Freya smiled. “It is not that sort of ship. It flies through the sky.”
“Then you are indeed a Valkyrie!”
“No, merely a human woman. I was born in a remote settlement in Iceland. We called it Svartalfheim.”
“Near the southern coast,” said Eric. “Perhaps two hundred miles east of Reykjavik, near a village called Höfn.”
“How did you…?”
Eric was pleased to have caught Freya off guard. “I was there once, many years ago, shortly after I first arrived here. My father pledged his assistance to me in conquering Northumberland if I would postpone my campaign until his men returned from Iceland. I did not know why my father would send an army to Iceland, and when I heard nothing of them for several months, I went to see the place for myself. We reached Höfn to find it deserted and followed a road inland to what must have been the place you call Svartalfheim. I had thought it only a legend. In any case, little remained of the settlement; it was as if a dragon had come upon the place, leaving nothing alive and barely one stone upon another. The ground was scorched as if by a tremendous fire. We found several strange, finely crafted artifacts there, some of them made of materials I had never seen before. If I had known I might find weapons such as that, I might have investigated further, but I did not want to tarry in my return to Northumbria.”
“Then you know more of my people than I thought,” said Freya.
“Your people are the Dvergar who were said to reside at Svartalfheim?”
“It was my people who inspired the myths,” said Freya, “though as you can see, we are not dwarves or kobolds.”
“What are you, then?”
“A human being, like you, as I said. My grandmother came to Earth from another world, along with three others. Their ship crashed here, and they needed to build another to return to the sky. That was the reason for the facility at Svartalfheim.”
“But the Dvergar remain on Earth?”
“Some of them, yes. Descendants of my grandmother’s crew and their allies. Our mission was ultimately a success. It took nearly half a century, but we built a ship that took me to the sky.”
“You alone?” Eric asked dubiously.
“Yes. There was supposed to be another, but he was killed. I traveled for years, until another ship found me. They brought me back here.”
“Why?”
“To find you. I meant to get here sooner, but it took a while to find a place to land.”
Eric scowled, certain that the woman was mocking him. Undoubtedly most of what she had told him was a fabrication. And yet, he had seen the remains of Svartalfheim, and there was no denying the awesome power of the weapon that Freya wielded. He had to know the truth about Freya (if that truly was her name) and her people, one way or another. Once they were safely out of sight from the road, he decided, he would demand answers. He would find out how she had really gotten here and what she wanted. Gulbrand could be quite persuasive.
As they talked, they had reached the ridge, and were now nearing its crest. Still there was no sign of the Northumbrians, but then Maccus probably figured there was no need for him to hurry: Eric’s men were trapped between the Northumbrians and Eadred’s men at York. Certainly they would have preferred to slaughter Eric and his men at the pass, but now that their intentions were revealed, they could take their time.
“Now listen,” said Eric. “I am in debt to you for what you did at the pass, and I will grant that wherever you are from, your craftsmen must be remarkably skilled to produce such a weapon. But I am no fool to be taken in by stories of dwarves and magic. I want to know how you managed to get to that pass at the very time we were traveling through it, without a horse, when I myself was not sure of our destination until this morning. And if I hear one more word of—”
His son, Haeric, who was still mounted, let out a gasp. “By Odin’s beard,” murmured his brother, Ragnald. Gulbrand stared open-mouthed. Eric, annoyed at the unseemly display of his most trusted men, was about to rebuke them when he caught a glimpse of something silvery just over the ridge. He broke into a run, stopping when the thing was in full view.
“Odin’s beard,” Eric said, staring at the giant metal thing nestled in the green valley below. It was the size of a cathedral. “Is that…?”
Freya came up beside him. “The ship,” she said.
Chapter Three
F reya sat across a conference table from Tertius Dornen, commander of the Orbital Deployment Cruiser Varinga. On Freya’s left sat Helena, the daughter of the legendary inventor and polymath Leo the Mathematician. To her right was Dan O’Brien, the last surviving crew member of the exploratory ship Andrea Luhman. It was, Freya reflected, a historic meeting: each of the three represented a separate branch of human civilization, each centered on a different planet. O’Brien and Helena, now both in their nineties, had agreed to attend the meeting only reluctantly. O’Brien’s health was failing, and it took most of Helena’s energy to care for him. They sat in silence, watching a viewscreen on the far wall, and Freya found herself wanting to sink into her chair until she was out of sight and then crawl under the table and out of the room.
The viewscreen showed a live feed from Varinga’s mess hall, which had been taken over by fifty large, filthy, loud and unruly men wearing tattered and soiled clothing of wool and animal skin. The men had been given water and meal packets (one of each per man, all identical), but somehow three separate fights had broken out over the “unfair” distribution of food. One man lay unconscious, and at least four others had been injured so far. Only the lack of deadly weapons had forestalled fatalities; they had been forced to give up their swords and axes—along with their horses, which were grazing outside—before boarding the ship. Their leader, Eric, far from trying to put an end to the fighting, was cheering them on. Several of the men near him had begun to make wagers on the fights.
“These,” said Commander Dornen, “are the men you expect to save the galaxy.” The words came in the Nordic language from the automatic translator at the center of the table, a half-second behind Dornen’s speech. Dornen, tall and lean, with an aquiline nose, was an impressive figure in his burgundy Concordat Defense Force uniform. Freya still hadn’t quiet figured out where Dornen’s people had come from, but Helena said their language seemed to be heavily influenced by two very ancient Terran languages: Latin and Aramaic. But even Helena, who spoke five languages, couldn’t understand Dornen without a translator.
Freya, who had never been a people person even before she spent four years alone on a Cho-ta’an spaceship, found herself so overcome with anxiety that for a moment she couldn’t speak. Fortunately, Helena came to her rescue.
“It’s true they’re a little rough around the edges,” she said, “but they are absolutely fearless in battle. You are looking for warriors, after all, not a diplomacy corps.”
“We’re looking for individuals who can operate complex equipment, execute precision tactical maneuvers, and, above all, follow orders,” said Dornen. “These men are on the verge of killing each other over packets of freeze-dried chicken.”
“With respect, Commander,” said Freya, “you don’t have a lot of other options. You’ve got eight hundred of these ‘mech suits,’ and no one to operate them.”
“There are companies of marines on at least five different planets,” Dornen said. “Many of whom have already been trained in the use of mech suits, and all of whom have more experience in combat with the Izarians than these… people.”
“Then maybe you should go get them,” Freya said irritably. She had risked her life to get Eric and his men aboard Varinga alive, and now it seemed that Commander Dornen was having second thoughts.
“As you well know,” Dornen said, unable to completely hide the condescension in his voice, “we made several attempts to do just that. Every time we jumped to a Concordat planet, however, we were met by a dozen Izarian warships, and we were forced to flee rather than be destroyed.”
“And now you’ve been
running for what, seven years?”
“Not running,” said Dornen coldly. “Trying to locate one of the fringe worlds that the Concordat lost contact with during the Collapse.”
“Yes,” said Freya, “and how is that going?”
Dornen smiled, taking his eyes off the screen to meet Freya’s stare. “Point taken. You know, we were on the verge of winning this war before the Izarians surprised us with upgraded hyperdrives. We had destroyed most of their fleet, and our intelligence indicated they were down to a few hundred heavy infantry units. Their production of new machines had crawled almost to a standstill. We were set to take Izar itself. Then Toronus happened and we’ve been running ever since, trying to find an army to finally put an end to this war. I am not convinced, however, that we wouldn’t be better off continuing our search rather than entrusting the fate of humanity to this throng of barbarians.”
“We had a deal,” said Freya.
“I agreed to help you in your fight against your enemies, the Cho-ta’an, in exchange for you providing me with a group of individuals capable of executing a mechanized ground assault against the military headquarters on Izar. I think you can understand my doubts regarding the qualifications of these men.”
O’Brien, who had been sitting with his arms folded and eyes closed, cleared his throat. His heavy eyelids lifted and he began to speak, his gravelly voice barely above a whisper. “The Vikings were… sorry, are the most feared warriors in the world,” he said. “They never numbered more than a few tens of thousands, but they somehow managed to take over most of Europe. They crossed oceans before the compass and astrolabe were even invented, and they settled borderline uninhabitable lands like Iceland and Greenland. Are they dirty, uncouth and unfamiliar with advanced technology? Of course. But do you really think you’re going to do better than this on some forgotten agrarian planet? Even if you find one of these fringe planets you talk about, without interstellar trade the colonists will most likely have regressed to the iron age or worse. They’ll either have separated into warring tribes constantly at each other’s throats or, worse, they’ll have achieved a lasting peace and forgotten how to fight altogether. In other words, a platoon of mechanized Vikings may be the best-case scenario.”
Freya was heartened to see that despite O’Brien’s frail appearance, he seemed to be in full possession of his mental faculties. He had spoken so little in the days since Varinga had picked him and Helena up from their home on the island of Bermuda that she wondered if he’d begun to succumb to dementia.
“What I don’t understand,” Dornen said, “is this: if I am to believe what Freya told me, you people built a spaceship. A rocket capable of reaching escape velocity and putting a human being into orbit. I realize that you kept this project secret, for reasons I don’t fully comprehend, but even so, you must have had an educated workforce and technologically advanced infrastructure. So where is it? Where are these people? How is it that these illiterate savages are the best you can offer me?”
“The project was always intended to self-destruct shortly after launch,” Helena. “Our goal was to leave zero footprint behind, because leaving anything behind that would alter the historical record would threaten the success of our project.”
“The so-called ‘LOKI principle.’”
“Exactly. The Limits Of Known Information. History resists being altered, so maximizing our chances of success meant leaving as little evidence behind as possible. We destroyed our primary site by detonating ten thousand gallons of liquid hydrogen.”
“Additionally,” said O’Brien, “shortly after we left Iceland, a volcano erupted, covering much of the island with lava and ash. A period of unusually cold weather, called the Little Ice Age, will eventually cause our primary site to be covered by glaciers, further concealing any evidence that remains. Our secondary site, a Caribbean island called…”
“Antillia,” Helena whispered.
“Yes, Antillia,” said O’Brien. “The island will soon be obliterated by a hurricane.”
Dornen regarded the old man. “And you knew all this would happen—the volcano, the ice age, the hurricane—because you come from the future.”
“That’s right,” said O’Brien matter-of-factly, as if he didn’t care whether Dornen believed him or not.
If Dornen had intended to argue this point, he thought better of it. “Still, the people—”
“Most of the people who were involved in the Iron Dragon project are dead,” Helena said. “Although only about four years passed for Freya, it’s been eighteen years since the launch. Those who are still alive are scattered across Europe and a dozen islands in the Atlantic. Most were engineers or menial laborers, not warriors. The few warriors we had are too old to fight and probably wouldn’t be interested in going to fight a race of aliens across the galaxy.”
O’Brien went on, “Meanwhile, these men—Eric and his band—are battle-tested and itching for a fight. You don’t know Earth history, but I can tell you that Eric Bloodaxe is a bona fide legend. They’ve been exiled from York and have nowhere else to go. If you want to defeat these Izarians, just point Eric and his men in their general direction.”
Dornen sighed. “I’ll give the matter some more thought. We’ll meet again at this same time. In the meantime,” he said with a glance at the screen, “try to keep your Vikings from tearing my ship to pieces.”
Dornen got to his feet, and the others stood. “As you were,” he said, and left the room. The door swished close behind him.
“They, ah, do look a little rough,” O’Brien said, sinking back into his chair. The others sat as well. Several of the men, having failed to bash down the steel door holding them inside the mess hall, were trying to tear one of the bolted-down tables from the floor, evidently intending to use it as a battering ram.
“Perhaps you should have talked to them first,” Helena said to Freya. “You know, suggested they be on their best behavior.”
“I did talk to them,” said Freya. “Understand that most of them think they’ve died and I’ve taken them to Valhalla. If they didn’t fear death before, they certainly don’t fear it now.”
“I suppose I’d be upset too if I died and found out that the food in heaven is all in freeze-dried meal packets,” said O’Brien.
“And no mead,” said Helena. “Still, I fear we’ve oversold the Vikings to Dornen. ‘A bona fide legend’?”
“He is!” O’Brien protested. “Or will be. Can never get my tenses right.”
“From what you’ve told me, though, historians of your time actually knew very little about Eric.”
“Well, you don’t get the name ‘Bloodaxe’ by adopting stray kittens.”
“I suppose not,” said Helena. Freya kept quiet, deciding this probably wasn’t the time to point out that the ‘blood’ in Bloodaxe meant ‘kin.’ Helena went on, “What happens if we can’t convince Dornen to use Eric’s men for his assault on Izar?”
Freya shrugged. “I suppose he’ll leave us here and Varinga will continue looking for one of the so-called ‘fringe planets’ where they can raise an army from the native population.”
“And what about the Cho-ta’an?”
“Dornen is sympathetic to our struggle, but it could take them years to find the army they’re looking for. They may never find any of these lost colonies, and of course there’s no guarantee they’ll be victorious even if they do. If they don’t win their war, then it’s unlikely they’ll come back to help us with ours.”
“On the other hand,” said O’Brien, “technically we’re about twelve hundred years early to wage war on the Cho-ta’an. The first known Cho-ta’an attack on humans, the destruction of the scout ship Ubuntu, won’t happen until 2125.”
“We know it will happen, though,” Helena said, “assuming the LOKI principle is correct. Known history can’t be changed. Our goal was always to retrieve one of the planet-killer devices and find a way to deliver it to the IDL after the moment Andrea Luhman went back in time. We can�
�t prevent the war, but we can win it.”
“But if Varinga leaves without us,” said Freya, “then we’re back to square one. Everything we did, the whole Iron Dragon project, was for nothing. We’re stuck on Earth with no way to defeat the Cho-ta’an.”
“We could leave a time capsule,” O’Brien said. “Bury a warning about the Cho-ta’an where we know it will be found a thousand years from now.”
“A warning saying what, exactly?” Helena asked. “We can’t prevent anything that’s going to happen.”
“Ah,” said O’Brien sheepishly. “You’re right, of course. If it were a matter of warning the people of the future about the Cho-ta’an, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble by burying a note under a rock rather than building a spaceship. I’m sorry, my mind isn’t so sharp these days.”
“Nor mine, love,” said Helena. “We’re both too old for this, and you’ve got the added confusion of time travel to deal with.”
“Ah, it’s not time travel but time itself that’s the problem,” O’Brien said. “Entropy. The degeneration of brain cells. I’m sorry, Freya. Forty years ago I might have been of more help.”
“I’m not sure anyone can solve this problem,” Freya said. “Maybe we were fools to try.”
Helena shook her head. “I realize it’s not particularly scientific,” she said, “but I can’t believe it was an accident that Dornen’s people found you. The odds were against another ship coming across yours at all, and what are the chances that the people who found you would be at war with the very race that built the planet-killer device we’re looking for?”
“It is strange,” said O’Brien, “the way our fates seem to have converged. But then I still don’t understand where these ‘Truscans’ came from.”
“Neither do I,” said Freya. “They’re clearly descendants of Terrans, most likely a mix of people from the Middle East during the early Roman Empire, but they have no solid historical record of their origin. Some of their records seem to have been lost in a catastrophic breakdown in travel and communications they call ‘the Collapse,’ but it isn’t clear they knew anything definite about Earth even before that. It’s very strange. Somehow these people either developed hyperspace travel or were transplanted by some other, technologically advanced race.”
The War of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic (Saga of the Iron Dragon Book 5) Page 4
