Chapter 1 - The New Generation Valkyrur
The assault course was a nightmare. Rain lashed down, making the obstacles slick and turning the dirt track into a muddy quagmire, as if the dim light of the sparse spotlights didn’t make things hard enough. All the while the merciless instructors watched over it like hawks. Waiting. Judging.
Nicole pushed through anyway.
Half a dozen Federation soldiers were taking the course alongside her. This assault course was the culmination of months of gruelling training; a final test of their abilities, endurance, and mental fortitude. Each of the remaining six were desperate to prove their worth. Success here would mean a fresh start. They would get a chance to take on the most important mission on the front lines, defending their homes from invasion and, perhaps more importantly for some, it meant a permanent escape from the oppressive research facilities they had been forced to endure for the last year.
The sudden clatter of gunfire almost made Nicole flinch. They were supposedly only blank rounds with a few tracers mixed in, fired overhead to give the illusion of a firefight, but she still kept her head down as she charged to the next obstacle. An almost sheer wooden wall rose up at least twenty feet out of the muck, with a series of vertical ropes supposedly allowing passage. The first soldiers were already clambering up by the time Nicole managed to grab a rope for herself.
The climb was agonising. The rain combined with the mud covering Nicole’s hands to make the rope worryingly slick, forcing her to grip with every feasible limb she could. Just over halfway up, the soldier next to her slipped and fell, dropping to the ground with a wet splat. Nicole hoped it wasn’t her sister.
Climbing with renewed vigour, Nicole grunted with exertion as she neared the top of the wall. She reached out and grasped the top with one hand, trying to get a good grip on the mud-streaked surface. A hand reached down towards her, and Nicole gladly clasped it, allowing the other soldier to help her up. “Thanks.”
Whatever reply the soldier made was lost in another burst of gunshots. The two cursed and ran down the ramp on the other side of the wall, keeping their heads down as tracer rounds zipped by worryingly close overhead. Together, the pair splashed down into the mud once again and sprinted to the next obstacle; a set of narrow metal tunnels half-buried in water that the trainees had to crawl through. Climbing over the top was technically an option, but the tangled web of barbed wire coating them was enough to put off all but the most idiotic.
Nicole lost track of the other soldiers as she dropped to her knees and crawled into a tunnel. She gasped in shock as her hands and legs sank into the icy water. It was utterly pitch-black inside, forcing her to feel her way forward with her hands while keeping her head up out of the water. The first few metres were easy enough, but Nicole came to a stop when her head suddenly bumped the top of the tunnel. Pausing to lift her hands out of the water, Nicole baulked as she realized that the tunnel descended ahead, meaning she would have to completely submerge herself for an unknown distance.
Precious seconds ticked by as Nicole wrestled with her own fears. Finally, she worked up her courage, took a deep breath, and plunged down into the icy water.
Sheer determination kept Nicole moving forward. The combination of darkness, confinement, and submersion in ice-cold water was enough to make the tunnel a hellish experience; easily the worst part of the course so far. Hope stirred as Nicole caught a glimpse of a flash of light ahead. The end of the tunnel couldn’t be far away. Right as she thought that, something snagged on her trouser leg.
Nicole barely resisted the urge to swear and let out precious oxygen. She reached down, trying to dislodge whatever she was caught on, but the tunnel was so cramped that her arm couldn’t reach far enough. Nicole tried to back up, but her clothes stayed stubbornly caught.
Panic set in. Stuck under the dark and cold water, with her lungs burning for air, Nicole couldn’t even scream for help. Simply trying to do so would only make the end that much faster. Abandoning all restraint, she scrabbled against the sides of the tunnel, trying to rip herself free through brute force. Spots danced in Nicole’s vision as her breath ran out. Instinctively, she breathed out, and her mouth immediately filled with icy water. It was all she could do not to suck it down into her lungs.
As her entire body screamed with the need for oxygen, Nicole put all of her might into one last push. Somehow, incredibly, she managed to get her leg free. Desperation gave her strength, and she scrambled to the end of the tunnel like a deranged animal, spitting the water out of her mouth as she went.
The first gasp of air as she broke the surface was the sweetest thing that Nicole had ever tasted. Her whole body shook as she dragged herself, hand over hand, out of the water and into the mud on the other side. Nicole dearly wanted to collapse on the ground, but she didn’t have that luxury. She allowed herself a few seconds to compose herself, trying to ignore the pounding in her skull or the way she was violently shivering, then gritted her teeth and forced herself to her feet.
Ahead, barely fifty metres away, a short wooden ramp rose up out of the mud to a platform where a single instructor was waiting. Reach him, and the course was finished.
Nicole grunted with effort and staggered forward, pushing herself into an ungainly run through sheer willpower. Two soldiers were ahead of her, both of them weaving and slipping as they neared the ramp. One of them tripped and fell just before the finish line. The woman cursed and swore like a sailor as she struggled to regain her footing. Nicole grabbed her arm as she passed and helped drag the soldier to her feet, unwilling to leave her to fail so close to the end. Together, the two stumbled across the last few metres of mud and up the ramp. The instructor nodded as they arrived. “Excellent work.”
With her goal reached, Nicole finally gave in to her exhaustion and sank to her knees, her chest heaving as she gasped for air. The soldier she had helped flopped onto her back with a groan, while the third, the one who had reached the end before them, was on her hands and knees just ahead, retching from exertion.
“Looks like that’s everyone,” the instructor said as he checked a stopwatch. “And… time’s up” He raised a whistle to his lips and blew a single sharp note. The clatter of gunfire stopped instantly.
Despite completing the course, Nicole felt a sick sense of dread coiling in the pit of her stomach. She looked back over the course, peering through the rain, trying to see where the most important person to her in the world had gotten to. “Tabby…”
“I told you… to stop... calling me… that…” the soldier next to her panted. Nicole whipped her head around to the woman in surprise. She hadn’t realized in the darkness, but the soldier that she had helped up at the last minute actually was her little sister.
“Congratulations, you three,” the instructor said loudly. “The official transfer won’t happen for a couple of days, yet, but as far as I’m concerned, from this moment on, you can proudly call yourselves members of the Ranger Corps.”
Lieutenant Colonel Gliene grumbled to himself as he looked through the most recent reports from the front lines. It had been less than three months since the East Autocratic Imperial Alliance had invaded the Atlantic Federation, and yet the Federation had already lost over a third of their territory. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before the Imperials controlled the entirety of Europa.
On paper, both sides would be considered superpowers, but, as much as Gleine hated to admit it, the difference in military might was abundantly clear. He scowled and glared at the most recent orders from High Command. The reason for the difference in relative power was equally clear to him. Where the Imperials were a tightly-knit conglomeration of countries united under the absolute authority of their Emperor, the Federation was a loose alliance of countries who couldn’t agree on any cohesive form of defence until they realized that they were on the brink of being utterly shafted.
A heavy sigh escaped Gleine’s lips, before a knock on the door snatched his attention. Straightening up, he made sure to keep his expression carefully composed as he called out, “Enter.”
The door creaked open, and the familiar form of Major Cowlrick lumbered through. Tall, heavily muscled, and sporting both long ginger braids and a truly magnificent beard that blatantly disregarded military regulations, Cowlrick was one of that rare breed of officer who had worked his way up the ranks from the very bottom. He was a hero of the First Europan War, and he was dead set on stopping the Imperials from winning the second one, even if he had to beat them back with a shovel.
“Sir, I got them reports on our New Generation Valkyrur you wanted,” Cowlrick rumbled, his gravelly voice thick with the accent of Edinburgh’s highlands. “Looks like three of them lasses managed to pass the Ranger Course, even without their enhancements. Not bad going, eh?”
“No, not bad at all,” Gleine replied, tidying away his paperwork and replacing it with the files that Cowlrick offered.
Cowlrick stepped back and crossed his arms. “Beg your pardon, Sir, but what’s going to happen to the rest of them? We ain’t just sending them all back to the damn research labs, are we?”
“Thankfully, no,” Gleine said with relief, ignoring his subordinate’s casual tone. Cowlrick was hardly the most tactful or professional officer, but his skill and dedication more than made up for that, as did his absolutely unyielding nature. “The soldiers who failed the course will be rotated among our regular units in between research sessions. As for these three…” Gleine quickly read through the notes pinned to the first page of each file. “It appears that the brass have cleared them for permanent deployment to our Ranger units.”
“Thank Mercy for that!” Cowlrick exclaimed. “It’s about time we had something that can stand up to that infernal Imperial magic. Those buggers are stomping all over us.” He jerked his chin at the files. “Any word from the eggheads on how that magic works yet?”
Gleine shook his head absently as he read. “Not yet. All they have managed to confirm is that it, and I quote, ‘interacts energetically with ragnite, but doesn’t appear to be a ragnite-based phenomenon’.”
The annoyance that Cowlrick felt was palpable. “Of course it’s not sodding ragnite!” He growled. “I could have told them idiots that this wretched magic ain’t caused by bloody ragnite. What the hell do they think they’re playing at?!”
Gleine could hardly blame him for being irritated, but he could hardly blame the scientists, either. He still found it hard to believe that magic actually existed, despite the fact that it had been a few years since it had appeared out of nowhere and rained down from the skies. No-one knew where it had came from, or why, but that hadn’t stopped near enough every government on the planet from scrambling to get hold of as much of it as they could. Unfortunately, the Imperials had managed to figure out how to work it faster and more effectively than anyone else, using it to boost the power of many of their weapons, tanks, and even some of their soldiers.
Still, Gleine comforted himself in the knowledge that the three women described in the files before him could go some way towards blunting the Empire’s superiority. “Hopefully the scientists will figure out something soon. In the meantime, let’s see what these ladies are capable of, shall we?”
Cowlrick nodded, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Aye. I think that sounds like a good idea.”
Gleine allowed himself a small smile and flipped the files closed. “It appears that our superiors wish for these ladies to be referred to by codenames from now on, to reduce the chances of Imperial spies figuring out our methods. It also appears that two of them are sisters.”
“Sisters, eh?” Cowlrick raised an eyebrow. “Seems a bit harsh to separate them.”
“I quite agree,” Gleine replied, though personally he was more concerned about whether or not their combat effectiveness would be affected if he put them in separate units. “Very well. I’ll assign Miss Aduba to Squad F, under the codename Novo. The Oliver sisters shall go to Squad E, under the codenames of Celestia and Luna.”
