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

settlers arrived on American shores, a massive plague, or series of plagues, had essentially annihilated the indigenous peoples. They were all but extinct, and even then they put up a fight that lasted well into the twentieth century before it was finally ended. Had the Native American peoples maintained the numbers they existed in just a couple decades before the European settlers arrived, they would most certainly have sent the invaders packing in short order.
    That was what worried her most, Sorilla realized.
    There was historical evidence there that if you wanted to hold land for your own nation, you almost
had
to commit genocide to do it. Anything less, and sooner or later you’d lose your grip.
    It was one lesson she fervently hoped that the enemy hadn’t learned from their own history.
    “Well,” Ton shrugged, “I hope those colonels are listening when you talk, Ell Tee.”
    Sorilla smiled wanly. Sometimes she wondered.
    “A few of them do,” she sighed. “There’s one prick who I swear is watching porn on his implants.”
    Ton laughed. “There’s always one in the room doing that.”
    “I’m just glad that none of them have processors like mine,” Sorilla admitted. “Otherwise they’d be watching me teach naked. Not that I have a lot of hang-ups, you know, but there’s a big difference between on-mission and some jackass recording me for future private viewings.”
    “Your gear is that good?” Ton asked, skeptical.
    She just nodded. “Yeah. The proc is amazing, never had anything like it before, not in my head or on my desk.”
    “Damn,” Ton rumbled.
    “It’s a quantum processor, able to work on multiple problems at once,” she told him. “Not sure when they’ll clear them for general use, but one look at someone with my implants and the software they jacked into my skull breaks down everything you’re wearing, carrying, or hiding and gives me a heads up. It’s distracting as hell here on Earth too. Since I have access to military and civilian databases, the damn thing keeps trying to do facial recognition searches. I keep it running in the background most of the time, but the AI still flags anyone important and alerts me.”
    Ton snorted into his drink. “That doesn’t sound so useful, you realize?”
    “Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure that I got a lot of alpha software,” Sorilla bitched mildly. “I have access to recode, thankfully, and a full SDK for it all, but it takes months of work just to wade through the crap code they put together in the first place.”
    “You’re checked out to mess with your own implants?” Ton asked, both surprised and impressed. Few people were code-qualified for basic stuff, let alone tinkering with their own shit while was in their bodies. “Damn, girl, you’ve got some real skills.”
    Sorilla waved it off casually. “Think about it for a second, Ton. Would you honestly let them sink alpha-tested hardware and software into your head and
not
get admin access to it?”
    Ton cringed, but nodded. “Fair ‘nuff.”
    “There’s a reason why I was selected for the new implants too,” she said, “beyond the fact that I was laid up in the hospital at the time and was due for an upgrade anyway. I trained with the first gen stuff years ago and helped devise the requirements for SF people in the field. I know the infrastructure like the back of my hand, and I’ve waded through that particular jungle more than once already.”
    “Any tricks in there that would be useful to me?”
    Sorilla shrugged. “Not as much as you might think, unfortunately. Most of the software is still heavily orientated around human enemies, so the estimates and projections you’d get would be way off. Some of the alpha software is incredible, but it really only works through advanced statistical models and a really deep database. We don’t have enough on the aliens to do that for them yet.”
    “Too bad,” Ton said as he sliced off a bit of steak and chewed thoughtfully.