Einherjar
an excerpt

There was a big black nothing. It was everywhere. It was everything. He couldn’t remember anything else, nothing but the dream of something else. Bits and pieces of pictures of a life. It wasn’t a happy one. He didn’t think he’d want to be a part of it.

He didn’t know how long he’d been in the dark. It didn’t mean anything. Time was nothing. Nothing happened, so no time could pass. He liked it like this, he thought. It was… acceptable. But something was echoing now. Sound, but with meaning, he knew it. If he could just grasp it…

“Awake…”

Was he asleep? He didn’t know. It didn’t make any difference for him. He was just aware of this sound, and it was interrupting his dark.

“Arise! Awake, Einherjar!” The first part made sense, but the last one barely made any sense at all. It tugged at something in his mind. One of those pictures that seemed to emerge, one of his dreams, if he was asleep and dreaming or whatever it was he was doing. Did he really want to wake up if he was asleep? He liked this.

“Awake!” And now it seemed that the choice was stolen from him. Something other than the dark was making itself known. It wasn’t light per se, but it wasn’t like the dark. Or at least, if it was like light, light had changed. Light had a decided sort of red glare. And it involved numbers dancing across his vision. Light, it seemed, had changed. But the numbers quit dancing, and the red haze disappeared. Now everything was… gray. Not light or dark, but gray.

And someone was standing in front of him now. Or at least, it was person-shaped, if he was remembering right. It was hard to tell anything about the person right now. He squinted - and then something that he didn’t remember happened. Suddenly, everything grew lighter. And this person was suddenly clear. This person was a she, apparently. She was dressed unlike anything he’d ever seen before, though.

She was dressed in what could only be called armor, black. It wasn‘t anything that remotely resembled a chain mail bikini or something, but there wasn‘t any mistaking her sex. It seemed to consist of a plate on the chest and narrow shoulder pauldrons. She wore bracers to cover her forearms, and a fauld to cover the waist. She was also wearing greaves and boots, and whatever wasn’t covered in plate was covered with some kind of flexible black material.

He couldn’t help but be glad for all those days he’d stayed awake in Renaissance Lit class. Her helmet was strangely modern in comparison. A sort of tanned face, and prettily angular, and eyes of a decidedly fierce red. And apparently, she was in fantastic shape.

“You’re awake,” she said. Ah. It was her voice.

“I am,” he answered. “Thanks. I was enjoying my sleep you know.”

“Do you remember your name?” she asked.

“What? Of course I do!” Didn’t he? Of course he did! It was… something… “Bob!” he shouted, and suddenly there was this rush. He was Bob, yes, Bob, alone and unmourned, cancer casualty and trying to cheat God out of what he owed. He’d submitted himself to the cryostasis process. But he was awake now, which could only mean…

“You guys have cured cancer!” he shouted in a rare moment of glee.

“We have. We can talk about it later, I promise. Right now, we have to get you out of here.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. He looked around. There were lights on the ceiling, but they weren’t on. The light in the room was coming from some kind of display that lay to his left. The language was strange to his eyes, looking less like English and more like something out of a Tolkien book, but he didn’t pay it very much mind. Looking down at himself, he could see that he was dressed in some kind of skintight gray hospital gown thing. And apparently, he’d managed to get really well-built while sleeping in the tube.

“I mean, I don’t get it,” he said, before the room suddenly shook. A dull boom echoed throughout the room.

“Look, can you not get this later? We really need to go.” she said. She didn’t snap at him, no. She seemed to be totally calm and collected. Nonetheless, despite her calm, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right here.

“Where are we going?” he asked as he stood.

She sighed. “Damn you twenty first century types. Look, I promise I’ll explain everything later. Right now, we have to go.” She obviously wasn’t taking no for an answer.

She spun around and started walking toward what looked like a doorway of some kind. He tried to follow, stumbling slightly. Something was weird about his body. It felt like he was strangely off his kilter somehow. He supposed that maybe it was because he’d been asleep for quite some period of time. But whatever it was, it was going away with every step.

It didn’t stop him from running into the wall, though. He stumbled his way around the tube and somehow took it too fast, running forward to help compensate and keep his balance. He cracked his head on the wall with a ringing sound, almost like a bell.

“Quit clowning around!” the lady in black said. Bob peeled himself off of the wall to see that she was busy pulling the sliding doors apart. They didn’t make any kind of grinding noise or anything, and it didn’t even seem that this woman had a hard time with the task. She stuck her head out, looking one way then the other. “Follow me,” she said. She stepped out slowly, and Bob followed.

Outside the room, the hallway was an absolute mess. It was all dark, but there were lights down lower, along the floor. Everything was still the same white, which made the bloodstains on the floor all that much more stark. Now that they were out here, Bob thought he could hear what sounded like dull explosions echoing from somewhere. They seemed to be coming from down the way to his left.

“Don’t worry,” she said, as if she were reading his thoughts. “You’re not going to see any of that just yet. Just come with me.” She walked slowly down the hall to the right, and Bob did his best to follow. Each step, however, left him feeling more sure, and the world wasn’t feeling quite so foreign to him now. They walked down the hallway to a t-intersection where they took another right.

“We’re going to take the stairs?”

“Yes. What’d you think we were going to use?”

“I dunno. I mean, it is the future now…”

She didn’t say anything, merely pulling open this door too and entering the stairwell. What else could he do but follow?

Now there were definitely shouts, too, and the reports of weapons. Occasionally this would all be punctuated with a loud roar, and Bob had noticed in the hallway that whenever he would hear one of these it always had an explosion of some kind following it. All of this was going on above. The lady cocked her head as if she was listening to something before giving a nod to herself and starting down the stairs.

“Listen, um…”

“What?”

“What’s going on?”

“I told you I’d explain later.”

“I mean, are we at war? Did we finally decide Iran had to go?”

“No.”

“So is the war on terror over then?”

“Yes.”

“Awesome! You mean we have world peace now and everything?”

“Peace?” she snorted. “Hah! We don’t waste our time on that sort of thing. Keep moving.”

This, obviously, was something new. But before he could say anything about it, there was a crashing noise from the stairs below. Bob stared down. He couldn’t tell how high up they were - seven, maybe eight floors? - when a crashing echoed up to them. The woman in front of him froze, looking down.

“Um…” Bob started. “Everything-”

“Shh!” she said, holding up a finger to him. “Wait here.” She crept down the stairs and out of his sight. Bob began to take a tentative step forward when there was another crashing sound. This time it sounded like something breaking. He peeked over the side. Down at the bottom there was definitely a crack of light in the shadows on the floor. The lady wasn’t moving at all now, and all her intent and focus seemed to be focused downward. With one more crash, the doors below were blown open, and it entered.

It was tall, whatever it was. And made of metal. It had four legs and something that looked like a large, segmented tail. Bob couldn’t see it going anywhere, really, it was far too big to get up the stairs. Which didn’t seem to bother the thing very much at all. The tail angled upward and what could only be called a beam of light pierced out of it. Bob could only call it piercing after watching this beam of light pierce through the walls of the stairwell and up along the way. The lady was out of the way, fortunately, and the thing was shooting the wall opposite him, but it was still intimidating.

And then another miracle - as he watched, the lady clenched her fist and flexed her fingers. And then, it happened: she stepped forward, stepped over the guard railing and flew down five stories before crushing the thing beneath. She leapt, spun, kicking the tail aside before striking downward into the metal thing beneath. What Bob could only describe as a roar echoed up the well, and the thing seemed to be whirling on its feet, trying to dislodge her. He saw her raise her hand and it suddenly seemed to glow with what looked like a red aura. She plunged it into the metal monster beneath her. The creature bellowed. Bob watched as she struck again and again, ripping into it, and the monster could do nothing about it. Finally, after what seemed like forever, there was a sound like something was winding down, and the gutted machine lay down and quit moving.

For her part, the woman shook her head and shook her hand out. She looked up and noticed him.

“Well?”

“Well what! What the hell was that!”

“Remember that thing I said about telling you later?” she asked. “It’d do you some good to remember that now. Get down here!”

Getting down next to this mad woman was something akin to the last thing Bob wanted to do, but he didn’t want to push his luck with her. She might try that hand trick thing on him next. Still, though, as he raced down the stairs, he did realize that she was protecting him from something. It was a very kind thing of her to do, but she kept not answering his questions. Granted, they were fighting for their lives here, but he really, truly wanted information. He’d gone under the tube thinking that everything was going to be okay. Like in Star Trek or something. Waking up in the middle of a war zone hadn’t been in the brochure.

“Lemme ask you something,” he said as he rounded the third floor stairs, feeling entirely untired. “What year is it?”

“The year we die if you keep asking questions. I said--”

“I know what you said,” Bob replied. “But look, this isn’t exactly what I signed up for. Things have changed too damn much. I swear, when I get back to Raleigh-”

He got to the bottom just in time to hear an explosion through the door. Both of them looked through to see another one of the spider/crab things stalking through a wall and turning on its legs. Bob could now see two glowing dots on what seemed to be the ‘front’ that looked eerily like eyes. The tail began to glow, and Bob guessed it was going to fire. The woman didn’t seem like she was about to take that.

But before either of them could do a thing, a hail of fire struck the thing. The thing turned to assess the threat, but the hail didn’t dissipate at all. The thing collapsed, and Bob saw more people now. These people were less-well armored than the woman was, dressed more in what looked like ballistics armor. These seemed like real soldiers instead of this crazy whatever-she-was. They wore city camouflage, all blacks and whites and grays, and they were carrying fire arms of some kind that he couldn’t identify. Their faces were hidden by the black glass of their helmets. The rank insigniae were unfamiliar to him as well. They were black fields with white symbols. Every one of them had a white filled circle at the top. A few of them he noticed had a white chevron at the bottom. Were these the sergeants of the new world? They definitely weren’t United States, or if they were, things had definitely changed.

The one with the most stripes stepped forward. “Valkyrie,” he intoned. Bob looked over to the woman and noticed that she didn’t sport any kind of rank insignia.

“Report,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. All forces of the Jotun incursion have been repelled in this area. Reports coming from other battalions around the city are announcing similar results. We have, however, suffered heavy casualties.”

She nodded. “Is there any word on whether we managed to destroy the fleet they deployed here?”

“Not at this time, ma’am.”

“I see. Well done, then. Form up and report back.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Um…” Bob said. The woman turned to look at him. “I don’t suppose we’re going to answer my questions now, are we?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and gave an aggravated sigh. “You don’t quit, do you?”

“Can you blame me?”

“I guess not. Come with me.” She walked out of the hole in the wall, and once again Bob followed. But what he saw outside nearly floored him then and there. The surrounding city must have been beautiful once. But the buildings were all torn to shreds. He doubted a whole window existed in the entire place as far as he could see. He could see through some of them, little metal rods and girders poking through like a 3-D x-ray. The earth all around was churned up or muddy. Bob couldn’t see a single tree anywhere. There were fires raging in some of the buildings. Some of the ground was charred. Everything was so still.

“I don’t want you to think I’m uncaring,” she said. She was walking again, and Bob moved to keep up. “To tell you the truth, I can only imagine what you’re going through right now. I’m betting this isn’t what you were expecting to see.”

“You’re damn right,” he said. “But you’re still not going to answer my question.”

“Oh, I will. I promise. But I think you’re going to be in for a bit of a shock, and so I’m going to wait a little longer.”

“Of course. And how long this time?”

“Not very,” she said, pointing ahead with her chin. Bob looked to see that soldiers were all gathering at what appeared to be a central point. It was clear, though, away from wreckage. He couldn’t tell if something would be landing here or what, though. What kind of transport would be big enough to take so many soldiers at once?

Many of the soldiers had been laughing and telling jokes at each other before they arrived, but the woman’s presence seemed to somber them. But she shook her head and merely said, “At your ease.” Everybody proceeded to do just that. She didn’t however, sit down like some of the other soldiers were, and her eyes were still moving around.

“So,” she said. “You’re from the twenty first century, yes?”

“Yeah, the year 2007.”

“On the common era calendar, right? Or the Anno Domini?”

“Yeah, that’ll do well enough. Now, answer my question.” Some of the soldiers looked at him. Okay, so maybe his tone didn’t befit talking to an officer or elite or whatever the hell she was. But all of this foreignness was really beginning to get to me. “Please,” he amended. “What year is it?”

“This is the 29th century” she said slowly. “You are currently in the year AD 2810.”

“I… I-what?”

“You can have a seat if you want,” she said. “That one thing is an awful lot to take in, on top of everything else you’ve seen in the past hour or so that you’ve been awake.”

“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t sit so much as the ground rushed up to meet him. Eight hundred years! His mind shouted it, but couldn’t grasp it. He’d figured at the most he’d be a century out of time, but this… this was almost too much. It wasn’t anywhere near his time, it wasn’t even his world.

“It’ll be all right,” she said. “You’ll be going to an infirmary. You’ll get more answers there.”

“Good,” he said at last. “Is it okay if I don’t ask any more questions right now?”

She smiled, but there wasn’t any ill humor in it. “Go right ahead.”