Chosen of the Valkyries (Twilight Of The Gods Book 2) (42 page)

“I really
would
stay lying down,” the voice said.  “You were drugged and it hasn't quite worked its way out of your system.”

Gudrun twisted her head, looking for the speaker.  A man - no, she realised dully, a
woman
- was sitting next to her, wearing a rumpled uniform.  There was something odd about her, something that nagged at the back of her mind.  And yet, no matter how she tried, she couldn't place it.

Her throat felt dry, but she managed to speak.  “Who are you?”

The woman shrugged.  “For the moment, I am your captor,” she said.  “You’re heading east.”

Gudrun hesitated, then threw a desperate punch at the woman.  The woman caught Gudrun’s hand effortlessly and yanked her forward, sending her sprawling to the deck.  Before she could move, she was rolled over and a booted foot placed against her throat, ready to crush her neck.  She froze, wondering helplessly if she was about to die.  She’d never been thrown around so easily, even when Kurt had roughhoused with her as a child ...

“Let me explain a few things to you,” the woman said.  “You are a prisoner.  You are no match for me or any of your other guards.  Even if you did manage to get out, where would you go?”

Her eyes hardened.  “You can sit here in reasonable comfort,” she added, “or I can chain you to the wall.  Which one is it to be?”

Gudrun tried to meet her eyes, but she couldn’t.  There was something about her captor, she saw now, that scared her to the bone.  This was a woman who had all of the human weaknesses burned out of her ... the commando her father had suspected, perhaps.  And she’d thrown Gudrun around with ease.

And if I’m not chained up
, she thought,
there might be a chance to escape
.

“I’ll sit here,” he said.

The woman nodded, unsurprised.  “Enjoy the ride,” she said, as she helped Gudrun to her feet.  “What comes after is going to be terrible.”

Gudrun shivered.  She knew the woman was right.

Epilogue

Germanica, Germany East

28 October 1985

Karl Holliston sat in his office, reading the latest reports.  The enemy trap had slammed closed, catching a number of units he could ill afford to spare, but the most powerful and capable of his divisions had managed to escape.  He honestly didn't know if he should give
Oberstgruppenfuehrer
Alfred Ruengeler a promotion - in hindsight, it was clear that he’d made a mistake - or execute him for disobeying orders.  Discipline had to be maintained, true, but he’d placed Ruengeler in an impossible position.

He put the report down and leaned back in his chair, thinking hard.  Berlin remained in enemy hands, while the enemy had enough firepower in place to deter another stab westwards.  That much was beyond dispute, even if the Americans continued to remain out of the fighting.  They’d intervened covertly already - and that had been costly - but open interference would be outright disastrous.  He could hope that the
Reich’s
population would recoil in horror at
any
dealings with the Americans, yet he had to admit it wasn't certain.  He had few qualms about slaughtering any number of traitors - and anyone who refused to join him was a traitor by definition - but it hadn't played well on the international stage.

And if the traitors think they’re going to be slaughtered
, he thought,
they won’t surrender
.

It wasn't a pleasant thought.  He’d hoped to win the war quickly, before the first snowfall began, but he’d failed.  The traitors were still firmly in control of Germany Prime, while his own forces had been badly weakened in the fighting.  Replacing the men he'd lost would take years, years he didn't have.  Even the news from the commando team - that Gudrun Wieland had been captured and was on her way to Germanica - wasn't enough to make him feel better.

I can make her suffer
, he thought. 
And I will.  But it won’t be enough to stop them from launching a counterattack
.

He snorted at the thought.  Generations of experience with insurgencies had taught the
Reich
that allowing the insurgents to try to use Germans as human shields would only encourage such behaviour.  He had no doubt that threatening Gudrun’s life wouldn’t be enough to stop the traitors from launching their invasion, when the time came.  Her family might take it badly, but they weren't calling the shots.  His spy in Berlin had made it clear that the provisional government intended to continue the war.  In spring, when the winter had finally departed, the panzers would head east.

The odds weren't on his side, he admitted, although it was something he would never admit in public.  His forces had taken a beating, losing far too many panzers and support aircraft for his peace of mind, while the traitors had vast numbers of untouched weapons under their command.  They’d probably have control of the skies too, thanks to their American allies; they’d certainly be able to deny the skies to
his
aircraft.  And they had absolute control of the seas.  It didn't look good.

And yet - and yet - the war was far from over.

He smiled darkly as he opened the secure drawer in his desk and pulled out a simple black folder.  The wording of the report was blunt and very clear, even to someone who felt as though he spent half of his life writing or reading reports.  There had been no success - yet - in preparing the ballistic missiles for launch, but a handful of tactical nukes were ready for detonation.  They could be deployed at his command.

They’ll come into Germany East, seeking to destroy us
, he promised himself. 
But they will find nothing, but fire and death.

Karl Holliston returned the folder to the drawer, then poured himself a glass of brandy.

The war was
very
far from over.

End of Book Two

Twilight Of The Gods
Will Conclude In:

Ragnarok

Coming Soon!

Appendix: German Words and Phrases

Abwehr -
German Military Intelligence

Bund Deutscher Mädel
(BDM) - League of German Girls/Band of German Maidens, female wing of the Hitler Youth.

Einsatzgruppen
- SS extermination squads

Gastarbeiter
- Guest Worker

Generalmajor
- Major General

Germanica
- Moscow, renamed after the war

Hauptsturmfuehrer
- SS rank, roughly equal to Captain.

Heer
- The German Army

Herrenvolk
- Master Race

Junker
, German nobleman

Kessel
- ‘caldron,’ German military term for trapping an enemy formation.

Kinder, Küche, Kirche
- Nazi slogan, roughly “children, kitchen, church.”

Kriegsmarine
- The German Navy

Lebensborn
- literally 'font of life.'  SS-run program for increasing the German population, including measures to encourage breeding and the kidnapping of 'Aryan' children from non-German families.

Luftwaffe
- The German Air Force

Mausefalle
- ‘Mouse Trap’

Mutterkreuz
- Mother's Cross

Oberfeldwebel
-
Heer
rank, roughly equal to Master Sergeant

Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
(OKW, 'Supreme Command of the Armed Forces') - The German General Staff.

Obergruppenfuehrer
- SS rank, roughly equal to Lieutenant General.

Obersturmfuehrer
- SS rank, roughly equal to First Lieutenant.

Ordnungspolizei
- Order Police (regular police force)

Reichsführer-SS
- Commander of the SS

Reichssicherheitshauptamt
(RSHA) - Reich Main Security Office

Sigrunen
- SS insignia (lightning bolts)

Standartenfuehrer
- SS rank, roughly equal to Colonel.

Sturmbannfuehrer
- SS rank, roughly equal to Major.

Sturmann
- SS rank, roughly equal to Private.

Strumscharfuehrer -
SS rank, roughly equal to Master Sergeant.

Swinehund
- German insult, literally ‘pig dog.’

Untermensch
- Subhuman.

Untermenschen
- Subhumans, plural of
Untermensch.

Unterscharfuehrer -
SS rank, roughly equal to Second Lieutenant.

Vaterland
- Fatherland.

Volk
- The German People.

Wehrmacht
- The German Military (often taken to represent just the army (
Heer
)).

Excerpt from Book 2 of the Codex Regius
:
Beyond the Shroud of the Universe

___________________

Chris Kennedy

Available now from Chris Kennedy Publishing

eBook, Audio Book and Paperback

President’s Conference Room, Terran Government Headquarters, Lake Pedam, Nigeria, September 27, 2021

“That concludes my report,” Lieutenant Commander Shawn ‘Calvin’ Hobbs said from the podium. “Are there any questions?” He looked around the room and involuntarily cringed. While he had known there would be
some
questions; he hadn’t expected that
everyone’s
hand would go up.

The president’s conference room was unlike any other Calvin had ever been in. At its center was a table which could easily seat 20 people to a side. The floor of the room sloped upward on all sides, with 10 rows of stadium seating.

The leaders of the Terran Government sat at one end of the table, with the president seated at the head of the table in her customary chair. The vice president, the secretary of state and the speakers from both houses of parliament filled the chairs closest to her. The rest of the seats at the table held members of the Terran Republic’s Security Council; their staffs and other interested representatives filled the audience seats, as well as most of the aisles. The place was packed.

The people at the table had brain implants which translated any Terran language; every seat in the room also had jacks that allowed users to plug in and get a running translation of the conversation provided by a small artificial intelligence (AI) which had been replicated for that purpose. The AI also kept notes and logs of all the conversations within the room, unless specifically told not to.

Seeing the forest of hands, Calvin sighed. This was going to take forever. With a mental shrug, he pointed to the closest representative.

“We have only just finished the war with the Drakuls,” the senator from Japan said, throwing her hands up in the air, “and now this…this…soldier has gone and involved us in another one. Who is he to think he has ambassadorial powers or the right to speak for us?” She looked around the enormous room for support and smiled when she saw most of the heads in the audience nodding.

“I certainly didn’t intend to get us into a war, ma’am,” Calvin said. “We were helping the Aesir, as we were ordered, when the Efreeti vessel appeared and fired on us unprovoked. We didn’t even know it was
there
before then, much less do anything to cause them to attack us. And actually, ma’am, I’m a naval aviator, not a soldier.” Although Calvin currently led a space fighter squadron and a platoon of Terran Space Marines, he still considered himself a naval aviator at heart. It had only been a couple of years since the aliens had shown up on Earth and drafted him to be a janissary in their wars; until recently, a Navy F/A-18 pilot was all he ever wanted to be.

“Not only has he involved us in a war with the Efreet, but also a war with these Jotunn frost giants?” the senator from Romania asked. “Both of these are creatures out of myth and legend. And new universes? What’s next, vampires? How are we supposed to fight things that don’t exist in places our best scientists say are impossible?”

“The Jinn Universe does exist, sir,” Calvin replied. “My men and I have been there several times, and in a number of different systems. Their universe is just as real as ours. I lost a lot of good people there.”

One of the senators from Domus raised her hand, and he pointed to her. The planet had been discovered on one of Calvin’s first missions to space, and their society had joined the Terran Republic the year before. The world was home to two races; one of these was humanoid in appearance, while the other, the Kuji, looked like 6-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus Rexes. Having been recognized, the Kuji princess stood.

“Unlike the rest of this august body, we are less focused on what is already done and can’t be undone,” said the princess, nodding to the other Domus senator, the humanoid princess. “We are more worried about what will happen next. Lieutenant Commander Hobbs has already shown these races inhabit a number of stars and planets in their universe, most of which are also inhabited in
our
universe. How do we know they won’t all of a sudden pop up on our planet or jump into our system and start dropping bombs on our cities?”

“I’m sorry,” Calvin said, “but the bottom line is that we
can’t
know whether they are there until we go into their universe and see. Even then, there is no way to protect against them; we can’t stop them from jumping into our universe. The only thing we have going for us, we think, is that there aren’t any stargates in the other universe. The Jinn have to transfer into our universe to use our stargates if they want to move around quickly. They don’t have faster-than-light space travel in their universe, so it would take many years to go from one system to another.”

“So the only ones we really have to worry about would be the ones already there, or those that come through the stargate into our system?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Calvin said. “At least, that’s the way we understand it now. There may very well be creatures that inhabit your planet in the other universe; in fact, I would bet there are. It seems like most of the planets that support life in our universe are also inhabited in the Jinn Universe.”

“A follow-up, if I may?” the princess asked. Gaining permission, she continued, “It is necessary for our continued security to determine if they exist on our planet. How do we find out if they are there?”

“There are a couple of ways to find out, ma’am. If we want to do it stealthily, we can use one of the transportation rods we brought back to send a few people to their universe and look around. Unfortunately, we only have a few of them, so it will probably be a little while before we can do so. We are working on making more rods, but there is a substance we need that is only found in the other universe. In order to make all the rods we need, we are going to have to find a supplier in the other universe.”

“What about the friendly race you met? The Sila?” Terran President Katrina Nehru asked, happy to be headed back in a positive direction.

“Yes, ma’am,” Calvin replied. “We have had contact with the Sila on a couple of occasions. They all left a common planet when its star went nova, and they now inhabit several planets we know of, but they don’t have contact with each other. Most of their planets have been conquered by the Efreet and ruled by them ever since. We helped one planet throw off the Efreeti yoke; I’m sure they would help us against the Efreet.”

“How big is the Sila Navy, exactly?” the Russian representative asked.

“Almost nonexistent,” Calvin admitted. “The Sila only have a single destroyer; however, they have been artificially held back in their technological development by the Efreet. If we give them a boost, I think they’d make great allies.”

“Oh, so now you are qualified to give us treaty advice?” the French representative asked. “After involving us in a war with two previously unknown star nations, you are going to tell us who we should have as our allies too?” He spread his arms as he looked across the entire auditorium. “Honestly, I don’t see the need for this body to exist since we already have you to determine who our allies and enemies should be.”

With that, many of the representatives began shouting their own comments and criticisms. As the moderator struggled to regain control of the meeting, Calvin opened up his in-head calendar display and began cancelling his other appointments for the day. This wasn’t going to end any time soon.

The Situation Room, Fleet Command HQ, Lake Pedam, Nigeria, September 29, 2021

“That concludes my report,” Calvin said for the second time in three days. “Are there any questions?”

Unlike the chaos that followed this question in the governmental headquarters building, the mood in Fleet Command was somber. Everyone in the room could see the magnitude of what the fleet had been tasked with. How could you defend an entire planet, much less its individual cities, when aliens could emerge anywhere, at any time, and attack? What did they have that could stop an Efreeti ship from appearing and conducting an orbital bombardment of Earth before any of the Terran forces could stop it?

Nothing.

It could happen in the next five minutes, and the military would be completely unable to prevent it. Everyone knew it, and no one had a solution. All the eyes in the room turned to Fleet Admiral James Wright, the head of the Terran Navy, who sat at the head of the table.

For his part, the admiral looked out the window at the Terran Governmental Headquarters, visible across the lake, deep in thought. Finally, nodding to himself, he returned his gaze to the podium. “So Calvin,” he said, “you’ve had the longest to think about it, what are your recommendations?”

Although the question might have seemed out of place to some of the non-American members of the staff, Admiral Wright had a long, personal relationship with Calvin, going back to the Sino-American War of 2018. Although their working relationship had been strained at first, the admiral had come to count on Calvin’s decision making. That trust was rewarded with a string of Terran victories across a number of systems in two universes. And, more to the point, Calvin had more off-world fighting experience than any other Terran officer.

“I don’t think we have a lot of choices,” Calvin said. “We have to take care of Terra first. Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to help the Aesir, and they need all the help they can get. Even with the information we gave them, they are going to be overwhelmed by the combined forces of the Efreet and Jotunn if they don’t get any help. Still, we have to take care of Earth first.”

“I’m sorry,” Admiral Ackermann said. “Who were the Jotunn again?”

“The Jotunn are frost giants allied with the Efreet,” Calvin said. “They stand about 16 feet high and weigh over a ton. Not only does their size make them difficult to stop on an individual basis, their ships are similarly oversized. For example, their battle cruisers are about the size of a Mrowry dreadnought.”

“That is about 1.5 of your miles in length,” Captain Andowwn, the Mrowry attache to the Terran military, replied. A felinoid race, the Mrowry were the Terrans’ closest allies on the galactic stage, with the elven Aesir close behind.

“That is…quite large,” the German admiral said. “We will need more ships if we are to meet them in combat.”

“That’s the problem,” Calvin said. “Well half of it, anyway. As much as I’d like to help the Aesir, I don’t think we can. Unless something changed while we were gone, we barely have enough ships to defend our own planets in the face of this new threat; if we send some to aid the Aesir, we are leaving ourselves perilously open to attack.”

Admiral Wright’s eyes found the only civilian in the room. Not surprisingly, he was tapping on a data pad. “Mr. Brown, could we get a status on ship production?”

Andrew Brown jumped as his name was called. Brown ran the Fleet Material Management Network, or ‘Replicator Command,’ whose sole purpose was to ensure the Republic of Terra’s replicators ran as efficiently as possible. Products of advanced alien technology, the replicators could take raw materials and turn them into any finished product for which they had a blueprint. The biggest replicators could even produce super dreadnoughts, the largest class of ships.

Calvin had first met Andrew Brown when he was the plant manager for Boeing’s Airplane Programs Manufacturing Site in Renton, Washington, during the war with China. Brown’s experience managing aircraft production facilities had been instrumental in his success with Replicator Command…although it looked to Calvin like Brown’s hairline was rapidly receding, probably due to the stress involved.

“Ah, yes,” Mr. Brown replied. He tapped the pad two more times. “Our fleet remains at three ships, the cruiser
Vella Gulf
and the battleships
Terra
and
Domus
. We also have the former Efreeti cargo ship
Spark
that Lieutenant Commander Hobbs brought back, if you count it. Although we do not have many active ships, our ship building facilities are just beginning to hit their stride.”

He looked at his pad. “The republic is up to five replicators—”

“Excuse me,” Calvin interrupted. “Did you say
five?
You’ve been busy.”

“Yes, we have,” Brown replied with a smile. He looked around the room and saw questions on several of the faces. “For those of you outside of Replicator Command, replicators range in size from Class 1, which can only make minor items, up to Class 8, which is capable of producing a super dreadnought. Class 1 replicators are found on some of the medium-size and larger ship classes where they are used to replace equipment that breaks. Class 8s are enormous in size, and are relatively static.”

Brown’s focus returned to Calvin. “In addition to the Class 2 replicator on the moon and the Class 6 we got from the Mrowry, we also towed the Class 8 you captured back to our asteroid belt. I knew that wouldn’t be enough, so we made a Class 5 replicator with the Class 6, and another Class 6 with the Class 8. We sent the Class 5 to Domus so they could begin shipbuilding, and we stationed the new Class 6 in the asteroid belt with the Class 8. It took some time to do all of this, as well as to create the infrastructure required to operate them effectively.”