The Last Valkyrie

by Dietmar Wehr

  “Well, okay, as long as you’re certain. Good luck and good hunting, Valkyrie.”

  “Thank you, Troy. May you get lucky too.” That made Ronson chuckle. Did Valkyrie understand what ‘getting lucky’ meant to human males? He had a suspicion that she did.

  Ronson was surprised to see the Committee Chairwoman waiting for him when he finished parking his craft in the hangar bay and stepped onto the deck.

  “Is there a problem, Troy? Valkyrie’s ship is heading out at a high rate of acceleration.”

  Ronson took notice of the fact that she had referred to him by his first name, which she had never done before, as he explained why Valkyrie would be gone for some time. She looked a bit alarmed by the time frame.

  “She might be gone for months? Are you sure she’s coming back at all?” Her expression returned to normal when he assured her that Valkyrie would be coming back. After a somewhat awkward pause, she cleared her throat and said, “As you know, your former quarters were turned over to someone else when it became clear that you’d be spending almost all your time on board Valkyrie’s ship. That means you don’t have a place to sleep tonight. If I had had some warning, I could have arranged something, but since I didn’t, why don’t you use my quarters? You can sleep on the sofa. It’s not very comfortable for sleeping, but I’m sure it’s better than sleeping on the rock floor.”

  Ronson accepted her offer. As it turned out, he spent the night sharing her bed and was surprised when she told him after an especially vigorous round of sex, that he had become something of a celebrity due to his relationship with Valkyrie. Apparently there were a lot of women in the Colony who were curious about what it was like to be Valkyrie’s travelling companion and were willing to trade sex for that information. The Chairwoman confided to him that she was quite pleased to be the one who snagged him first. As she climbed on top of him for round two, he made a mental note to ask Valkyrie if she had known this kind of thing would happen to him when she had expressed her hope that he would get lucky too.

  * * * * *

  As Valkyrie accelerated out of the Solar System, she decided that she would visit all Aesir colonies first and leave the home world for last. It was 55 days later when she emerged from hyperspace into the Aesir home world star system. It looked just as it had when she and Troy had briefly visited it all those months ago. Her advanced sensors detected the 144 huge sensor arrays strategically scattered around the star at the outer edges of the system. Their size and power had allowed her creators to look deep into interstellar and also inter-galactic space. That was how the invaders from the galaxy humans called Andromeda had been detected as they approached this galaxy. Those arrays were all powered down now… or were they? On the previous visit, she had just assumed that all Aesir technology, including orbiting and deep space infrastructure, had shut down for one reason or another over the thousands of years since the Aesir had ascended. But now she wasn’t so sure. Those arrays had been designed and engineered to be self-repairing in order to minimize the challenge of keeping them operating all the time. Could it be possible that some of them were still active? It was an intriguing prospect but not something that caused her a lot of excitement. She was here after all to destroy all advanced Aesir technology, and that included the arrays.

  As she approached the nearest array, she sent the recognition signal that she’d found in the ship’s database. The lack of any response, plus the fact that the array itself was slowly tumbling, confirmed to her that this array was dead. She waited until she could see it clearly at close range before firing her weapons. The destruction was satisfying, and she felt not even a hint of regret or sadness. Destroying these robotic devices would not bother her, but she suspected that destroying buildings on the planet’s surface, buildings that had been used by her creators, would be disturbing.

  The first 33 arrays she checked were all dead; number 34 wasn’t. To her surprise, it responded to her recognition signal with a code indicating that unusual data had been collected. For the tiniest of moments, she was tempted to ignore the code. After all, if something unusual had happened out in deep space, it had probably happened millennia ago, but then, out of curiosity more than anything else, she requested the data download,. The size of the data dump shocked her. The data coming at her was in chronological order. In other words, she was getting the oldest data first. This particular array had detected an unusual astronomical event in which inter-galactic gases, mostly hydrogen, were being accelerated to VERY high velocities, and that sudden transfer of kinetic energy generated EM radiation all the way from heat, through visible light and into higher frequencies. That was all very interesting, but the oldest data had been collected over 2,000 human years ago. If the array hadn’t told her how big the data dump would be prior to sending it, she might have given the mental equivalent of a shrug and blocked the rest because how relevant could it be. But knowing how much more data there was to come, she continued to monitor it.

  It wasn’t long before she realized that there was something peculiar about this sighting. It was moving to one side extremely slowly, but there was definite movement. After scanning hundreds of years worth of data, she realized that this anomaly showed no signs of stopping. She kept on scanning the incoming data. When the time stamp on the data showed that she was now scanning data collected just over a 100 human years ago, she put the rest of the download on automatic and compared that most recent data with the initial data. The location of the incoming EM radiation had definitely moved, and the magnitude of the radiation across all frequencies was growing. Either this anomaly was getting brighter, or it was getting closer. There was one possible explanation that fit all the data very nicely. If a large object was travelling at very high percentages of the speed of light, it would impart tremendous velocity to any molecule of gas or dust particle it ran into. With a high enough velocity, hydrogen molecules struck by the object might even become hot enough to initiate fusion. That would be certain to generate a lot of heat and light, plus higher-frequency radiation too. Since the object was moving sideways relatively slowly, that implied it had to be coming towards the Milky Way galaxy. On a hunch, she calculated the most likely trajectory of the object backwards to a possible point of origin. The projected trajectory narrowly missed the Andromeda galaxy. That was alarming because an object travelling at less than the speed of light from the Andromeda galaxy would have been in flight for over two point five million Earth years, and during the interval, the Andromeda galaxy would have moved enough to be noticeable.

  By tapping into the Aesir astronomical data, she was able to calculate that two point five million years ago, the point of origin was deep within that galaxy. It had to be an artificial construct of some kind. Natural objects, planets, stars didn’t attain velocities anywhere near that high. But how could a ship last that long? Even a hull made from the densest possible metals would have been blasted away long ago from collisions with inter-galactic gases and dust over a period of hundreds of years, let alone millions. The answer had to be some kind of electro-magnetic shielding that projected out in front of the ship and plowed a clear path through the gas and dust. That explained how a ship could theoretically last that long, but how could passengers last millions of years? Even Aesirian technology could not build a life support system that would keep losses of air and water down to absolute zero for that long. Not only that, but a species might evolve into who knew what over that period of time, or that ship could be a lifeless derelict by now. There was one possible explanation. If a ship could somehow attain a velocity of 99.999999% of light speed, the time dilation effect of relativity would slow down time on board the ship so much that the multi-million year trip would seem like hundreds of years or maybe even tens of years to the passengers.

  She tapped into the huge amount of data that she had downloaded from the Command Base and checked the historical record. To her horror, she learned that the Aesir had first become aware of the extra-galactic invaders via these same arrays, detectin
g an almost identical anomaly from almost the exact same point of origin. They’re coming again! For the first time since her re-awakening, Valkyrie felt fear. The original invasion had been stopped by a massive Aesir fleet consisting of hundreds of vessels as big or bigger than the one she was piloting now, and even then, the final battle had all but wiped out the defending fleet. What chance did this galaxy have with just 4 Aesir cruisers and a handful of auxiliary craft? Her fear was so great and so distracting that her lack of focus on piloting the ship was causing some internal systems to fluctuate alarmingly out of their normal parameters. When alarms started going off, she realized that she had to set aside her fear and regain control of all ship’s systems.

  When the ship was back under control, she checked and found that the data dump from the array was complete. She quickly scanned the newest data and was relieved to see that the anomaly was still in inter-galactic space, but it was even bigger and therefore closer. The question now was how close? It was impossible to tell from just this one array, but if she could get another array to generate a second bearing, then it would be possible to calculate how far away the two bearings intersected. The farther away the other array was, the easier the calculations would be. Continuing her leisurely loop around the outskirts of this star system from one array to the next was a luxury that she no longer felt she could afford.

  Valkyrie quickly identified the arrays that would give her the best data for calculating the anomaly’s position. They turned out to be on the opposite side of the star system, and she headed there as quickly as possible. The first five were all derelicts, but the sixth was still operational. It was quickly apparent that this array had also been monitoring the anomaly. With the data dump complete, Valkyrie checked the most recent data and compared the signal bearing with that from the first array. The calculated intersection put the anomaly almost on the very edge of this galaxy. That was bad news. The only good news was that it was still travelling at just over 98% of light speed. That meant it was still in the process of slowing down. Based on her understanding of how the original invasion transpired, the large carrier ship was so massive that it could only decelerate slowly. Therefore it made sense for the smaller ships carried onboard to wait until the mothership was slow enough to take up a position around a particular star. Only then would the smaller ships launch and use their FTL drives to explore and if necessary attack races in neighboring systems. She had to return to Vesta quickly and make plans with the humans on how to stop this invasion. She sent an FTL message to the sentry ships with instructions to notify the humans that she was returning.

  Ronson happened to be back from the first colonization mission to Gunnir when Valkyrie decelerated into orbit around Vesta. At her insistence, he was allowed to attend the Emergency Committee meeting that she was in communication with. As he walked into the conference room, he heard Valkyrie’s voice.

  “—vasion ship is approximately half a light year from the nearest star system. I wasn’t able to determine if that system is the mothership’s destination. It may or may not be. If it’s allowed to launch its cargo of FTL ships, we will almost certainly be overwhelmed. Those ships are very difficult to destroy even with our torsion weapons. They have shielding similar to what my ship has. In fact, once we learned about theirs, we were able to subsequently develop our own. On my way back here, I developed what I believe is our only chance at defeating this invasion, and that involves destroying the mothership before it launches its fleet of warships. This is how I propose to accomplish that.”

  By this time Ronson had found a seat and sat down. The large screen on the wall came to life. Valkyrie was transmitting a visual version of her plan.

  “I will take the three sentry ships with me and make a short series of hyperspace jumps until we’re in a position where the mothership will pass relatively close by. The multiple FTL trips are necessary so that the sentry ships stay within a close formation. When we detect the mothership, we’ll be able to determine its precise vector, velocity and rate of deceleration. Once that’s been determined, we will accelerate to an equivalent velocity and use hyperspace to place ourselves in position to fire on the mothership from the rear. I’m making the assumption that the crew will not be concerned with what’s behind them when they’re this close to their objective. With a little luck, we’ll be able to destroy their ship or at least cripple it before it can launch any of its warships. There is one other point I wish to make. If the mothership doesn’t stop at the first system it comes to, and it continues on the same trajectory, it will penetrate Compact Space. Therefore it’s imperative that the Compact be warned.”

  Ronson could see that the Committee members were clearly shocked by this development. As they spoke to each other in low voices, Ronson could detect their fear. When it was obvious that the hushed conference was going to continue, he spoke up.

  “How soon will you be heading out, Valkyrie?” The muffled chatter stopped amid annoyed looks.

  “I plan on breaking out of orbit as soon as this meeting is finished. Is this meeting finished?”

  The Chairwoman leaned forward and in a stern voice said, “No, this meeting is not yet finished. The Committee members and I are discussing what to do about warning the Compact and—“

  “I’m coming with you,” interrupted Ronson.

  “This will be a dangerous mission, Troy. I estimate the probability of surviving this mission at less than 50%.”

  “Even more reason for me to come along. My presence might increase those odds. In fact, I’m heading over to the hangar bay now. Wait for me, Valkyrie,” said Ronson. As he headed out the door, with one last backward glance at the stunned looks on the Committee members’ faces, he heard Valkyrie’s voice.

  “I’ll wait for you, Troy.”

  By the time Ronson got to his auxiliary craft, the Committee had decided on a course of action.

  “What d’ya mean I can’t go with Valkyrie?” demanded Ronson as he powered up the craft. He resisted the urge to cut the communications channel.

  The Chairwoman’s voice had acquired an annoying undertone of condescension. “The Emergency Committee has decided that we need all humans, especially humans who are trained pilots, to stay here for the possible defense of this colony, Mr. Ronson. You have no authority to take that ship. I’m ordering you to stand down right now!”

  “First of all, this craft does not belong to the human colony. Valkyrie gave us half of her auxiliary craft, not all of them. This one still belongs to her. I have her tacit approval to pilot it to her ship, and I intend to do just that. I’ve had this discussion before with that asshole Andreason. Trying to keep me from assisting Valkyrie could jeopardize the colony’s relationship with her. The Committee backed me in this before, so why are you people being assholes now? Don’t you realize the nature of this threat yet? If Valkyrie fails to stop them now, my presence here on Vesta isn’t going to make one iota of difference to the eventual outcome, but maybe, JUST MAYBE, me going with her can tip the scales in our favor. So you people worry about warning the Compact, and let me and Valkyrie get on with it!” Now he listened to his urge and cut the channel before she could reply. He quickly switched over to the Flight Ops frequency.

  “Flight Ops, this is Ronson requesting launch clearance asap.”

  “This is Flight Ops. Cool your jets, Ronson. We’ve gotten word from the Committee to keep the hangar bay doors shut.”

  Ronson quickly and silently counted to ten. “Are you in contact with the Committee now, Flight Ops?”

  “We have an open channel. Is there something you wish us to pass along to them?”

  “Affirmative, Flight Ops. You tell them that if the hangar doors aren’t open in 60 seconds, I’ll use this ship’s torsion beam to blow a hole in them big enough for me to leave. By the way, you might want to warn your people in the hangar to get to safety right now, Flight Ops. The explosive decompression is going to be brutal.”

  “Oh fuck! Stand by while we relay that message
, God dammit!”

  Ronson heard a click that told him the channel had been muted at the other end. He opened another channel to Valkyrie.

  “Valkyrie, the Committee is trying to stop me from leaving. I’ve told them I’ll blow the doors off this hangar bay if I have to. One way or another, I’m coming with you.”

  “If you damage the hangar bay doors, Troy, the Committee will be very angry with you when you return.”

  “If we succeed, I think they’ll forgive me. If we fail, it won’t matter what they do to me. And there’s always the chance that we won’t be coming back, so I don’t see much downside risk for me in pissing them off.”

  “Your logic is impeccable,” said Valkyrie. Before Ronson could reply, the channel to Flight Ops came back on.

  “Flight Ops to Ronson. We have permission to open the doors. Hope you know what you’re doing, Troy, because as far as the Committee is concerned, you have burned all your bridges. That’s a direct quote by the way. Good luck and good hunting. Flight Ops clear.”

  Ronson closed his eyes and took a deep breath. There was no turning back now, nor did he want to, but that didn’t stop him from feeling that he had just crossed a very important line.