Elana did what I told her, and then I spent the rest of the night making her my wife and a woman.
We drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms with our legs wrapped around each other and her head on my chest. Her shyness had endured through the night, but she had really enjoyed herself, so I knew that it would only be a matter of time before she was more comfortable with our love making.
“Adam? Adam!” I heard a voice shout, and I blinked my eyes open to stare around the dark room. Elana began to stir, and I felt her smooth skin rub against my legs and chest.
“Huh?” I asked as I blinked away the sleep from my eyes.
“It’s Juliette, I need you to come to the bridge.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I gently slid away from Elana.
“We just popped out of hyperdrive and… well, shit. Just come.”
“I was kind of in the middle of something,” I said as I glanced at Elana, she was awake now and had the sheet up in front of her small breasts.
“Something? You mean you're in the middle of someone. Ha!” Juliette laughed. “Well put on your pants and get up here. I wouldn’t have called you if it wasn’t important, and this is. I think we’ve just stumbled on a way to get into the Jotnar’s system really easily.”
“Alright,” I said, “I’m coming up.”
Chapter 9
“What’s going on?” I asked as Elana and I jumped out of the elevator and onto the bridge. She had slipped her dress on while I pulled on my pants, and we both ran out of my room and into the elevator as I put on my shirt.
“Check it,” Juliette said as she gestured to the screen.
I looked at the display and felt my stomach leap up into my throat. We’d somehow exited hyperdrive in an area of space that was dotted with the wreckage of a good hundred spacecraft. Their designs were immediately recognizable, and I shook my head.
“Those look like Nordar ships. How did we pop out so close to them? That’s a one in a bazillion chance.”
“We were actually pretty far away,” Zea said as she gestured to one of the terminals that was covered with playing cards. “We popped out in the middle of a card game and decided to wait until the hand was over before firing up the warpdrives again. Then the long range scanners picked the wreckage up, and we flew over here. Still pretty unlikely though.”
“Our route is actually somewhat well-traveled,” Paula explained. “It has the least amount of gravity swell, and it’s the shortest distance to not just Nseling -24 -f, but a few hundred other mining and trading outposts that are in Queen’s Hat’s master navigation system. So this probability is more like one in a hundred thousand.”
“Did you ID the ships?” I asked.
“Yep,” Juliette replied, and the rest of my wives smiled.
“Jotnar?” I asked, and they nodded.
“Other ships are Waymund,” Paula said, and we all looked at Elana.
“They must have not changed their tags yet,” the brunette beauty said as she tried to smooth the bed-head from her short wavy hair. “It will probably take three months to reach across all of our domain.”
“What were they fighting over?” I asked as I glanced at the scanner readouts on the right side of the screen.
“Hard to tell,” Paula said as she tapped on her controls. “Might have been a ship that is already gone. I don’t see any sort of planet or outpost nearby. The galaxy is mostly a lot of nothing, and this is right in the middle of a bunch of nothing.”
“Their logs will have the info,” Juliette said. “That’s part of the reason I wanted you to look at it so quickly. Heat signatures are still warm, and I’ve got engine burn on some of them.”
“Shit,” I said. “This battle happened recently.”
“Yep,” Juliette said. “I’m guessing maybe seventy hours ago, maybe a hundred.”
“It could have been long enough for someone to escape and then come back,” Zea said.
“Or maybe they haven’t come back yet, and they will come back at any moment,” Paula said.
“Check this guy out though,” Juliette said as she clicked some buttons on her terminal and the screen highlighted one of the Jotnar carriers and then zoomed in a bit. “See that hole in the side?”
“Yeah,” I said as I saw the gap on the starboard side of the bird-like ship. It looked surprisingly clean and uniform. She was a heavy cruiser class, and the scanners said she was two-hundred and forty meters long.
“This girl is pretty much in one piece. The plasma blast she took didn’t melt all of her seams, it just fried that one panel and ventilated all the air out. I bet her engines are still working, along with her life support. We just have to patch the hole and check her systems.”
“Hmmm,” I said as I looked at the cluster of floating ship debris around the highlighted vessel. “That’s a lot of garbage floating out there around her.”
“We can tow her out,” Juliette said with a shrug. “But yep, we’d have to go in there to tow her out, and the corvette might take a bit of a beating. Then we would have to worry about repairing two ships.”
“And we don’t know if anyone is coming back.”
“If the Waymund come back, would it be a problem?” Paula asked.
“Yes,” Aasne said. “They might not know Adam is their king. Even if they do, we aren’t in a properly branded ship and we are wearing civilian clothes. They’d think we were scavengers and probably shoot before asking a second question.”
“Getting that ship will make life easier for us,” Zea said. “Hell, we can probably just skip going to Nseling - 29 - f all together and just take a direct path to Jotnar’s home sector.
“Maybe,” Aasne said. “Unless we get there, and they ask the captain of the ship how he or she got out of the battle alive.”
“If they even know there was a battle or no survivors,” Zea said with a shrug. “I’m not saying it’s the best idea, but look at our plan right now: We have this corvette so we can hopefully get to Nseling and then either stow away or steal another ship so that we can get to Jotnar’s home sector. This is a Jotnar ship that can get us to their home sector. We are really fucking lucky to have stopped here. It’s almost like someone is looking out for us.”
“Odin,” Kasta said with a nod. “I’m sure he is.”
“You’re sure Odin is watching out for us?” Paula asked her sister, and her voice was filled with disbelief.
“Yes,” Kasta said with a nod. “I know I’ve never been much for religion. Hell, I’m an android, but…” The blonde woman turned to look at me and then she tapped on her chest. “I can feel something from Adam. It’s so strange. I felt our bond, and I can use the aegis. I don’t need any more proof to know that he exists and has blessed me. I’m a Nordar now. I believe in Odin’s power.”
“I’m glad the android has found god,” Juliette said as she pointed back to the screen. “But let’s figure out what we are going to do. While that ship sits in the middle of the cloud of broken ships, she’s just getting more beat up, and we don’t know if anyone else is coming back. If we want her, we need to do something now. Or we need to continue on our way. What’s it going to be, Adam?”
“How many space suits do we have?” I asked as I stared at the cluster of floating ships and space junk. It was probably ten kilometers in diameter, but the ship we were looking at was right near the center of the densest wreckage. Taking the corvette in was sure to reward us with some hull damage, but we could probably maneuver in with space suits.
As long as no one’s suit got ripped open.
“Just three,” Juliette replied.
“I don’t need one,” Kasta said. “I don’t need air. I can just use my aegis to protect me against the shrapnel.
“You can still get hurt if something cuts you,” Paula said.
“That’s why I have the aegis,” her sister laughed. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll need to come also,” Paula said. “You will need help to repair the hull.”