Steel-Winged Valkyrie (Lady Hellgate Book 5)

by Greg Dragon

  Spread out below them on the other side of the wall was a tremendous garden, filled with all manner of exotic plants, wide-branched trees, and a manicured lawn. It stretched on for 50 meters, stopping at a wall of bushes, trimmed in such a way they appeared as an impenetrable wall. From where they surveyed, a walkway made of stone bridged the garden to a gap in the bushes, behind which the Nighthawks saw buildings, squat and unremarkable, like a prison or barracks.

  Above it all, faded in the backdrop, sat the manor of Garson Sunveil. This they saw plainly, even above the highest branches of the trees. A two-level marvel of unrestrained creativity and architectural execution. Giant concrete cubes, stacked at odd angles, like ice cubes fused together inside a tall narrow glass. Each floor seemed to collapse into the one below it, with no visible supports, only the marvel of physics defying what they knew of gravity.

  Tiny sparks flew about the top—that’s how they appeared to Helga, who after some time realized they were drones. She always thought Reapers resembled miniature fighters, winged and aerodynamic in design but for the disproportionate cannon on their bellies. They were absolutely menacing, silent on the approach and deadly accurate with their aim.

  “You know what this reminds me of?” she asked no one in particular. “Stories from old Vestalia. How the enlightened, instead of sharing knowledge, used it to exploit the masses to accumulate wealth.”

  Cilas bristled. “This is Sanctuary all over, they just aren’t willing to hide it. Whoever this Garson Sunveil is, he’s set himself up as tenement king, building his corrupt empire where they can all be reminded of it.”

  “Silly king to impersonate an Alliance recruiter,” Quentin said. “No one here to set that cruta straight, and he’s backed by Helysian Marines. Am I awake, Rend? Is this really happening?”

  As a unit they crossed the lawn at a sprint, boots crushing flowers and carefully manicured hedges. They scrambled from tree to tree, sticking to the shadows. Lights for the property were provided mostly through lanterns and floodlights mounted on tall posts, but a large portion of that green field remained shrouded in the blackness of the night. This was how they remained unseen, crossing the field to a wall of bushes separating it from a gravel road that wound about the compound.

  The bushes were low, so the team hunkered down, waiting on Quentin, who crept forward to peer through the leaves to see what was waiting over there. Like Helga and the others, he had his heads-up display visible, where he could receive messages and feeds sent discreetly by the other operators. It wasn’t his PAS with a screen capable of night-vision, but it had many other features to help with communication.

  “Contact,” Quentin whispered. “Solo sentry at the gate, armored, holding an auto-rifle. Shot is clear, just awaiting your call, Rend.”

  “I have eyes on two reapers making their way over to our location,” Raileo informed them. “We may want to seek cover below something or take them out.”

  Cilas glanced up at the night sky. “Thype the drones. What can you make of the sentry? Anything that identifies him as Alliance?”

  “Think I see a patch, and he’s holding an ASR blue-shell,” Quentin reported, describing what was the Alliance Marine’s preferred auto-rifle. Cilas tapped Raileo on the shoulder, and he and Anders crawled past Quentin to aim up at the drones flying over towards the garden.

  They all raised their guns and aimed, holding for Cilas’s command, and Quentin brought his knife up to his chest and took a breath. Jumping through the gap in the bushes, he struck like a viper uncoiled. The sentry, who had stopped for a moment to scan the air in the opposite direction, could not have seen the big Nighthawk coming.

  “Stay back,” Quentin shouted, his knife still buried in the dead man’s chest. “Sentry’s a Cel-toc, I’m in the schtill. This is some kind of—”

  “No,” Cilas exclaimed. “Ray, Anders, take out those drones and get to Tutt.”

  Anders took a shot at his reaper, striking it dead center, causing it to fall to the asphalt, crackling where the rain struck its now mangled and exposed wires. At the same time, Raileo struck his where he knew them to be the most vulnerable, in the belly, directly above the gun. The drone he shot came apart from the bullet, raining bits and pieces all over the lawn. Helga and Cilas were already up, sprinting past them to join Quentin where he crouched.

  “If it was rigged you would be dead already, and Ray cleared the rooftops. The only thing left were those two reapers,” Cilas explained.

  “We should hurry,” Helga urged. “This is a road, and something could pull through at any minute. Drag that body inside and hide it. Anders, collect what’s left of that reaper, and grab that ASR. It’s Alliance property.”

  As a unit, in stack formation, they advanced to the rear of the nearest building. Here it was dark and would provide cover if any more reapers came by. “Get airborne, Nighthawk,” Cilas directed Raileo, who broke off from the line to run back the way they had come. He would look for a suitable rooftop to scale and establish a secure position to guide them from the top.

  The ground was flooded from the downpour, forcing them into puddles that came up to their ankles. To keep up their stealth they moved slow, stopping at every break in the building to check for enemies. Helga kept an eye on the rooftops, searching for snipers. The buildings were so rundown they resembled ruins, and if they were ever housing for people, it would have had to be in a past age.

  Deep down Helga knew they had been a part of the tenements prior to the construction of the wall. She guessed that the people who once lived here were run off or killed so someone could take their property. It would have been fairly recent, so she filed it away in her mind to ask Fio about later.

  After the fourth house, Cilas took them back west, towards the main pathway leading up to the manor. There was a wide gap between the ruined buildings with a large, blocky reservoir in the center. Water spilled out of it making a pool about its base, the downpour steadily adding even more liters. Helga saw something move in the distance, but it was too dark for her to make out what it was.

  “Place is like a ghost ship. Eerie,” Raileo commented from somewhere above them on the rooftops.

  Thump-thump. Cilas fired his handgun, and Helga’s lens registered the target, outlining a corpse slumped behind the reservoir. He appeared to be another Marine with an auto-rifle and an assortment of Alliance weapons. Like before, they disarmed him; dead men had no need for guns. Helga upgraded her sidearm with his heavy pistol, a practical cannon in her hands. With the guns reclaimed, Cilas picked up the pace.

  Another overflowing reservoir with a much larger building loomed before them, but as they made to start towards it, a pair of black clad men rushed out at them. Anders opened up his auto-rifle, cutting one down before he could make it to any cover. Helga fired at the next one, aiming for his torso but she underestimated the kick of the pistol and hit him in the shoulder, where it struck his armor and ricocheted off a wall and into his head.

  “Don’t move, Nighthawks,” Raileo whispered, and then they heard the unique sound of his Widow Maker firing two blasts at the distant building. Helga saw the window shatter and a body fall, landing in a sickening crunch where it broke apart like ice. Cryogenic rounds were Raileo’s favorite, so the people he shot would be frozen, thus cutting off their screams. “Sniper down,” he reported. “I’m seeing incoming transports behind us on the road.”

  “They’ll find our dead Cel-toc, so they will know we’re in here,” Cilas commanded. “They don’t know who we are and what we’re capable of, so at the very least we’re still a mystery and that lends us some advantage. Our only recourse now is speed to make it to the main building. Mercs, Alliance, BasPol, it makes no difference what we come across. From now on you have one directive, outside of our target, you’re to neutralize anything toting a gun.”

  The wind picked up and the rain was cascading sideways, the sound of thunder crashing like explosions. They worked their way past the large b
uilding where Raileo killed the sniper, and started running towards the manor, staying crouched behind the ruins, fallen columns, and disabled transports. They only slowed for Raileo to catch up after he shot another reaper patrolling the grounds.

  They made it to the courtyard without further incident, and hunkered down inside an abandoned house. Helga was feeling the fatigue of their lengthy trek to make it there, her quadriceps burning from the constant squatting, and the anxiety making her testy. “I see three armors having a chat north of our position,” Quentin reported.

  “What’s with all these transports? They look functional and there’s footprints all in the mud,” Helga pointed out.

  “Five reapers making the rounds,” Raileo reported.

  “This looks like an important meeting. That’s why he has all the security,” Anders said. “We chose a bad night. Our target’s entertaining guests, the type of guests that require armed guards and Marines-for-hire. Who do you think we’re likely to find inside there?”

  “Stay on walls and mind your cover,” Cilas urged.

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find both our marks in the building together,” Helga offered with a shrug.

  “Regardless of what’s in there, we have to make it across this courtyard to find out, so cut the chatter,” Cilas hissed, with enough finality for all four members of his team obey.

  Now that they were inside the perimeter of the property, Helga fully understood why the layout had been confusing on every front. The garden at the border to the tenements had been the original beginning of Sunveil’s lavish setup. The citizens, annoyed though powerless against the official, had struck back by lobbing trash over the walls, and that had forced Sunveil to reconsider.

  With the garden constantly under assault, he had instead built northward on the other side of a barely used road. Buildings were razed, hence the ruins that remained, and the bricks were reclaimed and used on his residence, which still appeared to be unfinished. She imagined that in the end, once it was fully completed, the remaining buildings would be flattened, or at the very least reclaimed. The muddy soil would be tilled, grass would be planted, and the compound would morph into a thing of beauty.

  What still confounded her, however, was Sunveil’s lie that he was an Alliance representative. It was obvious that he was a man of wealth and considerable power, so why would he have need for such a facade? Did it have anything to do with the Marines helping? Was Sunveil a former Alliance figurehead, long since removed, but holding on to the amenities and reach of his former office?

  The answers would be inside that manor, she hoped, though whether or not they would have the opportunity to search was unknown. They slipped back into the shadows, timing the reaper’s patrols to advance on Sunveil’s home. Armed men stalked the entrance, and the lights on the neighboring buildings shone with the brilliance of miniature suns. Helga saw a myriad of uniforms, hinting at something nefarious.

  Quentin spoke softly where his voice would only carry through comms. “Without knowing our mission details, what does this gathering remind you of, Cilas?”

  “A briefing,” Cilas answered. “Local militias meeting an Alliance impostor to plot something against their government or its people.”

  “Clearing that building is going to be necessary if we don’t want bullets in our back,” Helga suggested. “All of these barriers and walls everywhere; it’s going to be a maze if we stay on the ground. We’ll be at a disadvantage, and Ray alone won’t be able to pick them off with reapers complicating things. I say we find a way up into that structure and neutralize every target that gets in our way. That’s how we’ll maintain our speed and what’s left of our cover now that they’re coming.”

  “Ate’s got a point, Rend,” Quentin added. “It’s much too quiet, and if Ray hadn’t spotted those snipers, we’d likely be loud right now with our target in the wind. Why don’t we take the high ground, using the rooftops to travel to … whatever that building is supposed to be. Sunveil’s house? Thype, what a waste of resources.”

  “Good thinking, Nighthawks, let’s do it.” Cilas urged them forward towards the closest building.

  20

  Alliance starships are built for war, but function more as floating cities for conscripted warriors spending their lives to train and prepare for enemy engagement. Built in space, these vessels doubled as both refuge and enforcer for the Vestalian people, displaced for over a millennium by the Geralos.

  Recognizing the importance of these ships as representatives of the lost planet, the Alliance council recommended that its captains leave the fights to vessels built exclusively for engagement. This meant infiltrators, cruisers, assault ships, and fighters leaving the starship to act as a defensive juggernaut, orbiting the Allied planets to keep the Geralos off.

  Missio-Tral’s captain, Felan Lede, had never agreed with the council on this. In his mind, the starship was their strongest weapon against the Geralos, and in keeping them out of fights, it had only extended the war to where it now seemed endless.

  When he had received word of a potential traitor at the helm of an Alliance infiltrator, he had reached out to Captain Abe Rus of Helysian to ask him what he intended to do. Helysian was stuck on the far side of the planet, serving as a deterrent to Geralos invaders. Abe Rus let Captain Lede know that if they jumped out to reclaim the Harridan, it would leave the space exposed to Geralos invasion.

  That wasn’t good enough for the hot-blooded captain, who informed Abe Rus in so many words, that he would volunteer to “clean up his mess.” Now, as he watched as his Missio-Tral softened the destroyer’s shields for his primed torpedoes, Lede felt somewhat vindicated for his sharp admonishment of Helysian’s captain. Even his commanders had underestimated the importance of stopping this mutiny. Overkill, they had termed it for him to bring Missio-Tral instead of their new infiltrator, Inference.

  Had he followed the advice of those thrust heads, Inference would have been sucked in by the Harridan, all to get savaged by the Geralos destroyer. Thousands of lives would have been lost, and he would have been blamed for sending them off to their deaths. Now, because he had come personally to remove the traitor, Harridan’s treacherous captain was no longer at the helm, and her crew would be escorted back to Helysian, where there would be a court-martial and proper refitting.

  “Tracers have come online,” a tactical officer reported.

  “Already?” Captain Felan Lede reached into the hologram which still displayed a diagram of the three ships exchanging ordnance. With a practiced motion, the image changed into that of the destroyer, with a visible shield. A caption appeared above it: “Overcharged shields at 40%,” it read.

  He looked down at his wrist-comms, where the dark glass screen held all the readouts from Missio-Tral’s systems for him to scrutinize. Her shields were still at 70% despite being on auxiliary power, and a tracer focused could bring them down to 53%, but in that time, they would respond, and the Geralos captain, knowing that, wouldn’t gamble on his life.

  “What are you playing at, you scaly thype?” he muttered below his breath. “Mr. Cho, why the trace?”

  “It isn’t intended for us, Captain,” Homerus Cho said as he walked about the table surveying the ships. “I think it means to strike the Harridan.”

  An explosion of panic went off in the captain’s brain and he brought his wrist-comms up to his lips. “Alert the Harridan,” he roared into the intercom, too frustrated with himself for not having seen it. “Lieutenant Banks, put us in the path of that tracer, double-time now, make it happen. We may not catch it in time, but we must try, Maker save us. All fighters, focus your fire on the destroyer, missiles are free, unload it all. Do you hear me? Give them everything.”

  He shifted the hologram back to the engagement view, where he could see at various angles where the bow of the Harridan was exposed to the destroyer’s trace laser emitter. He slammed his fist into the table when it became clear that neither ship could move fast eno
ugh to avoid what was coming.

  From the bow of the destroyer, a thin line of white light split the blackness to then vanish off the exposed end of the Harridan’s hull, stretching beyond it like a line cast into pitch black water. The line thickened and shimmered, becoming a laser, blindingly hot, and stretching on from the tip of the emitter out beyond the location of the Harridan. It grew as it moved, destroying any fighter unlucky enough to be in its path when it came on and intensified.

  The tracer struck Harridan mercilessly, obliterating her shields nearly instantly, then tearing a line through the hull, killing 43 spacers instantly who had been huddled together watching the bout. The galley was ruptured, taking with it another 26 spacers dining together or working their shift preparing the chow. All of them died horribly but quickly, bodies seared, broken apart, or evaporated under the energy, while the lucky ones were frozen and sucked out into the vacuum of space.

  When it moved to destroy engineering, Missio-Tral’s starship-rated shields refracted it harmlessly away off into the distance. Her tracer was on the destroyer now, whose beam was powering down, having exhausted its energy, while the pair coming from the Alliance warship had barely started its path.

  Captain Lede pushed away from the table angrily and nearly collided with a junior officer, who had shown up to deliver a personal message from communications. The old man bit down and inhaled steadily, this practiced move appearing as stoicism to the downcast eyes of the frightened teen.

  “Urgent message from the Shrikes, Captain,” the boy nearly shouted, causing the old man to cock an eyebrow to remind him that the message was private. Luckily for him, the boy lowered his volume to the level appropriate for a one-on-one conversation. “Captain Kur’s cruiser was located and they’re currently in pursuit. They wish to know how to proceed, sir. Through stealth to discover where he’s running to, or should they disable the ship and take him captive?”