Chapter 2

As soon as they landed, Brodie hurried to his quarters to get dressed. He didn’t need there to be a vid showing him being taken into custody wearing only a pair of shorts. As he pulled on his shirt, he noticed Loki had put a scorecard of sorts on his display screen.

Death Count
Loki – 118
Brodie – 3
Erik – 0
Val – 0

Someone was going to have to explain where they got this AI. It was as if Loki had taken on the mythical god’s personality. Almost every AI he’d encountered never showed excitement, especially during combat. Most had no personality to speak of. But as he thought about it, he decided he would rather have an overzealous AI than be dead, so he let his worries go for the moment.

There were more important things to worry about, like the swarm of security transports racing to the spaceport. The overriding question was: who was out to kidnap him?

As he pulled on his boots, Brodie decided he should have a word with his AI.

“My father’s security team will be here in a moment, and none of them are to be harmed. Allow them access and cooperate with their investigation. If they attempt to shut you down or restrict your programming, you may defend yourself and the ship by non-lethal means.

“Before I get back, fix that hole in the side of my ship. While I’m not on the ship, you are in charge unless either Val or Erik is onboard,” Brodie said.

“If both are present, who’s in charge?”

That sounded like a question an AI would ask.

“Who do you suggest?”

“Val for combat situations, and Erik for everything else,” Loki said.

“Make it so.”

“Yes, sir. Am I allowed to make repairs beyond the hull breach?”

“Yes.”

Brodie looked at the external view screen and saw the security team standing outside. He grabbed his duffle and exited the ship.

Lorelei ‘Elle’ Gundersen and Katja ‘Kat’ Fiske were in a heated discussion.

“I thought my people were boarding a dilapidated scout ship. Instead, I lost two of my best ships and over a hundred men and women!” Kat barked.

Elle had seen the pirate get mad before, but this was a new level of rage. She was glad for the millions of kilometers of space that separated them.

Kat was the warlord of the pirates who called themselves ‘The Lost Ones.’ Elle watched as she paced in her office within an asteroid that served as The Lost Ones’ home base.

Elle was the jarl of the Gundersen clan and benefactor to The Lost Ones. The pirates took care of matters the Gundersen clan didn’t want to have tied to them, such as removing the Erikson hersir before he could take command.

The jarl’s office had floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Ægir Sea. The view never failed to impress her visitors. The building itself was made out of wood and had been shaped like a pearl. The outside had been covered with a material made from genuine crushed pearls so it gleamed in the sunshine. It could be seen from many klicks out at sea and acted as a beacon if a ship lost navigation.

By a fluke, one of the loggers who’d traveled to Norse from Mulheim recognized Brodie Erikson and collected the notification bounty. She’d quickly sent drones to track Brodie and found him and his childhood friends entering the old scout ship, Loki’s Mischief. It was too good an opportunity to pass up when his friends left, leaving Brodie alone and an easy target—or so she’d thought.

Elle had arranged for The Lost Ones to be on standby in case they got lucky, so they were in place when she notified Kat. Everything seemed to be coming together when she watched Kat’s team breach the hull and enter the ship. Then all hell had broken loose. Less than five minutes after the breach, all life signs of the boarding team had vanished.

In a fit of rage, Kat had sent her two best attack ships after Loki’s Mischief. From long range, they’d launched missiles to blow it out of the sky, only to see the scout prove to be more than it seemed as it survived the initial attack. The counterattack had consisted of two powerful electromagnetic pulse rounds that disabled Kat’s ships. With no engines or thrusters to keep them aloft, they’d plummeted to the surface, where one exploded, causing a massive fire. The other vessel had suffered severe damage and the loss of all hands.

“There was no way to know in advance that the scout ship had been upgraded. As far as we knew, it had been parked in the same location for the past fifteen years and was a scrap derelict,” Elle said.

Scrap ships were often used for parts for other craft, and this one shouldn’t have been able to even get off the ground.

“Let me put a hole in his head, and we’ll be done with this,” Kat said.

That was both the best and worst thing about Kat: she was a hammer in search of a nail. She looked at every problem as something extreme violence could solve. Now that everyone knew that Brodie had returned, her plan would lead everyone back to the pirates and then the Gundersons.

“If we did that, we would risk exposure. We’re playing for higher stakes than simply killing Brodie Erikson. We go to Plan B and play the long game now.

“Speaking of exposure, you need to initiate the self-destruct on the damaged ship. We can’t risk them discovering The Lost Ones’ involvement in the abduction attempt,” Elle said.

“I wanted to wait until it was full of rescue workers before I detonated it.”

“You mean you don’t have remote access because the EMP blast took down all electronics.”

Kat shrugged, which confirmed Elle’s fears.

“I’ll take care of it,” Elle said and pulled out her personal communicator.

A couple of keystrokes sent the drone monitoring the crash site straight down into the hull of the derelict frigate. It then detonated a small bomb, triggering a chain reaction that destroyed all evidence as to who’d owned it.

“You owe me two new ships,” Kat fumed.

“I have a special treat for you. I have two Yahve phantom-class stealth warships, and all you’ll have to do is retrofit life support and bypass their AIs,” Elle said.

Kat perked up because the Yahve were considered highly hostile to humans. Their philosophy was to weaponize first and feed their people second. Yahve phantom-class ships would be perfect for pirates.

Elle neglected to tell her that the Yahve AIs had proven to be a hardy bunch, and Elle’s engineers had given up trying to remove them from the ships. With them on board, the AIs found creative ways to kill humans. Elle was sure Kat would figure out how to shut them down, but she wasn’t sure whether that process would destroy the ships.

Brodie hadn’t seen his parents since leaving for school. His mother and father stood inside the grand entrance, looking regal as he walked in. As the head of all the clans on Norse, his father answered only to their King. Brodie knew this greeting was being vid-cast across the Norsemen Empire.

“Brodie Erikson, that which has a bad beginning is likely to have a bad ending,” Bjorn stated formally.

Brodie took a moment to remember the proper response. His father was acknowledging his encounter with the pirate ships.

“Where wolf’s ears are, wolf’s teeth are near. Isn’t it better to fight your foes in the field than to be burned in your home?” Brodie asked.

Bjorn’s serious demeanor switched to one of pride and joy. He opened his arms wide and said, “Come and greet your father and mother. Then we’ll swear you in as the clan’s hersir.”

He hugged his parents and then got down on one knee, where his father quickly swore him in. At that point, the vid feed cut off, and his father suddenly looked upset.

“On your first night home, you killed over a hundred men and women. What were you thinking?”

“I did as I was trained. I stayed alive and killed over a hundred enemies.”

His father didn’t have an answer to that, so he did what he did best: turned on his heel and left Brodie with his mother, Freya.

“Come, you look frail. Did they feed you at that academy?”

“Yes, Mother, they did.”

“Obviously, not enough. Come eat, and then we’ll make you presentable for tonight’s event.”

Brodie knew it was useless to defy Freya. She was a formidable woman in her own right.

The Pegasus luxury yacht was en route back to Norse. It carried the three heirs of the Callan, Eike, and Fiske clans who’d met with King Denhardt. They sat in the observation lounge, drinking cocktails and discussing recent events.

Betrina—B to her friends—Eike’s clan ran the lumber business on Norse. They were wealthy compared to the other clans and used their money to bend others to their will.

B had a figure like a vid star, and every heir on Norse lusted after her. Notably, her long neck screamed for someone’s hands to squeeze it while they bred her. Her long black hair dangled down her back as though waiting to be fisted. B had cunning green eyes that pierced anything, feared nothing, and gleamed with intelligence. All that, plus her kissable lips, made B a wet dream teen boys had to hide their bedsheets over.

She was arguing with Johan Callan, whose clan was responsible for farming. The third member of their travel party was Karl Fiske, whose family was into fishing. Karl had stepped away to take an urgent call.