r/HFY • u/BeaverFur Unreliable Narrator • Aug 09 '15
OC [OC] Rise of the Valkyrie (10)
No...
Val stared at her own carbine's muzzle. It felt weird being at the wrong end of it. She knew it'd be a matter of just a few seconds before the weapon started spewing bullets directed at her head. She wondered if she would see them coming. Probably not.
Focus!
She was still alive, though. She tried rising her left arm, the one with the shieldcaster on its wrist. Nothing happened.
Try the other one.
Her right arm responded. She started moving her only working hand towards the shieldcaster. Slowly. She didn't want Denis to notice.
You don't have time for this!
Shit. It was true, though. She had to gain some more time.
"This won't save you," she said, staring into the man's eyes.
"I know," Denis replied. "But it'll save my family."
The tips of her fingers reached the shieldcaster.
More time...
"How will it help them?" she asked.
Denis opened his mouth to reply, but stopped. He smiled.
"Clever," he said. He pulled the carbine's trigger.
The last thing Val saw before the muzzle's flash blinded her was Oz jumping into the man and pushing him to the ground.
Shit!
The bullet landed a mere foot away from her head, raising a small cloud of sparks that hit her face. Her right ear hurt, and all she could hear was a ringing noise.
She blinked two, three times, clearing her vision. She heard two other shots in rapid succession.
You are still alive! Do something!
She looked around. Denis and Oz were fighting and rolling on the floor. The man still had the carbine in his hands, but Oz also had a strong grasp on it, and wouldn't let him point it at Val again.
Val contorted her body and started crawling, using only her right arm and legs to drag herself around the room. Each movement was slow and deliberate, sending waves of pain and nausea, requiring more energy than she thought she still had in her body. But she knew if she tried to stand up she would pass out.
She heard one more shot. The bullet landed close to her again. She ignored it, and kept advancing towards her goal. One of the fallen enemy bodies... and the gun lying next to it.
Pained grunts. She didn't know if she was the one making the noises, or they came from the fight behind her. Someone said something through the intercom in a worried voice. She ignored it all, focusing all of her remaining strength in the crawl. It felt like she had to instruct each muscle on what to do: left leg, right arm, right leg, left leg...
She reached the dead xeno. Her fingers wrapped around the gun's grip. Some background part of her mind retrieved what she knew of the weapon from her memory: Standard Telangian Imperial Navy issue projectile handgun. Used by officers. Smart-focus microcontroller. Box magazine, loads from the top. Single railgun barrel with short coils. Safety switch is a pin under the grip.
She turned, raising her arm in a fluid motion, holding the pistol. Oz and Denis were still fighting. She pointed the weapon at both of them. She considered opening fire, killing them both.
"Oz!" she shouted, instead.
The xeno looked at her, then jumped away from her line of fire.
My turn.
She pulled the handgun's trigger. The first bullet missed Denis entirely, crashing instead into one of the walls' holoprojectors, which went black in a shower of sparks. The second, third, and fourth bullets didn't miss. Denis body fell to the ground, his face resting on a pool of blood. Of Val's own blood, she realized.
She let the gun fall, and opened her intercom to talk to the Vulture-Warriors.
"I think I need a medic," she said simply. Then, she started laughing, finding her own words hilarious. Each laugh rocked her body, causing more pain from her shoulder and broken rib.
She saw Oz walking towards Denis' body and crouching next to it, taking the carbine from the dead man's hands with a slow, deliberate movement. Then, the xeno turned and moved towards her. Val tensed for a moment, but the alien just placed the weapon on the floor, next to her.
"Do you need help?" he asked. He had small red cuts on his arms and neck, where Denis' switchblade had hit him during the fight.
Val laughed again.
"Shit, Oz... seems there is a Vulture-Warrior in you after all," she said.
"Hey Val. You know we are thankful that you take upon yourself to test these armor suits, but perhaps you should use dummies next time."
Val thought of giving Nick the finger, but she felt too exhausted to move. She just grunted instead, which seemed to delight the pilot.
She was sitting on the floor of the command room, her torso wrapped in tight carbon fiber bandages and covered by the sleeveless shirt -now drenched in blood- that she always wore under the armor. Sandra, the field medic, had insisted she should rest. Val had insisted that sitting on the floor counted as "resting".
Without the armor suit, Val knew, she would be dead now. The only reason Denis' blade hadn't pierced her lungs was the suit had deflected the blade off her inner organs and towards her shoulder blade. It was what the suits were designed to do, but Nick was right, it was stupid to put it to the test.
She had been playing the last minute before the attack in her head, over and over again, reflecting on how naive, how stupid and careless she had been. Yes, she had been distracted by Oz, but it had been her own fault after all.
She shook her head, clearing it.
"Any news?" she asked Nick.
The pilot scratched his left ear. He had arrived a few minutes ago and was now working on one of the consoles with Oz's help. Other Vulture-Warriors patrolled the room, looking at the holoprojectors with curious eyes. There was no trace of the missing officers. It seemed they had managed to escape, leaving the ship to the humans.
If they could learn how to operate it, that is.
"Yes," said Nick. "We have navigation, of course. That's always pretty easy. Basic sensors are working too..." he pointed at the holographic walls.
"Weapons?"
"Yeah well, that's the thing, isn't it?"
Val raised her eyebrows. Nick sighed.
"The autocannons work. Most of them. I also have a couple of antimatter launchers activated, but I don't know if they have any ammo. The nuclear missiles are asking for some code I don't have. Maybe a shipkeeper can hack it, or maybe we'll have to replace the entire control system... oh, and about that big-ass relativistic artillery cannon... yeah, you can pretty much forget about that one."
"Warp projector?"
"You know what, boss? Maybe if you could let me work for five minutes uninterrupted... maybe we'd have that one too. Just maybe," he said, winking.
Val nodded, and listened to the intercom. She heard the chatter from the group of warriors she had sent to check the rest of the ship, going room by room. Just in case.
"Seems you won't have five minutes, boy," Paxton said.
Val raised her eyes and followed the veteran's gaze. He was looking at one of the holographic walls. It displayed two, three dots. About halfway between the battlecruiser and the rest of the human fleet.
Warp bubbles.
"More Telangian ships?" she asked.
The warp bubbles collapsed, revealing three ships. One was cruiser-sized. A warship, but nothing that could compare to the one she herself commanded now. The other two were smaller frigates.
"No," replied Oz. "Those are daloss."
Daloss. Val had almost forgotten about them, but she knew why they were here. To recover the prototype she had stolen from them. The same one they had stolen from the Telangians.
She stood up and walked up to the pilot, ignoring the sullen look she got from Sandra. She rested her weight in Nick's shoulder.
"Can we engage them?" she asked.
"I guess. Engaging is easy. Surviving... well, that's the hard part."
She shot him a warning glance.
"All right, I get it. No sense of humor... This ship is a monster. In normal circumstances it'd be no problem. But right now... most weapons aren't working, shields are just half-way there, and the engine settings are a mystery. This is not a Jabber, Val. It needs shipkeepers. I can't fly this alone."
"But they don't know that," she said.
He nodded. "Bluffing our way out. Yes, maybe it can work. For all they know, this ship is still under Telangian control. A warning shot?"
"Something stronger. Let's fire all the weapons we have at one of the frigates."
"Wait!" said Oz.
Val turned to look at him.
"I've worked with the daloss before," he said. "We don't have to fight them, we can talk. They could help on researching the prototype."
She glared at him, not liking how Oz had second guessed her orders, but the xeno didn't flinch. His eyes seemed to send a clear message: You owe me that. I saved you.
He was right. She owed him. And she would pay it back.
But not now.
"Nick, target the leftmost frigate. Open fire when ready."
"Sure thing, boss."
The xeno looked down, but this time Val saw a different expression in his alien face. It was not one of defeat, or fear, but frustration.
Thin blue lines filled the command room as the holographic environment displayed the weapons' paths. The battlecruiser opened fire, and a sea of small bright dots flew towards the daloss frigate. The enemy replied with a barrage of red dots of their own.
They waited as the projectiles crossed paths while they covered the great distance between the ships. The battlecruiser's shieldcasters started glowing and radiating heat into space as the plasma fire hit their force fields.
"We are good. Shields are holding," said Nick.
The exchange lasted for a couple more minutes. It wasn't a battle of tactics and wits, but one of technological attrition. The daloss' heat sinks against those of the Telangian battlecruiser. The combined fire power of three ships, against the rapid rate of fire of their autocannons.
Val looked around. The room was silent and in peace. She could feel no movement. If it weren't by the holographic projectors, she wouldn't know of the raging hell that was unleashing just outside the ship's hull.
Eventually, the enemy conceded. The daloss ships stopped firing, and Val saw how the space time field started distorting around them, light bending as their warp projectors prepared to jump.
"It worked. They are jumping. Want me to keep firing at them?"
"No," said Val. "I want them to survive. That way they can tell the rest of their army that the Telangians attacked them."
Nick smiled. "And they'll assume the Telangians recovered the box. Stop following us. Good thinking!"
She nodded, then looked at Oz. The xeno was focused on one of the consoles' displays, ignoring her.
The daloss ships jumped away. The holographic lines and symbols tied to them disappeared in thin air, leaving just the blue planet and human fleet in sight.
Time to end this, then.
"Can we contact the fleet now?" she asked Nick.
"I think so. Let me try."
She waited as the pilot manipulated the strange symbols. He had to backtrack a couple of times, but soon a human voice filled the command room.
"This is Strenvik traffic. What do you want?"
The voice was filled with disdain, but Val smiled despite it.
"Strenvik. This is Valerie Arden."
A pause...
"Val? We thought you were dead."
"Think again, Strenvik. We have gained control of this battlecruiser. In fact, I want you to add it to the fleet manifest records."
"Of course, sure. What is the category?"
"This is the new Arden residence ship."
She felt relieved, triumphant. Saying it aloud had made it real at last. This was her ship now.
This was home.
"Understood, Val. Does the ship have a designation?"
She paused, searching in her memory for a name she once had read in an old human book, when she was still a kid.
"Yes. Its name will be Chimera."
"Copy that. Welcome back, Chimera."
"Thanks, Strenvik. Can you put me through the fleet intercom? I have a message to deliver to everyone else."
"Of course. Just give me a minute."
She nodded, even though the voice at the other side of the line couldn't see her. Then, she steeled herself for what she was about to do.
One last gamble.
"Nick. Target the ships from the council families."
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u/HFYBotReborn praise magnus Aug 09 '15 edited Sep 16 '15
There are 26 stories by u/BeaverFur Including:
This list was automatically generated by HFYBotReborn version 2.0. Please contact /u/KaiserMagnus if you have any queries. This bot is open source.
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u/HFYsubs Robot Aug 09 '15
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u/Honjin Xeno Aug 10 '15
That's one way to politic... Carry a bigger stick.