The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) Read Online Free PDF Page A

that sentiment, the idea that the human race had actually stepped over the brink and plummeted into the abyss, only to flap its arms real hard until it managed to fly back to the top. Global warming had become irreversible by the mid-twenty-first century. Nothing done on Earth would put the genie back in the bottle once the global temperatures rose high enough to start freeing deposits of methane from polar grounds.
    Every man, woman, and child on the planet could literally have vanished at that point and it wouldn’t have mattered. The Earth was on a rollercoaster ride to the hot place, with the most pessimistic views stating that eventually it would be no more than a second Venus in the solar system.
    That was when governments finally admitted that there as a problem and it had to be resolved. It cost a particularly large fortune, but the price paid had paved the way for the future in ways no one expected. In order to reverse the warming trend, it was necessary to undertake an
active
attempt to cool the planet. They had been so far beyond merely passive attempts to stop causing harm that it wasn’t funny by that point.
    It was a second great space race, one that dwarfed the Apollo project. Eleven nations all cooperating on the first stage of Earth’s weather control network. Stage one was a series of satellites in geo-sync orbit with massive reflectors, intended to direct some of the sunlight away from key areas. They started at the poles, keeping solar energy from melting the ice that remained and encouraging the formation of more. That alone dropped the average temperature by over a full degree in just five years.
    Cleaning up the mess on Earth itself took a lot longer, but in the end, they’d managed to pull it off. Most nations had built up deep undercurrents of trust and community in the process, and it wasn’t long before the Solarian Organization formed. Every space-capable nation on Earth, except for the Chinese, were members, as were a great many of those who weren’t space-capable.
    The Solarian Organization went far beyond “United Nations in Space.” It was in many ways a nation unto itself. It oversaw colonies once they reached a point of self-sustainability and requested membership, provided for the common defense, and many other functions besides.
    Of course, that was what brought them to the point they found themselves at now.
    Moving out into the Universe—well, the local parts of the Galaxy, in truth—they eventually ran flat into another group that was expanding in the opposite direction. A lot of people wondered if war was in the nature of humanity, but Sorilla didn’t. She knew that war was in the nature of life.
    All living things waged war all the time, with every breath and every motion.
    Plants gobbled up resources, strangling out their competition, while insects arrayed themselves in battles with a truly mind boggling variety of weapons. Animals hunted each other, many killed even for sport or pure pleasure, while some species even raped others not of their own kind. The natural world was bloody in tooth and claw, and humans were the top of the heap.
    Until now, perhaps.
    Out there, they’d perhaps finally met their match.
    The unstoppable force of humanity
not
coming up against an immovable object, but rather another unstoppable force. One of them would have to give. It was her job, hers and Ton’s, and many others, to make sure that it wasn’t humanity that gave.
    “So watch out for the stocky grey guys,” she said seriously. “They’re not to be underestimated. They don’t use WMDs as far as we know, but they are skilled and they are
precise
.”
    Ton nodded. “Don’t worry, Sister, I know this. They nailed us fair and square on Hayden the first time. Won’t give them a chance to do that again.”
    “Good,” she said. “The Ghoulies, they’re nasty but only because of the sheer firepower they have. Keep that always in the back of your mind and you’ll be okay. They’re