Skyfire

by Maloney, Mack;

Wolf lowered his head further, and for a third time let out a long, low breath.

  “You see, it was my brother and my father who sent the submarines against you. And that is why I am after them….”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Aboard the Great Ship

  DOMINIQUE HAD NEVER LOOKED so beautiful.

  She was dressed in a flowing white, low-cut gown made of authentic satin and lace and fastened with clasps and buttons made of solid gold. Her luxurious long blonde hair had been expertly washed, curled, brushed and set, and was now held in place by a delicate strand of diamonds and pearls. Her skin had been gently washed in milk and beer, powdered twice, and then anointed with perfumes made from rosemary and myrrh.

  Even her cleavage—substantially revealed in the low-cut gown—had been sprinkled with a fine, glittering dust made from real silver.

  She was kneeling on a heart-shaped rug made from lamb’s fur, and before her was a goblet made of gold, filled with the thick, mind-altering liquor the Norsemen called myx. Kneeling at a discreet distance on either side of her were two lovely female attendants, dressed only slightly less glamorously than she. They, too, had goblets filled with myx, though these were made of pewter and not gold.

  All around her, the banquet swelled. There were more than four hundred people in attendance, she would have guessed, with an even split between Norse clan members—dressed up as their crude exteriors would allow—and young women, some of whom were undoubtedly captured as slaves during the recent raids and forced into service.

  The banquet hall itself was enormous, taking up more than half of the promenade deck of the Stor Skute. Two long wooden tables ran through its center, both of them pointing to a third, gold-encrusted platform next to where Dominique now was. The wooden tables were crowded with Norsemen, gorging their way through slabs of beef in what was the fifth course of the night. Scattered amongst the men were the scores of semireluctant young women, any one of whom could be flung to the floor or onto the table itself at any moment for the purpose of satiating a Norsemen’s whimsical sexual lust.

  Through it all, the myx flowed freely.

  Seated at the gold table, not ten feet away to Dominique’s left, was the man they called Verden, which when translated literally from Norwegian meant “world.” But in Verden’s case, she had come to learn, the name connoted nothing less than “the all-encompassing” or “the everything.” It was an appropriate title for the person who, more than anyone else, could claim to be the leader of all the Norse clans.

  In appearance, Verden looked the part. Despite the patch over his right eye, his long white hair and beard gave him an undeniable if slightly sinister Santa Claus look. His massive frame—still powerful and muscular despite his sixty-plus years—recalled that of a weight lifter, or perhaps a professional wrestler.

  Verden was a strangely quiet and reserved man, Dominique had quickly come to realize, not at all the character she would have imagined would be the top chieftain of the wild and boisterous Norsemen. There was no mistaking that Verden was a man given to long periods of brooding and even depression. Even now, while his minions ate, drank, and molested the evening away, he sat alone at the gold table, his head in his hands, not touching his meal or drink, his only companions being his two enormous, coal-black pet ravens that never seemed to have the urge to simply fly away.

  Dominique had been introduced to Verden shortly after she and Yaz were transferred to the Great Ship after a brief three-hour trip in the sub. It was the Norse leader himself who had casually given her a tour of the vessel, explaining that at one time it had been a luxurious Caribbean cruise ship named, appropriately enough, The Royal Viking Queen.

  Now it served as Verden’s floating palace, an unarmed speck of gleaming white surrounded at all times by a protective phalanx of gray Norse destroyers, frigates, and, more often than not, a squad of raiding submarines.

  Dominique also found out quickly that Verden was different from the rest of the Norsemen in his candor and outright honesty, though he doled it out in selective measures. Speaking in broken English, the man had explained to her during their tour that, yes, his raiders were intent on plundering the East Coast of America. But he insisted in the next breath that they were “entitled” to do so because it had been the Norsemen who discovered the continent in the first place—many years before Columbus. Therefore the land, and its people, were theirs for the ravaging.

  Beyond this highly disputable claim, Verden said little more about the motives of his clans. He did mention, however, that although he was the recognized leader of the clans, more often than not, the clan leaders fended for themselves.

  “We Norse are like wolves,” he told Dominique. “The leader can lead, find food and shelter for the pack. But he is usually not appreciated unless there is big trouble. When one of his brood decides to act independently, all he can do is bark.”

  Dominique had then asked the Norse leader why she had been transferred to the Great Ship. She would never forget the look that came over him as he held her gently by the shoulders, a slight glistening welling up in his good eye.

  In a voice that might have come from a kindly grandfather, he had said to her: “Because you have been selected as my Valkyrie …”

  And with that, he had left her standing all alone on the deck of the Great Ship.

  Dominique knew full well what a Valkyrie was …

  A crucial component of Norse myth, the Valkyries were maidens of Odin, the godlike character, who, like Zeus in Greek mythology, served as an omnipotent ruler. It was the Valkyries’ mission to fly to the battlefield and decide at Odin’s bidding who should live and who should die. They also served as conduits of information to Odin, providing him with eyes and ears amongst his domain.

  It was also believed, though not generally spelled out in the very few authentic Norse myth texts, that the Valkyries were available to serve Odin’s sexual desires. And it was this thought that ran through Dominique’s mind now as she watched the banquet reach new heights of drunkenness and debauchery.

  As the next course of food—consisting of several dozen roasted pigs—was brought on, it seemed as if more and more of the disinclined young women were being grabbed, stripped, and sexually set upon. Fistfights of varying intensities were also breaking out among Norsemen of opposing clans, the fisticuffs brought on no doubt by the volatile mixture of the psychedelic myx and the intoxicating cries of the ravaged young women.

  Yet though the storm of drunken wantonness swirled about her, no Norseman dared approach Dominique. Even in their most inebriated state, each man knew that to disturb Verden’s Valkyrie in any way would result in the most painful of deaths. Despite the myriad of distractions, Dominique kept a close watch on Verden, thoroughly mystified by what she saw. The man neither ate nor drank and barely did he look up at the raucous scene before him. Rather he spent most of the time with his good eye closed and his head hung down, more like he was a bishop in deep prayer than the presiding member of the banquet-cum-orgy.

  Dominique couldn’t help but wonder.

  What could be worrying him so? she thought.

  Deep in the lowest deck of the Great Ship, Yaz could clearly hear the screams, the cries and laughter of the feast.

  Even though they were the enemy, and he was their prisoner, Yaz envied the Norsemen who were at that moment eating, drinking, and doing God-knows-what-else six decks above. Just the smell of the beef and ham cooking in the huge galley two levels above him was driving him nuts. All he had to subsist on was a hunk of hard black bread and a dirty gallon jug of incredibly bitter beer.

  But at least he was still alive.

  He took a long sip of the acrid-tasting lager and contemplated his situation. He was in a tiny cabin barely larger than a closet. A dim bulb provided the only illumination, a lumpy mat served as his bed. Before him was nothing more glamorous than a two-foot-thick, crudely written, badly translated repair manual detailing the unsophisticated guts of each and every one of the Bats�
��as the Norsemen called their submarines. As dictated by Verden himself, Yaz’s role in life for the foreseeable future was to memorize the book and be ready to advise the Norsemen on what to do when one of their submersible claptraps broke down. To demur would have cost him a finger or an ear, or maybe an even more precious body part at the best, and death at the worst.

  So study the guidebook he did.

  But now, after poring over the manual for the better part of the last two days, it was slowly dawning on him that like bottles of cheap wine, no two of the raiders’ submarines were built alike. Just as Smiley had told him, there were two classes of rudimentary subs: the Krig Bats (or war boats) to ferry raiders on their attacks and the Folk Bats (people boats) used mostly to transport the human cargo of slaves back to Scandinavia but also as supply and replenishment vessels.

  But while the basic design of all these subs was consistent—in almost all cases, Panel A was welded to Panel B and so on—the interior layouts were almost always different with each vessel. Some boasted huge galleys, which left little room for sleeping quarters. Others had a surplus area for bunks, yet no kitchen. Some had been built with enough room for so much coal that, if filled to capacity, their buoyancy would have been nil. Others had to refuel almost daily because they carried almost no area for coal storage.

  Above all, the electrical wiring and plumbing systems were the most convoluted; some of the boats could barely sustain burning two dozen fifty-watt lightbulbs, while others had power to spare. Many had been built entirely without toilets. Most of the air-circulation systems were a joke, as were the water repurification processes. Just about the only thing the subs had in common was that on-board escape and rescue systems were nonexistent.

  Yaz found the reading complicated and frustratingly confusing. Plus, nowhere in the volumes were the mysterious Fire Bats even alluded to. Yet it never left his mind that while he was studying the manual, he was also drinking up volumes of valuable intelligence on the enemy. Being able to understand submarine technology had been his life-saving grace so far. And though he hadn’t seen her since coming aboard the Great Ship, he liked to think it was what had kept Dominique close by also. It had also given him this chance to learn more about the Norseman’s Bats than they probably knew themselves.

  As an officer of the United American Armed Forces, it was up to him to take as much of an advantage as possible of the mind-numbing yet luckily fortuitous situation.

  With this in mind, he set aside the glass of incredibly bitter beer and turned to the next page. Six decks above, it sounded as if the orgy had shifted into high gear.

  It was one of the handmaidens who passed the note to Dominique.

  Just barely making her way across the chaotic banquet-hall floor, the woman ceremoniously slipped the piece of paper into Dominique’s cleavage and then returned to her own rug without a word. Reading the roughly scratched letters, it took Dominique several moments before she realized that the message was from Verden. He had left the banquet about a half hour before, slipping through a side door without so much as a salute from his horde of barbaric soldiers.

  Now he was summoning Dominique to his quarters.

  No sooner had she reread the note and folded it when two Norsemen, wearing the all-white cloth uniform of Verden’s personal security squad, appeared and motioned that she follow them. Like a parting of the waves, these two men cleared a path for her through the sprawling and screaming bodies of the Norsemen and their victims.

  She passed unhindered to the opposite end of the hall, not one of the raiders daring to touch her or even look directly into her eyes.

  She arrived at Verden’s third-deck quarters ten minutes later.

  The door was open and the man was sitting on a thronelike wooden chair placed at the far end of the cabin. The room was very dark, six weary candles providing the only light.

  In an instant, her two escorts were gone.

  “Come in, my beautiful friend,” Verden said in his heavily accented, withdrawn, and raspy voice. “It’s with pleasure that I greet you. I’m happy that you decided to pay me a visit.”

  “Your note was an order,” she replied, walking to a spot about fifteen feet from the throne. “I had little choice but to obey.”

  He looked up at her, making an effort to distinguish her features in the dark room with his good eye.

  “An order or an invitation,” he shrugged, “… what’s the difference?”

  “I am your prisoner,” Dominique said. “I must do as you say or suffer the consequences.”

  He lowered his head to his hand and pulled worriedly on his beard.

  “That is true, my lovely,” he said in his dreary monotone, grabbing a goblet filled with myx and practically draining it in a single swallow. “But you are not like the others. This you must know by now. I have chosen you above them all to be my Valkyrie. This is a position that millions of women would give their lives for …”

  “And so I must give mine?” she countered.

  He poured and gulped another cup of myx and then stared hard at her.

  “I drink so rarely,” he said. “But now that I do, I simply cannot believe your beauty …”

  “I have had the myx,” she said, “I know how it distorts reality.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his finger at her. “Your loveliness transcends the myx.”

  “Then it is just another part of your dream,” she said, spreading her hands to indicate everything from his throne to the shipload of drunken Vikings. “This dream …”

  Suddenly, Verden’s voice became deeper, clearer, and, for lack of a better description, more contemporary.

  “Don’t be entirely fooled by what you see around you,” he told her. “To you, my men and I probably look like actors in an old movie or people drawn in a comic book. But believe me, before the Big War, we weren’t all that different from you—you and your ‘civilized’ American friends.”

  Another goblet was filled and quickly consumed.

  “True, many of my men are from the mountains,” Verden went on. “And from the small villages up near the Arctic where it seems to be dark every hour of every day of every year. Modern civilization was something that intruded in on us only every so often.

  “But don’t be deluded, my lovely creature, that we are totally ignorant of convention. We know that planes fly and bombs destroy and that men have walked on the moon. We also know that the blood of Eric and Leif and the others runs in our veins, and that it was they who first discovered America and not this Italian interloper.

  “As I told you before, we are simply returning to recapture our claim.”

  Once again, he lowered his head and stared into the empty goblet.

  “Though, I must admit,” he said, his voice returning to its original sad timbre, “that it is the myx that makes our blood boil and permits the ghosts of our ancestors to burst through. Then, perhaps, we do look like comic book characters.”

  Several minutes of a stone-cold silence descended on the room. The candles flickered and the ship rolled gently in the Atlantic swell. Verden stayed almost motionless, staring at his empty cup, the aura of despondency almost visible around his hulking frame.

  “You belong to another?” he asked her, suddenly looking up.

  Dominique slowly nodded her reply.

  “And do you think he is still alive?”

  “I know he is …” she whispered.

  “And he will be faithful, even after he knows you’re gone?”

  “That makes no difference,” she said.

  He tilted his head up to look at her again. “And why is that?” he asked.

  “Because he is looking for me,” she replied. “And he will keep looking until he finds me.”

  Verden reached for his flask and refilled his goblet once again with myx.

  “You know him so well, do you?” he asked.

  “Yes …”

  Verden downed the full cup of myx in a loud gulp, wiping his mouth with the end of h
is sleeve. His movements were shaky and almost convulsive now, due to the large quantity of the powerful mind-bending liquor he’d consumed in just the past few minutes.

  “But he is not here now,” the chieftain slurred. “And you are my Valkyrie. Thus, you shall do what I say …”

  He drained another cup of myx, and coughed hard. Then he poured out another full goblet and handed to Dominique.

  “Drink this, my lovely,” he commanded. “This and two more …”

  “And if I refuse?” she asked, trying to stay calm. “Certainly you wouldn’t kill your Valkyrie so soon after selecting her.”

  For the first time, Verden smiled.

  “No, my dear,” he said, now barely able to prop his head up on one elbow. “But if you do refuse, then I will kill that friend of yours, who right now sits at the bottom of this ship.”

  Dominique drank the myx.

  His name was Thorgils, Son of Verden. In the cabin full of clan leaders on the other side of the Great Ship he was the only one without a beard.

  Two decks below them, they could hear the orgy reach a new height of ferocity. But frivolities such as eating and fricking young slave girls were of little concern to Thorgils and the other dozen men in the room. Before them was a map of the East Coast of America, around which they were discussing the largest Norse assault yet on the American continent.

  “The spies tell us that much of the East Florida coast is still inhabited,” Thorgils told them in rapid, tense Norwegian. “The lack of fuel has forced many of the people there to stay put. Plus, the Americans haven’t yet started to ship troops and equipment down there by rail, again because of the fuel situation. Therefore the opportunity lies with us.”

  Thorgils pointed to the multicolored squares of cloth that dotted the map along the eastern Florida coast.

  “There are twenty-five targets,” he said of the various markers that ran from Jacksonville in the north to Orlando in the south. “You know your clan colors. Those are the targets you should suggest to your men. Each target has three means of access and retreat. When your raiding party goes ashore, they will have a choice of which direction to attack from and how to withdraw. These multiple routes will also confuse the enemy.”