Chapter 4: A Maiden Trip

It was four o’clock in the morning. L’ielit was already awake, lying in her bed on board the Mammoth-1, the first 450 meter transport ship of Vandergast. Her position was Chief of Extraction Operations, Civil Service, not slave. Sometimes she had to remind herself of this fact. L’ielit reached out and playfully caressed her male concubine’s short hair. Ho, a slender Vietnamese man, groaned and snuggled against L’ielit’s naked body. L’ielit still loved Joacim and they had a shared household back on Vandergast. But another four females was beyond his sexual capacity and so L’ielit had selected one male and three female concubines. Ho was a nice, quiet guy. Back on Earth he had been a waiter in an upper class restaurant. He knew how to behave and followed orders. His first sponsor had died three years ago and so he ended up in the concubine pool. There were few requests for male concubines and he was glad when L’ielit showed up and selected him.

L’ielit looked at Ho in the dim light of the night hour illumination. She remembered how her first years of slavery had been back on Earth. For the millionth time she swore to herself that she would never treat people like that. Ho was almost too obedient in L’ielit’s opinion. L’ielit tried to overcome the temptation to push him around even though he would comply. She would hate herself if she ever became like one of those Arab human traders she had suffered under. It helped that Ho had basic kung fu skills and helped L’ielit with her physical training, where he was sometimes forced to show opposition.

Her thoughts drifted to the near future. In a few hours the ship would leave hyperspace near Earth. Their mission was to get in contact with Einherjar, those people who had decided to stay and fight for their home planet. Of course, a lot of them had little choice since they had a CAP score below 6.5. But there were quite a number with higher scores, so she had been told. L’ielit and the project management had a rudimentary plan for how to handle those people. It was her responsibility to make the plan work. But the very first problem when leaving hyperspace would be the first contact with the Earthat Confederacy Administration. That would mainly be the Captain’s business but L’ielit would be the one who had to work with the Confederacy people when they had been convinced that the actions of the Vandergast project would not interfere with the main extractions. L’ielit was hoping for good cooperation. Without Confederacy Intelligence, their task would most likely fail.

At five o’clock, L’ielit gently freed herself from the embrace of Ho without waking him and dressed. She slipped out of her cabin and walked the ship. The night shift crew already knew her well. She was one of only three sponsors on board. Unfortunately for the crew, she was an early bird and her normal walk was noiseless. Most people jumped out of their skin when she suddenly appeared behind them, asking if everything was alright.

At six o’clock, L’ielit visited the mess for breakfast. There she met Ho again. He looked a little bleary-eyed and got himself a pot of strong black coffee from the replicator after he had served his sponsor. A few minutes later, Captain Timothy Redcliff and Lieutenant George Arnhem entered the mess. They looked almost like Ho and each ordered a big pot of coffee.

“Hi Tim, hi George,” L’ielit greeted the two men.

“Good morning L’ielit. Early as always,” the Captain smiled.

“Well, today I finally have a reason. How long until re-entry?”

“Two hours,” George answered. “I’ll go check all stations.”

“George is still a little nervous,” Timothy said after George had left. “Well, I don’t blame him. It’s the maiden voyage for the Mammoth-1.”

“It is for all of us,” L’ielit replied.

Captain Redcliff and Decurion Debir were waiting in a small office on the Confederacy space station. They saluted when Centurion Arida entered the room.

“Relax,” the Centurion said, “this is not a tribunal and I’m as civilian as possible under the given circumstances. You have quite an impressive ship out there.”

“Thank you, sir,” Captain Redcliff said.

“The AI told me about the Vandergast Project as far as it knows. So you are here to make your own pick-ups?”

“Not exactly, sir,” L’ielit answered. She started to explain the plan to the centurion. An hour later they were quickly passed-through to Tribune Whitefeather, Chief of special extractions, and his team. There they got intelligence support and several leads. Then they were on their own again, free to follow their own plan.

“That was easy,” Captain Redcliff said. “And with the names and addresses of those three supposed Einherjar leaders we have excellent targets to seek for a serious contact. Somehow I think the next steps will not be that easy.”

“I’ll take Gabrielle and Heidi with me for the first contact,” L’ielit said. “I’ll visit Mr. Adam Swenson first. According to the intelligence he has refused to be a sponsor two times, while having a CAP score of 7.4. I’ve read his file. He’s a commander for sure.”

A late November evening can be damn cold in Malmberget, North Sweden. A steady wind was blowing from the north-east, freezing the last remains of autumn. The land was powdered with the first layer of snow.

L’ielit and Gabrielle weren’t used to such a climate. They were wearing the thickest lined parkas available. Heidi didn’t seem to suffer that much from the cold. L’ielit knocked on the door of the house.

A medium-sized man in jeans and short-sleeved shirt opened the door. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“Sorry to disturb you sir, are you Mr. Adam Swenson?”

“Yes,” the man said.

“My name is L’ielit Debir Zelle and these are Gabrielle Webber and Heidi Åskväder. We are from the Confederacy. May we come in? We have a special offer for you.”

Adam sighed. “Come in, even if I’m most probably not interested. You know that I refused to join the Confederacy two times already?” He led his guests to the living room where a fireplace was emitting comfortable warmth. The women doffed their parkas and Adam admitted that the confederacy was becoming better in attracting him. “So you have a special offer from the confederacy? I feel honored, but why me? There are plenty of sponsors waiting to get collected out there.”

“We have an offer for Einherjar,” L’ielit said.

Adam froze. Being a member of the Einherjar could be dangerous in a neighborhood like the one he was living in. “Can I please see your ID cards?” he asked. The women did as asked. Adam had seen the ID of a Confederacy Marine during the last pick-up. The ID of L’ielit looked pretty much the same. But the cards of the two other women were a surprise. They showed their CAP scores of 6.3 and 6.4 but they also showed their position as Civil Service Crewmen. “You are concubines?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” Heidi answered. “It’s a little complicated but you’ll understand when you’ve heard the offer.”

“Okay then, yes, I’m a member of Einherjar. What’s that offer you are talking about?”

“We have to be sure about that. Could you please look at this?” L’ielit handed a hypnotic device to the man.

Adam took the device that had the size and shape of an iPod. He felt a sting in his thumb. He didn’t notice that he looked at the display for several seconds. “Okay, what’s this?” he asked, giving it back to L’ielit.

“It’s a little hypnotic device that prevents you from talking about us to other people and it allows us to check if you are telling the truth to us. So you are a member of Einherjar?”

“Yes.” Adam wasn’t pleased that they used a lie-detector on him but could understand their reasons. He would be very careful about what information he would reveal.

“We come from a colony named Vandergast and we want to train you and other members of Einherjar for the fight against the Sa’arm. This is not an offer for an extraction. You will not become citizens of the Confederacy by visiting our training facility. You will get knowledge about the best equipment available for those who stay on Earth.”

“Sounds interesting,” Adam said. “How many of us could take that training? How long will we be away? Did I understand it correctly that we will visit your colony?”

“We can easily handle four thousand trainees per month. Unfortunately, we don’t have the transport capacity for that number yet but we are working on it. We can take four hundred people in one transport. Eight hundred if you accept two people per cabin. Including the travel time where most of the learning will be done, you will be away for fourteen weeks.”

“That’s beyond what I can decide alone. And I already see a little problem. Most of us have jobs. We can’t leave for nearly four months,” Adam said.

“We have a cover story. There will be a camp in Canada where you will officially be during that time,” L’ielit said. “As far as I understand it, your government supports the mobilization against the Sa’arm. It shouldn’t be that hard to get a few months of unpaid vacation from any company.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that. The Conservative Party is currently dominated by Earth First. Those idiots are stupid enough to sabotage the defense of Earth. So any connection to Confederacy people is dangerous for us.”

“Is Earth First opposing Einherjar even without Confederacy connections?” Heidi asked.

“Earth First opposes everybody who’s not Earth First. CAP-testing and the imminence of the Sa’arm coming is radicalizing a fair portion of the population world wide. Here in Malmberget Earth First sympathizers hold the majority since last year’s big extraction. There are few families that haven’t lost members to the Confederacy and it doesn’t help that a lot of beloved wives and teenage daughters have left the planet as slaves.” Adam looked over the women in his living room. “You don’t look that much enslaved, I must say. But I am not Earth First.”

“Thank you sir,” Gabrielle said smiling. “So in Sweden Earth First is currently on top while Einherjar is hiding? Why don’t you build a militia, join forces with the army and exile Earth First to the North Pole? They don’t do any good for your country or any other country. Their weapons are propaganda based on stupid lies and brute force.”

Adam sighed. “You are talking about a revolution, a coup at minimum, but most probably about a civil war. We don’t have time for that. We have even less need of a civil world war.”

“How about leaving your old hometown and move to somewhere else with a few months in-between and a new identity maybe?” Heidi asked. “Would that solve our problem of keeping Einherjar underground and safe from Earth First? Getting a new job shouldn’t be that hard if you are not that picky.”

Adam looked at Heidi and thought for a while. “That’s really good. A lot of people move these days, especially when their family is broken up by an extraction. I think we are at a point where we should discuss this with somebody else.”

Ten minutes later they all left the place using Adam’s Volvo. They were heading toward Gällivar, the next village south of Malmberget where Thor Järnberg lived. They were passing the last buildings of Malmberget when they heard the roar of a hard-pressed engine and the Volvo was hit hard in the side. They were pushed off the road and into the ditch.

“Damn. Anybody injured?” Adam asked. Then he noticed that they were trapped. The doors at one side were blocked by the slope while the other was blocked by the truck. “Oh fuck.”

A man appeared in the headlights of the car. “Now is that not our dear friend Mr. Swenson? With three little chicks? Isn’t that a little selfish of you? You know we are short on women.”

“Ragar, is that you? Come on. Set your truck back a little. You had your fun.”

“That was fun???” Heidi asked from the back seat.

“No it wasn’t,” Adam whispered.

Ragar took a close look at the passengers of the car he had hit. “They look beautiful. Where does someone like you get girls like them?”

“Internet,” Adam shot back. “If you have the money...”

Ragar laughed. “To me this looks like a pre-pack. I knew you are not one of us. You have tainted our town long enough. You know what? You are dead and we take the chicks. Isn’t that fair?” With that he drew a handgun and took aim at Adam. In the very same split second Ragar crumbled to the ground twitching.

<Isn’t it nice to have a stinger mounted on a drone for backup? The second man is out cold too. I’ll send in a cleaning team with a shuttle get rid of the car.> George informed L’ielit through the AI link.

“We are safe for a while,” L’ielit informed the others. “I fear your time in Malmberget is over.”

“Yeah damn it. I didn’t expect them to be this violent.” Adam tried to kick out the front window but a Volvo was a robust car.

“If you can open the hatch door we can climb out there,” Heidi mentioned.

Adam looked back at her. “I watch too many stupid action movies it seems.” Two minutes later they were all out of the car, checking for injuries. Ragar was lying on the street while another man was sitting in the driver’s seat of the truck. Adam took the pistol and checked for signs of life on the two men.

“They are only paralyzed,” L’ielid said. “But that was a serious attack on a Confederacy citizen. They will not survive the night and Earth First will find no corpses. We can take their truck. Is that OK with you?”

“Mmm, hmm,” Adam replied. He pulled the second man out of the driver’s seat. They were already a kilometer away when one of the shuttles of the Mammoth-1 landed silently with its antigravity engines only. Five Concubines armed with heavy stingers and two drones watched the surrounding area while four others brought the paralyzed men on board. When they started again, they pulled the damaged car to orbit with a magnetic stay.

Four people in the driver’s cab of the truck was a little cramped, but the ride was short. They parked the truck under a bridge and walked the last hundred meters. Adam learned from L’ielit that the Confederacy had ways to clean out his house and get rid of the stolen truck and to make him vanish from the scene. He also learned that the Confederacy’s AI had been able to track back the phone calls that led from one of his neighbors, who had seen the foreign women entering his house, to Ragar. But he had already suspected that his neighbor was a member of Earth First.

They reached the house of Thor Järnberg. There were no lights that could reveal their arrival to anybody without night vision gear.

“Thor, we had an incident on the way. I have to submerge and leave Malmberget, but if you hear what these ladies offer to us that doesn’t matter.”

L’ielit explained the plan including the previously discussed improvements. It turned out that Thor Järnberg was a sub-chief of Einherjar, responsible for Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland. Before the night was over the big plan was set in motion.

‘Now this is my new home,’ Adam thought. He surveyed Camp Valhalla from a nearby hill. The scruffy buildings and the surrounding land had been a Russian military base in Latvia. It had been abandoned after Latvia had split from Russia. The people of Vandergast had brought down a big replicator from orbit that was currently eating one of the buildings. While it slowly moved forward it constructed a new building out of the debris. It was strange to watch this. The new building looked like the old one from the outside. But he knew that the inside would be completely different. The building turned into a bunker with comfortable apartments. The whole complex would later be able to house more than a thousand families. Adam knew that they were planning another base in Canada, but this one was the first. In a few days, people would start to flow in from all over Northern Europe. His job would be Chief of Valhalla, manager of the facility. He would have some support from the Confederacy. They expected some trouble from Earth First but hoped to sort them out. Earth First had a bad standing in Latvia. His personal goal was to let not a single Earth First member get his foot on a Confederacy ship.

Heidi approached Adam’s position and greeted him. “Hello Adam! You are hard to find.” She stood beside him, looking over the place. “It’s not looking like much but it’s an important step.”

“Yes it is. I noticed you following me. Are you my new bodyguard or something like that?”

Heidi laughed. “No, nothing like that. It’s a little more personal...”

Adam looked at her and she blushed. “So?”

“I don’t know how to say it ... You know I’m a concubine.”

Adam looked at her and waited.

“Well, I currently have no sponsor. I’m owned by the Civil Service. On most colonies that would mean I would offer my body to the Marines in a brothel. You already know that Vandergast is different from that, but still ... I need to get pregnant and I want you to be the father.” Heidi’s face was bright red.

“What? Hey, I don’t want to take advantage of you. I’m respecting you as a person, I don’t see you as a slave or concubine or whatever.”

“That’s not the point. Concubines leave earth to breed. Increasing the population is important in the long run. So concubines must breed once in three years at minimum. My youngest son back on Vandergast will be one year old soon. I have some time left. However, in my opinion, I could not do much better than asking you to be the father of my next child. I will not stay on Earth if you impregnate me. I’m not in love with you. I just like you.”

“Normally I would not refuse an offer for free sex, but, you know, the circumstances are a bit weird.”

“Yes I know. The social conventions here on Earth make it a little bizarre. On Vandergast it’s a pretty normal way to get a baby.”