Relying on the infrared, Eric sprinted out of the way and dove behind a boulder. The fliers shot past, still firing, and suddenly he was exposed again. He scrambled around the other side of the boulder, but realized too late that the two groups had staggered their attack: the other three were now flying right toward his position, their guns blazing. Furious, Eric got to his feet and unloaded his guns in the direction of the fliers. The few men with ammunition left who were still standing did the same. One of them winged the flier on the far left, causing it to wobble and then dive into the crevasse. But the others kept on firing, and men fell to Eric’s left and right, until he was the last still on his feet. Eric let out a defiant howl as his suit seized up and toppled over, trapping him inside.
*****
“That’s a fail,” said Commander Dornen, watching as the holographic tanks dissolved on the screen.
“I’m unlocking the suits,” said Dr. Thaddeus Bartol, who was in charge of the Vikings’ training. Bartol was a diminutive man with curly, dark hair and deep-set, intelligent eyes. “Safe mode with no weapons.” He touched a button on the console before him. “All trainees, return to Varinga at once,” he said. “We’re dispatching a medbot to deal with the wounded. If your suit is reporting a serious injury, remain where you are unless you are in immediate danger.”
“How many actual wounded?” asked Dornen.
“Four seriously. A concussion, a broken arm and two with severe burns. No actual fatalities this time.” Three men had died in previous training exercises—actually died, not just had their suits deactivated by the simulation software—mostly due to their own carelessness.
“Small victories.”
“You have to admit,” said Freya, “their performance was impressive.”
“Effective hits per shots fired, seven percent,” said Bartol.
“All right, but if you subtract their celebration toward the end—”
“Mech suits lost, fifty out of fifty. Fatalities, twenty-one. Major injuries, eighteen. The simulation projects five more fatalities would occur if medbots were more than twenty minutes out. Primary objective failed.”
“They did hold the ridge for—”
“Three minutes, four point six seconds. If this were an actual mission, it would be classified as a catastrophic failure. Rarely have I seen such a complete failure in every success metric. It’s extraordinary.”
Freya wished more than anything that Helena were here to help her deal with this fiasco. “With respect, Doctor,” Freya said, “your metrics don’t reflect real-world conditions. What is the typical pass rate for a platoon this size facing such an enemy force?”
“It isn’t merely the fact that Eric’s men failed to achieve the overall objective,” Bartol said. “They acted recklessly. Wasted ammunition. Allowed themselves to be drawn away from the ridge by an obvious ruse. Communicated poorly. Lost track of a group of fliers, even though a glance at their heads-up display would have told them—”
“We get it, Bartol,” Commander Dornen said. I’d like to know as well, though: what is the typical pass rate for such a scenario?”
“Well, it’s difficult to make a direct comparison. CDF marine platoons are somewhat smaller, and the terrain here in Greenland is different from the worlds where we generally conducted training in the past.”
“I’m just looking for a rough idea, Doctor,” Dornen said tiredly.
“Around twenty percent.”
Freya seized on the opening. “Of the platoons that failed, how many were able to hold the ridge for any amount of time?”
Bartol frowned. “I don’t have an exact number. Nearly all the platoons who took the ridge managed to hold it until the clock ran out, which only demonstrates further that the lack of discipline—”
“What you’re saying,” said Freya, cutting him off, “is that nearly four out of five platoons of highly trained CDF marines failed to do what a band of Vikings with three weeks of mech training were able to do.”
“Again, it’s not a fair comparison—”
“If it’s not a fair comparison, then by what standard can you say Eric’s men failed?”
“You can’t be serious. Beyond the objectively terrible metrics, the complete lack of discipline and poor use of readily available tactical information—”
“All right, that’s enough,” said Dornen. “The fact is, if this were a real-world situation, Eric’s men would have failed.”
“But we don’t need them to take some random ridge,” Freya protested. “This is an all-out war for survival, and the Norsemen—”
“Enough!” Dornen snapped. “I’ve heard as much as I care to about your legendary Norsemen and their exploits across the known world. The question isn’t whether Eric’s men can fight; it’s whether they can be controlled. Judging from the results of this exercise and those of the past week, as well as the holosims before that, they cannot. Tonight is the last night those stinking barbarians will sully the corridors of this ship. We will continue on our mission to find a fringe world with a population that can supply us with a more suitable army. Freya, I will leave it to you to inform Eric and determine what is to be done with them. We can leave them here if they like, or return them to Northumbria. I imagine Earth history will work itself out one way or another. I’m going to my quarters. Don’t disturb me unless something’s on fire.”
*****
“The Truscans deserve to lose this war,” Eric said, “with eunuchs like Dornen leading them.”
“Helena did try to warn you,” Freya said.
Eric shrugged. “We are Norsemen,” he said. “We fight for glory and for power, not to take ridges and flags. If Dornen wants the Izarians’ flag, he can take it himself.”
“What will you do now? Try to retake the throne of Northumbria?”
Eric shook his head. “Not unless Dornen plans to let us keep the mech suits.”
“Surely you haven’t forgotten how to fight with a sword already.”
“That isn’t something one forgets. I am afraid, though, that fighting with axes and swords will feel like a child’s game after having known the power of the mech suits. And perhaps I have come to accept that Helena spoke the truth when she said that I was destined never again to be King. My allies are few, and my own men will hardly be content to be court henchmen after doing battle with ghost machines across the plains of Greenland. I think I may lead an expedition across the sea to Vinland.”
“It is a relatively short voyage from here.”
“Ah, but I have no ships, and there are no trees here to speak of. No, tell Dornen to take us back to where he found us, and we shall forge our own fate without the help of sky ships and men from other worlds. You say history considers me dead. Well, then, we shall see what mischief a dead man can make. And you? Shall you return to your people?”
“I have no people,” Freya said. “Commander Dornen said I am welcome to remain on Varinga, and I may as well take him up on the offer. Perhaps I can still be of some use. If nothing else, my presence will serve as a reminder that humanity faces another enemy besides the Izarians.”
*****
The next morning, Varinga lifted off the snowy plain, rising some ten kilometers above the surface and then heading southeast on a course that would bring it back to Yorkshire. Less than two hours later, she set down in the same valley she had left a month earlier. Eric’s men, who had been restricted to a single deck on the ship where they’d had minimal contact with the Varinga’s crew, were informed by Commander Dornen via the ship’s intercom that they were to leave the ship immediately. To his credit, Dornen, flanked by two senior officers, met all the Norsemen personally as they left the ship—although Freya suspect this was mostly to ensure that the Vikings didn’t make off with any valuables. To the Vikings’ credit, they stole only things that could be easily hidden in their clothing.
“Where will you go from here?” asked Freya.
“To Middlesbrough. I still have two ships there. We will voy
age to Vinland.”
“You don’t intend to return to Ripon?”
Eric grinned. “One of the benefits of being dead is the severing of certain inconvenient familial ties. Gunnhild will get by without me.” Freya did not press the matter; Eric’s wife was said to be very beautiful, but Freya gathered from other remarks Eric had made that their relationship had become strained. The men who had been on their way to Bamburgh were his core group of henchmen, who were either unmarried or accustomed to being away from their wives for months at a time. Those with closer familial ties had remained in Ripon.
“The other men feel the same way?”
“Some would like to return, but if any of us returns, it will raise uncomfortable questions about the rest. We will seek our fate across the sea.”
“You will walk to Middlesbrough?”
“We have little choice, as our horses have fled. It is all right. It is less than two days’ walk.”
Freya nodded.
“You wish to ask me something. Go ahead. You have earned the right.”
“Is it true? How you got your name?”
“By killing three of my brothers? Yes. It was not murder, though. Most brothers are not as loyal as Ragnald. They plotted against me. I acted to put an end to the plots. And it was all for naught, as Haakon outmaneuvered me while I was dealing with the others. They call him Haakon the Good, and I am Eric Bloodaxe. As Helena told me, history is written by the victors.”
“There is glory in fighting, even when you cannot win. I wish you good luck in your voyage, Eric.”
“And the same to you. You are a formidable warrior, Freya. Perhaps we shall yet meet at Ragnarök.”
Chapter Seven
D arius Aquiba sat in front of a bank of monitors in a small room with no windows, trying to work up the motivation to go into the next room to pour himself another cup of coffee. On one hand, he had only forty minutes left on his shift. On the other hand, if Major Sadona caught him sleeping at his post again, he’d be kicked back down to corporal. Not that rank mattered much at Janthus station; there was only so much work to do and only so many people to do it. Still, being demoted would mean Jusef would outrank him, and that meant Darius would get stuck cleaning the solar panels again.
These days, Darius spent most of his days like this—staring at the monitors, waiting for the chime that indicated a deep space probe had returned. The chime would be followed by a burst of text across one of the screens—a status report on the system from which the probe had just returned. Darius would note any anomalies, make sure the report was properly categorized and flagged, and then run a diagnostic to make sure the probe was ready to be sent out again. It was tedious, but not difficult. The job had been more interesting at the beginning of the war, when there was always a probe either about to launch or about to return. Hyperspace-enabled probes were problem-prone and difficult to maintain, though, and with the destruction of most of the CDF’s fleet, cargo ships carrying replacement parts couldn’t get through. The Janthus station now only had one probe left, which was in constant service, jumping back and forth between the station and the six inhabited systems within a ten light year radius. The idea was that if the Izarians attacked any of the planets within this area, the probe would report this information to the station, which could then alert the other systems that the Izarians were nearby.
“Nearby” was, of course, a relative term. A hyperspace drive reduced the distance between origin and destination by a factor of about ten thousand—such a stark increase that when hyperspace gates were first invented, it was generally believed that travel between them was instantaneous. When dealing with distances of more than a few light years, though, travel times remained an important tactical factor. If the Izarians attacked one planet, there was a good chance those ships would soon target another planet in the vicinity. If the probe returned bearing news of an attack, the station’s technicians could send it out to the nearby planets with a warning, giving them anywhere from a few minutes to a few days to prepare. It wasn’t clear to Darius exactly what the people of those planets would do with that time. He supposed at least some of them had shelters that would provide some degree of protection from orbital bombardment, but they had minimal ground-to-space defenses. The CDF certainly wasn’t going to send anybody to help: they had exactly one deep space warship left, and it was an Orbital Deployment Cruiser without any troops to deploy. In any case, it was several hundred light years away. Darius, like everybody else at Janthus Station, knew the truth even if he didn’t speak it aloud: the war with the Izarians was over. The only question now was whether the station personnel would die quickly and painlessly in a nuclear blast or slowly and unpleasantly, from starvation. Still, they did their jobs, because you had to do something.
Darius had just made up his mind to refill his coffee cup when he heard the familiar chime. Sooner than he’d expected, but lately the probe’s self-diagnostic had been raising false positives, causing it to return early. Maybe it was as bored with its job as Darius was with his. Or maybe they weren’t false positives at all, and there was something seriously wrong with the probe. Darius wondered what the Major would have them do when the last probe finally gave up the ghost. What would ten people manning a remote observation station do when they no longer had any way of observing anything?
Darius shelved the question as the probe’s report came up on the monitor. He knew immediately that something was wrong. So wrong, in fact, that his first inclination was to suspect somebody was playing a joke on him. “Hey, Jusef!” he shouted. “Not funny!” When there was no reply, he tried again. “You’d better fix this or I’m going to flag this report to the Major and submit it as-is. We’ll see how funny you think it is then. Don’t think I won’t do it!”
Still there was no reply. Darius scanned the report. There was no way it was real. None of it made any sense. The only way you could get results like this was….
“Jusef, damn it!”
Still no reply. A sick feeling began to grow in Darius’s gut. He scrolled down, skimming the log file. It looked real. All the timestamps seemed right. Jusef wasn’t very bright. If he’d dummied up a report, he’d have copied the log from an old report or just wrote “Darius is a sheepfucker” a hundred times. He ran the checksum algorithm on the report, and it came back genuine.
“Oh God,” he said. “Oh my God.” He tapped Major Sadona’s extension on the comm panel.
“Damn it, Corporal,” said Sadona’s voice after a moment. He sounded as if he’d just woken up. “This had better be important.”
“I think it is, sir.” He glanced at the report again. “It is. Definitely.”
Sadona must have heard the worry in his voice. “I’ll be right there.”
Less than five minutes later, Major Sadona, his eyes foggy from sleep, stood looking over Darius’s shoulder. Sadona, only three years older than Darius, was a short man with an unusually round face who combed his hair forward in the time-honored and futile way of hiding a receding hairline. His prominent belly pressed against the back of Darius’s chair. “What in the shit is this fuckery?” Sadona demanded.
“Report from Tabor,” sir. “I thought it was a hoax, but the checksum is good.”
“Sensors must be on the fritz.”
“All of them, sir? I ran a diagnostic, and everything checks out.”
“Run it again.”
“Yes, sir.”
Darius tapped a key, executing the diagnostic script. The results came up instantly on a monitor to his right. Everything was nominal.
“Have you got photos?”
“Um. I think so, sir. Sorry, I forgot to check.”
“Well, bring them up. Maybe we can figure out why this damned probe seems to think….” He trailed off as Darius put the photos of Tabor’s surface on one of the monitors. “What in the hell is this?” he demanded. The screen held twenty nearly identical photos. They showed the surface of the dark side of Tabor; the probe had emerged from hyperspace on
the opposite side of the planet from the sun. No lights were visible on the surface.
The Major leaned forward and tapped on one of the photos, enlarging it to fill the screen. Still no lights could be seen. It was as if the whole planet had lost power.
“An EMP?” Darius suggested.
“Maybe, but… what are those striations?” He tapped on the photo to enlarge a section. “Look, they start here and spread out across the whole surface. At least, what we can see of the surface. It’s like a bomb went off. But what kind of bomb….” He brought the image to maximum enlargement. “My God.”
Darius stared at the image in horror. “I thought the Izarians were still two years away,” he said, not wanting to believe what they both knew was true.
“That was our best guess,” Sadona said quietly, his voice quavering, “based on the available intelligence. It seems we were wrong. They did it. The bastards did it. And they might have a hundred more of them, for all we know.”
“What do we do, sir? The probe looks like she’s good to go. If we send her back out, maybe we can warn a few of the other planets. Severus, maybe, and Jabesh-Gilead.”
“What good will it do? They have no hyperdrive-equipped ships, and there’s no defense against a weapon like that.”
“There’s got to be something we can do, sir. Maybe somebody at Supreme Command will have an idea.”
“You think the probe can make the trip?”
“I’d say so, sir. A few of her nonessential systems have been glitching, but forty light years through hyperspace should be doable.”
The War of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic (Saga of the Iron Dragon Book 5) Page 7