Eric Olafson, Neoviking 27

Chapter 27: Bredenberg Island

Bredenberg Island was part of a cluster of five Islands close together, known as the Five Clan Cluster. I was just hundred klicks west of the Uhim Grounds and long ago all five Islands belonged to that legendary Uhim Clan. The Uhim’s had perished in the last clan war. Four of the rocky islands were occupied now by the Burgs of individual Clans and the fifth held the third and smallest city on Nilfeheim called Trondheim. If one would draw lines between the five islands you would get an almost perfect pentagon of about one kilometer each side. The Bredenberg Clan was around for a long time but it was not an Old Clan and they established their own Burg on top of the old Harald Uhim Island.

I put the boat down in the water a few kilometers away, I could not really say why but I wanted to keep that a secret for as long as I could. It was bad enough we Norse had fliers but no one really had the idea yet to use them in anger as a weapon. Having Neo Vikings in flying subs would not be a good idea unless there was some sort of control in place. Astrid stood next to me holding the life like mask of Sif.” With something like that you could be Freya again. I miss her and the time we had together. All seems so far away now!”

“Don’t get me started. You girls used me from the start and you did it knowingly. First you took me inside your circle and then I was kicked out without an explanation, only to learn later it was nothing but a trick, but it was stupid of me to begin with.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “Yes we did and some of us felt really sorry for you, especially Elena. Eric we all had a crush on you and some still do. I wanted to protect you from what we planned to do. I knew Freya became more real every day and you might have joined us and we could not risk that. Our mission was to use you, yes. Our leader says we must use men as tools for our cause as this is the only real weapon we have.”

Her face became fierier. “You of all men should understand how different our lives are. Women have no say, no rights and are openly declared to be second class to men. Your very own mother died because she was traded like a piece of commodity to gain clan alliances and riches. No one asked your mother if she wanted to be married to that brute that is your father. Do you really know what happened the night you were conceived? Do you think she willingly let him in her bed? He was the lord he was the man and there was nothing she could say or do, not even to her own father!”

I could not help but remember how horrible I felt when Harkun tried to rape me during that body switch dream the Old man had provided. Was I a product of such an act? I suddenly felt dirty and guilty. Knowing only too well that she was most likely right. Astrid wiped her eyes.” Do you know why I killed the Bendixen Elder?”

I was about to say something, but she didn’t wait and pushed the accelerator control to zero and hissed.” I will tell you anyway! I must tell you! Maybe then you are not so hard in your judgment against us.”

There it was again. Someone else accused me of coming to a verdict too fast. “Tell me please!”

Astrid was a very fair skinned and she had freckles over her nose, her hair was thin and long, she was not one of those girls that looked pretty when she cried, but I suddenly felt very sorry for her and her tears felt hot as they dripped on my hand. “This old bastard raped me Eric! He forced his stinking body on me when I was barley thirteen! He was an Elder and I the daughter of a Freeman in the house of Bendixen. My father beat me up when I told him what happened and told me it was my fault for making him aware of me and that I should never speak about it! My mother was afraid and asked me to forget! I can never forget and he did it many times! I cannot stand to look at a man without getting so sick I throw up! Eric I hated you for the simple reason you have a pecker! But you showed you could be Freya and the Illusion was perfect I didn’t want to know you were a boy underneath!”

She spread her hands and her tears flowed freely. “What could I have done to prevent it? Father always said I could have!” Her words hit me like knifes, some of what she said where like echoes of my own thoughts. Her words brought my experience as Loki to the surface and the words of the old man that there were many personal hells on this world and I was not the only one with a rotten childhood.

I remembered Raghild’s words and Snøfried speaking of Harkun.

I could not tell if all the tears were hers as I took her in my arms and held her for quite a while as she sobbed and moaned. I don’t know how long we held each other like that but finally she let go and gave me a sad smile. I must look like a bloated Rose fish. We still need to meet the leader I guess. “She kissed me on the cheek and went to the bath room.

It was a more modern burg, no masonry and rock at all, entirely made of Duro-Crete. Instead of open ramparts on towers and walls it had covered corridors with thick armor glass windows. According to Astrid it had no Submarine pen but instead a small harbor had been constructed with massive Duro-crete walls and a wharf. Two Surface fishing ships tied up painted in the Bredenberg Colors of Yellow on Purple. While Nilfeheim had no official time zones and all went by the same universal time that almost fit the day cycle around Bifrost during Shortsummer, here it was just getting dark. The burg looked dark and brooding against the rising darkness of night. I dropped anchors.She put the other cloak around my shoulders.” It is going to be cold outside.”

Out of an impulse I pocketed the little Off-world gun as I left the boat after her and locked it with my code.

We went up the short steep ramp to the actual gate. It opened after she keyed in a security code and blew into a senor hole. To me she explained “Biometric DNA lock.”

The court yard was dark, there were no lights anywhere. “Why is it so dark and where is everyone?”

She answered with a somber tone and almost whispering. “There aren’t many of the Bredenberg family left.

Despite the fact that the burg was only five hundred years old and by design looking more modern than for example our burg, it had an old feeling almost like that of a tomb. I didn’t know why I got goose bumps over my back as she opened the heavy door to the High halls and a draft of musky stale smelling air went past us. The High Hall was dark except for a few yellow and weak Lumi-plates; most of the furniture was pushed to the sides and covered with cloth. Her Heels sounded like echoing hammer blows, my Fanger leather boots made little noise. In all this weirdness I admired her heeled boots and had the urge to walk in heels once more.

Over a flight of stairs we reached the Drawing room and there in the fire place was a small fire of pressed Sea weed blocks. A circle of twelve upholstered stone carved high backed chairs were the dominant feature of the room. There was no one else.

“Wait here!” She asked. Then she put on her white stocking mask and pulled up the hood. She stepped inside the circle of stairs pulled at a cord and bell rang somewhere, then she sat down on one of the chairs.

From the deep darkness of the room behind the chairs a person in a dark red cloak appeared stepped in the middle pulled the cord and sat down in a chair across Astrid. Two more appeared the same and one after the other rang the bell and sat down.

The others wore dark blue, like Astrid. All their faces hidden behind those white stockings. The Red Cloak spoke with a deep female voice. “ The Daughters of Nilfeheim have one more come together to discuss grave matters and to erase the injustice against all Sisters and daughters of this world.”

The rest spoke together.” To the rights and freedom of all daughters daughters we pledge our lives.”

The red cloak waved at me.” Step into the circle. We have a very special guest tonight. The first man ever to step foot in our midst.”

Interlude 9: VIVID DREAMS

Kevin Atkien closed the GalNet Connection and switched of the Dream creator. “Finally!” He sighed and got up to step outside the tiny little balcony on the 432’t floor of Coulter Tower downtown Cork City. The air tasted sweet with a hint of strawberry and grape as it always did when the wind came from the east and the huge Sparkle Bright delights factory occupying most of this large rock plateau surrounded by scorching deserts., but it was night and both suns were on the other side of the planet, not that the four hours of darkness helped much to cool the planet down, but soon the large weather control satellites would be operational and in a few months it would rain for the first time on a planet that had not seen a drop of rain in a billion years. All this was of little concern or interest to Kevin, he was neither a weather control engineer nor did the weather outside have any meaning to his work. He held to the chest high safety railing. He wasn’t afraid of heights at all but being over 800 meters above the ground was still a good reason to hold onto the railing. He watched the light traffic and wished he could get a little time off to go to town and live a little of the real life.

He signaled a far away vent bot, still the machines visuals picked him up and the machine floated to his balcony.” Do you carry Terran cigarettes?”

“No Sir, I am sorry but I signaled your request to Terran Tobacco Timmy, what would you like?”

“A pack of Black Skulls –Original Unhealthy”

It took about eight minutes and a courier bot arrived and handed him the pack after he paid the machine. One of his Avatars smoked and so he learned about this very ancient Terran habit that was so popular again, especially among those humans who weren’t Terran but liked to pretend they were or show just how in and up to date they were. He simply liked it.

After he had finished a cigarette he flicked the butt and watched it fall till it disappeared, then he stepped back into his work office, just in time as David Moyes his supervisor came in with a smile and a big bag of Chocolate covered Green Hell Berries, Kevin’s favorite snack.”How are we doing on case six?”

“I have her hook, line and sinker now. I want to proceed to phase two and cement the illusion with a few reality presents. She is a chocolate addict and wanted to send her some real Mozart Balls from Vienna Earth.”

“I take care of it!” David said and made a little note on his PDD. Then he looked over the transcripts and started laughing. “Are you serious? Does she really believe she will meet Rex Schwartz?”

“She is very serious. Murphy created a support Avatar after the only public image I could find.”

David became serious.” Be careful, we don’t want to make SII angry or even aware of what we doing here. I am not afraid of the bumblers of the police, but we don’t want to tango with SII Security.”

“Little chance, Boss. She believes everything and thinks all is real. She goes into Dream-maker as an Avatar and she believes it so firmly, you could tell her it’s a SIM and she would not believe you. By the time we are at stage four and she leaves the planet, we get rid of her anyway!”

David grinned.”Would be funny though to see her actually arriving at Azure-Delight and ask for Jon or Rex Schwartz.”

Kevin laughed too.” As much as she is in the dark about the reality of what we do and where she goes, she is a gifted agent in terms of our agenda.”

“So you think she and the three others we have working on that planet will get a Clan war started and eradicate these primitive brutes?”

“Oh most certainly, Adolph Lindbergh is as power hungry as Gretel and he has no clue that we play him exactly like his Psych profile suggests. He ordered a Submarine with artillery. High velocity rail guns!”

“Splendid! How about the Pearl fisher?”

“That is the best part. He isn’t even working for us but gets advice from a Jewelry dealer on Para-Para and my girl does the rest. He ordered proximity mines to defend his little stretch of ocean.”

“Very well then, carry on!”

David left the chocolate covered berries with Kevin, one of the best Psycho emotion manipulators he had and ordered the confectionery to be delivered via the Sweets shop on Azure-Delight. Of course this was four times more expensive than simply ordering them directly from Earth, but it was the little details that made all the difference, and what were a few hundred credits to the 5 Billion credit contract he had to make sure Planet Nilfeheim was soon depopulated enough for his client to move in and take over. David was the President of Galactic Solutions Inc. A very successful firm, providing very special services to very large clients, below the rare wares procurement service his company provided as a cover for its real activities was a tightly run highly criminal organization, but David found it was simply a business like any other.

His client a major competitor to Tyson Galactic wanted that ocean planet. Water planets were rare, water planets teaming with life that was consumable by 70% of the Union population was even rarer, and the fact that most of the stuff the fishers pulled out of those oceans was delicious and fetched high prices was as rare as it gets. The stupid Neo Vikings peddled around with a few fish farms and a few hunting boats. His client planned to hang Sun mirrors into its orbit, no more Longnight winters. Warm sunshine year round and use big robotic trawlers to empty those oceans of all the useless stuff and reseed them exclusively with one or two of the best selling ones. In fifty or sixty years the company would have made five thousand times what they invested to get the place.

His client had eyes on the planet for a long time, but it was nearly impossible while Erik Gustav Ragnarsson was the planets representative. That man had his fingers on the pulse of business and knew very well what prize his little water world was.

His planets seat was empty now and soon to be occupied by a hired corporate rep.

He smirked as he entered his big and flashy furnished corner office to make an encrypted call to his client, to deliver his monthly progress report. The planet deep in Union Territory, close to all the major markets, had no Union Police, no Union law and was on a basically stone age tech level by choice. Kevin could not believe the facts when he heard about them almost 15 years ago. Nilfeheim was a treasure ready to be picked and the only guardian it had was single man, a man now dead and gone. When he had his agents make an initial report o the planet, they made contact with a very ambitious woman. The fact that women had little to say in her society spurned her on so it seemed and she had great influence over a powerful clan leader with close ties to that Ragnarsson tycoon. She was the already full of ambition and burning hate. After he had a psych profile of her it was easy to press the right buttons. She ordered Kermac Psych drugs, to control her husband, and managed to convince him to plot to kill Erik Ragnarsson. If the bumbling Union Police ever found out all they would find was a local plot.”

David could not help but smile. He had no respect for Union Police. He was doing this sort of thing for almost sixty years and they had not caught on, but then he was an expert and his projects ran sometimes over decades, nice and slow and just by pulling the right strings. Easy as stealing candy from a baby, just much more rewarding.

The concern over a new representative was unfounded as some supposedly mystical Old geezer never showed up on Pluribus. David had seen the local News footage of an old man boarding a Space bus, before he could send someone to make sure he did not arrive. Funny enough the Old fart got probably lost at the first space bus hub and had not surfaced yet. Not that anyone on that backwards planet could do anything about it, they had no clue and soon they would kill each other and whatever survived would be willing workers in the processing plants and accept corporate rule.