Prime Valkyrie

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “Another friend, I’ll explain it all when we get you back on board.”

  “Okay,” Zea agreed. “I just suddenly had this fear that you got a whole new crew of beautiful women, but that is crazy talk.”

  “Yeah…” I said.

  “Wait. When you say ‘yeah’ like that, it makes me think--”

  “Just dock!” I replied. “If you can get the one next to us, it will make it easier.”

  “The station is trying to communicate with us!” Paula called out. “We’ll switch channels. Hold on, Adam.”

  I didn’t hear anything from Paula and Zea for almost a minute, and my heart threatened to rip free of my chest.

  “Alright,” Zea said as Nikki docked Persephone into the harbor. “I spoke in my deep manly voice, and they gave us a dock. I asked for D or B, but they gave us G because the other ships already docked into D, E, and F.”

  “We’ll come get you,” I said as I stood from my chair.

  “Uhh. That might be kind of hard,” Zea replied. “There are three docks between us, and they are going to be crawling with Magate Order fuck faces.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  “Our ship had thirty men on it, though. If they all exit into the docks, there will be--”

  “Zea, it’s fine,” I said as I nodded to Madalena. She was already out of her chair and was motioning for Mikhael and Nikki to follow her. “I’m looking forward to killing a bunch of these fuckers. Get ready to move.”

  “Got it. I’ll tell the others. Be safe. I don’t want to be without you again.”

  “I will,” I growled as my body began to shift into its tiger-man form.

  The beast was finally going to feed on the screams of these slavers.

  Chapter 18

  The seven Vaish warriors and I dashed into the elevator and descended to the bottom level. No one seemed startled by my appearance, but I could feel the swirl of excitement pulse and roll from each of them. It was a bit strange how impassive their faces were, but I was getting used to understanding their feelings through Madalena’s bond.

  “Stop,” she commanded as soon as the elevator doors opened. They all froze and then turned inward to look at the Prime Valkyrie.

  “I will remind you all that I am submitted to Adam. He has saved our lives and has been sent to me by Odin. Assume he has already passed the rite of passage and treat his orders appropriately. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, Prime Valkyrie,” they said in unison. I had thought that their aura of emotions might shift with her words, but none of them did.

  Madalena turned to me, and everyone else mirrored her movement.

  “Get armed and start killing. Nikki and Josefinna post outside of Persephone's bay door. Everyone else with me.” I didn’t wait for their nods of confirmation. I was already out the door and sprinting toward the armory.

  I grabbed my belt with my two large pistols and then reached for my trusty shotgun with the drum magazines. It only took me a few seconds to get the gear, but the Vaish warriors were just as quick, and they all grabbed their pulse rifles. I noticed Mikhael pull a massive yellow painted pulse weapon from a foot locker in the corner of the room. He shot me a half smile after he set it on his shoulder, and the group of us ran out to the hold only moments after.

  Persephone’s bay door was beginning to open as we ran into the hold. No one could have triggered the door, so I guessed the ship was doing what she could to aid us.

  “The security door!” I shouted as I looked at the end of the tunnel.

  “I will take care of it!” Mikhael’s armor was covering his body now, and he sprung ahead of us with a quick boost from his back thruster wings. He set one knee on the edge of Persephone’s ramp, lifted up the plasma launcher, and sent a massive blob of yellow power down the loading tube. The globe of energy made a horrific noise when it left his launcher, and its impact with the door actually shook Persephone.

  The door was now totally vaporized, and only the smoke and melted sides of the loading tunnel gave any indication that there had been any sort of security checkpoint.

  We sprinted into the harbor. The main avenue wasn’t as large as Queen’s Hat, but it was filled with hundreds of people, and they turned toward us with dumbfounded expressions on their faces.

  Chaos ensued.

  Most of the bystanders in the harbor were smart, and they either ran or took cover as soon as they saw the giant walking tiger-man and his monster armored entourage. Some of them weren’t as smart, and they pulled their weapons when they saw us.

  These weren’t the station’s security forces, they were just travelers on the station. I didn’t particularly want to kill them, but then I realized that they were probably slavers. A trumpeting roar escaped my throat, and it filled the harbor half a second before my shotgun slugs did.

  One of my shots took a lightly armored man in the side of his chest, and his body disappeared like a popped balloon. A man standing next to him got a shot off with his laser pistol, but his aim was off, and the red beam went wide over my head. My slug found his face, and then it continued its journey to slam into the chest of the man behind him.

  The Vaish filled the harbor with a stream of blue energy bullets, and everyone reaching for their weapons died.

  I turned to my right and ran toward the next dock. It was about a hundred meters away.

  There were only three hundred meters left to go until I saw Eve, Zea, Paula, and Kasta again.

  The crowds knew that we meant fucking business now, and everyone had either thrown themselves on the floor or were running in the other direction. The station alarm was also shrieking, but I almost couldn’t hear it over the scream of the beast in my head.

  A squadron of drones dropped from the ceiling. They were disk-shaped, two meters in diameter, and had small machine guns mounted to the bottom. My weapon barked ten times, and each slug found a drone to destroy. The blue pulse bullets took out the remainder in front of me, and I turned to see Lux and Josefinna taking care of the drones behind us.

  We reached Dock D, and I poked my head around the corner. The security door was still closed, and I debated what to do. I half expected them to pour out of the tubes and engage in a gunfight with us, but they either didn’t know we were out here and were taking their time, or they were hiding in their ship. Either way, I didn’t want to get pinched between them.

  “Mikhael!” I shouted.

  “Fire in the hole!” He crouched next to me with his big ass plasma launcher, and a globe of yellow sunlight poured into the tunnel.

  He jumped back around the corner as soon as it hit, and a wave of hot fire erupted out of the tunnel. A sonata of pain-filled screams came from the far side of the tunnel, and I gestured for Madalena and Lux to fill the opening with a barrage of bullets. The women fired, and there were more shrill screams.

  I checked around Lux’s armored shoulder and saw that the boarding tube was filled with melted metal, smoke, and the dead bodies of white-robed men. The far hold door of their ship was swinging closed, and two men were running toward it.

  Twin shots from Madalena and Lux took them in the back, and their blood exploded onto the door of their craft.

  I doubt they were going to come out anytime soon.

  “Keep going!” I shouted at everyone as I set my eyes on the next docking station. It was another hundred meters away, and I saw a group of ten white-robed men exiting into the dock.

  They looked surprised by the chaos in the harbor, and I roared as I aimed my shotgun toward them.

  My first slug tore through two of them, and a spray of blue bullets tore through the rest. I growled with a mix of annoyance and pleasure. I wanted all these fuckers to die, but I wanted to be the one to tear through their flesh and crunch their bones into dust.

  It didn’t matter. Just as long as they died.

  “Kill them all!” I roared, and the Nordar felt my rage. Their thruster-wings sprouted from the back of their armor and they took to the air. They were fast,
but my tiger-man form was as well, and the distance between Dock D and E closed in a few seconds. Lux and Calisto took the corner of Dock E, and they proceeded to fill the tunnel with their rifle fire while Mikhael, Madalena, and I kept moving.

  Adam.

  Eve’s voice filled my head, and I purred.

  “I’m coming for you,” I whispered as I put a dozen shotgun slugs into a group of Magate Order fuckers coming out of Dock F. The men went down in a spray of gore, bone, and screams. The slugs were definitely overkill, and I probably should have brought a buckshot loadout.

  Then again, overkill was my style, and these fuckers deserved it.

  I know. Her voice came into my mind.

  We cannot open the security door.

  “Get back into the ship. We are going to blow the door,” I said.

  We will, my love.

  “Security,” Madalena said, and I saw twenty armored soldiers pour out of one of the side tunnels opposite Dock G. Their suits were cream colored, bulky, and they carried mean looking rifles. A metal wall moved up from the floor of the station, and the group took cover behind it.

  “Mikhael!” I shouted as I jumped to avoid the guard’s first spray of bullets.

  “Got it!” he fired the massive plasma weapon again, and their wall exploded in a flash of neon chartreuse. I fired my weapon in that direction along with Lux and Madalena, and the men screamed.

  “Drones behind us,” Calisto said calmly, and I spun to see her shooting at more of the disks. She’d already taken out all but three, but she dealt with those even before I could lift my shotgun up. I hadn’t spent any time with Calisto, but it looked as if she was as good with her rifle as Lux.

  “Mikhael, we have to blow the door to Dock G!” I pointed to the next corner, and the man nodded at me.

  We were almost there.

  We are back in the ship and have closed the loading door.

  “Hit it!” I shouted at the Vaish man as soon as we reached the corner leading to the dock where my friends were. Past our position. I saw a group of armored security step out from an adjacent tunnel. They were a hundred and fifty meters away, but one of the men hefted a chaingun.

  “I see him!” Madalena shouted as she jumped into the air. The guards tilted their heads back to watch her fly toward them, and the man with the massive chaingun seemed unsure of exactly where he should be aiming.

  “Firing!” Mikhael shouted, and the plasma shot blew open the security door at the same time as Madalena’s and my shots tore into the far group of cream armored guards.

  It felt like the station actually shuddered when the Vaish man shot his cannon, and I wondered if we were doing serious structural damage to the place. Weapons as big as the one Mikhael carried were a big a no-no on stations because he could miss and blow a hole in the bulkhead.

  So far, I hadn’t seen this extraordinary team of warriors miss.

  “Hold the tunnel! I’m going in to get them!” I ran into the melting docking tube and sprinted through the smoking ruin. The gunshots behind me faded into silence, and the screams of the dying assholes were drowned out by the sound of my heart hammering in my chest. The door to the shuttle was lowering in front of me, and I let my shotgun fall back onto its strap.

  Then Eve was in my arms.

  She felt so small, but power radiated from her. I couldn’t really kiss her because I was in my tiger-man form, but I ran my tongue over her lips and fought against the urge to crush her with my hug.

  “I missed you,” she whispered both aloud and in my mind.

  I couldn’t speak because of my purring, and I cradled the vampire woman in my left arm so that I could pull Zea to me.

  “You don’t need to lick me on my-- ahhh!” Zea squealed with delight when my tongue lapped her face.

  I hugged them both, and it felt like my purrs were going to shake my bones free of my tendons. I couldn’t begin to quantify my emotions; there were too many.

  I felt two more pairs of arms around my stomach, and I set down my lovers so I could turn and hug Paula and Kasta. My emotions were still overflowing, and I couldn’t help but lick them as well.

  I had my women back, and the beast inside of my soul was pleased.

  “We are pleased as well, Adam,” Eve said. “We love you.”

  “Let’s get back to Persephone.” I wanted to say more, but my emotions were too powerful, and the Marine in my mind knew that we had to take care of the important shit first.

  “Our friends,” Paula said as she gestured to the group of forty women standing in the hold. All of them, including my crew, were wearing simple white pants and blouses. None of them wore shoes, and I thought about the sea of shrapnel that the destroyed drones left on the harbor floor.

  The station shook again, and it sounded like someone was opening a thousand zippers.

  “Adam!” Madalena shouted down the tunnel, but I also heard it in my transponder. “They are sending fighters to this part of the harbor! We need to leave!”

  “Shit!” I growled, and then I turned to my friends. “Have them follow and stay behind me. The people in the glowing power armor are my new friends.”

  I was sure Eve already knew about Madalena and the Nordar, but my other three women gave me curious looks. There was no time to explain though. I turned from them and ran back to the end of the tunnel.

  There were two groups of cream armored guards blocking our retreat. Like with the earlier security team. These guards were using the pop up floors of the station to give them cover, but Madalena had possession of the massive chaingun now, and a stream of metal was digging a hole into the steel barrier while the other Vaish worked their way around to flank.

  I turned to my right, to where Docks H, I, and J were, and saw a squadron of dish drones flying toward us. Beyond the robots, I saw a large tank rumbled along the harbor road. It was still a good five hundred meters away, but I had no doubt in my mind that the massive cannon mounted on top could hit us from this distance.

  Or it could punch a hole into the side of the station. Then we’d all fly out into the atmosphere.

  I looked at our return path to Persephone’s dock and groaned. My earlier assumption of a sea of shrapnel was more than accurate. There were fewer smooth spots than areas with jagged pieces of metal. I saw no way for my friends and the forty other women to run back without serious injury. I needed a giant broom or forty more Nordor warriors with jetpacks that could taxi my friends.

  I turned back to the tank and tried to focus on a solution. The monstrosity was moving faster than I expected, and its track system plowed a fallen set of metal crates as if they were made out of putty. It didn’t even need to fire the massive cannon. It could just plow over us.

  I was going to have to deal with it.

  A series of screams sounded behind me, and I turned to see my new crew deal with the two groups of station guards. Madalena stopped her chaingun’s spray, but the barrels were still spinning. Her banshee helmet turned toward me, and I gestured to the tank in the distance.

  “They can’t run because of the shrapnel!” I shouted. “We need to take out the tank!”

  “Mikhael!” Madalena barked.

  “I’ll get it!” He was about fifty meters back toward Persephone's dock and had used his pistol to help take out some of the guards. He holstered the weapon, swung his cannon back onto his shoulder, knelt, and then aimed it down toward the tank.

  “Back up!” I shouted to Zea, Eve, Paula, and Kasta as they reached the edge of the tunnel. I moved to stand in front of them, and Mikhael’s shot lobbed down past our position. The plasma had been close enough to singe the fur on my face, but it looked like his aim remained true, and the yellow ball spun right toward the tank.

  Then a shimmering shield of energy appeared in front of the thing, and the plasma ball bounced up into the ceiling of the harbor.

  The metal there exploded, and my heart caught in my throat.

  The tank’s cannon shifted its position, and I screamed out
a warning half a moment before it fired.

  The tunnel rocked, and I heard my friends scream as the surrounding metal caught on fire. The alarms screeched, and the fire extinguishers turned on.

  “Everyone okay?” I asked over my shoulder.

  “Yes,” Eve answered.

  “Yeah. Fuck!” Zea shouted.

  “Yes!” Paula shouted.

  “I think I broke my butt bone,” Kasta said with a laugh.

  “How can you joke at a--” Paula begin.

  “Hey, you programmed me.”

  “Wait here!” I shouted as I dashed out of the tunnel and into the harbor. I checked over my shoulder and saw the cannon shot had slammed into the side of the harbor some ten meters past my tunnel. Thankfully, it hadn’t punched through the bulkhead, but it looked like the next shot would. The armored Vaish warriors had avoided getting hit, but there was another group of guards firing at us from the direction of Persephone’s dock.

  I sprinted toward the tank.

  My leg muscles flexed, and I felt Madalena run, or blast, after me. The tank was about three hundred meters down the harbor, and I prayed that I could get there before it fired again.

  The tiger screamed in my mind, and my vision turned red.

  I ran faster, and Madalena fell behind me.

  There were smaller machine guns on top of the tank, and they pivoted to aim at me.

  I ran faster and felt the wind screech past my ears.

  The cannon belched, but I jumped a moment before it fired and my massive shoulder slammed into the side of the barrel. My armor cracked, my bones shattered, but the cannon twisted away from its target, and the shot punched into the side of the harbor wall some fifty meters to the tank’s left side.

  I bounced off the barrel of the cannon and tried to twist through the air so that I’d land with some shred of grace, but everything in my body hurt, and I dropped to the ground like a sack of bricks. My face smashed against the ground, and I coughed up what felt like a gallon of blood.

  I was right in front of the tank tracks, and the thing was still rolling.

  Madalena grabbed my uninjured shoulder, and her thrusters lifted us off the ground. We landed on top of the tank, and I coughed out another spray of blood when she let go of me.