Star Wolves (The Tribes of Yggdrasil Book 1) (15 page)

“Skål!” Hal declared. They both downed their glasses. Smooth as satin Hal thought.

Gina eyed her glass before putting it down. “I assume,
skal
, is some kind of toast?”

“Yep, it’s an old Norwegian toast, like
cheers
.”

“Well, I’m glad I could share this with you, Hal. And, the gods willing, we’ll get through this. I’ve been praying to Diana for aid and guidance on a regular basis.”

Hal pulled his Mjolnir pendant from beneath his shirt and held it between his thumb and forefinger. “What I wouldn't give for Thor’s hammer right now to smite these bastards,” Hal stood up, and Gina did likewise, "Keep me posted. I’ll just poke around the area and see what’s on this rock. I’ll be back in a couple of hours- tops.”

“Ok, I’ll call you if anything comes up, but we should be snug as bug here until the repairs are done.”

T
he
Sleipnir
had
a complement of vehicles to accomplish its varied mission profile, two of which were a pair of incredibly advanced aircars designed specially for the types of activities S3 would be undertaking.

They were large vehicles, if one compared them to an old personal ground car; they were more like the size of the Old Earth Humvees, which the American military had used. To call them
cars
was a misnomer; they were more aircraft than automobile. Dark matter taps and the resulting contragrav technology turned these aircars into surprisingly versatile vehicles, capable of 2,000 kph, and with an endurance measured in years; the anti-matter reactor was small, but incredibly efficient.

It had no weapons, but was lightly armored, had marginal stealth capability, life support for a week with two occupants, and could seat six. It wasn’t quite space capable, but could dock with a low orbiting station in a pinch, arriving very slowly once it hit the upper atmosphere.

Hal was cruising at a modest 200 kph to afford him a better view of the surrounding plateau. It was fairly flat where they landed, and the same topography went on for hundreds of kilometers in every direction.

“Anything interesting on scanners?” Hal asked Eva.

“Well, this is not exactly a scientific vessel, Captain,” she said with a wry smile.

“Fair enough,” he said. Ok, emotions under control, he thought. I can do this.

Hal’s eyes swept across the rusty red landscape.

“Reminds me of Mars,” Hal said.

Eva nodded agreement. “It does. Bigger though, and a little warmer. This would be a better terra-forming candidate than Mars, certainly. I wonder if there was any life here once?”

Hal shrugged. “There seems to be a lot more life in the multiverse than we ever though possible,” he said.

“What do you think of these Hrymar?” Eva asked.

“Not much to go on really. We have one subject who is apparently an outcast and a reject, physically. Gina was impressed by the larger Hrymar she fought on the transport though. ‘A big tuff bastard’, I recall her saying. And I don’t think Gina says that lightly, she’s a tough bitch,” Hal laughed.

“She is rather intense,” Eva said with a little shudder.

“That’s her job. I hope you’re not getting any flack from her?” Hal asked.

“No, why would I?”

“Well, apparently she knows about our
history
.”

“And? That was years ago. Is she concerned about some conflict of interest?”

“No, and for the record, neither am I. We can work together like two adults. Just because we dated once, doesn’t mean we have to be uncomfortable together.”

“If you say so,” she replied, sounding unconvinced.

They were jarred momentarily by an updraft as the aircar rocked, then returned to level flight. They looked at each other and smiled.

E
va was perusing the landscape
, looking for anything of interest, but it was an unremarkable vista. Planets worked over by an active atmosphere and biotic agents were vastly more interesting—this planet was
dead
for all intents and purposes … and then Eva saw something that looked a little out of place.

“
H
al
, down there,” she leaned over toward him and pointed to a black shape going by on their port side.

“What is it?” Hal asked.

“I don’t know, but it looks peculiar. A very dark, black rock? I don’t know, let’s just go have a look, I need to stretch my legs anyway.”

Hal swung the aircar around smoothly and vectored the vehicle toward the black rock. The aircar touched down gently, in contrast with the sharp clunk of the Sleipnir earlier. The ground did look softer here, more sandy than rocky.

They both flipped up the visors of their Recon Combat Armor, to shield them from the expected cold. The starboard gull-wing door rose gracefully and they scrambled out.

Libuscha II’s star didn’t provide much in the way of light. Libuscha had a luminosity about a quarter of Sol's, and even though Libuscha II was twice as close as Earth was to Sol, the star still bathed the planet in much less light—it gave it a dim, spooky feeling. Hal almost laughed, with the dull red lighting, the planet reminded him of a big red-light district, like those in Amsterdam or Copenhagen.

As they walked up closer to the black object, they could see it wasn’t natural at all. It was a
runestone
.

G
ina was sitting
on the bridge, chewing on her lip and mulling over Adrianna’s murder. The big question was the
why
, rather than the
who
. She needed to understand the motivation behind this, then she could find the killer.

C
adfael sat
in the command-chair, his hands steepled under his chin deep in thought. Nila gasped, and Cadfael turned to look at her.

“What is it?” asked Cadfael.

“Sir, we have a contact above us!” Nila replied.

Cadfael’s expression didn’t change at all—he was a paragon of cool.

“What other information can you provide?” he asked.

“It is them, sir, the ship that attacked us,” Nila replied.

Gina made eye contact with Cadfael and keyed her wristcom. “Mared, Teaghynn, we have an incoming enemy contact. Our friends are back. Where are we with repairs?”

Mared replied,
“0-4, the dark matter tap is offline, we just extracted it from its housing half an hour ago.”

“Pluto’s balls,” Gina muttered cursed. “Ok, can you put it back into service quickly?”

“No, it will take twice as long to re-install, and we have not yet begun repairs.”

That meant no shields, no sub-light drive, no inertial compensators and no kinetic weapons. In short, they were screwed.

“Is the dark energy tap still online?” Cadfael asked.

“Yes, sir, it is,”
Mared said.

“Good.”

“What are you thinking?” Gina asked.

“That means we still have our plasma-cannon working in case we need it,” Cadfael said.

“Do you intend to attack them?” Gina asked.

“Not outright, no. I think what we must do, is deceive them. With all power off we will look damaged and perhaps incapable of defending ourselves.”

Gina snorted.“Not far from the truth is it?”

“They are slavers, Gina, they will likely come and attempt to board us if they can. I think we should encourage that. Mared?”

“
Yes, sir, still here”

“Can you vent some plasma and make it appear we have more damage than we do? Perhaps some anti-matter as well?”

“Of course.”

“Nila, how long until they are here?” Cadfael asked.

“About thirty-two minutes, O-4.”

Cadfael keyed his wristcom to contact the Captain. He explained the situation, but Hal and Eva were now an hour away at full speed, and wouldn’t make it back in time. But Cadfael had a plan.

A
dark shape
descended through the rusty yellow clouds, growing ever larger. The enemy vessel was at least thrice the size, and twice mass of the
Sleipnir
, and was clearly designed to fight. The
Sleipnir
could hold her own in a skirmish if needed, but not in a pitched battle. She was a ship of finesse and precision—a scalpel, not a sledgehammer; the enemy vessel appeared to be the latter.

Cadfael lay prone on his belly in the rocky, red soil, about fifty-meters from the
Sleipnir
. As the ship descended, he could make out a few of the salient features of tactical note—it was equipped with two plasma cannons and multiple missile launchers. Clearly they didn’t intend to destroy the
Sleipnir
during the first engagement. Based on the armament Cadfael saw, they could have done so. Had they opened with a full volley of missiles and both plasma cannons, the
Sleipnir
would have been disabled, or perhaps even destroyed immediately; they did have their plasma cannons trained on the
Sleipnir
now though.

The enemy ship touched down about two-hundred meters from the
Sleipnir
with hissing and popping sounds, and Cadfael saw escaping gasses. With a grinding-whine, a ramp was lowered from the belly of the enemy vessel. A group of four humanoids walked gingerly down. They were in some kind of un-armored vac suits, and all had medium length rifles with strange forked barrels. He recognized them from Gina’s description. They appeared to be the same weapons the Hrymar used when boarding the transport from Earth.

G
ina was lying
on the ground beside Cadfael, watching the four Hrymar depart their ship cautiously. The enemy were glancing in all directions, sweeping their weapons in anticipatory gestures. As they walked away from the ship, the ramp began to retract. She looked down at a display screen on her wrist. She could see four green dots on-screen, approaching the closing ramp of the enemy vessel. She couldn't see them visually, their Recon Combat Armor was doing an excellent job of concealing them, but she did notice a shimmer at the ramp, which coincided with the dots—her marines—entering the enemy ship.

“They’re in,” she whispered to Cadfael.

He nodded silently.

E
-4 Tameka Harris
was leading the boarding team. Their mission was simple. Board the enemy ship and seize control—quietly. This is what they trained for.

Her team, Fire Team Alpha, made it to the ship’s ramp without detection. So far so good. There didn’t appear to be any guard or sentry at the ramp. She wondered if there might be some active or passive sensors doing the job?

“Utkin,” she whispered in her helmet-comm. There was no chance of an enemy hearing her. The recon suits were designed to dampen any vibration from sound within the helmet that might be transmitted outside the operator’s suit. But whispering on a stealth mission just felt right.

“Utkin here, E-4.”

“Scan for any passive or active sensors at the ramp. I don’t want to trip some early warning system,” Harris ordered.

“Done. Looks clear," he responded.

She motioned for E-1 Corinne Thul to act as point going up the ramp. Thul was Fire Team Alpha’s scout and sniper. Cautiously, Thul walked up the metallic ramp and into the ship. The corridor ahead of her was about fifty-meters long and terminated in what appeared to be a bulkhead. The walls and ceiling of the corridor were constructed of rusty brown metal. At the end of the corridor, there was a T branch, leading off to two more corridors. Once she saw it was clear, she motioned for the next marine to leap frog past her. E-3 Kasper Vollan, who was the second in command of Fire Team Alpha, proceeded past her, repeating her actions—checking for danger, then giving the signal for the next marine to proceed past.

They met no resistance as they explored the ship, which seemed odd to Harris. These Hrymar were either dim witted or over confident. Maybe being a slave-master gave them some sense of superiority so they didn't expect to encounter resistance.

It was a reasonably big ship—probably three-hundred meters long—thrice the length of a football field. There was surprisingly little in the ship though. Though, they found a massive cargo-hold with hundreds of cryo-tubes—likely for the transportation of slaves.

Grigori Utkin reported a contact in a corridor off to the left of the main branch they were in, and made his way silently to the enemy. Utkin surprised the Hrymar in the hall, and with surgical precision, cut his throat and moved on—as if he’d just stepped on a spider. Harris was pleased. That’s exactly what she expected of her marines; kill the enemy remorselessly, no hesitation. Civilian sensibilities would have found that attitude repugnant, but that was the job.

Within a few minutes, they made their way to the bridge. There were six Hrymar all monitoring systems, talking, and generally taking up space. It was a fairly small bridge for such a big ship. The focus was on space for slaves, not the comfort of the crew apparently. That would work in their favor.

For a century, clearing a room of hostiles was still accomplished in a similar fashion—with a concussive grenade—historically called a flash-bang. They were much more effective in 2128, but the principal was still the same—provide a bright, blinding flash, overloading ocular function, accompanied by an explosion capable of shattering ear drums and rendering subjects helpless. The military versions of these concussive grenades weren’t created with the same care for human life the civilian versions were—if the enemy died, too fucking bad. The design focused on ensuring maximum effectiveness without damaging physical environments—important on board spacecraft; to achieve this, each had a timer and an adjustable yield, which could be set depending on the size of the room in question.

Utkin tweaked a dial on the grenade and tossed it into the bridge. The Hrymar looked at the device with utter confusion … until the grenade exploded, filling the bridge with a blinding flash of light, and a deafening thunder clap; the RCA suits attenuated both the visual and auditory components, so they could have actually been
in
the room and suffered no ill effects.

“The bridge is ours, O-4,” Harris reported to Russo.

“Well done, Harris. Secure the rest of the ship and report back.”

“Aye, m’am”

F
ire Team Bravo
had a much less complicated mission. Fire Team Alpha had been tasked with taking the crew of the enemy vessel alive, and the ship intact. Bravo’s orders were infinitely less complicated—kill the Hrymar boarding party headed to the
Sleipnir
.

E-4 Jessie Vaughn had his fire team concealed outside the Sleipnir. There were two people on each side, waiting until the Hrymar were almost at the ship.

The standard issue marine weapon was the LC-5 Laser Carbine. Essentially it was a shorter version of a laser-rifle, more suited to close quarters and tight spaces. All marine weapons, whether the LC-5 or sniper rifle, or regular laser-rifle, had one thing in common—they were paragons of technology, sharing some of the incredible advances of the marine’s armor systems, such as active camouflage. Not only were they deadly weapons, but there were sophisticated networked devices with a very rudimentary organic AI; this allowed some very intricate group tactics to be employed, as was Vaughn’s plan today.