Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three)

Text copyright © 2012 Evan Currie

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Back to the Hayden war and the Solari universe. You know, it’s good to be back. I loved visiting ancient rome, and am looking forward to a return, but nothing quite replaces gravity induced fission and exploding starships. This is book three of a planned four book cycle that will wrap up the
Hayden War
saga, so look for book four,
The Valhalla Call
, sometime early next year. I would write it sooner, but I have at least two more novels in my other series to work on first.
SEAL Team 13
is already underway, and should be out in early fall of 2012, and then I’ll be working on
Roman Renegades
. So there’s the schedule, more or less, for your edification. Enjoy
Valkyrie Burning
.

For earlier novels in this series, please read :

On Silver Wings

Valkyrie Rising

And visit
www.tenhawkpresents.com
to subscribe to Evan’s newsletter where you can read a sneak peek look into the future of this universe in the short story
Sentinels
!

(Or just go here:
http://forms.aweber.com/form/86/386797486.htm
to subscribe directly)

The rock screamed like a freight train as it entered the atmosphere of the planet, lighting a trail of fire through the skies that could been seen for thousands of kilometers in all directions. The sensor network around the planet didn’t detect it until then and were in a state of near panic as they tracked and analyzed the object, seeking to identify it and gauge its threat to the world below.

It was less than twenty meters in diameter, a chunk of rock with an iron core. Impervious to conventional defensive measures. Those manning the sensors determined in seconds that it would shrug off all but a gravetic compression wave. That was considered, but as the final trajectory came in, the option was shelved.

It tore through the atmosphere, slamming into the ocean water, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest community. The wave it kicked up would be troublesome but less so than dealing with the fallout of detonating it with a compression singularity. The crash site was logged and an observation craft dispatched to determine that nothing untoward had hitched a ride with the falling star, but more attention was placed into determining how it had escaped early warning systems and whether any of its friends might be coming on its trail.

In the ocean water, a hundred meters down and sinking rapidly, the cooling rock was boiling the water away from the sheer heat of its surface, a trail of bubbles leading from it to the eruption it had left on the surface. It struck with the force of a nuclear weapon, yet so far from any targets of interest that even the commanders of the war division soon put it out of mind, turning their focus to other matters.

As those thoughts were first filtering through paranoid minds, however, the rock was reaching one thousand meters below the surface of the ocean, and it was changing. It cracked wide open from the rapid cooling, spilling a green fluid into the waters as movement could be seen within the now clearly hollow sphere.

Six figures emerged from the crack, pulling equipment after them as they paused and looked around. They were in black armor, all but invisible in the deep water, with no lights to attract enemy or predator of the ocean’s depths. They didn’t have much time, so they went immediately to work, pulling material from the darkness of the hole they had emerged from, each passing second dragging them deeper into the ocean depths.

Finally, after several minutes of work in the inky darkness of the ocean, they had retrieved the sealed boxes of gear and, perhaps more importantly, the UNAVS (Underwater NAVigation Systems) they were going to need to get to their target.

After a moment of orientation, they turned in unison and kicked off into the inky darkness, the UNAVS whirring slowly and silently on stored power as they pulled miniature supply trains behind them.

They didn’t surface for several hours and over two hundred kilometers. Finally coming upon a coral reef, or what was determined to be as close to coral as there was on this alien world, they paused to confirm intelligence reports on the land mass. When they found the beach ahead of them was indeed empty, the six figures anchored their supplies to the coral reef then rose from the sea. Water cascaded from their armor, beading on the slick surface as they walked from the depths like monsters of legend, swinging their infantry assault weapons across the beach, covering the light jungle beyond in case something had slipped past their sensors.

Clearing the beach took several minutes, then they collapsed just inside the jungle line and the first of them pulled off the armored helm he wore.

“That sucked,” he pronounced, not for the first time, taking a breath of unrecycled air for the first time in several weeks.

Corporal Jardiens was a big man, probably six-three, even without the armor. With it, he towered over the rest of the squad at almost seven feet tall.

A smaller figure pulled the helm off as he spoke and shook her head, glaring at him. “Can it, Jardiens.”

The big guy looked down at the five-foot-eleven—in armor—figure and ducked his head. “Sorry, Top.”

Master Sergeant Sorilla Aida shook her head, trying to work a kink out of her neck muscles as she looked around the jungle. It looked like any jungle she’d been in during her career, across a total of three worlds and seven continents. At almost forty, Sorilla was the Old Woman of the team, both by virtue of age and experience. In a culture of rejuvenation and life extension treatments, however, she was barely considered out of diapers by some standards.

It was funny how your age was relative to the work you did.

Dion Jardiens was a nineteen-year-old Canadian trooper who’d been slated for recruitment into Joint Task Force Two until the Allied Fleet picked his name out of the proverbial hat and pulled him for SARD (Solari Advanced Reconnaissance Detachment) training and duty. The opposite end of the spectrum and, as far as Sorilla was concerned, in serious need of wet naps and a fulltime nanny. The other four weren’t much older, for that matter.

Lieutenant Joshua Crow, Sorilla’s latest CO, was a United States Navy SEAL, or had been until he was tapped for advanced training in the SARD units like the rest of them. She’d served with him for a while, now, though and was satisfied that he knew his work. Not that he had always known it, but Crow was a man who owned up to mistakes and didn’t repeat them. He pulled his helm off as well, nodding to Sorilla as he ran a hand through his soaked hair. “Some ride, huh?”

The men chuckled, and Sorilla grunted in grim amusement. “I’ve had worse.”

Yeah, they all knew that she’d had worse.

Corporal Mackenzie, standing six-three in armor, dropped his helm to the ground along with the others, breathing deep droughts of fresh air as he lost the smile briefly. He was a former member of His Majesty’s Special Air Service, drawn from active service for SARD training along with the rest only six months earlier. “Didn’t hit near as hard as the simulations.”

They nodded as the last two dropped their helms in the dirt, each taking the requisite deep breaths of the first free air they’d had in days. Corporals Able and Korman were former members of the United States Marine Detachment One and Israel’s Shaytet-13, respectively.

“The gravity valve worked precisely as planned,” Korman said, taking deep and even breaths. “Or well within optimal parameters, at least.”

The small wiry man, his head and neck looking out of place in the relatively bulky suit he wore, smiled wryly. “Congratulations. We rode the rock and survived.”

Another soft round of chuckles passed between them as Lieutenant Crow tapped his hands lightly together, catching their attention. “Korman, confirm that we’re on target. Top, take Jardiens and do a quick recon while the rest of us drag the gear up.”

“Right.” Sorilla nodded, clapping the larger man beside her on the shoulder. “Come on, kid, let’s make sure there’s nothing out here looking to eat us.”

The big Canadian chuckled as they picked up their helms and took one more breath of fresh air before sealing themselves back in their protective cocoons. “Anything out here tries to eat me better be ready for a belly ache, Top.”

Sorilla laughed dryly. “If it can get its jaws open wide enough to swallow that fat head of yours, I think its belly will be the least of our worries.”

She checked her M190, a compact variant of the standard-issue M112 assault rifle, making sure that the magazine had a full charge and that there was a round in the chamber, then nodded to the jungle. “Let’s go, kid.”

****

The area was clear, and by the time they got back, the gear they were going to need for their mission was spread out on the ground just inside the edge of the jungle, waiting for them.

Crow glanced up as Sorilla and Jardiens appeared from the jungle. “Anything?”

Sorilla shook her head briefly, walking forward to where the lieutenant was looking over a digital ink display with the map they’d been issued for the mission.

“We’re on target,” he said, not looking up again. “Came in right here, and it looks like we’re about here.” He pointed to a small island chain near one of the planet’s large continental landmasses. “Give or take.”

Sorilla heard the distaste in his voice and couldn’t help but smile slightly. She knew why it was there, of course. Modern military units were used to knowing precisely where they were at all times. All human worlds had a network of positioning satellites that could pinpoint a person to within a couple inches on three axes. This wasn’t, however, a human-controlled world. It belonged to the Ghoulies, the first alien race humanity had happened to encounter in its almost three hundred years of space faring.

Sorilla was the first human to come face to face with a Ghoulie, and she’d been the one to name them from the human side of things. They were similar in many ways to the legendary ‘Greys’ of Earth culture, though not nearly as spindly and fragile-looking as those were reported to be. Some people even thought that they were the source of the grey legend, but that was highly unlikely in Sorilla’s considered opinion, since the Ghoulies would have taken Earth in a heartbeat if they’d found it three hundred years ago.

Not that the little bastards knew where Earth was now.

They’d come close, too close in fact. The war had opened five years earlier with the destruction of the colony on Hayden’s world and a total decimation of its population. Sorilla had been inserted there just after the initial attack and found only a few thousand survivors of the planet’s pre-invasion populace of nearly eighty grand.

Since then, the Ghoulies had pushed the war hard, destroying one human world outright when they found it wasn’t to their personal liking. They had the advantage of superior technology and numbers, ripping through the few armed human ships like snarling beasts through a flock of butterflies.

Humanity had a few advantages of its own, however. The first was strategic depth. From the outer worlds to Earth, there were over thirty light-years, which couldn’t be easily crossed, even with the Ghoulies’ technology. The fact that Earth was hidden amongst several hundred other stars within the sixty-light-year sphere also kept the war from ending abruptly in the first year.

Earth had some pretty nasty little minds as well, however, and occasionally even a little luck. New ships were being turned out within eight months of the loss of Task Force Two over Hayden, a record in anyone’s book as far as Sorilla knew, and thanks to a real Sierra Hotel Captain, they even captured some of the key enemy tech.

Especially their gravity manipulation stuff, which was the only way the Rock Rider team had been able to survive insertion via the equivalent of a nuclear detonation. The carefully constructed meteor they’d rode in had a gravity valve engineered into it, the first application of the captured technology to be used tactically so far, which had allowed the team to survive the explosive crash into the water.

“We’ve got three days to get eyes on,” Sorilla said, glancing at the map pensively. “Then the Fleet is going to jump in and start hammering this hole.”

Crow drew a line across the map to their target location. “This is where recon probes say the target is. We should be able to hump it over there in a day...day and a half. Final approach is going to be the pain.”