Open Arms (On Silver Wings Book 7)

by Evan Currie

  Muffled clangs were heard for hundreds of meters as the transport locked the APC in, and then the reactors whined loud as the thrusters flared bright for a moment before vanishing invisibly into the infrared spectrum and the craft pulled up from the ground.

  It was like a magic trick to those outside. One moment the APC was there; the next it was gone. Like the old game of cups and balls, only with just one single ball and cup pulling the effect off.

  Caliph pushed the throttle all the way past the red line, nosing the transport up and making for altitude as fast as the drop ship could claw its way up.

  *****

  “Peregrine, all units. Extractions complete. Returning to SOL to offload asset and prisoner. Good luck.”

  “Thank you, Peregrine,” Sorilla said. “All units, break contact. Escape and evade. I say again, escape and evade.”

  Sorilla provided cover as her team broke contact on her orders, but rather than picking the best route for herself, she waited until the team was on their way and then started fighting her way to the Lucian Sentinels…and, of course, toward the enemy.

  She bolted across the dusty ground, sliding into a trench dug up by enemy fire where Kriss was lying on his side for cover. The Lucian twitched in her direction, but she closed a hand on the body of his blaster and held it at bay as he recognized her.

  “Time to go,” Sorilla said.

  “The enemy are still fighting.” Kriss grinned, a slightly maniacal look on his face. “It will be time to go when they are all dead.”

  “There are still fifty enemy soldiers, at least, coming around the villa,” Sorilla growled. “My team has pulled out. You are not going to reenact the Battle of the Alamo on my time!”

  “Reenact the what?”

  “Kriss!” she snarled. “It is time to leave!”

  He glared at her. “You humans are beginning to disappoint me.”

  Sorilla leaned in close to him. “Ask me if I care.”

  Kriss glowered at her, but she didn’t budge, despite the sound of warp blasts tearing the living hell out of the battlefield all around them.

  “You’ll actually sit here arguing with me while the enemy descend upon us?” Kriss asked, a touch of wonder in his tone.

  “If that’s what it takes to get this through your thick skull, yes.”

  He maintained his straight expression for a short time longer, then abruptly broke into what passed for alien laughter. Sorilla wasn’t entirely immune to the chills it invoked, but she refused adamantly to let that show.

  “Acceptable,” he told her, grinningly wildly, and for a moment Sorilla thought that meant he would happily stay there at an impasse until they both died under enemy fire, but he snapped a hand up. “Sentinels! Withdraw! We have accomplished the task!”

  Sorilla masked a sigh of relief. “Good. Let’s move.”

  “Move along. I’ll follow,” Kriss told her with an almost absent wave.

  Sorilla started to her feet, then paused as she noticed a discoloration on the ground below him. She paused, scanning the light reflected off the discolored dirt, and sighed audibly.

  “Damn it, Kriss. I told you to stay out of the fighting.” She dropped back to one knee beside him. “How badly did you tear open your wounds?”

  “That is not your concern. Go. I will cover your withdrawal.”

  “You damned idiot,” she growled, hooking his arm up over her shoulder and lifting him to his feet. “If you get me killed, I swear I’ll find a way to make you pay for it.”

  “Leave me be, human,” Kriss protested. “A good death awaits here.”

  “Against these worthless pieces of shit?” Sorilla scoffed, extending her free arm and putting three rounds into a particularly brave, or more likely stupid, attacker. “You won’t punch much of a ticket to Valhalla here, Kriss.”

  “What is this Valhalla?” he gritted out as she physically hauled him out of the depression in the ground and away from the fighting.

  “Is this really a time for metaphysical discussion?” she asked, pulling him back as she fired back toward the enemy positions with her free hand.

  Kriss hefted his warp blaster and propped it against his hip, firing it as they moved. “You can think of a better time?”

  Sorilla sighed, exasperated.

  “Grit your teeth,” she ordered.

  “What? Grit my…? Argh!” Kriss roared in pain as Sorilla ducked down and put her shoulder into his mid-section, lifting him up over her shoulder. “You human—”

  “Stop yapping and shoot them while I run!” she snarled, turning and bounding away.

  He swore fluently in several languages, only a very few of which did she personally understand. Swearing was swearing in any language, however, so she dutifully set each of them to memory. It always surprised Sorilla, actually, how very useful swearing was to her job.

  Kriss’s weapon fired steadily as she moved, the staccato beat twisting her guts with each surge of the gravity warp. Sorilla ignored it as best she could, using the focusing techniques she’d been able to use to keep from puking during ship jumps.

  The entire battlefield was a twisted mess of conflicting signals, each of which was pulling her attention in different directions. The result was the mother of all nausea episodes and a real impact on her ability to maintain balance as she ran. She leveraged the suit sensors to compensate for the disorientation and did her best to maintain stability with her eyes instead of her whole body.

  Even with all the practice she’d had over the years, she still stumbled when a blast flew by close enough at just the wrong moment. Staggering with the extra weight on her shoulders, Sorilla barely avoided pitching to the side as another blast warped the air by her right side.

  “What are you doing?” Kriss demanded from over her shoulder.

  “Shut up,” she snarled in return, gaining her balance again and pushing forward again.

  “Colonel,” a voice came over the command channel. “Viper One, coming around. Need a hand?”

  “Roger that, Viper One, and thank you for any cover you can provide.”

  “We have your IFF on our scopes. Keep your head down and we’ll bring the fire.”

  “Negative, Viper One. We are not keeping anything down. Withdrawing under fire, provide cover as you can,” Sorilla ordered.

  “Roger that, Colonel. Package inbound.”

  With warp blasts chasing them, Sorilla and Kriss ran out into the desert just as lines of flame struck across the battlefield, rolling thunder echoing across the field as the Saddleback appeared from the distance, firing steadily, then arced slowly away as it completed the fire mission.

  *****

  Washington looked over his shoulder as he pulled the Saddleback around and left the area of operation.

  “SOL, Viper One.”

  “Go for SOL, Viper One.”

  Washington flipped off the capacitor link to the gun, securing it for flight.

  “Viper One reports fire mission complete,” he said over the comm. “Gun is secured. Viper One proceeding away from area of operation. Request window for orbital extraction.”

  “Roger, Viper One, hold for calculations.”

  “Roger, SOL, holding.” Washington secured the comm and checked over his shoulder again. “Any sign of air defenses?”

  Lieutenant Molen shook his head. “No radar, no LIDAR, not even any gravity scanners other than the Alliance ship. We’re in the clear.”

  Washington frowned. “That make any sense to you?”

  “Does what make any sense?” Molen asked, confused.

  “No air defenses, at all?” Washington asked. “You’d think they’d have some sort of monitoring system in place, if nothing else.”

  “Maybe they shut it off?”

  Washington scowled. “Shut it off? Why would they do that? Unless they were planning on…” He trailed off, checking the instrumentation package before opening the comm to the SOL again. “SOL, Viper One.”

  “We don’t have your win
dow yet, Viper One.”

  “Not that. Do you have any unidentified flights anywhere near the AO?” he asked. “There’s something odd down here.”

  “Hold on.”

  “Yeah yeah, hurry up and wait, I know the drill,” Washington said, securing the comm again before turning to look back at his RIO. “Keep an eye on the scopes.”

  *****

  USV SOL

  “Operation complete.”

  Mattan didn’t look up at the pronouncement, too focused on the remaining icons left on the world below.

  The green ones were moving away from the fight, which was fine. He knew his men, and he knew Sorilla well enough to know that they would be fine. In many ways, the lot of them would be more at home down there, on the run, than they ever were in their rooms on the SOL. The grayed-out icons, those were the ones he spared a moment of silence for, however.

  Three men. Rather low, considering the force they went up against, I suppose.

  It didn’t really matter, though. One was too many.

  “The transport drop ship has gone to full orbit burn,” a young ensign announced. “The SOL will have to shift orbit to pick them up. They do not have enough fuel to reach a stable orbit.”

  Ruger nodded. “Tell the captain to bring us down to pick them up. Let’s find out what they stumbled into, whether it was worth any of this.”

  Mattan snorted. “It never is.”

  “Points of view, General,” the admiral said, “points of view. The life of one good man is worth more than all the bastards we’ve ever put down over the years…but the intelligence that man can deliver to help us put down more bastards…that might just be worth the effort.”

  “You ever get tired of playing this game, Admiral?”

  “Never. You?”

  Mattan laughed. “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t.”

  Ruger shrugged. “I’ve worked Navy intelligence most of my damn life now. I enjoy it. Of course, I’ve always been a sociopathic piece of shit, if you listen to my superiors.”

  The general chuckled. “I believe them, but you’re our sociopath. I never really got the hang of separating myself from the lives that got tangled up in the ops I ran, both soldiers and civilians. Probably why I never got tapped for the hot seat.”

  “You never got promoted to organization command because you can’t play the political game worth a damn,” Ruger told him. “Had nothing to do with your competence. You just pissed off too many people over your pay grade.”

  Mattan laughed openly. “Says the man whose superiors call him a sociopathic piece of shit.”

  “General, in my line of work, that’s a compliment.”

  Mattan tipped his head slightly, acknowledging that fact as a lieutenant stepped over to the table.

  “Sirs?” the young ensign said nervously.

  “What is it, Lieutenant?” Ruger said. “Spit it out.”

  “Lieutenant Commander Washington just requested any information we have concerning unidentified flights approaching the AO,” the young man said.

  “Oh? Were there any?” Ruger asked, leaning forward.

  “Yes, sir, one, sir,” the lieutenant said, tapping the display table and flicking the appropriate scans across it to where Ruger watched.

  The view of the area of operations was from overhead, live scans from the SOL overlaid with digital enhancements. The icons and timestamp were from the height of the battle, just minutes earlier.

  To Ruger it felt like hours.

  He spotted the highlighted icon of an unidentified craft approaching the AO, only to see it turn away abruptly just shortly after the Saddleback had opened up on its first steep approach. He tracked it with his eyes.

  “Where is it going?” he asked. “The airfield is the other way.”

  “Private field, Admiral,” the lieutenant said, gesturing to shift the focus of the scan.

  It was a field near the mouth of the river delta, in the lushest and richest part of the colony. The unidentified craft was heading straight there, apparently unaware of its being tracked.

  “Do we know who owns it?” Mattan asked.

  “No, sir,” the lieutenant said.

  Ruger’s eyes shifted over to the icon of the transport drop ship that was now passing angels eighty and heading for orbit.

  “I bet you we know someone who does.”

  Chapter 17

  Sorilla skidded to the ground along her hips, keeping Kriss balanced mostly on her shoulder as she dropped into a drainage ditch. She offloaded the grumbling and severely pissed Lucian, shrugging him to the dirt and pushing him over onto his back.

  “How bad is it?” she asked, glancing at his injury before pulling a scanner stick from her armor and jamming it into the dirt at the top of the ditch so she could keep an eye on approach vectors.

  “I am not a healer,” Kriss growled.

  “You’re leaking like a sieve,” Sorilla told him. “I’d be close to passing out by now.”

  “Lucians are tougher than most sophonts,” he responded. “I will likely live.”

  “Don’t be so optimistic, Kriss,” she snorted. “You sound like you’re disappointed.”

  “My injuries are debilitating,” he said after a moment. “Once healed I will be removed from the active duties of a Sentinel.”

  She looked at him in silence for a long moment. “You really were trying to punch your ticket to Valhalla.”

  “What is this Valhalla?” Kriss asked. “There was nothing of that in our cultural briefs on your species.”

  Sorilla scanned the desert around them, seeing nothing approaching from any direction or the air as she spoke.

  “Valhalla is the warrior’s afterlife,” Sorilla said, choosing the simplest explanation she could fine. “When a warrior dies in combat, he or she will be carried off to Valhalla by…maidens on winged mounts.”

  “And…you believe this?” Kriss asked, barely disguising his amusement.

  Sorilla shrugged, the exaggerated expressive used by people in armor. “It’s not common these days, and no, it isn’t my faith. However, it is one that appeals to soldiers. I served on Task Force Valkyrie, named after the maidens of the story. A number of those who served with me were faithful—some just because of the task force’s nickname, but a lot of them got very serious about it as the war drew on.”

  Kriss slumped back. “I can see the attraction of such a faith.”

  Sorilla nodded. “It spread quickly, especially during the harder moments of the war.”

  “Such times try even the hardiest,” Kriss said. “The war with the Ross…changed many things among the Alliance races.”

  Sorilla nodded but didn’t reply when a hint of motion was caught on the scanner. She refocused her attention, scanning the area through the mobile stick, but didn’t see anything.

  “What is it?”

  “Scanner picked up motion,” she said. “Don’t see anything though.”

  “Wind, perhaps.”

  “No.” Sorilla shook her head. “Something is out here.”

  “Your instruments show nothing?”

  “Not a thing,” she replied.

  Kriss stared at her for a long moment. “And you don’t believe them?”

  “Something is out here.” Sorilla drew her right-hand pistol, checking the load. “Stay here.”

  Kriss laughed painfully, holding pressure over his injury. “Where would I go, Colonel?”

  Sorilla didn’t respond as she began moving down the ditch in the general direction of the motion that her scanner had briefly picked up. The furrows in the ground were deep and winding, providing plenty of cover for people who, like themselves, were looking to avoid being spotted.

  None of her scanner systems were particularly adept at penetrating the ground/air interface, which meant that she would have to go peek around the curves herself.

  She edged over to the turn in the trench, leading with her gun and using the barrel camera to look around the corners. As she pushed
around the corner, Sorilla caught a blur of motion on the camera feed and started to react just as a force slammed into her arm and jarred the gun loose.

  She flipped her hand around, grabbing at the arm that knocked her, and yanked, jabbing a hard left that was blocked as she dropped her head to avoid a swing on her head. She caught the glint of a blade and reacted by stepping in closer, levering the attacker up and heaving him into the air with all her strength.

  Spotting another figure, and suddenly recognizing them both, Sorilla sighed mentally and reached out to grab number two before stepping backwards. She yanked her target forward, just in time for number one to come crashing back to the ground, crushing the second into the mud.

  “Are we quite done?” she asked, looking down at the two Lucians who were working to extricate themselves from the tangle they were in.

  Kriss was laughing to kill himself, which, with his injuries, was an entirely possible outcome.

  “Shut up, Kriss,” she growled. “You’re going to make your injuries worse.”

  She retrieved her pistol, shooting a glare at the two Lucians who were getting to their feet.

  “You two idiots need more practice ghosting,” she said. “Motion trackers picked you up at least five times before you got within fifty meters.”

  “I warned all of you to be wary of the humans,” Kriss chastised them. “You should not have gotten within her reach at all, let alone without your blasters charged.”

  Sorilla rolled her eyes. “If they were trying to kill me, that would be true. They weren’t interested in killing me, however. They were testing me.”

  Kriss laughed. “I have seen you fight. They still should have come fully armed.”

  “Possibly,” Sorilla replied, holstering her weapon once she got it cleaned off. “In the meantime, are there any more of you nearby?”

  The Lucians glanced at Kriss first and got a signal from him that Sorilla noted and memorized before they would speak.

  “The others are not far. We elected to approach and determine your status,” the Sentinel said to Kriss.