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

predictable: When they encounter a problem, they use their tech like a hammer.”
    “Right.” Ton nodded. “And every problem looks like a nail.”
    “Bingo.”
    “What about the Deltas?” Ton asked.
    “Don’t know much about them, never seen them myself.” Sorilla shrugged.
    “Yeah, but you’ve read every contact report, haven’t you?” He smiled as he asked.
    Sorilla shrugged but conceded the point.
    “Honestly, you’re better off asking Fleet there. They’re the ones who’ve contacted those, but they feel like regular army to me. Maybe Navy, something like that,” she said. “They’re competent, obviously trained well, skilled flyers, and disciplined. Those are the sort that win wars, Ton. The Delta’s are the most dangerous of the bunch.”
    “Really?” he asked, surprised.
    “Hell yes. Operators are scalpels. We are precision instruments that are best used to eliminate very finite targets. The Deltas?” Sorilla shook her head. “My read is that they’re regular army. Those are the guys who take land and control it.”
    “Fair enough,” Ton said, nodding. “I can see that.”
    “What we don’t know, and what we really need to find out,” Sorilla said, “is just how long the enemy supply chain is. If they’re working a conventional force into this equation, then we’re going to have to figure out what kind of logistics challenges they’re facing, because
those
are the points we need to hit.”
    Ton smiled. “And they have you taking classes with cadets.”
    “They also have me teaching classes to Colonels, Ton,” Sorilla grinned back. “This is one of the things I know. Granted, I usually work on a smaller scale than this.”
    “Sister, we
all
usually work on a smaller scale than this,” Ton told her flatly.
    She snorted, amused by his tone more than his words. He was right, of course. The sheer logistics of maintaining any sort of war at distances measured in hundreds of light years was staggering. She’d actually gone looking for any treatise written on the subject, in the theoretical realms of course, and found a few. Most were of the general opinion that it wasn’t really possible.
    So far as Sorilla was concerned, they’d been proven wrong, but some of their points were very well made.
    Supply lines were all but impossible to secure, even if you controlled every jump point right up to the last one, because no matter what, you were still going to have to transport all your material, soldiers, and whatever else, across an intervening space that light itself took significant time to cross. Ambushes were incredibly easy to set up, especially as you got closer and closer to the enemy homeworld. Your supply difficulties would increase geometrically, while the enemy’s would decrease by the same degree.
    At some point, no matter how much more technology you had over your enemy, you would lose. Even sticks and stones could eventually wear down a force armed with automatic weapons and ships. Transporting even light armor across the stars was a mind boggling task, and when you got it to where you were going, there was no guarantee that it would operate effectively in the environment you had to fight in. The Cougars and other armored units on Hayden were a perfect example of that; the otherwise quite competent light-armored units were bogged down to inutility by the terrain rather than their opposing numbers.
    Taking a world was easy. Destroying it? Childs play. Holding it, however, was a promethean task if there was an indigenous people in place willing to die for their freedoms.
    There were ample points in Earth’s own history to show it. Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, France, and many others just in modern history. In fact, she was only really aware of one true example where the territory taken by the superior force was permanently
held
, and that was the United States of America.
    That one was a cheat, however, because that battle was won before it truly began. Before the first