Ragnarok: Colonization, intrigue and betrayal.

by Andrew Claymore

  They went through, finding themselves in a large living room. The opposite side was a wall of glass looking out over the ocean. It would have been a much nicer view if the stumps of the older waterfront buildings weren’t sticking up out of the water.

  Luna and Gleb were sitting together on a couch, talking with Eth and… Maeve? Adelina could almost feel the fan-girl energy coming off her daughter.

  “They’re already near the halfway point,” Gleb said. “So we need to leave by tomorrow if we’re going to get there first.”

  “True enough,” Eth said. “I’d like a chance to secure the area before they show up – make sure nothing dangerous is lurking in the system.”

  “Is everybody back aboard?” Luna asked. She smiled at the newcomers and waved them to one of the couches.

  “All but four of our people,” Eth said. “They were… absent from the celebration last night when we passed the word, so…”

  “Ah, yes,” Gleb darted a glance at Gabriella. “They were… they were eager to meet one of the local heroes. I appreciate your discretion but it’s time to get them moving. They don’t understand the local customs and I don’t want us delayed while we arrange…” He frowned at his wife and muttered something in a strange language.

  “Bail,” Luna said. “And it’s a good point. This genius...” She jabbed a thumb at Gleb. “Almost got us arrested a few days ago. It’s a lot easier than you might think.”

  Eth stood. “I’d better round them up right now. If there’s nothing else for us to deal with?”

  “I think that covers everything.” Gleb said. “Thanks, Eth.”

  The man nodded and left the suite.

  “So,” Luna turned to her sister and niece. “Addie, you met Maeve last night but Gabriella missed out.”

  “So this is the young lady you’ve been telling me about?” Maeve got up to offer her hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Gabriella!”

  Adelina didn’t know what sort of proposal was in store but it was entirely worth coming here just to hear her daughter gushing. It was, by far, the most enthusiasm she’d seen from Gabriella since she’d become a teenager.

  And it was a hell of a lot better than the usual alternative. Instead of freaking out over meeting some coke-head musician, Gabriella was excited to meet a noted scientist and visionary.

  “Will I be working for you?” she squeaked.

  Maeve gave her a friendly smile. “I can promise you, before the day is out, you’ll be glad you didn’t end up as one of my interns. Seriously, you’re gonna freak!”

  “Shall we go?” Gleb stood.

  “Let’s not keep them waiting any longer than necessary,” Luna said, setting down her coffee and getting up as well.

  “Where are we going?” Adelina asked.

  “Trust me, Big Sis,” Luna said. “The only way to explain this gig is to show you.”

  They exited the suite, the two guards falling in with them as Gleb and Luna emerged. Back at the elevator end of the hall, there was a glazed door.

  They went through the door and up to the roof where a helicopter waited.

  “Oh, this is so cool!” Gabriella squealed. “I’ve never ridden in a chopper before!”

  Neither had Adelina and she would have been happy to keep it that way but they were kind of committed at this point… at least, committed to seeing what it was they wanted to show her.

  Maeve climbed into the pilot’s seat and started flipping switches and pushing buttons. Of course the visionary space-goddess can fly, Adelina thought.

  They lifted off and headed inland. Before Adelina could even work out how the intercom system in the headsets worked, they were descending in what seemed to be a pretty deserted area in the hills of the Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.

  Except for more of Gleb’s guards.

  “I’ve already got more questions than I woke up with,” Adelina said, climbing out of the chopper. “Is there some secret lab out here?”

  “That’s the kind of question you can never get a satisfying answer to, isn’t it?” Maeve asked.

  “No one’s gonna say ‘yes’ to that, ’cause, if it exists, then they have to keep the secret,” Gabriella said. “So they say ‘no’ and you can’t figure out whether it’s a lie or the truth!”

  “There’s an answer you can trust under that shelter.” Luna pointed at a large temporary structure, colored to match the trees.

  They walked over, Adelina nervously taking her daughter’s hand as they approached the large hangar-style doors. For once, Gabriella didn’t pull her hand free. Their guards jogged ahead and pulled the doors open.

  “What the hell is that?” Adelina’s grip on her daughter’s hand got a little tighter. Her skin crawled with supernatural dread.

  Inside was a… hole in space. She couldn’t think of a better description for it. It was a large, slightly irregular black spot that you could have driven a van through. There was no glint of reflection from its flat surface, no specular collection of light versus dark.

  Just flat nothing.

  “We said you needed to see what we’re talking about,” Luna told her. “We have to take you there first. This is how we travel.”

  “Is it a portal?” Gabriella whispered.

  “Come look from here,” Luna urged.

  They started toward her and Adelina gasped as the object seemed to be getting longer. “What is this thing?”

  Luna held up what looked like a key-fob. “It’s our ride.” She pressed a button and the blob emitted a double chirp, just like deactivating a car alarm.

  “I can’t help it,” Luna chuckled. “I just love that sound coming from a machine like this.”

  “A machine…” Adelina heard a whispering sound. She turned back to the blob to find that it now had a little pocket of real space in it.

  And a boarding ramp?

  The others walked up the ramp. Luna stood at its foot. “C’mon, guys. It’s safer than the ride out here, not to mention ground transport.”

  “How do you know that?” Adelina demanded, her engineer’s mind spinning. “Do you even have sufficient accident data on this thing if it’s new tech?”

  “It’s not new,” Luna said. “This particular tech has been in use for more than seventy thousand years. They’ve got more than enough data on it by now.”

  “Seventy…” Adelina couldn’t even continue. There was just no way. “Cute. My car is actually a bit older than that.” I thought she was going to be straight with us!

  But Luna wasn’t laughing.

  She lurched forward, Gabriella literally dragging her toward the vehicle.

  “C’mon,” her daughter urged. “We can let our minds catch up while we travel. I’m not missing out on this.”

  They walked up the ramp and, though Adelina was still struggling with the way her morning was going, she was noticing the details. The hull had clearly been given some treatment that would prevent reflection. It was perfectly visible from the inside and it appeared to be seamless.

  The supporting framework looked more organic than industrial. Stanchions were rounded in cross section and they were connected to each other by branches that seemed random but the same pattern repeated everywhere she looked.

  Luna gave them each a small hexagonal object. They looked like they were made of metal but didn’t wick away the heat in her fingers like most metals would.

  “This is a protective suit,” Luna explained. “You put it on your chest like this.” She placed another one over her breastbone and pressed down on it with her fingertips.

  Adelina jumped back as a flow of black hissing froth descended from the ceiling and began devouring her sister. It started coalescing into hard plates, radiating out from her chest until her body was almost entirely encased in interlocking facets of armor.

  “Freaky, huh?” Luna said. She flexed her arms and legs. “Mine was already calibrated to my body but, after all that food last night, it can do with a little stretching.”

  Adelina loo
ked down at the object in her hand. “Um…”

  “Ahh!” Gabriella exclaimed. “That tickles!”

  Adelina watched in near horror as the cloud of material enveloped her child.

  “Try to stand still,” Luna advised. “Hold your breath if you can.” Gabriella was fully encased before Luna had even finished talking.

  Well, no sense in dragging this out, Adelina thought. She pressed the object to her chest. She could feel that it wasn’t falling and so she let go.

  “Arms out to the side,” Gabriella prompted.

  She complied, snorting. “Listen to this one. Already she’s an expert?”

  “If you’re talking,” Gabriella lectured, “you’re not holding your breath, now, are you?”

  “Ai!” she hissed as the flowing cloud tickled her moving belly. She stood stock-still, staring ahead.

  “It’s done,” Luna told her. “Move your body a bit, let them sort out the fine details of the fit.”

  She whistled as Adelina started flexing. “Yeah, girl! Shake what our mamma gave you!”

  “You’re such a freak!” Adelina said, looking down. “But this does feel flattering.” She met her sister’s gaze. “Why do we need to wear these?”

  “Like I said earlier…” Luna headed for the front of the craft. “You gotta see it to believe it.”

  The sooner we stop having to hear that, Adelina thought as she followed, the better.

  Gleb was sitting in the right-hand seat and Luna dropped into the one on the left. She started moving her hands and the rear of the craft flowed shut.

  It didn’t swing shut or slide shut. The ramp dissolved and re-formed as a part of the hull, complete with organic-looking stanchions. I suppose I wasn’t far off, thinking they looked like they were grown instead of manufactured. They must have perfected some kind of nanite tech.

  She reached out to grab a stanchion as Luna lifted them off the ground and started moving the vehicle out of the shelter. Did we just grow wheels?

  She frowned leaning forward unexpectedly. Seeing evidence of forward motion, her reflexes had kicked in, making her try to compensate for the inertia.

  But there was no inertia.

  “Why is there no inertia?” she asked.

  “This shuttle could have us on the moon in less than an hour,” Luna said. “But you can’t accelerate that quickly unless you nullify the effects inside the hull.”

  “Shuttle?” she asked flatly.

  “The moon?” Gabriella asked excitedly.

  “We’re just going to orbit right now,” Luna said, sparing a moment to glance back at them. “So don’t get too excited.”

  Adelina opened her mouth with what she expected to be a suitably sarcastic comment but that was the moment Luna slipped her hands into adjustable harnesses and pushed forward.

  The ground outside turned into a blur and began to fall away. The Pacific coastline slipped beneath them and the ocean disappeared beneath the clouds.

  Adelina’s clever rejoinder had morphed into a valiant attempt to refrain from screaming. She was relatively pleased with the results, considering her current state of shock.

  “Awesome,” her daughter said, remorselessly highlighting the difference in their perspectives. “We’re already in space!”

  Luna pointed to a bit of dirt on the view-screen. “That’s where we’re headed. She’s called the Mouse in English.”

  Adelina blinked in surprise. I thought this was just going to be a really impressive joy-ride. There’s a whole ship to go with this thing we’re riding in? Having blinked, she noticed that the ship was now looking a lot less like a smudge of dirt.

  “Looks big!” I suppose it would need room to land a shuttle at least. She frowned again as their approach continued. “More than a few shuttles,” she said to herself.

  “Pardon?” Gleb turned to look up at her.

  “Oh, I was just thinking it must be at least big enough to carry a couple of shuttles like this one.”

  He smiled. “It’s a little bigger than that. Once Luna and Noa… our Noa… sorted out the fighter concept, they created a new configuration for heavy cruisers allowing them to carry three fighter squadrons.”

  “What?” Adelina stared at him, looking for some hint that he was about to laugh. “No. A ship that big would be impossible to build without the government finding out.”

  “If they built it on the surface, maybe,” Luna said. “And, anyway, this ship was taken in combat.” She glanced at her husband. “Near a planet called Heliopolis, right?”

  He nodded. “Eth seized it from Uktannu. Lord Mishak – our lord at the time – was in a rush to consolidate his gains elsewhere, so he confirmed Eth in command of the ship. He certainly wasn’t inclined to return it.”

  They were close enough now for her to make out the scale of the ship. Windows showed how many levels it had, proving it was larger than any cruise-ship on Earth.

  But now she had a bigger distraction to worry about. “Lords, battles , planets…” she said. “I’d say you were bullshitting me but it’s hard to be a skeptic while we’re approaching your giant spaceship. What the hell is all this about?”

  “Long story short,” Luna said distractedly, working the controls as she explained, “there was an empire covering more than a sixth of the galaxy and that’s where my hubby comes from.”

  “Was an empire?” Adelina asked pointedly.

  “Are you an alien, Uncle?” Gabriella asked.

  “Yeah,” Adelina added, “that too!”

  “I’m Human,” he told them, “and the empire is still out there. It’s just a little smaller than it used to be. Several systems broke away and joined us in a new republic.”

  Adelina looked up as something filled her peripheral vision. She flinched as the frame of a large opening flashed past them.

  Luna followed what looked like a holographic indicator beacon hovering in the hangar bay. She lowered the shuttle in front of two rows of people, turning the craft just before it settled onto the decking with a couple of thumps.

  “You said ‘used to be our lord’. Did you abolish the nobility or something when you joined the republic?” Adelina asked. Wait, am I actually believing all of this?

  Her ears popped. She turned, looking out the open rear of the shuttle at the two rows of armored people, flanking a path from the shuttle. Hard not to believe when I’m seeing what I’m seeing.

  “Not quite,” Luna told her, looking a little sheepish. “But it’s another one of those things you just need to experience to believe it. You should walk between us, I think.” She angled her head sideways for a second, a mildly absent look on her face, then she nodded. “Yep, between us.”

  Adelina took her daughter’s hand again and stepped between the newlyweds. She looked back at Maeve questioningly.

  “This is family business,” the woman insisted. “I’ll follow.”

  Adelina was pretty much beyond questioning things for the near future, so she simply descended the boarding-ramp with her daughter, flanked by her sister and new brother-in-law who, she was belatedly realizing, wasn’t actually a Russian.

  Eth was there, also not a Russian. “All hands!” he roared in English, apparently for Adelina’s sake because these people had their own language. Also also not Russian… “All hands, render honors to your lord, Gleb of Irth and your lady, Luna of Irth!”

  What-the-actual-shit? Adelina marveled as the two lines of armored people came to a stiff pose, hands over hearts. She was pretty sure she saw tears on some of their smiling faces.

  Luna nudged her and she looked over. “Hand over your heart,” her sister urged, holding her own hand over her heart. “Return the gesture.”

  She did so, glancing right to see that her daughter was doing the same.

  Gleb lowered his hand and bowed. He straightened, nodding to Eth.

  “Dismiss!” Eth bellowed.

  The two lines broke rank and closed around them, smiling and shouting. Eth moved closer to Adelina an
d Gabriella to ensure they had some personal space.

  “We meet again, My Lady. Welcome aboard the Mouse,” he said.

  “I’m no lady,” she demurred before realizing what she was saying.

  Gabriella snickered.

  “I don’t wish to be argumentative,” Eth said, “but, technically… and legally, you both are. Our lord has no family except for the one he’s just married into. As the eldest sibling of our lady, you’re next in the line of succession, should anything happen to both of them.”

  Adelina must have swayed a bit because she could feel her daughter’s arm suddenly bracing her. Amazing how much tactile response these suits can preserve, she thought irrelevantly.

  “Easy, Mom,” Gabriella soothed. “Eth, I think we should find a quiet place where we can work on absorbing all the crazy we’ve dealt with so far.”

  Eth tilted his head in an elegant stand-in for a bow. “As my lady wishes.” He said a few words to Gleb and then cleared a path for his two charges.

  She’s such a good girl, Adelina thought dreamily.

  They left the shuttle hangar and strolled along a few reassuringly boring corridors. Eth led them through a large set of sliding doors that opened with blinding speed and shut behind them with equally alarming enthusiasm.

  The space they’d entered was massive but it was also calming.

  “Your church, down on the surface made me think this place might seem more familiar to you,” Eth said.

  “What is this?” Adelina asked. “It looks like a cathedral.”

  He nodded. “An unlikely coincidence. When your sister modified this part of the ship to carry fighter squadrons, the standard ship design parameters gave us this.”

  The open space was probably as long as any cathedral in the world and at least as high. Or low, she thought.

  The bottom of the chamber was a groin-vaulted structure with blue hazed openings that currently offered a view of Sub-Saharan Africa. It’s like an upside-down cathedral.

  “Are those your fighters?” Gabriella asked, pointing to one the bays, set back between rows of ornate pillars. There were three rows of the deadly looking vehicles running down each side of the ‘cathedral’.

  “They are,” he confirmed proudly. “Your aunt’s concept. The squadron on this level is hers.”