The War of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic (Saga of the Iron Dragon Book 5)

by Robert Kroese

  Freya dropped the bag. She bent over, unzipped it, and pulled out a foil-lined blanket. “Here,” she said, pressing it into his hands.

  “N-no,” Eric said. “Haeric.” He pointed to Ragnald, who stood a few yards away, holding Eric’s son with the suit’s mechanical arms.

  “My God,” said Freya. She lay the blanket on the ground, and Ragnald stepped forward and gently lay Haeric on it. His neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. Freya pulled off her glove and felt at his neck with two fingers. Feeling no pulse, she removed his mask.

  “You c-c-cannot….” Eric stammered. “The air….”

  “He is dead,” Freya said. Despite the brutal cold, there was no cloud of vapor from Haeric’s nose. His skin was so pale that it looked blue in the light from Freya’s lamp. “I am sorry, Eric.”

  “The Truscans have m-m-medicine,” Eric said. “The sh-ship. Where is the sh-sh-ship?”

  Freya folded the blanket over Haeric and went back to her bag. “While we were landing, the sensors picked up a group of Izarian warships as they dropped out of hyperspace,” she said. “I tried to get him to wait, but he wouldn’t.” She pulled another blanket from the bag and held it out to Eric. He tried to take it, but it slipped from his numb fingers and fell to the ground. Freya picked it up and threw it over his shoulders. By this time, Eric was so cold that he couldn’t feel any difference.

  “Dornen couldn’t wait another… five minutes?” Ragnald asked, clearly struggling to remember the units under the circumstances. The other men had gathered around them.

  “I begged him,” Freya said. “He said he’d already waited too long. He may be right. The Izarians—”

  “We fight his war for him, and he leaves us behind?” said Bjorn. His tone was somewhere between utter disbelief and barely controlled rage.

  “The T-T-Truscans have m-m-medicine,” Eric said. “You must have b-b-brought s-s-something….” He fell to his knees and began to fumble with the zipper of Freya’s bag.

  “Eric, stop,” Freya said, crouching down next to him. Still Eric clawed at the bag with his useless fingers. “Eric!”

  He stared at her, uncomprehending. She saw confusion and anger on his face. She sympathized. Eric had seen the Truscans work miracles with their machines and medicines. They had healed third degree burns, healed broken femurs, cured fever and frostbite. And now she had to get him to understand that there was nothing anyone could do.

  “Eric, listen to me. You’re in shock. You have hypothermia. There is nothing we can do for Haeric now. All I have in my bag is blankets, some bottles of water, and a few food packets. It was all I had time to grab. Now we need to get out of here. There’s a lot more of those machines on the way. Ragnald will carry Haeric and we’ll make sure he gets a proper burial. Can you walk?”

  Eric stared at her, shaking his head, teeth chattering.

  “Gulbrand, carry Eric.”

  “He will not last long in this cold,” Gulbrand said.

  Freya considered the matter. Gulbrand was right. Without a suit or cold weather gear, Eric would be dead within an hour. “All right,” she said. “We will have to backtrack to find something for him to wear. Did any of the marines… are there any cold weather outfits like this back there, that aren’t being used?”

  “Not in the canyon,” Ragnald said. “The marines all made it out.” He said it flatly, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

  “One of the mech suits then,” Freya said. “Can you locate a suit that’s still online back there?” It was a ghoulish thing to contemplate, dragging a corpse out of a suit to put Eric in it, but they had no other options.

  “We can’t go back there!” Bjorn said. “Those trolls could break through at any moment!”

  “We don’t all have to go,” said Freya. “If the rest of you can lead the machines away from the canyon, Gulbrand and I—”

  “Ma’am?” said a weak voice behind her. Freya turned. A young man, named Arne, stepped forward. “That may not be… necessary.” The man’s face was as white as chalk.

  “Arne?” asked Bjorn, moving toward the man. Arne was part of Bjorn’s squad. “Are you all right?”

  “No, sir,” gasped Arne. “Piece of shrapnel. Punctured my armor. Thought it was just a scrape, but…”

  Freya punched a code into the suit’s chest plate and pulled it open. Arne half-fell out of the suit. She couldn’t catch him, but she managed to break his fall and lowered him to the ground. The right leg of his inner suit was drenched with blood, and there was a large tear just below the groin. Inspecting the wound, Freya could see that the femoral artery had been nicked. The chunk of metal was still in Arne’s leg; that was probably the only reason he was still alive. The shrapnel must have hit at just the right angle to slip between the two heavy plates at the hip joint. With surgery and a transfusion, he might have a chance. On Voltera, he was a dead man.

  “Trolls have broken through,” shouted a man running toward them from the canyon mouth.

  “We must go,” Ragnald said. “Gulbrand, take Haeric. I will carry Arne.” He stepped forward to pick up the dying man.

  Freya went to Eric’s side and pulled his arm over her shoulders. He felt cold even through her thick coat. “You’ve got to get into the suit,” she said. “Come on, walk with me.” Eric dumbly put one foot in front of the other until they were in front of the suit. She helped him climb inside, typed a command into the control panel on the suit’s chest, and then closed it up. “Ragnald, I’ve paired Arne’s suit with yours. Unless you tell it otherwise, it will follow you.” Ragnald nodded, understanding. Eric was in no condition to operate heavy machinery.

  “Let’s move!” said Ragnald, and the men began to move out. Freya ran after them, but she hadn’t gotten more than a few feet when she was scooped off her feet.

  “With respect, Ma’am,” said Bjorn from behind her, “I think you’ll be better off if I carry you.”

  She nodded, curling up in the huge metal arms as the mech-suited men bounded across the valley floor.

  *****

  “You’re sure there aren’t any more trolls down there?” Ragnald asked. From their vantagepoint on the southern lip of the crater, they could just make out the lights of the refinery, some ten miles away. With magnification, Ragnald had spotted about a dozen golems patrolling the area with machineguns, but there was no way to know what was hidden behind—or inside—the huge mobile building.

  “Ninety percent sure,” said Freya.

  “How much is that?”

  “Let’s just say our odds of taking the refinery are better than our odds of hiding indefinitely in the mountains. But we’ve got to move fast. The trolls will return eventually.”

  They had spent the previous five hours leading the trolls away from the mobile refinery, which was the only shelter for three hundred miles other than the cave in the mountains to the west where the miners had been hiding for the past several months. Sergeant Macron had told Freya that the cave’s supply of food had nearly run out, and the portable filters they were using to make their air breathable were beginning to clog with dust. They wouldn’t have lasted another week if Varinga hadn’t arrived.

  “Why did you stay?” Ragnald asked.

  “The Truscans are human,” Freya said, “but they aren’t my people. And I did get you into this, after all.”

  “You will die here with us.”

  “Maybe. Let’s take that refinery and then we’ll see.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  R agnald knew there was no possibility of taking the golems by surprise. The Norsemen could only hope that the machines hadn’t been programmed to destroy the refinery rather than let it be taken—and that the trolls wouldn’t return before the golems had been dealt with. The trolls would receive word of the attack the second it started; the Norsemen’s only advantage was their slightly superior speed.

  The nineteen Vikings loped across the plain in their metal armor, closing rapidly on the sprawling building, which rested on three
sets of massive treads that allowed it to cross rugged terrain despite its size. A single golem stood at the top of its highest tower, scanning the horizon. The others patrolled the exterior with mechanical precision. The Norsemen still had seen no trolls or other heavy infantry, which was a good sign, but Freya had warned them that the refinery itself was equipped with missile batteries and heavy machineguns. If luck were with them, these had been exhausted by the defenders before the Izarians had taken the refinery.

  Luck was not on their side. A few seconds after the golem in the tower locked onto them, several missiles streaked toward them. “Scatter!” Ragnald ordered, and the men began to spread out. A missile detonated just behind him, throwing him forward. He threw up his hands and landed on the suit’s forearms, rolling onto his back and executing a somersault. He sprang onto his feet and kept running, a grin spreading across his face. He’d performed this maneuver many times in training, but never thought it would serve him well in an actual battle!

  His smile faded as the explosions continued to his left and right. His display indicated that one suit was badly damaged and two others were inoperable. Their assault had barely begun and they were down to sixteen men. Eric, half-mad from grief and cold, had remained behind with Freya and the two dead men.

  More explosions erupted all around him, but the men were now spread out well enough that the missiles could no longer effectively target more than one man at a time. They ran erratically, dodging and weaving to stymie the machines’ targeting, and no more men fell. Forming a rough semicircle about three hundred yards out from the southern edge of the refinery, they closed on their target.

  The defenders switched to heavy machineguns, pelting the Norsemen with a relentless barrage of bullets. Meanwhile, the golems had gathered on the south side of the refinery, guns at the ready, waiting for the attackers to advance within range. The Norsemen, not wanting to damage the refinery (nor waste ammunition), held their fire as well. Three more men fell, their suits torn apart by the heavy guns, before Ragnald gave the order to open fire. They were within a hundred yards of the refinery.

  The golems had begun firing as well, but their guns did little damage, and the Norsemen quickly dispatched them. The attackers ducked under the continuing barrage from the heavy machineguns, pressing against the refinery’s treads. Soon the only men within the guns’ range of fire were those who had fallen on the plain. White icons went gray as bullets riddled the bodies of men in incapacitated suits.

  Ragnald led the men around the edge of the tread. As Gulbrand and four other men exited their suits, Ragnald tore a hatch off its hinges and they charged into the refinery, armed with handheld guns. They found four more golems inside, manning the refinery’s heavy weapons. None of them were armed. They tried to fight, but Ragnald’s men easily subdued them and then permanently deactivated them by putting a bullet into each golem’s core processor. They tossed the broken machines outside. While Ragnald worked on getting the fallen men and broken suits loaded aboard the refinery, Gulbrand went with two other men to retrieve Freya and Eric, who waited on the plain several miles back. Once Freya was aboard, she made her way to the refinery’s transport controls while Ragnald and Gulbrand worked on getting the rest of the suits aboard. By the time everything was loaded, she’d managed to get the refinery rolling. She directed it toward the northeast, where a road had been constructed to allow trucks to carry refined helium-3 to a launch pad located near Voltera’s equator, a few miles north of the crater. Surveillance of the surface from Varinga indicated that three cargo ships sat on the launch pad, awaiting shipments to carry off-planet. The launch area was guarded only by a few golems. If they could reach it, and if at least one of the ships was operable, Freya thought she could still get them off Voltera. Having thoroughly studied the astronautical systems of both IDL and Cho-ta’an ships, as well as picking up what she could about CDF systems, she was confident she could pilot a cargo transport.

  The refinery wasn’t fast, but it could move almost as quickly as the trolls, which, according to the refinery’s radar, had not yet returned to the crater. The refinery was too big to take on the narrow road out of the crater, so they would have to exit and travel the last few miles with the mech suits. With a little luck, they could take control of the launch pad before the trolls caught up with them.

  The men spent most of the first eight hours of the journey sleeping. Only a small part of the so-called refinery was for processing helium-3; most of it was storage space and living quarters for the miners. Helium-3 was neither flammable nor radioactive, so there was no danger keeping it so close. Freya watched the radar for signs of the trolls while tending to the men’s wounds. The refinery was essentially self-driving; she just told it to travel north as quickly as possible.

  When the men were rested, they ate and drank and performed what repairs they could on the suits. The refinery was stocked with food, water and medical equipment, and it also had a workshop equipped with welding equipment and other tools, and thanks to the extra suits, they had plenty of spare parts. One of the men, named Tarben, had been a blacksmith, and took quickly to the metalworking tools. They got a suit working for Freya and reloaded the suit’s ammunition from the refinery’s weapons store. Working with Freya, they even managed to adjust the suits’ missile launchers to accept the slightly larger missiles used by the refinery’s batteries. If they did have to face the remaining trolls, they would be ready.

  Eric had recovered from shock and hypothermia, but he remained sullen and reserved. Nor was he the only one. They had lost two thirds of their number in the brief time they’d been on Voltera. The Vikings were not strangers to death, but to lose so many over such a short time was almost unthinkable. Among the dead were some of the most well-loved and admired men of Eric’s band: Viggo and Thorvald had been killed in the initial engagement with the trolls, and Halfdan had died during the assault on the refinery.

  Worse, these men had died in a meaningless battle on a world that meant nothing to the Norsemen. Their corpses were wrapped in plastic sheets and laid on the roof of the refinery in the hopes that the survivors could find a way to bury them in the frozen ground of this hateful planet.

  The survivors fared little better. Abandoned by their supposed allies, their hope now rested in the possibility of fleeing the planet in a stolen cargo ship. Even if they were successful, what would they do then? If fifty men were too few to assault Izar, then what good were fifteen? Perhaps they would return to Earth and await their death there. They were not needed at Ragnarök.

  The refinery reached the edge of the crater late the next day. Freya had spotted the trolls on radar an hour earlier, about twenty miles away and closing. The Norsemen exited the refinery and made their way quickly up the road that ran along the crater’s edge. Upon reaching the top, they continued north until they reached the launch area. The launch area, consisting of a large tarmac and a dozen or so steel-frame buildings, was guarded only by a score of golems, which the Norsemen easily overcame. Three cargo ships rested on the tarmac. Evidently the bulk of the security force had been moved south to deal with the marines.

  When the area had been cleared of hostile machines, Freya made her way to the control tower. Using the tower’s superior radar system, she could get a better idea of the size of the threat they faced from the KW23s and determine if there were any other machines on the way. The first thing she did, though, was to disable the jamming signal the machines had been broadcasting. Almost immediately she received a transmission from Varinga. The ship was taking fire from several Izarian craft and was going to have to make an emergency jump from within the Voltera system. As Freya understood it, gravitational fields interfered with the hyperdrive, potentially causing catastrophic problems—anywhere from the ship jumping hundreds of lightyears in the wrong direction to instant annihilation. Commander Dornen had waited as long as he could, trying to get Varinga as far as possible from Voltera and the other planets of the system, but at this point it was either attempt t
he jump or be blown apart by Izarian missiles. Freya sent a response, but it probably never reached Varinga: twenty minutes later, the incoming transmissions ceased. There was no way to know what had happened to her.

  Having determined that the nearest trolls were still an hour away, Freya let Ragnald organize their defenses while she tried to figure out how to pilot a Truscan cargo ship. Eric and Gudmund dug a grave for Haeric and Arne, and the men took a brief respite to bury them and speak a few words commending the dead to Valhalla. It was all they had time for. When Gudmund had finished tamping down the earth with the feet of his suit, the men went back on alert. Only Eric remained at the grave, mourning his son. Freya returned to the cargo ship.

  Despite her experience with similar craft, she was initially bewildered by the controls. It figured: nothing about this mission had gone as planned. Eric’s men had faced an Izarian force much more powerful than they’d been led to expect, and the Izarian ships had arrived sooner and in greater numbers. Dornen’s final message indicated that at least twenty ships were closing with Varinga. Yet Dornen had told her that CDF intelligence estimated that the Izarians had fewer than forty ships left in total, and most of those were occupied defending Izar itself.

  Had Dornen been mistaken about the size of the Izarian fleet? Perhaps, but that didn’t explain why the Izarians had sent a hundred heavy infantry units to deal with a minor insurrection on an unimportant mining planet.

  Unless it wasn’t so unimportant after all.

  Dornen had told her the Izarian war effort depended heavily on helium-3, and that they had already burned through their supply on Izar. There were, of course, many other ways of generating power—she gathered that the Concordat planets used fission reactors, solar power, geothermal plants, and many other technologies. If a world ran out of, say, plutonium or fossil fuels, it would find some other way to generate power. History showed that human ingenuity was boundless when it came to finding ways of generating power.