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

sir,” Sorilla mumbled dumbly.
How the hell?
    “We’ve instituted some plans to test and potentially counter that,” he told her. “You’ll be briefed at the Alamo.”
    “Yes, sir.” Sorilla was thinking furiously. “Fighters, sir?”
    “Not as such. Possibly, later, but for now we have other ideas,” Graves told her. “Take some time to test your new kit. The shoothouse here is open to you, but your tether car leaves in two days. Make use of them.”
    “Yes, sir!”

Chapter IV

    Deep Space,
    Master of Ships Parath eyed the displays carefully, making his own judgments as to the state of the local space-time before he ordered his ships into the gateway.
    Gravetic gateways were tricky things by times, formed as they were by the interaction of gravity deformation from stellar class and higher masses. Generally stable, they could be misjudged if you didn’t account for pulsar interactions at distances that were occasionally rated in hundreds of light spans. No one understood how or why a pulsar could throw a gateway off, except perhaps the Ross, but only a fool transited without checking.
    All things seemed clear this time, however, and he’d personally checked the logs and charts before beginning the voyage. There should be no odd interactions to affect the transit of his fleet, and that was as it should be.
    They were still a fair distance from the last jump point to the nexus of this part of the galactic arm, even at their current rate, so most of his work now was just idle busywork more than anything of real value. Oh, it served a purpose, of course—fr one, it made certain that no one messed up their calculations, which was always important, and it made it look like he was working, which also mattered to the crew’s morale, he had long since learned—but there was nothing new in it.
    Not normally.
    This time, however, just as he was wrapping his calculations with some degree of satisfaction, Parath found himself staring at the computer models in what was quite simply undisguised shock as they began to shift and warp on him with no warning.
    For a moment he just stared, but he was a trained stellar interpreter and a master of ships; he recognized the signs long before even the computers did.
    Parath slapped his hand down on the alert com, voice crackling out. “Alert! Incoming transiting objects from the gate!”
    Alarms sounded across the ships and, he knew, would be spreading across the fleet as fast as photons could carry his order. He rose to his feet and strode around the displays, eyes to the communal screens.
    “Bring in the focus, show me the gateway.”
    “Yes, Master.”
    The gate they were looking at was the last one before contested space and the planet the alien forces were so determined to hold. It was the ideal place for an ambush, he supposed, but if that were the intent, then the enemy had mistimed it. They were still well out of combat range, and if needed, Parath was confident that he could out-maneuver the aliens until the bulk of the fleet arrived.
    “Ships transiting the gateway!”
    Parath glowered at the screen for a long moment, recognizing the configuration of ships. They were the same as the ones that chased him out of the system during his last foray into the alien territory. Unlike the flattened sleek designs of the Parithalian ships, the aliens preferred a cylindrical design that seemed centered around an outdated yet quite effective reaction-based thrust system.
    Most Alliance ships now used variations on the Ross gravity drives, to one degree or another. Only the Ross truly understood the design, if even they did, but it was efficient and limited only by the effectiveness of your ship’s cooling systems. At high thrust, the opposed gravity fields generated an inordinate level of heat and radiation that would eventually overwhelm any shielding and cooling.
    “All stations to readiness state.”
    Parath gave the order calmly, knowing that he had time to consider what to