Lost Vikings Read online

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  Lost Vikings

  By Matt Forbeck2

  "We are not ready for this." Erik Snabb squirmed in his viking's harness as the craft

  scudded across the ice-blue sky of Braxis. The unwieldy machine handled like a rented

  mule, and he felt like getting out and beating it like one. Maybe he'd save that treatment for

  the engineer who'd come up with the idea of putting wings on a war walker and forcing it

  to fly.

  "Speak for yourself, rookie." Major Stortand Varg grunted at Erik over the open comm

  channel. "You knew what you were in for when you volunteered."

  The other members of the flight wing laughed. Erik's cheeks burned in embarrassment.

  He took some small comfort in the fact that no one could see that.

  Then Varg's ugly, battle-battered mug popped up on Erik's screen, glaring down at him.

  In the past, a hydralisk had slashed open the veteran's face with one of its meter-long

  claws, and he hadn't bothered with reconstructive surgery until it was too late to do him

  much good. The scar ran across his mouth, twisting his lips into a permanent sneer and

  exposing the metallic replacements for the teeth he'd lost in the battle.

  To Erik, Varg's face served as a stark reminder of the horrors of war that he'd hoped to

  leave behind. He'd flown a Wraith for the Dominion for just over a year during that distant

  tour of duty, and he'd loved every minute of it. Erik had never felt so alive as when he sat

  behind the controls of a fighter, feeling the power in his hands and keeping the galaxy safe

  for terrans.

  He'd seen it as his obligation to use his talent and skills as a combat pilot where they

  could do the best good. Fighting for the Dominion against forces that threatened to strangle

  it in its crib had seemed like the smartest way to help the greatest number of people. The

  fact that he'd gotten to fly some of the most powerful and deadly machines around hadn't

  hurt, either.

  That had lasted until he'd met Kyrie and fal en in love. Much as he adored flying, he just

  couldn't stomach leaving her behind. He'd seen the way Kyrie wept for him every time he 3

  went off to battle, terrified that she would never see him again, and he knew that he

  couldn't put her through that forever or, worse yet, leave her to mourn his death.

  His superiors hadn't been happy about his wanting to resign, of course. They'd

  harangued him about how the emperor had invested a fortune in his training and how Erik

  needed to spend the rest of his life repaying that. In the end,though, as much as part of him

  agreed with those officers, Erik had left. Once he'd discovered that Kyrie was pregnant,

  even Emperor Mengsk himself couldn't have convinced him to stay.

  As soon as his tour of duty was up, he and Kyrie got married. As his wedding gift to her,

  he mustered out, packed Kyrie and their sweet young daughter, Sif, onto an interplanetary

  transport, and took them here, to Braxis.

  Lone and icy Braxis sat far enough away from the rest of the Dominion that Erik hoped

  he wouldn't fal prey to the temptation to re-up. He almost gave in to it a couple of times

  after watching the news on UNN, but he always came to his senses before finding his way to

  a starport.

  Instead, he'd gone back to his job, flying transports across Braxis's frozenwastes,

  hauling goods from one settlement to another and precious ore from the mines to the

  refineries. It paid well, although it kept him away from Kyrie and Sif for days at a time. It

  also gave him far too many moments alone with his thoughts.

  The instant he mentioned leaving the planet, Kyrie knew what he meant. "You can

  forget it," she said. "We have a good life here. It's safe, far from all the troubles of someone forging an empire for himself, and it's the kind of place our daughter has a real chance of

  growing up knowing both her mother and father. Why would you want to change that?"

  Erik shrugged. "I just don't feel that useful here, is all. History's happening out there

  somewhere, and we're not even going to witness the footnotes." 4

  Kyrie shook her head. "Tell me that's more important than your marriage. More

  important than letting your little girl keep her dad. Go ahead and do that, and then I'll

  consider it."

  He wanted to turn away, but she grabbed him by the chin and forced him to look at her.

  "Come on," she said. "Try."

  He couldn't manage it. He took her in his arms and held her until the urge to leave went

  away. He needed an awful y long time.

  So he returned to his work and made the most of it. If that meant being just a truck

  driver, he meant to be the best damn truck driver around. He did a good job, and he moved

  up in the organization. His bosses kept him close to home and only sent him on shorter

  runs, so he got to spend more time with his family.

  He'd made his peace. He felt content. Happy, even.

  And then the zerg arrived.

  Al that precious ore Erik had been moving around the planet turned out to be just as

  valuable to the zerg as to the terrans. The aliens didn't issue a warning when they invaded.

  They didn't make any demands. They just squirted down to the planet's surface and set to

  work taking what they wanted and slaughtering anyone who got in their way.

  Kyrie was in tears when Erik final y made it home. Sif—sweet little blue-eyed Sif—had

  done her best to comfort her mother, but she had failed. The girl was so relieved to see her

  father that she raced up and leaped into his arms the moment he burst through the door.

  Then, once she felt safe, she al owed herself to weep, too.

  Erik had been listening to the UNN reports all the way home. He knew the planet was

  already lost, at least the Braxis he'd known. It was only a matter of time before the zerg

  scoured every terran from the face of the planet. Even if the emperor sent a force to stop 5

  them, the war between the two sides was sure to rip the settlements to pieces. Erik, Kyrie,

  and Sif had to leave now and hope there would be something to come back to later.

  They were packing their things for the evacuation when the cal came. The local

  recruiter told Erik that the military had concocted a plan to slow down the zerg, at least for

  a while. With luck, it would hold them off until most of the people on the planet had a

  chance to escape. But the Dominion needed more combat-ready pilots to help implement

  that desperate plan, and it needed them now.

  Hearing that spurred Kyrie into action. "Go," she said to Erik as she wiped the tears

  streaking her face. "Do whatever good you can. We'll be waiting for you when you get

  back."

  Erik took just enough time to kiss Kyrie and Sif good-bye before he raced to meet the

  recruiter.

  Within hours, Erik found himself in the cockpit of a viking, joining a unit of veterans as

  they rocketed toward the northern ridge of the Grendel Mountains, the spot where

  Command said the zerg had landed their invasion force. Erik hadn't flown a fighter in over

  three years, and he'd hoped the muscle memory he'd relied on during his active-duty days

  would come back to him right away.

  But th
e viking threw him hard. The controls bucked in his hands like reins on a wild

  horse. There was just too much for him to keep track of, and he hadn't had any time to train

  with the damn thing before he'd been asked to climb into it.

  "Are you sure you don't have a Wraith back there somewhere?" Erik had said when the

  armorer told him he'd be operating a viking.

  The man laughed at him and shook his head. "The few we had are out helping with the

  evacuation. You're flying with Varg. You get a viking." 6

  Erik had spent so much time in his Wraith that it was like a natural extension of his

  body. By contrast, the viking felt like a violation, as if someone had surgical y attached two

  extra legs, three extra arms, and a prehensile tail to him. The problem wasn't that he didn't

  know how to operate any individual piece; it was that he couldn't figure out how to

  coordinate them in a way that didn't feel as if he was going to trip and fal —or crash.

  Of course, everyone else on the team had put in dozens, if not hundreds, of hours in

  these craft. These pilots worked together like a well-oiled machine, able not only to wield

  their vikings like fencers with sabers but also to anticipate one another's movements. It

  was as if their actions had been choreographed and practiced endlessly, the team a

  seamless whole but for the jagged bit of broken bone that Erik represented.

  Erik had never been in a viking before—a real one, not a simulator—and he'd never met

  anyone in the crew, much lessworked with them. He'd heard of Varg, who was a legend on

  Braxis, but the rest of the team remained a mystery. If there was a weak link in this chain,

  he knew who it was. He could only pray he wouldn't snap and destroy them all.

  "We're practical y there, kid," Varg said, interrupting Erik's reverie. "Time for regrets ended after takeoff."

  "I wanted to defend my family," Erik said, explaining now to Varg why he'd volunteered

  for this mission. "I didn't realize it would be in one of these."

  "You got to choose whether or not to fight," Varg said. "That's more than the rest of us got. You just didn't get to choose your weapon."

  "I know how he feels, though." The voice belonged to Olaf Kraftig, a massive bear of a

  man flying off Erik's starboard side. "These beasts are neither fish nor fowl. An armored

  walker that can convert into an aircraft? It doesn't seem natural, does it?"

  Varg laughed at the comment. "What do you have to say to that, Scorch?" 7

  "Scorch" was the nickname for Captain Drake, a redheaded firebrand of a woman Erik

  had spotted in the hangar. They hadn't spoken, but she'd snapped a quick salute at him as

  he climbed into his viking, and he'd reciprocated, more out of reflex than intent.

  "It's a machine that can do it al ," she said. Her voice was so raspy that Erik had to

  wonder how she'd damaged it. No one sounded that raw and throaty natural y, right? "Air

  superiority and ground-support capabilities. What's not to love?"

  "Might ask Johan," Baleog Grym said in a bitter tone. "He was flying young Erik's rig up until last week."

  The fifth and final member of the wing, Baleog hadn't had much to say to Erik the entire

  trip. He seemed to resent Erik's presence, to think the wing would be better off without

  him. Erik wasn't sure he could disagree.

  "What happened to Johan?" Erik said.

  "Put it this way," Baleog said, grim as ever. "If he was still around, Varg here wouldn't have asked for volunteers to take his place."

  Olaf threw back his head and laughed. "Too true!"

  "He died in a training accident," Scorch said. "He lost control of his craft while

  transforming from an assault walker to an air-superiority fighter. Smashed right into the

  ground."

  "Happens more often than you'd think," Varg said. "There's nothing easy about flying a

  viking. Only the best of the best can pul it off."

  Baleog grunted at that. "The best—or the desperate."

  "Look," Scorch said, "there aren't a whole lot of spare combat-tested terran pilots on

  Braxis these days. Varg wouldn't have asked for Erik if we hadn't been stuck." 8

  Erik felt his heart sink. "How desperate are you?"

  "I wouldn't have tapped you if I didn't think you could hack it," said Varg. "Having a bad pilot in a wing's worse than being shy a ship."

  "That's the truth," Baleog said.

  "I went over your military records before you got the call. Your old commander said you

  were the best damn pilot he's ever seen. Racked up the most kil s in your unit."

  "That true?" Scorch said.

  "True enough," Erik said with no trace of pride.

  "Wel , there haven't been enough terrans here on Braxis, period," Baleog said, a

  grudging note of respect in his voice. "Not since the protoss blasted the whole place clean."

  "Have you seen pictures of how it looked before?" Scorch said. "Mostly flat and round as a marble, with a mountain range here and there. Pretty standard stuff. Not now, though."

  Erik had spent a lot of time flying high over the planet's icy surface. Some called Braxis a

  frozen graveyard. Erik preferred to think of it as a clean slate.

  He marveled at the way it had re-formed after the apocalyptic heat from the protoss

  cleansing had turned every bit of water on the frozen planet to steam. From what Mr.

  Wotan—one of the first terrans to resettle Braxis—had said, most of the planet's surface

  might have vaporized, but that didn't mean it had disappeared.

  After the horrifying job had been done and the protoss had left, the planet had cooled

  again, and al that water vapor in the sky had turned into snow and hail. The storms must

  have been almost as terrifying as the cleansing that had preceded them, vast oceans' worth

  of precipitation fal ing back to cover the scoured lands, which had been exposed for the 9

  first time. The insane weather had created gigantic crystalline structures that seemed

  impossible, jutting from the surface like monstrous works of art or some dead god's toys.

  In many places, the ice had re-formed solider than ever. In others, it had formed a

  fragile latticework that looked stable but couldn't be trusted. It might be able to hold tons

  of frozen water without col apsing under its own weight, but the right amount of pressure

  at the wrong angle could cause the entire area to give way. Although he'd never had to

  make an emergency landing in the wastes, Erik had heard tales of those who had, only to

  have the ice swallow their transport whole.

  "Yeah," Erik said. "It feels alien, but it's beautiful."

  The words escaped his lips before he realized that he meant them. He'd learned to care

  about his new home since he and his family had moved here. Too bad he'd come to

  recognize it only now, when the zerg were about to drive them out.

  "You got this far; you're going to do fine, kid," Varg said. "Time for us al to shut our yappers and concentrate on the task at hand. We hit the LZ in 60 seconds."

  Despite Varg's encouragement, Erik winced at how il -prepared he felt for this mission.

  The viking didn't help. The way it moved read wrong to him, at least compared with the

  Wraiths he remembered so wel .

  "We're coming in hot," Varg said. "We need to put down a few klicks out from the site of the zerg infestation and leg it from there. Command thinks that should let us get closer to

  the trouble spot before they start firing at us."

  Rumor had it that the zerg had landed on the far side of the pl
anet, a preliminary force

  that would soon blossom into a ful -scale invasion. Braxis might be big enough to hold both

  species, but the zerg didn't like to share.10

  The Dominion had launched an airstrike against the infestation, but the zerg had

  brought the terran flyers down before they'd completed their mission. That was when

  some bright bulb in the command structure came up with the idea of sending the vikings.

  Soon after that, Erik was called in.

  The evacuation of all non-essential personnel had begun, and Erik had been planning to

  leave with the rest of his family. He hadn't thought the Dominion would need him if they'd

  already decided to abandon the planet. Maybe he shouldn't have answered when they came

  calling, but the moment he heard who it was, he knew his hiatus from combat had ended.

  Sif and Kyrie were still slated to go out with the second or third round of evacuees. They

  said good-bye to him that morning. Erik and Kyrie had agreed not to let Sif know what was

  happening, tel ing her only that she and Mommy were leaving on a trip and that Daddy

  would catch up with them as soon as he could.

  Kissing them before he left—knowing that he might never see them again but unable to

  say anything that might tip off his sharp little daughter—was the hardest thing he'd ever

  done.

  Right up until now.

  "We're here, Erik," Varg said as the vikings skimmed down toward a bare patch of snow.

  "I want you on the ground first. Switch to assault mode now!"

  Erik hauled the viking back as hard as he could and punched the button to lower the

  aircraft's legs. With any other machine, doing something like this would cause it to stall out,

  which would be fatal at this altitude. The rapid stop hurled him against his harness, but it

  held him tightly against the wild inertia. Now he understood why the viking had more than

  double the straps, pads, and packing that the Wraith had. Al of the crazy ups and downs

  the craft went through as it switched from one mode to the other were brutal. 11

  As Varg had ordered, Erik was the first to get his walker's feet on the ground. Landing a

  viking was one of the trickiest maneuvers in the entire fleet. If he was going to crash, it was

  better if he didn't land on any of the others and take them out, too.

  Erik had flown over the frozen wasteland that made up most of Braxis on more trips