“May I join?” Elana asked as she shot a quick look at Aasne.
“Of course,” I said, and then I turned to look at the other women, “we’ll be back soon.”
The three of us made the trip down the elevator to the bottom floor in silence, but as soon as we stepped into the armory, Aasne began to ask me questions about what type of firearms I preferred and why I used such old fashioned style revolvers.
“The bigger bullets punch through armor better.” I shrugged and grabbed two Nordar rifles from the rack.
“Our husband is a large man,” Elana began. “He is well suited to wield mighty weaponry.”
“I’m not saying he isn’t,” Aasne said as her eyes narrowed at the other woman. “I am putting together notes for his saga, so I want to understand his desires.”
“Ahhh, yes, of course, sorry. I did not wish to sound combative.”
“Oh. I did not think you were.” Aasne seemed a bit surprised by the taller woman’s apology.
“My king, would it be acceptable for me to bring this weapon?” Elana asked as she gestured to a long barreled pulse rifle. “I am familiar with sniping techniques, and we might have to fight at long range inside of the Jotnar’s fortress.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Sniping techniques?” Aasne asked.
“Yes,” Elana said as she pulled the larger rifle down from the rack and checked the power cells. “My best shot is at five kilometers.”
“Five kilometers?” both Aasne and I asked.
“Yes, but it was a day with no breeze, I was using a modified rifle, and my target was a moose.” Elana let out a girlish giggle and then patted the stock of the weapon she held. “This will be serviceable.”
Once we had the rifles and pistols gathered for everyone, we carried them out of the armory and set them in the service racks next to the airlock. The two Nordar women didn’t seem that nervous about the upcoming battle, but then they hesitated when I asked if they knew anything about King Uffe.
“Just rumors,” Aasne said.
“What kind of rumors?” I asked
“They say he is a powerful warrior who has never been defeated in combat,” the auburn-haired beauty said.
“They say that of all the kings,” Elana said with a shrug of her slender shoulders.
“It is also said that he is part machine,” Aasne continued.
“A cyborg?” I asked.
“I do not know what that word means,” she said. “Kasta and Zea have been helping me with my English, but there are still some words I don’t--”
“It’s someone who has had parts of their body replaced with a machine or synthetic parts,” I explained.
“Yes,” she said with a quick nod. “That is what I have heard about him.”
“Hmm,” I said as I thought back to Cynthia Jayhee. Eve had not been able to sense her thoughts because of the computer parts in her brain.
Fighting Uffe might be a bit of a challenge.
“Our husband is strong,” Elana said as we walked back to the elevator.
“Again, I am not saying he is not,” Aasne snorted. “However, my father feared Uffe, even more than he feared Tanal Vaish.”
“My father did as well,” Elana admitted. “He called him ‘a rabid jackal that pretended to be a wolf.’”
“The advantage we have is that he doesn’t know we are coming,” I said as we stepped back into the elevator. “He might not even know I am king, or what I look like, and he sure as hell won’t think I’d come to his fortress to kill him.”
“This is true,” Elana said.
“Unless he does know,” Aasne said with a shrug.
“How would he know?” Elana hissed.
“Spies lurk everywhere,” Aasne replied. “We should consider other tactics assuming that our enemy is ready for us.”
“We’ll find out if he knows in a few minutes,” I said, and then the elevator door to the bridge opened up, and we walked inside.
“We’ve got ten minutes,” Juliette said on cue.
“Alright,” I said as I sat on my chair. “Kasta, this is going to be all you.”
“No pressure,” the android said as she wiggled her shoulders and flicked back her long blonde hair with her fingers.
“You got this, girl,” Zea said.
“Thanks sweetie,” Kasta giggled, and then we all turned toward the screen.
No one spoke for ten minutes, and then Juliette began the count down.
The display screen flickered to life as soon as we hit zero, and I saw four green and blue planets that were connected by impossibly large metal bridges which spanned between them. Each planet formed the spherical corner of the box shape that the metal bridges connected to, and they now orbited as a group around a center axis that lay at the center point of the box.
And in the center of the system squatting between the four joined planets was a battle fortress that was a good four times larger than the Odin Geirr.
“Fucking shhhhhiiittt,” Zea hissed. “That thing is massive!”
“How did they connect the planets?” Juliette gasped. “That’s impossible!”
“They must have used the magnetic poles to anchor the metal bridges,” Paula whispered. “I can’t even imagine how long it must have taken them to build it.”
“Or why they would have even wanted to,” Kasta said. “The planets can’t even rotate properly.”
“Maybe that was the point,” Zea said as her fingers danced over her controls. “I’m getting fucking magnetic readings from them. Maybe they never spun correctly to start, and the Jotnar needed to do this to live on them.”
“Have our scanners given us an armada count?” I asked as my eyes darted to the thousands of ships dotting the space around the four joined planets.
“Looks like forty thousand,” Juliette said.
“That’s a lot, but I expected more,” I replied.
“They may not be expecting an attack,” Aasne said. “The clans haven’t directly attacked each other in three generations.”
“Or they could be attacking us,” Elana said sarcastically.
“We can always ask,” Juliette laughed. “They are sending a communication request.”
“Alright Kasta, you are on,” I said, and we all turned to the blonde woman.
“Good,” she said in the old captain’s deep voice. “Audio only, Juliette.”
“Yep.” The redhead smirked, pressed a button on her screen and then pointed up in the air.
Kasta spoke in the Nordar language, and a female voice answered. I still wasn’t fluent in the language, but I was getting the gist of the conversation. The woman was asking about the status of our ship, and Kasta was using the captain’s voice to explain the outcome of the battle and ask permission to dock.
I would have thought that the conversation would have taken a bit longer, but they only spoke for half a minute, and then I heard the phrase “Warg-ey” and realized that they were talking about the fortress.
Kasta thanked the woman in her fake voice and then gestured for Juliette to cut the connection.
“That went well,” Aasne said.
“Yes, I was holding my breath,” Elana remarked as she leaned back in her chair and let out a long exhale.
“Of course it went well,” Kasta said in the captain’s voice. “Helmsman, take us into the Wargey. Heading 456.23, 876.23, and -35.”
“Aye captain,” Juliette said, and the rest of us gave a relieved laugh as the cruiser began to drift through the traffic of spacecraft and toward the four connected planets.
“Did they give you a docking location?” I asked.
“Just popped on screen,” Juliette said. “I’m not able to read this shit though.”
“I got it,” Kasta said in her normal voice, and then she tapped her fingers over her controls to bring up a blueprint of the fortress. “This map was saved in the cruiser’s nav systems. They are telling us to dock at repair bay 34 - G. That’s riiiggghhhhttt here.” A red dot popped on the map, and we all leaned forward to study the image.
“Right in the fucking middle,” Zea sighed. “Can we get a break?”
“They didn’t shoot us down,” I said. “That’s our break.”
“Fair enough,” Zea laughed.
“It is hard to tell from the map how far away the sides of the harbor are,” Eve said softly. “What are the measurements?”
“Eight kilometers wide by ten kilometers long,” Kasta answered.