The Legacy of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic

by Robert Kroese

  “No, sir. Although, to be honest, this one isn’t particularly subtle.”

  “Why would the Choties want us to go through the gate at point three light speed?”

  “It would be an effective means of killing us, sir.”

  “There are easier ways. Unless they’re trying to destroy the gate as well, this doesn’t make much sense as a Cho-ta’an ruse. Also….”

  “Sir?”

  “The second sentence. It’s something my father used to say. Part of a quote from MacBeth.

  “‘How now, my lord, why do you keep alone,

  Of sorriest fancies your companions making,

  Using those thoughts which should indeed have died

  With them they think on? Things without all remedy

  Should be without regard: what’s done, is done.’”

  “What does it mean, sir?” asked the weapons chief, Mika Schwartz, who had just joined them on the bridge. The fourth member of the bridge crew, Devin Olson, was resting in his quarters.

  “I think it’s the closest thing I’m going to get to an apology.”

  “Then you think the message really is from the admiral?” said Schwartz.

  “It seems the most likely explanation. Either my father or someone who knows my father very well.”

  “Why would the admiral want us to go through the Chrylis gate at point three light speed, sir?” Creed asked.

  “Through the Chrylis gate to the Sol gate at point three light speed. Does that sound familiar?”

  Creed’s brow furrowed. “You think he wants us to try to replicate what happened to Andrea Luhman?”

  “It’s the only explanation.”

  “But Andrea Luhman disappeared without a trace.”

  “Maybe. Some interesting theories were floated among IDL’s gate experts in the wake of Andrea Luhman’s disappearance. Over unofficial channels, of course. One is that Andrea Luhman traveled to an alternate universe. Another is that she went backwards in time.”

  “The admiral doesn’t seem the sort to buy into those theories, sir.”

  “No, he doesn’t. My father would have demanded cold, hard evidence.”

  “Evidence of what, sir?”

  Jason sighed. “There’s no way to know.”

  “We don’t even know if the gate is still there. If the destruct code got through….”

  “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Do you intend to do it, sir?”

  “I don’t know. It may be the only chance we have.”

  “Sir, if the Chrylis gate is still there, it’s because the Cho-ta’an blocked the destruct code. But if they’re jamming transmissions, then how do we transmit our destination to the gate?”

  “Freedom’s got a five hundred kilowatt tight-beam transmitter,” Jason said. “I think we’ve got a pretty good chance of cutting through any interference once we get within a few million klicks.”

  “With respect, sir,” said Schwartz, “you’re suggesting that if the gate is still there, and if we can get a signal through, and if the admiral’s message is genuine, and if we can thread the needle, we might be able to escape the Cho-ta’an by traveling back in time?”

  “That’s an excellent summary, Schwartz. Thank you.”

  “Glad to be of help, sir.”

  “For now, maintain one point six gee acceleration toward the gate. It’s the only way we’ll stay ahead of the Choties. We’ll be close to point three light speed by the time we get to the gate. To the extent we have any choice in the matter, we can decide once we’re a little closer. Maybe we’ll get a clarifying communication in the meantime.”

  *****

  Three weeks passed and no further transmissions were received. By this time, the crew of Freedom had to assume Kilimanjaro was lost and the Cho-ta’an had complete control over the Geneva system. The only good news—if it could be called that—was that Freedom had begun picking up a broad spectrum jamming signal from the direction of the gate, indicating that the Cho-ta’an jamming device was still active. That suggested the Chrylis gate was still there.

  When Freedom was four days out from the gate, she spotted twelve interceptors on her tail. Interceptors were unlikely to be armed with missiles, which meant they had to close within a few thousand kilometers to use their railguns. At the rate the enemy ships were accelerating, that would happen when Freedom was about eighteen hours from the gate.

  “We’re not going to make it, sir,” said Commander Olson, as they watched the enemy vessels slowly gaining on them.

  “Not in one piece,” Jason said. When they had been planning to ram the gate, being perforated by Cho-ta’an railguns a day or two out from the gate hadn’t been a big concern. Freedom might break apart, but the debris would continue toward the gate at nearly point three light speed. If anything, striking the gate in a dozen pieces would bolster their chances of destroying it. If the Cho-ta’an had caught up to them a few days earlier, the debris might drift off course enough to miss the gate, but at this distance at least some would almost certainly hit. Traveling at a hundred thousand kilometers per second, it wouldn’t take a very big chunk of metal to smash the gate into pieces.

  If they intended to survive long enough to go through the gate, however, the railguns were a problem. They had no weapons left, and nothing left to dump in the enemy vessels’ path. All they could do is use their lateral thrusters to try to dodge the streams of projectiles. At their current speed, though, Freedom had so much momentum that moving it even an arm’s length sideways required a tremendous amount of energy. A rampaging elephant would have an easier time dodging machinegun fire.

  The other problem with trying to move Freedom out of the way of the path of the projectiles was that the slightest change in trajectory would cause her to miss the Chrylis gate by thousands of kilometers. In short, Jason had to choose whether to let Freedom be riddled with railgun fire or to miss the gate entirely.

  “Ms. Gleeson,” he said over his comm to the chief engineer, “I need more acceleration.”

  After a moment, Kyra Gleeson answered. “Sir, we’re already at the limit.”

  “I’m aware of that, Ms. Gleeson. We’re going beyond the limit. Shut off the safety overrides for the reactors.”

  “They could melt down, sir. Then we’d be dead in the water, or worse.”

  “They could, but they probably won’t. What’s the absolute max acceleration you can give me, if we disregard all safety protocols?”

  “I could probably get us to one point seven, sir. At least for a little while. If we run that hot for more than five or six hours, a meltdown is almost certain.”

  “We’ll worry about that in five hours. Make it happen, Gleeson.”

  *****

  With Gleeson pushing the proton reactor beyond any semblance of safety and common sense, Freedom once again began to pull away from the Cho-ta’an—only a few klicks per minute, but it was enough to keep them out of range of the Cho-ta’an railguns. The question now was whether the Cho-ta’an would increase their own acceleration to try to catch them. If they had any idea how hard Freedom was pushing her limits, they probably would have. But an hour passed, and the distance between them continued to increase.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Olson, running his hand absently through his strawberry blond hair. “They’re letting us escape.”

  “They know there’s nowhere for us to go. They’re figuring on us ramming the gate,” Jason said. “They know they can’t stop us.”

  “Then the Cho-ta’an don’t know whatever your father knew about the gates.”

  “Either that or they’re betting we can’t thread the needle at this velocity.”

  “They may well be right, sir. We’re clocking point three one two light speed. If we keep up this rate of acceleration, we’ll approach the gate at nearly point three three light speed.”

  A third of the speed of light. Besides the utter insanity of trying to go through a jumpgate at a hundred thousand klicks per second, ther
e was the question of whether whatever his father had in mind would work at that velocity. The message had said to go through the gate at point three light speed. Did that mean at least point three light speed? A little more specificity would have been helpful. What kind of half-assed transmitter had his father used that he couldn’t send more than two brief sentences?

  “What will our velocity be at approach if we cut back to one point six gees?” Jason asked.

  “Point three two three light speed, sir.”

  Still too fast. Or was it? In any case, there was nothing to be done about it. Even if they cut the engines completely now, they’d be going faster than point three light speed, and they couldn’t afford to stop accelerating with the Cho-ta’an vessels less than a million klicks behind them. On the other hand, if the Cho-ta’an didn’t intend to match their acceleration beyond one point six, there was no reason to risk a reactor meltdown.

  “Ms. Gleeson,” he said into his comm, “please reduce reactor outpoint to nominal levels.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Gleeson. The relief in her voice was unmistakable.

  The Cho-ta’an began to gain again, but Jason was betting that they would break off pursuit before they were in range. The Cho-ta’an wouldn’t want to waste their ships trying to stop a seedship that was about to destroy itself anyway.

  By the time Freedom was three hours out from the gate, the Cho-ta’an ships had closed within ten thousand kilometers. At this distance, they would have no trouble hitting a target the size of Freedom that wasn’t actively trying to evade them—and Freedom couldn’t risk using its lateral thrusters this close to the gate. The bridge crew held their breath waiting for the barrage to begin.

  It never came. When Freedom was two hours out from the gate, the Cho-ta’an broke off, altering their course slightly to miss the gate. They cut their engines, flipped end-for-end, and began to decelerate. They had given up on going through the gate; they would return to Geneva the long way.

  “Are we on track to thread the needle, Mr. Olson?”

  “We’re overshooting a bit at this point, sir.”

  “Cut acceleration as needed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Traveling at a third of the speed of light, they wouldn’t even see the Chrylis gate before they reached it. Even with their most powerful cameras, the gate would be a mere speck in the distance one instant, and then—well, no one was quite sure what would happen then. The only certain thing was that it would be over with very, very quickly.

  The odds of getting through the gate unscathed at this velocity were slim. Complicating matters was that the gate—assuming it was still there at all—was moving. Like all hyperspace gates, it had been constructed orbiting a star, far out from the gravitational fields of any other bodies. As with any navigation in space, one had to plan a course not to where the destination was, but to where it would be when you got there. The Chrylis gate’s movement was predictable and relatively slow, so it was generally a simple matter to navigate a course to it.

  Plotting such a course, though, required one to know the ship’s velocity in advance—and because of Freedom’s ad hoc acceleration schedule, their effective velocity was all over the place. She would have to cut her acceleration in an attempt to rendezvous with the gate at the same time-space coordinates they had calculated before their final, near-fatal burst of acceleration. The alternative was to try to meet the gate either a little before or a little after those coordinates, which would require a modification of their trajectory—bringing them back to the rampaging elephant problem.

  One factor working in their favor was that the gate was currently on the part of its orbit that was closest to parallel with Freedom’s current trajectory, so they had a margin of error of a few minutes either way. Even with that advantage, though, it was going to be tight—so tight that a tiny error in course correction could cause them to miss the gate by a thousand kilometers. Freedom’s automated systems were incredibly precise, but they weren’t built for this. Nothing was, because no sane person had ever considered the possibility of trying to navigate a three-hundred-meter wide opening at a third of the speed of light. All they could do is hand the navigation over to the computer and hope for the best.

  At about four hundred million kilometers out, Freedom’s nav system informed them it would soon be cutting the main engines. It would have a better chance of hitting the rendezvous point if it didn’t have to constantly correct for infinitesimal variations in thrust.

  Jason was about to tell Creed to inform the passengers to prepare for zero gravity when Creed spoke. “Sir, one of the passengers is asking to speak with you. Bree Cooper. She sounds agitated. Oh.”

  “What is it, Mr. Creed?”

  “We’ve got a situation on the garden deck, sir.” He tapped a button and an overhead view of the park popped up on Jason’s console.

  “How long until zero gees, Mr. Creed?”

  “Nineteen minutes, sir.”

  “All right. Tell Ms. Cooper I’ll be down shortly.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea, sir?”

  “I’ll be fine, Mr. Creed. Just need to remind somebody who’s in charge.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Jason exited the elevator and made his way to the fountain at the center of the park. The fountain was an interesting piece of engineering: rather than water, it used a solution infused with microscopic iron particles so that in the event of a sudden loss of gravity, a magnet could be used to pull stray liquid out of the air. The fake gravel and manufactured soil on the ground were similarly infused; a magnetic field would keep everything in place whenever Freedom was in freefall.

  The garden deck took up the equivalent of five levels of Freedom, which was structured somewhat like a tapered skyscraper, with the bridge near the top and a wide base at the bottom that housed the proton reactor and three monstrous thrusters. As long as Freedom was accelerating, inertia pushed objects against the floor in a perfect imitation of gravity, just like Einstein promised. If Jason unfocused his eyes a little, he could almost imagine he was strolling through an actual outdoor park on some pleasant, Earthlike world. To Jason, who was accustomed to the sterile plastic-and-metal environment of spacecraft, it seemed like a waste of space and resources, but he supposed it was worthwhile if it kept the passengers from going crazy.

  At present, the embellishments didn’t seem to be up to that task: next to the fountain stood a young woman—a girl, really—named Eva Tolliver, who was holding what appeared to be a box cutter to the throat of a junior member of Freedom’s crew, one Petty Officer Hasan Darmawan. Darmawan, who was only nineteen himself, was wide-eyed with terror. Gathered around the pair were a dozen or so passengers, including Lauren Foley, who seemed to be trying to talk sense into the girl. Bree Cooper approached Jason from the side, holding the personal communicator she had used to call the bridge.

  “Please don’t hurt her, Captain,” Bree pleaded. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  Jason ignored her, continuing toward the pair. This is my fault, he thought. You can’t expect civilians to tolerate this level of uncertainty, in a strange environment, all while dealing with one point six gees of gravity. Somebody was going to snap.

  “Stay back!” Eva shrieked. “Everybody stay back!”

  Some of those closer to the pair took a few steps back.

  Jason stopped a few paces from Lauren Foley, who greeted him with a curt nod. She turned back to Eva. “Eva, you have to put down the knife. We can talk about whatever is bothering you, but you have to put down the knife first.” She glanced at Jason as if expecting him to back her up. Jason looked at the girl and saw fear on her face.

  “What is this about, Eva?” he asked.

  “Stay back!” Eva shrieked again. “I’ll kill him!”

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” said Foley. “I knew Eva was on edge, but I never thought—”

  “We can talk about this, Eva,” Jason said, “but first you have to put down the kn
ife.”

  Eva shook her head.

  “I’ve been trying to talk sense into her,” Foley said. “She’s just scared. They all are. She keeps babbling about the TGP.”

  “What about the TGP, Eva?” Jason said.

  “It’s gone!” Eva cried. “All those babies, ejected into space! And the animals! It’s just us left. We’re all going to die!”

  “Eva, who told you the TGP was gone?”

  “Hasan,” Eva said. “He said we dumped it to get away from the Choties, but what’s the point in getting away if it’s just us?”

  “She tricked me, sir!” Hasan Darmawan said. “She acted like she already knew, and I—”

  “All right,” Jason said. “I think I’ve heard enough.” He turned to face the group of spectators. “It’s true we’ve lied to you,” he said, “and for that I apologize. It seemed necessary at the time, but perhaps I owe you the truth. We dumped the TGP and most of the rest of our cargo in order to outrun the Cho-ta’an on our tail. The good news is that it worked. The bad news is that we’re now headed toward the Chrylis gate at a little over a third of the speed of light. In all likelihood, we’re going to hit it, and if that happens, none of us are going to survive. You wanted the truth? There it is.” He turned toward Eva. “Now, in about ten minutes,” he said, “we’re all going to be in freefall. When that happens, I would like Mr. Darmawan to be strapped into a safety harness per IDL regulations.” He strode toward Eva and stopped an arm’s length in front of her. The knife shook in Eva’s hand, and trickle of blood started down Hasan Darmawan’s neck. “The rest of you can do what you like, so as soon as you let Mr. Darmawan go. Give me the knife, Eva. Now.”

  Eva hesitated for only a moment before slowly moving the knife away from Darmawan’s throat. She held it out to Jason, who carefully extracted it from her hand. Darmawan broke away from Eva’s grip, holding his palm pressed against his bloody neck.

  “Dress that, Mr. Darmawan,” Jason said, “and then get yourself strapped in.”