The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) (8 page)

Beside the pistol, however, was something she didn’t recognize. Sorilla picked up the device, turning it over in her hand. It looked rather like an electric screwdriver, except that in the place of the driver bit there was a smooth piece of glass.

“Chemically boosted gigawatt laser,” Graves filled in. “Has a ten-minute burn.”

Sorilla whistled appreciatively. Lasers weren’t commonly used in her line of work, not as weapons at least. Plenty of ships used them, generally for point defense purposes, but few power sources were potent enough, and stable enough, to put out the required current to weaponize a handheld laser system.

“Ten-minute burn? Damn, sir, that’s impressive. Why haven’t we seen these before?” she asked, honestly curious since even a two-minute burn would be useful with a weapon of that power.

“Price, mostly,” Graves answered. “That’s worth almost as much as your suit.”

“Ouch.” She laid the device back down in its case.

Her suit was worth close to twenty million, one reason why OPCOM was the only division that used them.

“It’ll give you another way to deal some havoc, not that you need any more ways from what I understand.” Graves smiled thinly. “But more importantly, it also has some versatility. You can fight with it, cut with it, weld with it…think of it as a multi-tool, Lieutenant.”

Sorilla nodded slowly.

“A
very
expensive multi-tool,” Graves said with a sinister smile. “Don’t break it.”

“Yes, sir,” she said in a slightly strangled voice.

She knew he was kidding, mostly. You didn’t send kit out into the field without the full knowledge that it may well have to be used up to accomplish the mission, that was the way of the military. In fact, in most cases, the brass tended to prefer if material was used up. It looked better on their books if the pricey toys they paid for actually got used, otherwise why were they purchased in the first place?

That said, she didn’t much like the idea of the desk work she’d have to fill out if she dropped the damned thing and stomped on it.

“Most of the rest are updates on items you’ll be familiar with,” Graves said. “However, over this way you’ll see that we’ve saved the best for last.”

He led her over to a familiar, yet distinctly different, shape. She smiled slowly and walked around the item, taking it in from all sides.

“I like.”

“I suspected that you would.”

Graves watched impassively as Sorilla walked around the new issue operator class armor, designed to replace her previous kit with something that had a little more kick to it. The new suit had an angled face plate, replacing the flat black slate of the original OPCOM suit, giving the impression of a knight in matte black armor. Sorilla reached up and broke the magnetic seal, opening the armor up, then glanced back.

“May I, sir?”

“This is your suit, Lieutenant. Feel free to get acquainted.”

Sorilla nodded, reaching in and running her hand along the inside of the armor. “I don’t see gel dispensers.”

“The gel is in a porous membrane, still there and you get the benefits, but no more mess when you get out.” Graves shrugged. “Unless you get yourself shot up.”

Sorilla smirked crookedly. “Pity. It was always fun to watch men squirm when I wiped it off.”

Graves, probably wisely, refrained from commenting. There were some subjects that were, if not taboo, then at least risky for a man to enter into, even if he was a general. Along those same lines, he had to steel himself to keep from turning aside as she methodically stripped down. He refused to look away from her when he wouldn’t even consider looking away from one of the men under his command, but the lieutenant did make it…difficult.

She was perhaps not a beautiful woman, but she was certainly striking and very attractive in her own way. Her skin was pulled tight over ropes of thickly twisted muscles that moved and rippled with every motion she made. She wasn’t muscular on the order of a body builder, but there was probably an unhealthy lack of fat on her body.

Sorilla paid him little mind as she climbed into the armor.

It wasn’t difficult to suit up, but it did present its own challenges. From the knees down was closed, and she had to squeeze her feet down into the pointed toes of the armor, squirming slightly as the cool gel-filled material compressed around her to fit as snugly as possible.

The arms were the same, leaving her hanging in the suit like she’d been crucified. Sorilla lay her head back into the helmet, making contact with the NFC receiver at the base of the neck. She nudged the suit awake and waited for the boot sequence to complete before the suit was ready to activate. After that, it just took a thought to close it around her.

The upper legs and arms went first, sealing easily. The chest was a one-piece slab that closed from right to left, and then the helmet slid shut over her face. For a moment she hung there in darkness, her implants syncing with the armor, and then the HUDS came online.

“New interface,” she said, noting instantly by the hollow echo that the com wasn’t on yet. She nudged the armor mentally and instantly the noise cancellation activated along with her mic, so she repeated herself, “New interface, same command line though.”

“There are a few new commands in the command line, I believe you’ll find,” Graves said. “But yes, the software has been updated.”

She nudged the help menu while the General was speaking, spotting the new commands in the list that followed.

Nothing spectacular here…no, wait, what’s this?

“Active camouflage, sir?”

“This suit is invisible to most wavelengths used for detection on Earth,” he said. “Microwaves, radio waves, infrared, a few others. We haven’t quite got the visible spectrum worked out yet, but the armor can fake a pretty decent invisibility cloak,” Graves told her. “Nothing you want to depend on up close in a well-lit room, but in a shadowy jungle? It’s a solid King, if not an Ace.”

“Groovy,” she said softly, cycling the system on and looking at her arm and hand as she held it up in front of her face.

The image of the general wavered as she waved the limb in front of her, a noted distortion warping the air in front of her. He was right, not something to be relied on in a well-lit room, but she didn’t do much fighting in well-let rooms.

“Unfortunately, we’re not sure how much good this is going to do for you.”

“Oh?” Sorilla lowered her hand and cycled the armor back to normal mode. “Why?”

Graves had a dark look on his face as he let out a gravelly sigh. “We suspect that the aliens, the Alphas at least, use your body’s gravity to track you.”

Sorilla couldn’t help it, she laughed out loud. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Someone might be, but it’s not me, Lieutenant,” Graves replied seriously. “The Alpha technology is insanely refined compared to our own. We’re still picking it apart, but just the stuff we’ve been able to work out has boosted our technical capability by decades.”

Sorilla shook her head, noting in the back of her mind that the armor felt more natural than her old model. “Seems to me that it’s not a reliable method, Sir. Hard to tell the difference between human and animal, for one.”

“There is that, which is probably the only reason they didn’t nuke your ass on Hayden.”

Sorilla nodded. That was entirely possible. She shuddered at the level of information overload a system tracking individual space-time deformations would provide on a planet that held sophisticated life forms.

“I don’t suppose going on a diet would help?” she asked, voice a mix between sour amusement and mild disbelief.

“It might, for some people.” Graves shrugged. “You’ve studied the gravity technology, I believe?”

“Yes, sir, as much as I could without a doctoral course at least,” Sorilla answered. The basic theories were complicated enough, she’d found quickly. If you wanted to know anything in depth, it required advanced study in quantum mechanics just to scratch the surface. Since the first recovery of alien technology from the Alphas, gravity theories were effectively a discipline all their own.

“Well, the iceberg effect comes into play,” Graves said. “We suspect that they can track the full gravity of a body.”

“Right.” Sorilla knew that one.

Most of the gravity that made up “normal” space-time—that is to say, the universe humans experienced—was actually only the very tip of a rather large iceberg. The rest was hidden away beneath the surface, unnoticeable to human sense but still very much in existence. That was the secret of the Alpha’s Gravity Valve: It didn’t magnify or create gravity, it just
opened
up access to what was already there.

So in answer to her own question, it was entirely possible that losing one pound of body weight may actually be the same as losing ten pounds to the Alphas’ detectors. It seemed unlikely that it would make much difference, not on that scale, but suddenly it didn’t seem like a great idea to have the massive space craft that humans had built. Not if the enemy was tracking by the full potential gravity of an object.

Brigadier Graves smiled. He couldn’t see her face, but the armor relayed body language well enough to someone who was used to dealing with people wearing it. He could see the thoughts taking over the lieutenant’s mind and could almost pick them out individually. It helped, of course, that she was hardly the first person he’d seen tread this line of reasoning.

“You’re wondering about capital ships and how much they mass,” he said, shocking her from her reverie.

“Uh, yes, sir,” Sorilla mumbled dumbly.
How the hell?

“We’ve instituted some plans to test and potentially counter that,” he told her. “You’ll be briefed at the Alamo.”

“Yes, sir.” Sorilla was thinking furiously. “Fighters, sir?”

“Not as such. Possibly, later, but for now we have other ideas,” Graves told her. “Take some time to test your new kit. The shoothouse here is open to you, but your tether car leaves in two days. Make use of them.”

“Yes, sir!”

Deep Space,

Master of Ships Parath eyed the displays carefully, making his own judgments as to the state of the local space-time before he ordered his ships into the gateway.

Gravetic gateways were tricky things by times, formed as they were by the interaction of gravity deformation from stellar class and higher masses. Generally stable, they could be misjudged if you didn’t account for pulsar interactions at distances that were occasionally rated in hundreds of light spans. No one understood how or why a pulsar could throw a gateway off, except perhaps the Ross, but only a fool transited without checking.

All things seemed clear this time, however, and he’d personally checked the logs and charts before beginning the voyage. There should be no odd interactions to affect the transit of his fleet, and that was as it should be.

They were still a fair distance from the last jump point to the nexus of this part of the galactic arm, even at their current rate, so most of his work now was just idle busywork more than anything of real value. Oh, it served a purpose, of course—fr one, it made certain that no one messed up their calculations, which was always important, and it made it look like he was working, which also mattered to the crew’s morale, he had long since learned—but there was nothing new in it.

Not normally.

This time, however, just as he was wrapping his calculations with some degree of satisfaction, Parath found himself staring at the computer models in what was quite simply undisguised shock as they began to shift and warp on him with no warning.

For a moment he just stared, but he was a trained stellar interpreter and a master of ships; he recognized the signs long before even the computers did.

Parath slapped his hand down on the alert com, voice crackling out. “Alert! Incoming transiting objects from the gate!”

Alarms sounded across the ships and, he knew, would be spreading across the fleet as fast as photons could carry his order. He rose to his feet and strode around the displays, eyes to the communal screens.

“Bring in the focus, show me the gateway.”

“Yes, Master.”

The gate they were looking at was the last one before contested space and the planet the alien forces were so determined to hold. It was the ideal place for an ambush, he supposed, but if that were the intent, then the enemy had mistimed it. They were still well out of combat range, and if needed, Parath was confident that he could out-maneuver the aliens until the bulk of the fleet arrived.

“Ships transiting the gateway!”

Parath glowered at the screen for a long moment, recognizing the configuration of ships. They were the same as the ones that chased him out of the system during his last foray into the alien territory. Unlike the flattened sleek designs of the Parithalian ships, the aliens preferred a cylindrical design that seemed centered around an outdated yet quite effective reaction-based thrust system.

Most Alliance ships now used variations on the Ross gravity drives, to one degree or another. Only the Ross truly understood the design, if even they did, but it was efficient and limited only by the effectiveness of your ship’s cooling systems. At high thrust, the opposed gravity fields generated an inordinate level of heat and radiation that would eventually overwhelm any shielding and cooling.

“All stations to readiness state.”

Parath gave the order calmly, knowing that he had time to consider what to do. Two ships had transited so far, and the gravity point was showing little sign of others incoming.

Must be a scouting group.

That seemed odd. He would have expected that they already knew what was coming. The previous scout had sent those messages on to
someone
after all, so why would they feel the need to send anyone through to check?

He had been expecting an ambush on the other side of the gate. That was the tactically ideal choice for the aliens. He still was expecting said ambush, actually, since two ships here would not slow him significantly.

“Bring forward our strike wing,” he ordered. “Cover the Ross battleships. We will approach with caution.”