by Per Holbo
***
The huge Yetten cruiser hovered lifeless in the vast emptiness of space like a dead fish in rushing water. Sparks from the inner surface of Skrymer´s Glove jumped toward the center of what was only moments ago the only safe place to be and the horrific whirlwinds of distorted time and space narrowed the non gravity pocket in undulating movements. Numerous pockets of time lags shook the ship on the outside of the hull and the trembles made their way inside the cruiser, where Sif and Thor were sitting on the floor At the bridge with the mini scanner beeping beside them. Freya, Loki and Roeskva had already left the sinking ship in an escape pod, but despite trying again and again, they´d been unable to establish contacts with their friends still aboard the cruiser.
Husband and wife sat close together holding each other while thinking about the others, if they were alright and if they´d managed to escape. They sat there for almost half an hour without saying anything, but now Sif looked up and her eyes caught Thor with love in the midst of hopelessness as she effortlessly ignored the earthquake-like vibrations that spread through the ship´s interior.
“I love you, Thor,” she said quietly. Thor smiled for an answer.
Sif picked up the scanner from the floor and fiddled nervously with it while she tried to gather courage to talk to Thor about something she found difficult to talk about, but had to bring out in the open. Everything seemed as if they would never get another chance.
“I was close to giving up out there,” she finally said, briefly looking at Thor, then refocusing in the mini scanner, “as I got through the last membrane, I mean. I almost turned around and started searching for you. I wanted to find you and... die with you...”
She waited anxiously for his reaction as she had no idea what he would make of it. No doubt that it was a declaration of her love for him, but still, it was not what he had wanted.
Reversely, Thor wondered what made her tell him this. He was pleased she hadn´t stopped to look for him, of course, but he just didn´t understand why it was important to her telling him about it.
“So... what made you change your mind?” he asked.
“Because I remembered, what you said to me...”
“Said about what?”
“Well..? What you said to me about going on, no matter what..? So, I went on... just like I promised you I would...”
Thor looked puzzled.
“What do you mean?” he asked, looking confused at her, “What you promised? When?”
Now she was the one looking puzzled. How could he not remember?
“Just... before we left Alfheim..? You came to the lab just before the final briefing. I cleansed your wound and we were talking about...”
She suddenly stopped mid sentence and looked at him with a strange look on her face as she realized something. Looked? No, she stared at him. Or rather, she stared at his wound and at the congealed dark blood on his cheek. She hadn´t noticed before, but now she realized that after the briefing, just before they left the ship, he had no wound. And now he did? Furthermore the wound looked almost exactly like she remembered it, when he´d entered the lab, except it had looked older at the time. Right now, even with the blood having stiffened, it looked like a fresher wound than it had in the lab? What was going on here?
Thor tilted his head to the side, his eyes roaming from side to side as he was trying to figure out what she was looking at.
Suddenly she leaped up and yelled!
“Thor!”
He startled at her yelling.
“Your wound! I mean... you had a wound, when you came to the lab, but... you just got that wound... When you and Freya arrived here...! What´s going on, Thor?”
Thor had no idea what to say, but just marveled at her as if he thought she was at the brink of going crazy. He speculated like mad about what to say, but he never got to the point where he could speak, because suddenly the ship started trembling. The quakes were so severe that neither of them could keep sitting on the floor. As he got up, it hummed and whistled of metal being rubbed against metal all through the hull with an infernal noise, which he felt in his ribs. Both he and Sif covered their ear from the painful sound, which was accompanied by sparkling lightning that flashed through the otherwise solid hull and within a very short time they were both surrounded by a bubble each of their own. A gigantic blast exploded inside the ship and sent a powerful wave of light outwards, like when you throw a huge stone into a pool of water. Then all went quiet...