Valkyrie Hunter

I stood looking out of the slit of a window in a bunker with thick duraconcrete walls. I could see a broad shallow valley and the bridge that crossed a width of meandering river that cut through it. The bunker was on a buff overlooking the valley and bridge. Below the bunker were another two bunkers straddling either side of the road to the bridge. Beyond that was a rolling plain of knee high grass and the occasional clump of trees. The bunker I was standing in was like an iceberg with two thirds of it below me. A staircase at the centre spiralled down into the depths. I had been here two days. I really should have shut up when I confronted the Elders in the Hall. I had grown angry when they had dismissed my ideas out of hand. I shouldn’t have used words like ‘head in the sand’ and ‘play the fiddle while Rome burned’. What was worse was that I had to explain my words. Then I decided to call them ‘motherless cowards’. How was I to know how deadly an insult that was? As it was none of it went down well with the Elders. In retaliation they’d sent me here to investigate. I had refused telling them to ‘go stuff themselves’ not my smartest move. But they brought out the big guns. I was quite content to refuse the Elders but I couldn’t refuse Miranda. She practically begged me to go, family was family even though we weren’t that closely related. My task to interview the refugees crossing the river. Apparently they’d thought it was safer for them with a Clan they had clashed with in the past than stay in their own Clan Territory. The Elders had assured me it was safe. Safer my ass I was in the middle of a war zone. Maybe that was a bit melodramatic the war zone was on the far bank of the river.

I was still angry with the Elders for sending me off without letting me say goodbye to Miranda or Thirika. I was just bundled into a shuttle with my gear and shipped to this place. I couldn’t even comm them the Elders still maintained their blanket ban on comms except for emergencies or short distance local calls. I wasn’t on my own here. I glanced to see the others sharing bunker with me. The local commander stood at the window if she could be called that her hands on the box like image intensifiers in her hands. She was typically tall for a Valkyrie but her skin was darker and her hair nearly the same shade as mine. I suspected that she was vaihdokas. Whereas I had to stand on a crate to look out she could do it without the effort I’d had to put into it. There were several of her Clan with her one seated at the useless comms consoles. They looked like more typical Valkyrie.

“Commander?” she addressed me.

“Not really,” I replied honestly. “As I have been telling you I’m only a Lieutenant in the TCA.” I avoided using Alliance I doubted she would have understood the distinction.

“You wear silver and that outranks me,” she stated without any rancour.

She fingered her image intensifiers. “I am at your service.”

I had a set like hers attached to a lanyard around my neck. I didn’t want to be in charge but she was happy for me to be so.

Suddenly she put her hand to her ear. She had a comms earpiece she wore constantly. “Bunker One reports more refugees on the road heading towards the bridge,” she said to me.

“How many?” I asked her.

“A lot,” she replied.

This was the part that didn’t make sense. Elders should have been stopping this. I understood they stopped Clan on Clan conflict but why stay their hand when people were suffering. At least Captain Korja the dark skinned vaihdokas had put me straight on Bond Sisters. From what she had told me The Clan Mother was like the old style from before the Empire, president. Bond Sisters were like vice presidents or rather like planetary duchies in our present. Whereas there was only one vice president Clan Mothers could appoint many Bond Sisters each in control of a region. Some of these Bond Sisters had sided with the rebels. Which had resulted in a local civil war, a war other Clans were forbidden to interfere with, a fact that stuck like sour milk in my gut.

“Ok I’ll gather Lori and head to the bridge.” Lori was a telepath, a young T’Arni as trapped here as I was. The Elders had pressed her into service when they had Thirika’s, well my suggestion that the rebels were using telepaths. “We’ll try and process as many as we can.”

That was Clan Mother Rika Svertingdottir’s idea Korja answered directly to her. She was worried that some of the refugees were not as they said. One thing I did agree with.

Korja suddenly leaned forward peering out of the weapon slit. “What in the Mother’s name is that?” She pointed and put her image intensifiers to her eyes studying something high in the sky.

Instinctively I did the same. The image intensifier was a box with two eyepieces and one mono lens to spy out of. It had a row of buttons on the top to adjust the zoom and for several other functions, I didn’t know what they did. I zoomed in on the spot she was pointing to. I froze my blood running cold I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Three aircraft were circling slowly in the distance. Instantly I recognised the aircraft, Imperial Interceptors. Thousands of light years from where they should have been. Long before I joined Security on Earth I had contemplated joining Imperial Air Defence. I had imagined flying an Interceptor but in the end I decided to follow my father in to his career. I had studied the specs so knew what I was seeing. They shouldn’t be here. There was no way the Empress had given them away. Only the Empire used them. The Confeds didn’t have anything like them relying on shuttles. I concluded these were Black Stripes there could be no other explanation. We were never able to recover the data off the Curator’s terminal. With what I knew they had got their hands on a lot of Imperial weapons.

The Interceptors were flying piloted weapon platforms. Deadly craft in fighter and bombing roles. They had short stubby delta wings and a split fin tail.

“Interceptors,” I said in a sick voice. It didn’t bode well for us although I suspected they had different targets in mind.

“Interceptors?” Korja asked.

“Imperial aircraft,” I replied giving Korja a brief detail of armaments, role capabilities and ranges. The Interceptor was a VTOL aircraft able to hover like a shuttle and no need of formal runways. It could take off from a field if need be. Which made them harder to detect. I correlated the appearance of the Interceptors and the refugees crossing the bridge. The river valley was at least a kilometre and a half long and the bridge itself was a hundred metres off the valley floor. A terrifying scenario entered my mind.

“How fast can we get the refugees across the bridge?” With that many people a almost impossible task but I had to try.

Korja lowered her image intensifiers and stared at me. “What do you mean?” she said her voice as sick as my gut felt.

“The bridge. They’re planning to strike while the refugees are crossing.”

“Mother of All!” Korja swore.

“What air defences do we have?” I winced at calling us ‘we’.

“Nothing just our individual weapons. AR 32s, sidearms nothing bigger.”

My blood ran colder, I felt so helpless. I could see the frustration mirrored on Korja’s face. “Is there nothing we can do?” I know I sounded desperate. I didn’t want thousands of deaths on my hands because I could do anything.

“Not without crossing into Clan Bondedottir’s territory.” Anger simmered beneath her words. She felt as frustrated as I did. “We’re not permitted to do that.”

“Damn it!” I snarled trying desperately to reign in my temper. “Where does Clan Bondedottir territory end?”

“You see our lower bunkers there is a post two metres beyond them that’s it.”

I had to stand on tiptoes to see it. It was close to this side of the bridge. About two metres from the bunker below me. “If that’s the line?” I said to myself and swallowed hard. The road to the bridge was through a narrow ravine, which would bottleneck the refugees on the bridge. It would be absolute slaughter if the bridge was the target. The odds against the bridge as the target and the refugees on it were infinitely small. From all reports the rebels were ruthless in culling all opposition to them. Several scenarios flashed through my mind none of it good. The worst case was that they herded the refugees onto the bridge and them bombed either end. It would trap the refugees in a perfect kill zone. They could strafe the refugees to impunity. All we could do is watch the die. Earth history was filled with examples such at this.

Korja broke my train of thought. “They’re lining up for attack,” she said frustrated.

I brought my intensifiers back to my eyes watching the Interceptors form into a ‘V’ formation.

“Damn it!” I groaned watching helplessly as the Interceptors dived to towards the refugees.

Suddenly the lead Interceptor exploded into a ball of flame her two-wingwomen banked hard left and right peeling away from the rapidly descending wreckage.

I lowered my intensifiers surprised. “Did we do that?”

“No, and I don’t think the refugees had that type equipment?” Korja sounded a puzzled as I felt.

I stared at the sky. Nothing there but kilometres of high dark clouds. The types that promised heavy rain I was sure I heard it thunder earlier but hadn’t seen any lightening. It could have been a lightening strike but as soon as I thought it I knew how impossible that was.

“Do we have anything on sensors?” I asked Korja.

“What sensors?”

“Which answered several questions but none answered my original one. Above the bridge the Interceptors spiralled like sharks scenting blood.