Page 71 of Alien Viking's Plunder

Josie sat back down, still holding Tornado in case this wasn’t Ninja. And in case it was, but he had forgotten her. He was still an alien predator, and she knew she should never trust him completely.

The fenr came all the way up to her. It was clearly him. He still had a long patch along his spine where the wound seemed to have mostly healed, but where the fur hadn’t grown in yet.

“Hey, Ninja,” Josie said, glad for the interruption but still fighting off darkness. “You look well. How big will you grow, I wonder?”

He had grown noticeably in just a day or two, and he looked more dangerous than before. His moves were still playful, but now they were smoother and there was more power in them.

He got all the way over to her and looked up from close by. Josie slowly reached over and scratched his furry head. “Yeah. That other one is gone:”

The words made the pain well up in her, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “Damn it.”

When she opened them, the fenr was still there, tilting its head and looking up at her.

Josie got up. “Let’s see if we can find you something to eat.” The door to the hut was open, but Ninja stayed on the outside.

“Smells weird to you, huh?” Josie said as she went inside.

The hut was cold, and it looked pretty tidy. There were still glowing embers deep in the ash in the fireplace in the middle, and Josie added firewood and kindling and managed to get a fire burning. She found dried meat and tossed some slices to Ninja, who attacked and devoured them with even more enthusiasm than he had the keigr guts.

She wasn’t sure what to do with the fire except have it warm up the hut. She had zero appetite.

Leaning into the door frame, she stood there for a long time, just watching Ninja eat. He trotted around the area for a while, trying to entice Josie to play. But he was so big now that he might do some real damage to her without meaning to, so she didn’t bite. She had never felt less inclined the play in the snow.

The sun had set when Ninja trotted away the same way he had come, tails rotating happily and only stopping once to look back at Josie.

“Bye, Ninja,” she said. “I think that’s better for all of us. A wild predator shouldn’t be domesticated.”

The starry sky was spectacular, but she didn’t really notice. She only noticed the cold wind before she went inside the hut and sat down on the furs, trying to ignore that Bragr’s scent was still in the room.

The emptiness and the sadness were becoming unbearable. The only thing she had to cling to was that she would find Aretha, whatever the cost. But the impossibility of it was hard to get past. She was a total stranger on this planet. If it hadn’t been for Bragr, she would have been dead several times. If Aretha was held captive by Gornt, she would have to fight her way through many layers of probably his best zombies. Alien monster zombies, by the sound of it, ones that even the best Viking warriors lost to.

Without noticing, she had grabbed Tornado and caressed its razor sharp edge. It had been years since the last time she’d been cutting.

She set the spear back down. She’d gotten past that. She wasn’t about to start again, despite the grief and desperate loneliness she felt.

Bragr had the image of his mother as an ally against the demons inside him. Josie had something else, she decided on the spot. She had her own strength that she got from surviving the head injury and the neural lace, as well as the toughness to not collapse in despair when she was abducted by a space Viking. She didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. But she knew she was strong enough to handle it.

Putting more wood on the fire, she laid down on the bench and closed her eyes.

She got no sleep that night. It was a relief when morning came and she could get the day started after all the tears through the night. Probably it would be the final day of her life, but she was not going to abandon Aretha to her fate.

When she went outside, it was still night time. Realizing she couldn’t drive the flying sled in the dark, she forced herself to eat some food and then waited until Straum made the sky blue in the east. She got into the bright red shortship and slowly flew along the ridge of the mountain, going north, just like Bragr and she had done the day before. That was the way to the chief’s estate that Gornt now occupied and where Aretha and the others were kept.

Gaining confidence in her piloting skills and the abilities of the shortship, she sped up and had the craft skim ten feet above the snow.

When the eastern sky got really bright, she stopped, set the shortship down, and stood on the ground with Tornado in her hand. When the first sliver of Straum appeared above the dark mountains in the distance with a blue flash she could feel inside her, she reached the spear to the sky and saw sparks travel all along the edge of the spearhead. The light from the pulsar sent tingles out through her limbs, ending up at her fingertips.

She turned the headset back on. “That’s the rise of Straum, the pulsar that Gardr orbits. Notice the two beams of electromagnetic— ”

“Josie?!”

She froze. That was Aretha’s voice! She must be in comms range, which meant she couldn’t be far away.

“Ari?!”

“Hey! I never thought I’d hear from you again! Are you alive?”

“I think so,” Josie laughed, filled with relief at hearing her friend’s voice. “If not, it’s a weird afterlife. You?”

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