No Man's Land

by Mike McPhail (Ed)

  I climbed into her command couch, jacked into her systems, immediately met the standard warning. Incompatible rigging, the ship’s AI flashed in my internal HUD. Synch not possible.

  Synch this, I thought.

  This is Tactical Operations Officer Simikan Amisano Marit, override code Esimir Den 3 7 Vandos 2. Confirm.

  A heartbeat’s pause. No other command officers in system. Emergency access confirmed.

  My heart raced faster and I swallowed past a constriction in my throat.

  Talisman, I addressed the AI by name, you are controlling our warp effect bubble, correct?

  Yes. Maintaining warp, headings, and drive power at last authorized settings.

  I need you to change them.

  Arbitrary course changes are not authorized. The AI sounded almost scandalized. I drew a deep breath. Here we go...

  I have emergency command of this ship, do I not?

  Within certain parameters, yes.

  I frowned. What parameters?

  Emergency command is authorized only when appointed command officers are dead or incapacitated. This status obligates you to request emergency assistance, or navigate to closest location of friendly forces who may aid you in your distress.

  I wanted to slam my hands on the control console. I nursed my wounded arm instead, and parsed AI logic with an effort.

  Let me restate. Do you know our present location relative to n-space?

  Negative.

  I’d guessed as much. However Bakadesh had put us in warp, she hadn’t stopped to map n-space referents first. Is it possible for you to navigate us at this moment to the closest friendlies in n-space?

  Negative.

  Good ship, good ship. Follow my logic just a little further... Therefore, I need to take alternative action to contact friendly forces. Do you concur?

  Affirmative, the ship agreed.

  Then cut our warp bubble and drop us into n-space immediately.

  Hesitation. Our coordinates will be unknown.

  Our coordinates are already unknown.

  We have hull damage. Transition will be hazardous.

  Transition is necessary.

  Another ping from the console told me how necessary. I could see the Dalukin hull looming over us at the upper edge of the forward view bay. Warp fields were beginning to synch.

  Talisman, you see the vessel trying for warp parity with us?

  Yes.

  You must recognize the Dalukin energy signatures. Your well-being and everyone on board will be endangered if we stay in this warp location a moment longer.

  I could sense the AI thinking about that one. I felt like a minute passed. It was half a second by the clock.

  You have a point, Talisman conceded. And the floor dropped out of the world.

  To be synched with your weapons systems is to fly. To be cut off from them is to be isolated in mere humanity.

  It is a state I endured for endless weeks. The Talisman was able to map our location: we were not lost, just far from traveled spaceways. The ship was damaged, the drive reduced to maneuvering thrust only. I set the rescue beacon to call for help, then waited for aid to arrive.

  I buried the crew in space, all twenty-five, including memorials for those lost in the hull breach.

  Bakadesh never came to on my watch. I stowed her unconscious body in the med bay’s single stasis chamber and ordered the AI to seal that room lest I do something unthinkable there myself. What became of her after we were found, I was never told.

  I never again experienced the live-wire existence of the rigged predator, the quasar-burn of energy weapons and targeting beams. Not directly. For now I command my own ship, a gunboat with a crew of three, where I am the pilot and the i-rigger all at once, orchestrating the dance for us all.

  It is almost compensation for what I lost on board the Talisman.

  ValkyrieS

  Lisanne Norman

  Valkyries they call us but it feels to me we’re more like Odin’s ravens. Our part in the War is here on the planet Valhalla, near the front line, but everyone stuck on this damned ball of snow and permafrost calls it Hel, or Helheim. How’d it all start, you ask? Valhalla and its two moons are rich in resources that humanity badly needs, the Company says, so almost before the probe had finished sending its reports back to the Company ship, sitting in orbit nearby, the decision was made to land here and set up the mining operation. They’d been here for six months when the balloon went up and the real owners arrived.

  You think they were explorers like us, and just sore ’cos we beat them to it? Don’t you go listening to the Company, gal, they knew from the get-go that the snow hid a permanent settlement and graves, many of which were obviously recent. Planet’s a shrine for the aliens, place they come once a year to bury their dead.

  Why? Damned if I know. They’re aliens, aren’t they? Who the hell knows why they do anything!

  Who are you? Odin bless, lass, didn’t they tell you? You’re Sigrun, and when you get out of Medbay, you’ll be in my unit. Now, you rest.

  She forced her eyelids open as the voice in the dream faded. It had been years since she’d first heard those words, and months since Olrun, who’d said them, had died. The words were Olrun’s way of introducing a new recruit to her unit to the reality of the War on Valhalla. But what had triggered the dream of her late mentor and friend, she’d no idea.

  The alarm on her night table began to buzz loudly and she sat up, reaching to turn it off. As she did, the light in her small room, once Olrun’s, automatically came on.

  “Good morning, Captain Sigrun,” said the warm neutral voice of the base AI. “Time to get up. There’s a special briefing for your unit in forty-five minutes at 0800 hours. The weather outside is fine, with the temperature currently a bracing -50 degrees Fahrenheit, taking the wind chill into account.”

  “Uh . . . right. I’m awake, MIMIR.” She threw back the covers and padded across the carpeted floor to her tiny bathroom, still not used to the perks of her month-old promotion. As she leaned into the shower cubicle to turn the water on, she wondered what the special briefing was about. Their work was so routine it almost became boring at times, but you couldn’t afford to let your attention slip, not on Valhalla.

  The mess was half empty this morning, she noticed, most of the units already out on their daily missions, the other half on either standby or R & R like they should be. She grabbed her meal from the server and headed to sit with her own women.

  “What’s with this special duty, Captain?” demanded Hruna. “We’re supposed to be on leave for the next three days!”

  “You know as much as me,” she said, sitting down. She noticed that they all had the double rations served up before a mission—two eggs, extra steak and pancakes, washed down with the good coffee or tea, not the usual brown, cardboard-tasting sludge they usually got.

  “Must have been a push on at the front,” said Mist, waving her fork in the air.

  “We’d have heard about it before now,” snorted Brynhild. “You can’t miss the sound of those big guns, and besides, we’d all be battening down for lift-off to move this tub closer to the front.”

  “They don’t move us until the advance has been consolidated, you know that. When they’ve held it for a week or two, then they’ll move us,” said Gudrun.

  “It’s gotta be a push, why else would they pull us off leave?” demanded Hruna.

  Sigrun tuned them out, concentrating on her food. She was as curious as any of them, but she’d learned over the years that speculating got her nowhere: she’d find out soon enough at the briefing. It did strike her as odd, though. Why her unit? Was it perhaps because something had gone down in their patrol area?

  “It’s gotta be something at the 5th,” she heard Gudrun say. “We don’t know any other region well enough to go there.”

  Laughter and catcalls greeted that remark, drawing Sigrun out of her own thoughts.

  “Gudrun wants to see her sweetheart in the 5th,” laughed E
ir.

  “No I don’t! I mean, I don’t have a sweetheart in the 5th,” protested Gudrun, turning on Eir. “You know I don’t, it’s against the rules to have relationships with the soldiers in our patrol area!”

  “You better not,” said Hruna. “Don’t want to be doing a pick up of him one day.”

  “Keep it down, ladies,” said Sigrun. “Other people trying to eat their breakfast, they don’t need to listen to you lot.”

  She felt a nudge in her side and turned to look at Kara, her second in command.

  “Captain, who’s the suit over there with the brass?” she asked in a low voice. “He’s not one of the visiting grunts.”

  Sigrun turned to look. He was young, maybe twenty-six at most, dark hair cut short, his complexion pale, but his ramrod-straight bearing and the expensive suit he wore yelled out Company man loud and clear. He was picking at his food, not joining in the general chat that seemed to be taking place among the officers at the table.

  “Not a clue,” she said. “Odds on the mission concerns him, though.”

  “Reckon he’s as young as he looks? Or is he a Rejuv?“

  “Possibly. He’s way too stressed out for anyone older than, say forty, though.”

  A quiet but insistent buzzing began, calling them to muster. Sigrun grabbed the slice of buttered bread that was all that was left of her meal, and pushed her chair back.

  “Muster, ladies. Now we’ll all find out what’s going on,” she said.

  They joined the general exodus heading out of the mess, each to their own briefing room. Theirs was on the starboard side of the old ship that was their mobile base. No longer capable of space flight, it served them well enough. It was home to the hundred odd Valkyries, their officers, and support staff. There was also the hospital section that could deal with two hundred people, though no one ever remembered more than about forty ever being in there, and the launch bays that acted as garages for the scout vehicles that the Valkyries used.

  They settled down into their seats, waiting for the officer who would brief them to arrive. The speculative chatter and banter ranged back and forth, but at a low enough level that Sigrun ignored it.

  As the base commander came in, though, everyone fell silent.

  “Good morning, ladies,” said Commander Vanadis as she walked across the small podium in front of the wall-mounted TAC screen. She stopped at the lectern set off to one side.

  “Your mission today is a special one, that of locating a missing journalist. You may have heard of her, Kate Jordan. She was embedded with the 5th Battalion, until she decided to leave them and head off alone into No Man’s Land.”

  “Why the hell did she do that?” Mist demanded.

  “Seems she thought there was a story to be had about what we do out there,” said Commander Vanadis drily.

  “Nothing she could handle,” snorted Hruna derisively.

  “Can it, Hruna,” snapped Sigrun, turning to glare at her.

  Muttering under her breath, Hruna subsided reluctantly, and Sigrun retuned her attention to the commander.

  The TAC screen came to life with a view of the current eastern war front.

  “You’ll be heading out to the Fenris Mountains where the 5th is currently based, some ten miles north west of the Bifrost landing site,” said Vanadis, using a laser pointer to outline the area on the map. “The 5th made a push a few days ago, advancing the front line another two miles into enemy territory. It was then that our journalist went missing. Captain Sigrun, you’ll land at the 5th‘s new base and glean what information you can from them before heading out into No Man’s Land. Meanwhile, here’s what little we have.” She held out the manila folder she had in her left hand toward Sigrun.

  “Does she have a tracker implant?” Sigrun asked as she got up to take it.

  “No, but she was wearing one on her wrist. The 5th called us this morning as soon as they realized where she’d gone. Thankfully they knew better than to follow her.”

  Sigrun nodded, accepting the folder and returning to her seat.

  “Your unit was chosen because you know that area, and you have the best retrieval record to date. There is one other matter, ladies. You’ll have a passenger, an important Company one. Her brother.”

  Exclamations of disbelief and anger broke out, Sigrun’s among them, until the commander raised her hand for silence.

  “I know everything you’re going to say, because I’ve already said it myself. Seems Mr. Jordan pulled enough strings that we’ve got no choice but to send him out with you. He’s been told to stay inside the scouter at all times, and to obey your orders instantly, Captain.”

  “He damn well better,” muttered Hruna, almost under her breath. “Or I’ll shoot him myself! If the aliens catch sight of him, then it’s goodnight for all of us!”

  “Hruna!” Sigrun hissed, again turning to stare the woman down.

  “You’ll do any pickups you see as usual, but just load them up and bring them back here for processing. Your main job is to find that journalist. Mr. Jordan will be waiting for you in your ready room. Dismissed, ladies.“

  As she followed her troop out into the corridor leading to their ready room and the hanger area where their scouter was parked, Sigrun listened in to the general grumbling, gauging the mood of her women. Like her, they were angry and worried in equal measure. In the War, they held a special status as both women, and non-combatants, and were allowed free access to No Man’s Land.

  The first women taken prisoner by the aliens had been in a convoy, taking supplies to the front line. They’d been prepared for everything but what had actually happened—they had been handed back unharmed after an agreement had been made between the two sides that women would never be involved in combat, nor with combat supplies, and that only the women would be allowed into combat areas unharmed to pick up the injured and dead. It seemed the alien Ymir held women-kind in deep reverence, and would not harm them in any way. Humanity had had to agree to it, and to date had never broken the agreement. For their part, only the alien females, much larger than the males, went into the same area to collect their injured and dead. The aliens were apparently big on symbology, and thus the Valkyries had been born. Tales of amicable meetings in No Man’s Land between the females of both species that had passed into urban legends.

  Like her troop, Sigrun ignored the man standing between two MPs just inside the ready room, and headed for where her armor was stored in its cubicle. Tyra, her adjutant, was already waiting for her.

  “Morning, Captain,” Tyra said, taking the folder from her and placing it to one side. “I’ve checked your kit out already, just to be sure, since you’re missing your down time this week. Everything’s in the green. And I had my gals check out your troop’s suits too.”

  “Thanks, Tyra,” she said, turning round and backing into the small space before slipping her feet into the leg and foot sections.

  “I put a couple of extra battery packs for your stunners in your left side ammo pack,” she said quietly, waiting for Sigrun to lean back against the back piece of her suit before swinging the front chest and groin piece round on its mounting gimbals. “Same for Kara. Figure with that young man along, you may need them.”

  She looked up into the older woman’s face and smiled, lifting her arms up and out of the way so the side latches could be sealed. “Good thinking, they may just come in handy.”

  “What they’re thinking back at HQ, allowing him out in your ship, I’ll never know,” she grumbled. “We’ve never broken that treaty in over five years, till now. And all because of some journalist that should know better than to put everyone’s lives at risk just for the sake of a story!”

  “Doubtless, they’ll have something to say to her when they get her back to HQ, assuming she’s still alive, of course.“

  “A night outside on Valhalla probably finished her off, and good riddance, I say!”

  “Now, Tyra, that’s no way to talk about her,” Sigrun admonished mildly as she l
owered her arms and waited while her adjutant fitted the left arm and shoulder sections in place. “If she’s embedded with the 5th, she’ll have a power suit on too. She should be able to survive long enough, so long as her air and the heating system last. It’s still summer out there, with no sundown for another couple of months yet.”

  Tyra sniffed loudly, moving round to her right to put on the other arm piece. “Well, let’s hope she got the fright she deserves, wandering off alone like that!”

  “I hope she didn’t meet up with any of the Ymir,” said Sigrun. “Not that they could understand each other. At least she won’t be wearing silver-and-white armor, so there’s no chance of her being mistaken for one of us.”

  Tyra grunted as she handed Sigrun her gloves. “Like that would ever happen! Well, at least they dressed him in furs, not in armor. He’ll freeze in minutes if he leaves the ship.”

  “True, Now stop being so pessimistic, Tyra! Smiles as we leave, please. Never tempt the norns,” she said, pulling on her gloves and sealing them in place.

  “Aye, Captain,” said the woman, stepping back to give Sigrun room to move.

  Her arm seemed to weigh a ton as she lifted it up to open the access panel and start the power-up sequence. She toggled the switch and instantly she felt the suit interior firm up and cling to her body. Heating came on, low level for now, but its tell tale flashed green on her panel.

  “Comm-set,” she said, holding out her hand for it without looking up from the panel.

  Tyra slapped it into her gloved palm. “Comm-set,” she confirmed.

  She clipped it over the back of her ear, then fixed the throat mic into its slot at the inner neck of her suit.

  “Valkyrie One, checking in,” she said.

  “Affirmative, Valkyrie One, hearing you loud and clear,” said control.

  “Sound off, Valkyries,” she said, checking suit air pressure, meds, and gravity adjustment to make sure everything was green.

  “Kara checking in.”