Valkyrie Rising (Warrior's Wings Book Two) (9 page)

“Screw that!” she snarled, pointing back in the room. “What’s with the nerve agent?”

“Relax. It was CS, we just hacked your implants.”

Sorilla froze, staring in total shock as her mouth went dry. She barely managed to rasp out a response. “You can do that?”

“Of course,” he said, as if it were obvious.

“You little shit!” She picked him up bodily, sending his pad clattering across the floor. “If you can do it, so can the enemy! I wasn’t briefed on that! My old implants were designed specifically to outright refuse outside access for a good, goddamned reason!”

The man, a lieutenant by his bars, struggled awkwardly in her grip. He was taller than she was but built like a paper pusher and really didn’t stand a chance as she shook him wildly.

“Calm down, Sarge.”

Sorilla looked behind her to see Brigadier Graves step into the room. “Did you know about this shit, sir?”

“Drop the louie, Sarge, he’s just a clerk recording your results,” Graves ordered, rolling his eyes.

She looked back at the young man, who was now turning a little blue, and let him go. As he fell to the floor, she turned back to Graves. “Sir? Did you know?”

“Yes, I knew. And you can relax, you weren’t hacked.” Graves said as he looked at the kid on the floor and snorted, annoyed. “It was an incredibly poor choice of words.”

She glared down at the man but quickly turned her focus back to the General. “You still had my implants feed me false information, sir.”

“That we did, but you let us do it.”

“Excuse me?” she snarled, knowing she was bordering on insubordination but really not caring in the least. Having large parts of her reality being defined by her implants made Sorilla really quite touchy about hackers in general.

“When you put everything into training and diagnostic mode, Sergeant,” he told her calmly, “a hardware connection was automatically made that lets us access your systems. Come out of training mode and your system defaults to no external access and you can’t be hacked…well, not without an axe or something similar, anyway.”

She grimaced at that imagery but didn’t comment.

Graves walked around her, glancing down at the fallen man. “You all right, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” the young officer croaked from the floor.

The general looked back over to Sorilla. “You do realize I should have you up on charges, right?”

“Sir.”

“Oh, don’t give me that boot camp shit, Sergeant. I’m neither that stupid nor that old,” he growled. “You’re lucky that this is Bragg and we somewhat expect our officers to get scuffed up from time to time around here.”

Sorilla didn’t say anything; nothing particularly intelligent came to mind.

Graves walked over to the door, which was still jammed down on Sorilla’s rifle. “Nice move. Figured you’d make a slide for it, myself.”

“I figured if someone was twisted enough to pump VX into the room, the door might just take one of my legs off if I miscalculated.”

The general nodded. “Check into that, Lieutenant, I never asked how much force the door had.”

“Yes, sir,” the young butter bar croaked out again, rubbing his throat and trying not to glare at the woman who could, and likely would, cheerfully break him in half.

Sorilla suppressed the urge to glare at the general. It was one thing to scuff up a new butter bar… A sergeant , especially a master sergeant, could just possibly get away with that. Glaring openly at a brigadier, not so much.

“Word came through from Fleet,” Graves said casually. “They want you now.”

Sorilla actually took a few moments to work out what he was talking about. “Sir? I thought you said I had more time to decide?”

“I thought you did. Something changed,” he told her. “Don’t know what, but they want an advanced recon team in the worst way. You in, or do I send someone else?”

She didn’t really have to think about it. If Fleet was after their own SOCOM team, that meant that they had a use for it. At the moment, there was really only one thing that use could be, and Sorilla was looking forward to another shot at the aliens. She had a few questions she wanted answered, and they were the only ones with the answers.

“I’m in. I’ll be in New Mexico in three days. That all right, sir?”

“Perfectly fine, Sergeant.”

She nodded, idly kicking her rifle out from under the door and wincing as the heavy door slammed shut with enough force to shake the Shoot House. Sorilla shot a glare at the lieutenant, who suddenly found something very interesting on the other side of the room.

Sorilla rolled her eyes and threw the general a salute, which he returned casually.

“Go on, Sergeant. Give ‘em hell for the SF.”

“Bet on it, sir,” she replied before turning on her heel and striding out.

His eyes followed her departure as he nodded.

“Already have, Sarge.”

Chapter Three

USF Cheyenne

Jump Point Alpha–Atlantis System

Despite an uncharacteristic shudder as they re-entered normal space-time, Patrick was surprised how smoothly things seemed to have gone. He checked a couple readings from internal diagnostics then addressed his officers.

“Clear the heat shields, let’s get a look around.”

“Aye, sir.”

The Cheyenne’s external sensing systems slowly came back online as the heavy heat shields were retracted. Given the danger of slamming into excited particles at high velocity, the admiral had ordered that they jump blind in order to preserve the more delicate systems from possible damage. It wasn’t a bad thought, but it did limit how quickly they could begin gathering information about their immediate location.

Long-range data wasn’t an issue; there was always a delay there, but jump points were known locations in space-time. It was only a matter of time before the enemy began picketing them the way Fleet had, only likely with heavier weapons.

“Close-range systems online. We’re clear.”

Patrick nodded, relieved. “Good. Get me a good look at Atlantis as soon as you can.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Squadron data-link is coming back up. All ships accounted for.”

Patrick nodded his thanks. “Sound general quarters, signal the squadron to do the same.”

“Aye, sir. General quarters.”

The alarm began to sound as the Cheyenne’s reactor spun up, bringing the ship to ready stations across the board. The ship’s powerful Tokamak reactor was the only way to generate enough power to run the VASIMR drive at the levels needed for a military ship, but it couldn’t run in jump space. The lack of gravity and other effects of space-time actually played holy havoc with magnetic containment, and no one had figured out a way to compensate, as yet.

That meant that they couldn’t store anti-hydrogen pellets during a jump, nor could they run the fusion reactor, so the ships were forced to run on straight battery power during the initial few minutes after exiting jump space.

“We have Atlantis onscreen, sir. Information is about seventeen hours old.”

“Onscreen.”

“Aye, sir.”

At extreme long-range, the most they could make out with only a few seconds exposure was the soft blue of the planet along with the light of its moon peeking out from one side.

“Looks quiet so far, at least.”

It did at that, but Patrick knew that looks could be very deceiving at this range. “Do we have anything across the spectrum?”

“No, sir. Radio and laser frequencies are quiet.”

More news that was either good or bad, but without context there was no way to tell which. All they could do was wait for better data, but he wasn’t sure they could afford to be patient. Patrick opened a channel to the admiral.

“Ma’am?”

“I’m following, Captain. As soon as the squadron is spun up, take us in-system at best action speed.”

“Aye, ma’am. Best action speed.”

At best action speed, they’d reach planet in a little under a day, accounting for acceleration and deceleration, while maintaining combat-fit levels of crew health and welfare. It worked out to between three and five gravities acceleration, on average, but fluxed in order to allow for some breaks to keep the crew from being injured or just simply worn down to nothing by the time they arrived.

Patrick set to work, getting his ship in readiness while monitoring the squadron’s preparations at the same time. It took them almost an hour to secure all stations and wind up enough power to continue, but shortly after that, they were underway and under military power as they tipped their bows sunward and drove in-system.

*****

Trying to sleep in four-gravity acceleration was akin to trying to run in molasses: it could be done, but it took a lot of effort and a surprising amount of practice. So when the alarm sounded, Nadine Brookes awoke far easier than she had nodded off and struggled from the straps of the acceleration couch as she pawed at the console near her for the com panel.

“Bridge here.” A voice came back over the comm a moment later.

“Brookes,” she growled, trying to mask the sleep in her voice. “Status.”

“Accelerometers are showing gravitational anomalies, Admiral. I’ve brought the fleet to battle stations,” Patrick told her calmly. “They’re out there somewhere.”

“Understood.” She painfully swung out of the couch and planted her feet solidly on the floor. “Do we have contact with the planet?”

“Negative. Looks like a signals blackout, same as Hayden, ma’am.”

“Damn it,” she swore. “Visuals?”

“We’ve confirmed that the counterweight is still in orbit, ma’am.” His voice was mildly optimistic as he said that. “Still appears to be connected.”

“Well, that’s good then,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

If the counterweight was still tethered off, then the city was still there, as Atlantis used a floating facility for its tether. Partly this was a concession to the fact that there were no significant landmasses to build on, but it also served as a valuable safety measure in case of storm fronts. The city of Atlantis was quite capable of steering clear of most storms, even outrunning them in a pinch, and bringing the tether along with it.

All of that did mean, however, that if the counterweight was still being flung around by the orbit of the planet, then it was certain that the aliens hadn’t unleashed one of their gravity valve assaults on the city, because the first thing such an attack would do would be to likely destroy the tether base.

Nadine pulled a wet wipe cloth from a dispenser by her couch and scrubbed her face and hands while she considered the information she’d just received. The accelerometer system was quite sensitive, able to detect gravitational effects over several light-minutes or even farther, depending on the strength of the originating warp in space-time.

The trick after that was to filter out all known causes, and then eliminate any unknown causes that could be traced to explainable sources. In a system like Atlantis, that was a tricky proposition given the sheer number of planetoid and larger bodies, but with full active scans running, she was reasonably certain that Patrick wouldn’t be crying wolf over a predicted or predictable anomaly.

Slowly and carefully, Nadine got to her feet and stalked across the deck to where her aides were already working. She lowered herself gratefully into the bolster reserved for her station and sighed from the lessened strain before speaking up.

“Report.”

“Gravity detection across the squadron is tracking a source of gravity in motion,” Denise said crisply. “Subject is not natural. We’ve observed three distinct changes in angular velocity that don’t relate to any noted sources of local gravity.”

“Location?”

“Ahead, ma’am. Between us and the planet.”

“Damn.”

“Captain Roberts has issued squadron-wide battle stations alert. Weapons are free and charging.”

“Good.” Nadine nodded, eyeing the plot on her repeater screen carefully before she opened the command channel to the squadron captains. “This is Admiral Brookes speaking. Given what we know of the enemy and the intelligence from the Fleet courier, I believe we have to assume that the unknown contacts have hostile intentions toward Atlantis. Spread formation, standard counter-gravity tactics are in play.”

She paused for a moment, her lips twisting into a wry parody of a smile. “Remember…the center cannot hold. Let’s play this by the book, fight well, fight together… I’ll see you on the other side. That is all.”

She switched over to the Cheyenne’s closed circuits. “Captain? Take us in. If it’s not supposed to be here, make sure it isn’t here when we’re done.”

“Aye, ma’am.” Patrick replied.

A few moments later, his voice came over the ship-wide, calmly informing the crew of the impending action with no more emotional inflection than if he were blandly reading the menu at his preferred restaurant. She’d heard men sound more excited about the mystery meat ration packs that occasionally made the rounds.

The ships of the squadron spread out as they approached the planet, both to minimize damage should one of them be caught by the enemy weapons but also to maximize the effectiveness of their accelerometer detection grid through parallax. By gaining bearings from different angles, it was mathematical child’s play to triangulate the source of the rogue gravitational fields mucking about the local space-time.

It also let them recognize that there were at least two of the anomalies moving close enough to one another that they hadn’t been detected until the ships broke formation.

With all weapons hot, Taskforce Five threw its combined weight of active detection power into the direction of the rogue gravity well and quickly received a bounce signal.

“That’s them”

Patrick nodded, eyes on the initial ghost signals they were processing. Similar to the signals intercepted by the gravity trap accelerometers, they were still getting somewhat amorphous return signals off their forward sensing gear. At the ranges involved, it wasn’t a huge shock, however, particularly given that they knew these aliens had some form of electromagnetic jamming that covered almost all frequencies aside from visible light and some of the infrared and ultraviolet extensions.