Free The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) by Evan Currie Page A

We haven’t quite got the visible spectrum worked out yet, but the armor can fake a pretty decent invisibility cloak,” Graves told her. “Nothing you want to depend on up close in a well-lit room, but in a shadowy jungle? It’s a solid King, if not an Ace.”
    “Groovy,” she said softly, cycling the system on and looking at her arm and hand as she held it up in front of her face.
    The image of the general wavered as she waved the limb in front of her, a noted distortion warping the air in front of her. He was right, not something to be relied on in a well-lit room, but she didn’t do much fighting in well-let rooms.
    “Unfortunately, we’re not sure how much good this is going to do for you.”
    “Oh?” Sorilla lowered her hand and cycled the armor back to normal mode. “Why?”
    Graves had a dark look on his face as he let out a gravelly sigh. “We suspect that the aliens, the Alphas at least, use your body’s gravity to track you.”
    Sorilla couldn’t help it, she laughed out loud. “You have got to be kidding me.”
    “Someone might be, but it’s not me, Lieutenant,” Graves replied seriously. “The Alpha technology is insanely refined compared to our own. We’re still picking it apart, but just the stuff we’ve been able to work out has boosted our technical capability by decades.”
    Sorilla shook her head, noting in the back of her mind that the armor felt more natural than her old model. “Seems to me that it’s not a reliable method, Sir. Hard to tell the difference between human and animal, for one.”
    “There is that, which is probably the only reason they didn’t nuke your ass on Hayden.”
    Sorilla nodded. That was entirely possible. She shuddered at the level of information overload a system tracking individual space-time deformations would provide on a planet that held sophisticated life forms.
    “I don’t suppose going on a diet would help?” she asked, voice a mix between sour amusement and mild disbelief.
    “It might, for some people.” Graves shrugged. “You’ve studied the gravity technology, I believe?”
    “Yes, sir, as much as I could without a doctoral course at least,” Sorilla answered. The basic theories were complicated enough, she’d found quickly. If you wanted to know anything in depth, it required advanced study in quantum mechanics just to scratch the surface. Since the first recovery of alien technology from the Alphas, gravity theories were effectively a discipline all their own.
    “Well, the iceberg effect comes into play,” Graves said. “We suspect that they can track the full gravity of a body.”
    “Right.” Sorilla knew that one.
    Most of the gravity that made up “normal” space-time—that is to say, the universe humans experienced—was actually only the very tip of a rather large iceberg. The rest was hidden away beneath the surface, unnoticeable to human sense but still very much in existence. That was the secret of the Alpha’s Gravity Valve: It didn’t magnify or create gravity, it just
opened
up access to what was already there.
    So in answer to her own question, it was entirely possible that losing one pound of body weight may actually be the same as losing ten pounds to the Alphas’ detectors. It seemed unlikely that it would make much difference, not on that scale, but suddenly it didn’t seem like a great idea to have the massive space craft that humans had built. Not if the enemy was tracking by the full potential gravity of an object.
    Brigadier Graves smiled. He couldn’t see her face, but the armor relayed body language well enough to someone who was used to dealing with people wearing it. He could see the thoughts taking over the lieutenant’s mind and could almost pick them out individually. It helped, of course, that she was hardly the first person he’d seen tread this line of reasoning.
    “You’re wondering about capital ships and how much they mass,” he said, shocking her from her reverie.
    “Uh, yes,