Starship Ragnarok

by Alex Oliver

  "But the captain?" Yas insisted, not quite processing 'your goddess' beyond I've never heard of her.

  "Your captain is fine." Ruari gave a chilly smile, though everything about him was frost sharp and snow white so perhaps he didn't have any other sort. "When he arrived he was under the influence of alcohol and had been for some years. To better serve Freya, he decided to give it up, and now he fights through the consequences."

  "DTs?" Oh, that did make sense. Yas felt again the embarrassment he had felt on learning which ship he would be joining. What a hell of an impression the Raggy’s crew was making on an ancient entity just returning to the Milky Way galaxy after a long absence.

  "We have experience of it," Ruari's smile warmed a degree. "Many of your great warriors in the past were the same. The medicine I have given him should work it out of his system fast. He'll be well again by tomorrow."

  "I don't know of a goddess called Freya," Yas admitted. "I'm not from Earth." He took a sip of the apple juice and found it delicious, both tart and sweet, with an aftertaste of spices. Even as he was staring down at the surface of the liquid, Ruari ladled out a bowl of stew from the cauldron on the fire and handed that to him too. This was getting a little more than friendly, and Yas revised Ruari's place in all of this from "guard" to "servant." That actually made things worse.

  "You will have heard of her under another name," Ruari said imperturbably. "She is the goddess of romantic love, and also of war. Half of those who die in battle come to her and live as her champions hereafter, in peace and plenty and high content."

  It sounded very unbelievable, but Lt. Mari sat down opposite Yas and nodded, smiling like a woman in love. "Believe it," She said. "Didn't you know, the moment you laid eyes on her, that you would do anything for her? I did—we all did. Look at the captain. I doubt he'd have gone through all this for anyone else. Aren't you happy? We were all looking for new horizons, new civilizations and see, we've found something that will make all humanity's lives have meaning. Allies like Ruari's people and something to fight for. Our mission is substituted for something much better. If we can only prove we're worthy of it."

  "So you're not a god too?" Yas asked Ruari. He looked like he could have been. The Yei of small pools of water, perhaps. "How many of these gods are there?"

  "I am a Liosalf," Ruari said. He seemed to be thawing a little, there was definite amusement in his eyes by now. "My people were conquered by Freya's father, a long time ago, and given to her and her brother as teething gifts when they were very small."

  "You're slaves?" came the doctor's sharp voice from the darkest part of the room, startling Yas. The android had switched off his face and was so motionless he resembled a wire statue.

  "Did I not say so?" Ruari inclined his head gracefully.

  "Next you'll be telling me you don't mind."

  Yas noticed that Desultory's datapad lay by the doctor's foot, the slow rippling of colors across his skin being interpreted by it as text. The two of them had been talking quietly while the humans caught up with one another. The division was stark and worrying.

  "Of course not," Ruari nodded. "It is what we are accustomed to. And they are good to us, the gods. It is better not to be their enemies. Indeed, why would you oppose them? For they return to their own home. They created you, they care for you, and they know best what is good for you. A little absence should not have eroded your faith, but a little presence will soon convince you how lucky you are that they're back. Under their rule you can expect peace and prosperity, defense from the enemies of light, from the chaos at the doors."

  He rose and brushed down his impeccable fall of snow-white clothing. "Eat and sleep, recover yourselves. In the morning you will be tested to see if you are worthy of becoming part of Freya's army of champions. A peaceful sleep and a happy rising, before I see you again." He bowed and disappeared all at once, as if he was a hologram that had been switched off at the mains, and Yas dug his nails into his arm, the sting letting him know he hadn't dreamed any of it.

  Yas immediately went to the doctor’s side. His eyes fell on the notepad and a lump rose in his throat when he saw how quickly the doctor slid a page of text aside so Yas would not read whatever it was he had been saying to Desultory.

  “Doctor,” Yas said. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that none of this glorious welcome seems to have been for you. Are they giving Desultory grief too?”

  Coral rippled over Desultory’s surface—a swift moving lattice of coral and black. Desultory had not chosen to have a translation chip implanted in his skin, and Yas’s uniform—with its inbuilt translator—was back at the ship. He couldn’t read what the Ocuilin was saying, but he knew that coral was fear. Desultory had drawn himself in so tightly he was all but a cube, and his cleaning remoras were nestled under the contracted flap of his foot like a flock of chickens beneath a brooding hen. He was frightened, Yas realized, suddenly guilty for the giddy laughter that was going on over by the fire.

  “Our condition is optimal,” the doctor said, but his face plate lit with faint color-changes too. He had replaced his human face with a swirl of light like a section of Ocuilin skin.

  He had been forthcoming enough when they were getting here, and it hurt Yas to be cold shouldered now. But the doctor had no way of knowing that Yas immune to whatever charm the ‘goddess of romance’ was throwing out. It made sense that he was now thinking of Yas as compromised, like the others.

  “I’m not brainwashed,” Yas offered. “I don’t know what’s happened to the rest of the crew, but it hasn’t happened to me. I can help.”

  “Ask any of them and they too will say they are not conditioned, converted, catechized, corrupted, co-opted,” the doctor observed. “Your word is suspect. Still, for now they are tolerating us and we intend to do nothing to jeopardize that. If you wish to help, return to them and keep their attention away from us for as long as you can. We intend not to press the issue until we must.”

  “They’re your crew-mates,” Yas objected. “Haven’t you been traveling with them for years? Can’t you trust—”

  A bolt of lilac crawled through the coral pattern on Desultory’s back. That was anger, gone as fast as it had arisen.

  “You will not understand.”

  Yas opened his mouth to argue, but then Keva thumped over to his side and he realized he’d already drawn the attention he’d been specifically asked to avoid. That wasn’t a great way to show he was trustworthy, so he rose before she arrived and went to meet her.

  The arm she slung around his shoulders as she drew him away from the two huddling non-humans was a heavy weight, but it still felt lighter than the worry he had curdling in his heart.

  “Come on, Kiddo. Our worthiness is going to be tested tomorrow, let’s brainstorm how you fit in the team.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Fighting for favor

  In the morning, they were lead to a strange arena further down toward the base of the chariot. Here there were parks and exercise areas, and here there was also a stadium with rank upon rank of seats curved around a central flattened area. The central area was flooded with water, except for a single island which swooped up into a rocky, jagged mess of bare rocky teeth.

  The arena seats were only sparsely occupied, but Yas's skin still crawled as they were marched in by Ruari and one of the other human guards.

  "Here," Ruari indicated a pile of weapons and armor. "Take what you are most familiar with, and then follow me to pick a steed."

  "Is there some way we can refuse to do this?" Yas asked. "Captain Harcrow? The whole galaxy is watching through your eyes. Do we really want to get into some kind of gladiatorial contest at the whim of an alien who thinks she's a god? Do we even know who we're fighting?"

  Harcrow was indeed much improved this morning. He'd woken early, with clear eyes, disappeared for half an hour and come back freshly washed, shaved and in a white tunic and trousers reminiscent of Ruari's clothing. Yas found the outfit disturbing—too much like the
visible change of allegiance it was—but he had to admit that he preferred the shine of bullish confidence in the man's eyes to the despondency of earlier.

  "Does it matter?" Harcrow said now, shrugging.

  Yes, Yas thought, picking a mace out of the pile of weapons. The thing was solid metal, capped with two inch long spikes. Anyone hit with this thing was not getting up again soon. "What if we're put up against another NXA crew? Or a bunch of untrained civilians?"

  "You have such little faith." Ruari frowned. "Why would you suppose Freya would require you to do something anathema to you? Your opponents are pirates, caught while robbing a shipment of seeds. They are your natural enemies, chosen for the purpose. Did you think it would be otherwise?"

  The alf's expression reminded Yas of the way Freya had regarded him-like something she couldn't quite work out. He reminded himself not to push it and turn that puzzlement into anger. He and the other two freaks would figure out how to deprogram the others somehow—as long as they got through this challenge alive. Then they could work out a way of decoupling Raggy and getting word home to mobilize against this strange invasion. If home didn't already know.

  "Yeah," he said. "Sorry."

  The 'steeds' referred to turned out to be hover-bikes of a sort. A simple seat with handles when they weren't being used, the moment Yas swung his leg across one, the illusion of a horse appeared beneath him, a golden horse with silver mane. Once it was there, he could feel the movement of its ribcage against his thighs as it pretended to breathe.

  "What the--?" he exclaimed, more and more annoyed.

  "Our own humans find it reassuring," Ruari said with that little amused smile of his. "They were taken from Earth at a technological level of the dark ages, and they prefer that our technology mimics that. The majority of them are still convinced these are magic horses."

  Yas felt the handles beneath the sensation of reins. He knew how to ride a horse, but that wasn't actually going to help.

  Across the arena, he glimpsed the pirate crew arming themselves with the same antiquated but brutal weapons. He hoped that they too didn't know how to use them.

  "Okay, guys," Harcrow rumbled, beckoning them to come close. "We've got no comms, so I'm not going to be able to give orders during the match. I want you to focus on defense at first until we figure out who's the strongest. Then Keva will take them out. I've got the only ranged weapon..." He had a recurved bow of steel, and he held it as though he knew what to do with it. The man was burly, and Yas imagined he could put quite a bit of power behind the draw of a bow. "So I'm going to stop on the rock and take shots at any of theirs who gets close enough. Try to keep them between you and me."

  He looked Yas in the eye, his gaze direct, and blunt somehow, as though he'd had all the artifice pared away from him by living under observation for so many years. "Sub Lt. Sundeen? You got any special talents I need to know about?"

  "No sir. Standard Academy combat training, sir."

  Harcrow grimaced sympathetically. "It's gonna get brutal out there. Just focus on staying alive, okay? The rest of us will deal with tactics."

  Yas felt a rush of affection for his crew for the first time. He didn't really know them yet, but maybe he would get to like them after all. "Yes sir."

  A rush of wings filled the arena with a whirring sound as twenty white feathered women seemed to fly like angels into the stands around the great central seat. The crew looked up with eagerness, but Freya herself didn't come.

  "She'll know anyway," Harcrow said, the short words setting heads nodding like an inspirational speech. "Let's give them something good to look at."

  A fanfare of harsh horns bellowed, and the crew rose on their gravity repellent 'horses' to hover close enough to the central island for Harcrow to set his feet down. There was a moment of hush, and then the pirates came racing toward them at a speed so great they blurred in Yas's eyes. He saw a half-naked man with an ax take a swing at Harcrow, who ducked and came up shooting. The man swerved out of the path of the arrow and into the sword slash of Tima Zardari, who sat on their copper horse like a Persian warrior of old with a curved scimitar and bared teeth.

  Two of the enemy were coming at Yas, identifying him as a weak link. One had a long trident and a small, round shield, the other had a spear. They had range on him—the sharp portions of their weapons would reach him long before either of them were in range of his weapon. But they were riding like they'd forgotten these weren't real horses, both in the same plane. Digging in his heels he accelerated toward them, racing toward the blades. At the last moment he flipped the horse on its back - it carried on imperturbably galloping upside down as he swung downward and his mace connected with the first pirate's head.

  The man was wearing a steel helmet, and the shock of the impact felt like it might have broken Yas's arm. One of the spikes on his mace punctured the steel plate and blood sprayed, but the worst thing was the snap as the man's neck broke. Yas's lips went numb as an icy flood of adrenaline and disbelief seemed to pull him down. The world around him sounded as if it was underwater. He couldn't move.

  The body fell with a splash into the pool beneath them, and cheers sounded from the stands. Yas's full body freeze flashed into fire, and all of a sudden he was seeing with a saturation and intensity he'd never imagined as Harcrow took a shot that swept past him and went through the second pirate's eye and out the back of his head.

  Yas didn't want to admit that what he felt was joy, but he couldn't stop himself from laughing as he righted his steed and zoomed straight at another pirate.

  They were thinning out. In their old life they had probably targeted the crew quarters of their prey with ship’s lasers, vented them from a distance and only gone in to pick up the pieces when everyone inside was dead. They seemed no more accustomed to hand to hand combat than Yas was.

  Keva snatched two of the pirates from their machines and rammed their heads together, dropping them into the water after. Sasara and Avril Yueh seemed to be working together—Sasara waiting until they grew close enough then taking over their minds, paralyzing them so that Yueh could knock them out with a warhammer.

  Lt. Mari had been knocked from her horse and was holding with one hand to one of the jagged mountaintops of the central island while she flailed with the other, trying to fend off two attackers, both with swords. Mari had only a buckler left, and pieces of it were being hacked away even as Yas watched. He made a three sixty degree turn and headed for her, just as Zardari came in from the other side and hacked both heads off, left, then right in a magnificently casual rampage, like they were playing polo at the country club and they were late for afternoon tea.

  It was a rout. Yas whooped and held up his bloody mace for the cheers of the crowd. The crew, when they touched ground again, swept into a round of hugs, even Ruari grinning as he held out a wide bowl of warm water for them to wash. It wasn't until Yas turned back and saw a couple of the viking guards fishing the corpses out of the water that his stomach turned and the reality of it hit him like a piledriver.

  He'd just killed someone, and he'd enjoyed it. Maybe he wasn't as un-brainwashed as he thought.

  "You did well," Freya said later, after they had been returned to their longhouse and provided with tubs of fragrant water to bathe in and white garments of their own. Yas had scrubbed someone else's brains out of his hair and was on his guard now. No more enjoying this stuff. It was time to act like an NXA officer, not like some wannabe savage.

  They had been brought back to the reception room in what he thought was a sobered mood, but the rest of the crew was still gazing at her as if she was the moon and the skies. He checked again to see what he was missing, but again came up with only a beautiful woman with the look of a fresh-faced country maiden and heavy, almost metallic golden hair. Yes, she was luminous, but so what? He wasn’t a moth.

  "Thank you, ma'am," Harcrow sketched a bow. "Anything for you."

  It made her smile. She waved at another alf--maybe a female one, it was har
d to tell--and the creature came forward with a platter covered with silver armbands, and pushed one on to the wrists of each of Raggy's crew. Desultory and the Doctor still excepted. They had not fought, and they had not attended this swearing in or promotion ceremony, whatever it was. Yas wondered if Desultory had even been fed, and then felt terrible for not checking earlier.

  He turned the silver on his wrist. Was it just the bangle that it appeared? A reward for achievement, or some kind of monitoring device?

  "I accept you into the ranks of my champions," Freya continued. "You may take a new name if you wish. Or you may wait until the second trial and be named giantkiller as our heroes of old."

  "Giantkiller?" Harcrow asked.

  "Indeed. For there are three giants approaching this vessel even now. I have just been warned of it." She rose and beckoned, and the crew followed her like a line of ducklings as she lead them into the train station from which Yas and the doctor had come. Ruari and their guards followed.

  "It is my will and pleasure to protect the humans of the Midgard galaxy from the incursions of the Jotnar, whom some of you call giants,” Freya pronounced. “They hate you because the gods created and love you and it pleases them to destroy. It is for this purpose that I have chosen my champions over the many years. You will be returned to your ship, and there you will join with the best of my people in killing these monsters before they can hurt any of your own folk. If you have never seen a giant, you will understand when you do."

  Back to the ship! Yas's heart leapt at the opportunity. They could get away—but no, not without Desultory and the doctor.

  "May we bring our team mates?" he asked eagerly. "Desultory is our comms officer and we might need the doctor."

  Freya smiled with a hint of steel. "You do not need them. There is no need for communication, and any injury you sustain my own people will heal. These creatures’ presence is a boon I grant you for the present, but I will not have you grow dependent on it."