Star Wolves (The Tribes of Yggdrasil Book 1) (19 page)

As Altan approached the door he noticed the dog had stopped barking. He put his hand on the door to open it, then thought maybe he should just leave her alone. She was quiet now after all. No, on second thought, he better check on her or Goker would kill her and he’d have nothing to show for all the care he had given her.

He opened the door slowly and was shocked to see two shimmering figures, one stroking the dog, and another large one standing by the reactor controls. Without thinking he slapped a button on his jacket and sounded the alarm.

M
aathai shot
toward Altan like a bullet, hitting him hard and knocking the Hrymar off his feet. With one direct punch to the head, the Hrymar was unconscious. Recon Combat Armor augmented strength as well as speed.

“Ingy, set the charge!” He dragged the Hrymar back inside the building, but as he did so, he could hear an alarm that sounded like a klaxon and saw blue lights flashing everywhere. Several armed Hrymar streamed out of the main building complex toward their reactor. Maathai slammed the door shut. “Shit! Deactivate the charge. We have company.”

T
he red dwarf
, 4551 Arae, was just beginning its daily transit across the planet's sky. The red star providing the barest sliver of light to the dull orange landscape. Gina looked over at Cadfael, both lying prone in the dirt.

“Did you hear barking?” she asked.

Cadfael raised his eyebrows.

Vollan and Thul arrived back at the waypoint, just as the lights came on and the alarm starting
blatting
. They hit the ground beside Gina.

“Damnit! Maathai and Ingolfsdottir!” She looked at her wrist-display
05:12:45
Five minutes to go. “Everyone, let’s get to that north-east reactor room and get this done, we’ve got less than five minutes. Go! Go! Go!”

The team jumped up and sprinted off at their armor’s top speed of 50 kph, and were in position facing the north-east reactor room from two different vantage points.

There were sixteen armed Hrymar that Gina could see, maybe more elsewhere. This wouldn’t be a quick fight—
03:22:09
to go.

The marines were well camouflaged with their recon suits, and the Hrymar still hadn’t spotted them. Six enemies were converging on the reactor room door.

Cadfael was behind the Hrymar that were heading to the reactor room, and tossed a flash bang grenade at the door, which bounced off and landed right in the middle of the enemy formation. It wasn't as effective outdoors where there no walls to reflect the sound, but at its highest setting it should suffice.

There was a loud thunder clap and a blinding flash, both of which the recon suits attenuated, but the Hrymar had no such protection. The six Hrymar near the door were all on the ground and unconscious. Several others had been looking in that direction were also blinded temporarily, but now the Hrymar had a rough direction for these new hostiles and several began firing energy rifles in the direction of Cadfael’s group. Gina was directly across from them, and she and her team shot and killed two more with their laser-carbines.

She broke comm silence and called Maathai. “You ok in there?”

“Yes, m’am,” Maathai said, “There was a dog tied up in this building which alerted one of the Hrymar, then he sounded an alarm before I could take him out.”

“Understood, we’re trying to clear things up out here so you can leave the building. Did you set the charge?”

“Yes, but then we de-activated it.”

“Shit,” Gina looked down at her wrist-display -
02:11:58
. “We have two minutes before the other charges are set to detonate. Set yours for five minutes and arm it now. We’ll have it clear by then.”

“But m’am, that means ships will be jumping in with a cannon active,” he said with concern.

“Yes, it does, but three minutes fire from one cannon is far better than continuous fire from four cannons.”

“Charge set,” Maathai said.

A
rtman sat tensly
on the bridge of the
Gungnir
as they dropped out of hyperspace.

“Report,” said Willms.

“Sir, I’m detecting a weapon charging! Looks like a particle beam cannon,” his crewman reported.

“Fleet, disperse,” Willms ordered. “And don’t fire on that cannon, our people are down there!”

As per their contingency plan, the fleet dispersed at maximum military acceleration.

“Helm, keep us in between that cannon and any other ships. We can soak up more damage than our destroyers,” Willms said.

“Looks like someone had the same idea, sir,” his helmsman said.

Willms watched the ship’s display and saw three Alfar battleships taking turns drawing fire from the particle beam cannon. Their massive bulk soaking up the hits effortlessly.

The Gungnir’s comm lit up with an incoming message.

“Sir, there’s an incoming message from Councilor Ifor,” said his comms officer.

“Put him through,” Willms said.

“Captain Willms, I hope you do not mind, we needed to test out our new shields and this seemed a perfect opportunity,”
said wizened Councilor Iforr.

“Not at all, Councilor. I understand the need for
field testing
new equipment,” Willms replied with a wry smile.

Artman chuckled in the chair beside him.

“Damn those ships can soak up damage!” Willms said to Artman.

“Indeed, and in a few months we’ll have a few new ships of our own,” she mused, “though the Alfar ships have self-repairing armor in addition to regenerating shields; so if something gets through their shields and they take hull damage, the ship
heals
. Not instantly mind you, but over time it fixes itself. I understand there are limitations, but for example, if there’s a hull breach, it immediately goes to work repairing that. That’s technology we won’t have on our ships—a function of their organic hulls—but I’m still excited about many of the other systems we’re deploying.”

They watched with admiration as each of the three Alfar battleships drew enemy fire, not allowing any one ship to take too many hits before another one interposed itself. That way their shields could fully recharge between assaults and no real damage was taken by any one ship.

By the emissions strength of the particle beam cannon, Willms knew even the Gungnir would have taken minor damage, and the destroyers, much more, had they been hit.

As suddenly as the firing had started, it stopped.

“Sir,” his comms officer said, “incoming message from Captain Olsen.”

“On screen.”

“Steffen, having fun up there?”
Hal asked.

“I’m just having a cup of coffee waiting for you to get your job done,” Willms joked.

“Yeah, sorry about that, we ran into a little complication,”
Hal said.

“No trouble, the Alfar battleships took turns soaking up the fire. There’s no damage on any ship to report.”

High Commander Artman stood and addressed Hal, “Is the ground all clear now Captain?”

“Yes, m’am. All planet based weapons batteries are offline and most of the slavers have been pacified. If you’ll give us thirty more minutes we’ll be more confident there are no surprises left.”

“Excellent, update me as soon as you can. Artman out.”

H
al
, Artman and Xue, wandered through the central complex of the slaver’s buildings. The bastards were well organized, that was for sure.

The complex was set up like a wheel, with the slave quarters at the hub, and various functional buildings on the ends of the spokes. They saw what had to have been an auction-hall with a door at the back leading to slave quarters at the hub. It was likely the slaves were lead out of their quarters, down a hall and through the door into the auction-house, where they were restrained on a raised platform while bidding or buying took place.

Another building was clearly a display area where slaves were meant to stand behind clear polymer walls in their individual cells. Sort of a window shopping arrangement prior to the auction, Hal thought.

The hub of the complex was where the slaves were quartered. There were about a thousand various species, mulling about in different rooms, and what could best be described as pens. There were stairs going down which the party descended. Below the slave quarters were thousands of cryo-chambers; several of the marines were already patrolling the cryo-chamber level.

“Looks like a big operation,” Xue said, “If my math is right, there are maybe thirty-thousand cryo-chambers here.”

High Commander Artman shook her head is disgust. “Bastards! Have we found any of our people in here?”

Hal shook his head. “We’re looking now, m’am. There are a lot of chambers to scan, but we should have an answer in two to three hours.”

They walked back upstairs and explored the other buildings. At one end of the spokes was a nightclub type setup. It had tables, a bar-like partition, and of course a corridor for the slaves to enter. Disturbingly there were also small rooms with beds off the back of the nightclub. No mistaking what they were for.

The other spokes lead to a barracks for the Hrymar and another to a command and control room.

“I wonder how many of these outposts they have?” Artman mused.

“One is too many in my book, m’am,” Hal said.

Artman nodded in agreement and shook her head. “Just when humanity thought we’d become so civilized we meet these…
things
, these Hrymar. I can barely process their barbarity, but I am certainly going to be happy to
civilize
them.”

A
fter interrogating the Hrymar slavers
, Hal learned some extremely disturbing news—a large Hrymar fleet was planning to attack Earth.

High Commander Artman called every ship’s captain to the
Gungnir
for a conference, including the Alfar. Just prior to the meeting, a ship had been dispatched to Earth to warn them.

The Gungnir’s war-room was full, and each and every man and woman was sullen. The mood was low, dark.

High Commander Artman stood and addressed the room, “Once again we find ourselves reacting to the Hrymar threat. I tell you, this will be the last time. We
must
seize the initiative! According to the Hrymar we interrogated on this outpost, they have a massive fleet planning to raid Earth. They don’t plan to conquer Earth, just raid it—take our wives, husbands and children and sell them into slavery. They intend to harvest us like a field of ripe tomatoes.” Artman looked around the room and everyone was dumbfounded.

How had it gotten to this point? Hal wondered. He’d never before been on the defensive so often. He was used to taking charge of a situation and dominating it. That was his way, he liked to take charge and keep control of any aspect of his life. He felt as if everyone’s lives were spiraling out of their control. It was not a good feeling.

“I had a preliminary discussion with the Alfar Councilors prior to calling this general meeting,” Artman continued, “they are of course willing to send ships to our aid, but based on what intelligence we have gained here, even with Alfar battle-group combined with our ships, we will not likely be able to fend of the Hrymar attack. And it will take several weeks to get reinforcements form Alfheim. The Hrymar intend to come in force and overwhelm Earth; that is defacto standard strategy. Like many wolves attacking a bear—even though the bear is stronger than a wolf, with the numbers of the pack, they bring the bear down. We are the bear, ladies and gentlemen.”

A Wolf Age, Hal thought. There was something to the old myths, he felt it deeply.

A multitude of whispers spread through the room. The captains were not sure where High Commander Artman was going with this statement.

Antonio Cadena spoke up, “High Commander, are you intimating we do nothing?”

“Of course not!” she snapped. “What I need from you, are options. I need lateral thinking here, people. We have two unequal forces—asymmetric warfare if you will. We
cannot
prevail against them now with the conventional means at our disposal. We
must
find options.” She looked around the room at each of the captains.

“M’am,” Willms broken in, “I suppose we could try to intercept and harry their fleet en-route?”

“How would you find them?” Artman asked.

Willms shrugged. He didn’t have an answer, Hal knew. The Hrymar fleet could be anywhere. Niflheim was nearly 730 light years from Earth, and they could be anywhere in between. They could even be off that straight line route, perhaps rallying at one of their outposts. There really was no way of knowing where they were.

Hal could sense the tension and fear in the room rise, he felt a near panic emerging; he was very sensitive to body language, always had been, it was one of his strengths as a leader.

“What if we balance the equation?” Hal offered up.

Every eye in the room turned to Hal.

“Explain,” Artman said.

We aren’t the only three races in this section of the space, right?” Hal asked.

The Alfar nodded.

“Are there any we can enlist as allies?” Hal asked.

“Not with any significant fleet of warships,” Councilor Iforr said.

“What about the Dvergar?” Hal asked. The Dvergar were the engineers behind much of Alfar technology. They operated as a large entity known as the Sons of Ivaldi Corporation, and had trading posts scattered fairly widely.

“Dvergar have no friends or allies, Haldor, only clients, and business interests. Anything from them is purchased,” Iforr explained.

“Do have warships?” Hal asked.

Iforr nodded. “Yes, they have a large fleet of warships which they use to patrol their space and keep the peace near their trading outposts.”

“Can we rent them? Like mercenaries?” Hal asked.

“And pay them with what?” Councilor Bleddyn asked. “The Dvergar are greedy devils. They do nothing without a great profit to themselves. What could Earth offer them worth such a boon?”

Good question, Hal thought.

“Also, it can take months to negotiate contracts with the Dvergar. They like trade agreements to be
iron-clad
, I believe you say?” Iforr said.

Artman looked discouraged.

And then it came to Hal. “I think we might have something of sufficient value.”

“Which is?” Artman asked.

“M’am, we’ll actually need to clear the room. You and the Alfar Councilors are cleared to hear this, but nobody else is yet,” Hal said.

The captains went to rise, likely anticipating their dismissal.

Artman waived them to sit down. “Stay,” she said, “Captain Olsen, I assume your talking about the interstellar-bridge network?”

Hal nodded while the other captains look baffled.

“Bring them up to speed, quickly, Hal,” Artman said.

And so Hal gave them a five minute crash course on the newly discovered inter-stellar-bridge network.

“There are two ISBN nodes in the Sons of Ivaldi Territory. What if we offered to show them the bridges and taught them how to use them? Surely that would be a nearly priceless gift?”

“The danger, Hal,” said Iforr, “is once you show them the gates in their space, they will rightly assume there are more. They are devious and relentless in their pursuit of profit and advantage. This is such a great prize they will have half their merchant fleet searching for more bridges.”