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

by Robert Kroese

  That night, Freya found herself unable to sleep. She told herself that it was time to give up, that there was no longer any point in fighting, but she couldn’t make herself stop thinking about the hyperdrive. She had always had a mind for physics and mathematics, and she’d spent most of the past year getting up to speed on the project. What she didn’t know, she would learn. She would never have Andi’s natural insight, but she would bring a new perspective. They would never get the hyperdrive working before the EPOKH, but they still had a chance. Geneva would certainly be destroyed, but humanity wasn’t finished yet. She refused to give up.

  She went to the lab, planning to go over the output logs of the SHAM tests. As she entered the lab, though, she noticed something strange: the SHAM was missing. What in the hell? Had Andi taken the SHAM with her? She walked to the other end of the lab a took a sharp breath as she saw the football-sized device resting on the floor of chamber, on the opposite side of the steel partition, looking for all the world as if it belonged there.

  Was this a joke? she wondered. If it was, it was in poor taste. Checking the lab activity logs, she found only one recent entry: Andi had checked in at 7:13pm the previous day, and then checked out at 7:17. She couldn’t possibly have had time to program the algorithm into the SHAM and then conduct the test. Could she? Checking the test log, Freya saw that Andi had logged a successful test. But then, if this were all a cruel joke, that’s exactly what she would do. It wouldn’t be difficult to create a fake log entry. But why would Andi do such a thing?

  It took Freya only a few minutes to initialize the system for another test, with the SHAM programmed as Andi had left it. The SHAM powered up, lifted off the floor of the chamber, and then shot toward the steel partition. A few feet from it, the SHAM vanished. Freya gasped and ran to the other end of the lab. The SHAM was now back where it had started the previous day, before Andi had entered the lab. Still finding it hard to believe, Freya executed the test again. Again the SHAM lifted off the floor, shot forward, and then vanished, appearing at the far end of the chamber.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Freya said. Andi had solved the problem. Scanning the test logs, though, Freya found no record of the changes Andi had made. The SHAM itself was essentially a black box; there was no way to extract the algorithm from it. Freya found herself laughing. Andi had played a joke on them after all: she’d programmed the SHAM to work, but they had no way to replicate it. Until they figured out what Andi had, they were stuck with exactly one working hyperdrive. It was enough: in the morning, she would have the engineers swap out Valkyrie’s control module for the one in the SHAM.

  She was going back into space.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  V alkyrie launched on March 28, 2227. A week later, she rendezvoused with the ship where Eric and his men remained in stasis. She revived them and brought them aboard Valkyrie, along with the mech suits. Three days later, Valkyrie made a hyperspace jump, traveling 3,000 light-years to the outskirts of a distant solar system. Shortly after she entered the system, she began broadcasting a tightly focused microwave transmission repeating the first seventeen numbers of the Fibonacci sequence in an endless loop, directed toward the planet called Kiryata.

  0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 …

  After the seventeenth number, the broadcast started over at zero. It was intended as a greeting to the Cho-ta’an who now occupied the planet, members of the sect called Fractalists. The Fractalists, persecuted mercilessly by the High Command, were the closest thing humanity had to an ally against the Cho-ta’an. Freya could only hope her intuitions about them were correct.

  Two days later, as Valkyrie accelerated toward Kiryata, she received a terse transmission from the surface that she interpreted as permission to land. The transmission repeated once per hour, every hour. She had learned the predominant Cho-ta’an language many years earlier and had been reacquainting herself with it over the past several months, but she was hardly fluent. Valkyrie flipped end-for-end and decelerated toward the planet. She had no weapons, nor any defenses to speak of; if the Fractalists wished to, they could blow her out of the sky. But the ship approached the planet without incident and landed, using the signal as a beacon.

  Wearing a spacesuit, Freya made her way across the powdery surface. In her right hand was a plastic satchel resembling an attaché case. She came to a horizontal hatch about two meters in diameter, made of a dull gray metal with a bluish-green tint. Barely perceptible on the surface were lines that spiraled out from the center, marking an iris-like opening. After several seconds, the hatch silently spiraled open.

  Freya took a step forward and looked down. The hatch had opened to reveal a vertical shaft about fifteen meters deep. The shaft appeared to be a perfect cylinder, with walls constructed of the same bluish-gray metal. A series of metal rungs led to the bottom, where a roughly human-sized opening led to another tunnel or an underground chamber; it was impossible to say which. The illumination came from a series of palm-sized white discs that lined the shaft in a spiral pattern, spaced about half a meter apart.

  Freya lowered herself into the shaft. It took her nearly three minutes to reach the bottom. Turning, she saw a human-sized arched doorway leading into a square room about five meters in diameter. In the far wall was a heavy-duty metal door, also human-sized. A small window at eye height revealed nothing beyond but darkness. Next to it was a control panel.

  There was a metallic click as the hatch on the surface closed. A moment later, the door in front of her slid open, revealing another small room. It was round, with walls of the same bluish metal. An identical door was in the far wall. An airlock.

  She stepped into the airlock and the door slid shut. A moment later, she heard a faint humming noise. After a few minutes, the humming ceased. A voice came to her from above, low and raspy, speaking in English.

  “Who are you?” it asked.

  “My name is Freya,” she said. “I come to help you fulfill your mission. To end the war between humans and Cho-ta’an.”

  “How do you know of this place?”

  “I was here once, long before. I know why you are here, and what you are working on. It’s time for all this to end.”

  A long pause followed. Then: “Take off your suit.”

  Freya set down the satchel and unlatched her helmet. There was a hiss of air as the pressure equalized, and then she removed it. She took a deep breath and exhaled. Other than a slightly odd smell, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the air. She removed her suit, and the door on the other side of the airlock slid open to reveal another room, not much larger than the airlock. It too had no windows and only a single door in the far wall. Freya walked into the room, and the door closed behind her.

  “Please close your eyes and raise your hands over your head,” said the voice. Freya did so. Warm, dry air blasted her from all sides, filling the room with a deafening roar. Eventually it stopped. “Put down your arms and open your eyes,” said the voice. Freya did so. The door on the far side of the room slid open. On the other side was another, somewhat larger, room. In the middle of the room stood three tall, gaunt, grey-skinned figures with elongated heads and large, pure black eyes: Cho-ta’an.

  “Enter, please,” said the Cho-ta’an in the middle, who was a bit taller than the others. The Cho-ta’an were wearing utilitarian gray uniforms. The two on either side wore some type of sidearm in shoulder holsters. Freya couldn’t tell whether they were male, female, or asexual. She entered the room.

  “Why are you here, Freya?” asked the one in the middle.

  “As I said, I’m here to help you end the war with my people.”

  “You are the one the prophecy tells of.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I’m sorry.”

  The Cho-ta’an’s face contorted into an expression Freya took to be a smile. “The prophecy tells us that a human woman will come to us to make whole what was torn asunder. It also tells us that this woman will claim to be ignorant of the prophecy.�
��

  “Well, I guess I passed the test.”

  “One test. I am Cho-Chirok Sem-Kallis. These are Sabik Charkarran and Koris Sem-Challok. We represent the ruling council of this facility.”

  “Cho-Chirok…” Freya started, doing her best to imitate the guttural pronunciation. The three Cho-ta’an reacted with an expression that was recognizable as a wince even on their alien faces.

  “If you like,” said Cho-Chirok, “You may assign us names that are easier for you to pronounce. We will not be offended.”

  Freya, gathering that the Cho-ta’an would be offended if she continued to slaughter their names, picked three names that she recalled as being common during the time of the human-Cho-ta’an war. “Aaron,” she said, pointing to the one who had been speaking. “Richard,” she said, indicating the one on her left. She pointed to the one on the right. “Olivia.”

  “Good,” said the one she had named Aaron. “What do you know of the Fractalists?”

  “I was under the impression you didn’t care for that name.”

  The alien moved in a vague analog of a shrug. “It is how we are known to humans.”

  Freya nodded. “You are a Cho-ta’an separatist movement. The name ‘Fractalist’ is an English translation of a Cho-ta’an word. Because of its mathematical connotations, my people came to believe the name referred to your affinity for mathematics and the sciences. I think this belief is incorrect.”

  “Tell us what you think the name means,” said Olivia.

  “The word fractal comes from the Latin, fractus, meaning broken or fractured. I think the word that we sloppily translated to Fractalist refers to the fracturing of a single race of beings into two distinct species.”

  “You claim to have been to this planet before. You mean before we arrived?” said Olivia.

  “It was over a thousand years ago, when the race called Izarians was still here. They built this place to serve as a remote laboratory to build incredibly powerful weapons. Their intention was to use these weapons against the machines they had built if the Izarians ever lost control of them. But the machines found this place and took the weapons. They used them to eradicate humanity from the galaxy. Only one planet, called Jabesh-Gilead, survived. But the people of Jabesh-Gilead could not survive cut off from the rest of humanity. So they adapted. Unable to alter their world to meet their needs, they altered themselves to better fit their word. They changed into something that was no longer human. Something must have happened to cause them to forget their past—a cataclysm of some kind. But a few remembered—or suspected. They were altered on the outside, but they retained an impression of their humanity. Some became consumed by the idea of rediscovering their true nature. Those were the first Fractalists.”

  “The planet you call Jabesh-Gilead is our home world, Yavesk,” said Richard. “There was, as you say, a cataclysm during which most technological and historical records were destroyed. We Fractalists still believed we were descended from another race, but we were a tiny sect, considered harmless by the authorities. Then, about two hundred years ago, Yavesk was attacked by a group of humans who arrive in a gigantic spaceship. They intended to eradicate the Cho-ta’an, but we killed them first. That event was formative to Cho-ta’an history in three ways: first, it prompted the official policy of persecuting Fractalists that continues to this day; second, it provided us with the technology that was eventually used to build our hyperspace gates; and third, it set us on a path to war against humans.”

  “Do you believe now that I’m the one your prophecy talks about?”

  “You have passed two of the three tests,” said Aaron.

  “I see,” Freya said. Presumably demonstrating knowledge of the origin of the Cho-ta’an was the second test. “Well, I have one last thing to offer you. A gesture of goodwill.”

  “Speak.”

  “The powerful weapons I told you about? The planet-killer? There’s still one here. The one meant for Jabesh-Gilead—that is, Yavesk.”

  “Where?”

  “In a secret chamber a hundred yards below the surface, about two miles in that direction. You’ve been excavating recently to expand this facility, so you probably already have tunnels close to it. Do some soundings from the tunnels in that direction. You’ll find a large void about thirty yards away. That’s where the planet-killer is. If you would like to see what such a weapon can do, look at the photographs in my satchel. They were taken of the planet Izar just after the device was deployed.”

  The three Cho-ta’an conferred amongst themselves for a moment. Then Aaron spoke: “We will investigate your claims.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  F reya was escorted to a bedroom in the dormitory where she had slept when she’d first come to Kiryata over a thousand years earlier. She was offered food, but she politely refused it: the Cho-ta’an digestive system could pull nutrients from substances that were almost inedible to humans. The door to her room was locked, but she was assured that this was for her own safety. She almost believed it. In the end, it didn’t matter: she had to trust her intuition, as she had for the duration of the Jörmungandr project.

  She lay on the bed for several hours, trying to assure herself that she was doing the right thing and praying that Eric’s men wouldn’t do something crazy like trying to take over the facility. The Norsemen were still onboard Valkyrie, waiting for her to return so they could complete their mission. She had warned them it could take a while, but she was dubious whether twelve hundred years in stasis had taught them patience.

  She had just dozed off when her door opened. A Cho-ta’an—she thought it was the one she’d named Aaron—stood in the doorway. “Come,” it said. She got up and followed the alien down the hall to a room where eight other Cho-ta’an waited. She thought she saw Richard and Olivia among them. The ruling council? Aaron took his place among them, and Freya was invited to sit.

  “We have located the device you spoke of,” said a Cho-ta’an she didn’t recognize. “It was where you said it would be. You say that a device like that was used to cause this?” The Cho-ta’an slid a stack of paper photographs toward her. They were the printouts she had brought in the satchel.

  “That’s right,” Freya said. “And Izar wasn’t the only world to be targeted.”

  “The Cho-ta’an High Command has discovered some of these worlds,” said the one called Richard. “Judging from the pattern of striations, we had concluded that they were made by a singular, vastly powerful weapon. We never imagined such a device was buried a few steps from this facility. How did you know?”

  “I put it there,” said Freya.

  Murmurs circulated amongst the Cho-ta’an.

  “Why did you do this?” asked Aaron.

  “I didn’t want it to be found until the time was right.”

  “And that time is now?” asked another Cho-ta’an she did not recognize.

  “Yes.”

  Olivia spoke: “If you intend to use this weapon against our siblings who persecute us, you will be disappointed. We will not allow you to have it. Although the Cho-ta’an High Command wishes to eradicate us, we will never condone genocide of our own kind.”

  “That is not my intention.”

  “Then how do you intend this weapon to be used?”

  “I don’t intend it to be used at all. I wish it to be destroyed.”

  “You are asking us to destroy it?” said Aaron.

  “No. This is going to be difficult for you to accept, but I really am on your side. I want the same thing as you do. I hope my passing your tests has convinced you of that much, at least.”

  “Go on.”

  “In about three weeks, an IDL ship called Andrea Luhman is going to pass nearby this planet. It’s an exploratory ship with minimal weaponry. You have nothing to fear from it. If you broadcast the Fibonacci sequence—the same series of numbers I sent to you to announce our arrival—the ship will alter its course to investigate. A lander craft with a crew of four humans will set down. Let them in
, as you did me.”

  “These humans are following your orders?” asked Richard.

  “No. They do not know of my existence, and under no circumstances should you speak of me to them. I have no control over the crew of Andrea Luhman. But I know of their mission and their current location and trajectory. You must give them the planet-killer.”

  “The IDL will use it against Yavesk,” Olivia replied.

  “I promise you they will not. Andrea Luhman will be destroyed and the planet-killer with it.”

  “How do you know this?” Aaron asked.

  “The same way I know that Andrea Luhman will pass by in three weeks. I have knowledge of the future.”

  “How do you come by this knowledge?” said Richard.

  “I can’t tell you that, other than that it involves the hyperspace gates. I know that the Fractalists have figured out how to hack the IDL gates; that’s how you got here. So I suspect that you have an idea of how gate technology relates to the nature of time. More than that, I won’t say.” Freya knew from her grandmother’s description of their meeting with the Cho-ta’an that some of those on the council would not go along with the plan to give the planet-killer to the crew of Andrea Luhman. And if Andi had been right about the ability to understand hyperspace technology going along with a certain sort of wisdom, then those on the council who knew the true nature of the gates would understand that she was telling the truth. That was her hope, in any case.

  “If the planet-killer is to be destroyed,” said Aaron, “what is the point of giving it to the crew of the ship?”

  “It will set off a chain of events that make it possible to bring about the end of the war.”

  “How?”

  “By providing my people with the hope that they can win the war. You must convince the humans that you want them to use the planet-killer to destroy Yavesk.”

  “They will never believe that!” Olivia exclaimed.