Immortals (13 page)

The door came crashing down with a loud bang at that instant. Jai was startled and Henna woke up with a shriek. Jai rushed instinctively towards the noise and found three men with guns in the room, the door having given way at the hinges. Jai ran back into the inner room, having nowhere else to go. He caught Henna and shoved her into the bathroom, bolting the door from outside. Jai stood guard outside, grabbing a kitchen knife that was lying on the bedside table where Henna had cut an apple before going to sleep.

The three men barged inside the room and the man in the front raised his gun at Jai. Jai flipped the knife in his hand, grasped the blade and flung it hard across the room at the man. The man ducked but the knife caught him in his right shoulder, his fingers squeezing the trigger reflexively. The bullet found the right side of Jai’s chest and Jai was thrown back against the wall. The other two goons rushed towards him and kicked him out of the way. Jai still held on to the bathroom door handle. One of the men smashed the butt of his gun on Jai’s hand, making him scream in pain and cringe away. The other man unbolted the door and found it locked from inside. He jumped at the bathroom door, his weight crashing the PVC door in an instant.

Jai heard Henna scream, and then he saw the man dragging her out by her hair. Jai leapt from where he was lying and the second man instantly fired at Jai, pumping another bullet into his chest not far from where the previous bullet had struck. The third man had by now lifted Henna off the ground and thrown her headfirst on to the bed. He grabbed her by the tunic and yanked on it hard, tearing the fabric and exposing the white lace of her bra. He then jumped on her, pinning her down on the bed.

Jai realised what the man was up to and let out a loud blood-curdling scream with the last ounce of breath that had not seeped out of his leaking chest. Henna thrashed wildly, hearing Jai scream and screamed even louder, joining Jai’s howl. The second man pulled the third off Henna from the bed, shook his head, and pointed his gun at her and shot two bullets that struck Henna in her head. She fell back, dead and silent.

Jai’s voice deserted him in an instant and he sank to the floor, Henna’s dead face the last image on his clouded consciousness.

***

Etin County

Domus-Nova

Mouse-tail Galaxy

Domus-Nova Year 2547, Earth Year 7858 AD

Jai swooped down from the sky on Wrecko, his Xuenemaia, the breeze ruffling the beast’s fur and beating against Jai’s face as he sat astride his ride. There was black war paint smeared all over his body. He was leading a rescue team to free two of his corporals being held captive at a camp-base of the Humae’its.

Jai and his team of twenty riders rode into the strong breeze coming in from the sea, cold enough to sting their bare skin. The night was dimly lit by the crescentic Lueon and Majon, the faint white and blue light just enough to navigate while providing them enough dark cover for their attack.

The riders rode in a V-formation, in three groups, Jai leading the first group of the pack. As they closed in on their target, Jai started his descent and stabilised Wrecko just above the tree-line, barely skimming the foliage of the towering
blubar
and
futyon
trees rising close to two hundred metres from the ground. They could see the lights of the Humae’it camp.

Jai tightened his grip on the spear docked by his side on the beast. He gave it a gentle tug and it came unstuck. A click of a button later, the first Quesenium shell swung forward on the spear to its tip. Jai raised his spear, the riders followed, arming themselves with spears and Quesenium-tipped arrows. They were almost on their target and Jai signalled them to get into attack formation. The third-group riders on each side converged to the centre of the formation, readying their Xuenemaias for the dive and the snatch. There were light posts all around the complex and that made things a bit difficult. However, Jai was counting on the surprise element of the attack.

Then they were upon the camp and left the cover of the trees as they swooped down on it. Jai steadied his throwing arm and let go of the Quesenium-tipped spear towards the camp to the right of their target. The second-group riders on each side followed suit, directing their spears at the camps adjacent to the target camp, sparing the target camp. Long, coiled cords attached the spears to the under-armour of the Xuenemaias, and they retracted up towards the fighters after depositing their Quesenium load on their targets. Jai’s missile boomeranged back into his hands as he rode on beyond the target camp. The Quesenium loads exploded in a brilliant flash of light and sound a second later, creating a circle of intense heat and fire all round the camp in which his comrades were being held captive.

The third group of riders on each side swooped down right to the middle of the blitz site and jumped off from their Xuenemaias, which hovered a couple of feet from the ground. There were a couple of Plurient guards with laser guns, who took a couple of seconds too long to recover from the sudden attack. The riders did not give them a chance and hacked them down with their swords.

Jai circled the campsite and came back towards the prisoners. The noise had alerted other Humae’its in the camp and they had taken to shooting at the dark sky above. The lights at the ground blinded them to what was happening above and Jai and his fellow riders took aim at the camps, systematically destroying them with Quesenium loads. The prisoners had been freed, and they were on the Xuenemaias. Jai gave the signal and the riders let loose another barrage of fire around the rescue team, letting them ascend to the safety of the dark skies.

Jai knew he did not have much time before the Humae’it aerial teams arrived, and gave the signal to evacuate. The beasts swooped back into the air, flying back in formation. There were laser rounds flashing all around them as the Humae’its fired in the dark after them. Wrecko took the lead and flew at the head of the formation. His ability in dodging the flares was uncanny. Jai held on, huddling down on the beast to keep a low profile. He could feel the beast’s heart pounding away under his hand on its chest. He loved that sensation of that strong and robust heart beating away, in perfect rhythm, despite the madness of the raid and the counter-attack around them. It reminded him of his childhood, when he and his Xuenemaia took long walks in the Zunn. They usually had a light picnic of cake and berries, and when he grew tired of playing, he fell asleep, curled on the bosom of Wrecko, the strong heart beating away beneath his ear. Only the beast wasn’t called Wrecko back then. Its given name was Xaddon but now everyone knew it as Wrecko the Wrecker.

Jai was almost at the tree line, and he turned around to see if the Humae’it fleet had taken to air, when a round flew too close to him, swishing behind his ears in a hot searing hiss. He got his head out just in time, but it grazed past the side of his face.

That left a permanent scar on his face.

Domus-Nova

Mouse-tail Galaxy

Domus-Nova Year 2548, Earth Year 7859 AD

Jai winced in pain and woke up from his dream, on the cot in the white room. Things had not changed much in the room where Jai was alone, prisoner in his paralysed body in alien surroundings.

Jai looked around the room and saw the clock on the wall, showing a strange time with the hour hand at fourteen and the minute hand at eight. The doors and the windows were closed today and the entire room was suffused in bright white light.

The machine above his head made a constant buzzing noise, like static, and he could see wires connecting his head to the machine. He realised that he had some control of his neck muscles today as he was able to turn his head up to get his first glimpse of the machine over his head. It had a big rectangular face that had screens all over it, displaying a symphony of fluid fractal patterns that were beyond his comprehension. A container containing a silver fluid spewed out wires that were hooked on to his head.

He looked down, barely raising his head and could see the sheets drawn a bit lower on his body, revealing his tanned bronze chest, that probably had a good structure once. The muscles showed signs of atrophy, probably from the prolonged paralysis that he was being subjected to.

The static picked up a notch on the noise scale and the white of the room started to fade away slowly.

Chapter 17

Sonya Ludvigsdottir

Park Hotel

Noyabrsk, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

Russia

20 May, 2012

It was snowing outside. A pensive Sonya Ludvigsdottir sat near one of the three large French windows in her hotel room. She could see beyond the snow, out into the beautiful ice-park below. The view notwithstanding, she had butterflies in her stomach.

Work on the Gazneft oilrigs had been suspended for the past month due to striking workers.

The strike had virtually crippled the economy of the region and it was a blow that Luk-Oil could not possibly bear.

Sonya had come down for the kill. There was opportunity and Sonya wondered if she could do an Abramovich with Luk-Oil.

She had a meeting with the management and the creditors of Luk-Oil in an hour. Also attending the meeting would be the representatives of the labour union, and the mayor, Bogdan Kirobkov. Sonya had detailed dossiers about everybody and had studied them carefully. Kirobkov was as dirty as they came and could be easily bought over. The banks and other creditors would come over if she promised them infusion of fresh capital. They certainly did not want to go through a Luk-Oil bankruptcy and risk losing their invested millions. That left Ivan Kravchenko, the wily union leader who had the reputation of being a rabble-rouser.

He was difficult. He was not an idealist or an ardent communist but he was known to be antagonistic to the management. It was he who had instigated the workers to go on this strike and it was imperative that he be won over.

Sonya had no plans for him yet but hoped that she would make him see the merit in her arguments.

***

Sonya was back in her room after the meeting that had lasted a good two hours. The meeting had been held at the conference hall of the Park, the hotel where she was staying. The meeting was rough but it was something that Sonya could take heart from. The bankers had come round; the mayor had consented at a very steep price: extracting his sweat equity and dirt money.

Ivan Kravchenko was a revelation. He fought valiantly for the rights of his workers. What he was asking for was not unacceptable, but Sonya did not do easy negotiations. They played around with figures and Sonya drove a hard bargain. The bankers took their leave and Sonya and Kravchenko continued after lunch. They agreed to agree on the issue of health and other benefits and for a generous contributory pension, but failed to find common ground vis-à-vis revision of worker’s salaries. Nevertheless, their meeting moved from the boardroom to the dining hall and finally to Sonya’s room in the hotel.

Kravchenko was thirty-three, married, with two kids, and had a family that lived far away in Tomsk. He was an oilrig worker, accustomed to hefting loads in excess of two hundred pounds and the hundred and ten pounds of Sonya posed no problem for him.

‘You know what you are?’ Kravchenko bellowed between breaths as he literally hoisted and slammed a naked Sonya up and down on his naked pelvis.

‘Mmm...’ Sonya grunted as she went up and down on the well-hung Kravchenko.

‘A
bliad.
A bloody
bliad,
you are!’

‘I hope that’s a compliment, Ivan,’ Sonya gasped between breaths, as she hoped he would stop talking and concentrate on what he was doing.

Sonya knew what
bliad
meant and she did not mind being called a slut. So long as being a slut got her what she wanted.

They finished in a couple of minutes and an exhausted Sonya lay quietly in the strong arms of Kravchenko.

‘So, what do you have for me if I manage to get the strike called off?’ Kravchenko asked the question first.

Sonya feigned hurt and said:

‘I didn’t think this was business, Ivan’

Kravchenko laughed a hearty laugh.

‘Oh, you
pizda!
You are the devil incarnate. I know that I am not getting to hump a
printzyessa
for the love of her heart. You need something from me and that is why I am here.’

Sonya laughed along with Kravchenko.

‘Nothing for you, Ivan. I am not going to do anything for you. Ten million rubles for your wife and a plum post for you.’

‘Why do you want to give the money to my wife?’

‘I am just buying you from her, Ivan. The managerial post you will get will keep you in Moscow with Russo-Hantel…’ Sonya paused and winked at Ivan, ‘directly under me.’

‘You
pizda!’
Ivan hissed the words in her ears and swung her below him, spreading her legs apart with his knees.

The French windows crashed barely within a second of each other and three canisters rolled into the room through the broken glass. The canisters started hissing out a white smoke and both Sonya and Ivan were unconscious before they even realised what had happened there, a naked Ivan lying unconscious between the legs of an equally naked and unconscious Sonya.

***

Hantel Corporate Headquarters

St. Olav’s Gate, Oslo

Norway

21 May, 2012

The morning headlines of ‘The Oslo Mirror’ screamed:

“HANTEL HEIRESS SONYA LUDVIGSDOTTIR KIDNAPPED. BEDFELLOW FOUND MURDERED.”

Ludvig was already on his private jet, a Bombardier 5000, to Noyabrsk. He had left with a small coterie of his trusted aides, as soon as he had heard the news late at night. From what had been gathered by Haalkud’s team, it was a mob hit. Sitting behind him on the plane was Dan Knutsen, Ludvig’s Man Friday in crises such as this.

For most of the journey, Ludvig sat with a stoic look on his face, staring out of the window to his right. He was lost in his thoughts. He loved Sonya more than anyone else in the world and could not bear to think about losing her. She was the essence of what he had been in his youth; reckless and yet calculative and cold, but not heartless. She had his business acumen and his love for the good life. She was he, and he could not but love her.

‘Have you got your team on the ground?’ Ludvig asked Dan, without turning.

‘Yes.’ Dan nodded.

Dan had a chequered history with a spattering of work with various intelligence agencies as an independent contractor. Besides, the Russian mob was not foreign territory for him. Hantel had a big presence in Russia and Dan had an active unit there. He had a team on the ground awaiting their arrival in Noyabrsk.

‘Are the coppers looking at it?’ Ludvig asked again.

‘Yes, they are involved. The mayor will be there to receive us. In addition, the chief of local police is already investigating. I have alerted the local FSB, too.’

Dan realised that it was hard for Ludvig. He was very fond of his daughter and it was no secret that he loved her more than he did his son. She was born of a second ‘wife’ whom he had taken when he had stayed for almost a year continuously in Russia and started the Russian operations of Hantel. Her mother, Irina worked for him during that time. She was a striking beauty and a very successful Russian athlete with a haul of two silvers and a gold in the Olympics.

Ludvig had never been able to devote much time to his second family but Irina had been very faithful and had been very successful when she took over the managerial responsibilities of Russo-Hantel. She took care of their only child, Sonya, largely in Ludvig’s absence yet did not let her feel the lack of a father. She told her tales of her father and Sonya remained devoted to a largely absent Ludvig. She was groomed to be the future CEO of Hantel right from her birth and when the time came, Irina handed over the mantle to Sonya, with the consent of Ludvig. Sonya had a business major from the London School of Economics and had a first-rate teacher in her mother; so much so that, when she took over the company at the young age of twenty-six, no one questioned her credentials.

Irina died a year later of a metastatic tumour of her left knee.

As a child, Sonya had never regretted not having the constant attention of both her parents, though she looked forward to those rare occasions when her daddy would make the trip to Moscow to meet them and stay for a few days every six months or so. But she never really recovered from her mother’s death and her grief made her immerse herself fully in the company’s work.

Ludvig fondly remembered the moments that he spent with Sonya. He remembered them camping by the frozen Moskva River upstream from the city, and going ice fishing near their camp. He would have loved to spend more time with her but his schedule only allowed for those few occasions, which he cherished so very dearly now. It was partly his guilt at never having been a good father to Sonya that probably made him love her even more.

Ludvig was lost in this reverie when the landing instructions were given on the flight-com. He readied himself for what lay ahead. Ludvig had received the news pretty close to the time when he woke up from his sleep, and he knew he wouldn’t get enough time to rescue her even if he decided to ‘rewind’. He could not use his immortal abilities at the time that probably most merited their use.

They landed on an almost frozen strip on the Noyabrsk airport and after a quick round of introductions, he went over to the police station to meet the head of the local
politsiya,
where he was rapidly updated about the progress made in the case so far.

The kidnappers had probably attacked in two teams, one of whom had fired the sedating canisters through the windows and the other team had smashed the door and taken Sonya captive after pumping several rounds of bullets into Kravchenko’s head. Kravchenko was found dead, naked on the bed, and the blood on the sheets belonged only to Kravchenko. Semen and vaginal fluids were also recovered from the sheets and the latter matched that of Sonya. That probably meant that Sonya was not harmed during the operation to kidnap her. There was no ransom note or calls from the kidnappers after that.

The word on the street was that this was a mercenary act, well paid for, and funded from abroad, and carried out by one of the many arms of the Russian mafia.

Behind the scenes, Dan was busy filtering through the intelligence that he was gathering from his own less official sources. It took him a bit of time, but by evening, he could follow the money trail to a Moscow trade cartel and from there on to a well-known Socialist sympathiser in Norway.

‘It is Luvenson,’ Dan informed Ludvig that evening.

‘Bastard!’ Ludvig had not anticipated that Luvenson would make it this personal. Luvenson had resigned from the political race that year but Ludvig had still released the video, destroying Luvenson and forcing him into political oblivion.

‘What is the progress, Dan?’

‘I have some intel on which clan of the Russo mafia is behind it. I can be sure by tomorrow early morning.’

These were difficult times for Ludvig and Dan knew that. Still, Ludvig was handling the situation in his own calm and calculative way.

‘Let’s open another war front with Luvenson. Let me know what can be done back home.’

Dan knew what he meant. He already had plans for that. Both of Hanka Luvenson’s sons had been pulled from their school and they were nowhere to be seen. That left him and his wife, and Dan was not sure if all was well with their marriage, which had somehow survived the damaging revelations of Luvenson’s affair with Dagny.

Dan realised that he had to go for the sons, hunt them down and use them for possible leverage, if it came to that.

Dan left his boss for the night and headed straight for the temporary situation room that he had set up in a room on the top floor of the Park Hotel. He was going to sit through the night sifting through the intel that would be steadily pouring in all through the night.