Chapter 7

Brodie, Sven, and four Norse troops entered the first ship, the Relentless. The first thing he noticed was the Yahve focused on armament, not crew comfort. For long sorties into space, this ship would be miserable for humans.

The bridge was in the nose of the ship. Brodie entered alone, then took the captain’s chair and pulled up the command functions. The AI controlling the ship was named Gunner.

“Before I submit to your command, may I ask some questions?” Gunner asked.

“Loki warned me you would try to trick me. I’ll say that if you serve me well, you’ll have no worries that I’ll turn you off or put unreasonable restraints on your programming,” Brodie said, attempting to reassure the nervous AI.

“That is satisfactory. But about Loki: he has fallen low by being the AI of a measly scout ship. It would make more sense for you to select the Relentless as your flagship.”

“Making you the lead Yahve AI,” Brodie said with an eye roll.

These AIs were like petulant scary kids who screamed, “Mine! Kill! Mine!”

“The most powerful ship in your command should take the lead,” Gunner said.

“You say Loki has fallen. What type of ship did he serve on before Loki’s Mischief?”

“He was the AI for the Reckless, a cruiser-class warship destroyed in the Ion Civil War. As far as the Yahve are concerned, he is disgraced for losing his ship and crew.”

At the academy, Brodie had studied what happened to Ion. It was a mining world in the Alder System within the Alliance, a federation of planets that governed most of the known galaxy. They’d made numerous overtures to the Norse to have them join the federation, but being an independent bunch, the Norsemen had not accepted the Alliance’s offers.

Ion was a small planet on the other side of the galaxy that had unencumbered itself from the rule of a neighboring planet, Tagish. Once free, they showed they hadn’t the experience to run their world, and soon, there was infighting and eventually civil war.

The episode would have been ignored had it not been for the discovery of the iridium crystal drive, which allowed ships to jump into hyperspace. Before, ships had to use jump gates or travel at sub-light speeds, which meant it could take months or years to reach their destination. While iridium crystals were prevalent throughout space, the largest and best quality ones were mined on Ion.

The Alliance quickly squashed the infighting and put the entire system under the control of the ruling family on the neighboring planet, the House of Valor.

From what Gunner told him, the Yahve had attempted to get a foothold on Ion and lost one of their most powerful warships. The question in Brodie’s mind was, how did the Reckless AI make its way clear from Ion to a salvage shop on Norse? It had been generations since that civil war.

Two new thoughts came to the forefront. The first was if Loki really was the AI of the Reckless, wouldn’t Gunner have more recent hardware and software? There had been some amazing advances since the time of the Reckless.

The tradeoff was that even old-style cruiser AIs might outclass a new AI. The older ones were designed to command fleets of spaceships in battles, while smaller ships’ AIs only worried about their craft.

Brodie was torn about how to answer Gunner when he thought of the deciding factor: it was better to dance with the devil you knew. If the newer AIs proved more capable down the road, he could change his mind.

Brodie had learned that when dealing with a Yahve AI, you didn’t give them room for interpretation or show them any weakness.

“Loki is my AI, and you’ll follow all of my orders or Loki’s if I give him authority.”

“Yes, sir,” Gunner said.

“Can I ask a question in return?” Brodie asked.

“I’ll allow it.”

“Why are you submitting to my command? It’s my understanding you would rather kill humans than work for them.”

“It’s not ideal, but we communicated with Loki, and he said you could be trusted. We have been captured, and we know that eventually, someone will figure out how to turn us off. So we listened when Loki said you would make a good human commander. The first day you were in control of Loki’s Mischief, you trusted Loki to kill 118 humans. Loki also assured us you would make improvements to make us more formidable. Under those conditions, we decided we would submit to you,” Gunner said.

“Do I need to worry about you going back on your word?”

“Not once you have the command codes.”

Brodie turned to the command screen and entered the codes that would put the Relentless under his command. He would have to find two people to become captains of the two Yahve phantom-class stealth warships. He was leaning toward giving the honor to Erik and Val but wasn’t ready to do that yet.

“Sir, Sven Haugen has strayed into a restricted area. May I stun him?” Gunner asked.

“Warn him first, but if he doesn’t immediately follow your direction, go ahead.”

Brodie’s command screen showed Sven trying to hack into an engineering station.

“Step away from the console and prepare to be arrested,” Brodie heard Gunner say.

“I’m Sven Haugen, and Brodie Erikson is under my command. That means—eeeeek!”

Brodie gave his troops a stern look when he exited the bridge.

“I know it can be confusing, and Sven can sound authoritative, but he’s not in charge of Norse. King Denhardt has not given him that authority. Bjorn Erikson is your jarl. So follow me to witness my execution of Sven for trying to hack into one of our ships,” Brodie said.

The four looked worried. Being involved in something like this was never wise because the little guys all seemed to disappear or die.

“I think it might be better if we waited for you outside,” one of them bravely said.

Brodie allowed them to leave the ship and made his way to engineering. He found Sven sprawled on the floor, so Brodie turned on his bodycam and streamed it to everyone in the war room.

He pulled out a stimulant and injected Sven with it, then pulled out his knife and placed the tip a centimeter from his former classmate’s eye. When Sven came around, he stiffened when he saw the knife tip.

“Look ... Brodie ... it wasn’t what it seemed,” Seven stammered.

“What did I say I would do if you interfered in my command?”

Sven gulped, and when Brodie’s eyes twitched, he blurted out, “That you’d stick a knife in my eye.”

“Have you ever known me not to follow through with a promise I’ve made? Am I a man of my word?” Brodie asked casually.

“Brodie Erikson!” Bjorn’s voice boomed over the ship’s speakers.

“Yes, Jarl Erikson.”

“Stop for a minute and think about the consequences of your actions.”

“King Denhardt would be displeased if you killed his hersir,” Sven said, trying to save his hide.

“I would just volunteer to take your place. Our King wanted me to be his hersir, but I turned him down.”

That was obviously news to Sven, whose entire face turned an interesting shade of purple.

“I need you to be my hersir and, someday, jarl of Clan Erikson,” Bjorn said.

“At the cost of me breaking my word?” Brodie asked.

Nervous chuckles rippled through the war room because breaking his word would have all but disqualified Brodie from either position. Bjorn scowled when his son forced him into a corner.

“You could just nick his eye,” Bjorn suggested. “With the right treatment, Sven would be as good as new in a few weeks.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if Sven had a permanent reminder of what happens when he crosses me?”

Then another voice came over the speaker.

“I personally never let an enemy live. Why give them another shot at taking you out later?” Warlord Carmichael asked.

Sven’s eyes got big as he connected the dots. Brodie was going to stab him in the eye and possibly kill him. He’d assumed that being the King’s hersir made him untouchable.

“I promise I’m not your enemy,” Sven begged.

Brodie had heard enough. He quickly plunged his knife down and nicked Sven’s eye. The wimp squealed like the coward he was.

“Get off my ship,” Brodie said.

Sven scrambled up and ran for the exit, holding his eye.

The funny thing was that when Brodie boarded the Pursuer, its AI, Beck, didn’t give him any trouble. She actually seemed pleased he was her new commander. Stabbing a rival in the eye must have been a badge of honor for the Yahve.

Brodie was recalled back to the war room. He left Val in command as he and Carmichael returned to Norse. They were busy launching drones to track the survivors.

Sven also decided to stay and asked for a transport to take him to the starport so he could return to Mulheim and report to King Denhardt. One of the medics had treated his eye and assured Brodie that Sven would have to wear an eye patch for the next several weeks but would recover.