“Fuck you, Vordr, or whoever you are. You sabotaged my goddamn plane. Mayday, mayday. This is Cirrus N91193 en route from Fort Lauderdale to Boston. Can anyone hear me? Please respond.”
Several seconds went by with no response. They can’t be jamming my radio, she thought. That’s impossible. And there sure as hell isn’t any parachute behind me. Still the engine wouldn’t start. The plane had dropped to 8,000 feet. Cursing to herself, she unstrapped her seatbelt and looked behind the seat. There was indeed something that looked very much like a parachute back there.
“Andi, you’re going to be passing over us soon. You need to put on the parachute and exit the plane. We’ll get to you as quickly as we can, but if you spend more than a few minutes in the water, you risk hypothermia.”
“Who the fuck are you? How do you know who I am?”
“I’ll explain everything when you are safely aboard, Andi. Please put on the parachute and exit the plane. We aren’t going to let anything happen to you.”
“You sabotage my plane and you think I’m going to put on a parachute you somehow snuck aboard? Fuck you. When I’m on the ground I’m going to find out who you are and make sure you spend the rest of your life in federal prison. Mayday, mayday. Can anyone hear me?”
“You’ll be passing over us in less than a minute, Andi. You’re not going to make it to the shore. You’re dropping too fast. Please put on the parachute and exit the plane.”
Andi could see the shore in the distance. There had to be somebody in range. She called for help again, but again received no response. The plane was down to six thousand feet. Whoever Vordr was, they were right about one thing: she wasn’t going to make it to the shore. The plane was going to hit at least two miles out. Assuming she survived hitting the water, that was going to be a hell of a swim in some damn cold water.
“You’re passing over us now, Andi. It would be a good idea to put on the parachute.”
Andi swore to herself as she reached for the parachute. Pulling it from behind the seat, she saw a flare gun lying on the floor. She gave the parachute a once over. It looked okay—not that she would know if the parachute had been sabotaged as well. Why would the people who had sabotaged her plane have provided her with a parachute in the first place? None of this made any sense.
The plane had dropped to five thousand feet. That water looked pretty rough. The odds of putting the plane down gracefully were slim. The odds of surviving a jump were probably worse. But with a parachute, she might stand a chance.
She strapped it on, still not having made up her mind whether she was going to use it. By the time she had it secured, the plane was at three thousand feet. She had done parachute jumps a few times, but never from an altitude of less than two thousand feet. She was going to have to make a decision quickly.
The voice on the headset had gone silent. Whoever was on the other end was either waiting for her to jump or had given up on her.
I can’t jump, she thought. It’s insane. I don’t even know there’s a parachute inside this thing. It could be full of confetti for all I know. One last joke on Andi Luhman, ha ha. The rational thing would be to set the plane down as best I can and then swim for shore. Water temp is probably around fifty-five this time of year. I could survive that if I keep moving. Unless a swell comes up at the wrong moment and my neck snaps before I even get out of the plane. The plane was at two thousand feet and falling.
Fuck it. She grabbed the flare gun, threw open the door, and leapt from the plane.
Chapter Thirty
A ndi Luhman sat in a chair in a small room, shivering despite being wrapped in two thick cotton blankets. Across from her sat a tall, thin man with close cropped blond hair. He wore civilian clothes but the way he sat ramrod straight in his chair reminded Andi of career military officers she’d met. He looked to be in his late thirties. He regarded her with cold blue eyes, but his face was not unkind.
She had a sense she was somewhere below decks on a ship, but her memory of how she got here was hazy. She remembered pulling the ripcord, falling toward the water, and then a shock of cold. A moment of panic as she tried to extricate herself from the canopy of the chute. At some point she had fired the flare gun. Treading water for what seemed like at least an hour. A ship—something like a naval frigate—visible over the swells. Rough hands grabbing at her, heaving her aboard. Clothing stripped. And now here she sat, across from a man she didn’t recognize. She had heard his voice, barking orders as she was brought aboard; it was the same voice that had spoken to her over the radio.
“Wh-why?” she stammered.
“Why did we rescue you?” he asked.
She shook her head, more violently than she intended. “N-no. Why s-s-sabotage my p-plane?”
“We didn’t sabotage your plane. We just happened to know your engine was going to fail.”
“Happened to kn-n-now how?”
“That’s a difficult question to answer without telling you a great deal more about our organization. I’m authorized to tell you virtually everything, but perhaps it would be better if you got some rest first?”
“N-no.”
“Very well. My name is Soren Bell. I work for an organization called Jörmungandr. Our mission is the survival of the human race.”
“Oh. Is th-that all?”
Bell went on, ignoring the interruption: “We rescued you because your experience and intellect are vital to the success of that mission.”
“M-me? What do you know about me?”
“Andrea Jean Luhman. Born twelve June, 1986 in Davenport, Iowa. Graduated magna cum laude from the University of Chicago with degrees in physics and mechanical engineering. Did post-graduate work in applied physics on a grant provided by Lockheed. Your grant was scheduled to run out, and you were in the process of applying for various entry-level engineering positions when you were visited by a U.S. Air Force Colonel named Emily Rollins, who suggested you continue with your work. Shortly thereafter, you received word that your grant had been extended. You may or may not know this was due to the direct intervention of Colonel Rollins, who was at that time in charge of a top-secret project called Firefly. You received a doctorate in applied physics from MIT in 2018 and were hired by a well-funded startup based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida called Next Frontier, Inc. In the five years that you worked at Next Frontier, you managed to singlehandedly revive their moribund interstellar propulsion program, putting them on track to be the leading supplier of engines to fuel potential future missions beyond our solar system. You were rapidly promoted, eventually becoming the lead on the project at the age of thirty. Despite this, you feel underpaid and unappreciated, and you suspect that Next Frontier is ultimately going to fail, because they are producing a product for a market that won’t exist for another twenty years. Your assessments, in all three of these matters, are correct. This morning you decided, rather at the last minute, to travel to an aerospace conference in Boston in the hopes of finding a lead on a new job. As always, you traveled in your own plane—the one luxury you allow yourself on your substantial but hardly exceptional salary. You did a full preflight check on the plane, but perhaps in your haste to get to Boston you did not notice a damaged fuel line.”
“You knew I had a bad fuel line and let me take off anyway?”
“This is going to be difficult for you to accept. The crash of your plane was part of the known historical record. History cannot be changed.”
“Known historical record? Known to whom?”
“Known to us. To Jörmungandr.”
“You’re telling me you know the future.”
“We know of the inevitable occurrence of certain future events. We knew that at 11:43am on sixteen March 2021, you would make a distress call indicating that your engine had failed. Your plane would hit the water about ten minutes later, and would be recovered later that evening. Your body will never be found, and in three days you will be declared dead.”
“You’re kidnapping me.”
�
��Certainly not. You are free to go at any time. I will suggest, however, that if you are looking for a challenging career opportunity where your gifts and efforts will be valued, Jörmungandr is worthy of your consideration.”
“You want me to work for you? To do what?”
“Ultimately, to build a spaceship.”
“A spaceship. To go where?”
“A planet that has not yet been discovered.”
“Of course. And we want to go there because…?”
“Our founder believes it holds the key to victory in an interstellar war with an alien race called the Cho-ta’an.”
“Right, right. And how far away is this planet, which has not yet been discovered?”
“Three thousand light-years.”
“Uh-huh. You understand that even if I could build you a spaceship that could accelerate at a constant rate of one gee for a full year and then maintain a velocity near light-speed indefinitely, it would take over three thousand years to make that trip?”
“You would be utilizing hyperspace technology.”
“Oh! Hyperspace! Right, like in Star Wars. I totally forgot about utilizing hyperspace.”
“We have the plans for most of the components, but putting them together… well, we expect it to require what you might call ‘intuitive leaps’—the sort of thinking you demonstrated in your post-graduate work and at Next Horizon. We have a team of engineers and physicists already at work, but we need someone with your unique gifts to synthesize the knowledge and shepherd the project.”
“Fuck me, I almost believe you. I mean, it’s pure gibberish, but it sounds convincing. Where are we going, by the way?”
“Our secret facility in Iceland.”
“Ah. Good. Excellent choice for a secret facility. I’d never look there, for sure. Anyway, can you turn us around and bring me back to America? You can just drop me at Atlantic City or wherever and I can grab a bus to Boston.”
“If you really want to continue to Boston, we’ll take you there directly. I would ask that you humor me for a few more minutes, however.”
“Sure, sure.”
“Thank you. There are some things I must attend to on deck, if you don’t mind, but I will be sending someone else to give you the rest of your briefing. Are you certain you wouldn’t prefer to rest first though?”
“I’m good. Getting my second wind.”
“Very well. Amelia will be in shortly.”
“Amelia. Good. Send in Amelia.”
Bell gave a slight bow and exited the room, closing the door behind him. For a few minutes, Andi sat alone in the room, wondering if there was any way of escaping this ship that was evidently crewed by lunatics. Then the door opened, and someone walked in.
“Hello,” the thing said. It was shaped like a person, and it wore perfectly ordinary clothing, but its face was like a mask of some gray polymer. “My name is Amelia. I’m here to continue your briefing. Would you prefer that I sit?”
“What… what are you?”
“I’m an android,” said Amelia. “I am one of six of my kind, created to assist in an effort to build an army of machines to prevent a divergent branch of humanity from creating a history-breaking paradox. The interlinking of the brains of the Six unexpectedly resulted in the emergence of a sentient being that embarked on a campaign of human genocide, but the destruction of one of my counterparts terminated the consciousness of the emergent entity. I was brought to a secret facility on a remote planet where I assisted in hiding a device designed to liquefy planets by temporarily weakening the covalent bonds between atoms. Then I traveled on a spaceship for one thousand four hundred twelve years to get to Earth. Now I work for an organization called Jörmungandr, which is dedicated to ensuring that humanity will survive a future interstellar war with a hostile alien race. I am aware that this is a lot of information for you to process, and I would be happy to repeat it or answer any questions you have.”
Andi fainted.
Chapter Thirty-one
A ndi waited nervously in an anteroom for the arrival of the founder of the Jörmungandr Foundation. She had been at the vast underground facility for nearly three weeks now and she had started to accept that it was all real: the war with the Cho-ta’an, a ship—bearing her name!—traveling thirteen hundred years back in time, a group of astronauts from the future building a replica of a Titan II rocket to carry a person into space a millennium before Sputnik, and all the rest of it. She had even seen some of the artifacts: a propeller from an ancient airplane, a rifle used in a battle against the army of Harald Fairhair, part of one of the treads from an earth mover used to build roads and runways for machines that wouldn’t be invented for a thousand years.
She’d met the engineers, the scientists, the archaeologists, the historians and the dozens of other people who worked for Jörmungandr in various capacities. All had been sworn to secrecy, few would ever be allowed to leave the Jörmungandr campus, and most were—like Andi—officially dead. They had no friends and family but each other. And they were all completely devoted to saving the human race from a threat that wouldn’t present itself for another two hundred years.
About half of these people worked on some aspect of the spaceship development program, while another quarter worked on finding and securing artifacts leftover from the Iron Dragon project from eleven hundred years prior. Most of the rest were focused on public relations, propaganda and disinformation: covering up the existence not only of the goings-on in Iceland but also of the involvement of IDL personnel in Earth’s history kept an entire department busy. Andi gathered that the government of Iceland itself was now effectively under Jörmungandr’s control, although this would be virtually impossible to prove. It was vital to maintain the public’s perception of Jörmungandr as a benign but ultimately inconsequential endowment that funded projects and causes seen as important to the future of humanity. Its funding for organizations raising awareness about “global warming” was a natural fit, given the location of the organization’s headquarters. Recently they had funded the transatlantic voyage of a Swedish teenager so that she could attend a “climate change conference” in New York. Because the girl refused to fly, Jörmungandr had paid for her to sail across the Atlantic—and then had to fly two crew members to bring the boat back. The expedition was praised by some for bringing attention to important environmental issues and criticized by others as pointless, wasteful gimmick—and both perceptions served Jörmungandr.
The one person Andi had not yet met was Astrid van de Lucht, the founder of Jörmungandr. Evidently Ms. Van de Lucht was rather eccentric; she spent most of her time in something called a “stasis pod,” which prevented her from aging. It was, Andi gathered, only her own arrival that prompted those in charge to “thaw” their leader before the usual interval of ninety days.
A door opened across the room, and a tall woman with long blond hair entered. Andi got to her feet. The woman crossed the room and shook her hand, a somewhat forced smile appearing on her face.
“Andrea Luhman, yes?” she said. Her Scandinavian accent was slight. “I am Astrid van de Lucht.”
“It’s great to finally meet you, Ms. Van de Lucht. You can call me Andi.”
“Good. Then you may call me Freya.”
“Freya?”
The woman shrugged. “Astrid van de Lucht is an alias. A fictional persona, created for the purposes of running the foundation. It’s a bit of a joke, you see. ‘van de Lucht’ means ‘from the sky.’”
“From the—oh! You’re her! Oh my God!”
“They didn’t tell you?”
“No, they’ve been… well, not secretive. Soren, Amelia and the rest have been quite helpful in explaining everything. But somehow I never put together that the founder of Jörmungandr and Freya were the same person. Everybody talks about them—you—as if they were two different people.”
“Yes, that’s by design, although the confusion was certainly unintentional. I’m a little like Batman. Astrid van de Lucht i
s my Bruce Wayne persona. Wealthy, staid, respectable. Freya is the one who battles robots and aliens.”
“Then… it really is true? I keep expecting someone to tell me I’m on a hidden camera show.”
“I doubt there are many television programs devoted enough to their premise to build a multibillion-dollar secret underground facility in Iceland. Let’s take a walk.” They went across the room to a door, which opened after Freya allowed a lens to scan her iris. They entered a long hallway.
“You really came from the past?” Andi asked as they walked. “And… er, the future?”
“My grandfather was born in 839 A.D. My grandmother will be born in 2181. It is a bit confusing, I’ll grant you.”
“You arrived five years ago?”
They had come to an elevator. The doors slid open and they went inside. Freya entered a code on a keypad, and after her iris was scanned again, the doors slid shut and they began to descend. Andi had been given access to most of the facility, but she had a feeling they were going to a level she hadn’t seen.
“That’s right,” Freya said. “It took us one thousand sixty-one years to get here from Kiryata.”
“You and the…?”
“The Vikings, yes. They remain in stasis on board our ship, which has been orbiting the sun out past Jupiter since it dropped me off. I’ll be picking them up on the way back out.”
The elevator doors slid open and they stepped out into a huge room that was somewhere in between a warehouse and a museum, filled with a bizarre assortment of artifacts. To her left was what appeared to be a replica of a Viking longship. To her right was a collection of corroded broadswords in a glass case. Straight ahead was a ten-foot-tall bipedal machine that Andi assumed was one of the “mech suits” she had heard of.
“How could you do all this in seven years?” Andi asked, meaning not just the museum but the entire Jörmungandr project.
They took a few steps forward and paused in front of the badly scarred and scorched suit.
The War of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic (Saga of the Iron Dragon Book 5) Page 23