Painkiller: Odin's Warriors - Book 2 Read online

"None taken," said Magnus, taking a sip. "We may appear blunt, and crude, but we can be subtle when necessary. Beowulf and Snorri are having some fun."

  "Laurie looks like he's about to pop a coronary or two," said Ella, glancing over her shoulder. "Look, you can see his right temple twitching. And the muttering."

  "The last time I saw that," said Magnus, "he slaughtered my kinsmen."

  "An epic tale," said Griffin. He eyeballed Magnus. "Man's got courage."

  "He's got more than that," said Merrion, readjusting his genitals through his pants, and sitting back down. "As do we all." Merrion winked at Ella.

  "I was thinking," said Ella, rolling her eyes, "about what you said of the Emperor's castle? It's halfway up a big mountain yes? And the fortress's manufacturing, garrisons and whatnot are at its base, by a bay?"

  "Yes," said Merrion. "And?"

  "Griffin, how many parachutes were aboard the Damage Inc.?"

  "Ten," said Griffin. "Ten AN-6513 parachutes."

  "Did any of the crew bail out?" she said, chewing on the end of her pencil. The hubbub around her faded.

  "No?" said Griffin.

  "Mick," said Ella, "did any of you bail out?"

  "Ah, yes," said Mick, wiping the beer froth away with his sleeve, bits of foam still stuck in his black bushy beard, dancing firelight reflecting off his shaved head. "One. Tom over France?"

  "So, six from Hades’ Express." said Ella. "Sixteen parachutes all up." She made a note on the paper. "So, allowing for seven-hundred feet . . . three for equipment and supplies . . . excellent." Her long fingers tore the page off, and she stood, crumpled the paper into a ball, and lobbed it into the hungry fire, as the men just watched.

  "The solution gentlemen, you know, is obvious." Ella picked up her two necklaces, one disfigured by extreme heat, the other made by her child, and put them both around her neck. She pulled her ponytail free. "We parachute in. Right on top of them, and take the castle."

  Every man in the room looked at her in silence. Even the dogs looked surprised.

  Chapter Six

  WHERE TO BEGIN

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Ella stood in the centre of the War Room, with the impromptu assault team, and the general. "Hellsbaene and a secondary ship, containing a seaplane, sail to near the target's coastline. The seaplane, carrying the commando crew, is launched with an assist from the Viking ship. Shortly after, Hellsbaene attacks the main gate, creating the diversion. With luck, enough forces are pulled away, and seeing the signal of one of the Very flares, our paratroopers are deployed here, and the seaplane returns to the Hellsbaene, that with her speed, can outrun those chasing her, there." Ella moved the second figurine with the long wooden rod to the little model of the Viking flagship that Amelia had carved in her art class.

  "The assault force takes the castle quietly, at night, and with speed. The treasure is located. The second Viking ship, made to look like Hellsbaene, swaps places, and leads the pursuers away. Hellsbaene circles back, picks up the raiding party, having slaughtered everything they encounter back down the mountain, and heads to the rendezvous spot, over here, where I'll be waiting with my plane."

  "Not bad I reckon," said Laurie, "not bad at all. It'll all turn to shit anyway once we begin, but not bad." He pinched his freckled nose. "Not bad . . . are you daft? A dozen or so men against a whole castle full of soldiers? It’s suicide."

  "As we agreed last night," said Ella, "it's at least the base of something we can expand on. They'd never expect an airborne paratrooper assault, bypassing the main defences concentrated at the mountain foot. And yes, military planning is not my forte, I agree."

  "It's not a bad plan, Ella," said Merrion, "apart from oh, what Laurie just said, or the fact we don't have a seaplane, let alone something that can carry a dozen men, if not more, plus equipment, or a vessel to carry it . . ."

  "Or, or, or," said Ella. "I know that. But I have ideas. We have ideas. We've all parachuted before, well except for you and the Vikings, but Merrion, you're going to love it. Trust me."

  "Why is he coming again?" said Laurie.

  "Because every mission needs a thief," said Ella, and the look on Merrion's face was worth every moment of past and future payback.

  Marietta coughed into her hand, suppressing the wide smile. "Excellent," she said. "And since it does bear repeating, tell no one outside this room. The last thing we need is the Emperor to move his shiny, precious things." She clapped her hands together.

  "The Republic of Fairholm stands once more at your disposal. Beowulf?" The Viking King gave his assent. "Make it happen. Captain John, you're in charge. Form your assault team, and begin training immediately." She walked to the door, and knocked upon it. "And make us proud."

  "She does love doing that, the general, doesn't she?" said Mick, watching her leave. The doors thudded shut.

  "Part of the job description," said Laurie. "Wouldn't you?"

  "Wouldn't know mate, only made it to sergeant," said the man from Melbourne, a long way from home.

  "So, Ms Gruder," said Captain John, "tell me about this seaplane idea."

  "Well," said Ella, playing with her red ponytail, twisting it around in one hand, "I was thinking about twin engines, from the Damage Inc., and making a baby Junker's-52 with twin pontoons."

  The three Vikings regarded her, waiting for her to start making sense. "A junkyard what, pray tell?" said Beowulf.

  "A German flying troop transport," said Laurie, "from our old world. Single wing, simple, like a bloody outback shed kind of simple, extremely reliable from all accounts. We shot one down over Spain before the War. In the Guerra Civil Española actually. Yellow tips and tail with a black lightning strike. Took forever to shoot down."

  "You did what?" said the crew of the Lancaster, almost simultaneously, save for Mick, who remained silent.

  "You never told us you fought in the Spanish Civil War," said Andrew, Chief of Gossip, aghast at finding out something new.

  "None of your damn business until now," said Laurie. "Besides, it was all on the Q.T. Isn't that right, Mick?"

  "Yeah," said Mick, "it's how I met him, when I volunteered as a medic in the International Brigades. Fucking fascists." He looked around. "What are you staring at me for? I gave my word."

  "Anyway," said Laurie, "it's a story for another time." He caught Ella's gaze, who was looking at him with wide open eyes. Her jaw could have landed whole squadrons of fighters inside, the German woman that aghast. "Another time."

  "We have two working engines left from Damage Inc., Rob told me the other day," said Griffin. "The other two Cyclone-Wright's are part bins only."

  Ella shook her head clear, and focused. "That's correct. We know enough now from the prototypes to extrapolate a bigger example, something that can carry twelve to fourteen men plus equipment plus the pilot. Me."

  "You make it all sound easy as pie," said Mick. "Build a plane. Sail the long way around where people from this world do not dare to go. Parachute in, when we've only jumped once before, in basic training, take the castle. I bloody well hate parachutes." He muttered to himself the rest of the sentence, arms folded.

  "It's a shitload of work, no arguments there," said Laurie. "But what the bloody hell else are we going to do? Sea monsters protect the Vikings, for now. The late King Hffylson made sure of that. We have a much larger invasion force sitting at our doorstep. General Marietta is right. We need that technology to make sure one hundred of theirs equals one of ours."

  Then, he too slumped backward. "Where to begin."

  Beowulf broke into a huge grin. The King of Vikings slapped Magnus on the back. "It begins with Hellsbaene, of course."

  Chapter Seven

  PROBLEMS

  "HOW THE FUCK you can hear anything in here is beyond me," said Laurie at midday, in the Number Two dry dock, which now resembled half a shipbuilding area, and half a metalwork and engineering shop. His tinnitus hurt like hell.

  "What?" said Magnus. "It's lucky we can hear anything in here."r />
  "That's what I just said," said Laurie. "Do you have to beat the metal sheets in such an enclosed space?"

  "It's probably since we're beating the engine-shroud sheets in an enclosed space," said Magnus, as loud as he could.

  Laurie stopped and regarded the Viking. He was an utter wizard when it came to turbocharged and supercharged engines, as good as Rob, which considering one year ago he'd never seen a combustion engine was marvellous all by itself, he thought. That's if I can think. He walked over to the metalworkers and waved his arms for them to stop. They did, and pulled little moulded wax plugs from their ears.

  "Cheers," said Laurie. "Take a five-minute break or something?" The women smiled at him, and left through a small side door in the cavernous rectangular-walled space, chattering to themselves. Then Beowulf and Thorfinn entered via the same open door, and came up to the prow of the King's longship, standing on her support beams, high in the air.

  "Hellsbaene," said Beowulf, holding out his hand and running his fingertips down the hardwood keel. "This time we will fix you properly." Seventy-five feet, from her ornamental dragon's head on her prow to her rear, and eighteen-feet wide, with space for thirty rowing benches, Beowulf's ship rested on her bare frame, the rest of the ship lying around the walls of the dock.

  "So, you're keeping the beasts then," said Laurie, as the men inspected the ship from underneath, standing up between the skeleton timber frame.

  Taken from Laurie's Avro Lancaster, the Hades' Express, the pair of Rolls-Royce Merlin V-12's rested on their custom engine mounts, at the rear of the longship, low against the hull. Each V-12, with a two-stage supercharger, and now with a turbocharger taken from Damage Inc.'s parts engines displaced over sixteen-hundred cubic inches, and Laurie mused, drank fuel worse than a shipload of sailors run aground at a beer festival. The smell of fish oil overpowered the stench of motor oil, the engines exterior surfaces wiped with the foul-smelling fish residue to prevent rust from ocean water.

  "Tell me again," said Thorfinn, crinkling his nose, "what happened when you took her past three-quarter power?"

  The two Vikings beamed. "Oh, we almost died," said Beowulf, grinning.

  "It's a little unstable," said Magnus. "Lucius told me the word for it. Hydroplaning. Her rear end just swung side to side as if possessed. And she almost flipped back over four or five times, her prow barely touches the water as it is. Magnificent."

  "We have a solution for that," said Thorfinn, "but you might not want to hear it, Laurie."

  "And what's that mate?"

  "Spoilers," said Rob. "We'll need to chop up the Lancaster a bit more. But trust us. You're going to love it."

  The women finishing their break found Laurie with his head in his hands, mumbling dark words to himself, whilst the men around him bantered like naughty boys, deep in the bones of Hellsbaene.

  COMMANDER LUCIUS INSPECTED the row of aircraft sitting on the concrete airstrip. The seven machines represented the sum of the Republic Air Force, built over the first year of its existence. Sunlight glinted off the polished metal surfaces here and there, mostly from around the radial cowlings of the single-engine aeroplanes. These were Gruder Mark IV's, one tech level up from the deathtraps he'd flown with his Junior Pilots when the Inquisition landed their first invasion fleet, of which only one still survived, now mounted high on a pole at the entrance to The Pit's Aerodrome.

  Ella Gruder knows her shit, he thought. I guess flying and tinkering on airplanes since you were a child helps. And they're still death traps, compared to the Damage Inc. He'd flown over North America and Europe, selling war bonds in a modified B-17, until that fateful day his superior told him they'd be joining a nighttime bombing raid for 'experience.'

  Least I don't have to fly them anymore.

  The memory of the entire wing shearing off Jake Marsh's aircraft and taking down both him and his gunner Jill into the ground far below spinning like a devil's own torpedo caused him to shudder.

  Marietta had seen to that, after the battle had been won. A physics professor's brain was just too damn valuable.

  Lucius's team of junior pilots, apprentice mechanics, and ground crew watched the commander finish his circuit. Ella called these aircraft a cross between a Morane-Saulnier H and a Fokker Eindecker, with a wingspan of just over thirty feet, and twenty-foot long. The entire aeroplane constructed from wood, metal being in short supply.

  What isn't?

  The bottom third of the radial engines stuck out from the cowling, and just behind the single cockpit, a metal tri-masted pole sent connected wires to various points on the wings. To Lucius's eye, for all they represented in technological advancement, they were medieval.

  "Well done," said Lucius, to the support crews. "Get them back inside. Mechanics, return to the engine shop. And pilots?" They saluted. "I'm sorry, but today's short flights are cancelled. There's been a hiccup in gas production. It's now flying in emergency cases only. But there's always the gliders. Get up that practice hill and continue mastering your art. That's all."

  The eight pilots saluted once more, and dispersed, heading to the hills behind the aerodrome.

  THE THREE-FOOT long wooden aircraft smashed against the stony ground, at the base of Flight Hill. The scale model of her latest design of the baby Junkers, made from the lightest wood available, sourced from the region where the bomber crews first met the Vikings. It resembled balsa wood, and it seemed, broke as easily too.

  "Scheissen," said Ella, walking over to the crash site, and the ten-foot-long wing in four pieces. "Well the wing structure is an improvement," she said to Fang, trotting by her side. The dog looked at her, tongue lolling out. "My thoughts exactly."

  She sat next to the wreckage, cross-legged, and pulled out her scrapbook, now battered, dog-eared, and worn after twenty years of being exposed to Ella's tender administrations.

  Fang fell into a drop position next to her, and started chomping on any twigs within his reach, tail wagging.

  "So, what we have Fang, is a problem." She gazed up at the grey skies, stuck the end of her pencil in her mouth, and pondered some more. And more problems. I don't get it. Why are we here? Why are any of us here? What is the point of dragging people to another world without so much as a by your leave? And why pull only warriors, fighting men, whole warring tribes like the Vikings over thousands of Earth years, a generation or two at a time? Is this a blood sport?

  As she thought that, the memory returned to her. When I duelled Grieg. His aeroplane. In those final moments, she wasn't alone.

  They weren't alone.

  In the briefest flash in her vision, spectator grandstands stretched out either side, filled with roaring, shouting beings of alien majesty, both of human form and not, as she sighted down her hunting rifle, her Helena. Her lance. She couldn't shake that feeling that in that moment, she wasn't flying her aeroplane, but mounted on top a war charger, a stallion.

  But I hit him. Shot him. He could not have lived.

  Then it all went black as I fell toward the earth, and woke up on the beach, badly injured.

  She stared at the sky. Who are you?

  The breeze caressed her face, and the two suns shone down, as Fang broke apart twig after twig.

  Life continued. It was all the answer she was going to get.

  I will find out, she thought to herself, and when I do, there's going to be hell to pay.

  But now, back to more tangible problems, like designing an aeroplane to carry a dozen men and their gear over the top of a mountain after a few hundred miles. You know, Ella, easy ones.

  Despite herself, she laughed, and concentrated on the task at hand. Flying.

  And not dying.

  Chapter Eight

  JADE FALCON

  A SINGLE OIL lantern illuminated the small bedroom. Its walls were covered in drawings and found treasures nailed to the walls, random and chaotic. Beautiful. It was Amelia's bedroom, and her mother regarded it. After years and years of always travelling around, it was still
weird to see a bedroom that looked like her child's bedroom, and not just a temporary shelter, on the next assignment for the Luftwaffe.

  Message Bear sat by the head of the bed resting against a brown pillow. If only that teddy bear could talk.

  The moment of quiet passed, as Amelia ran back up the hallway, past her mother, and in one leap jumped into the bed. "There I've brushed my teeth, okay?"

  "I shouldn't have to tell you every night."

  "You're not here every night."

  "What do you mean? I am here most nights. Well a lot of nights. Look, you're the one who wanted Griffin and the others to tuck you in and read you stories at night, remember?"

  The child sighed, and rolled her eyes, in the way that some adults just never understand.

  Ella laughed. Or forced herself to laugh, worried she'd missed something obvious. "Come on you, let's get you to sleep."

  Amelia snuggled in under the woollen blanket.

  "I have a joke for you. Are you ready?" Eyes blinked at her. "What is brown, sticky and walks through the dessert?"

  No reply.

  "A caramel." Ella slapped her knee in mirth. Her child again rolled her eyes.

  "I think that's desert, not dessert, Mummy."

  "Ah. Well." Awkward silence. "Everything still going okay at school?"

  "Yes," said an exasperated Amelia. "I helped the twins with their maths at lunch. They are getting a bit behind, but doing okay."

  "Ah," said Ella, "the twins." The twins that Amelia had put in hospital. The now former scourge of the Republic School system. She had never found out what really happened on the day of the invasion in the emergency caverns. When Ella had recovered from her own injuries, Merrion had told her the bullies had got their just reward, and that there was nothing more to discuss. Amelia had taken full responsibility, matter closed.

  Amelia had sorted it out. Then refused to discuss it.

  Whatever did happen in that cave, that day, her child had gone back to her regular self, but more assured, more confident. In effect, she'd grown up. Gained a little more independence. Taking sparring classes from Griffin and Snorri. Metalsmithing from Magnus. Hunting with Mick. This both excited and terrified Ella simultaneously. My baby girl! Mein Gott.