Viking Love Beyond Time (Time Travel Romance)
Read Viking Love Beyond Time (Time Travel Romance) Online
Authors: Kathryn Anderson
Tags: #Trading, #Mission, #25th Century, #Futuristic, #Time Travel, #Space Travel, #Romanc, #Vikings, #Earth, #Female Captain, #Ship, #9th Century, #Adventure, #Sea King, #Adult, #Erotic, #Sexy, #Black Hole, #Time Warp
VIKING LOVE BEYOND TIME
BY KATE SCARLETT
To Juliet Greenwood
, my BF
now and forever!
And, of course, Kath Freeman!
Preface
Please note – the majority of this novel is set in Anglo Saxon Wessex, I have not used archaic language, I have had my characters speaking and setting out their ideas in modern English, but without the use of too much slang
and
/
or colloquialisms
. If
a few have
crept in I apologise.
APTER ONE - DEEP SPACE - EARTH YEAR 2430
The universe is a void, a vast, achingly empty
,
void.
G
alaxies are
like
jewels scattered at random on a black velvet cloth, their star systems thrown ever outward from the
super massive black holes at their co
re.
Around some of these stars orbit planets and on a small number of these planets life has arisen - in the vast majority of cases primitive, unthinking, unfeeling, simple life. On a small percentage, however, reasoning life has evolved, intelligent beings who are masters of their own destiny and who plan for the future, nourish their children and build dwellings against the vagaries of the weather. On an even smaller number of worlds are beings who have broken the bonds of their planetary existence and thrust free into the
void
, seeking other intelligent beings like themselves
;
trading, occasionally warring, discovering new planets and colonising them.
One of these planets called, by its inhabitants, Earth, orbits a mediocre star tucked away in the middle of a spiral arm of a galaxy called ‘The Milky Way’ and it was Earth which was responsible for the huge unsightly hulk of stretchsteel christened by its owners, slightly tongue in cheek,
“The Star City Colossus”
at present
a
waiting
the go ahead
to enter Nolwean orbit
in order
to off load its cargo of Thidlean gar oil and receive in exchange half a million tonnes of klerth crystals, highly prized on Earth as a substitute for industrial diamonds but extremely volatile in their untreated state.
The commander of the
Colossus
, Captain Alodie Austen, was sitting in the observation deck, biting her lower lip and drumming her nails, (well shaped and manicured but unpainted) on
a
computer terminal whilst staring moodily at the unlit panel above her
,
willing it to flash green, giving her the go ahead to proceed to Nolwean orbit. Once she was given the green light, she could take the ship into a sub-light jump - the trip would take ten seconds.
She sighed deeply - she had already had an irate Vice President Loxley screaming over the holo waves about money being lost by excessive delays, his piggy little face becoming even more porcine in his anger. He had not wanted to listen, had not allowed her to put her case, had not allowed her to explain that she was as eager to get home as he was to save money. She had tried, unsuccessfully, to point out that the delays had been unavoidable - a savage meteor storm off the Straum Belt and a wildcat strike by the gar oil operatives being only two of the headaches she had had to deal with.
Sighing once again and getting to her feet she glanced up. Apart from the floor area, the observation deck of the
Colossus
was a plexiform goldfish bowl and the sight which met her eyes was breathtaking to say the least. Servar, the blue sun of this system, winked hotly over one hundred million kilometres away whilst the planet Nolwe, still five million kilometres distant, glowed green in the void. This being a dense part of the galaxy she was surrounded by colours; blues of new stars, yellows of middle aged stars and the red glow of ancient stars ready to die.
Captain Austen grimaced and took her seat, staring once again at the console, fervently hoping that the Nolweans would not invite her and the crew to be their guests after the cargoes were exchanged, knowing that if they did she would have to accept, the Nolweans being sticklers for protocol. If she lost their goodwill it would probably be the final nail in the coffin of her short career.
Captain Austen sighed once more and glanced up at the holographic chronometer hovering above her head, they had been hanging here she noticed, with ever mounting frustration, for the best part of twenty four hours. She reached backward, groping for the coffee cup she had left on the side table, and gulped down the contents - grimacing as the flat cold bitter liquid assaulted her taste buds. Crumpling the cup in her hand and tossing it in the waste disposal she glanced out once again at the cloudy green mass of Nolwe. As if on cue the console in front of her flickered and filled with a pulsating green light. Grinning, Captain Austen hit the blue button in the centre of the console. There was silence for a moment then the clipped voice of Adair, the Medullan science officer, spoke
“Bridge, yes ma’am”
“We’ve got the ‘all clear’” she replied “let’s get to Nolwe, get the cargoes exchanged and go home”
“Home?” cut in a lazy American voice “home - ain’t we having any shore leave?”
Captain Austen winced - Owen, the second navigator, her weak point, her
bete noir,
the fly in the ointment, the snag in the silk. She took a deep breath, it was a reasonable enough request after all, but wouldn’t he have to be the one to bring it up? She forced herself to remain calm.
“I’m sorry Owen” she replied through gritted teeth “but due to all the delays, not least damage repair time after someone navigated us into a meteor storm, shore leave is not an option on this trip - and anyway, don’t you want to get back to Earth?”
He laughed, “what the hell for? I’ve nothing to get back for, our pay’s drawing interest and I want to buy me some of that aphrodisiac they sell down there, I’ve heard it’s the best in this part of the galaxy”
A
usten
tutted - the man was obsessed - “I’m sorry Owen” she replied “I had no idea your taste ran to bright purple women with tentacles”
Owen laughed “it don’t captain, I aim to try it on a
human
woman”
Austen opened her mouth to inform him that there were no human women on Nolwe when the realisation of what he meant hit her.
She took a deep breath, astounded at his insolence, she badly wanted to get him off her ship, have him kicked out of the company, but her hands were tied, and he knew it. If she reported him she would be classed as an inefficient commander, unable to maintain staff discipline, perhaps only fitted for short hauls like the rest of the female captains working for E & MTC. She decided to treat him like a naughty child and ignore him.
“Navigation, is the course locked in?” she snapped. There was silence for a moment then Owen’s voice replied
“Course set ma’am, light jump at your mark”
Austen pressed two buttons - there was a blinding flash outside, the plexi turned blue, followed by red then the green orb of Nolwe filled the screen.
Yawning, Austen ran her fingers through her closed cropped blonde hair,
well,
she thought
that was an oasis of excitement in a desert of boredom
but then she had always accepted the fact that ninety per cent of space travel was mind numbingly boring, financially rewarding but boring. She had lost count of the space hours she had logged since becoming an E & MTC cadet at fifteen and going on to become the youngest captain in the fleet at twenty two. The hailer crackled.
“Captain, Bradey here, Nolwean orbit achieved” - Bradey, first navigator, a pain in the neck but not as big a pain, thank goodness, as Owen.
“OK Bradey” she replied “have Adair raise the surface and let’s see where they want this lot dumped” Alodie glanced again at the planet. Nolwe was only a medium sized world, slightly smaller than Earth, but technologically very advanced and rich in minerals. The Nolweans had been in space before Earth people had shed furs for cloth, their problem was that they had reached a plateau and had not advanced in tens of thousands of years, it was as if their imagination and drive had stopped functioning.
Adair cut into her thoughts, bringing her the news that Grazifer, shipping director of the Nolwean Trading Collective, had been contacted and was waiting to speak to her. She ordered him to be patched through to her on screen.
“Welcome Captain Austen” he said, the red gash which passed for his mouth moving into what he must assume was a friendly human smile “I trust you have had a pleasant trip”
Austen smiled back “A long trip, shall we say Grazifer, my crew and I are eager to get home”
Grazifer waved his tentacles in what Austen recognised as the Nolwean gesture of regret.
“Ah, then I will not detain you, I trust you have our gar oil”
“We have, ready to beam down on your mark”
Grazifer leaned forward and waved his tentacles over a console in front of him.
“Co-ordinates coming through to your computer Captain - now”
A low humming noise filled the ship and it seemed to vibrate a little. The hold of
The Star City Colossus
was, in effect, a huge steel balloon, a balloon capable of stretching from a diameter of thirty kilometres down to practically zero, leaving just the relatively small living quarters.
Within a very short period of time the exchange was complete and the
Star City Colossus
, now only half her original size, her hold carrying half a million tonnes of klerth crystals, was ready to embark on her journey home - a journey of nine parsecs or almost thirty light years and which, until one hundred years ago, would have been impossible to complete in less than thirty years. That was until a team of Earth scientists, one of whom was, coincidentally, Captain Austen’s great great grandmother, Lucy Anderson, had invented the matter/anti matter mixer and made travel at twenty times the speed of light possible. Captain Austen smiled to herself - and what did you get for all your trouble Grandma? E & MTC took all the mega billion profits and retired you to a little plexi on the outskirts of
London
.
Sighing, she seated herself in front of the console and fastened her safety buckles, two crosswise across her chest, and touching the hailer button began the pre-hyper command check.
“Engineering, are you strapped in and ready?”
“Aye ma’am ready for hyper at your mark”
“Science section, are you ready?”
“Everything checks out here ma’am”
“Navigation, are you ready?”
“Navigation ready, course 020 Captain”
Alodie Austen took a deep breath. Hyper always fazed her, it was the thought of the raw universe bending power at her fingertips, one tiny miscalculation on her part and they could end up trillions of kilometres off course. Her fingers almost danced over the array of buttons on the console and the blackness around them gave way to blue, then eau de nihil as the huge starship kicked into hyper, outrunning the speed of light. The ship bucked and swayed then, shuddering along its length, settled into a smooth forward motion.
Austen unbuckled herself and stretched, then climbing out of the seat entered the turbo lift and ordered it to take her to the bridge. She arrived five seconds later and, as the doors hissed open, she walked into the nerve centre of the ship, banks of computer terminals winked at her and from the two navigation consoles came muted conversation.
“Anything to report?” she asked, grabbing a data board.
Three heads looked up, Bradey, a very experienced fifty year old from
Detroit
, smiled in a supercilious manner and patted the console “Nothing untoward ma’am, course 020 to Earth, plotted as ordered”
Austen raised her eyebrows at him and Bradey’s lips compressed into a tight line, he was all too aware of her
unspoken
meaning. He had almost been dismissed five years ago when, as chief navigator on the E & MTC’s most prestigious starliner “
The Cloudburst
” he had plotted the course from Nolwe to Earth without calling up the latest data and had taken them directly into the path of the collapsed star ‘Copernicus’. It was only a piece of inspired piloting by the then captain of
The Cloudburst
, now Admiral Caligari, which had saved them from being annihilated. Due to his long service, however, Bradey had not been dismissed but had instead been moved to a far less prestigious post as navigator aboard the haulers. Captain Austen had been his navigation cadet at the time and found his manners stuffy, overbearing and arrogant. What his views must be on being commanded by his one time junior were unimaginable.