The Dream of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic (Saga of the Iron Dragon Book 1) Read online

  The Dream of

  the Iron Dragon

  A Novel by Robert Kroese

  Copyright ©2018 Robert Kroese. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or other—except for brief quotations in reviews, without the prior permission of the author.

  Note on Old Norse and Old English Pronunciation

  For the most part, the same set of symbols is used to represent words in modern English, Old English, and Old Norse. Modern English, however, uses th for both the voiced th sound (as in this) and the unvoiced th sound (as in thin), whereas in Old English and Old Norse, these sounds are represented by two separate letters: ð for voiced; þ for unvoiced. Thus the Old Norse word for time is tíð, pronounced like teethe, and the Norse god of thunder is Þórr, pronounced Thor.

  For quoted speech, I did my best to use the correct Old Norse and Old English spellings, respectively. For characters’ names, I sometimes substituted th for ð or þ for easier reading.

  PROLOGUE

  United States Air Force Colonel Emily Rollins ducked out of the chartered helicopter and walked briskly to the police car parked across both lanes of Route One. The air was cool, and the sun hung low in a clear blue sky. She handed her credentials to the red-cheeked, blond officer standing in front of the car. The man made a show of inspecting her ID and then handed it back to her. “Over there,” the man said, in crisp English. His nametag read STEFÁNSSON. “He’s waiting for you.”

  Rollins looked in the direction Officer Stefánsson had pointed. There was nothing but a field of black volcanic rock dotted with dull green lichen—the sort of landscape you could see anywhere in Iceland. She’d been to this country once before, on vacation. The whole country was like an alien planet. In the distance arose a mountain of white: the largest glacier in the country, called Vatnajökull. Her hastily conducted research on the plane from Andrews Air Force Base had revealed that the name meant “water glacier.” Some things were better left untranslated.

  Walking a few steps into the lava field, she still saw no sign of the man she was supposed to be meeting. A black Audi was parked on the side of the road, just past the police car. Her contact had to be around here somewhere. She turned to ask Officer Stefánsson for better instructions, but he was busy pointing an angry French tourist in a rented Toyota back toward Reykjavik. She sympathized: Reykjavik was a five-hour drive, and this was the only road into Vatnajökull National Park. It would be closed for the foreseeable future.

  Rollins picked her way carefully among the rocks, eventually spotting a brown-haired man in a drab tweed jacket standing about a hundred yards away. She hadn’t seen him before because he’d been crouched over something in the field. He waved to Rollins, and she waved back. He hunched over again, almost disappearing among the lichen-covered rocks. That was Major Alan Hume of the Royal Air Force, her British counterpart. Rollins made her way toward him.

  “Come here often?” Rollins said as she approached the man. It was a dumb joke, but it was part of the routine they went through every time they met at a field site.

  Hume stood up and smiled at her. “We’re supposed to be keeping a low profile, you know.”

  “You can have low profile or you can have fast,” Rollins said. “I know you Brits don’t like to make a spectacle of yourselves, but we Americans have places to be.”

  Hume chuckled good-naturedly and shook Rollins’s hand. “Good flight?”

  “I hate helicopters,” Rollins said. “They’re unnatural. Speaking of which, nice work on the cover story.”

  “What, the bit about the snowmobile helmet?”

  “I meant the Russian Cosmonaut stuff.”

  “Oh, that! Well, yes. Had to do some thinking on my feet.”

  “And they bought it?”

  “The folks at the newspaper? Hook, line and sinker. The snowmobile helmet thing was their idea. The only thing media people like more than getting a scoop is making up a bullshit cover story. Did most of the work themselves. They’ve got everybody convinced this bloke was a scam artist, trying to make a name for himself. You know, one of these flat Earth, ancient astronauts types.”

  “What happened to him? The guy who found it.”

  “Oh, we took care of him.”

  “Took care of…?”

  “Christ, Emily. We don’t do that anymore. We found him a nice place in the Virgin Islands.”

  “He’s not going to talk?”

  “Unlikely. We’ve a plan in place to thoroughly discredit him if he does.”

  “And no one else knows?”

  “Just the newspaper people. And I’ve got them scared shitless they’re going to start an international incident if they make a peep. Icelanders aren’t keen on being in the middle of a new Cold War.”

  “What exactly did you tell them?”

  “Experimental Soviet spy plane was shot down by the Americans over the North Sea in seventy-eight. Soviets denied it was their plane, Americans denied they shot it down. The usual bollocks. I told them Putin himself was in charge of the program. Nobody wants it brought up now, what with the Yanks and the Russians about to go at it in Ukraine. Old wounds, sleeping dogs, et cetera.”

  “You’re a little too good at this, Alan.”

  “Don’t I know it. Would have been a used car salesman if I were a bit more honest.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In the boot of my car.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “Safer than lying out here in a field.”

  Emily nodded. “Have you found anything else?”

  “Not yet. A field team is flying in tonight.”

  “Then what are you doing out here?”

  “Killing time.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Of course.”

  They started walking across the field back to the Audi.

  “How long will the road be closed?” Rollins asked.

  “As long as it takes. We’re in talks with the Icelandic government about rerouting the road to the south.”

  “Permanently?”

  “If this site turns out to be as big a deal as we suspect, yes.”

  “You’ve found a single artifact.”

  “We’ve found an artifact in Iceland, Emily. What are the odds they took the trouble to set up a decoy site in Iceland? Who would even think to look there in the first place?”

  “You’re sticking with the decoy theory then?”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense. They were trying to hide the location of their actual base of operations.”

  “Okay, but why would they set up their base in Iceland of all places? Sparse population, remote, resource-poor, high latitude….”

  “Hell of a place to hide a space program, eh?”

  “It makes a perverse sort of sense, I suppose. Pick the worst possible site because no one will look there.”

  “Not only that, but this whole area was covered by ice until about twenty years ago. The rest of the facility might still be under the glacier.”

  “Hold on. You’re saying….”

  “I think they knew, Emily. I think they knew the glacier was going to advance, covering their tracks.”

  “Climate modeling?”

  “That’s one possibility.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Alan. Not the time travel thing again.”

  “It explains everything. The advanced te
chnology, how they knew about the glacier, the lack of—”

  “The tech isn’t that advanced.”

  “For the tenth century it is.”

  “You’ve dated it?”

  “Not yet, but I assume it’s of roughly the same vintage as the other pieces.”

  They’d reached the car. Hume pulled the key fob from his pocket and opened the trunk. Inside, lying on a layer of newspapers, was a roughly spherical object a little larger than a basketball. Under a layer of mineral deposits, a yellow-white shell of hard material was visible. On one side was a shaded, translucent visor. The headline of one of the newspapers beneath the object read: American hiker finnur ‘fornu rými hjálm.’ Below it was a picture of a grinning man holding the round object in front of his chest.

  Emily pointed to the headline. “I’m assuming that says…?”

  “American hiker finds ‘ancient space helmet.’”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “The story is less committal. Anyway, the correction went out this morning. Well-executed hoax, nothing to see here.”

  After glancing at Officer Stefánsson to make sure he was otherwise occupied, she reached into the trunk and picked up the artifact. It was surprisingly light.

  “Do you ever wonder if this is worth the trouble?” she asked, turning the thing over in her hands.

  “Looking for the artifacts?”

  “I meant the elaborate secrecy. Who are we hiding this stuff from anyway?”

  Hume shrugged. “It started during the war. We wanted to keep it away from the Germans and the Soviets. Now, who knows. Force of habit, I suppose. So what do you think?”

  Emily peered through the visor, trying to imagine a face looking back at her. Had it ever been worn? By whom?

  “I think,” she said, “this is a thousand-year-old space helmet.”

  Chapter One

  The survey ship Andrea Luhman’s antennas picked up the signal about 3500 astronomical units out from the Finlan Cluster. Traveling at its current rate of nearly a tenth of light speed, Andrea Luhman would approach the nearest star in the cluster, M-341698, in just under three weeks. At that point, the crew would have a decision to make. They would analyze the sensor data and pick the star system in the Cluster that seemed likeliest to contain a planet capable of supporting human life. Based on that choice, Andrea Luhman would alter her trajectory relative to M-341698, using the star’s gravity to bank toward their destination.

  That had been the plan, anyway—before Andrea Luhman’s pattern recognition algorithm siezed on the tightly focused microwave transmission repeating the first seventeen numbers of the Fibonacci sequence in an endless loop. Now things had changed, and Lieutenant Michael Carpenter, the man currently overseeing this leg of Andrea Luhman’s voyage, had to decide whether to stick to the plan or take action in response to this new data. The signal repeated:

  0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 …

  Carpenter sighed. This decision was above his pay grade, which was part of the problem. The captain and the rest of the crew were in stasis, with three weeks of hibernation left. If he revived them now, it would throw everything off. Food and oxygen calculations, work assignments, stasis schedules. There was no clear protocol for something like this. Distress signal? There were procedures for that. Enemy contact? Everyone on board knew those protocols by heart. Contact with a previously unknown alien intelligence? Sixty-eight pages of guidelines. But it was hard to be sure which of these procedures to follow in the case of a signal of unknown origin broadcasting numbers according to a well-known mathematical algorithm. And still the transmission continued:

  … 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987

  And then it started over again at 0.

  The approximate source of the signal was easy enough to pinpoint: by using directional antennas and comparing the relative strength and doppler shift of the signal at two moments several hours apart, the ship’s computer had effectively determined the source through triangulation: an uncharted planet orbiting a star about half a trillion kilometers from Andrea Luhman. The star had been considered for investigation when Andrea Luhman’s mission had been outlined, but it had ultimately been rejected in favor of the more closely grouped stars of the Finlan Cluster.

  The numbers being transmitted meant nothing in themselves. But their mode of transmission—and the very fact that someone had gone to the trouble of transmitting them in the first place—implied several facts. Carpenter ticked them off in his mind:

  Number One: this area of space wasn’t as devoid of intelligent life as previously thought.

  Number Two: somebody wanted to communicate Fact Number One. Also, given the tightly focused transmission, they wanted to communicate it specifically to Andrea Luhman—or at least a ship on this approximate course. It was highly unlikely the sender had actually spotted Andrea Luhman; at this distance, a radio signal would take almost five days to reach them. No, whoever was transmitting that signal had known—or suspected—a ship would be traveling from the Fomalhaut Gate to the Finlan Cluster.

  And Number Three: the being or beings transmitting the signal either could not or did not wish to transmit any additional information. They could just as easily have transmitted a standard distress signal, but they didn’t. That might mean the source of the signal was an uncontacted alien intelligence. Or it might just mean they wanted to say hi as Andrea Luhman shot past. Neither of these possibilities seemed particularly probable to Carpenter. In all likelihood, the senders were either human or Cho-ta’an. Whoever they were, they knew what Andrea Luhman was looking for, and they knew the crew wouldn’t be able to resist investigating the source of the signal.

  And yet, Carpenter hesitated. If he woke the captain, he knew what would happen. They’d change course to investigate the signal. If the senders were Cho-ta’an, then this was almost certainly a trap. Andrea Luhman was a scientific survey ship; it wasn’t equipped to defend itself against a Cho-ta’an warship. In short, if Carpenter woke the captain, they were all probably going to die.

  *****

  “Hell, Carpenter. You woke me for this?”

  Captain Nathan Mallick sat across a molded plastic table from Carpenter, his hands spread flat on the table and his eyes fixed on the squeeze bottle full of electrolyte solution in front of him. To Carpenter, it looked like the captain was staring the bottle down, and he had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing. Waking up from three weeks in stasis was no joke. The IDL’s scientists had made great advances in the field of in-transit hibernation, but the protocol for emerging from stasis had remained essentially unchanged since the first trials twenty years earlier: take it slow and drink plenty of water. Of course, it didn’t help to drink water if you couldn’t keep it down. Muscle atrophy, dizziness and nausea were the main side effects. Mallick handled it better than most, which was probably how he’d lasted long enough in the IDL to become Andrea Luhman’s captain. Carpenter had never actually seen the captain get sick, but next to the squeeze bottle was the standard-issue IDL barf bag.

  “Sorry, sir. The protocol isn’t clear, and I thought—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” said the captain, waving his hand. “You did the right thing. My head’s still foggy. It’s just… what the hell is it?”

  Carpenter ran through the possibilities: the source of the signal was either human, Cho-ta’an, or… something else.

  “Humanity’s been in space for two centuries now and we’ve only encountered one other intelligent race—and that was eighty years ago. You think we’ve stumbled on another one?”

  “I’m just listing the possibilities,” Carpenter deadpanned.

  “Fair enough,” the captain replied, the faintest hint of a smile flickering across his face. “For now, though, let’s assume they’re human or Cho-ta’an.” He reached slowly across the table, picked up the bottle and squeezed a little of the liquid into his mouth. He grimaced. “We got any coffee?”

  “I’ll make some.”

  Carpenter started
a pot of coffee. While they waited for it to brew, he stood in silence as the captain took a few more sips of the electrolyte solution. By the time Carpenter handed him a mug of coffee, some of the color had begun to return to the captain’s face. Mallick took a sip of the coffee and sighed contentedly. He was beginning to seem like himself again. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s assume they’re human. What are they doing on an uncharted planet this far from IDL territory?”

  Carpenter held up his hands. IDL territory—also known simply as “human space”—was a vaguely defined, kidney-shaped area of space some fifty light-years long. The Sol system was roughly in the middle of the kidney; Andrea Luhman’s home port, Geneva, was one hundred twenty light-years toward the kidney’s base. Andrea Luhman had left the confines of IDL territory a week earlier, after jumping from Geneva to the most distant gate, which orbited the star Fomalhaut.

  “Come on, Carpenter,” Mallick said. “I just got up from a three-week nap. Help me out here. Do some spit-balling.”

  Carpenter nodded. “Civilian craft gets knocked off course by an asteroid. Engines and radio are damaged. Can’t get back on course, can’t call for help.”

  “Any civilian ships unaccounted for?”

  “Maybe they’re smugglers. Unregistered.”

  “Seems like a stretch, but okay. If they’re having mechanical problems, how did they manage to change course to land on a planet? And why?”

  Carpenter shook his head. “Their new course intercepted the planet’s orbit. They couldn’t avoid it, but had just enough control to make a landing.”

  “The odds just went from slim to infinitesimal. If they had enough thrust to land safely, they could have avoided the planet altogether. They must have landed on purpose.”

  “Maybe the planet is habitable. They decided to take their chances rather than drifting in deep space.”

  “So our unregistered smugglers hit the lottery. The IDL hasn’t found a new habitable planet in seven years, even with Andrea Luhman and four other ships like her scouring the galaxy, and these idiots find one by accident?”