 
### Skrymers Glove

The Fyrkat Project

Copyright Per Holbo 2013

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

#  Contents

Chapter 1: Under Attack

Chapter 2: Silence after the storm

Chapter 3: Fyrkat

Chapter 4: Alfheim

Chapter 5: Abducted

Chapter 6: Brimir

Chapter 7: Skrymer´s Glove

Chapter 8: Behind the membrane

Chapter 9: The traitor

Chapter 10: The escape

Chapter 11: Thor´s Hammer

Chapter 12: Tjalfe vs. Skrymer

Chapter 13: Fading hope

Chapter 14: Endgame

Chapter 15: A new life

About the author

# Chapter 1: Under attack

"Thor, the Yetten fleet has almost breached our perimeter. We have to evacuate! Right now!"

Loki raised his voice as hard as he could trying to overshout the noise from various explosions around the Svalinn. It wasn´t easy in itself, but the fact that Thor was so focused on his task and seemed to form a mental bubble around him while working his magic on the consoles didn´t exactly help either.

"Not just yet, Loki..." Thor finally responded, though in a rather distant voice.

"Thor! Please!"

"I´m almost done, Loki," Thor went on, his voice and body language still showing a slight absence as he continued punching the virtual keys on the upright screen in front of him, "I need to shut down Fyrkat before we can leave."

Loki grabbed his friend´s arm. "Thor, we need to go! Now! Overseer Odin gave us a direct order!"

"Let me go!" Thor barked as he wrestled angrily from Loki´s grip. "If we don´t shut down that device, it may fall into the hands of the Yetten! The entire galaxy will be at their mercy! You know this! Now, let me finish! It´ll take only a minute or two. Then we can evacuate!" Thor turned back his focus on the consoles as if Loki wasn´t even there.

Loki frowned. He had absolutely no idea what the Fyrkat device could do, but he knew it was important. The Asgard council wouldn´t have sent them on a mission this far away from home in such a remote corner of the galaxy, if it wasn´t important. Add the secrecy surrounding the whole expedition, and you´ve really got something of high significance. And even if this mission wasn´t all that high profiled, letting any technology fall into the hands of the Yetten was per definition a bad idea. They would use any and all means to achieve their goal of complete dominance of the entire galaxy. Likewise, Loki would stop at nothing to prevent them from reaching that goal. And it wasn´t without risk.

The Yetten weren't exactly known for being kind to their prisoners. Especially not if they believed those prisoners to have vital information.

Loki made a quick decision and opened a channel.

"This is Captain Loki," he said, "message to all Skarfi units: protect Svalinn at all cost. I repeat: Svalinn must be protected. All other units: retreat immediately. Requesting landing permission is NOT required. Just come home."

Outside the ship the battle had already gone to the next phase. The remaining Skarfi´s were trying to get back to the hangar with Yetten attack vessels on their tail and a battleship firing wildly at them from so far away that it didn´t even show up on their scanners yet.

Suddenly a big blow hit Svalinn and the chock of the blast worked its way through the hull and shook the entire crew. Two Skarfis crashed right into the side of Svalinn and one of them cut a power cord as it met the surface of the cruiser. Dieeew! The crew at the bridge heard the sound of systems shutting down. Then everything inside went completely dark...

The Aseir cruisers and scouting ships outside the window of Svalinn complied with their orders at once and went for their respective hangar ships, while the Skarfi fighters still operational moved into protective formations around Svalinn getting ready for the incoming enemies.

Loki observed them closely through the front window at the bridge with a concerned expression on his face. The Skarfi was indeed quick and easy to maneuver, but the Yetten attack vessel, the much bigger Farbauter, was still a formidable adversary. Its heavy weaponry made little room for error by the Aseir pilots and many a good pilot had been killed as a result of making even the slightest mistakes. Only the very skilled pilots were able to take advantage of the Skarfi's superior maneuverability to put their ship in a position to make a kill.

Two of the Skarfis out there seemed to have exactly that kind of pilots. Surrounded by dozens of Farbauters they threw their Skarfis up and down and to the sides crossing each other's paths and succeeded with these maneuvers to get the Yetten in range. One by one they thinned out in the enemy numbers, before their counterparts knew what hit them.

After a while one of the Skarfi pilots made a sharp turn and looked as if he was about to make a run for it. Loki knew what the pilot was up to. They had developed this maneuver based on data from previous encounters with the Yetten and for months they'd been practicing it using simulations. Now it was time to find out if it worked. The basic idea was to make it look like they were fleeing the fight drawing the most aggressive, that is: those who were most potential to let their feelings control their actions, away from the Svalinn.

The maneuver seemed to work. At least a dozen Farbauters tailed the "fleeing" Skarfi leaving just a little more than half of the attacking forces for the other Skarfi to deal with.

The pilot in that Skarfi was good. Really good, actually. He made a series of slalom maneuvers which they had a hard time following and Loki nodded satisfied and confident as he watched this pilot´s skills. Those Farbauters may be strong, fast and heavily armed, but when it came to maneuverability, the Skarfi was without doubt superior to them. The Yetten pilots' only chance was to predict their adversary's next move in time to compensate and this proved to be a very difficult task. One by one the Skarfi put them in awkward positions and shot them down.

Loki was impressed and opened the console to punch in the ID of the Skarfi. That fighter pilot sure was skilled and he should be commended for it, when all of this was over - if he survived...

Loki froze for a second looking at the virtual screen. "Baldur," it said. Loki glanced at Thor, who was still punching numbers like crazy. Maybe this wasn't the best time to tell Thor that his brother was out there alone with half a dozen Yetten fighters. Loki returned his focus on the ongoing battle outside. The other Skarfi was on its way back with no less than four Farbauters on his tail. The rest of them had probably been destroyed, although at a price. The Skarfi tipped from side to side as if there was a problem with the controls.

Loki opened a channel to inform Baldur of the problem, but it proved unnecessary.

"Skarfi 7!" Baldur yelled, "Are you okay?" Loki looked at Thor and sighed with relief. Luckily he´d remembered to turn off the speaker. Thor couldn't hear Baldur and continued the shut down procedure of Fyrkat without being disturbed.

"Skarfi 7 here" the other pilot responded with a slight sound of panic in his voice, "my exhaust pipes have been damaged and I have a few bogies on my tail. Can you place yourself between us?"

Baldur responded in a coded message to his friend and threw the Skarfi around the incoming Farbauters. His skilled and well performed maneuver created brief chaos among the Yetten pilots and their formation scattered in all directions. As one of the Farbauters turned its side toward Baldur, he saw that it had been damaged even more than Skarfi 7. Baldur had expected the fighters to easily evade collision, but this particular Farbauter didn't have the needed maneuverability. Instead of passing Baldur with a few meters' to spare, it glided by really close. The sound of metal against metal reached Baldur's ears as the Farbauter's right front wing tore a deep scratch in the body of his Skarfi before passing and continuing toward the Svalinn.

"Whoa!" Baldur shouted, "THAT was close! Skarfi 7, are you alright?"

Loki didn't hear the answer. He had his eyes intensely fixed on the Farbauter approaching the Svalinn at extremely high speed on a collision course.

The next few minutes felt like a dream. The kind of dream, where everything seems to happen fast, but at the same time in a very slow motion. The Yetten fighter grew in size right in front of him and Loki could do nothing else but wait for the inevitable impact. Suddenly the Farbauter went out of his view at the lower right of the front window. Loki took a deep breath and waited for what was bound to happen...

and then...

Crash! The sound of the Farbauter smashing into the hull of Svalinn shook his mind and the trembles through the ship shook his body. Deeeuw! The sound of all systems shutting down waned upon the crew At the bridge and covered the ship like a blanket. Then complete silence. And darkness...

Loki had the same feeling you have when you are sitting in a roller coaster moving upward and anticipating the thrill of the first top. He glanced at Thor and much to his surprise his friend didn't at all look as if all the things happening around him had had any effect on him.

Suddenly the floor beneath Loki jerked downwards and his body flew up stranding mid air. The weightlessness could mean only one thing: Svalinn was about to crash land.

"Thor!" Loki yelled as he was trying to regain some control of himself. His eyes swept across the bridge and found Thor clinging to the console with one hand still frantically typing in the last few algorithms. Finally he seemed to have finished and hammered his hand on the red circle in the middle of the screen.

A humming sound started from the bridge and sent out visible energy from the ship's hull. The growing and glowing bubble of energy reached the planet atmosphere on which only the half on the outside was visible, while the half on the inside disappeared. The visible half diminished and after a while completely vanished into the atmosphere.

Down on the surface the ring shaped formation started glowing red. Soon the red glow turned yellow, then white and POOMPF! The entire area was shaken and the ground trembled as a wave spread out as if the soil was made of water and someone had thrown in a huge stone in the center of the circle. Then complete silence...

At the bridge of the Svalinn the artificial gravity was acting up, going on and off as if a child was playing with the switch and they were both thrown in the air, slung to the floor and then again hurled into the air only to be thrown hard to the floor again. Having difficulty figuring out what was up and down, Loki reached out hands fumbling trying to get hold of something solid. Finally his hands found the console, but Thor was too far away from anything firmly attached and found himself at the dysfunctional gravity's mercy. Each time the gravity switched off he was swirled even faster around himself and after a while he decided to give up trying to stop the spinning and instead started to focus on not lose his consciousness.

All of the sudden the entire ship moved in one giant yank and Loki almost lost his breath as they fell inside the planet's gravity. It stretched out its hands, grabbed Svalinn and pulled it relentlessly downward.

Faster and faster it went and reaching the atmosphere, Svalinn lit up like a torch falling toward the surface. Shortly after, the energy circle around Fyrkat blasted from the surface and rammed Svalinn with such force that Thor was thrown head first into the console in the middle of the bridge. Loki was too busy holding on and could do nothing but watch Thor hit his head on the corner of the console. As the blood from Thor's wound dripped into mid air like bubbles floating in oil, his eyes rolled and soon the lights weren´t on and nobody was home. After a while Svalinn's fall to the surface smoothed out a bit and approached the planet surface at a softer angle towards its doom.

Suddenly the small red pebbles of blood fell to the floor and formed a puddle. At least now Loki was able to let go of the console and go help his friend. He crawled cautiously forward continuously finding new solids to hold on to for every move just in case the artificial gravity would shut off again. Reaching Thor this proved to be a rather good idea. The moment he tried to grab hold of Thor, his feet left the floor and his body tilted backwards and up over the rest of him leaving his feet dangling free. His hand slipped and there was nothing he could do as he drifted slowly toward the window. Sighing with relief he discovered the window was intact. At least they would not be sucked into space. He looked at Thor who had regained consciousness and accompanied his "I am alright" nod with a "thumbs up." Thor punched in the command for shutting off artificial gravity. After all, floating in mid air would be preferable to being smashed to the floor on a regular basis. Loki hoped Thor would manage to turn on the main computer as well, so they could regain control of the ship. They wouldn't be able to fly the ship, but maybe they could make a safe landing if they at least had some degree of control, even if it was no more than that.

But for now, Loki couldn't do anything to help out, so he decided to get a better view of things the old fashioned way. He got to the window and looked down. The water between formations of land reminded him of a kneeling soldier and from the window at the bridge it looked as if the ship's course would bring them to crash land somewhere between two areas, most of the earthlings called "Danimarca" and "Gardaria." A well suited site for a crash landing, but unfortunately very far from land. They would need to get the computer running, if they were to get the escape pod to leave Svalinn at the exact right moment before the ship splintered hitting the surface of the water and it would greatly strengthen their chance for survival, if they had some kind of maneuverability of the pod as soon as possible after landing.

The sound of primary systems rebooting woke up Loki from his thoughts and he looked at Thor.

"Yes!" Thor yelled and threw a fist in the air, "that's it! We are good - to – go!" He punched a few keys with those final words and then turned to another screen.

"All I have to do now is switch on the autopilot and then maybe Svalinn can correct its course before smashing into the surface..."

Loki kicked his feet against something and floated over to Thor, where he grabbed his arm. He didn´t say anything, but just looked at him letting his face do the pleading and this time Thor gave in.

"Alright, Loki," he said reluctantly, "We should go - but we have to go find the console and the energy crystal from the Fyrkat device as soon as we land. We cannot let them fall into the hands of the Yetten, okay?"

Loki nodded in agreement. Not that he really agreed, but he knew he would never convince Thor that leaving in a hurry was the best course of action if he had the slightest concern about the Fyrkat device getting into Yetten hands. So he decided it was better to give a promise, he may not be able to fulfill.

***

Tjalfe held a pitch fork in his hands as he was doing his morning chores. He shoveled the dung as fast as he could without covering himself in it while he listened to the sound of his mother humming by the fire place.

To Tjalfe and his sister, Roeskva, this was the most comforting sound in the world, and even though his mother knew, how much they loved it, she rarely noticed herself when she was humming. In fact, she would more often than not look rather surprised if one of them made a comment about it. Then she would stop humming for a moment, out of sheer embarrassment, but after a while, the humming continued as if it had its own life and she wasn't able to control it.

From time to time Tjalfe paused in his work and took a peek toward the kitchen to keep himself updated on how long it would be before her amazing oat meal was ready.

She was so beautiful, his mum. At least Tjalfe thought so. Her long blond hair went all the way down to her waist and his sister often stood at her side playing with it. Tjalfe just couldn´t wait for breakfast. Not that he was all that hungry, he just wanted to get it over with and go to the Gods' Fortress up the hill.

"Take it easy, son"

His father, Egil the Bowman, had just entered the house and was now standing in the door.

"There´s no point in shoveling dung from the floor if it's going to end up being attached to the walls instead, is there?" Tjalfe looked down.

"No, sir," he said with a smile, "I'll be more careful."

Tjalfe's dad seemed satisfied with his answer and turned around to give his wife a hug and a kiss.

"Good morning, my wonderful Groa" he said and lift up Roeskva, placed her on his shoulder and started spinning with a big laugh on his face. Roeskva was not the least bit less happy. She was absolutely thrilled and chuckled to her father's content.

"Good morning, my caring husband" Groa smiled back and started pouring steaming hot oat meal into bowls and placed them on the table beside the wooden spoons Tjalfe had carved her the winter before last. Tjalfe threw the last fork full of dung onto the pile and grabbed the handles on the wheel barrow. It was kind of heavy. He´d put way too many forks full on it because he wanted to finish as quickly as possible and the less trips to the mitten, he´d thought, the better. He almost regretted it now, but he managed with difficulty to get it outside and carried it to the big pile of older dung behind the house. There he unloaded the wheel barrow and put it back in the stable, where it belonged. Then he went to the courtyard and washed himself thoroughly.

What a wonderful day this was! Despite the fact that it was still early in the morning the sun had already warmed up the soil and everything on it. Tjalfe had even put his cape over the small center axle trailer Tjalfe and his father used when going to the market to sell vegetables, because it was too hot to wear it. Tjalfe stole a quick glance up in the sky hoping to catch a glimpse of Svalinn. He imagined it would hang up there somewhere. Of course, he couldn't know for sure, but Thor had told him about it. The gods had ships that could sail through air and even though it sounded incredible, Tjalfe was sure he could trust Thor to tell the truth.

He ducked his head entering the house through the low door. The rest of the family was already placed around the table and Tjalfe quietly found his usual seat across his father, whose place was at the end of the table. His oat meal was still steaming hot and ready to eat. Tjalfe smiled. His mother's oat meal was the best!

"Careful, now, Tjalfe," Groa said as he almost shoveled in his food, "You´ll end up burning yourself. You can't be that much in a hurry, can you?"

His dad leaned forward in his seat. "I am sure the gods will have enough patience to wait for you, Tjalfe," he said in a firm voice. Tjalfe knew they were right. He was a little too eager. But these daily visits by the Fyrkat Fortress were just something he really looked forward to. It was the last thing on his mind before he fell asleep at night and it was the first thought coming into his head when he woke up in the morning. Being with Thor, Loki, Sif and the other Aseir was more gratifying than anything he had ever done before in his life and even though he went there every single day, going there never got old.

There was so much to see and even more to learn, but most importantly, the Aseir never stayed indefinitely. Their last visit was three summers ago and before that they had been gone for more than a hundred summers. Or at least that was what the elders in the village said. Tjalfe wasn't sure what to think. Yes, the Aseir were amazing and they had stunning abilities that no one in the village could even understand a fraction of. But still... Immortality? Naah... that was a bit over the top. Besides, what the villagers believed to be magic or godly powers was really not all that mysterious if you began examining it, he thought.

Tjalfe had asked Thor about it one day, but he hadn't seemed too eager talking about it. "Magic?"Thor had looked surprised at Tjalfe. "Why do you ask if it is magic?"

Tjalfe had felt some suspicion on Thor´s part and had looked down as he had tried to find the right words.

"Well," he had begun, "I don't know...It's just that... Well, that´s what they´re telling me. They are saying that..."

"The elders in the village, you mean?"

Tjalfe had nodded in embarrassment and had almost regretted even mentioning it.

"Hmmm...The elders..." Thor had frowned as he had said that word: "elders." You couldn't really blame him. Even though Tjalfe didn't believe the Aseir were immortals, he was sure Thor had to be at least 100 summers old and even the village elders couldn't expect more than 70 summers - and then only if they were really lucky. Calling people so much younger than himself "elders" really couldn´t sound right. Furthermore Tjalfe had a feeling Thor didn't exactly look up to the elders. Sometimes Tjalfe had gotten the thought he might even despise them a bit. On several occasions he had said things that lead Tjalfe to believe Thor thought they were a little too afraid of everything.

"You really shouldn't take them too seriously, Tjalfe - at least not when it comes to knowing about the Aseir" Thor had said and there was something in his voice that told Tjalfe it would be a bad idea to go further into the subject. And so Tjalfe suppressed his urge to know more and didn't ask more about it that day. Coming home he tried talking to his dad about it. He hadn't seemed to keen talking about it either and the matter was soon closed. Thinking about it now, Tjalfe wondered if his dad was more than just unwilling to talk about it. In fact, he had almost looked worried. Maybe he too, like the elders, were a bit afraid of the Aseir.

"The gods have existed ever since Odin and his brothers created the world and that's all there is to it," Tjalfe's dad had said and it was clear that he didn't want to discuss it further. Tjalfes father, Egil, wasn't the only one beside the village elders, who was very careful when talking about the Aseir. The whole village was struck with awe and their fear of them, however unwarranted, was quite vivid. Tjalfe couldn't for the world understand that fear. He himself at least had never had any reason to be afraid of Thor, Sif or any of the other Aseir he had met at the fortress. Still, after a while he got tired of asking the elderly about the gods and even after the Aseir had returned and welcomed Tjalfe in the fortress of Fyrkat, he hadn't told anyone about all the things he had experienced with them. Except Roeskva, of course. Roeskva he could tell about it.

Tjalfe loved telling Roeskva stories and now that he had some really amazing stories to tell her, he found it to be an irresistible mental valve telling her everything. This way, he wouldn't pile up everything inside and he knew she could be trusted not to tell anyone about it. In that way, Roeskva was different than any other girl he knew, including women being several summers older than his sister. She was only 9 summers old, but as long as she knew these stories to be a secret between the two of them, she would keep it to herself.

So he told her everything. Usually it was when they were both lying in bed and their parents thought they were sleeping. And she loved listening to his stories. She knew, she would never be allowed to go with him to the fortress and join him in his adventures, but listening to him telling these amazing tales was the next best thing. Every day as he left and went for Fyrkat, she couldn´t hide the fact that more than anything else in the entire world she would like to accompany him, but still she accepted this had to be the way of things. And when he told her the tale of the day, it was almost like being there herself. She had told him so on more than one occasion.

Tjalfe finished his oat meal as fast as he could without getting into trouble. Finally he put his spoon on the table.

"May I be excused?" Tjalfe looked at his father, waiting for his acceptance.

"You may," Egil nodded and Tjalfe got to his feet. "But remember to behave – and don't ask too many questions, you hear?"

Tjalfe grabbed his hunting bag and swung it over his shoulder.

"I understand, dad," he said and ducked his head exiting the house, "I'll be good."

Eager to reach Fyrkat, Tjalfe went over the top of Fox Hill and continued toward the forest. The sun was shining and the heat was continuously building up, so the cape he´d brought mostly for his mother´s sake was way too warm for wearing. Instead, he had tied it round his waist from where it was hanging loosely with its edges flapping against his legs. He looked to the sky where he knew Svalinn was hanging somewhere. He still didn't understand how the gods could live up there, floating high above the clouds in that circle shaped thing. But that was what Thor had told him and he never doubted this was the truth.

At the moment, with the sun shining from the sky, Svalinn wasn't visible, but sometimes when it was dark and the glowing coals from Muspelheim showed themselves like small dots on the Midgaard Dome, the observant person could get lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Svalinn. Of course, even the most observant people wouldn't have the slightest idea about what it was. For everyone else, Svalinn wouldn't stand out in any way. To them, it would look like any other Muspelheim Coal and they wouldn't think anything of it. But Tjalfe knew better. And he knew what to look for. Svalinn had a slightly different color and if you really looked for it, it was quite clear.

Thor had even showed Tjalfe how to make a looking tube, or a looking glass, as he had called it. With this looking glass you could see objects far away as if they were very close. It was right after the Rusen had come to the village after a many weeks journey. When Thor had seen the transparent balls the Rusen had brought from Miklagaard, he was suddenly very excited and bought the whole shipment on the spot. He didn't even bother to hassle about the price, which struck everyone around them as being outright insane.

Thor had explained to Tjalfe, how the balls were made by throwing lumps of sand into fire and then shape them like balls. As they cooled down they became transparent and you could see through them. Glass, he called it.

Tjalfe always had the looking glass in his hunting bag and quite often used it for hunting. It was extremely useful. With it, he could see a deer clearly from far away, which was a great advantage when he wanted to plan how to get closer.

He crouched and opened the bag, grabbed the leather piece and placed it flat on the grass. Then he took the two glass balls and placed them in opposite corners like Thor had shown him. Finally he rolled the leather piece firmly around the balls. The looking glass was ready.

He put one end of it to his right eye and turned the other end toward the sky in direction of where he believed Svalinn was. He was careful not to look straight at the sun, as Thor had warned him he could harm himself doing so, but surely it couldn't hurt to try finding Svalinn as long as he was careful?

It wasn't easy, though. Using the looking glass was very different than just using your eyes, because everything was shown distorted in them. Thor had explained to him how the balls bent the light and this was why things seemed to be closer than they really were. How clearly you could see through it depended on the quality of the glass balls. The finer the surface of the glass, the clearer things appeared. Even the slightest unevenness would make the image blurry.

There it was! The Svalinn. Tjalfe watched it closely while trying to imprint its shape in as much detail as possible inside his mind. It was round with a sort of outset in one side and in what Thor had explained was the front it looked like someone had taken a bite of the ship. Almost like when Roeskva greedily took the first bite of one of their mother's flat bread that she used to bake on a stone by the fireplace.

Tjalfe put down the looking glass on the ground carefully, so it wouldn't fall apart. He then reached into the hunting bag to grab his drawing of the Svalinn and placed it beside the looking glass. Based on memory alone, he added further details to the drawing with great skill and then used the looking glass again to search for Svalinn. It was much easier to find the second time around, but something was different from before. He saw not only Svalinn, but also some smaller ships sort of dancing around it. It reminded him of the village children playing tag at the plains, zigzagging back and forth, except on the sky it wasn´t one chasing the others, but rather looked as if Svalinn was being chased by most of the smaller ships. Then Svalinn started moving across the sky at great speed.

_Oh, no! Not that! Not already!_ Tjalfe thought to himself. Of course, he knew this day would come eventually. The day when the gods would leave Fyrkat and the village to return home... home to Asgard. He knew it, but he had hoped it would be in a long time from now. Watching the Svalinn move across the sky made him feel sad. Not only because the Aseir were about to leave. That was inevitable. And fair. No, Tjalfe was sad, because he felt let down by his new found friends. He was disappointed. Sif had promised they would say a proper goodbye before leaving. And now it looked as if they weren't going to keep that promise. They were leaving right now with him standing far away, not being able to do anything about it and he wouldn't have a chance to say goodbye. Hey, wait! Maybe they hadn't left completely! Maybe he could make it to Fyrkat, before they finished packing all their stuff! After all, they did have a whole lot of equipment...

Tjalfe threw the drawing and the looking glass inside his bag, grabbed hold of the cape and secured it to his waist. Then he ran as fast as he could in direction of Fyrkat. He had a chance, and he was going to grab hold of that hope. It wasn't certain that the Aseir were already on the ship. He had seen them use the stone in the center of Fyrkat. Touching that stone in a certain way they were able to move from one place to another in the blink of an eye. The first time Tjalfe saw it he got really scared. Sif and Baldur had been standing close to the stone and suddenly there had been a flash - and then they were gone! Tjalfe had tried hard as he could to hide his fear, but Thor had seen it in his eyes and made an effort to calm him down. He had explained that the very moment they disappeared here, they re-appeared somewhere else.

"Where?" Tjalfe had asked.

"Anywhere you like. Mostly aboard Svalinn, but sometimes even further."

"Further than Svalinn?"

Thor couldn't help laughing when he saw the disbelief in Tjalfe's face. He just couldn't comprehend it. Svalinn was so far away you had to use the looking glass to even notice it. With the naked eye it didn´t look like anything but an insignificant spot in the sky - and now Thor claimed they could go further away than Svalinn? It was almost too much and at first it didn´t make any sense.

"Yes," Thor had finally answer through his laughter, "further away than Svalinn. In fact, that´s why we are here. To try improving its range."

Tjalfe listened to Thor as he explained, but he just couldn´t wrap his head around it.

"See, the problem is," Thor had continued, "right now, we are able to transport people at a distance of here to Svalinn times three. We are working to increase that distance, make the device move us even further. And if we succeed - when we succeed - we should be able to move as far as from here and to any of the stars you can see with your own eyes."

'Stars' - Tjalfe had some trouble getting used to that term, but that´s what the Aseir called the Muspelheim Coals and Thor had explained to him in detail how all the stars, he could see were much like the Sun and that around most of them there were worlds, a few of which were very much like Midgaard, were he and his family lived.

It was all very strange, but in some odd way, Tjalfe knew Thor was telling him the truth. And just as strange as it all sounded, it was equally wondrous and marvelless. Just to imagine that out there, far beyond the heavenly arch, there were people in the thousands of thousands of thousands of... and they were living their lives much like he did!

Still, the Fyrkat device was something different and even though he had seen it so often, he really didn´t get how it could work. Whenever the circle around the stone began glowing, everyone knew that one of the gods were about to appear out of nothing right there in the middle of the Fyrkat Fortress and they would move away from it to give room for the new arrivals. To the Aseir this was nothing special, just a natural thing happening every day, but to Tjalfe it was absolutely amazing!

Exciting as the Fyrkat device was, however, he had never completely gotten over his fear of it and he had tried to avoid coming too close to it. Instead, he had watched it from a distance as he tried to build up the courage to satisfy the curiosity eating him up from within.

Little had he imagined that the device would be the one thing he clinged to in an effort to keep up hope. With the Fyrkat device, there was still a chance that they hadn´t all left yet and he just had to hold on to that hope. They had to still be there. They just had to!

Tjalfe reached the end of the path that snaked through the landscape and he was now at the edge of the forest. The sun hung low on the sky blinding him as he passed the last row of trees. Twitching his eyes and holding up a hand to shield against the strong light he ran in the direction he knew the fortress was.

Shortly after he got used to the light and was able to at least make out a blurry version of Fyrkat. Something wild was definitely going on in there. Usually they had guards posted on the palisades to ensure no intruders could get in unnoticed, but right now there wasn´t a single Aseir in sight. Inside there were lots of things going on. Though he couldn´t see anything, he could clearly hear the rattling noises coming from the other side of the palisades.

A clanking and a scraping told him they were busy packing everything in a hurry and the sound of a deep voice, he was sure he hadn´t heard before was shouting orders in a language he didn´t understand. It sounded almost like the language of the Aseir, but then again slightly different. And who was it? He thought about it for a while. Could it be someone he knew? No, he was sure. This was not a voice he had ever heard before.

Suddenly an ear deafening noise blasted through the air above him! Tjalfe jolted and because he didn´t see the big boulder right in front of him, he hit it hard with his left foot. The ground jumped toward him and he smashed his head full face into a pile of cow dung. He just managed to notice it was old and dry - big relief - before hitting the ground with the rest of his body.

He was just about to get to his feet when he heard a deep humming sound and decided in the last minute to make do with discretely lifting his head to see what was going on. It proved to be the right decision. A red hot glowing light squeezed through the cracks in the palisade wood around the fortress, changed to a strong yellow, then a bright white and then - BLAM!

He felt the ground shake violently underneath and by pure instinct he lifted up his body to stand on all four. He barely made it, before a blow of light and air exploded in every direction including his own. He was hit with such a force that he was tossed back and whirled through the air in a backwards summersault as if he was merely one of the wooden dolls he had so often made for Roeskva to play with. Finally he landed behind a small elevated area in the rugged terrain. Pump! He felt the air being blown out of his lungs as his ribs met the stony ground. He took a few seconds to catch his breath before looking up. That was when the dreadful sight of Svalinn roaring over his head with a tail of fire and smoke behind it appeared. Bursting across the sky with a horrific noise it continued in a low descent and disappeared in the horizon.

Tjalfe fought to get up, but it was an impossible endeavor. His eyelids were increasingly heavy and he felt a jolt of pain in his head just before he lost his consciousness and everything went pitch dark...

# Chapter 2: Silence after the storm

Thor woke up with a strange sensation bringing him back to his childhood when he sometimes woke up in the middle of the night having wetted his bed. He didn´t wake up all at once, but slowly travelled from a dreamlike state and gaining more and more consciousness. It wasn´t before he noticed the sound of rippling water he realized where he was. He squeezed his eyes tight in the bright sun and looked around. Loki was nowhere in sight, but then again Thor´s eyes had yet to get used to the bright light. His head pounded painfully beating simultaneously with his heart and his hand touched his hair as if it had a will of its own. _Oh, no!_ His hair was wet, but not from water and when he brought down his hand to look, it was dark red. He had had to have hit his head hard on the console aboard Svalinn - or was it aboard the escape pod when they broke the water surface close to the coast? He didn´t remember.

He sat up straight. The heat from the sun fell on him like a thick, heavy blanket as if he was sitting inside a baking oven and as his eyes got used to its light, everything around him was increasingly in focus. With his hand held over his eyes like a shade, he noticed an inroad at the edge of the forest, where a group of trees were toppled. He had a pretty good idea why they´d been turned over. The escape pod had all sorts of safety measures and his guess was that it had skipped a few times on the water and then released their seats just before ramming into those trees and plowing a path through them.

A couple of hundred meters down the beach, at the edge of the water, there was a burthen of some kind. Loki, maybe? Thor got to his feet as quickly as he could with the intent of rushing toward his friend, but apparently his body wasn´t quite ready for it. He barely got up, before dizziness overcame him and he tumbled onto the hot sand again. He wasn´t sure for how long he rested there, but it couldn´t have been more than a few minutes. Then he tried again. This time he had learned his lesson, though, so instead of rushing to it, he got up slowly, letting his body set the pace. As he came closer to the burthen, there wasn´t any doubt. It was Loki. He didn´t move at all. Just lay there lifeless as a rag doll. _Please let him be okay,_ Thor thought to himself as he crouched beside Loki and poked him in the side.

"Loki? Loki!"

No response...

He poked a bit harder.

"Loki! Wake up!"

Loki´s head shook. Phew! At least he wasn´t too badly hurt. Thor noticed that he didn´t even seem to have any visible wounds either and shook his head in disbelief. How typical... Even in the most dangerous situations, Loki always managed to get out of it without a scratch, while everyone else looked like they had been through a meat grinder.

"Thor?"

Loki sat up and looked around. He was clearly confused and had a hard time just figuring out where he was. Thor recognized the look on Loki´s face. It was the look he himself had had a few moments ago, but he sure wasn´t going to tell Loki about it.

"What happened?" Loki asked.

"I´m not sure. I think the escape pod had some kind of malfunction, though" Thor said moving his hand through his hair. He found the wound and jerked in pain. Then he pulled himself together and continued.

"We were ejected from Svalinn in the nick of time, but I think we hit the surface pretty hard."

Loki bent down and put his head between his thighs, just as he had been taught many years ago at the academy.

"Oh, my poor head" he moaned, "I think it took quite a beating."

"Same here, " Thor answered, still with his hand on his wound, "the last thing I remember, is the water rushing toward us and BLAM! Next thing is I´m stranded here on the beach with you." He paused for a moment trying to find a way to ease up the whole situation a bit.

"Loki, you look like crap!" He said with a wry smile on his face.

"Thank you very much!" Loki said back, "Honestly, you don´t exactly look like a homecoming queen either, if you don´t mind me saying..."

They both smiled and sat there for a while. Loki opened a pocket in his jacket and pulled out a navigator. He tapped it a few times and shook it hoping it would at least give him something.

"Nope," he said shaking his head, "nothing. Not a blip." He threw it in the sand beside him. For a while he just sat there, but then his face changed. He looked puzzled.

"Where is the pod?"

"I think it´s in there somewhere," Thor said pointing a finger to the inroad in the forest, "but I seriously doubt it will do us any good. The engine died when we entered the atmosphere and the panel was flickering red and yellow all the way down. It´s got to be dead."

Loki quickly got to his feet and brushed off some sand from his legs. "Well, at least we should figure out where we are," he said and began walking down the beach without even noticing Thor didn´t follow.

"Where was the pod again? Somewhere over..."

He paused in the middle of the sentence and turned around; only do see his friend was hurt much worse than he had noticed before.

"Thor!" he yelled and rushed back to help him up, "you´re hurt - badly!" He reached out and grabbed Thor´s arm and pulled. His face froze in a painful expression as a sensation of being pinched with a thousand needles went from his hip and spread out through his legs, torso and arms.

"Ouch!" he burst while putting a hand to the hip. He stood swaying in a circle motion for a few seconds, but couldn´t keep standing. With his face still showing intense agony he fell, first to his knees, and then his body just tilted, stiff as a board. Had it not been a rather serious situation, Thor would probably have laughed out loud. It really looked funny.

Moaning in pain Loki gathered all possible strength to get up. He knew that if the Yetten had any ships nearby they would most definitely discover two Aseir warriors out in the open and the last thing they needed was to be subdued to a Yetten interrogation. They had to get out of sight.

Mustering everything he had in him, he fought his way to his feet and mutually helping each other they managed to drag themselves to the edge of the forest.

There they dropped to the ground like a couple of sacks full of potatoes, each at the stem of a tree, where they leaned their backs to rest for a moment. They breathed heavily as they were trying to catch their breaths and little by little they regained their strength. Thor grabbed something from his pocket. It was a small piece of equipment that could easily fit in his hands. The device had two legs with a bow like structure between them and the third leg, which was a bit shorter, was connected to the bow, able to slide from side to side. At the point where all three legs met, there was a short looking glass with mirrors and the short leg could be fastened to any point on the bow by twisting a little screw.

Loki shook his head indulgently and turning the white out of his eyes. "I´ll never understand your fascination with Earth toys, Thor. What is that thing?"

At first, Thor didn´t reply, but just twisted the small screw, looked through the looking glass, twisted some more and looked again. After some time, he seemed to be satisfied with the settings and looked at Loki.

"It´s called a sextant," he said and drew something on a paper map, he had found in one of his pockets.

"A what?"

"A sextant," Thor repeated still focused on the map and the device, "it can help us figure out where we are."

Loki stared for a moment, but then decided Thor had to be joking.

"Yeah, right," he nodded, "and I suppose it can even get us all the way to Asgard by the use of magic?"

Thor finished drawing on the map and pointed toward some unseen point at the other side of the forest. "We need to go that way," he said, "but it´s going to be a long trip. Even if we could travel in a straight line, it´s about..." He measured a distance on the map and made some calculations inside his head with his eyes looking up and to the right. Then he looked at the map again and drew another line.

"675 kilometers," he mumbled as if he wasn´t really present. Sighing deeply he looked up from the map.

"And as I said: that´s if we could´ve travelled in a straight line..."

A worried silence fell over them both as the reality of the challenge had time to sink in. For a moment Loki considered protesting against relying on the sextant, but he had known Thor for a long time. No matter what Loki thought of earth technology, Thor was usually right about these things. So he kept it to himself and instead decided to back Thor up helping him find a viable solution to the problem.

Thor looked despondently at Loki.

"Maybe we can find a boat somewhere," he said with a sigh, "but none of the boats on this planet has the necessary speed to get to Fyrkat in time before the place is crawling with Yetten forces - and that´s if they are not there already."

"What about the escape pod?" Loki suggested.

"Have you even been listening to what I've said?" Thor answered fighting to hide his temper, "the pod doesn´t work."

"The pod won´t fly," Loki corrected him, "but if we can get the engine running, then maybe we can get it to sail?"

Thor thought about it for a second, but he just couldn´t see it.

"No," he said and threw both map and sextant to the ground, "the navigation system doesn´t work either." He sighed.

"There is nothing we can do," he claimed, "we are stuck here and the Fyrkat device will probably fall into Yetten hands within the next few hours. It´s only a question of time before they get a basic understanding of how it works and then it´s all over. We've lost the war."

But Loki wasn´t about to give up. He was certain his idea would work.

"Look, Thor" he said looking firmly in Thor´s eyes, "We have come this far and we are not going to give up now. Not just yet. I mean... You have the ... Earth thingy to help us hold the course. We just have to make a stop here and there to get our bearings." He paused a bit and then continued.

"At least we should give it a try, Thor" he insisted.

Thor sat still thinking about it while staring aimlessly at nothing. Suddenly he sat up straight! Of course! Loki was right! The sextant and the map were just as good as the navigation system. The only difference was the lack of automation and the fact that they would be vulnerable at every stop they made. But it should be possible.

"Alright!" he said a bit more optimistic and got to his feet, "it´s better than sitting here doing nothing, anyway. Let´s give it a shot."

He fastened his eyes on Loki, who was obviously still in great pain.

"Stay here!" he said, "I´ll find the pod and get the medical gear. We´ll get you up and running in no time and then it´s off to Fyrkat!"

Loki nodded and Thor started walking.

He stopped a few steps ahead to consider his options. Walking through the sand would probably take a bit longer, but on the other hand the narrow bit along the edge of the forest looked rather muddy and he was worried that he might get stuck in it somewhere and he couldn´t count on Loki to be able to free him if that happened.

Finally he decided on the beach and went on his way. It proved a bit difficult to keep his balance. His head still hurt and his legs seemed to be almost unwilling to do what he wanted them to, probably because he was exhausted. He almost regretted choosing the beach instead of walking at the edge of the forest, but it was way too late to change his mind.

Half way through the sandy bit of his journey he decided to take of his shoes. The warm sand pushed in between his toes and even if it was a bit too hot for his liking, he rather enjoyed the feeling. Additionally, it felt somewhat easier moving forward having direct touch with the ground beneath him.

Reaching the knobbly forest floor he had to put on his shoes again in order to not lose his balance and hurt himself more than he already had. He walked determinedly up the inroad, which he figured the escape pod had made in between the trees; and sure enough, there it was: the escape pod. Judging on the turned over trees, the pod had most likely entered the forest about two thirds up the height of the closest trees and at the impact made a sort of summersault suddenly decreasing its altitude strongly. The final 100 meters it looked as if it had skid the ground leaving a track of fire and smoke.

Instinctively Thor looked up through the tree tops. Although he was eager to get to the pod, such a crash was a dead give-away for any enemy vessels searching for them. There were no immediate signs of Yetten presence nearby and he sneaked a bit closer while constantly having all antennas out. Even if there was nothing to be seen in the sky, there could still be enemy foot soldiers in the vicinity.

At last he reached the pod. Being the experienced warrior as well as a brilliant scientist, he knew the Yetten had a habit of placing traps in places they had already searched. Using all the techniques to find such traps Thor finally decided there were none and approached the pod door. With a wave of his hand he unlocked the door and it opened with a breezing sound as the pressure equalized to the surroundings. Holding his hand on the wound on his head he entered the pod and looked around. Apart from the red lights still flickering insanely, the pod didn´t look as if it had any additional damage. Most importantly, it didn´t seem to have any visible leaks, which would´ve killed the idea of using it as a boat.

The automated systems immediately recognized the presence of Aseir DNA and the virtual screen appeared at the front in the pod. Thor searched through the logs and found what he already knew: the navigational systems were off line and the pod had no propulsion. No surprises there. At least there was more than enough power to get the pod to sail if only they could figure out a way to get the engine running.

He typed a command on the console and a drawer appeared beneath it. He grabbed a small box from the drawer, opened it and pulled out a canister. Holding the canister close to his head a faint green light healed his wound within seconds. It disappeared and left only dried blood, which he washed off with a cloth. Phew... much better. The pain wasn´t entirely gone, but it would eventually. He put the canister back, closed the box and brought it with him as he left the pod to the sound of the door closing automatically behind him.

He went back the way he came, despite of his training telling him to always use a different path going back. If the enemy had seen him on his way to the pod, the might wait for him to return and follow him back. But he was just too weary to worry about it now. This time it was much easier and it didn´t take nearly as much time to get back as it had getting to the pod.

The look on Loki´s face revealed sincere agony, but as soon as he saw Thor approaching along the edge of the forest he sat up and made an effort to relax his face.

"Glad to see you stop by," Loki teased him, "are you sure you shouldn´t have packed some lunch before you left? You look kind of hungry." Thor thought about telling Loki that he had noticed his pain, but finally decided not to. Instead he sat down beside him and opened the medical box. The virtual screen inside the box opened and Thor read the information.

"Well," he said while typing a few commands, "it says you broke a hip. But it´s not too serious, though. It´ll heal in no time at all. According to this it should about a half hour before you can walk again."

Loki was vexed. Han wasn´t exactly the patient kind and the thought of all the battles he had left uninjured made him a bit embarrassed that a short journey in an escape pod would force him to do nothing for a whole half hour.

"Oh, No!" Thor said guessing his friend´s thoughts, "we won´t wait with the healing before going to the pod. You will accept staying still for 30 minutes and then we´ll leave. In the meantime you´ll rest here while I go back to the pod and try to get the engine going." Thor paused a bit trying to determine if Loki´s nodding was sincere.

"Promise me you´ll stay here" Thor demanded and Loki nodded again. He knew Thor was right. Besides, there was something in Thor´s eyes telling him he wouldn´t take no for an answer. He might as well accept the fact that he had to rest there for a while. As Thor turned around and started walking back to the pod, Loki laid down resting his head on a lump of roots by the tree. He shut his eyes and within just a few seconds, he was overcome by weariness and fell asleep...

***

Tjalfe´s mother hovered across the plains with Roeskva hanging in her hair like an extension of her pony tail. She held a pitchfork in one hand and a pot in the other, which she used to wave at Tjalfe. She had a wry smile on her lips and her eyes seemed distant, almost as if she wasn´t really present, but was instead controlled by a strange and undefined force. At first Tjalfe believed it was a mere optic illusion that made her look as if she was flying freely a few feet above the ground, but as he observed more closely, he had to realize that her feet did in fact not touch the ground.

Roeskva was giggling and cheering as she toppled around herself hanging in her mother´s hair. For every time they moved across an elevated area on the grass field, Roeskva rammed into the ground and toppled even faster. Tjalfe kept expected her to cry out loud in agony, but for some strange reason she didn´t. Instead she was absolutely thrilled and her laughs reached new heights for each blow to the ground.

Tjalfe looked down and was terrified to discover that he was completely naked. Even though his mother and sister were the only ones present apart from himself, he wasn´t at all comfortable to be naked in the presence of women. He wanted to grab his cape, but it was nowhere to be seen. Desperately he looked around for something, anything, to cover himself. Even the tiniest cloth would be better than nothing. Apparently nothing was all there was. The hunting bag with the looking glass and the knife his father gave him last winter had also disappeared.

Some 10-15 feet away Sif was staring in his direction, but she didn´t look like she had noticed him standing there the way he was born. In an attempt to hide, he crawled under a nearby bush and started pulling the branches to cover himself, but as soon as he touched them, the bush suddenly came to life. Spreading out its branches and leaves it left him completely visible to everyone passing by. And everyone did pass by - or at least that was how he felt. The whole village had suddenly decided to parade by this particular bush to stare at the naked boy in it. Most of the elderly women just passed by with a condescending smile while looking somewhere else than in his eyes, but the old men starred at him viciously grunting and complaining. "Blasphemer!" "Disrespectful Boy" and similar invectives were the order of the day and the humiliation was almost too much to bear.

Through the leaves he could see Roeskva as she came closer and closer while calling his name out loud.

"Tjalfe?"

Tjalfe looked around to find his mother, but she was nowhere to be seen.

"Tjalfe?" Roeskva repeated his name in a worrisome voice. She approached the bush crouching to crawl under it and put a hand on his naked shoulder.

"Tjalfe? Tjalfe! Wake up, Tjalfe, please!"

Tjalfe slowly opened his eyes and looked around with a confused expression. He was fully dressed and the hunting bag lay on the ground right beside him. Roeskva looked him in the eyes with concern and he sat up straight. Phew.. He sighed with relief as he realized it had only been a dream. But how long had he been sleeping? He wasn´t sure, but tried figuring it out by looking at the sun, which was hanging a hand or so over the tree tops in the direction of the city of Hobro. He had had to have been unconscious for several hours, then.

"Are you alright, Tjalfe," Roeskva wanted to know. Sweet Roeskva. Always concerned with his well being, she was.

"Yeah," he said in a distant voice, "Yeah, I´m.. I´m okay." He tried to ease her concern with a smile and it seemed to work. She looked more relaxed and lowered her shoulders.

"Mum is worried about you," she said, "she asked me to look for you and tell you to come home right away." Tjalfe got to his feet and brushed off the dirt of his clothes.

"In a minute or so, sweetie," he answered and grabbed the hunting bag, "I have to check out something first."

She looked concerned again.

"Please, Tjalfe," she objected with her eyes skewing toward the ruined fortress, "She did say right away, you know. She is going to get mad. Tjalfe!"

He stopped and turned around looking in her eyes. She looked both angry and excited at the same time. As if she had already sensed there was some kind of adventure ahead, but couldn´t shake of the prospect of having to deal with her mother afterwards. Tjalfe put his hand on her shoulder ensuring her that there was no danger in what he was about to do and that the fortress was completely deserted.

"I won´t be long, Roeskva," he said. He paused for a bit, and then continued: "you can come with me if you want." That triggered her. All grumpiness and potential anger disappeared from her face. She sent him a gigantic smile that pushed aside all worries. Tjalfe hadn´t told her to come with him just for her sake, though. After all, it would be much better if she went along instead of going home revealing everything to their parents. Not that he believed she would deliberately tell them. In fact, he was certain she wouldn´t. But if she looked the least grumpy or even worried coming home, their mother would guess immediately that he had refused to come home with Roeskva. This way he could avoid the conflict with their mother, because they couldn´t know if Roeskva had found him or not. So, he suggested she should join him. And he knew it would work. Every single day since the Aseir arrived at the Fyrkat fortress and welcomed Tjalfe to visit them, Roeskva had begged and pleaded with him to bring her along. He had always refused her, because he knew his parents wouldn´t approve. It was bad enough that he visited the gods, a fact his parents weren´t too happy about in the first place. He suspected they only let him do it, because deep down they awed the gods and since the Aseir extended their hospitality to Tjalfe, who were Egil and Groa, a simple hunter and his wife, to go against the will of the gods? So, even though Tjalfe´s visits called for some unwanted attention from the village people in general and the elders in particular, his parents probably felt they had no other choice but to let him go for his daily visits at the fortress. But there was a huge difference between that and allowing Roeskva to go with him. She was, after all, no more than 10 summers old - and even a girl!

After a while Roeskva had come to terms with the fact that she would never meet Tjalfe´s new friends face to face. So, at this new prospect of visiting the fortress, she shone brighter than the sun. Deserted as it may be, going inside Fyrkat was still quite the adventure and she looked very much forward to it.

"But..." Tjalfe said in a firm voice, "you have to promise me you won´t tell anyone about it!" She nodded eagerly.

"Not to anyone - especially not mum and dad, okay?" Roeskva couldn´t stand still, but moved her feet and legs like mad.

"I won´t, Tjalfe, I promise!" She said excitedly. Oh, was she looking forward to seeing that fortress on the inside!

Tjalfe swung the hunting bag over his shoulder, took her hand and then they proceeded across the grass toward the fortress.

Coming closer, Tjalfe had to stop for a moment to let the sight of Fyrkat´s destructive state sink in. He was chocked.

"Whoa," he said distantly and felt Roeskva squeezing his hand so tight it hurt, "the palisades have almost been destroyed."

Roeskva looked at her brother while still clinging to his hand.

"Pali- what?"

"The Palisades," he answered without looking at her, "The raft wall around the fortress. They are supposed to protect the fortress against enemies." He pointed at the top edge of the Palisades and continued:

"You put guards up there and then you can spot the enemy coming from far away. It gives you the advantage of being on higher ground." She showed her understanding by nodding and they entered the gate, which was wide open and hanging askew at its hinges. The inside of the fortress appeared to them as they entered through the gate. What a dreadful sight! Everything in there was destroyed. The many houses the Aseir had used as living quarters when they weren´t aboard their air vessels were obliterated and the small cars that could move by themselves without being pulled by oxen or horses had turned into charcoal. Some sheds were still burning and the grass beneath the two children was light brown like after a dry summer. Only the big stone in the middle of the fortress seemed untouched by whatever had happened in there.

That particular stone had always had an alluring effect on Tjalfe ever since he entered the fortress for the first time. The symbols on the stone had to be touched in a certain order and then the stone and the circle glowed more and more till the gods were embraced by something that resembled the steam Tjalfe had seen coming from his mother´s stewing pot over the fire. Finally the gods would disintegrate like melting snow. Tjalfe had never really understood how it worked, but contrary to the beliefs of the elders, he knew it wasn´t magic. It was 'science,' a word Thor used on several occasions. In the village they believed magic to be something reserved for people with the gift, but according to Thor, 'science' was obtainable by anyone who wanted to learn, although the extent to which someone could harness the power depended on their ability to learn. The elders had never responded positively to this notion and Tjalfe was quite sure the only reason they didn´t exile him from the community was the fact that he seemed to be favored by the gods.

Tjalfe looked down to find the circle, but for some reason it wasn´t visible. The stone didn´t have the usual glow either, so he gathered all his courage to get closer and examine the place. He was quite disappointed. There was nothing special about that stone. It was merely... a stone... nothing more...

His face changed expression as he noticed something on the ground right beside the stone and crouched to get a closer look. There it was, calling out to him - or so he felt. It was a kind of tube made of a material similar to glass like the balls he used for his looking glass. Only it was of a much finer quality and the color was a bit different. He had seen that kind of tube before and knew the gods used them for a whole variety of things. Thor had told him never to touch them. They were only to be used by the Aseir. Tjalfe felt the temptation grow inside of him. He strongly wanted to grab the tube and try to fix the transport stone and he was wondering if this situation wasn´t special enough to be the exception from the rule. Maybe the gods would forgive him for it, if he picked it up? Just to have a look at it, of course. He struggled with himself for a while. Finally he gave in to the temptation and picked up the tube.

"Tjalfe! No!" Roeskva yelled loudly, but it was already too late. The tube began glowing in his hand and while Roeskva horrified stood by observing without being able to do anything about it, Tjalfe felt the excitement grow inside of him. Imagine standing there with a piece of Aseir technology in his hands? He turned the tube examining it from every angle. The glowing light inside of the tube moved back and forth in yellow and red colors. First slowly from one end to the other. From that end and back again. Back. Forth. Back. Forth. Back... Forth... Back and Forth. Back and Forth. Back, forth, back, forth, back, forth, back, forth. Faster and faster it moved and for every switch in direction of the movement the light glowed a bit brighter. After a while the light grew outside the tube embracing his hand and moving further out to cover his arm. At this point he was scared and threw the tube on the ground. But it was already too late. The glowing bubble continued to grow further and further out from its origin inside the tube. Roeskva grabbed his hand and pulled it. He following her willingly and they both stepped back a few steps.

The bubble of light grew and grew and reached over the top of the stone and - if it happened within a few seconds or if it was minutes, even hours, wasn´t at all clear to any of them, because they had both lost every sense of time they might have had - with a sudden change the bubble seemed to burst in an explosion of light, heat and fire... Tjalfe felt his body being blown backwards and he only just managed to grab Roeskva with both of his hands and holding her in a firm grip, before a mighty force pulled them violently backwards, away from the stone...

***

# Chapter 3: Fyrkat

The console of the escape pod still didn´t work exactly as it should, but with a bit of luck Thor had managed to push the heating shield on the front aside using his hands. Then at least they were able to see where they were going. Even better, to Thor´s big surprise, there wasn´t anything wrong with the engine either. The problem had been much simpler and easier to fix than he´d expected. The conduits between the engine and the energy crystals had been damaged in the rough landing and it had proven to be rather easy to reconnect them.

The pod couldn´t fly as both navigation and controls were still off line, but they had full power and full control over the horizontal steering and should be able to reach the fjord leading in to the country close to Fyrkat within a few hours. Hopefully they would make it in time to disconnect the crystals and the console from the device before the Yetten gained control of the fortress and started ripping the whole site apart to steal the new technology.

The pod sailed in a manner similar to an old fashioned semi submarine its top being some few centimeters above water and the rest of the pod submerged. This way Thor could easily observe how the bottom of the ocean raised up as they approached the coast and found the fjord. He poked Loki, who opened his eyes and sat up.

"Are we there yet?" he uttered in a slightly confused voice while rubbing his eyes. He barely remembered how they got into the pod in the first place and he certainly couldn´t remember walking to it. Maybe Thor had carried him there?

"Almost there," Thor answered, "We've reached the fjord and are about to begin sailing in through the entrance. I need your help steering through the more narrow turns. I would hate to be grounded somewhere this close to our destination."

Loki got up from his seat and placed himself in the front of the pod and Thor instructed him how to keep an eye on the ocean bottom at his left and inform Thor if they came too close to obstacles. It proved to be a good call. No more than a few minutes later they had to turn sharply to the right and then right away an equally sharp turn to the left. They barely avoided being grounded and even heard scraping along the hull as they continued inward through the fjord. The next curve went sharp right, but it wasn´t too difficult getting around. After that they sailed straight ahead for a long while, then a sharp left turn, even more sharp to the right and after a few turns to each side they finally reached the inner third of the fjord. The rest of the journey was like a walk in the park.

Fifteen minutes later the pod crept quietly to the bottom of the fjord and landed on the southern beach. There were no people there, which was what they´d hoped. The last thing they needed was for someone to notice them resulting in hordes of curious villagers bringing their presence to the attention of potential Yetten troops in the vicinity. After all, their "boat" wasn´t exactly of indigenous design and if any of the locals saw it, they would not be able to avoid being detected.

Exiting the pod they were met by a refreshing breeze. Even though the pod did have a rather effective internal environmental system, it couldn´t reproduce the feeling of actually being outdoors.

They attached a rope to the pod, tied it around a nearby tree and pulled in the pod. Although the pod was heavy, they managed to drag it out of the water and hid it beneath some trees that were turned over by a recent storm. Finally they grabbed their backpacks packing them with some items they might need and began their journey inwards in the direction of the Fyrkat fortress.

Not long after reaching the edge of the forest, Thor looked at the radiation meter which showed such high levels, that it was clear Fyrkat hadn´t been completely shut down yet. Thor had expected as much, but he was still quite concerned.

"These levels are way higher than they are supposed to be," he explained, "even the ordinary procedure of cooling down can´t explain it." He looked puzzled. "In fact," he mumbled, "the only explanation I can really give is that someone tampered with the console at Fyrkat, but..." That was when a terrible thought struck them both at the same time! They looked at each other with a frightened expression on their faces and it was clear to them both what was going on.

"The Yetten!" they burst out and picked up the pace. They didn´t run because they had to conserve some of their energy. If the Yetten had actually taken control, they would need their strength to make an insurgent attack to obtain the valuable pieces of the Fyrkat device. It wouldn´t do much good getting there quickly, if they didn´t have the strength to fight. So, they went as quickly as they could, without depriving themselves of being able to talk on the way.

Loki wondered about something and now felt it was time to ask.

"Thor?"

"Hmmm..." Thor mumbled preoccupied.

"What would happen, if the Yetten did get hold of the Fyrkat device?" Loki continued breathlessly as they were going up a strong hill. Thor still had his focus on the radiation meter and didn´t look at Loki, but almost ran undauntedly downhill and continued down the path that would bring them to the Fyrkat fortress. Loki kept up as best he could, waiting patiently for an answer. Up till now he hadn´t cared much about what the Fyrkat device was and what it could do. He hadn´t felt the urge to know or even deemed it important to know. Being a warrior, he seldom found it necessary to know why different kinds of technology was important and to him, it was more than sufficient to just know, that it was important and that it should be kept away from the Yetten forces at all cost. Likewise all he needed to know was the purpose of his mission on Earth: to keep Thor and his team of scientists safe during the testing of the Fyrkat device. But now the situation had changed. Right now they were on their way to the Fyrkat fortress to dismantle the device and obtain the console and the energy crystals. As a strategic expert and soldier he found it important to know more. He had to work out some kind of plan to give them the best chance of success. To do this he had to get some idea of what could potentially happen out there.

"Well," Thor began, "basically the Fyrkat device is nothing more than an expanded version of our transportation system."

"But," Loki replied in a puzzled voice, "the Yetten already have a similar transportation system."

Thor continued undauntedly down the path while trying to explain the details.

"Yes, they do," he said, "and in many ways their system is like ours. That is the basic problem. The Fyrkat device massively increases the range of transportation. Our current transportation system has a very precisely defined limit to its range based on the laws of astro physics, but the Fyrkat device should, in theory, be able to transport all kinds of material any distance as long as there is power enough. And since the Yetten transportation system resembles our own, there is no reason to believe, they can´t make it work with their own technology."

Loki let the information sink it while trying to figure out the consequences of such an outcome. Unlimited transport distance? So, anyone with an understanding of that device would be able to transport anyone to any place in the galaxy? Maybe even to other galaxies? Even with his vast experience, Loki was chocked. If the Yetten were ever to get this kind of technology, they would be able to attack anyone everywhere at any time! Their only limit would be set by the amount of energy they could get hold on, but with access to this many planets and solo systems, that wouldn´t be any problem either. They could harvest energy from stars, black holes, nebulas and who knew which other energy sources were out there in the vast emptiness of space that neither the Yetten, nor the Aseir had come across yet? And even worse: the time it would take for the Yetten to obtain the needed energy would be short. Most of the solo systems in the Milky Way alone were uninhabited and the few that were occupied by sentient beings were mostly so technologically disadvantaged compared to the Yetten that they wouldn´t stand a chance at defending themselves. Alone the fact that no more than 2 out of 100 civilizations had the knowledge and means to send spaceships to even their nearest neighboring planet, meant that the Yetten would meet virtually no resistance at all. Furthermore, Yetten history showed without a doubt that they would have absolutely no problem using that advantage. It was simply a defining part of their culture to subdue other races making them slaves and when the Aseir had first encountered the Yetten more than ten thousand years ago, it became clear almost instantly that negotiating was no viable option. At that point, the Aseir Counsel approved Overseer Odin´s suggestion to make the stand against Yetten expansion their number one priority.

The strategy had been to send in small fighter units hit and run missions in an effort to inflict the Yetten infrastructure and supply lines as much as possible and it had proven rather effective. It was on one of these missions, Odin met Loki. As a young Yetten warrior, Loki was not comfortable with the brutality of his race and it bothered him how they treated other races. During a mission in the Vanaheim system, Odin had managed to capture Loki and bring him back to Asgard. It had been the perfect timing for both of them. The Vanes were a peaceful race and even though they were every bit as advanced as the Yetten, they had never done much research in the application of their knowledge to offensive means - or even defensive measures. They simply did not believe it to be necessary. The result was on one hand that the Yetten had no problem defeating the Vanes, but on the other hand the Vanes were still a proud race completely refusing to subdue to Yetten rule. The only respond the Yetten could think of was to increase their brutality, which in turn made the Vanes even more stubborn. It had to be a never ending bad cycle and if the Aseir had not succeeded in pushing back the Yetten forces with a single huge and determined blow, the Vanes would most likely have been utterly wiped out in the end.

As it happened, Loki was posted on Vanaheim and had been increasingly disturbed by what he saw there. The brutal and even arbitrary arresting of Vanes to be interrogated by common soldiers with no goal of obtaining intelligence, but simply being used as a means to terrorize the Vanes, had Loki stretched between his loyalty to his superiors and his own conscience. He was at the brink of falling apart emotionally, when Odin captured him and brought him to Asgard. At first, he was a prisoner of war, but Odin had soon won the trust of Loki and he slowly began to develop a deep sense of sympathy for the tall Aseir. Looking up to Odin and as their relationship moved toward something resembling the relation between a father and his son, Loki revealed an ever increasing number of Yetten secrets to the Aseir council. After some time, Odin even decided to adopt Loki as his son. Not an action the Aseir council were too happy about, but Odin wasn´t a nobody and in time they even had to accept Odin´s decision to let Loki join the ranks of the Aseir military.

It hadn´t been long after Loki had proven the council wrong. His fierce opposition to the Yetten brutality and his strategic abilities had saved quite a few lives; Aseir as well as other races´. With time Loki had become an accepted member of the Aseir community and only a few Aseir still had some concerns about Loki knowing as much as he did, biologically being a Yetten.

All of the sudden Thor stopped and Loki almost ran him over. Further down the path they could see the sad remains of the Fyrkat fortress. Thor sighed at what he saw there. Smoke was reaching up from several places inside of the palisades and the palisades themselves were all but destroyed. But it wasn´t as much the destruction itself that concerned Thor. No, it was more the glowing light coming from the center of Fyrkat. It was a pulsating glow in many colors and it expanded more than 500 meters out from Fyrkat. They both knew this could mean only one thing: someone had activated the Fyrkat device and the Yetten could already have obtained the technology!

Thor and Loki started running toward the fortress. They held their eon rifles in front of themselves ready to shoot their way through if need be. While they were running, the glowing and pulsating light grew up and over the top of the fortress and further upwards. It had the shape of a bubble and expanded around the fortress in all directions.

_Oh, no!_ Thor thought while trying to concentrate on not putting his foot down in the wrong place and find himself tripping on a stub or an elevation on the ground. _The only way the bubble can grow this rapidly is if it is trying to establish a stable wormhole to somewhere far away from here._

Loki held his riffle tight with one hand as he signaled Thor with his free hand. He wanted Thor to run clockwise around the fortress to the next gate while he himself would run the other way and try to get to the northern entrance. Thor saw his signal and understood Loki´s plan at once. It really was their luck that they had been on so many missions together in the past. It made it much easier to communicate and Loki wasn´t sure, Thor would get the idea, if they hadn´t known each other as well as they did.

Thor made a few short sideways jumps to the left and was now able to look through a big hole in the palisades. His experience told him that if he had clear vision through that hole, then the potentially battle ready Yetten soldiers on the other side would of course be able to observe him in return and instinctively he jumped flat to the ground. Just in time before hitting the ground and getting himself moved away from a possible clear shot he caught a glimpse of the two figures standing close to the center stone. _Tjalfe??? What in the world is_ _he_ _doing here???_ _And who is standing with him???_

To the right from where Thor was now lying flat down in the grass, Loki had managed to get close to the northern entrance and as he had anticipated, this was exactly from where the Yetten had decided to capture the fortress. The obvious advantage of their strategy was the fact that they wouldn´t have to worry about being discovered by local fishermen coming home from work and have to deal with those as well as the Aseir. The southern entrance was too close to the forest, where any potential enemy could easily hide and prepare for an ambush. Of course the Eastern entrance was another viable way to get easy access to the fortress and Loki expected the Yetten would probably try entering through there as well. Coming from the West and being only the two, Loki and Thor wouldn´t have the Eastern option, though. So, the northern entrance was the best option.

Loki had hoped to make it to the northern entrance before the Yetten forces had had a chance to move in through the gate, but apparently they had been inside the fortress for quite some time and had already posted guards at all the gates.

Loki carefully sneaked closer and hid himself beneath a bush from where he had a clear view through the gate. He pressed hard against the ground as best he could in the hope that the Yetten wouldn´t be able to see him in return.

Inside Fyrkat a big Yetten commander screamed orders at his soldiers, who scattered evenly around the center stone in a half circle about 25 meters in radius. A smaller group of about 8 men were busy trying to evacuate injured troops from the area, which had clearly been a battle zone less than an hour ago. Or rather, as Loki thought about it, more likely there had been a major explosion in there.

In the middle of the fortress, close to the center stone, two kids were standing. The energy crystal was lying on the ground in front of the children imbuing its surroundings in pulsating light in all colors of the rainbow. Loki was puzzled. The crystals worked only at the touch of an Aseir. In fact, this had been somewhat of a challenge, when he had joined the ranks of the Aseir military. Most of the Aseir technology had a built-in security based on DNA and because his genetic code didn´t match what this system was searching for, Thor had been working overtime to find a solution granting Loki access to the use of those crystals without granting any other Yetten the same advantage. After months of trial and error, Thor had finally come up with a way and Loki had been injected with a serum changing his genetic code slightly. Not to the extent that his body had changed as such, but just enough to make the crystals accept his touch.

Could the Yetten have found a similar solution? Loki certainly hoped not. It was one of the most important security measures the Aseir used as a means to keep the Yetten from obtaining advanced technology and if they had actually found a way around it, the entire structure of the Aseir security had to be re-thought.

But he had to worry about that later. Right now, the important thing was to get the Fyrkat device as far away from the Yetten as possible - and as Loki rather reluctantly had noted by now, it looked like they had to rescue some stupid human kids as well. Loki turned his focus to the scenario inside of the fortress again and observed as much as he could. From tiny signs at the battle ground Loki´s trained eyes detected and deducted information most other people didn´t even notice and what he found, was rather disturbing. First, Loki noticed foot prints on the two main paths crossing each other inside of the fortress. The size of these prints was a dead give away: they had to from the big Yetten army boots, he despised from the minute he joined the academy and till he was a P.O.W. However, it wasn´t likely they´d deserted the place to recapture it later. It wasn´t their battle style. On the other hand, there weren´t any corpses inside the fortress. The only reasonable explanation, Loki could think of was that they´d taken control of the Fyrkat fortress a few minutes before Svalinn crashed and when Thor managed to shut down the Fyrkat device, the resulting explosion had sent such a forceful blast of radiation that the initial Yetten troops had been killed instantly. This would explain, why there were corpses on the ground, as the heavy radiation would´ve dissolved most of the organic matter, leaving nothing but dust and ashes. After that, they´d sent in new troops to recapture the fortress and scavenge the technology, they believed to be inside.

If Loki was right about all of this, the situation was much more serious than they had thought at first. The Yetten were definitely skilled warriors, but courage and honor in the Aseir sense of those words weren´t among the Yetten virtues. They´d never have sent in troops as long as there were Aseir troops sufficiently guarding it. A small Aseir fleet had been posted in this solo system just in case, but apart from the council and of course the team of scientists under Thor´s leadership, only a handful of people knew about the scientific mission on The Earth. If the Yetten knew when, where and how to strike, the only reasonable conclusion, Loki could think of, was that the Yetten had infiltrated them. In other words: they had a spy in their midst!

Loki and Thor waited in their respective hiding places observing the Yetten soldiers inside the fortress and preparing themselves for the upcoming battle. They were vastly outnumbered by at least ten to one, but they weren´t too worried about it. The Yetten were indeed a challenge when fighting in space, but in close combat on a planet surface the Aseir were by far the strongest. The Aseir hand weapons and especially their personal shields provided them with a huge advantage. Usually a group of 6-8 Aseir warriors could take on whole platoons of thirty to forty Yetten foot soldiers and even though Loki and Thor were only two against at least 24 men, they still had the advantage of experience and even more importantly the element of surprise. The platoon inside the fortress didn´t look very experienced, with the possible exception of the commander and some of his sub commanders.

The pulsating light had almost reached its maximum and Loki was running out of time. He turned his eyes toward the elevated area where Thor had taken cover and signaled him. The time had come. Thor acknowledged nodding his head and watched Loki closely as he counted down using his fingers. 3.. 2.. 1.. GO!

From each of their locations they jumped up and jolted forward while shooting wildly at their enemies. These tactics worked exactly as they were supposed to. The most inexperienced young Yetten soldiers took cover almost immediately. The two Aseir warriors were able to take down nearly half of the Yetten troops before the commander at the northern entrance regained control of his people by shooting those of them who tried to escape. After that the battle was a more equal fight.

Loki fought his way through the gate and threw himself beneath a car from under which he had a clear view of most of the fortress´s interior. It was the perfect place to work out how to proceed. Thor wasn´t as lucky. He succeeded in defeating the four guards standing by the entrance, but as he went through the gate, he hadn´t noticed a lone Yetten warrior, who had pressed himself flat to the mound wall to the left.

Click!

The sound behind him startled him and he turned around on his heels. The Yetten soldier looked at his weapon with a frightened expression and tried frantically to get it to work. Thor knew instantly how lucky he had been. If that rifle hadn´t malfunctioned there was little doubt Thor would have been killed right there on the spot. The short distance had definitely made it a sure kill if he had been able to fire. Thor reacted swiftly and the Yetten could do next to nothing as the fierce Aseir warrior stormed toward him and with a forceful jolt jabbed a knife deeply into his flesh just beneath his left shoulder blade and punctured his heart. The Yetten fell to the ground with a thump and Thor turned around to face the five Yetten soldiers who had rushed to aid their comrade and now pointed their weapons at Thor.

Loki saw it all from under the car and aimed. Two of them fell to the ground before they knew what hit them, but the remaining three managed to throw themselves flat on the ground. However, they had no time to appreciate their luck, because the moment after Thor made sure they were in no condition to fight.

The noise made the commander aware of what was going on. He burst with orders to his men as he ran toward Thor with his rifle raised shooting wildly at everything that moved. Thor saw it and ran sideways while returning fire. He reached Loki and threw himself under the car. The big Yetten commander ordered his men to storm the car. Thor and Loki quickly crawled out from under the car, turned it over and took cover behind it. Loki popped his head above the edge of the car to get a basic idea of the enemy´s positions and then sat down beside Thor with a disturbed expression on his face.

"Oops," he said.

"Oops?" Thor responded, "What do you mean? Oops?"

"Erm... well, let´s just say that there are a few more Yetten soldiers than I expected."

"A few more? How is that? How many more?"

"Look for yourself."

Thor turned around and lifted his eyes above the edge of the car - not much, just enough to get a head count. His eyes widened at what he saw. From somewhere far away hordes of Yetten soldiers practically flooded through the northern entrance. Thor and Loki weren´t outnumbered ten to one, but more like a hundred to one! The Yetten had sent an entire regiment!

Thor turned around again and sat down with his back to the car.

"So," he said, "that´s what you call 'a few more,' eh?" He looked at his friend with a theatrical resentment.

"It´s the entire Yetten nation out there!" he said in a loud voice.

Loki looked at Thor with a thoughtful expression. Thor looked back at Loki with a similar expression. Then they nodded at each other in a mutual understanding. They may be beaten, but they surely weren´t going to surrender. If this was to be their final hour, they were determined to go down with a bang!

They prepared themselves and hung extra eon grenades in the vertical straps of their uniforms in such a way that they just had to grab a grenade and the pin would be released automatically. That way they would be able to throw quite a few grenades in a very short time. Again they nodded at each other. Ready, set, GO!

Jumping over the car they began their death run against the enemy troops...

Time seemed to slow down the moment they both landed on their feet on the other side of the car. At first Thor fixed his eyes firmly at the approaching Yetten warriors, who´s facial expressions showed rage and blood thirst, but then, for some strange reason, he remembered Tjalfe and his companion in the center of the fortress. Thor turned his head toward them as a blast from a Yetten rifle passed him deadly close to his face, but he didn´t even notice it. He had suddenly realized who was standing beside Tjalfe. It was his little sister, Roeskva and Thor instinctively turned in their direction!

Both children were standing still as statues in front of the center stone looking at the energy crystal and it looked as if they had absolutely no idea what was going on around them. As if they didn´t even sense the hordes of Yetten warriors surrounding them. Not even the screaming and the battle noises seemed to bother them in any way.

Most other people would have been rather puzzled at this, but Thor knew exactly what was going on. He knew why they looked like nothing in particular happened around them. He knew, they looked like that, because to them nothing did happen around them.

The bubble of the Fyrkat completely covered those children and as a result the artificial wormhole set them out of both time and space. For the very same reason they looked as if they were standing still, because compared to the time passing for Thor, Loki and the Yetten, they were in fact standing still - or at least they almost were. Time inside of the bubble passed much slower than outside of it.

Despite the fact that this had saved them from the Yetten and still kept them safe, Thor was worried. If he weren´t able to sever the connection between the crystal and the Fyrkat device they might be trapped forever in the time dilated field of the wormhole. Thor didn´t have to think much about it. He knew exactly what to do. Sure, it was dangerous and he had no way of knowing if it would work or if it would rather destroy everything in a 10 kilometer radius, but it was worth the risk. If there was just a remote chance of saving those kids, he would do whatever it took to accomplish it. He grabbed a grenade from his strap and pulled it off of its place. With a perfect school example of a flic-flac he jumped up and over a couple of surprised Yetten soldiers, who had apparently been looking forward to overcome the mighty Aseir warrior in a moment of distraction. In mid air he let go of the grenade and as soon as his feet met contact with the ground beneath him he set off in another jump sending him a meter or so to the side where he threw himself flat on the ground and took cover behind an elevated area. He looked up and observed the grenade flying in a perfect arch over the bubble approaching its center, which was downwards bent and fluctuated with light distortion like a whirl pool. The grenade slipped into the stream and began hurling around the center, slowly entering the bubble itself.

Now there was nothing Thor could do but wait till the grenade reached its target inside the bubble. He took a deep breath and prepared for his inevitable demise at the hands of the Yetten soldiers who were gathering around him from all sides weapons raised and eager to avenge the deaths of their comrades in previous battles. Thor insisted on not closing his eyes and instead he sat up straight and looked them firmly in their eyes. Closer and closer they approached him with hatred and decisiveness. It was clear that they looked forward to this battle and meant to enjoy every moment of the victory over the Aseir warrior that was sure to come...

***

Loki ran beside Thor for a while gunning down Yetten warriors with his eon rifle. As the Yetten soldiers came closer he had to switch weapon. First from the rifle to a smaller hand weapon and then even that wouldn´t work and he had to draw his knife which he waved in a sort of controlled frantic. It looked like some sort of dance. A dead man´s dance.

He bent his knees and cut the leg of a close by Yetten soldier, sprung his body like a jack-in-a-box and swung the knife cutting an arm and then again made a quick turn jolting the knife deep inside the body of another Yetten soldier right behind his left shoulder blade. The fight went on for what felt like hours to Loki, but was really no more than a few minutes. But even the fiercest and most agile Yetten fighting for his life and his honor has his limitations and Loki felt his strength weakening for every stroke. A somewhat small Yetten warrior had noticed this and decided to exploit Loki´s weakness with a quick series of punches to Loki´s face and neck followed by a strong kick at his knee.

During the fierce battle Loki hadn´t noticed that Thor had changed his direction, but know that his knees gave in beneath him, his eyes searched for his friend and found Thor close by the center stone. With a wry smile he noted the consequences of Thor´s plan in his mind. In a few moments the Fyrkat device would explode and Loki prepared himself for the inevitable impact.

The Yetten commander noticed the changed expression in Loki´s face and turned to look in the same direction. The commander immediately realized the seriousness of the situation and reacted accordingly. With his arms propelling around him he shoved away every obstacle as he plowed his way toward Loki. With a final jump he grabbed Loki´s arm in mid air and punched a button on his belt with his free hand. There was a whooshing sound as small flashes of lightning covered them both and their bodies dissolved just in time before the explosion from an eon grenade shattered the bubble around the center stone and a powerful burst of energy blew out in every direction.

Then everything was quiet... The only thing Loki could hear was the low pitched humming of an engine. Loki looked around and recognized the place immediately. He sighed deeply. He was on a Yetten vessel and on the wall he read the name of one of the most feared space ships in the galaxy: Brimir!

# Chapter 4: Alfheim

Tjalfe woke up his body jolting involuntarily. He sat up. Ouch! The pain from his chest hurt as if someone had pricked him straight to his heart with a long needle.

"Easy, now, Tjalfe." Sif´s voice was soothing and with a soft hand on his shoulder she gently guided him to lie on his back.

"You broke a few ribs. It would be better if you could lie still for a little while."

He let her push his upper body down on the bed, but then he remembered his sister.

"Roeskva!"

He almost burst with worry.

"Where is my sister? Is she okay?"

"She´s fine," Sif reassured him as she nodded her head and smiled. Then she found a hand held console from the small table beside her and examined him by moving it up and down his chest.

"She is waiting for you in the next room," Sif continued and put down the equipment on the table, "you can see her in a moment. But first we need to be sure your bones have healed."

Tjalfe looked puzzled. He didn´t get it. Broken ribs? It really didn´t feel all that bad...

Sif noticed his confusement and tilted her head smiling in understated understanding.

"Yes, Tjalfe," she said still smiling, "you got it right. You did break your ribs, but they are healing and you should be up and about in half an hour or so."

Her smile changed to a giggle as his confused expression widened.

"Oh, Tjalfe, you really are something... You must have gotten it by now. If we didn´t have this equipment you might not even have survived. But we do, so..." She shrugged. "Anyway," she said, "you will be fine in a half hour and in a few days you won´t even feel pain anymore."

Yeah... of course... He hadn´t thought about it that way, but he knew she was right. He had seen before, how the Aseir could heal people with their technology. A few weeks back one of them hadn´t been careful enough when handling one of the small cars they used to move heavy loads back and forth inside the Fyrkat Fortress. He´d let go of the car and for some reason it had moved and run him over. There had been multiple fractures in his foot and his ankle was broken, but it hadn't seemed to worry any of them. They just mended it with their equipment and after lying down for an hour he had been up and running again.

Tjalfe sat up straight again. This time he was a little more careful. Sif let him, but looked carefully for any signs of his body reacting on pain. It didn´t hurt as much as before and all he could think of was his sister. He wanted to make sure she was all right.

Sif got up from her chair and went to open the door. Tjalfe looked at her questioningly while wondering if he was even able to stand up. As he didn´t move, Sif made a gesture saying: go through the door.

"Didn´t you want to see your sister," she asked. Tjalfe nodded. He got up and treaded carefully toward the door. No pain... Within a few seconds he had passed Sif in the hall way and entered the next room. And there she was... A sigh of relief left his lunges as he approached her with his arms spread wide to the sides. She looked up from a bowl of whatever she was eating.

"Tjalfe!" she shouted with a smile and jumped up from her chair. It hurt as she hugged him tight, but he didn´t say anything. He was just happy that she was alright.

Sif pulled out a chair for Tjalfe and they sat down sharing a meal together. Sif, Roeskva and Tjalfe were the only ones there and under other circumstances they would probably have been cheerfully talking about anything and everything. But there was nothing normal about these circumstances and Tjalfe knew there was a question that needed to be asked, though he had a feeling he wouldn´t like the answer.

Finally he had built up the courage and looked at Sif with a concerned expression.

"Ehm... Sif?" he began while struggling with the knot in his throat as it tightened and made talking rather difficult.

"Yes?" Sif looked at him with that friendly smile of hers and waited patiently for him to go on.

"Well," he said looking down at the empty bowl in front of him while holding on to the edge of the table with his left hand, "it´s just that... I... How did we... I mean, we were kind of trapped and..."

"You want to know how you escaped?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, Tjalfe, that´s a fair question," she said as she poured Roeskva another bowl of food, "and it _was_ a close call to say the least."

Then she began telling the story of what had happened, starting from before Tjalfe and Roeskva arrived at the Fyrkat Fortress and though Tjalfe didn´t understand why she would reveal all the things she did, he didn´t ask. If that question was ever to be asked, it was for another time and certainly for another place than this.

When the Aseir had followed the orders to evacuate, the small fleet had gathered at a predetermined rendezvous point. But as they arrived, they realized that neither Loki nor Thor was there and they could only conclude that they were somehow stranded back on Earth unable to get to the rest of the fleet.

"Thor!" Tjalfe interrupted as he heard the name of the Aseir who had invited him to the fortress in the beginning.

"Is Thor here?" he almost shouted his question. Sif held up a hand to stop him.

"Thor is here and he is fine," she said, then she looked down and her usual smile disappeared as she continued.

"But Loki is missing and we have no clue as to where he could be." She looked up and Tjalfe could have sworn there were tears in her eyes.

"The fact is," she said reluctantly, "that he may have died."

Tjalfe felt sad. Though he had never met Loki, Thor had always spoken so warmly about him and with all the stories Thor had told about Loki, Tjalfe felt almost as if he knew him. Now it seemed he would never even get a chance to meet him.

Sif continued her story. As the evacuated fleet at the rendezvous point realized that Loki and Thor weren´t accounted for; their crew had been transferred to other vessels just before the evacuation, though; they scanned as far as they could in the hope that Svalinn had only had some kind of navigational trouble and had been stranded somewhere in between Earth and the rendezvous point. They had no success and their efforts to make radio contact through sub space had turned out empty as well.

"That´s when we decided to go back for them," Sif said and looked them both firmly in their eyes. "Now, this decision wasn´t easy. Going back was extremely dangerous. The Yetten may be less advanced than we are, but their fighting capabilities in space are lethal. The only reason we went back was because we couldn´t risk the Fyrkat Technology falling into the hands of the Yetten Empire and if Loki and Thor hadn´t returned, they might have been caught with the Fyrkat Device or parts from it. We couldn´t risk it, so we returned to at least try to get it back."

Sif continued explaining how the fleet went hiding behind the moon while a single vessel, the Alfheim, managed to pass the Yetten vessel fleet undetected. It had flown cloaked and silently close to the Fyrkat Fortress. Here they found Thor and Loki fighting the Yetten land troops and as the bubble around the center stone exploded the pilot on the Alfheim reacted quickly. He managed just in time to transport Tjalfe, Roeskva and Thor onboard Alfheim before the force from the blow would have vaporized them all. The Alfheim pilot did have a lock on Loki, but a split second before he started the transporter Loki had disappeared and they had no idea where he had gone. The most likely explanation would be that he had been disintegrated by the radiation from the blast, but they couldn´t be sure.

Tjalfe´s eyes found the floor as he heard of Thor´s closest friend being killed while trying to save Tjalfe and his sister. He was embarrassed. He shouldn´t have tampered with that glass tube. He should have listened to his much wiser sister. If he had, none of this would have happened and they would all be sitting in the dining room of the fortress laughing and being educated on the Aseir technology.

All this had happened solely because of him and his stupid curiosity. He was the one responsible for the disappearance of Loki and he didn´t know how he would ever be able to look Thor in the eyes again.

"Yes, Tjalfe, you are responsible for Loki disappearing." Thor appeared in the door and fastened his eyes strictly on the boy.

"I did tell you never to touch the center stone or the tubes."

Tjalfe felt tiny enough to crawl inside a mouse hole. A drop of salty water slid slowly down his cheek. Thor approached him and put a hand on his trembling shoulder trying to comfort the devastated boy who was crying silently shaking his entire body in grief and a bad conscience.

"There, there, Tjalfe," Thor said softly, "what has happened has happened and there is nothing we can do about it right now." Thor pulled out the chair beside Tjalfe and sat down. He grabbed Tjalfes face with his warm hands and lifted up the boy´s head looking kindly in his eyes.

"Listen, Tjalfe," he said, "there is no point in sitting here feeling sorry for yourself. You made a mistake and you know you did. I can tell by the look in your eyes. But done is done and right now we need to focus on one thing and one thing only: getting back Loki safe and sound, alright?"

Tjalfe nodded quietly.

"Are you up for it, Tjalfe?" Thor asked, "because I need you to focus. I need your help."

Again Tjalfe nodded and there was a quiet moment.

"Well!" Thor broke the silence with a much more cheerful voice. He took a plate and filled it with food.

"That´s it, then! No more talking about errors of the past! Right now we need to get some food, so eat up, kids! We will need all the strength we can get, if we are going to rescue Loki." He looked around and met the eyes of everyone and there was something strong and comforting in his look.

"And we are going to get him back, mind you!"

Tjalfe didn´t exactly feel okay, but seeing Thor in such a good mood was after all soothing and he did feel much better.

After they had finished eating Thor brought the two children to his laboratory.

"Right, kids!" he said, "this is what we are going to do."

He went to the wide variety of shelves in the room grabbing all sorts of equipment which he piled up on the large table in the center of the lab as he explained their situation.

"Now, we managed to shut down the Fyrkat device," he said while rigging up his gear, "but after the device was shut down the Yetten tampered with it. We don´t know exactly what they did and far less how they did it, but knowing them I am certain that we need to take our precautions."

He was standing with his back to Tjalfe and Roeskva as he was rigging up some gear, but suddenly he let go of whatever it was that he was holding in his hands and turned around looking at them with a concerned expression.

"Whatever the Yetten did..." he began, then paused for a moment before going on.

"If you have in any way been influenced by what the Yetten did with the device, there is a very real risk that they have some kind of lock on you. And if that´s the case, it´s only a question of time before they figure out how to transport you to one of their ships - maybe even to a base."

The kids shivered when he mentioned the Yetten. Neither of them understood much of what he was saying, but the part about being captured by the Yetten was very clear and even though they didn´t know much about the Yetten, it was clear to them that being caught by Yetten soldiers was not a situation anyone would want to be in.

Thor noticed their reaction and smiled. "Oh, don´t worry," he said, "I can prevent them from locking on to you as long as you are aboard this ship." Roeskva sighed with relief, but Tjalfe realized immediately the consequences of what Thor was trying to explain to them. If they were only safe right here on Alfheim, they would never be able to leave the ship and that meant never seeing their parents again, unless the Aseir scientists were able to come up with another more permanent solution. He didn´t say anything, though. He didn´t want to worry Roeskva before it was absolutely necessary.

Thor examined the children in more ways they had ever thought possible and then finally let them go ensuring them that he would find a solution and protect them from the Yetten.

"Just keep in mind," he reminded them, "that whenever you hear an alarm going or if you see a bright light or something looking like a storm inside the ship, you have to get to the center of the ship as quickly as you can. This is where the ships shielding is most powerful and this is where the chances of preventing the Yetten from locking on to you are best. Okay? Promise me!"

His face was stony as he looked at them standing in the door and they both nodded in agreement. Not only because of Thor´s determination, though. If there was one thing they had grasped from all of this, it was that the danger of the Yetten was definitely something to reckon with. Alfheim´s shield wouldn´t be able to completely prevent any Yetten lock on them, but it would make it quite difficult to make a secure lock and that could give them some extra time to find a better solution to the problem.

***

The next few days Tjalfe and Roeskva spent the waiting time exploring the ship and playing wherever they could without getting in the way of the crew. Their knowledge of the ships interior grew vastly and soon the two children knew every corner of the Alfheim better than anyone else. After all, they had actually been in every corner of the ship.

At the very back of the ship there was a huge hangar containing 12 Skarfi fighters with all the equipment and man power needed to keep them in good order and capable of flying.

From the hangar a 500 yards long hallway went through the middle of the ship connecting front and back. Protruding from the center hallway there were a series of smaller hallways on both sides giving access to all the ship´s rooms and functions.

Right beside the hangar in the starboard side the engine room was placed. Next to that the engine control room, where Frey resided like a king. He was a Vane like only a handful of the crew. The Vanes were allies of the Aseir and they were usually intelligent and had great interest in technology and science, mostly the nonviolent kind. Frey´s responsibility was to make sure the engine was always running at full strength and that the energy flow was in order so that the ship functioned effectively.

It was Frey who explained the relationship between the Aseir and the Vanes to Tjalfe. The children had been playing hide and seek and as he found the engine control room, he entered it in the hope of finding a place to hide. Frey had been repairing the console and lay on his back under it, so when Tjalfe entered, Frey wasn´t visible except for his feet sticking out. It was only when Frey´d heard a locker being shut and decided to investigate, they´d met face to face. Frey had opened the locker and almost scared the life out of Tjalfe, who hadn´t expected the locker to be opened so soon after he´d gone hiding inside it.

But after establishing there was no immediate danger from any of the two, Tjalfe began asking questions and Frey´d been more than willing to answer his questions as best he could.

A long time ago, the Aseir had saved the Vane home world from being completely destroyed by the Yetten and following that they became allies. The Alfheim was one of the ships built as part of a joint effort to keep the galaxy safe from the Yetten. It was named after the Vane home world that had many names of which one was "Alfheim."

Frey was the first Vane Tjalfe had ever seen \- or at least that was what he thought. As it turned out, Sif was also a Vane, but it had never occurred to him. He had thought that Sif was smaller and slimmer than the others simply because she was a woman and he had never given it any thought before. But seeing Frey he was quite surprised. Frey looked exactly like a human and when he asked about it, Frey couldn´t help laughing at Tjalfe´s ignorance on the subject.

"Vanes and Humans look alike simply because we are of the same race," Frey finally explained when he´d managed to stop laughing. Tjalfe was astonished.

"What do you mean?"

"Look, Tjalfe," Frey explained, "The Aseir aren´t all that special. Yes, they are strong and their technology is quite advanced, but the special ones... are you and me... well, not you and me as such, but Vanes and Humans in general. It is quite remarkable that two peoples having the same ancestors live so far away from each other in the galaxy."

"But why are we so alike," Tjalfe had asked. Frey shrugged. "No one knows exactly," he said with a puzzled smile, "all we know is that the ancestors of Humans come from Vanaheim..." He paused for a second and looked as if he had just realized something he´d never thought of before, then he continued:

"Or maybe... maybe our ancestors originally come from Earth... Who knows? Whatever the truth really is we have common ancestors. Maybe that´s why the Aseir have taken such a liking to you. In some strange way they are still haunted by the fact that Vanes and Aseir were once at war with each other without any of the sides coming even close to winning and now they see this as a sort of second chance for repentance?"

Tjalfe listened to Frey as he told him all of this. He had the strangest notion. There was something rather disturbing about the facts of that war. If neither the Aseir nor the Vanes had even come close to winning, did that mean that his own people, the human race, were in any way as powerful as the gods? The thought was quite unsettling and Tjalfe felt he had to shove the thought away... He had wanted to ask Frey some more questions, but as Roeskva entered the engine room at that very moment, he didn´t get the chance and soon after, they´d left Frey and continued playing in other parts of the ship.

***

To the port side of the ship close to the hangar and counting from the back of the ship, first there was the hospital department, or the sick bay, as the crew called it, and after that the kitchen with direct access to the dining hall.

In there the almost 200 people aboard the ship could eat in shifts of up to 50 people at a time, so the place was almost always filled with Aseir and Vanes side by side.

Coming from the dining hall and turning down the hallway there was about 25 yards to the main bridge. This was Baldur´s place, though he obviously wished it wasn´t. During the battle of Earth he had been severely injured and was unable to fly a Skarfi, at least for some time, and now the buttons and consoles of an old cruiser had to do. Everyone knew he wasn´t all that excited about it. He was born to fly a fighter and enjoyed the twisting and turning inside a Skarfi. He never complained, though. He knew, after all, that it was only temporarily and that he would soon again be in the front of some coming battle. Furthermore, he had to be pleased with the fact that he had even survived. When Svalinn plunged to the ground during the battle he found himself completely alone and surrounded by Yetten Farbauters and while the entire expedition fleet had been evacuated, a massive Yetten war machine had flown right pass him and conquered the Fyrkat Fortress and he had to accept the frustrating truth that there was nothing he could do about it.

At least he had felt a bit useful as he realized that both Loki and Thor had arrived at Fyrkat and were fighting to the best of their ability to prevent the Yetten to obtain the new technology. He brought it the Aseir fleet´s attention and for that deed the Yetten had tried to shoot him down with everything they had. They were quite focused on having their revenge and they would probably have succeeded if it hadn´t been for Sif, who had jumped into a Skarfi and singlehandedly shot down no less than 14 Farbauters. Number 15 managed to shoot off the tip of Baldur's plane just as Sif had a lock on it, so she had to let it go and try to save Baldur instead.

Usually transporting people between fast going vessels is virtually impossible, but Sif was a genius and crushing numbers in her head was one of her greatest strengths. Within a split second she actually managed to lock on Baldur, separate the information flow of Baldur´s body from that of the ship plus calculate for differences in speed and direction and voila! There he was, safe inside of her Skarfi. It wasn´t till he looked down he had realized he wasn´t his usual self. He had lost both of his legs due to a slight glitch in the information stream, but at least he was alive. To Tjalfe and Roeskva, all of this sounded very disturbing, but with the Aseir medical technology it really wasn´t that big of a deal giving Baldur a new set of legs. They´d been attached immediately after his return to Alfheim and all he had to do was wait till his body accepted these new legs and then start training them. If everything went as usual, he would be up and running in a few weeks. Patience wasn´t his greatest strength, though. In fact, waiting for his own recovery was without doubt much more difficult for Baldur than all the battles he had fought and he longed to get inside a Skarfi and kick some Yetten butt!

For now the consoles of Alfheim would have to do and even though he didn´t like it, he still performed his duties with the same level of professionalism as he would commanding a Skarfi fighter.

Every afternoon the children went to the infirmary, where Thor awaited them eagerly with all of his equipment consisting of both electrical devices, needles and the like. Everywhere you looked there was a screen open showing all sorts of diagrams, tables and numbers, he needed to perfect whatever it was he was working on to ensure that the children wouldn´t suddenly disappear from the ship and be transported to some distant base or enemy vessel where they would very likely be tortured into telling all their secrets. Thor took blood samples, scraped off skin samples, scanned every inch of their bodies and entered all the data into the computer, where those data were crunched through programmes of algorithms and other mathematical calculations.

Usually Sif was there with him working as an assistant, but mostly she was the one doing the mathematical and theoretical work. As time passed, Thor became more and more frustrated and it seemed as if he was beginning to doubt that he would be able to produce a serum that would actually work.

On the third day his frustration was brought to extreme levels and during an attempt to get yet another blood sample from Roeskva, he missed her vein repeatedly. Roeskva was quite the hero and during the past days of undergoing several painful procedures, she hadn´t even twitched. But now tears were running down her cheeks and Sif rushed to comfort her.

"#!&*!" Thor said something in a language the children heard from time to time when the crew communicated with each other and they didn´t know the children were present and though they didn´t understand it, there was no doubt that he was cursing. He dropped the syringe angrily on the floor and left the room for a while. Then he returned and sat down in a chair in front of the children looking them in the eyes.

"I´m sorry, Roeskva," he said, clearly feeling guilty from the look in his eyes, "I didn´t mean to hurt you... It´s just that... Well, I´m very, very frustrated..." He paused and sighed deeply before going on. "Look, kids," he continued with a hurt look in his eyes, "I am beginning to realize that I can´t make the serum... Not here in the ship, anyway... I lack the necessary equipment..."

He paused again and let the message sink in with Tjalfe and Roeskva. Then he suggested a solution.

"Listen, kids," he said, "If I am to have any chance of actually producing this serum and make you safe from the Yetten, I´ll have to take you with me to Asgard. What do you think about that?"

As he asked, he prepared himself for their reaction. After all, it was much to ask of them to go to a distant planet they hadn´t seen before and trust Thor and the Aseir to solve their problem.

Much to his surprise, they reacted in a very different way. They didn´t seem to have anything against the idea, but looked rather excited at the thought of going to the home of the gods. Tjalfe had the broadest smile you can imagine and Roeskva was jumping up and down in joy. But then Tjalfe´s smile stiffened and he looked at Thor with a very serious and concerned expression on his face.

"But... what about our parents?" he bluntly asked, "they must be going out of their minds with worry..." Thor shook his head.

"I´m sorry," he said, "but we can´t risk bringing you down to Earth. Not even for a while to say goodbye." This made Roeskva´s excitement vanish and she looked at the floor with tears in her eyes.

"Thor..." Sif began, but she was quickly interrupted by Thor. "No, Sif," he said with a firm voice, "there is no way we can do that. It´s too dangerous and we can´t take that risk!" Sif nodded her head. "I know, Thor," she said softly, "we can´t risk the Yetten locking on to them... But..." she paused for a second, trying to find the right words and then continued. "I think I might have found a solution to that problem," she said and showed them a bracelet. Thor raised his head and looked at her with an astonished expression, frowned eyes and wondering eyes. Tjalfe recognized the bracelet. It was a device he had seen the gods using when they traveled short distances like from one part of the ship to another and he felt a hope growing inside, although he didn´t dare to put too much trust in that hope.

"I modified the bracelets," she said, "and I think it´ll do the trick. The ship´s shields can protect the kids for shorter periods of time, right? So that the Yetten can´t lock on to them too easily?"

"Yeah," Thor said, "That is the theory... But it doesn´t work on the surface. The shields only work right here on Alfheim."

"I know," Sif smiled, "but what if the bracelets could be modified to make a connection through the transportation system and be linked to the shields?"

Thor lit up in a big smile. "Then it would be possible to generate a personal shield around them and prevent the Yetten from locking on - in the same way as it does on the ship..." he said, "probably not as effective as when they are on board the Alfheim, but yes... I do think it would work!"

"That´s the idea!" Sif said, " and I´ve managed to modify two of the bracelets to do exactly that! It should work for a little under half an hour before the link is disconnected, but shouldn´t that be enough time to meet their parents and say goodbye?" Thor smiled and looked at his wife with pride. Sif was really something and to Thor, there was nothing she couldn´t manage, if she set her mind to it. She was always able to find a solution, however crazy her ideas might seem.

"And you´ve probably already tested them?" he asked knowing the answer to that question. Of course she had...

So that was it. Now they knew exactly what to do. First they would go down to the surface close to where Egil Bowman and his wife lived. The children would be accompanied by both Sif and Thor just in case the Yetten forces hadn´t completely left Earth as intelligence claimed they had. As soon as they had scanned the area and Sif and Thor felt there were no enemy forces nearby, the Aseir would leave the children on the surface to say goodbye to their parents alone. They would then have the remaining time of the half hour the bracelets should give them to say their goodbyes and then Sif and Thor would go back to fetch them. Then they would all leave Earth and go as fast as possible to Asgard together and get to work solving the problem and produce the serum.

***

Egil Bowman was working hard on his field swinging his pick axe. For every blow he gave it all he had and swung the axe forcefully pulling it fiercely through the clayey soil. There was something therapeutic about using his strength. The past few days had been hard and he couldn´t stop thinking about his children. Where were they? How did they manage? Did they get enough to eat? Where they even alive? He had a faint hope that maybe, just maybe, the gods had taken them in, providing for them and helping them. He tried keeping that hope alive, but the sad fact was, that he hadn´t a single one of them since that dreadful morning when strange soldiers dressed in clothes of material he couldn´t quite pinpoint the origin of had marched through the village pillaging and destroying everything on their way.

The village elders had sent a message to the king pleading him for help and to his defense it had to be said that his response was quick. Unfortunately, gathering forces of such magnitude isn´t done in a day and by the time his warriors finally reached the village, the enemy had already gone leaving nothing more than rubble and a few wooden houses, which were probably only spared because they were placed in a bit of a distance from the rest of the village.

Instead of coming to a fight, the king´s soldiers began helping out in every way they could chopping down trees for new homes, bringing food and water (the well inside the village had been destroyed by the enemy) and generally coordinating the effort of rebuilding the village.

The villagers did appreciate the soldiers helping out, but still they moaned and complained about the time it took the king to respond to their plead. If his soldiers had arrived just a few days earlier they may have been able to stop the enemy from setting at least some of the houses on fire, they thought. Little did they know that if the kings soldier had in fact reached the village earlier, they would have been slaughtered and then they wouldn´t even have been able to help them rebuild. But the villagers didn´t know and maybe that was for the best. If they had known, there is no telling how they might have reacted.

Even so, the enemy soldiers had been quite ruthless. The brutality of which they had taken control of the village was unseen of by even the oldest in the village, who had witnessed quite a few battles in their time. But Egil had noticed something else as well. Something that made him wonder and gave him hope. He had noticed that these strange soldiers seemed stressed and frustrated, as if they were in fact loosing instead of winning. Egil hadn´t told anyone about his conclusion. He knew better. He knew that none of the villagers, not even the elders, would gain hope with his observations. It was much more likely that they would tell the enemy soldiers and then who knows what would have happened?

Egil had no idea why they seemed so stressed out, but talking to his wife, Groa, he and she had a feeling it had something to do with the gods and the kids disappearing. Of course, Egil knew this could very well be nothing more than wishful thinking, but he had to hold on to the hope that Thor and Sif had taken care of the children. He just couldn´t cope with the notion that they may both be dead and gone. He would much rather believe the incredible that they were with the gods. He even preferred the idea that he and Groa wouldn´t see their children ever again to knowing that they were both dead. Their hopes grew with the fact that the bodies of their children hadn´t surfaced somewhere and that no one had heard from the gods since that day when everything lit up brightly and some of the Muspelheim Coals moved around on the sky.

The first two days after, the entire village had searched for Tjalfe and Roeskva in all directions looking in all the usual and unusual places, but with time their hopes of finding them fainted and it was hopeless to continue the search. Both Groa and Egil then decided it was better to keep the farm and the animals and prepare for winter. It was still spring, but they knew they had to work hard to be sure to have enough food when the cold came and the soil froze.

Tjalfes father dropped his pick axe on the ground and wiped his forehead with the small cloth, he always wore in his belt. The first swipe made the cloth dripping wet with sweat. Egil´s eyes flickered as he glanced shortly at the burning sun that made it almost unbearable to work during the day. It wouldn´t be long before Groa would bring food and water and then they would both sit down eating lunch together in the shadow of one of the large oaks, his grandfather had planted so many years ago as a natural fence to break the winds blowing over the flat country side where his family had been living for generations. There they would talk about the children trying to encourage each other as they had done so often these past few days. Then they would sit together in silence hoping for some kind of miracle to occur.

He put the cloth back in his belt and reached for the pick axe. Maybe he would have just enough time to finish one or two furrows before Groa brought lunch. He lift up the axe and was just about to swing it when something caught his attention in the corner of his eyes. He let down the axe and put his hand flat over his eyes for shade and saw four figures far away over the nearest hill top. His first impulse was to drop the axe and run away as fast as he could, but there was something those figures that seemed familiar. He squeezed his eyes. The four figures weren´t the strange soldiers, that much was certain. Two of the figures were tall, but the two figures walking between them were rather small, one a bit taller than the other; probably children.

Then he realized who they were! For a short moment he froze and just stood there paralyzed, hesitating to give in to the hope building up inside fearing that if he did, that very hope would soon be squashed. He wasn´t sure he could cope with getting his hope up and then see that hope disappear like sand running through his fingers... But the tears running down on his cheeks revealed that he had already given in to the hope. He dropped the axe on the ground and stormed forward to meet his children. It was as if his feet suddenly regained all the energy that had been drained from him and he felt as if he almost hovered inches above the ground, floating easily over the knobbly soil approaching the four figures faster than he had ever thought possible. Coming closer to his children, Egil shouted at the full strength of his lungs.

"Tjalfe! Roeskva!"

Broad smiles appeared on the faces of Tjalfe and Roeskva and they waved wildly as an answer to his call. The children looked at Sif and Thor, who nodded smiling. Tjalfe and Roeskva picked up the pace and ran to their father. Kisses and hugs warmed up the entire area and shortly after Groa appeared far away with a braided basket hanging from her arm. At first she was afraid, but then her face turned astonished and as she realized what was going on, her mother instinct took over. With her right arm holding on to the basket and her left hand trying to keep her tears away from her eyes, so she could see, she started running holding the basket tighter for every step. She flew quickly toward them and they all hugged and kissed as if they would never let go of each other even if the world was coming to an end and they were the only ones who could prevent it. The family was together again!

Sif and Thor smiled. Then they nodded at each other and excused themselves by pushing the buttons on their bracelets. Groa and Egil didn´t even notice how the two gods disappeared like magic into thin air. They focused only on their children, whom they had almost lost and they sure weren´t going to let them out of their sight ever again.

When all the kissing and hugging was done, Groa and Egil started checking their children for possible wounds but to their relief found nothing wrong with them.

Groa spread out a blanket from her basket and they all sat down while she emptied the contents of the basket and set the table - or the blanket, to be precise. Of course, she had only packed lunch for her husband and herself, but still there was more than enough food for all of them and Groa´s smile grew broader for every mouthful Egil, Tjalfe and Roeskva consumed.

After a while the food weighed heavily in their stomachs and they sat for a moment in silence, looking at each other and smiling contently. It wasn´t an awkward silence. Rather, it felt like silence was just the right thing at the right moment. As if speaking would somehow ruin the magic of this moment.

Then Egil broke the silence asking the children to tell what had happened since that day they vanished at the fortress of the gods. Tjalfe and Roeskva took shifts telling their story and both of their parents listened while looking at them with an expression of deep and sincere love. The children didn´t tell them everything, though. Sif and Thor had been very clear as they had instructed them that neither the village people nor their parents should know everything that was going on. All for their own protection, of course. The children couldn´t tell anyone about the ships in the sky, but instead just explain to their parents that the gods had taken them to a safe place, where the gods could protect them. It would be dangerous, if they knew too much. Even if the Yetten had left Earth and probably were very far away, they couldn´t take the chance. Maybe they had even left spies on the planet gathering information and if the Yetten would in any way suspect that a group of people on Earth had the slightest idea of what was going on, they wouldn´t hesitate abducting dozens of humans to interrogate them using every means to get the knowledge, they so desired.

"Make no mistake," Thor had told the children with such a seriousness in his voice that Tjalfe and Roeskva knew for sure, how dangerous it would be to reveal too much, "The Yetten will stop at nothing to get hold of the Fyrkat device and its technology. Nothing! If they have just an ounce of suspicion that someone on Earth knows anything that can bring them closer to that goal... Well, suffice to say that the Yetten have absolutely no conscience at all. Not many people have ever been subjected to Yetten interrogation and lived to tell about it..."

But there was still a lot they could talk about and Tjalfe found it much easier to get around the secretive parts than he had expected. He explained how Thor, Sif and Baldur had saved from the grip of the fierce Yetten soldiers and how they had brought them both to a safe place, where they had been working to lift the curse that the Yetten had cast upon them both in an attempt to make slaves of them.

Tjalfes father listened silently to their tale, although constantly with a concerned expression on his face, but their mother just couldn´t keep quiet. She interrupted them again and again trying to comfort them with soothing words and continuously confirming her love for them. "Oh, no Tjalfe!" "How dreadful for you!" and "praise the gods!" streamed out of her mouth like a never ending river of motherly love and concern as their story went forward.

Coming to the end of the story everything was silent again and they sat there for a while looking at each other... Now the silence was rather awkward, but somehow Tjalfe understood it had to be. He instinctively felt that his parents had to be given time to wrap their heads around this strange and not very comprehensive story. The air was thick of something unsaid and Tjalfe had the notion that his parents had questions, but were for some reason afraid to ask them. He just didn´t know how to make it easier for them and he also wondered if he should even try making it easier. Maybe it was really best, if it was left to them to ask in their own time?

Finally Egil built up the courage and broke the silence.

"Tjalfe?" he hesitantly began and cleared his throat, "This ehm... this Yetten curse..? Is it? I mean... Was Thor able to..?"

Tjalfe and Roeskva knew exactly what he was trying to say and they both shook their heads quietly.

"No, dad..." Tjalfe said in a serious voice sounding almost like an adult, "I´m sorry, but... He hasn´t been able to lift it..." Tjalfe paused and looked at his father, who was clearly both disappointed and worried. Tjalfe almost wished he´d lied to his parents about this part. He almost wished he´d just told them that everything was alright and that they would all live happily ever after. But this was all the child in him speaking. He knew better. He knew that the truth had to be told, no matter how much it hurt.

Roeskva leaned into her mother tucking herself tightly in her bosom and Groa's tears flowed slowly down her cheeks dragging themselves through her long golden hair and further through Roeskva's equally long and golden hair.

Tjalfe felt the heavy burden of responsibility and decided to try and cheer them all up.

"But he will succeed!" he suddenly said, hoping that he sounded more certain than he felt, "Thor is very close to finding the solution..." His effort didn´t have much of an effect and both his parents and his sister looked at him, searching his eyes for more comfort, more strength. But Tjalfe simply didn´t have it and he had no idea how to build up more strength or how he could find a way to give them what they wanted. Still, he had to try and he felt that anything would be better than nothing.

"Roeskva?" he pleaded, "remember what Thor said?" Roeskva attempted a smile and pulled together all the strength she could.

"Yes..." There was something strange in Roeskva's eyes. Tjalfe didn´t know what to make of it, but something was definitely going on inside her, as if she just needed a little notch to regain hope and right now it looked as if that very hope was growing inside of her. "Yes!" she said again, this time with much more certainty as if she had just found something, she had lost a long time ago. And in many ways, this wasn´t far from the truth. She had found hope and much to Tjalfes surprise she suddenly sat up straight looking firmly in her mother´s eyes with a broad smile on her face.

"It´ll be okay, mom!" she said in a loud voice, "It really will!" Tjalfe observed his sister with astonishment as she assured them all with a strength and a certainty he had never seen in her before. "Thor promised to fix this!" she continued, "and if Thor says he can do it, he can!" She turned to her father and fixed her eyes on his. "He just needs to do it somewhere else, dad..." she said, this time with a more tender, soft voice, "He can do it in Asgard, dad..." She paused for a bit, allowing her father time to let it sink in. Then she looked at her brother and continued. "Isn´t that so, Tjalfe?" she asked.

Her renewed joy and hope and the glow of comfort beaming out from her was infectious and even Tjalfe, who had just minutes ago felt as if he had drained himself of every little bit of strength he had to tell their story, was smitten. Just one second ago, he felt despair like he had never felt before, but seeing his sister like this filled him with hope.

"Yes, Roeskva!" he nodded and sat up straight looking as if he had just grown an extra few inches, "Thor can lift this curse - in Asgard!" Then he looked at his father, his eyes pleading for approval.

Egil didn´t look even remotely thrilled at the thought of letting his children, whom he had just lost and then miraculously found again, go to some distant place he had never seen or even had the slightest chance of finding, if they didn´t return for some reason. Adding to this, he had already realized the extent of this proposal. He knew this could very well be the last time he would ever see his children again. Tjalfe knew his father well and he understood what he was thinking.

"Dad, we must go to Asgard," he said, "it is the only way Thor can lift the Yetten curse..." He paused to let the good part of it all sink in. Then he continued:

"Listen, dad," he said, "if you don´t want us to go, we won´t. It is your decision and we will abide by it. But I really think this is the best way - no, the only way. At least send Roeskva and let me stay here with you. She shouldn´t have to live with that curse for the rest of her life..."

Groa looked at her son with pride and then she nodded at her husband, who nodded back. Egil sighed deeply...

"No, Tjalfe," he said, "you´re right. You must go. Both of you!" Tjalfe was just about to say something, but was interrupted by Egil, who grabbed his shoulders firmly and held on to him looking firmly in his eyes.

"I understand, Tjalfe!" he said, "I get it. If you go now, you may never return - ever! Thor may not be able to lift this curse, but..." He looked lovingly at them both trying to smile and drawing them close at his side as he squeezed them with his arms. "I understand it," he continued, "and frankly, I´m crying inside at that thought, but... No matter what... I would much rather that we can never see each other again for all of eternity, if that means you´re safe and guarded by the gods. As much as it pains me, I prefer this to having you here and forever looking over our shoulders constantly fearing the Yetten coming to get you and hurt you. You have my and your mother´s blessing. Go with them! Be safe!"

Egil had hardly finished his sentence, before they heard the sound of the Aseir transportation system returning Sif and Thor and it almost felt as if it had all been staged and rehearsed. The family stood tall together as Egil and Groa greeted the approaching gods with bowing heads. Then they took one final look at their children, smiled lovingly and hugged them with a firm grip.

Then they gently pushed them toward Sif and Thor, who had patiently been waiting for them to say their goodbyes. They put new bracelets on the arms of the children and activated them. Tjalfe managed to get a proud nod from his father, before they all disappeared before their parents and everything went silent. They were no longer on the surface of Earth...

# Chapter 5: Abducted

There was a deep pitched humming in the transporter room aboard Alfheim, when Sif and Thor appeared out of nowhere in a cloud of gathering atoms and molecules. Sif still smiled with joy thinking about the love she had just witnessed as she turned to remove the bracelet from Tjalfe´s arm. Then she froze at what she saw! Or rather: what she did not see... The children weren´t there!

Thor and Sif looked at each other with a fearful expression! They stood completely still as if they were statues made of stone!

"The shield!" Thor barked. His yelling worked as a catalyst inside Sif, who immediately left the transporter room in a hurry. She fetched her communication device from a side pocket and turned it on as she ran down the hall way. "Baldur!" she cried, "Baldur! Come in! The shield! Reactivate it! Now! The children are gone!"

At the same time Thor threw himself at the console in the transporter room and began punching in algorithms as fast as he could. He didn´t even take the time to consider if they were safe to use. Right now his only thought was to prevent the Yetten from finishing their transporter sequence. Those kids could not fall into Yetten hands! To Outgard with safety! All that mattered were the children and he believed that if he was quick enough he just might be able to interfere with the transport. The chance of success wasn´t great - in fact, it was quite slim... But he had to try! He felt responsible for them and he would fight to the best of his ability.

Meantime, Sif reached the bridge, where Baldur was frantically trying to re-establish the shield and thereby prevent the final sequences of the Yetten transport. But a few seconds later, though for him and Sif it felt like an eternity, he let go of the console and shrugged in defeat.

"I´m sorry, Sif," he said head shaking and looking into her eyes with sadness, "I can´t do it. Nothing works. It almost looks as if someone tampered with the entire system and sabotaged the shield..."

Deeeyoooohh...

The sound of a complete systems shutdown made it clear that the latest of Thor´s algorithms hadn´t been quite right. Thor smashed his hands angrily on the console with a torn expression on his face. Then he turned around and leaned on the console, slid down bending his knees till he finally sat with his back to the console while hitting himself on his forehead with a knotted fist.

***

Within seconds after appearing, Tjalfe and Roeskva knew something was wrong. They were in a very different place than they expected. The transporter room looked almost like the one on Alfheim, but the mysterious letters on the wall by the door were different from the Aseir symbols and the door itself looked heavier and more massive than the doors on Alfheim.

"Welcome to Skrymer!" the big Yetten standing by the console said cheerfully. Although he looked kind, the children knew at once that he was a Yetten - and that meant he was dangerous. He shut down the screen, moved around the console and approached the children. They moved back a few steps. Roeskva looked down, but Tjalfe kept his eyes firmly on the Yetten soldier. Seeing their reaction, the Yetten stopped moving and looked at them pausingly.

"Don´t worry, children," he said kindly, "I won´t harm you."

They all stood there for a while, looking at each other, measuring each other. The kind voice and seemingly calm nature of the Yetten clearly didn´t change anything in the children´s suspicion of him and he realized, there was nothing he could do to win their confidence. Then his appearance and character seemed to change. As much as he had just looked kind and forwarding, he now looked harsh and unforgiving.

"Follow me!" he ordered and opened the heavy door with a movement of his hand, "the commander wishes to see you."

The children abided at once. There was something in his voice making it clear that this was certainly not the time for any kind of debate or even hesitation.

"My name is Loki, by the way," the Yetten said as he led them down the hall way. Tjalfe had a hard time hiding his surprise when hearing that name. Could that really be true? Thor had held Loki highly when speaking of him and Tjalfe just couldn´t believe, even in his wildest dreams, that Thor could have been so wrong about his friend. No, it had to be some sort of misunderstanding... Maybe several Yetten had that name? Neither Tjalfe nor Roeskva knew all that much about the Yetten, even less than they knew about the Aseir or the Vanes, of which they had only met a few - and Loki could be a very common name among the Yetten... Yes, that had to be it...

Tjalfe looked at his sister, but Roeskva didn´t look as if she had been wondering in the same way he had, but then he remembered that Roeskva hadn´t met any of the gods before that day, when the Fyrkat fortress had been attacked. That meant she had probably never heard about Loki before. Although Tjalfe had told her quite a few stories about the gods and about his experiences at the fortress, it had mostly been late in the night after they had gone to bed. And she had often fallen asleep during his tales, no matter how much she had fought against it to hear everything, he told her... So, maybe, she had never heard him mention Loki? It was a farfetched hope, but he had to hold on to it. The less Roeskva knew, the better her change of survival. Maybe the Yetten would then quickly realize how little she knew and leave her be?

It seemed to be very far to where Loki apparently wanted to go and Tjalfe realized that Skrymer had to be much bigger than both Svalinn and Alfheim. It was hard to grasp that any ship could be so big. They passed many doors on the way and finally they arrived at a huge double door at the very end of the hall way. It opened by itself and made a sound that reminded Tjalfe of the times he had gone with his father to the miller. The sound was quite similar to the sound of grinding stones rubbing against each other.

Loki gestured them to go through the door and they entered a huge hall with massive pillars on both sides of a 3 yard broad isle. By and behind the pillars small groups of Yetten warriors stood ready to defend against potential intruders and the isle between the pillars was lit by small spots of light on the floor.

Furthest into the hall was a wide staircase that led up to what looked like a throne and on the throne an obviously important Yetten was surrounded by guards on both sides. He sat like a king and gazed condescendingly at the mob on the floor, while a giant stood slightly bent over him and whispered something in his ear.

Overwhelmed by the hall's interior Tjalfe and Roeskva slowed down and ambled off with their eyes panning around the vast number of scary pictures on the walls. Pictures of warriors in battle and large machines shooting what looked like arrows and thick spears against various enemies. The images themselves were scary enough, but it was even worse that they were moving. Some of the images were not quite as scary, but consisted only of symbols and dots in different colors, moving in and out between each other. Loki nudged the children.

"Better get moving," he recommended, "the commander does not like to wait." Roeskva was frightened and she tightened her grip on Tjalfes hand, which she had firmly held on to ever since they left the transporter room. Tjalfe squeezed her hand in an attempt to sooth her fear. It seemed to help a bit. Her shaking diminished and her breathing seemed less heavy.

At the foot of the stairs, Loki placed himself beside them and knelt before the commander. Tjalfe found it best to follow his example and pulled Roeskva's hand to let her understand she should do the same. The face of the big Yetten was hard as stone, although Tjalfe noticed something that looked like the beginning of a smile at the corner of his mouth. He had a smug appearance and looked like someone who looked forward to whatever was about to happen next.

The big giant nodded to the guards, who immediately left the room, leaving the four alone. Then he got up from his throne and walked down the stairs. He put his hand on the shoulder of Loki, who raised his head and came to his feet.

"Nice work," the commander nodded in appreciation at Loki. Then he moved his attention to the children, who still knelt with their eyes fixed on the floor.

"Get up!" He commanded.

Gently and with all antennas up the kids rose with fear shining from their eyes, which were still fixed on the floor.

"It certainly looks like you´ve brought yourselves into quite a mess. Maybe you shouldn´t have interfered in our business..." continued the commander and looked at them letting his body language show them his superiority. Tjalfe felt the urge to protest. After all, they weren´t the ones who had decided to get involved in all this. It was the Yetten who had attacked the gods, and they had just ended up in the middle of it all. But he said nothing. It would probably not be wise to complain. Besides, the commander did not look like someone who was used to being contradicted. Suddenly he lit up and flung out his arms as if he wanted them to feel welcome.

"But now you're here!" He almost cried in a cheerful voice that reminded Tjalfe on one of the village idiots.

"Welcome to my realm!" he continued. Then he lifted Tjalfes head with a finger and stared into his eyes.

"We'll get really, really ... cozy, " he said stiffly. A tear rolled down Roeskva's cheek and no matter how well she usually was able to control herself, Tjalfe saw at the corner of his eye how her body trembled - out of fear, out of crying ... maybe even out of anger ...

***

The level of activity aboard Alfheim was extreme and Sif had to edge herself around warriors and scientists racing back and forth in the corridors.

"Hi ..?" Sif looked gently inside the lab. Thor was not always easy to deal with when he was working with his experiments and she wanted to be sure that he was ready for a visit. He stood gazing on his studying numbers and equations as she entered.

"Hi," he said absently and beckoned her to him with his hand his eyes fixed on the screen.

"Please," he continued and moved away from the screen to give her some room. "Please come and have a look "

Sif looked at the screen. First with interest, but then with eyebrows wrinkled and her face in a puzzled expression. Certainly he didn´t mean this seriously? She had had to have misunderstood!

Some of the equations on that screen were very similar to the ones used for the transport system and some looked like parts of the programmes controlling the Fyrkat device.

"Weren´t you supposed to be working on some cutting edge weapons technology?" She asked. He responded with an unpleasant look. Like a blend of amazement, but also a little bit of resentment. Then he pulled himself together and shook his head slightly as if he was trying to let it go.

"Now, just look at it, please," he asked, "would these equations get Fyrkat to open a time warp bubble where time either goes faster or slower than everything that lies outside the bubble?"

Sif studied the numbers further and nodded.

"Well ...I suppose..." she answered hesitantly, "theoretically, but ..." She cocked her head as she used to do when she really had to think things through. Then she pointed out a few issues on the screen.

"This won´t work," she said and deleted an equation, "and this should probably be called something like ..." She made some corrections to another equation.

"I assume this is supposed to control time differences?" She asked and got a nod for answers.

She was just about to ask how Thor was planning to use all of this as a weapon when Baldur popped in and looked at them with a seriousness quite unlike his personality.

"Thor, Sif," he said in a concerned voice, "We´ve established contact with Asgard. Odin asks us to gather in the control room immediately. "

They left their work and went with Baldur. On the way down the corridor they passed Freya and Baldur passed on the message to her. Before long, the four gods were gathered in the control room with Odin's huge face looking at them from a big screen. He asked them to sit down and report.

"As you know, Mr. First Minister," Thor started, but was interrupted by Odin, who sat with a wry smile and shook his head.

"Please, Thor, back up on the formalities a bit, if you please," he laughed, "we've all known each other for way too long. It really us quite unnerving to hear you people use my official title. To you I´m Odin, plain and simple Odin - at least when there are no other people present." Thor looked around and found the eyes of the others. Off course, Odin was right. It was rather strange for him to be that formal. After all, Odin was his and Baldur´s father and Sif was his daughter-in-law. And Freya? Well, the relationship between her and Odin was a public secret.

"Well, yes, of course," Thor continued focusing on Odin again, "But then ... as .. You know, Odin ... The two human children, Tjalfe and Roeskva, disappeared during transport from Earth to Alfheim. We suspect that Tjalfe by accident \- and without even knowing it - has somehow managed to reprogram the console connected to the Fyrkat device. This could in some way have granted the Yetten an opportunity to lock on to Tjalfe and Roeskva using their own transporter technology." Odin frowned.

"But how did they manage to break through the shield?" He asked. They looked around at each other and Thor shrugged.

"We cannot be sure," he said, "but there are indications of sabotage aboard the Alfheim. The shield logs shows a succinct reduction of shell efficiency to 13% and we suspect that it has opened a window of 2-3 milliseconds, where the Yetten might have been able to go around the shield and lock on to the children." Odin looked worried. A saboteur aboard Alfheim?

"OK," he nodded, "continue ..." Thor cleared his throat.

"We still have no clear idea of where Loki is, but we are collecting a vast flow of information coming in from our agents around the galaxy." He turned to Freya and encouraged her to take over. Without moving from her place in the chair, she showed a model of the galaxy on a screen at the side of the room.

"We have received quite a few reports and it is more complicated than usual to figure out which reports are important and which are less important," she explained, pointing to an area on the map, "but as you can see, there is a particular concentration of reports in this area. " She zoomed in on the map.

"The center of these reports seem to be Skrymers Glove, a paradoxical black hole."

Baldur looked confused.

"A what?" He asked.

"A paradoxical black hole," Freya repeated, "usually black holes occur around a star that implodes and draws its mass around a single point. Such an implosion is what we call a supernova and when it occurs, the force of gravity is so massive that even light cannot escape. This sucks planets, other stars and whatever other material there is nearby, toward and into the black hole in a whirlwind shaped formation. "

She looked around to make sure they were still with her. Then she continued.

"But this is the most usual chain of events," she said and moved to the next illustration on the screen, "and, if two stars or more in close vicinity become super nova´s at the same time, which in universal time could be anything from 10,000 years to at least 200,000 years, the most usual outcome would be that the smaller stars are drawn into the larger ones, where they collide and become one huge black hole. But..." she paused for a second for drama, which was quite unusual for her character, and then she continued: "Our scientists have, pure theoretical, predicted that under certain circumstances, two or more supernova´s can be in such close vicinity in both space and time that the range of their respectful field´s of gravity exceeds the capacity of what we call the fabric of reality."

Baldur´s eyes grew in size as he listened, but Freya had no intention of stopping her explanation to ask if anyone had questions.

"The fabric of reality" she moved on, "can best be understood as the interplay between the natural forces in space and time in almost the same way as when we are talking about triangles. If we know the length of at least two of the sides, we can calculate the third. If one of the sides are stretched, at least one of the other sides has to be shorter for the triangle to still be a triangle.

The same goes for the fabric of reality. It cannot be exceeded. Still, in some cases, such as the before mentioned situation with at least two supernovas close enough in both space and time, that fabric of time exceeds its capacity and the result is peculiar: the supernovas cannot collide and so they don´t - but still, they do."

Baldur shook his head in disbelief. "Could you run that by me again?" he asked rhetorically, "they do not collide and they do collide?"

"Exactly!" Freya answered and now she was so thrilled with the Scientifics that the eagerly jumped up from her chair. "That´s precisely the point! It sounds crazy - and it is... Something happens in a paradoxical black hole that scientifically speaking is quite impossible, but somehow it happens anyway. So, yes! They collide - and they don´t collide - all at the same time and in the same space. It is in itself a paradox, that is: something that cannot happen, but still does happen. That´s why we call it a paradoxical black hole!"

Baldur leaned back in his chair with his hands folded behind his neck shaking his head as if to say: "you scientists are completely insane."

Freya pointed her finger at the screen.

"As you can see, Skrymers Glove is a special case of the paradoxical black hole. A paradoxical black hole with just two or three points is rare enough, but Skrymers Glove has no fewer than 5 black holes, connected in a paradoxical collapse with each other."

Freya further explained how the 5 black holes relative to each other could theoretically create a small pocket of space between them. In this pocket there would be no gravity and therefore no danger of being swallowed up by the black holes surrounding it.

"This pocket can be as small as a fingernail or as large as an entire solar system," she explained, "but we cannot predict its size and we have no way to either prove or disprove our theory. There is only one way to find out the truth..."

"We have to go in there?" Baldur said. Despite his aversion to all this science gibberish, he would never decline the chance of a dangerous adventure - not the least now, as it seemed he would not get the chance to shine with his skills in a Skarfi.

"Well, I don´t know about you guys, but I´m ready for some action!" Baldur made clear with an excited look at the others. He had to realize, however, that he was the only one not finding it important to give it a bit of thought before moving on. A noisy silence fell upon them as they thought it through.

Finally Thor cleared his throat and raised his hand.

"The truth is," he began, "that I feel responsible for those kids and would go every bit of the way if I had the slightest hope of recovering them. But if they really are inside that thing, how are we supposed to find them? I mean, that gravity free pocket could have any size, as I understand it? If it´s the size of a fingernail, we will all die in an instant and if it´s the size of... I don´t know... a galaxy? How could we ever hope to find them in our own life time, let alone in their life time?"

Freya said nothing as her eyes fell on Sif, who looked at the floor biting her lips.

"Well..." Sif said quietly, "I´ve been nerding a bit with radiation in organic material, and..."

"Whoa!" Baldur interrupted her with a horrible grimace, "Enough with the science talk, already!"

He shook his head exaggeratedly while holding out his hands, palms fronted as if he was defending against a dog trying to lick his face.

"My head is about to explode! Could you please skip all the fancy details and just tell us what your newest gimmick can do?"

Sif smiled. She just couldn´t help herself. Somehow she´d always had a soft spot for Baldur and especially for his way of pretending to be more stupid than he really was. The fact was that he understood perfectly well what she was talking about. The real challenge for him was his impatience. He wanted to get the mission started as quickly as possible and she knew it. Besides, giving him a more practical explanation wouldn´t hurt.

"I can do that," she said, "I made a sort of decoding device that isolates the presence of human DNA within a range of approximately 100,000 kilometers - that is: if it works the way I hope it does."

Thor turned his head and looked at Freya. "Would that be enough?" he asked.

"Yeah, I think that would probably do it," she answered, "but the Yetten forces went through quite a lot of trouble to even capture the kids, let alone bring them inside the paradoxical black hole. We should expect them to be heavily armed and alert to any kind of activity outside the non-gravity pocket." She paused for a bit, looking questioningly at Thor, before continuing. "Bottom line is: we need a weapon that can match anything we´ve seen in the past."

"And we shouldn´t forget the saboteur," it sounded from the big screen where Odin´s face watched over them from far away.

"I sincerely believe we have it under control," Thor responded, clearly still quite embarrassed that such a thing happened on his watch, "I reprogrammed the controls to the shield and only the people present in this room know about the new set up. Furthermore I´ve changed all passwords to the basic controls to every part of Alfheim´s systems. I should be able to track any and all unauthorized changes in the programming, no matter where it comes from or who is making changes."

Odin nodded in content. "Okay," he said, "I´ll approve this mission, but under two conditions. First, it´s vital to keep all information about the mission among ourselves. No information whatsoever leaves this circle, understand?"

They nodded in agreement and Odin continued: "Now, to make sure, I will order anyone but the people present in this room to leave the Alfheim and move to various other functions spread out in the galaxy. I´ll send transport ships immediately to get them off the ship as fast as possible. And yes, Freya, I do agree that Frey is trustworthy, but this is my decision... There is a group of transport ship in close vicinity to where you are and they will arrive in a few hours, so prepare to embark as soon as this meeting is over, okay?"

Odin did not wait for them to agree, but simply went on explaining the second condition:

"I will not force anyone to accept this mission. You will all have a choice and whatever you choose, it will have absolutely no effect on your future career in our armed forces in any way."

They all looked at each other, their eyes stating what they already knew: there wasn´t a single one of them who even considered declining the mission. This was something they just had to do.

"As soon as Alfheim returns to Asgard - hopefully with the children aboard - it will be phased out and dismantled," Odin went on, "Every weapon and other technology you have tested will be integrated in a brand new project we´ve been working on for the past months. But I´ll tell you more about it when you get back to Asgard."

He paused for a second, weighing his words and then opened his mouth to say one last thing:

"One more thing you need to know: If you are captured during the mission, we will not be coming to rescue you. We simply do not have the resources for it. We are under pressure on several fronts and cannot afford to lose a single ship. It is important that you understand this: either you complete the mission without getting caught or you will be lost in the hands of the Yetten!" He caught their eyes one by one to be sure they understood this, before closing the meeting.

"Right! I think that just about sums it up. I´d like a brief message before you leave, but other than that it´s complete radio silence. Understood?" He did not wait for them to answer, but simply nodded for a farewell and turned off the screen. The meeting was over.

They went down the corridor as a group. Thor noticed how Freya slightly slowed down lagging behind and sensed that she wanted to talk to him without the others hearing their conversation, so he decided to accompany her. And sure enough. When Baldur and Sif were out of earshot, Freya stopped and looked at Thor her eyebrows wrinkled. He took a deep breath and prepared for the worst.

"Have you ever considered that Loki might be our saboteur?" she asked. How typical of her to hand it to him so bluntly. Thor fought to control his anger at this accusation. Freya was one of the cleverest people he knew and definitely the most able intelligence officer in the entire Asgard society. If she had a suspicion it would be most wise to listen.

"Does anything point in that direction?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Not as such," she said, "we just have to consider that possibility. There have been no intelligence reports on his whereabouts since that day back on Earth. Not even a dead end rumor. It´s highly unusual having no reports at all and this is my main concern. All the reports we have received are about the children, although much of it is of no importance and seems to lead nowhere. But nothing about one of the most feared soldiers in the Aseir forces? That just doesn´t sound right."

"Hmmm... no, it doesn´t..." Thor went through it all in his mind, but neither he could find any reasonable explanation for it. "How about our contacts with the Vanes?"

"Nothing there either," Freya shook her head, "In fact we haven´t even heard his name mentioned anywhere. Not a peep!"

Thor nodded. Even though he hated the idea, he knew she was right. Loki and he were blood brothers and they had fought so many battles together, but he could not allow his feelings for Loki to cloud his judgment - or for anyone else, for that matter. He had to keep an open mind to the evidence. If anyone was ever to even suspect that he was holding his hand over those most dear to him, it would be a danger to his authority and make it almost impossible to fight back the Yetten forces.

"Okay," he finally gave in and breathed in deep, "investigate the matter. And do not hold back on it."

Freya turned on her heels to leave him.

"But Freya?"

She turned again to look him in the eyes.

"As long as we don´t have anything solid...?"

"We can´t act on suspicions alone," she said and touched his shoulder with a tenderness, he had never seen in her before.

"For now, there are no direct indications of Loki being involved," she emphasized, "but the point is that we can´t ignore the signs that he may be involved. Simply put: it seems too much of a coincidence that Loki completely disappears from under our radar at exactly the same time as your rescue operation at Fyrkat and that the children vanished almost immediately after. And it is remarkable that we hear absolutely nothing afterwards. We must take it seriously and consider every possibility."

"I know," Thor said quietly nodding his head in a sad posture. Silence...

Then Freya turned around and began walking down the corridor aiming for her office.

"Keep me informed, alright?" Thor said loudly. She held up her hand for an answer. "As always," she responded.

***

# Chapter 6: Brimir

Tjalfe fought hard to keep warm in the cool cell. He and Roeskva huddled in a corner and though it helped a bit, they were both trembling. Fortunately, he had been allowed to keep his cloak, which at least kept them warm enough to be able to think reasonably straight. As far as he could see in the darkness, the cell was empty except for him and his sister, but sometimes they could hear cries coming from somewhere nearby, probably from another prisoner down the corridor. The commanding Yetten in the throne room had given the guards strict orders to never talk to them. Tjalfe wondered why this was so important, but the commander had been very insistent about it cautioning them that any who disobeyed him in this matter would be harshly punished. If Tjalfe hadn´t known better, he would probably have concluded that the commander was a bit afraid of them. But that wouldn´t make any sense at all. Two human children could not hope for even the slightest chance in a fight against these giants, of which even the smallest were at least one and a half the size of a grown man. But why else would he make such a fuss? He had even ordered them to double the number of guards outside their cell. Four giant Yetten to guard two insignificant and very tiny human children. One of the guards had been particularly unpleasant when they arrived at the cell. Roeskva was afraid of the dark, so she had hesitated for a moment at the entrance to the cell. Just a moment, nothing more. But one of the guards, a small tempered Yetten, whom the others called Fenrir, had brutally pushed her so hard that she twisted her ankle and fell forward into the cell hitting her head on a bench. One of the other giant had given Fenris a piece of his mind and ordered the others to give the kids a cloth to wipe away the blood on her face. Then the door shut tight and the cell was even darker than before. The kids could not see guards and the door to the cell was as thick as the large oak door, Tjalfe had once seen in the palace, and there was no peephole. The door seemed to be made of iron, like the kind of iron the Rusen used to forge swords with, just smoother and more delicately made, so Tjalfe was pretty sure that it was not quite the same material. He came to think of the doors on Alfheim, but they were more slender and not even remotely as heavy.

This door was quite solid, as he had discovered physically on his own body. As they had thrown him and his sister into the cell, he had hammered on the door to get them to at least give them a little light for Roeskva´s sake. They hadn´t cared one bit and completely ignored it. Now he his hand was hurt and the cell was still pitch dark.

Tjalfe sat with his back to the wall massaging his tender hand as he listened to what was going on outside. It sounded as if the guards were playing some kind of game. He heard rattling coins on a table and at regular intervals the warriors cheered or complained loudly, depending on their luck. They were speaking in their own language, but unfortunately Tjalfe didn´t understand a word of it.

"Tjalfe?" Roeskva looked up an sent him a forced smile. He was a bit surprised. He thought she was sleeping, but apparently, she didn´t.

"Tjalfe, could someone learn other peoples´ languages just by listening to them, when they speak it? I mean, really listening to it?" He sent her a surprised look and shrugged. "Ehm.." he said, "I.. I really don´t know... I suppose so... If you really take your time... What makes you say that?"

"Nothing..." she answered almost unhearable and tugged herself tighter to him. "I just wondered," she continued, "Maybe it would help, if we knew what they were talking about..."

Tjalfe hadn´t thought about it that way. In fact, he hadn´t even found it worth the trouble to even try. But it made sense. In the throne room the commander had yelled at them in his own language and at the time, Tjalfe thought he had just been trying to scare them, but thinking about it, maybe there was something else to it. Maybe it had also been a kind of test to see if they understood their language? Maybe this was also the reason why the commander didn´t want the guards to have any contact with them. As a precaution to make it difficult for them to learn and understand them?

Quietly he started listening to the guards and to his astonishment he actually began to make sense of the structure of what they said. He began noticing how some words were said rather often. For every time they cheered as if a game had just finished and a new one was about to begin, one of them would say something along the lines of 'speifsatser' and then again, as something seemed to call for a response, he thought he could hear a word like 'speifon.'

Speifsatser - speifon - maybe the name of the game was "Speif" and the endings of the other words were some kind of call and response? He remembered a game, they used to play at home: "Kings game." Each team had five square pieces made in wood, which were placed in a line of each team´s home base. The goal of the game was to knock down each of the opposite team´s pawns with sticks as thick as three fingers. When all the opponent´s pawn were knocked down, you had to knock down the King, a square piece the size of two pawns, which was placed in the middle between the two teams´ home base. And when the last of one of the teams´ pawns were knocked down, both teams went for the King and usually someone would cry "Knock down the King!" Maybe the Yetten played a similar game out there?

And he remembered the merchants coming from every corner of the world to the market in Heathby. They tried hard to speak the local language, but he had noticed that most of them spoke the words in a different order. Instead of saying "20 skeatta for the iron sword" or whatever they were selling, they said something like "You give skeatta 20 - I give sword iron." He had never understood it before, but now he realized that it could have something to do with the structures of their own languages? Maybe this was the same. Maybe 'speifsatser' meant "new game" or "new round" and 'speifon' was a sort of warning to your opponent, like "ending the game" as a way of saying "you´re about to lose?"

Tjalfe went on listening and gradually, as he caught on to more and more words his hope returned. Maybe there was still a chance to escape? He didn´t know how long he had been trying to learn their language, because here in the dark he had lost any sense of time. But suddenly it rattled with chairs in the hall way outside and he heard the sound of authoritative footsteps coming closer till they stopped right at the door.

"Roeskva!" he called and poked her in the side making her jump in shock. They sat up straight and stared at the door as the sound of the lock filled the room and the door opened. A bright light from the corridor burst inside the once so dark room and they had to cover their eyes to protect them from the sudden change in lighting. A big figure was standing in the door breaking the light and even though it was impossible for them to see anything meaningful, there was no doubt in their minds that this was Loki.

"Follow me!" He commanded. Slowly they got to their feet and approached the door. They went out in the brightness of the corridor hands covering their eyes while trying to get used to the light. They followed Loki along a long corridor with the group of guards right behind. No one said anything, not even the feisty Fenrir, who had apparently been beaten into line. He almost slouched with his head bowed glaring at Loki, as if he was expecting him to make some kind of concession and was disappointed he didn´t. Right in front of Fenrir was the guard who had defended Roeskva and Tjalfe could have sworn that he kept a close eye on Fenrir as if he was just waiting for an excuse to fight Fenrir and set the children free. But of course that was just wishful thinking. There was no one here who could help them. They were all alone and without hope that Thor and the others would ever find out where they were.

"In here!" Loki barked as he stepped aside revealing a door to a room slightly larger than the cell they had left just a few moments ago. Tjalfe sighed in relief seeing the interior of that room through the door. It was better lit than their cell and there was a table inside with four chairs, two on each side of the table.

Loki threw his head to the side in the direction of the room. "Get in there!" he yapped his hand gesturing through the door, "Take a seat." Tjalfe and Roeskva got in and sat on two chairs on the one side of the table, but apparently it wasn´t what Loki wanted and he immediately grabbed Tjalfe´s shirt. "Not you, boy. The girl!" Tjalfe sent Roeskva a brief nod and she hesitantly got back in her seat her eyes exuding fear. Then Loki pulled Tjalfe and dragged him toward the door. Roeskva went pale as she realized she was going to be alone in there, without the comfort of having Tjalfe close by.

"No!" she cried and moved to get up, but an angry glance from Loki quickly made her change her mind. This clearly wasn´t the time to disobey. With a terrified look on her face she couldn´t hide despite of all her efforts, she sat down again and let Loki take away Tjalfe. The children fixed their eyes on each other as long as they could before the door closed and Loki dragged Tjalfe further down the long hallway. He was shown into a room completely identical to the first and was placed at the table. Loki left the room and punched a button on the wall outside, then the door closed and the room went silent...

***

The shutters of the large panorama windows At the bridge at Alfheim slid slowly upwards like a theater curtain, revealing a rare performance with five large eddies of stars and gas tangling in criss-cross patterns. At the edge of the streams entire solar systems slowly distorted and careened out of themselves making them monstrosities against the pitch black nothingness in the middle of each of the five vertebrae. It was a beautiful sight! And a terrifying one! Even for the four seasoned Aseir warriors At the bridge, it was a sight almost taking their breath away and it reminded them how small they were in relation to the gigantic forces of the universe. Here, in the middle of a war that had significance for billions scattered throughout the galaxy, the feeling of being utterly insignificant sneaked up on them. What little importance all their efforts would have in ten thousand years. Thor was almost overwhelmed by the thought that all of this didn´t matter - not in the long run, not in the vast time line of the universe. But then he reminded himself that no matter how big the universe was, and no matter how short a life, he and his comrades had, when compared with the big nothing filled with stars and planets out there, what they were about to do out here would have quite an impact on all those who just now were exposed to the brutality of the Yetten and their lust for power. He thought of Tjalfe and Roeskva, who were currently sitting in a dark and cold cell as he himself had just a few years ago been sitting when he was captured during what should have been a peace mission. Had it not been for Loki's skill and courage, Thor wouldn´t be standing here At the bridge at Alfheim, but had probably been put to forced labor in one of the numerous mining operations where the Yetten built the foundation for their oppression. The peoples´ oppressed by the Yetten, were frequently used as cheap labor. Thor could have been there right now - and that even only provided he had been among the lucky ones who survived. The vast majority of slave labor in the mines worked less than a year before they succumbed to the hard work, the toxic gases and the poor food.

The idea that Loki could be the traitor was crazy and Thor couldn´t get his head around it. He and Loki had been in battle more times than he could count and Loki had gambled his life , not just for Thor, but even for complete strangers fighting hard to save them from the claws of the Yetten forces. On the other hand, he had to admit that Loki had always been a complicated battle companion and it wasn´t uncommon that he and Loki had quarreled, especially on the subject of other races. Loki felt that the Aseir, the Vanes and the Yetten were superior to other people. How often had Loki not claimed that other breeds´ lack in technology in some way made them inferior? And Thor had occasionally wondered how Loki again and again could escape the most ingenious traps set up for them by the Yetten. And afterwards Loki couldn´t - or wouldn´t? - explain how he had done it. There had previously been rumors that Loki was in possession of technology, which he never shared with the Aseir, but it had never been investigated and there had never been even fairly solid evidence that it was true.

"We´re here." Of course it had to be Freya breaking the almost sacred silence At the bridge with her straight forward approach. Thor shook off the unpleasant thoughts from his mind and asked her to explain one more time how they were supposed to get past the strong gravitational fields in and around Skrymers glove and into the free area.

An illustration of Skrymers glove with the five black holes appeared on the screen. The black hole was a skewed semicircle and a vast number of gravitational fields were drawn up in blue. "Right," Freya began, "the gravitational fields around the paradox form something similar to the fingers of a hand." She pointed to a red oval shape drawn in what looked like the inside of a palm. "There we have the non-gravity pocket," she continued, "our most recent scans suggest that it extends to roughly the colored area here and is about the size of the solar system of Earth give or take about 20%, but even this is highly uncertain. Remember, that our scanners can only detect so much and the distorted gravitational fields make it quite difficult to get trustworthy readings."

She drew a sharp angle into the space between thumb and forefinger of the hand like shape. "This is our point of intrusion and this..." she drew a half circle inside the sharp angle, "this is the point of no return. As soon as we pass this line there is no going back and we have to deal with whatever we meet. But this is also the line, where gravity should be minimal and directed toward the non-gravity pocket."

"And if that´s a wrong estimate?" Baldur asked.

Freya looked at him in silence and her eyes made the seriousness of such a situation quite clear. "If our estimate is wrong, we´ll never find out," she finally said, "we call it the 'point of no return' for a reason."

Again a short silence, before she went on.

"Okay, our next challenge is going through here.."

She pointed at the 'skin' between 'thumb' and 'index' on the hand, then she sort of came to a halt. Almost froze like a character on a screen when you push the pause button. Thor noticed and he could have sworn she seemed uncertain, maybe even nervous, which wasn´t like her at all. Freya was usually cool and calm in even the most chaotic of situations and for her to even hesitate... He didn´t like it. He didn´t like it at all. Maybe this mission was a bad idea? Maybe they should try to find some other way? But Thor didn´t have the time to reconsider, because suddenly Freya seemed to regain her confidence and went on with the briefing.

"When we get to this point we will go through a passage of unknown length. We don´t know the actual proportions of this area and our scanners can tell us nothing about any other characteristics in there. All we know for sure is that the gravitational fields inside are extremely distorted and we should expect to be dragged and pulled in any direction imaginable - maybe even in directions unimaginable - we have no way of predicting these forces and even the slightest miscalculation on the pilots behalf will potentially smash us to particles."

Baldur sank his spit and breathed in deep.

"I feel no pressure," he sighed sarcastically, "no pressure at all..."

"That´s not even the worst part," Sif commented.

Baldur looked at her in disbelief. "There is something worse?" he asked, "what in the whole wide universe could even remotely be worse than the occasional being ripped apart by gravitational forces of superseding magnitude???"

Sif couldn´t help smiling, even if it was only for a second. She thought it through in her mind trying to find the right words.

"Forces of time," she finally said, "Forces of time are worse." She got up and drew a couple of circles on Freya illustration.

"All these gravitational fields are so extreme that not only light is being distorted. So does the curvature of space - and thus time."

"???"

"Well, it means that the speed of time changes rapidly going faster or slower than normal. Instead of taking 6 hours to get through the passage, it may take a million years or 14 seconds, depending on which direction the time speed changes."

She paused as the look in Baldur´s eyes became even more distant and bewildered. Then she explained it in a different way.

"If time suddenly goes faster inside the gravitational field, you will enter the non-gravity pocket as an old man - at best - and if it is slowed down, all people you know will be dead and gone before you can drink a horn of that mead you have come to like so much during our time on Earth."

To this point, Baldur had looked quite indifferent, but as soon as Sif mentioned the mead, he woke up. With a jolt he sat up his face wide open and his jaw dropped. Before he managed to come up with something funny to say, Sif interrupted him.

"Thor has been working on something that should improve our chances of success," she said, but was interrupted by Thor, who didn´t want to take all the credit for himself. "Sif and I have working on it," he said, "and if it hadn´t been for Sif´s amazing mathematical skills, I would most likely not have succeeded getting the mini generator to work at all."

Sif smiled at this declaration of love and acknowledgement from her husband, as she elaborated their plan.

"The Fyrkat experiments have shown us that it _is_ indeed possible to generate wormholes using our transport technology, but there are still issues to be solved. For one thing, it has been virtually impossible to get the bubble around the test subjects to work anywhere else than on Earth - and even then, it has only been successful on exactly the spot, where we´ve placed the Fyrkat device."

She lashed out her arms in a questioning gesture. "In fact, we can´t even begin to understand _why_ the device works only at this particular place in the universe," she continued, "however... the latest data we´ve analyzed, mostly from the incident with the disappearance of Tjalfe and Roeskva, have given us the means to find a temporary solution as long as the elements being transported are small enough - more specifically: the size of humans. Unfortunately there is a side effect to this solution. The Fyrkat device does not merely generate a wormhole. It generates a wormhole with a bubble of distorted time inside. When it comes to using our solution in a transportation device, this is a huge disadvantage, because it poses fatal danger to whoever or whatever we want to transport. But... to our mission this side effect could be the key to success. We can exploit this effect by using the mini generator to establish a pocket of distorted time around ourselves. This way, we should be able to go through the narrow entrance of Skrymer´s Glove with a fairly certainty of not getting ripped to pieces by the time distortion that may be present there."

"Fairly certainty?" Baldur said, "sounds interesting... but as I understood what you just said, this pocket is too small for anything larger than our own bodies? How can we get Alfheim to fit in such a pocket? I mean, we can´t exactly just fly through that entrance in nothing but a space suit, right?"

The silence and Sif´s eyes being fixed on Baldur´s eyes made him realize. This was exactly their plan. This was the thing that was 'worse.'

"You got to be kidding me!" Baldur´s voice revealed a mix of fear and excitement at the thought of looking death in the eye. His jaw dropped as he leaned back in his chair. "You people are raving mad!" He looked at Sif, then Thor, then again back at Sif. Finally he put his arms over his head holding his hands behind his neck and lit up in a crooked smile. "I´m in!" he said cheerfully, "I don´t know about you guys, but I´m in!"

***

Tjalfe was frightened and found it almost impossible to concentrate with the rain of questions pouring down on him from the Yetten, who stood bended over him like a tower of anger aiming to pull as much information out of him as possible. Loki was there too. He was leaning against the wall and said nothing while the other Yetten, a big guy with hands as big as a bear´s claws, yelled and screamed at Tjalfe.

"WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE FYRKAT DEVICE?" "WHO IS THE LEADER OF YOUR EXPEDITION?" "WHAT ARE THE COORDINATES OF ASGAARD?"

But Tjalfe was quite incapable of answering any of these questions. He could think of nothing else than poor Roeskva, who had to be on the brink of collapsing from fear. His mouth was dry and his body paralyzed making it completely impossible to say anything at all. His silence did nothing good for the huge Yetten, who clearly was getting more and more angry thinking that his prisoner was silent with the sole purpose of taunting him.

BANG! Tjalfe jolted as the massive tower of rage smashed his huge fist on the table in front of him.

"SPILL IT OUT, YOU FEEBLE MINDED HUMAN CHILD!" He yelled, eyes narrow and his face red and moist with anger and resentment, "WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE FYRKAT DEVICE?"

Tjalfe shook his head silently his eyes reeking of fear and confusement. "But... I... I don´t know... I..." He stuttered, which only ticked off his interrogator and Tjalfe knew this could end fatally, if he couldn´t give him something - anything... "I´m sorry..." he tried, "but I just don´t know... Fyrkat is where the gods live when they are in Midgaard... I don´t know anything about..."

He hadn´t even finished his sentence, before the Yetten raised his hand to slap him a deadly blow. Luckily Loki was quick to respond and with an elegant maneuver, he twisted himself in between the two and facing the other Yetten grabbed his wrist and held it tight. Apparently, Loki had some power over him. At least he lowered his arm, turned around and moved away leaning up against the wall, his eyes still angrily fixed on Tjalfe.

Satisfied that his fellow warrior had seemed to cool down a bit and didn´t pose any serious threat to their prisoner, Loki sat on the chair across the table and looked friendly at Tjalfe, as if he was trying to create some sort of confidentiality between them.

"Look, Tjalfe..." he began softly, "I get it, okay? This is not easy for you..."

Loki sent a nod toward the other Yetten, who reluctantly moved to a console, from where he pulled two mugs like magic. He put them in front of Loki, who immediately sipped from one of them. Then he put it back on the table and pushed the other mug across the table.

"There you go," he said kindly, "but be careful... it´s quite hot..." Tjalfe looked suspiciously at the mug. It contained a black fluid and the steam from it lifted up a sweet smell compelling Tjalfe to drink it. But he managed to fight the urge and looked at Loki.

"It´s hot sukkuladio," Loki said, still sounding friendly, "It tastes great. Kind of sweet. Yetten kids love this stuff and I think you will too..."

Loki held his mug with both hands sipping its contents, while observing Tjalfe with a smurgy smile clearly enjoying the moment as his prisoner grabbed the mug and lifted to his mouth. Tjalfe touched the mug with his lips, but then he hesitated. Why would Loki give him something before he had himself been given some of the information, he wanted? Was this some kind of trick? Maybe it was poisoned? Or maybe there was something in this substance that would make him dizzy and indifferent. On a few occasions, Tjalfe had tasted his father´s mead and it made his head spin. Maybe the liquid in this mug would do something similar to him, making him say things he shouldn´t? He put down the mug again and looked at Loki, who responded with a wry smile.

"No, Tjalfe, it´s not poisoned in any way," he said, "It´s quite safe to drink and won´t even make you woozy, except maybe for the rush of sugar streaming through your vanes and the feeling of strength building up inside your body."

Though Loki´s smile and soft voice seemed sincere, Tjalfe still wasn´t sure about complying and he sat still, while observing Loki trying to find clues in the Yetten´s body language that would maybe reveal his true intentions.

"I´m drinking the same thing, Tjalfe, look," Loki said with an encouraging nod of his head and took yet another sip, "You really should try it. It´s fantastic. If you don´t like it, you may leave it. It´s completely up to you..."

Tjalfe built up his courage and raised the mug again. Should he give it a try? If they wanted to kill him they would probably already have done so and even if this substance would make him to talk, it really wouldn´t make any difference. He was quite sure he didn´t have any kind of information useful to them. He carefully took a small sip and felt the hot liquid filling his mouth. It was sweet and delicious, just as Loki had told him. Tjalfe enjoyed the taste and felt the drink strengthen his sore muscles and the feeling of fatigue leaving his body was, he had to admit, a rather welcomed one.

"Right, Tjalfe, let me tell you something, "Loki said as he leaned forward in a pose saying: 'I´m your friend and I want to help you.'

"I get that it must be a very intimidating experience to be dragged away from your family against your will and then be subjected to an interrogation like this. To be perfectly honest..." Loki lowered his voice almost to a whisper as he continued. "I have a gut feeling you know absolutely nothing about all of this - at least nothing of interest to us. But the problem is: it´s not my call. It´s all up to the commander and he is very confident that you have some vital information. And to say the least, he is not a softy... There is nothing he wouldn´t do to get the information he thinks you have and... well, I won´t go into details. You are a bright kid and I´m sure you get it..."

Loki sent Tjalfe a look that seemed almost merciful and if Tjalfe hadn´t been such a bright kid, he might even have thought Loki was one of the good guys.

Then Loki leaned back in his chair and raised his voice to a normal level as he continued.

"Let me say it as clear as I can: You and Roeskva have the best chance of getting out of this alive, if you come clean and tell us everything you know, no matter if you think it´s important or not. Just answer any question to the best of your knowledge and then maybe, just maybe, you can convince the commander that you´re not holding anything back. And if he comes to believe that you really don´t know anything, he just might let you and your sister go..."

Just hearing his sisters name being called, Tjalfe woke up and sat up straight.

"Where is Roeskva now?" he asked, "is she alright?"

"Of course she is!" Loki smiled and threw his head to the side. "In fact, she is right in the next room drinking 'sukkuladio' just like you. After all, she is just a little girl and she is probably chattering away trying to answer all their questions."

Tjalfe had a feeling that Loki said this only as a way to scare him. But he was quite sure Loki was wrong about Roeskva. Sure enough she was a little girl, but he knew no one as stubborn as she. If she didn´t want to say anything, she wouldn´t. And it wouldn´t do them any good if they decided to push her, as this would only make her even more stubborn. Even if she was afraid, her fear would just make her stronger.

Tjalfe was more worried at the thought of their reaction to her stubbornness. Maybe they would get so angry that ... He didn´t dare finishing the thought.

"If I try to help you... tell you everything you want to know... could... could Roeskva be allowed in here, then?"

Loki´s eyebrows went up and he tilted his head a bit to one side. He was clearly taken by surprise. Could it really be _that_ easy?

"Of course!" he announced, his hands thrown to both sides as if he was just about to give Tjalfe a big hug, "no problem, my friend! But you have to promise to come clean... I mean, really come clean and hold nothing back, however strange or irrelevant you may think our questions are..."

Tjalfe agreed with a nod of his head and Loki turned to the big Yetten, who´s face had changed from rage and anger to a bewildered look revealing that he was perhaps even more surprised than Loki.

"Gilling here will go get her right now," Loki proclaimed.

At this point, Gilling stood like frozen, his jaw resting on his kneecaps and looking not the least present in his mind, but then he seemed to realize what was going on and pushed away from the wall with a big smile on his face, opened the door and left.

As soon as the door shut behind him with a clicking sound, Loki quickly turned his attention to Tjalfe with a jolt. His face had changed and he didn´t look like the scary interrogator anymore. In fact, he appeared almost friendly to Tjalfe. Like the funny kind of uncle, who always seem to earn the trust of his nieces and nephews.

"Listen very carefully," he said as he leaned so far forward across the table that Tjalfe could hear him even if he whispered, "We haven´t got much time, so I need you to really take in, what I´m about to say and think very fast to understand what it means, ok?"

He didn´t wait for Tjalfe to answer, but glanced shortly at the door in complete silence his pupils hanging in the corner of his eyes as if he was trying to decide if anyone outside would be able to hear anything. Then he continued.

"Right, Tjalfe... In a minute, Gilling will return with Roeskva and as soon as she´s settled in a chair, I´m going to ask you a whole bunch of questions. What I need you to do, is listen very carefully. Every question, I ask, is going to be asked in a certain way and you must answer those questions to the letter, okay? Do not under any circumstances answer anything outside of what I ask of you. If I ask you to tell me the name of someone, you just say their name, nothing else, alright? No talking about what they do or what they look like, unless I ask you specifically, understand?"

Tjalfe didn´t say anything. He simply sat there, chocked at what Loki was doing.

"Do you understand, Tjalfe? Answer only the questions, I ask, nothing else." He paused for a second, then repeated the last bit to be sure, Tjalfe was with him.

"Do you understand?"

What is going on here? Who is Loki? Can I trust him? Is this just another trick?

Tjalfe´s mind went crazy with confusement and he didn´t know what to think.

"Ehm.. yeah... I get it, but..." he just managed to say, before the door opened and Gilling entered with Roeskva in front of him. She looked frightened, but then she discovered Tjalfe in there and lit up in a relieved smile. She practically threw herself around his neck and let out a silent sob her body shaking like a thresher.

"There, there," he comforted her while caressing her hair, "We´re together now, Roeskva, and I will protect you as best I can."

Little by little Roeskva calmed down. Finally she lifted up her head and looked him in the eyes. He stroked her cheek. It was completely dry. It struck him how unusual this was. Under normal circumstances Roeskva wasn´t the kind, who would hold back her tears if she was sad or frightened. To make the whole situation even stranger, she winked at him with one eye and he struggled not to let the two Yetten soldiers notice how puzzled he was.

With Roeskva sitting safely beside him, he listened to Loki's questions and tried to answer as accurately as possible on all accounts. _Keep it simple_ , he reminded himself as he thought of what Loki had just told him. _Don´t answer any question, Loki does not specifically ask_... He kept repeating these guidelines in his head while trying to find a balance, where it wasn´t too obvious to raise suspicion.

"When did you first meet Thor?"

Loki was sitting the same place as before, just across the table with Gilling seated beside him and clearly listening carefully taking in every information revealed by Tjalfe´s words, body language and tone of voice.

"Last winter," Tjalfe said, "It was still quite cold, but it was after drinking Yule."

Gilling turned his head toward Loki with a questioning look in his eyes.

"Winter solstice," Loki explained, "drinking Yule is celebration of the change towards longer days and the anticipation of the coming spring." Then he turned his head and looked back at Tjalfe.

"Where did you meet him?" he continued his interrogation.

"At the fortress of the gods," Tjalfe said, "it is placed in the flat land right after the forest."

"Did you see anyone besides Thor at the fortress?"

"Yes, but I don´t remember their names. There were quite many gods there and they were coming and going all the time, so I couldn´t keep track of them all."

"Maybe you could describe some of them?"

"Ehm.. well... I suppose... There was a woman there... She... she was quite tall... and... she had long golden hair... almost like my mum..."

Gilling leaned towards Loki and whispered something in his ear using the Yetten language. Even though Tjalfe didn´t understand what he was saying, it was quite clear from his body language that he was less than pleased. Maybe he didn´t think, Tjalfe was answering their questions thoroughly enough?

Loki and Gilling spoke for a while in their own tongue and Tjalfe was vexed that he hadn´t been clever enough to learn more about the Yetten language. If there was a time where understanding them would be very beneficial, this was it. He pounded himself mentally for not thinking about it sooner. If he´d had a little more time in that cell, he might have been able to get just an idea about what they were talking about. But no... instead he had juiced in self pity and wasted valuable time doing nothing but grunt about their predicament.

The conversation between Loki and Gilling seemed to Tjalfe to go on forever and it slowly turned into more of an argument than merely a friendly talk between colleagues. Since he wasn´t able to understand any of it, he decided to observe their body language and facial expressions instead, but he was interrupted by Roeskva, who suddenly squeezed his hand and smiled broadly winking at him with one eye, just as she had done a little while ago. Strange... She almost looked excited. Didn´t she at all get how serious all this was? Here they were, caught by one of the most ruthless peoples in the entire world and Roeskva was smiling and looking as if she´d just been given a valuable gift?

"Tjalfe!" He jolted at the sound of Loki barking his name.

"I´m sorry," he said and turned his eyes away from the two Yetten soldiers and looked down at the table.

"What was Thor doing in that fortress?"

"He ehm... I... I don´t know," Tjalfe stuttered his throat tightening from dry fear, "He usually spent his time in his house or by the stone."

"The stone?"

"Yes, the stone in the center of the fortress. The one that shines..."

"Hmmm... okay..." Loki looked shortly at Gilling and then turned his head back looking at Tjalfe.

"What was Thor doing, when he was by the stone?"

"He touched it with some kind of short iron sticks and then he chiseled something on his writing thing."

"He probably means Thor was making notes of his results," Loki explained to Gilling, "and the iron sticks sounds like ordinary screw drivers." Then Loki turned to Tjalfe and continued questioning him.

"Would you consider Thor a friend?" Loki wanted to know, "and do you think he thought of you as a friend?"

Tjalfe was baffled, to say the least. Had anyone asked him a year ago he would have laughed out loud, knowing that no ordinary person could ever be friends with the gods. But for some strange reason, this wasn´t at all as obvious as before and he felt complied to consider it. After all, Thor had treated him like an equal, more than as someone, who was beneath his rank. But still, someone like Tjalfe being friends with a god? It seemed unlikely, though possible...?

"Ehm..." he began while still thinking it through and trying to give Loki an answer, that wasn´t going to make Gilling angry at him, deeming his answer heretical.

"I... I don´t know... I mean... I liked Thor... and I think he may have found me to be interesting... but... I mean, you can´t expect a god to ever become friends with a mortal, can you?"

"That is a good answer, Tjalfe," Loki responded while looking as if he was to try to hide being impressed with Tjalfe´s intelligence. "But maybe Thor - if Thor found you interesting, that is - maybe Thor told you things about the Aseir - the gods?"

Tjalfe´s mind went on overload as he tried to think back. He didn´t want to reveal too much, but on the other hand he was sure he couldn´t answer nothing without Gilling going berserker on him.

"Well, I suppose he told me a little, but..."

"Like what?"

"I don´t know..."

Tjalfe paused thinking like crazy, while Loki waited patiently for an answer. Gilling wasn´t even close to being as patient and the red color on his face returned as they all sat there in silence.

"No, wait," Tjalfe suddenly said, "He did tell me that the Aseir got married and had children just like we do!" Tjalfe tried as best he could to look as if this was really important information to be excited about, but clearly Gilling did not agree. Unable to control his temper any longer, he stood up and took a swing against Tjalfe, who managed to duck his head just in time. Unfortunately Gilling´s huge hands swung over Tjalfe´s head and hit Roeskva instead and if it hadn´t been for the fact, that Gilling's surprise at Tjalfe´s quick response combined with the extra distance from Tjalfe´s head to Roeskva, she would most likely have died at the violent blow. Instead, Gilling's flat hand hit Roeskva on the side of her head and sent her flying up from her chair and gliding across the floor. Tjalfe hurried over to come to her aid. She covered her chin with her hand and stared venomously at Gilling. The big Yetten didn´t even notice, however. He was busy trying to defend what he had done, as Loki yelled and screamed at him. Once again Tjalfe wished he had been able to understand what they were saying.

Suddenly the two Yetten´s quarrel drowned in a rending noise. It sounded as if several hundred villagers tooted their horns at once, only the sound was both much higher and much deeper pitched. Then Loki and Gilling went busy! The door was flung open! Roeskva and Tjalfe were almost thrown out of the room, a couple of short messages to the guard and then they were off. The head of the security team was no less of a hurry. He shooed the children down the hall, while Loki and Gilling stormed in the opposite direction along with the many fighters who poured out through all doors in the corridor. Tjalfe tried to look back several times to find out as much as possible, but the guard behind him discovered it and hit him with a flat hand on his back.

"Move!" he cried continuously shoving the kids to get them to move faster and faster. Down the corridor to the guard´s room, up with the door to the cell and in with the prisoners in an unbelievable haste! The children practically glided across the floor into their cell and within a split second they found themselves completely covered in darkness with their backs to the wall, just like before. In there they instinctively kept silent to listen. Outside the door they heard boots running away in the direction from which they had just come and suddenly everything went completely quiet...

***

# Chapter 7: Skrymer´s Glove

"Sif?" Thor stood in the doorway and looked inside the room. He appeared different than his usual self. More serious. Reluctant somehow. Sif sent him a loving smile.

"Hi," she said and padded her hand on the chair beside her as an invitation for him to sit down. He came closer and sat down beside her his eyes fixed on hers. She felt his love and returned it by caressing his cheek, then her smile faded and she looked shocked and concerned. "You´re hurt," she said and grabbed a small device from the table.

Thor still smiled, though his effort to hide his pain wasn´t all that successful. "You should see the other guy," he said in a feeble attempt to joke about it, but then had to relax the muscles in his face as a jolt of pain made its way to his brain. He sat as still as he could, while Sif cleansed his wound with her small medical device, but after a while he started getting uneasy.

"Sif?" he said in such a concerned voice that she put down the device and looked him in the eyes, clearly alarmed.

"I have to go, my love," he said, "I can´t stay for long. But first I need to tell you something." The serious sound in his voice and the firm look in his eyes made her fight her growing urge to ask a whole bunch of questions and instead she just sat there in silence, encouraging him to go on with a nod of her head.

"No matter what happens out there, you must continue, understand?"

"Of course, Thor, you know I will... Why are you saying this?"

"No matter what, Sif! You can never give up - not even when everything looks completely hopeless, okay? Never give up! Promise me! Promise me, you will go on with this mission, no matter how bad everything seems to you, Sif! You got to promise me!"

She nodded with a puzzled expression on her face. Then Thor spinned his head toward a sound coming from the corridor, turned back to look at her, kissed her on her forehead and then got up and walked to the door, where he stopped to look over his shoulders.

"I´m sorry I can´t tell you more right now, but you must complete this mission!" he said, before going through the door and turning left down the corridor.

Sif sat there almost paralyzed for a split second. Then she got to her feet in a decision to go after him, but she didn´t even get to the door, before Freya suddenly popped in her head.

"Hi," she said, "you ready yet? We are all waiting for you by the air lock..."

Sif frowned and looked suspiciously at Freya. "All of you?" she asked.

"Yeah, of course... You were supposed to be there a few minutes ago and we don´t have much time, so I decided to..." Freya stopped mid sentence as she noticed the strange look on Sif´s face.

"What´s going on, Sif? You alright?"

"I just... I don´t know, it was..." she began, but then decided not to tell Freya what had just happened. Instead she got her things and they both went right down the corridor. "It´s nothing," Sif said as they walked toward the air lock, "I just have a lot on my mind." Sif bit her lip, then got a grip. "Let´s just focus on the mission," she said, hoping that Freya hadn´t noticed too much...

***

How long Tjalfe and Roeskva had been lying there trying to listen to the sounds coming from outside the cell was not easy to say. For the most part, it had been absolutely quiet and the only thing they could hear was the sound of prisoners shouting from their cells further down in the corridor. But now and again there were sounds of bangs making the floor in their cell tremble and Tjalfe got more and more worried. With Roeskva, however, it had the quite opposite effect. For every explosion and sound of Yetten superiors crying orders to their men, her mood went up the scale.

"The gods are here to save us," she suddenly said, smiling at her brother.

"Let´s hope so," he responded in an attempt to appear hopeful. At least she was able to keep up hopes and even though he knew better, he was not going to tell her the truth. What would that accomplish, other than them both dying with no hope?

"No, Tjalfe! You don´t get it. It _is_ the gods! They are out there right now, fighting to get to us!" Roeskva insisted, looking him straight in the eyes with a certainty revealing that she knew more than he did.

"The ship is under attack and the Yetten suspect there is a spy on board. The head of the guard detail has been given orders to search the ship for... what was that word again..? ehm... Yeah! 'Sprenjur!' - I don´t know what it is, but they are afraid it might tear the ship apart, if they don´t find it in time!"

Tjalfe starred at his sister. Was she loosing it? Was it really so important to her to keep up hopes that she would make up any kind of story, convincing herself that it was real? Then it struck him... She meant every word!

"Do you understand what they are saying out there?" he asked.

She eagerly nodded her head and sent him a broad and proud smile.

"You said it might be possible to learn, if you really listened, so that´s what I´ve been doing and I´ve really learned a lot. They were very helpful in the interrogation room, where I was, when you were being questioned by Loki and Gilling, because it hadn´t even crossed their mind I might be able to understand them."

Tjalfe didn´t say anything, but just kept starring at his sister. His wonderful, intelligent and amazing sister, who had the most incredible courage and whom he was very, very proud of!

"By the way," she trumphed it all, "this ship isn´t called 'Skrymer.' It´s 'Brimir.' 'Skrymer' is the name of the place where the ship is."

Tjalfe lit up in a huge smile.

"Roeskva," he said laughing, "you are fantastic! Simply fantastic!"

"Thank you," she mumbled, looking at the floor, her cheeks blushing from the praise of her brother, whom she had always looked up to. Coming from him, praise was like the air she was breathing.

Then she straightened up her body and looked him firmly in the eyes.

"Look, we don´t have much time," she said in an authoritative voice reminding Tjalfe of the way Loki had talked to him, just before Gilling had returned with Roeskva in the interrogation room. "They believe they have one 'klukkustund' to search the ship. I´m not sure, how long that is, but I don´t think it is all that much. They also believe that someone besides us on this ship is working with the gods. They call the gods 'Aseir,' whatever that means and they are sure the spy will try to free us from our cell. That´s why they have put some guards near the cell, but they are hiding in the hope of catching the spy, when he comes to get us."

She didn´t get to say anything else, before there was an enormous bang followed by several blasts all the way from the rear end and moving up through the entire ship. Roeskva jumped up and smashed into Tjalfe pushing him into the wall opposite the door just in time before it toppled into the cell with a loud BLAM!

The light streamed into the cell and a figure, they immediately recognized, came to the door and scared them witless! It was Fenrir!

***

Skrymers Glove looked dangerous, as it lay there in the middle of nowhere with his long invisible fingers extended towards Alfheim and its crew, hoping to seize them and crush them to dust. Thor, Sif and Freya stood in front of the airlock putting on their spacesuits, while Baldur was At the bridge. He had been furious when it dawned on him that he alone was to be left behind aboard Alfheim, while the others went on an adventure.

"I´m sorry, Baldur," Thor had tried to explain the angry Aseir, "but we need you At the bridge. Someone has to control Alfheim preventing it from coming too close to Skrymer´s Glove and simultaneously launch the time distortion bubbles and secure our penetration into the non-gravity space. You are that person, Baldur!"

But Baldur wasn´t ready to accept this at first.

"Why me?" he had protested, "Why not Freya? Or Sif? I mean, any of them can do this - especially Sif, who probably knows more about the mini generator than anyone else on this ship?"

"No, Baldur," Thor had rejected the idea, "None of them can fly Alfheim like you can. You are by any standard the best pilot we have. It´s going to be either you At the bridge or we cancel the whole mission."

Finally Baldur had reluctantly accepted his lot. Deep down he knew it was true. He was the only one who could do the job. Maybe if Loki had been here, he would have been an option, but it seemed that Loki had chosen to disappear at the most annoying time Baldur could think of.

"Well, alright! But I really hate the idea of sitting around doing nothing, while you guys put your lives on the line out there!"

"Oh, don´t you worry," Thor had ensured him, "there will be more than enough to do here. You won´t be bored much. The instance we pass the point-of-no-return you will have plenty on your hands trying to steer the ship and at the same time keeping us alive with the time distortion bubbles. The slightest slip of concentration on your part would kill us all."

"Yeah, I know," Baldur had said nodding his head, "I will keep my eyes peeled at all times. Just remember to keep me informed of what´s going on out there, okay?"

Again Thor had to disappoint his younger brother. "Well... that would be rather difficult, Baldur. As soon as we get out of reach of the internal communication system, we have to keep our radio silence. We can´t risk being discovered by the Yetten forces too soon."

"Just do what do can?" Baldur had asked.

"Of course, Baldur," Thor had responded, "if nothing else, you should be able to follow us using the short ranged scanner, okay?"

Baldur was still annoyed, but there was nothing he could do about it and finally he had accepted that he was needed At the bridge.

"Airlock safety measures are switched off, guys," his voice sounded through the loud speaker, "air won´t be pumped out before I open the external doors and when that happens you will experience something similar to being blown away by an explosion, alright?"

It was the best way to get propulsion. Alfheim´s systems had for the most part been shut down to make it possible to hide their presence to the Yetten. With everything turned off, the Yetten would hopefully interpret Alfheim on their scanners as a meteor or one of many other objects that were about to be eaten by one of the five black holes. If they used the engines on their space suits, it could bring too much attention and it could worsen their already poor chances of success.

"Okay, now. Everything is ready here At the bridge and all I´m waiting for is your final 'go' to open the bay doors."

Thor open the inner door and was just about to step inside the air lock, when Freya grabbed his arm.

"Wait..."

Freya´s two companions looked apprehensively at her.

She was concerned and wondered how to present this in the best possible way. She didn´t want to be misunderstood and she knew Sif well enough to know that her most probable reaction would be quite fierce. Still, Freya needed to bring it out in the open, no matter how angry it would make Sif. Not only because she insisted on doing her job well, but also because she loved Sif too much to not give it a try.

Freya looked at her friend and fellow Vane with sadness and apology in her eyes, as she spilled it out, knowing how much Sif would resent this:

"Maybe we should consider letting Sif stay here aboard the Alfheim," she finally said.

Sif froze. The feeling of being betrayed built up anger and resentment inside her and the color of her cheeks went dark red as her face shook with rage.

"What!" she cried out loudly, although she was less than a few inches from the face of Freya.

"Look, it's not that I think you cannot handle it. Of course you can. I just think that since this mission could be done without you... I mean... Why expose yourself to this kind of danger, when it really is not necessary?"

Freya knew right away that she probably could have given no worse kind of explanation than the one she had just used. Added to this, Sif already had problems with feeling inferior to the more agile and strong Freya, who in spite of her beauty was among the most feared fighters in the ranks of the Vanes. Even suggesting to let Sif stay behind, was bad enough in itself, but to bring up the notion, that she might not even be needed to complete the mission was like pouring gasoline on a fire.

"I don´t care one bit what you think!" Sif yelled in such a staccato kind of way that Freya unknowingly stepped back, "I am NOT going to just sit around onboard the Alfheim eating bon-bons and knitting sweaters, while you are all out there trying to save those children! They are just as much my responsibility as yours - more even - and I will NOT stay here doing nothing, while you and Thor rescue Tjalfe and Roeskva!"

Thor had first looked as if he was inclined to back up Freya. After all, Freya did have a point. He and Freya could complete the mission without her. But when he saw Sif's reaction, he didn´t say anything and instead decided to let the two feisty Vane Women fight it out.

Sif trembled in anger. She was determined to be a part of the mission and was in no way ready to let the others go without her. She was well aware that Thor and Freya had only the best intentions in mind. They wanted to keep her safe. Still, for some reason, she had a feeling that her participation was crucial for the success of the mission and she would not back down. Not under any circumstances. In addition, she had promised Thor to continue and that was a promise she intended to keep at all costs. Even if it meant giving her life.

Freya observed Sif carefully and concluded that there probably wasn´t any way she could make her change her mind and a brief look at Thor made it clear that she should not expect support there either.

"Alright, Sif," she said quietly and Sif felt she could almost sense a little admiration in Freya´s voice. Then they entered the air lock and the inner doors shut behind them.

The silence felt like a monster from a dream creeping in on them on a quest to kill them, as they stood there checking their equipment one last time before they lay down on the floor. They needed a solid body position when they were blown out in empty space in order to be able to control their exit. Freya was as usual the fastest.

"Freya ready."

"Sif ready."

"Thor ready. Counting down from 5?"

"Received. Counting down from 5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1.. Opening outer hatch.."

The outer door tilted outwards and the three companions blew out with the air quickly escaping Alfheim like when you open a shaken beer. Although they had placed themselves ready on the floor heads forward, their bodies were spinning around themselves the first several meters before they managed regaining control by letting air out through the nozzles on their suits. It was pretty unusual to use such low-tech propulsion, but it was exactly the kind they needed to keep the Yetten from discovering them.

Thor looked around trying to find the others. Freya was, not surprisingly, in the lead and had completely mastered the nozzle control, but Sif seemed to be in trouble, so Thor let a little air out through the suit´s rear nozzle and soon floated away reaching her. It was not easy to catch the spinning body, but he managed to grab hold of her legs with one hand while he controlled the nozzles with his other hand. When their rotation was brought to a hold, he examined her suit and quickly found the problem.

"Some of your nozzles are frozen," he explained, "try to keep still. I´ll fix it."

T he small hammer came out of the side pocket and it was perfect for chopping the ice without damaging the nozzle itself. Then he passed a message to Freya that everything was ok and reported back to Baldur.

"Ok, Baldur. I think we´re almost ready for the next phase. Have you got us on the screen?"

"Yep. Three dots on a line. That´s got to be you guys."

"Excellent. We´re in good hands, then. Better keep radio silence till we reach the first membrane of the time distortion bubble. Just in case the Yetten are routinely listening in on short distance communications. If they have patrol in the near vicinity, we are busted before we can even get close enough to find the kids."

The first way ahead, they had to communicate with hand signals, as they had agreed in advance. It took quite a long time, about 3 hours during which they could do nothing but wait. Wait and float. And marvel at the sight of Skrymer´s Glove, which was every bit as fascinating now as it had been looking through the bridge window on board the Alfheim.

As Thor hung there in the vast space of nothing, his thoughts brought him back to the time on Earth, where he had met Tjalfe for the first time. They had just finished building the protective dyke around Fyrkat when this young lad no more 13-14 years old had come by to see what was going on. Thor had immediately noticed that Tjalfe was different than the others in the crowd of people who piled up at the beginning to get their curiosity satisfied. From a distance, mind you. None of them dared come too close and even the most courageous of them never came closer than the edge of the forest more than 200 meters away from the dyke. They just stood there talking and spreading rumors of magical forces being at work here. When Thor and Sif worked late night shifts they always had the lights turned on so they could see what they were doing. These lights were like nothing the locals had ever seen before and they had begun to talk about mist men waiting in the in the bog just itching to leave their hiding place and move out to take over the village. But still none of the grown men had the courage to investigate further. Instead, it took the curiosity of a boy, Tjalfe, to figure out what was going on. He came one morning while the dew was still dripping from the tree leaves and initially he had joined the other villagers at the edge of the forest next to one of the village elders. But suddenly he had, to the horror of the Elders, decided to have a closer look at Fyrkat. They began shouting and screaming that he was not supposed to challenge the mist men and he should come back right away, or he would call down the anger of these magical beings and that they would attack the village. But Tjalfe had just ignored them and continued his journey towards the dyke.

Thor and Sif had been engaged in reading the results on the console in the center of the Fyrkat fortress when the closest guard on the palisades turned their attention to something going on outside.

"Thor!" the guard had yelled from his post with his back to Thor and Sif. He hadn´t even taken his eyes from the approaching boy with the uncontrollable curiosity. "You are not going to believe this," he continued, "but someone has actually built up the courage to come closer."

Thor had looked up and through the gate he could see the slender boyish figure coming towards Fyrkat in a sauntering kind of walk, as if he was on his pleasure trip rather than trying to investigate something potentially dangerous.

By now the guard had, to his own astonishment, also discovered that it wasn´t one of the warriors who had pulled himself together to do something about the possible danger to the village.

"I don´t believe it," he cried in surprise, "they have actually decided to send a boy to do a man´s job, the cowards!"

"No," Sif answered, "they haven´t sent him. They´re trying to discourage him from proceeding. Look! They are almost panicking out there!"

"Yeah! You´re right!" the guard responded, "Well.. I´ll let him come a bit closer. Let´s see, how far his courage will bring him. If he comes too close, I´ll stop him before he gets to the gate!"

"No! Wait!"

To this point, Thor hadn´t said anything, but now he decided to interfere. He put down his gear on the grass in front of him and started walking toward the gate.

"I will meet him out there. I´d like to get to know these people a little better," he said.

Sif had watched Thor approaching the boy, but when he decided to even bring him inside of the fortress, she just had to object.

"Thor, it´s much too dangerous bringing him inside," she had tried, but Thor was way too eager about it to listen to her warnings.

He had always had a great interest in meeting new people from alien planets and could not wait to find out how smart they were. In most cases, it was completely pointless to try to teach them anything, but Thor had quickly discovered that with Tjalfe it was different. Although Tjalfe obviously could not catch more than a fraction of the purely scientific things, he had an astonishing ability to capture the basic principles when Thor explained how their equipment worked. For example, he tried to explain Tjalfe that their cars had an engine that could drive them forward. Thor had been struggling in his head trying to figure out a way to explain the principles of fission in a simple manner and Tjalfe had just listened and asked questions. Asked some more questions and listened some more. After a long explanation of atoms being pooled together to release the energy inside of them, and then bring the energy into a generator that got the wheels to rotate, it had been a pure pleasure to Thor to suddenly see Tjalfe lit up in a huge smile.

"Oh, now I get it," he simply said, "it´s like boiling water, isn´t it? I mean.. when my mum puts a cauldron with water over the fire in her kitchen, she puts a lid on it to make the water boil faster.. and then, sometimes, when the water starts to boil and if the lit is a bit too tight, it kind of just.. jumps off of the cauldron, because there isn´t enough room inside the cauldron?"

From that day on, Thor had looked on Tjalfe from a brand new perspective. He had initiated him in all sorts of experiments and taught him every single day in the scientific disciplines. He had been proud of his new apprentice and happy to see his progress. Sif had been of a very different opinion and repeatedly tried to get Thor to stop his teaching, but it had all been in vain.

"It just won't do, Thor," she had tried on more than a few occasions, "It´s too dangerous! What if the Yetten find us here and they discover that humans may not be as dim as they think? What if they somehow get to the boy in the belief that he may know a whole bunch of stuff about us and about what we are doing here?"

"Relax, Sif..." Thor had almost sounded condescending and Sif would probably have felt insulted had it been anyone else, but with Thor, she knew he didn´t mean it that way.

"There is no reason to worry," Thor went on, "the Yetten are way too busy with the war. They won´t use that kind of resources in a place, where they haven´t even invented the steam engine yet. And they have absolutely no idea about our presence here. Nothing is going to happen to Tjalfe and he is the best student I´ve ever had. Better than Freya, even. And that says a lot, you know!"

But all of this seemed like a long time ago. Now Thor floated weightlessly in the middle of nothing and began wondering if he should have listened to Sif´s warnings. It _was_ his fault that the Yetten had taken Tjalfe prisoner. And additionally, they even had his sister. They just _had_ to complete this mission, find the children and save them from the claws of the Yetten! Those kids were _his_ responsibility and he would do whatever needed to get them to safety.

"Thor?"

The sound of Baldur´s voice over the radio woke up Thor from his thoughts and he found himself a bit confused as he fumbled with the communication buttons on his space suit.

"Thor here," he responded.

"You´re almost at the first membrane. Please advise me when you have a visual, so I can fire 'The Hammer' at the right time."

"The Hammer?"

"Yes, Thor, 'The Hammer.' Your nice device needs a proper name, doesn´t it?"

"It has a name, Baldur..."

"Yeah... well... let´s just say it´s official name isn´t exactly easy to remember, okay?"

"What do you mean? It has a name very fitting to what it does..."

"Ehm.. Honestly, Thor.. your name for the thing is kinda... how should I put it? ... Nerdy?"

"Nerdy???"

"Yep, Thor - it´s as nerdy as it gets. You got to know, Thor! Come on, man! 'Massively Injected...' I can´t even remember it. Wait a minute, I´ve got it written down somewhere... Here it is... 'Massive Injected Opposing Linear Non-whatever thingy..." I don´t even have the patience to spell my way through this gibberish nonsense..."

"Nonsense!"

"You do have more than just monosyllables in your vocabulary, right?"

"???"

"Anyway, bro... it´s just too boring a name for something as potent as 'The Hammer' and I´ve decided to pep it up a bit..."

_Pep it up?_ Thor couldn´t believe what he was hearing and was just about to seek out support from Sif and Freya, when he realized through the corner of his eyes how they were both shaking from laughter. He could almost hear them giggling, though of course that was quite impossible through the emptiness of space.

"You can´t just decide a name for that device, Baldur," he made an obviously futile attempt to regain authority over name giving his own device, "the device is mine and I can call it whatever I please."

"Sure you can, Thor," Baldur responded in a cheerful tone, "but we call it 'The Hammer of Thor' nevertheless. We´ve already voted on it."

Thor glanced at the two Vane women on each side of him. They were about to crack with laughing so much and even Freya had trouble keeping in control of the nozzles on her suit making her body rock sideways like a dolphin with a broken fin.

"Alternatively, we could use the abbreviation of your name, if you´d like: 'M.I.O.L.N.E.R' - at least it has a better ring than 'Massive Injected Opposing Whatnot...'

This was clearly a lost battle and Thor knew when to fight and when not to...

"Alright, alright, then," he said while trying to hide a smile from Sif and Freya, who´s eyes were fixed at him as they were aiming to get every possible bit of fun out of the whole situation.

"But right now we need to focus on the mission," Thor said, "and we do have a visual on the first membrane. Ready the canon, Baldur!"

"Ready."

"Good. Reestablish radio silence - just as a precaution - we will reach the membrane in just about 30 seconds, Baldur..."

Thor stared ahead with an empty look in his eyes. He had been a little curious as to how the gravity pocket at the point-of-no-return would look like, but he could never have prepared himself for what he saw. Although the background was blacker than black, the swirling waves in the curvature of space were quite clear. Here and there they could see small to huge sparklings like lightning between invisible poles and the entire surface of the giant pocket looked like a swimming pool in weightlessness.

Then came the first membrane ...

All three were strained to the breaking point and just hoped that they would be able to get fairly unscathed through. Shwoosch. They went through the first membrane. There was a strange sensation going through the body as arms, legs and torso experienced the passing of time differently and had it not been for Baldur´s firing of Miolner at the right time, they wouldn´t even have survived the trip to the other side of that membrane.

Between the first and second membrane, there was plenty of room and it took a while before they got through to the third membrane, which was so close to the fourth that their bodies got to experience no less than three time differences at once. Again, Baldur super accurately managed to hit all three of them with every shot at exactly the right time as they broke through yet another membrane. The fifth membrane was obviously the last, because they could observe how everything behind it was calm. Thor signaled the others. They had to be very careful when coming close to the surface of the final membrane. Miolner´s range was unfortunately too short for Baldur to shoot them through the fifth membrane, so here they had to fend for themselves. The most important thing was to make sure they had enough speed to get through fast enough for the time differences between the membranes to have the least possible effect on them for as short time as possible.

It required both precision and mindfulness. Especially since the fifth membrane seemed to have particularly violent fluctuations on its surface. If they did not have enough speed going through, they could risk the surface drawing back before they got through completely and if that happened, the wave of the membrane could very well draw a part of the body with it leaving the rest of the body outside. On the other hand, they had to simultaneously keep track of the contents of their oxygen tanks and they had to economize with the use of their nozzles when maneuvering. It would do them no good, if they could get through the membrane safe and sound, if they had no more oxygen to move on to the next phase of their mission and they would instead float aimlessly and helplessly around till they froze to death in the cold of space. They needed speed enough to just brake the surface of the membrane, but no more.

Thor got ready. He signaled Freya, who was a little ahead and out to the right and then to Sif, who floated closely in front of him and a little to the left. Now it was all about keeping the balance. From this point on and until they had all entered the non-gravity pocket, it was every warrior for themselves. The wave of the membrane approached with brute force and they would not be able to help each other through.

Thor struggled mentally to shut out everything else and now focused only on the pocket, on himself and the nozzles on his suit. Nothing else existed right now. The large and scary wave moved from left to right, but it was almost impossible to predict whether he would hit the high or the low of the wave at his current pace. He just had to make a decision and stick with it, so he breathed deeply into his lungs and decided to aim a little to the left of the high of the wave. That way he should hit the onrushing wave from the side and sail smoothly through. If he didn´t manage to hit it at that point, it was impossible to know where he would end before his air ran out. Hand on the nozzle controls. Wait for the right moment. Not yet. The wave needs to come a little further along. Three more seconds ... 2.. 1.. NOW!

The oxygen streamed out through the nozzle and the quick acceleration made gave him the feeling that his body was about to leave the suit through the boots as he stared rigidly at this one place on the wave, where he had decided to go through. Closer and closer came the pocket. This is it! Nothing more I can do... He just managed to discover that he had aimed a little wrong when the wave peak swept across his torso and continued its course to the left. This was exactly what he had feared and he prepared himself for the pain of his body being torn apart. He saw his life pass by in his mind's eye and just managed to send a thought to Sif as the pocket suddenly embraced his body and he was sucked inside, like a spider through a suction pipe. Swoosh!

He found himself on the other side of the membrane and everything seemed quiet. He looked around but could not see the girls. Then he turned his head as much as he could in his suit, but still could not see anything behind him, so he took a chance and used his nozzles.

He was much deeper inside the pocket than he had expected and the inner surface of the membrane was so far away that he could not spot the others without moving closer. Again, he decided to take the risk hoping there would still be enough oxygen to complete the mission. He listened to the sound of his nozzles opening and immediately closed them again so that only exactly the right amount of air to put him in motion toward the pocket lining would be released, while he scanned the area with his eyes to look for the others. As he came closer to the pocket membrane, a small dot appeared and he felt his hope return. Maybe they had all made it through? There! Oh, no! The hope vanished as quickly as it had come. Sif hung half way in through the wave and would very soon be torn apart, as it had almost happened to him. Freya was nowhere to be seen at all and he had to face the truth: Only he had made it safely through ...

Thor could not bear the thought of losing his beloved Sif and he could not bear to see her being torn apart by time, but building up courage he forced himself to look in her direction. He just had to see her one last time before it was over, even though it was heartbreaking. He felt the time standing still as he prepared himself for the grisly sight that would soon tear his world apart. The wave had almost passed Sif and it was time to say goodbye ...

But nothing happened!

Then he noticed. He didn´t _feel_ time standing still - time actually _was_ standing still, or at least it almost stood still! He had just travelled from a place so far away that he had barely been able to recognize Sif and now he was less than 10 feet from her. And during that trip the wave had moved less than one foot! Maybe there was still enough time to save her? He didn´t dare letting more air out of the nozzles, but luckily it proved to be unnecessary, since he was almost close enough to reach out and touch her arms, which hung outstretched in front of her. He turned around, grabbed her arms by wrapping his legs around them and opened up the nozzles for a short burst.

With a force that surprised him, Sif rushed past him and before he had even had the time to think this thought to the end, she was out of sight. Thor´s empty gaze reached out to her, but she was long gone. Once again Thor was all alone and there was less than 10 minutes of oxygen left in the tank ...

# Chapter 8: Behind the membrane

Swoosh! Freya felt her body practically being whirled like a spinning top after she had come through and she had quite a hard time trying to use the nozzles to stop the wild rotation. When she finally did, neither Thor nor Sif were anywhere to be seen and behind her the surface of the pocket was too far away for her to get a visual. She concluded that she had rushed inside with much more speed than any of them had anticipated and at her present speed, there was no way she could slow down and still have enough air to complete the mission, let alone to go back and search for them. So she gave up the idea, turned around facing forward and let her eagle like eyes scan for signs of Yetten presence. The inside of Skrymers Glove looked quite different than from outside. The vast number of colors and sparks, they had seen before they left the ship, were now just shades of gray and all the beauty was gone. Far off in the distance, she could make out an elongated oval shape. Being the veteran she was, she easily recognized it as one of the big aircraft carriers the Yetten used for invading planets where the local residents had little to no defense at all. From those carriers they could launch their troops and in no time take control of strategic points before the poor souls could even begin to respond. She also knew their weaknesses. Because they weren´t built to defend themselves against heavy artillery, these aircraft carriers had an absolute minimum of armor and fire power. Just a thick hull and no shield generator. Such a vessel, however, would be perfect to use here because the energy level would be sufficiently low for potential enemies to not be able to read their presence even when using the most efficient scanners.

The aircraft carrier was getting quite close and Freya grabbed her rifle from the sheath on her back. She had no idea how to find the children without Sif and her personal scanner, so for now there was nothing else she could do but to search the ship from rear to front. While she waited to get close, she imprinted the ship's exterior design on her memory. It was the classic oval shape used for most of the Yetten´s ships, but small details were different. Instead of having the bridge mounted in the center at one-fifth of the length of the ship measured from the front, this ship had the bridge built on the side as an extra appendage. Freya was puzzled, as it seemed to be a disadvantage. If their scanning equipment went off line, they would have a less favorable outlook and wouldn´t be able to see potential attackers coming from the other side of the ship. Still, she knew from experience, that the Yetten rarely built their ships the way they did without having a specific reason for any particular design. She guessed that it might have something to do with the gravitational fields that corrugated back and forth on the inside of the Skrymer´s Glove.

At the top of the ship, a bit further towards the center where the bridge should have been, a spherical dome stood approximately 5 meters tall and from underneath, she could barely see a square box sticking out. It stretched to almost the entire length of the ship and was apparently divided into several sections that could probably be disconnected and reconnected as needed. Possibly some sort of storage containers used for receiving new supplies.

Then she had a hunch and used the nozzles to move around and beneath the ship. She wanted to inspect the containers more closely. Gradually the container portion moved into view and she noted that each section had two turbines attached to the top right beneath the ship's bow. Engines? It would fit nicely with her suspicion that perhaps this was a very different kind of storage than she first thought. If the Yetten wanted a secure location to hold some of the most important prisoners of war, Skrymer´s Glove would be the perfect choice, a fact Freya and her friends had experienced firsthand. And using removable sections, they would be able to transfer prisoners to and from transport ships outside the glove and thereby keeping the crews of these transport ships from knowing about the vessel here. They could simply launch a single container and leave it out there somewhere for other ships to pick up. Yeah, that had to be the intention. And if she was right, the children would almost certainly be in one of those containers, at least most of the time, when they weren´t being interrogated. But which one? There was no apparent difference the sections other than a numeric code on each of them and even Freya with her experience of breaking codes and see structures couldn´t find any pattern to help her find the right section.

Suddenly, something whizzed closely past her at a furious pace! The small object was about 25 percent the size of a Skarfi and formed a white line behind it on its course directly at the aircraft carrier. Freya raised her rifle. If someone had discovered her, the whole mission would be doomed and it was crucial to shoot down the vessel before the pilot had a chance to alert the aircraft carrier. She aimed carefully. Swish! The Eon Particle Beam left the rifle and whizzed right past her goal. One more time! Swish! Yet another miss! Third attempt. This time she really had to succeed!

***

Baldur had just reported to Thor, that he was ready. There was a buzzing sound as the hammer began its start up sequence. His three companions out there depended on him and he knew he had to be precise when firing the cannon. The hammer was a terrible weapon and it was a little strange to know that in this situation it was the only thing that could save lives. His friends´ lives. And he had to be quick when calculating the readings. Even the slightest error in the configuration of the shift would tear their bodies apart instead of keeping them together. Even though he always complained when Thor and Sif went on and on with their scientific explanations, he understood very well how this worked. When the hammer was fired, it would emit a compact radiation and create a small pocket where time was shifted either speeding it up or slowing it down compared to normal time. If the Aseir would ever decide to use "Thor´s Hammer" as a weapon, such a pocket increasing or decreasing the time flow while embracing part of a vessel, while the rest of the vessel remained in normal time, the result would be devastating and tear the target apart.

But right now he had to focus on reading the fluctuations in the time flow on both sides of every membrane his friends had to go through and then use the gun to smooth out these time differences based on some rather complicated calculations. Finally, he had to make sure to hit every one of them exactly as they were completely covered by the bubbles the hammer created. If an arm or a leg wasn´t inside the pocket, the time flow would either slow down and stop the blood from flowing inside of that body part or it would speed up time subjecting them to rapid aging turning that body part to dust. The end result would be the same: a body that exploded in the pressure of blood that could not be pumped freely around. Under normal circumstances, the body's natural ability to defend itself would kick in and reduce the blood flow, but this was anything but normal, and the body would not even detect that something was wrong. Baldur shuddered at the image of his friends being torn apart when being hit by the hammer. Anyone looking at it from a distance would just see the body disintegrate, but for the affected, time could be reduced so much that the torment could go on for hours or days, even weeks or years.

Baldur knew how demanding his job was and he was focused on performing with perfection. He kept a close eye on the three dots on the 3D model in front of him. They had almost reached the first membrane, which would be the easiest. Here there was only one possible difference between standard time and time behind the membrane. For each new membrane it would be somewhat more difficult, as he had to keep track of both standard time, shift after the first membrane and then an extra shift for each membrane, they came through. And he could not count on the three coming through the membranes at the same time.

First reading. Time differences were minimal. Just 0.93. This meant that the time behind the membrane was seven percent slower than normal time. He readied the gun and set it at minus seven percent and fired it three times in rapid succession. All three dots lit up on the screen, confirming a successful hit. They glided through the membrane without problems.

According to their initial scans there would be plenty of time before the next membrane. At least 20 minutes, which had now increased a little due to the time flow being seven percent slower than outside the pocket. Baldur leaned back and relaxed. He might as well grab the opportunity to rest, because it was impossible to know how long he had before the next few penetrations.

He set the alarm on console to warn him in good time before the next membrane, closed his eyes and let his thoughts wander aimlessly. Thoughts of Sif, who was like a mother to him, even though she was married to Thor and therefore his sister in law. She had always taken good care of him. Unlike most other women she had never seemed interested in him, at least not in a romantic way. Strangely enough, He had never even thought of her as a potential girlfriend, despite the fact that she was very beautiful and had more between her ears than most of the women he knew. Now she floated out there helplessly and quite indispensable to the fight against the Yetten expansion. It was strange in a way. Once they had been enemies, Aseir and Vanes, but after a war that none of them could win, they had finally figured out that it made no sense to continue. It had happened hundreds of years ago, before the Yetten had left their domain at the other end of the galaxy and started a ruthless mayhem wherever they went. Perhaps the real reason for peace between Asher and Vanes had actually been the emerging of the Yetten and their brutality in the sense that it made all other contentions seem so utterly indifferent? Baldur wasn´t sure, but it made sense. He had never been interested in politics. He was a warrior and pilot and performed his job to the best of ability and that had is entire focus. However, he had been interested in quite a lot of women and even though Sif had not immediately occurred to him as a potential girlfriend, it certainly wasn´t because he didn´t like Vane Women. On the contrary. They were hot - at least most of them ... Even the unapproachable Freya had caught Baldur´s eye - every visible inch of her body had in fact caught his eye. Thinking about it, he wondered if it was in fact her inaccessible appearance more than anything else that made her particularly attractive?

In any case, it had been a great day when Freya and Sif had come to Asgard along with a small delegation. As part of the peace agreement it had been decided to exchange talented people between the two races and the Aseir had at the same time sent Hoener off to Vanaheim. Hoener had been meant to be a kind of ruler in Vanaheim, which was at the time a sort of enlightened kingdom and already then Baldur had been ashamed about it. The Aseir had actually tried to dupe the Vanes sending Hoener to be the new leader of the Vanaheim kingdom. He was in no way Chief Material. He could barely decide whether to put on his left shoe before his right shoe or vice versa, without asking anyone for advice. And of course, when they had put him in the royal chair on Vanaheim and lead them through troubled times, he did whatever he could to avoid making any important decision, but instead tried to get others to choose any course of action that might have serious consequences. That way he thought he could avoid anyone blaming him for being wrong.

At first, Hoener - and the Aseir Council, who had sent him - had gotten away with it, because the Vane nobles believed, he was just trying to find his place in his new home and that he was eager to figure out how the Vane society worked, but after a while, it became more and more clear, that Hoener and the Aseir Council did not in any way have the Vane Society´s best interests at heart. The Vane nobles had been furious! They had sent the council a clear message: if peace was to be uphold, the Aseir Council had to pay a severe fine for not abiding by the peace agreement. It had been quite expensive and the tribute had brought the Aseir economy to a crisis, they hadn´t experienced in the past 300 years, but all this happened long ago and the following centuries, the two races developed side by side becoming more and more intertwined and today no one even thought about who was Vane and who was Aseir. They had become a single people, with one common enemy: the brutal Yetten. All that was left of the old Aseir and Vane societies was the fact that their respective cultures sometimes collided, especially when it came to the use of weapons. Originally, the Vanes had not believed in using weapons aggressively, but had built massive defensive capabilities against the Yetten forces, but it had proven to be inadequate and they had changed their views to fit the situation. The debate between Aseir and Vanes on the council was not about using or not using offensive weapons, but rather which offensive weapons to use and how to use them.

Sveessj!

Baldur sat up with a startle as the door behind him opened! He spun around quickly and stared at the man who stood in the doorway with his uniform in tatters and with a scar on his left cheek.

"Hi, Baldur, caught you off guard, did I? It´s not often, I find you speechless, huh?" The man sat in the co-pilot seat and caught Baldur's gaze with authority and determination in his eyes.

"I´m sorry to just burst in this way, but there isn´t much time and certainly not enough to explain everything," he said as Baldur slowly put his jaw back in place with his left hand.

"It is very important that you listen carefully to what I´m about to tell you, alright? In a minute I´ll be gone and you cannot not tell anyone that I have been here. Promise me!"

Baldur nodded eyes wide open and the man continued telling the most incredible story. When he had finished, he disappeared just as subtle as he had arrived and there was no reading of his presence on the internal scanner. Strange??? He checked the clock. 2 minutes left. He had better get ready to save his friend from certain death...

***

Sif whizzed through the vast emptiness of space at a furious pace. Although she had nothing out there to help her get a bearing, let alone to get a reading on her speed, she had a clear sense that she was moving fast. Too fast. She had hit the wave on the last membrane slightly crooked and for a split second she had been sure that her body would be torn apart in the time lag between the fourth and fifth membrane. But then it was as if an invisible force pulled her through and saved her from certain death and now she was on the way toward the non-gravity pocket at a frantic pace. She turned around in her weightlessness and tried getting a visual on the inside of the final membrane, but no luck there. She was much further away from it than she should be and even worse: she could not see Thor or Freya either. _I sure hope they are alright_ , she thought to herself. She knew there was no way she could complete this mission alone. None of them could. She had the equipment to find the kids, if they were here, Freya was their best card when it came to getting the kids off from their captors and Thor was the one who would bring them back to Alfheim safe and sound. She tried to weigh her options. _Using the nozzles to go look for Freya and Thor? But what if there isn´t enough oxygen in the tank for it? On the other hand, this is all about Freya, Thor and the kids. How would she ever be able to look at herself in the mirror, if they all perished, just because she didn´t have the courage to lay down her own life to save them?_

She made a quick decision and placed her hand on the nozzle controls, but then she paused... _What was it, Thor had said to her just before they left? Continue, Sif, he had said. Go on, no matter what happens ... He had even made her promise... And Sif always kept her promises..._

The nozzles burst shortly and she turned around to face the center of the non-gravity pocket inside which they hoped to find Tjalfe and Roeskva somewhere. She didn´t use her nozzles to gain speed. It wasn´t needed. In fact, she had more than enough speed already and she was more worried about having enough oxygen to decelerate quickly enough when reaching her destination, whatever she would meet there.

After a few minutes a small dot appeared to her eyes. It was far away but gradually, as she came closer, she could clearly make out the classic oval shape of Yetten crafts. The ship grew bigger and bigger and she grabbed the personal scanner from her pocket and pointed it forward in the hope that it might show something.

_Nothing... Maybe she was still too far away?_ Then she had an idea and changed the settings on the equipment to scan not just for humans but also for Vane and Aseir DNA. Immediately a blip popped up on the small screen. Only one blip, so it had to be either Thor or Freya. She hoped it was Thor. Although Sif loved Freya as a sister, Thor was after all her husband and she could not bear the thought of losing him. She turned in the direction of the blip and opened the nozzles for half a second, but she had obviously underestimated how fast she was going. Instead of reaching the blip, she blasted pass the surprised Freya, who gave such a twitch that it quite visible despite of the thick fabric of her spacesuit. Sif turned around and prepared to move toward Freya, when a beam of blue-white light suddenly whizzed closely past her left ear! She frantically threw her head around from side to side trying to spot the enemy, she expected to hide somewhere close, but spotted no one else but Freya.

Then it dawned on her!

_Freya made that shot! Was she the traitor? No, that couldn´t be true?_ Sif waved wildly to catch Freya´s attention. Then a second rifle blast! Sif could not believe her luck as the otherwise concise Freya missed her second attempt. She was just about to raise her own rifle and return fire when she remembered how pointless it would be to go into battle with one of the most able warriors of the combined Aseir and Vane fleets.

If Freya really was the traitor, she might as well give up right away. Sif would in no way be able to catch up with the experienced Vane that even Odin and Loki would rather try to avoid battling against. Her chances would be much better if she chose to trust that it was a mistake. She lowered her rifle, closed her eyes and waved one last time...

Nothing ...

Sif opened her eyes and saw to her relief Freya´s smiling face through the glass part of the helmet of her spacesuit. She smiled back and signaled with her hands that she had found the children with the scanner. Section three on the left.

Freya was satisfied. She had been right about what the containers were used for. She signaled back.

"Thor? Where?"

"Unknown," Sif responded, clearly unhappy, "I fast through membrane. No see Thor."

Freya´s brows frowned as she thought it through. Without Thor it would be much more difficult to transport the kids safely back on Alfheim, but on the other hand they could ill afford running out of oxygen while searching for him. After all, they had no way of knowing where to search for him and they didn´t even have a clue as to how far away he was. They didn´t even know for sure if he had gotten through the membrane safely. She made a quick decision in the hope that Sif would back her up without protesting too much.

"Mission first. Then Thor."

Much to Freya´s surprise, Sif nodded in agreement. But what she didn´t take into account, simply because she knew nothing about it, was the promise Sif had made Thor just before leaving the Alfheim. And no matter how hard it was for Sif to accept the possibility that he may be dead already, she intended to keep her promise and go on.

They set off and went for the third section side by side as sisters at arms. Freya put the small magnet on the wall professionally guided by Sif. They had to be very precise for the kids to out of harm's way when the outer wall of the section blew to pieces. BLAM!

The hole in the section was just big enough for the two Vane women to squeeze through. It was pitch dark on the other side and Freya turned on her torch lighting up the room in a dim red glow. It was completely empty in there, except for a couple of benches shoved up to the walls on each side of them and in front of them there was a huge and heavy door that seemed to be able to take quite a few punches without even being scratched.

Freya threw a shutter grenade toward the hole where they had come in, so they could blast out the inner door without being blown out again as the air from inside of the ship left in a hurry. The light from the corridor almost toppled in and it took a few seconds before their eyes adjusted. Then they took off their helmets and looked around. The corridor was empty, but further down they could hear footsteps rapidly approaching. They were just about to run down the corridor towards the place where Sif's scanner had found the children, when there was a loud crash and dust filled the entire area clouding their vision. Then came another bang and one and tremors caused them both to fall backwards into the room they had come from. Tumbling around on the floor between each other, they tried to get up, but now it was too late to run down to the children, as the footsteps had come too close. If they ran now, they would be discovered before coming more than just a few yards down the corridor. Instead they jumped behind the wall on each side of the door just in time to watch a Yetten soldier run past them. For some reason he didn´t notice the missing door. Maybe he decided it was a result of the recent blasts. In any case, they were relieved that he didn´t investigate the matter further. If he had, he would have found them immediately. Both girls stood still and listened. Freya was on the wrong side of the door to be able to see anything, but Sif had a clear view of the corridor and she kept her partner informed using hand signals.

"Stop children door."

Freya interpreted the signals to be that the Yetten stopped outside the door behind which they believed the children were being held. Now what?

"Fire in the hole!"

They threw themselves hard on the floor and shortly after the explosion blew down the corridor throwing bits, pieces and dust over their heads. Immediately after the bang, they heard the Yetten shout.

"This is it, kids!" He commanded, "Get out!" They looked at each other with fear in their eyes. The Yetten had to have decided that the intruders were probably going to be successful and now they would move the kids to another location to prevent them from being saved. Freya crawled forward a bit to look down the corridor. The big Yetten soldier shooed the children out from their cell and pushed them in front of him in the opposite direction, away from Freya and Sif. This was it! They had to move fast, if they were to have any chance to complete the mission! Between them and the Yetten a piece of the ceiling had fallen down and a little closer she discovered a small indentation in the wall. Not a big one, but definitely big enough to hide behind. She motioned for Sif to stay ready, jumped out into the corridor and into the notch. Sif followed and threw herself behind the large piece of ceiling, where she took a shot at the Yetten, giving Freya a chance to get closer. The Yetten heard the shot and responded quickly. He grabbed the collar of both children and threw all three of them sideways into the adjacent corridor. Freya's brain worked full throttle as she calculated all the possibilities, she could think of. Then she ran towards the side corridor, somersaulted to the other side of it and squeezed herself against the wall making herself small enough to be out of sight. Sif immediately understood what Freya was doing and stormed across the corridor to the other side and squeezed in behind the wall on the nearest side. Now they were both standing at each side of the adjacent corridor. A brief look down revealed the Yetten, who stood with his back towards the children and a rifle in each hand aiming at the main corridor. Freya and Sif looked in wonder at each other. It really wasn´t like Yetten to put their lives on the line to protect others - let alone other races. But it certainly looked as if this Yetten soldier had decided to protect the children against their eon rifles.

"You won´t get them," the Yetten yelled and fired his weapon, "If you come in here, you´re dead!"

A strange sort of silence fell upon them through the noise of explosions and cut power cables frequently touching each other. After a while, Freya decided to try a new approach.

"Looks like we have a standoff," she yelled, "you can´t escape and we can´t get in there."

"You got that right!" the answer sounded, "if you come in here, I´ll shoot you before you can even get a glimpse of my ray gun!"

"So..." Freya tried, "any ideas?"

There was a short pause, before he answered.

"Yeah! You can leave!"

"Sorry, man! No can do!"

"Didn´t think so."

Another short pause.

"Well, I suppose we should talk about it. One of you can come in here unarmed and negotiate - but you better be quick about it, before this ship falls apart. It´s just a matter of moments before it cracks!"

Sif sent Freya an astonished look. Then her face changed and her mouth opened slightly, the way she did, when something just occurred to her that she hadn´t thought of before. Slowly she put her rifle down beside her and got to her feet.

"No, Sif!" Freya shook her head wildly. _What is she doing???_

"I´m sorry, Freya, but I have to," Sif said, "He won´t shoot. I´m sure of it."

"You can´t trust the Yetten!" Freya begged, "have you gone mad!"

But Sif didn´t listen. Instead she slowly moved out in the open giving the Yetten soldier a clear shot. There she closed her eyes and waited...

"Sif???" The big Yetten stood up, although still alert with his weapons ready to shoot if needed.

"Sif, is that you?"

Sif stood out in the open, quite vulnerable. But there was just something about that Yetten. Something she could not quite put her finger on and she was certain that she had never seen him before.

The Yetten soldier lit up in huge smile and started walking toward her with his arms lowered, but she took no chances.

"Wait," she warned him as she grabbed her hand gun from its hiding place behind her back and pointed it at him.

"What...? - Whoa, Sif... It's me ... What are you doing? "

Freya heaved a sigh of relief as she made her move and soon after stood next to Sif, aiming her rifle at the Yetten. Apparently, Sif had been the smartest of the two, tricking the Yetten to come out in the open and letting his guard down. Freya almost burst with pride. How Sif ever got the idea to try luring the Yetten into believing that she would listen and this way get him to expose himself was beyond her, but she had to admit it was one of the cleverest moves she´d ever seen. Maybe Sif had a special understanding of Yetten psychology?

At the sight of not only Sif and her hand gun pointing at him, but also Freya´s rifle threatening his life, the Yetten was really beginning to look frightened.

"Freya?" he said astonished at the development. He sounded despondent and depressed, but then he suddenly remembered something and lit up.

"Oh, yes, damn it! I completely forgot!"He put both his arms on the floor in front of him and straightened up slowly. Then he moved one hand slowly toward his belt and pressed an invisible button. Bzz! It flickered with sparks all around his body and suddenly it was no longer a Yetten in the uniform of the Brimir guards standing in front of them...

Freya and Sif stood with their mouths open and could not believe their eyes. Sif was the first to break the silence.

"Loki! We... we thought... we didn´t know..."

Tjalfe and Roeskva looked at least as surprised as Sif and Freya. They had both been covering themselves behind the Yetten through the whole thing, but now they slowly came out from their hiding place. At first with fear beaming from their eyes, but little by little a hesitant smile appeared on their faces.

"Loki?" Tjalfe finally managed to say. He couldn´t believe his eyes, but there was no denying it. The big Yetten, he had up till now thought was Fenrir, was now transformed to the appearance of the one and only Loki, who had interrogated him and his sister earlier. Loki said nothing, but just looked apologetically at Tjalfe and Roeskva while flinging his arms. Roeskva was just about to say something, but before she could open her mouth, everything changed and the next few minutes everything happened in a breath taking pace.

At the sound of boots coming closer, Loki was the first to act. He found the button on his belt and soon Fenrir appeared in front of them.

"We have to go! Now!" he barked, "I´ll take the kids, You will follow. But keep yourselves hidden. We have a better chance if they think I´m on their side."

They did as he suggested, although Freya still had her doubts. Just the fact that he had somehow obtained equipment to change his appearance and make him look like whoever he wanted to, posed a risk to whoever his real enemies were. And could they in any way be sure this was even Loki? Nevertheless, they had no choice. With the Yetten having sounded the alarm, it would at least be less risky trusting him to be who he claimed to be. After all, what would be the purpose of trying to trick them, when it would have been a much better option to try stalling for time till the Yetten guards arrived? No, whatever the risk, this seemed like the safest bet. Should all of this turn out to be some sort of very sophisticated betrayal, they could always take that fight if and when it occurred. Right now it the most important thing was to get to the transporter room as quickly as possible, without being seen.

# Chapter 9: The Traitor

The virtual keys on the screen in front of Baldur were almost burning red hot as he entered the final changes in the systems controlling Miolner. As a pilot, he was accustomed to having to do things quickly, but algorithms and other math was not his usual territory, so this was more of a challenge than flying a new craft as a test pilot. He had only two minutes to fix it before the cannon had to be ready for firing again. At least there would be plenty of time to retype the next few sequences, when his friends were floating between the third and fourth membranes. The distance between them he had calculated to be less than a body length and they would experience it as no more than a split second. But since the time lag between the two membranes was about 953%, so for him there would be about half an hour between the two firings. The trip through the final membrane they had to do without his help, because Miolner couldn´t reach that far. On the other hand, it was important to get to the other side of Skrymers thumb very quickly, so that he could get into the non gravity pocket via the route Thor had just told him about. A route he had to take to save Thor. Baldur felt his head spin just thinking about it and he had a hard time understanding the principles of time. Thor had instructed him how to save Thor! Time travel... whew... insanity, that was! No one in his right mind could find that kind of science interesting and Baldur would never have agreed to any of this, if it hadn´t been for the sake of saving his friend. It was just too weird. Finally! That´s it! I´m done!

Baldur started up Miolner again with fingers crossed. Hopefully it work as intended. His three friends were to be thrown through the penultimate membrane with such speed that they would easily get to the final membrane and penetrate it. He waited impatiently for the humming sound of Miolner telling him everything was ready and then he fired the gun three times in rapid succession. Blam! Blam! Blam! He knew in advance that only the first two shots would reach their intended targets, but Thor had been very specific about this.

"You must act as if you know nothing. If you change anything based on what you think you know, you risk changing the chains of events in space and time. And then we have no way of knowing how everything ends."

The first shot hit Freya as it should and she came safely through the final membrane. The second hit Thor in the very last moment, but the last shot bumped right into the wave, shortly after Thor pulled Sif through to safety. Now to the next phase of Thor´s plan: getting the ship turned around and hurry to save Thor at the exact coordinates, Thor had given him, however strange it all still sounded.

***

Thor fought to hold his breath as long as Aseirly possible, even though he knew it was futile. Baldur was way out of reach and the girls were already too far away. There was no chance they could come back and pick him up, even if they knew where he was. Not still having enough oxygen to complete the mission anyway. His own oxygen tank was almost depleted and the only thing he could think of right now was to get the most out of his last breath as he could before he died.

He exhaled and began breathing normally. He was calm and knew he wouldn´t die in pain. Hoped he wouldn´t die in vain. The carbon monoxide would slowly build up inside the suit till the air eventually would be so toxic that he would be knocked unconscious and then sleep quietly into death. He focused all the energy he had left on getting everything he could from the impressions around him. The undulating membrane, the pitch black nothing, the light far away of a star on the its trip to its final resting place inside one of the five black holes in Skrymers Glove. Another paradox, because theoretically he should not be able to see the black holes outside the non gravity pocket. The poisonous carbon monoxide was entering his system and Thor felt drowsiness overpower him. He began to hallucinate and imagined how the light from afar turned into Alfheim, approaching with its shields down.

"Thor!"

He could hear Baldur´s voice far away, as if he was yelling from inside of a box. Thor had never been exposed to carbon monoxide poisoning before. He knew that hallucinations were very ordinary, but he was still surprised at how real it all felt and he hadn´t thought those hallucinations to include audio.

"Thor! I´ll open the airlock and slowly move toward you. You should be able to enter the ship through the rear air lock!" Baldur had always been so insistent. Thor´s body floated slowly toward the open airlock and waned gently to the floor. Then the outer door of the air lock shut with the familiar sweeching sound. As did Thor's eyes...

***

With Loki and the kids in front of them Freya and Sif sneaked through the many corridors of Brimir. They hid here and there where they had the opportunity and actually managed quite well not to be discovered most of the way. Only once it almost went bad. Loki had come around a corner holding the kids firmly in their collar and since he did not have a free hand to signal the girls to hide from a group of onrushing guards nor had the chance to shout a warning, suddenly Freya and Sif found themselves in full view for the security group to see them.

They stiffened and held their breath as the group turned a corner a little further down the corridor without spotting them.

"Move on!" Loki barked as if he was commanding the kids, but in reality it was meant for Freya and Sif. They set in motion immediately and shortly after they were standing outside the door of the transporter room. Loki placed himself facing the door and let the kids go. With his one hand he signaled Freya and Sif to stop and with the other hand he waved to open the door.

The two guards who had been placed in the transporter room as an extra security measure flew up with their weapons ready, but at the sight of a Yetten they believed to be their superior, they lowered their rifles with a snap!

They straightened up and saluted with a flap over the heart with the left hand, the common greeting in the Yetten fleet. Loki aimed at them with his stolen service revolver and shot them down one by one, before any of them could react.

Then he waved Freya and Sif inside and ordered them to guard the door while he grabbed the console and entered the necessary information.

"How are you going to get us out of here?" Freya asked, "Alfheim is too far away for the transporter." Loki did not move his eyes from the console as he responded in a somewhat cryptic reply.

"I have an appointment with an old friend who does not know anything yet."

Then he turned around and held out his hands towards the children, who grabbed them without hesitation. He glanced insistently at Freya and Sif.

"Hold on!" he commanded. Sif left her post at the door and took Tjalfes hand, but Freya wouldn´t comply. Instead she aimed her rifle at Loki and sent him a skeptical look.

"I don´t trust you," she said sharply, "how can we be sure you are not a traitor and will lead us directly into the hands of the Yetten?" Sif was surprised. Admittedly, Freya was skeptical by nature, but Sif had a feeling she could trust Loki with her life.

"Freya?" She said questioningly, "what´s going on?"

But Loki knew exactly what was going on.

"She thinks I was the one who shut down the shield the day Tjalfe and Roeskva were abducted by the Yetten," he said quietly.

"Freya?" Sif repeated. Freya nodded.

"Besides Thor and me, he´s the only one who has access to change the basic codes on Alfheims computer," she explained without removing her rifle or her eyes from Loki.

"I certainly didn´t do it and I sincerely doubt Thor would ever risk destroying his research ... So, who else is left, Sif? "

Sif was distraught. It was really at the final call if they were to get away and she could not believe that Loki had something to do with Tjalfe and Roeskva being abducted by the Yetten.

"There has to be another explanation Freya." She tried, "Loki could never put all our lives in danger this way! He´s our friend! He is Thor´s friend!"

"There is no other explanation, Sif," Freya cut her off, "Loki is our traitor!"

"No, he´s not, Freya, come on!" Sif looked distraught at Freya. Then she looked at Roeskva and Tjalfe and finally at Loki, who still held the children´s hands. He let them go and spread out his arms in resignment.

"Freya´s right," he said quietly. Sif turned her head with a jerk and looked frightened at Loki while she squeezed Tjalfes hand till it hurt. Loki still looked at Freya, as he continued.

"I changed the codes ..."

Sif could not believe what she was hearing. How could Loki ever do such a thing?

"But I´m not a traitor, Freya," Loki went on, still with his eyes directed towards Freya´s angry face, "I was acting under orders ... from Odin! "

Now Freya looked surprised. That certainly was not the kind of excuse she had seen coming.

"Yes, of course you were," she said kindly, but her sarcasm was not very well hidden, "Odin just asked you to change a few basic codes on some key systems aboard Alfheim, right before you disappeared at the Fyrkat device with your Yetten friends..."

"Actually, no," Loki explained, "he ordered me a long time ago. Just before Thor´s previous trip to Earth, before we even began building the fortress." He paused for a moment and looked them all in the eyes one by one to give them time to understand what he was saying.

"It was before Thor returned to Svalinn with the preliminary data he´d collected from the experiments with the Fyrkat device," he continued hoping that Freya would deduct the consequences. She didn´t. But Sif did.

"Freya?" she said reflectively, "Loki never got the codes to Alfheim. He was the captain of Svalinn till it was destroyed. After that, he was officially instated as the new captain of Alfheim, but he never got onboard. We just assumed he had the codes, because it was the most natural thing, being the captain. But he disappeared before coming onboard - he never received the key codes!"

Freya tightened her grip on the rifle, but her eyes began to wander... She felt doubt nagging inside. Loki was not trustworthy, that much she knew for sure. He had never been in all the years she had known him. On the other hand, Sif was right. Even though Loki had officially been appointed Captain of Alfheim as they lost Svalinn, the codes could not have been transferred. And even if he had been able to provide them through shady contacts in the Aseir domain, he hadn´t set foot on Alfheim since the day he disappeared. She knew this to be true, because she had herself been supervising the repairs on Alfheim, which had been done through the entire test of the Fyrkat device. Yet she was very reluctant to give him the benefit of the doubt. She wanted to be absolutely sure.

Sif´s brain was working overtime to figure out a way to get out of this mess and at the same time she was fighting to suppress the urge to cry. She couldn´t bear the thought of Loki being a traitor. But it was even worse if he was not and Freya ended up shooting him anyway. Not just because she had compassion and wanted him to live for his own sake, but also because she felt he was crucial to their chances of survival - both Freya, herself and the children. They needed Loki, if they were to escape. He was the only one who could fix the transporter and boost its range. Of course! That was it! This was what she needed to convince Freya to let him live!

"We need him, Freya," she cried frantically, "He is the only one who can reprogram the transporter!"

"Nonsense!" Freya swept her off, "You can do that, Sif. You have more than ample understanding of how it works. You can fix it. "

Sif stepped closer to Freya and shook her head her eyes firmly fixed on Freya´s.

"No, Freya, I can´t. The console can only be used by Yetten. It's part of their security system in the same way only Vane and Aseir can use ours."

"So? Short circuit it or something. Isn´t that the sort of thing you usually do?"

"Not this time, Freya. If I start tinkering with the energy crystal, I might blow us to smithereens," Sif explained, "... the explosions could have made the ship´s energy system unstable." She stepped right up to Freya and stood very close as she put her hand gently on the rifle and moved it downward.

"The console will accept Loki´s DNA, Freya. It is the best way. Even if I could tamper with the security system, it might take too long and we wouldn´t get away in time before the whole ship is blown apart. "

Much to Sif´s surprise Freya didn´t resist, but let her pull the tip of the rifle towards the ground. Freya nodded.

"Okay, then .." she said lips tightened and eyes narrowed as she sent Loki a defiant look, "but I´m watching you, Loki! Even the slightest mistakes and my rifle and I take a chunk of your stomach. "

Loki nodded and stretched out his arms again. They took each other's hands and disappeared in a whirlwind of sound and light...

***

Baldur closed the airlock´s outer door from the console, jumped up from his chair and ran as fast as he could down the corridor. He had to be quick if he was to save his friend in time. Thor had obviously lost consciousness and if Baldur couldn´t get his helmet of in time, he would die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Baldur had closely observed the data from Thor's spacesuit, ever since he came close enough to read them and according to the reading he had less than 2 minutes to remove the helmet before it was too late .. He hurried through the corridors, while regularly checking his watch. 32 seconds, 45 seconds, 57.

He came around the last corner before the airlock and hammered his hand on the button to the inside door. Nothing happened ... He pressed the button again, but the door still wouldn´t budge. Shit! He had forgotten to restore the automatic functions after he had sent Thor, Freya and Sif on their way. Baldur looked at his watch again. 1 minute and 23 seconds. Less than 40 seconds to go! There was nothing else to do than take a chance with the manual door opener and override all safety procedures. He quickly found the panel and with a heave he got it opened. Baldur pulled the handle as hard as he could, and to his great relief he soon heard the cleats inside the door move inwards followed by the sound of gas seeping through the hydraulic pipes. Klonk ... Klonk ... 19 seconds left ... tsssszz ... 15 seconds ... The door opened with a click ... 13 seconds. He threw himself into the airlock and fighting the pain from the low pressure threatening to cave in his eardrum he started the override procedure. 9 seconds ... Clamp ... folding ... fortunately the locks on the helmet were easy to get off and soon he could hear the beautiful sound of clean air and vital oxygen flowing in through the slot just below Thor´s chin, which was already starting to get a touch of blue. _Please,_ he thought, _please let it not be too late!_

Baldur removed the helmet as soon as the pressure was equalized and then he lay down in agony barely focused enough to observe Thor´s face completely blue of anoxia. He pulled all his strength together and lift up his body to a crouch leaning over Thor.

"Come on, Thor," he cried and slapped his face, "wake up!"

Slap! Slap! it sounded for each blow on the cheek.

He saw something in Thor´s face. Twitching around the eyes? One more time! Yeah, definitely twitching! Again! Suddenly Thor coughed and squinted trying to adjust to the bright light.

"Where is ... what? happening? ... Am I? .... Valhalla? "

"Ha!" Baldur almost burst with joy.

"Hahaaa! Yes, " he laughed as Thor started to wake up looking more and more alive.

"Baldur?"

Baldur nodded.

"Yup!" he said through his laughter, "Sorry to deprive you of the joys of the afterlife, but Valhalla´s got to wait for the honor of your prominent presence. You´ve got more important things to do than endless battles and wild parties."

He handed Thor his arm and led him up. Thor looked around, clearly confused and not having a clue what was going on.

"I thought I was dreaming..." he got to his feet, "I saw visions... or..."

"Come on, we have to get to the bridge," Baldur demanded and helped Thor through the corridor. He was obviously not entirely well yet, but with a little support he was able to move and soon he could sit on a chair by the console At the bridge. Here he sat for a while coming to while Baldur entered algorithms at the Miolner controls.

"How did you get through the non gravity pocket?" Thor suddenly said as he began to realize that he was sitting safe and sound in a chair on the Alfheim and that they were actually flying inside the non gravity pocket he had thought impossible to enter. Baldur thought for a split second. He had promised Thor not to tell to anyone how he knew the entrance to the glove that only the Yetten knew about. He couldn´t even tell Thor, although Thor was the one who had told Baldur about it.

"Sorry, Thor, but that´s just got to wait" Baldur brushed his question aside, "right now our focus is to save our friends and I can´t do it without you, so you have to get up to speed."

"Yes.. yes, of course" Thor nodded, still a little absent, "I´m ready.. Fill me in."

Baldur fished out a data plate from under the console table and handed it to Thor.

"It´s all in there," he explained, "the plan is that they transport themselves to one of the Yetten Farbauter´s and use it to come to us."

"Transport?" Thor interrupted him, "But they don´t have the equipment for it. I have." He clapped his hand on the side pocket of his spacesuit with a puzzled expression on his face.

"And to make matters even worse, none of them can compensate for the time distortions inside The Glove. Not even Sif has this kind of expertise. "

"No, they haven´t "Baldur replied, "but Loki does."

"Loki?" Thor was surprised. How could Loki be here? Quite a few details had escaped him while he was enjoying his hallucinations out there.

Baldur gestured with his hand to show Thor that he did not have enough time to explain everything right now.

"Please, just trust me," he asked. _Or trust yourself,_ Baldur thought to himself, _you´re the real master mind behind all of this, however strange it all sounds..._

"Loki has already set the children free and now they are on their way to the transporter room with Sif and Freya," Baldur continued with a look that said 'do not interrupt, or we will lose valuable time' which made Thor shut up and listen .

"When we see the first Farbauter come out of the hangar, it´s them," Baldur explained while Thor wondered how Baldur could know. If the Yetten got a Farbauter close enough to Alfheim to move behind the shield, they would not have a chance against its arsenal of weapons. It was, after all, what their fighters were built for - attack on defenseless ships with no time to react. But he didn´t say anything, because with everything that had happened in the past ten minutes Thor was aware that he could not count on anything being consistent and meaningful. It was better to listen and try to follow the plan, Baldur presented him with.

"I´ve disengaged the shield for now in order to prevent the Yetten from discovering our presence here too early," Baldur continued, "and as soon as they get aboard the Yetten fighter, they will blow off the hangar door on Brimir opening an exit. Loki has placed bombs in various places throughout the Yetten ship and some of them have already exploded to provoke a systems failure and force an emergency shutdown of their shield. They won´t get it up and running before..." He checked his watch. "...at least 20 minutes from now. "

Thor nodded and smiled. It sounded like a well planned exit strategy. This way the Yetten would be quite vulnerable when the action began.

"Now, the remaining bombs should be triggered by the explosion from the bomb in the hangar and if our calculations are correct, Brimir should be split into two pieces engaging the automatic separation procedure, so that the container section boosts away from the rest of the ship. The downside is that all their weapons will be fully operational, so we should expect heavy weapons fire the moment they manage to pinpoint our location."

"And they will, as soon as we turn on the shield again," Thor commented.

"Under normal circumstances that would be true, yes," Baldur said, "but unfortunately we cannot turn on the shield before Loki and the others come real close and we should expect the Yetten to figure out that something is wrong when there is a huge gap in the middle of their warship ... "

"I suppose they will," Thor said sarcastically. He wasn´t exactly proud of it, but he couldn´t help being amused at the prospect of Yetten soldiers running bewildered and confused back and forth inside the Brimir in panic. Then his face changed from amusement to worry and looked tensely at Baldur.

"We are really going to be vulnerable, Baldur! I certainly hope you know what you are doing!"

Baldur seemed extremely confident and it worried Thor greatly. Not that it was unusual. Baldur was always confident, but right now it seemed as if he felt completely invulnerable. And if there was one single thing that could get even the most skilled warriors killed, it was arrogance and the feeling of being immortal.

At the same time, Baldur was struggling to keep certain details from Thor and he felt as if he was about to burst. He wanted to tell Thor, why he was so sure of the outcome of this mission. He wanted to reveal the truth. The truth that while Thor had been out there floating in the vast nothingness and Baldur had almost lost every hope believing that Thor was dead, suddenly Baldur had been visited by another version of Thor, who had survived and presented Baldur with a bullet proof plan. A plan, which would save them all and free them of the claws of the Yetten and on top of it all would set several hundred prisoners free. But he couldn´t say anything. He wouldn´t. He had made a promise. As odd as it sounded and as much difficulty, Baldur had trying to really understand it all, he had promised Thor not to tell Thor, that he had been visited by Thor... It almost made his head hurt trying to sum it all up in his mind. Time travel certainly wasn´t something Baldur would ever find pleasure in dealing with in the future. Not if he had anything to say about it.

But right now, the important thing was to present Thor with the most essential parts of the plan. Nothing more, nothing less. Baldur cleared his throat and as he explained the plan in detail - as much as he could without revealing too much \- Thor alternately looked worried, laughed, was frightened and even protested from time to time. Specifically when Baldur told about Tjalfe´s role, Thor reacted. He practically jumped out of his chair with a wild expression on his face and pointed angrily at Baldur with his index finger.

"Tjalfe? Tjalfe should not be involved in this at all, Baldur! He's just a child! What´s next? Roeskva as a designated gunner?"

Baldur sat still trying to find the right words for what he knew for sure to happen in the near future.

"Well, actually," he began, "Roeskva is going to play an important role with this plan, Thor ... She is the one who is going to bring down the Yetten commander..."

Thor's anger disappeared as quickly as it had come. He was so surprised at Baldur´s reply that he had to sit down. Knowing about Roeskva´s part built up a strange feeling in him. In his head it sounded completely insane, but somehow he felt a certain peace to it. As if he knew, deep in his heart, that it was true and that everything would proceed exactly as Baldur explained. Including Roeskva being the catalyst of the Yetten commander's downfall.

***

# Chapter 10: The Escape

There wasn´t much room in the fighter, as it was meant for no more than three people. Roeskva and Tjalfe had to curl up in the rear, where a small cubicle was designed to hold prisoners of war, while Loki and Sif sat in the front with Freya squeezed in behind Loki. She held a gun to Loki´s neck in the event that he would try something crazy. At the same time she kept a close eye on the console and regularly checked the data on the front screen.

Loki started booting all systems that did not make any noise. That way they would have the best chances to get out of here before the Yetten figured out what was going on. Then he held his hand over the console and looked crookedly over his shoulder eyes fixed on Freya.

"Ready?" He asked. Freya approved with a nod of her head.

"Here we go!"

The engine started up with a humming sound as he touched the console and soon the Farbauter was on its way. They didn´t get very far before the entire hangar was teeming with Yetten warriors working experienced together to get their fighters on the wings and in almost no time at all every internal gun inside was manned and began firing wildly in the direction the stolen ship. Loki threw the Farbauter from side to side while he steered toward the closed hangar door coming inexorably closer and closer.

Sif and Freya stiffened as the door grew in size before them and Roeskva squeezed herself as close to Tjalfe as she could. He responded like a good big brother holding her and assuring her that Loki would get them safely out of there.

It was not an empty promise. Shortly after there was a loud bang as Loki hit the hangar door with a well placed shot on each side and the door broke loose from its huge hinges and disappeared into the void outside. A storm of air pushed everything in the hangar that had not been securely strapped to something solid and the Farbauter was no exception. The hull shook with a deafening noise equalizing the tremble as they approached the hole where the hangar door had been only seconds ago with ever increasing speed. Peeoow! Something flew past them in a deadly pace and Loki once again had to make slalom maneuvers, as several fragments from destroyed platforms and small tools passed them by only inches just outside the window. Even the otherwise cool Freya had instinctively ducked, even though she knew the shield would bend off all the deadly fragments. Shwoosch! Shoouw! Schooit! Zah! Feeoow!

Roeskva, who had been sitting with her head covered under Tjalfes arm, looked back and Tjalfe marveled at the calm expression she had in her eyes.

Suddenly they were out through the hole and everything was quiet.

"It's not over yet," Loki warned them as he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Roeskva had gotten up and was now squeezing her way in alongside Freya. She didn´t respond to his warning, but just stared out the window trying to spot the Alfheim, which she expected was out there somewhere. Tjalfe came up to her and tried to pull her back, but she made a small twist of her shoulders and wriggled free. He decided to let her stay, but moved as close to her as he could, so that he would be able to intervene if something dangerous happened. A group of fighters washed out of the great ship like water from a water fall and regrouped in a formation like a dragon with a long tail just behind them. Then every Yetten fighter started firing and everything outside the window lit up like a bonfire as the bursts passed by, some of them being dangerously close. A few shots hit the Farbauter in the rear and they felt a jolt as one of the engines suddenly went out and decreased their speed significantly. A few Farbauters, who´s pilots hadn´t paid enough attention, rushed right past them and had to make a couple of sharp turns in order not to smash into the stolen ship. They quickly counter turned and approached the fleeing prisoners with guns on full roar in a wide arc from both sides.

"Sif! The cannon, " Loki yelled as he pressed the Farbauter away in a downwards curve. Sif quickly jumped into the gunner seat, started up the gun and began shooting expertly at the enemy fighters, although she found it quite the challenge. She was accustomed to the speed of the Skarfi and it wasn´t easy getting used to the somewhat cruder method, the Farbauter´s much heavier gun presented. It spat out rays on both sides of the Farbauter and a few of them hit its target making the Yetten fighters catching on fire. Now to the other fighter! Sif threw the gun around and tried to get him on the gun sight, but he swung unpredictably from side to side making it almost impossible to get a clear shot.

"Sif! The first fighter!" Freya suddenly cried as she realized that the pilot in the burning fighter to the right had apparently decided to revenge his own death even before actually dying and was now on a collision course against his enemy. Sif swung back the cannon to the right and struck with unerring certainty and soon the vessel exploded into several pieces and spread out wide like a net trying to catch the renegade Farbauter...

***

"There!" Baldur pointed towards the cascades of fire that stood out from what previously had been a hangar door. Thor reacted immediately and started up Miolner. He looked up and saw a Yetten fighter with at least twenty other Farbauters right on its tail. They practically bombarded the first fighter and Thor had no doubt that it had to be the work of Loki. He set the time distortion to -75% and waited. Miolner could in principle be used for smaller vessels, but with such a degree of displacement, it had to replenish after each shot.

Baldur, however, fired his guns repeatedly and with great skill. The whole area around Loki was covered in fire and fragments from broken Yetten fighters and for a short while they couldn´t even see Loki´s Farbauter in the cloud of metal and battle dust. Then, out of the clouds came first two fighters and then Loki. The two fighters flew in a huge arc and although Loki tried turning downwards, both fighters were able to follow him and sent a sea of radiation away in the direction of the lone Farbauter, which even seemed to have engine problems.

The guns of Loki´s Farbauter sent beams wildly around it and struck one fighter. The pilot first tried to return home, but then he seemed to change his mind and instead he headed straight towards Loki´s Farbauter.

Thor reacted quickly and fired Miolner. An almost invisible pocket whooshed away like a stray balloon. The pocket threw itself on the lone Farbauter embracing it and making it stop abruptly resulting in the burning torch rushing past. It lasted for only a short moment. Then the Farbauter jolted forward again and held its previous speed.

"Yes! Alright, Thor," Baldur cried out. Then he turned back his attention to the guns and soon they roared peeling down 8 Yetten fighters before it dawned on them that they had lost the battle and they all scattered to the winds.

Now it was important to keep the big cruiser at bay so that their friends could get close enough for them to be transported to the Alfheim. Baldur stayed with the guns, while Thor grabbed the console and stormed out the door. He had to prepare the transporter room and compensate for the various time lags in and around Skrymers Glove, if Sif, Freya, Loki, Tjalfe and Roeskva were not to end their days as a dollop of organic material on the floor inside an enemy vessel.

***

The burning Yetten fighter disappeared right in front of the five friends in the stolen ship. One minute they were prepared to die, and the next minute there was nothing outside the window.

"What?"

Tjalfe stared dumbfounded at nothing.

"What just happened?"

"Thor happened, of course," Loki replied and pointed out a tiny dot far away, "He´s on the Alfheim doing every bit of the job for us."

"Not everything," Roeskva´s distant voice sounded. She had said nothing during the whole trip, but everything about her exuded an inspired tranquility.

"Here comes the commander," she continued, pointing towards the cruiser, they had just escaped, "and he is quite angry."

They all looked in the direction Roeskva pointed. Out through the hole they had made a little while ago, a large round ship with huge guns on slowly exited like a whale searching for its family. Loki let go of the console and raised his hands.

"That´s it...," he said resignedly, "that one is out of our league. Our engines are done and we can´t outrun him." Loki looked up and found Freya´s eyes.

"I´m sorry, but if Thor doesn´t come up with something spectacular here it´s over. I can´t do nothing more from here."For a moment it roamed inside Freya that this may have been a part of Loki´s plan from the beginning and he that he had just being playing games all along, but a quick look at the screen confirmed his claim. The engines were almost dead and they had less than 10% energy left. It would hardly be enough for the trip to Alfheim and certainly not enough to engage in battle with a Yetten cruiser. She let down her shoulders down and holstered her gun. Then she sat on the edge of Loki´s chair and looked sad at the commander´s ship as it approached inexorably. In a few moments it would be within range and they could do nothing to stop it.

Roeskva was the only one not looking discouraged. She just observed out the ship as if it was a dog coming for its owners praise. As the ship came right up to the side of the Farbauter, they heard the familiar whistling sound of a transporter locking on. The ship´s interior disappeared and was replaced by the bridge of the cruiser and the commander, who stood with his hands behind his back glaring at them.

"Welcome home, kids. I have been out of my mind worrying about you, "he said mockingly and waved at a few guards who immediately disarmed Loki, Sif and Freya. Then he threw his head toward the door and the guards left them.

"I wouldn´t do that, if I was you, Loki," he warned, "going for the gun on the table behind me, I mean. It would be a very bad choice. Even if you could manage to get pass me and grab it, I´ve set the security system to kill anyone carrying anything that even resembles a weapon and you would be vaporized in the blink of an eye."

He sat on the edge of his table and observed the five friends with an appalled look in his eyes. _What a pathetic bunch! Two human children, two Vane women and a once so feared Yetten warrior, who had changed sides and was now fighting for the Aseir. Pitiful!_

Suddenly he lit up in a smile that would´ve melted the heart of any mother, if it had come from a Yetten commander and had a dash of brutality and a touch of his evil heart. Like a mass murderer plotting his next killing spree.

"I just realized something, kids. I never really introduced myself. How could I forget after all the fun we´ve had together? Where are my manners?"

He waited for a split second as he enjoyed observing their reaction. Then he got to his feet and exaggerated a bow accompanied by a flickering of his hand as if he was welcoming royalty.

"My name is Skrymer and this..." He made a gesture with his hand. "...is my home." Then he paused and looked at Tjalfe and Roeskva. His eyes were narrowed and it seemed like they were sending bolts of lightning toward the children as he stepped up to Tjalfe.

"Well... I suppose it´s not as impressive as it used to be. You kids destroyed most of it when you had a bit of a tantrum, didn´t you?"

Then he changed back again and smiled heartedly.

"But still, it´s all mine," he proclaimed and spinned around himself with his hands raised, "It can be rebuilt, it can! And when it is, everything in this ridiculous galaxy will be mine. Every human, every Vane and even every Aseir, who doesn´t bow to me as my humble subject, will be completely forgotten. Exactly as it should be with pitiful creatures such as yourselves!"

The last bit was mostly directed toward the children and Tjalfe unknowingly stepped back a bit. He was scared of the big Yetten, who was obviously not only very intelligent, but also quite insane.

Roeskva, on the other hand, was quite calm. She´d been standing still and listening to the madness coming out of Skrymer´s mouth without moving, but now she stepped forward a few paces with a defiant look in her eyes.

Skrymer looked at her, first with a confused expression, and then with scorn in his eyes. "Roeskva?" he said, "something you want to say to me?" He was quite amazed at the little girl´s courage and although he tried to hide it, his eyes revealed both surprise and something else, that resembled fear. Roeskva straightened up and put her hands on her hips in a challenging position.

"You better let us go, Skrymer," she said bravely, ignoring Tjalfes whisper as he was trying to persuade her to back away, "if you don´t, Thor will crush you."

"Thor???" cried Skrymer and broke into a roar of laughter, "he is dead, my silly little girl... You shouldn´t expect any more bravery from him. He is nothing more than an icicle out there in the vast emptiness of space..."

Roeskva shook her head with undaunted tranquility.

"Let us go, Skrymer," she repeated with firm conviction in her voice, "it´s your last chance ..."

Skrymer stepped close to Roeskva and bent down to look her straight in her eyes. He had the most dreadful appearance and anyone would have peed their pants out of fear at the sight of the big Yetten´s huge body leaning heavily against her, but not Roeskva. She showed absolutely no emotion, but just stared back in Skrymers eyes. Although Tjalfe was terrified of what might happen to his sister, he had to admit that he was a little proud of his sister. No, not just a little proud. Very proud! To think that she dared!

"No," said Skrymer mockingly with his eyes fastened directly on the little human girl, "You will not escape from here. Not ever... You will all die here in Skrymer´s Glove - my glove!"

He had barely finished his sentence, before a violent explosion shook the ship and it flew with smoke and sparks everywhere. Fragments of the ship's hull fell from above and formed a cloud of dust that was impossible to see through.

"Roeskva!" Tjalfe yelled, "Roeskva, where are you?" He lay on the floor and fumbled with his hands in front of him. There was a lot of dust and dirt on the floor, but then at last he got hold of something hard. At first he thought it was a fragment of something from the explosion, but what he now held in his hand, was smooth and curved in a way that told him this item was shaped like this with a purpose. It was impossible to see anything, and he was beginning to realize that it would be long before he would be able to find his way using his eyes. It was useless to fight against it and he decided it was better to stay right there on the floor and feel his way. Maybe he could find Roeskva that way. He forced himself to keep up spirits as he fought his way through all the rubble. Although she did not respond, he knew in his heart, she was still alive. She had to be and he knew he had to hold on to that belief, if he was to have any chance at all to save her. Maybe she had hit her head and was knocked unconscious? The ground beneath him went slightly upwards and the rubble seemed more solid than before. He pondered a moment to turn around and climb the other way, but it seemed to be a bad idea. He had no way of knowing which way would be the better choice and if one path could be just as good as the other, the worst thing he could do was to change his mind over and over. So he continued, concentrated on listening for any kind of sound that could help him find his way. The way up the rubble was steeper for every time he put down a hand or a foot, but he continued undeterred, hoping to find his sister. His body changed from being almost horizontal to a more and more vertical position and he felt as if he was going up a hill of debris that was about as high as the graves near the village. A little further on, the ground beneath him began to flatten out a bit and all of a sudden the dust cloud disappeared. Tjalfe carefully turned around while clinging on to the debris that seemed most secure. He looked down so he could react, if it all suddenly slithered beneath him. Whew! Finally, he could sit down and lift his head. What a sight! Only the flat part right in front of him where he had just climbed up was free of dust. The mountain of debris went just a little bit downwards before it disappeared into a lake of dust and dirt. But the most amazing thing was right in front of him. Without realizing it, he had climbed so far up that he was sitting just below the ceiling in the great throne room. But wait? How could that be true? He had left Brimir in the Farbauter with the others and they had all been captured by Skrymer´s cruiser. How could he suddenly be back on the big warship? Then he heard a roar of madness and rage! It wasn´t coming from far away and it sounded muffled as if the sound came from a confined space nearby - and he knew exactly who made the dreadful sound...

***

Thor almost lost every hope when he realized that the Farbauter with his friends on board was suddenly empty. He pressed the button to the transporter several times, even though he knew there was no point. Scans showed nothing but an empty Farbauter. He drummed his fingers on the console thinking about his next move. Then he got an idea and asked the computer to scan the large cruiser instead.

The results were clear enough: there were now five people more inside the cruiser than before. He punched the console in an effort to lock on to the five most resent blips, but the transporter reported only errors. The Yetten must have expected this to be his next move, he thought to himself. The only conclusion he could think of was to do the exact opposite of what they expected. If he could not transport his friends to Alfheim, why not try to transport himself to his friends. The cruiser´s shield would make it difficult, but he was sure it could be done. He opened a channel to the bridge.

"Baldur?"

The answer came immediately.

"I see it, Thor ... um ... Listen, now I´m going to say something really strange, so please bear with me, okay? Right, here we go: I was told to say 'hi' from yourself and remind you to just 'do it right away - do not wait, do it immediately'"

"What??"

"Just.. don´t think this time, Thor! Just do it. Do it right away!"

Thor didn´t understand anything. _Just do it? But..._ Then he had the strangest sensation in his body, that somehow told him that this really was the right course of action: that there was no time to think about it and that he had to just go!

So instead of making a fuzz, he quickly typed a bunch of numbers into the computer and pressed the button. The usual hissing followed by a small storm hitting him and suddenly he found himself in the hold of the big cruiser and looked around. Between a stack of crates and some cylinders with all different sorts of supplies was a window where he had a clear view of the warship Brimir. The ship was in an awful state. That which before had been one of the most feared warships in the Yetten fleet, now looked more like a flying heap of scrap with flakes of metal sticking out in too many directions and the entire energy system emitted sparks at random places. In some places there was even an outbreak of fire inside the ship itself where there were apparently still pockets of oxygen. Thor turned his eyes back to the hold where a few Yetten soldier lay crumpled on the floor. He searched their bodies and took their radios. One was completely destroyed and he threw it away. The second seemed to be fairly intact and perhaps Thor would be lucky enough to get in touch with the others using it. He pushed the button on the side of it. Nothing. He was just about to throw it away, but then he changed his mind and put it in the pocket of his jacket. Then he went to the door and found the panel on the wall beside it. He easily opened the panel with a snapping sound and soon after he had the door opened a crack. Just enough for him to squeeze through and out into the corridor. He had barely touched the floor in the corridor, before he heard a sound and threw himself into the nearest aisle...

# Chapter 11: Thor´s Hammer

Loki and Freya were shaken. Here they were, a Yetten and a vane, both battle hardened soldiers, who had in this war received more medals for courage and ability than anyone else. And now they witnessed a little human girl taking a stand against Skrymer with pride and defiance, while they stood there tripping like a couple of teenagers about to pee their pants out of fear! Freya particularly felt her manhood being hurt, although she technically wasn´t a man. Despite the fact, that she was a Vane and thus came from a people, who cherished peace and through cultural definition was a pacifist race, she was after all from a family of fighters, who were well known for their courage and battle competence. And now she was just standing there doing nothing, while Roeskva, a small human child, was the one taking action on her behalf. She had only just decided to back up Roeskva, when she heard the well known sound of the Aseir transporter system and the room was filled with the usual mini cloud of organic material. She just managed to catch the tiny murmur in the cloud telling her that something was not quite right, when a formidable force lifted her from her feet and pulled her sideways across the floor all the way to the wall, where she hit her head and was knocked unconscious.

Loki watched as Freya´s slender, but fearsome body of a war machine fly by, but before he could even begin to react, he himself was thrown in the same direction as Freya and almost landed on top of her. He smashed his head into the wall with the same force he had just seen render Freya harmless and he couldn´t fight his body´s natural defenses. It was calling for rest and he had to give in and give it rest. His eye lids fell heavy as led and there was nothing he could do as they closed and reality disappeared while his mind shut down and he entered a dreamless sleep.

The only one of the three, who realized in time what was happening was Sif. Not only did she catch the murmur, but she also eyed the slightly uneasy way the organic cloud moved. And she knew immediately what it meant. There were two options: either someone had made a huge mistake when setting up the transporter - or, the best option of the two: Thor had figured out how to use the Hammer to make a double displacement and thereby get around the Yetten cruiser´s massive shielding. She responded quickly and threw herself toward Roeskva ripping her away from the danger, mili seconds before the cloud embraced Skrymer and pulled him away with his hand reaching out inches from Roeskva´s neck. Then he was gone...

"What just happened?" Roeskva whispered chocked as she clinged herself closely in Sif´s arms. Sif let a tear of relief drip from her cheek, realizing she had saved Roeskva only inches away from being transported with Skrymer to Brimir. Sif tried to stop her thoughts as pictures came up in her head. Pictures of what Skrymer would do to a human child, who had interfered in his plans to overtake the entire galaxy, if he had time alone with her. There would´ve been no limits to his anger or to the ways in which he would´ve acted out his rage.

"There, there, Roeskva.. You´re safe now.. that´s all that matters."

"Where´s Tjalfe?"

Sif let her eyes pan the room as she realized she hadn´t even thought about that. Being so eager to save Roeskva, it hadn´t even struck her that naturally Tjalfe would want just as much as Sif to do what ever it took to save his sister. Then a terrifying thought entered her mind: what if Tjalfe had tried to do exactly what Sif had just herself done?? If he had - and failed - he would right now be aboard the Brimir with Skrymer!

Suddenly there was a sound from the corridor. Beyond her conscious control Sif´s body jerked sending her anxiety through to Roeskva, who clinged to her even harder than before. Sif put her finger to her mouth as a sign to keep absolutely silent, while she at the same time grabbed hold of Roeskva´s hand and pulled her around Skrymer´s desk and they both squeezed in against the wall, where they weren´t visible to anyone standing in the door. Sif hand signaled Roeskva to keep still and stay where she was, and then she crawled a bit forward stretching her neck in an effort to see what was going on. Through the hole in the wall where a massive door had previously been before the explosion yanked it away, she could see the flickering of a shadow in the light of the corridor and the shadow was most definitely moving closer, growing in size for each second that passed...

***

Thor kept as quiet as possible in the aisle as he listened to the dragging of feet and the sound of something heavy gliding along the hard floor in the corridor diagonally from where he was. He stretched his neck as far as he could and threw a look down the corridor. A slender figure was dragging a lifeless body in Thor´s direction. The person doing the dragging had its back turned to Thor, but he recognized Freya immediately. He had to fight his urge to get up and run to her. It would be way too risky storming toward her, as she was probably still in her fighting mind and would much likely kill him before he even got close enough for her to see, who he was. Instead he pointed his lips and let out a breeze of air.

Hearing Thor whistling Freya stopped at once and let go of Loki - that´s who the lifeless body belonged to - and due to pure instinct she jumped to the side and squeezed herself flat on the wall. Then she realized who the sound she´d just heard, belonged to and whistled back. Thor whistled a predesignated response and she relaxed a bit, although still quite alert.

"It´s me, Freya," she heard him whisper and shortly after he stuck out his head and sent her a smile for greeting, "are you alone?"

Freya stepped forward with her rifle ready just as a precaution.

"Yeah, we are alone," she answered with a low whisper, "And you?"

"Well, there are no Yetten here, if that´s what you mean."

Thor had already stopped whispering, but he still spoke rather quietly. After all, he couldn´t be absolutely sure...

"I wish I could say the same," Freya said hinting at the motionless Loki at her feet, although Thor didn´t catch it. Instead he just approached her with his hand stretched out toward her. Finally they were able to greet each other in a civilized manner and let their guards down for a while.

It wasn´t till Thor got up close to her, he realized, who the body on the floor belonged to.

"Is he...?" Thor began with a concerned look on his face.

"Oh, no, he´s quite alright," Freya calmed his worries, "he´s just a little tired after all the hardships, the poor thing. Would you help me move him, please?"

Though one of Loki´s best friends, Thor couldn´t help smiling at this well put taunting by her on the expense of Loki. He grabbed both arms and Freya took Loki´s legs and soon after, they´d moved him to the side of the corridor. Then they removed a panel in the wall and squeezed Loki in with all the now broken and inactive energy conductors, that hanged from somewhere high above inside the walls. He might be angry at them, when he woke up, being cramped inside the small compartment, but at least he wouldn´t be as vulnerable as if they´d let him lie in the middle of the aisle.

As they put the panel back in its place, Freya updated Thor on the most recent events and told him about how they´d found Loki with the children and managed to escape by stealing a Farbauter. She had expected Thor to be astonished when she mentioned Loki being aboard the Brimir and she very surprised that it did not seem to be the case. In her usual manner, she controlled it and did not let anything in her voice or body language reveal her thoughts, but simply wrote a note to herself inside her head. She had to keep an eye on Loki and Thor in the future. If Loki was a traitor, as she still believed he was, maybe the Yetten had managed to somehow get to Thor as well. She then went on to talk about how they almost got away when they were suddenly transported onto the cruiser. Thor nodded and said "hmm .." and "okay" where it seemed fitting to do so, but all times they both kept ears and eyes peeled and at the slightest sound Freya stopped in the middle of her sentences and they listened carefully to ensure themselves that everything was safe. When she finished her story, it was Thor´s turn. He explained everything as brief as he could, because they didn´t have much time.

"Baldur found an alternative route inside the non gravity pocket inside the glove and Alfheim is right now hovering less than 10.000 kilometers away. As soon as we have found the others, all we need to do is send him a message and then we´ll leave as fast as possible," he explained, "does Sif still have the mini scanner?"

Freya nodded.

"Yes, she has the scanner, but we got lost from each other when everything exploded around us. Loki and I were thrown through the door and landed pretty far down the corridor. But how did you manage to break through the shielding with the transporter?"

For a split second, Thor considered brushing her off with an excuse about not having the time to explain, but decided against it. It would probably be better to explain it, so that she would find it easier to keep focus on the task at hand.

"Well, the simple explanation is that I reprogrammed the transporter to create a double displacement," he told her, "that is: I transported one person away from the cruiser and at the same moment transported myself onto the ship."

"Aaah... Nice," she said praising him in a manner not very like her, "that does explain a lot. You transported yourself to the cruiser and at the same time transported Skrymer away from it, right?"

"Hopefully, yeah, " he answered in a concerned voice, "the process is very dangerous, though. It has the potential to destabilize time and space, so it really isn´t something you do lightly."

"And if the worst thing happens?"

"Well, that´s quite difficult to predict. The most likely outcome is that the whole area would either explode or implode, but there is no way of knowing for sure. And the chance of transporting the right person out of a smaller group away from the target area is about 50/50... but yeah, I tried to get Skrymer off of the ship."

"Hmmm..." Freya muttered thoughtfully. Then she shook off the unpleasant thought with a shake of her head and took off the safety on her weapon.

"Well," she said in a cheerful mood eager to complete the mission, "I suppose there´s only one way to find out, isn´t there? Let´s go have a look, shall we?"

"Certainly," Thor answered, "Lead the way. I´ll be right behind you." He waited for Freya to turn her back on him and then he pulled out a piece of old fashioned paper from his side pocket, pushed it under the panel where Loki was lying unaware of what was happening around him and followed her.

With Freya in front and Thor closely behind, they walked cautiously down the corridor. Thor glanced at the flickering light panels in the ceiling, which made Freya´s shadow look like a monster from an old black and white horror movie. He didn´t like it. He didn´t like it at all. Even though everything else pointed to the double displacement having been successful, it could still have destabilized the energy crystals inside the cruiser and maybe this was what made the lights flicker like they did. And if this was the case, it could only be a matter of time, before the cruiser and everything in close proximity would change into a nightmare they would never wake up from.

"Freya?" he almost whispered. She looked back over her shoulder and found his eyes.

"I´ve noticed," she responded, "I assume we´re in a hurry?"

"I think so," he whispered back, "we better find the others soon. In a moment or two, everything here..."

He shook his head disheartedly. "Well, suffice to say that if I´m right, this place could soon begin to crack up. The time lags could go in all sorts of directions and we could have less than a few minutes before this entire ship is split in time and space - with us inside it..."

Freya sped up a bit, but no more than she was still able to be alert. Although they hadn´t seen a single Yetten - at least not one that was still breathing - since the first explosion, they couldn´t be entirely sure the ship was empty. A few of them could have been abandoned and in hiding just waiting to jump out to attack them.

As she approached the blasted in door on her left, she squeezed closer to the wall as a precaution and by the time she reached the opening she was almost an integrated part of the wall and with her back to the last few panels she kept her rifle close to her upper body, ready for combat, if it proved necessary. She stretched out her neck and peeked inside the room for a short look and she narrowly withdrew her head before a blast of a beam weapon passed her face tightly and went on making a hole in the opposite wall.

"Whoa," she said in surprise, "that was close!" She signaled Thor and with a quick jerk she swung herself across the opening and got to the other side of the door, while Thor took over the spot she´d just left. Blasts practically rained through the opening like heavy hail being blown sideways by a storm and she only just avoided being hit. Thor wasn´t as lucky. His cheek got a black and red stripe from his chin and all the way up to his ear and he had to pull all his mental strength not to scream out loud and reveal his precise position. He clinged to his weapon and grinded his teeth at the pain.

"You´ll never get in here alive!" a familiar voice shouted from inside the room, "this ship is going to blow and you´ll never leave this place alive if you don´t make a run for it \- NOW!"

Thor and Freya looked at each other with a huge smile on their faces. Then they couldn´t help laughing out loud tears rolling down their cheeks.

"Freya! Thor!"

Roeskva was ecstatic with joy! She stormed away from Sif, who didn´t even think about reacting before she was way out of reach and ran toward her saving heroes.

"Is Tjalfe with you?" she asked full of expectation, but soon her happy expression had to give room for a sad and worried look, as Thor and Freya shook their heads.

"I´m sorry, Roeskva, he isn´t," Thor said and crouched in front of her, "but we will find him! I promise!"

Roeskva forced herself to smile and nodded. _This is a time for being brave,_ she thought to herself. Tjalfe´s chances of being saved wouldn´t be the slightest better with her crying her eyes out and she decided to put her trust in her new found friends.

Thor got to his feet and started ordering the others around.

"Freya, take Loki and Roeskva and hurry to the escape pods as quickly as you can!"

Freya nodded and soon she rushed out the door with Roeskva right behind her.

"Sif, the mini scanner!"

She fished out the scanner from her pocket and handed it to him.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, but he didn´t answer. He kept his eyes focused on the scanner´s screen while spinning around himself a couple of times.

"No!" he cried, "No! Please, no!" He smashed the scanner into his hand a few times and then tried again. Still nothing. He looked up at Sif with a frightened look on his face. "He´s not here..!" he said his eyes distant and empty, "the scanner doesn´t show him anywhere. Apart from us, only Brimir shows signs of life. But only one Yetten - no human, no nothing... Tjalfe is.. He´s gone!"

***

# Chapter 12: Tjalfe vs. Skrymer

The ground beneath Tjalfe began shaking wildly making the rubble on which he stood slide away under him at the terrible sound of Skrymer roaring out his infinitive rage! He had to be lying somewhere deep under the debris and for some strange reason he´d survived the devastation. Tjalfe reacted quick as lightning and slid his way down the mountain of scrap. Fortunately the dust cloud had by now almost vanished and he was fairly able to see his way down toward the floor of Brimir´s throne room. As soon as his feet hit the solid ground, he got up and looked around. Behind him the massive mountain was coming apart and debris of various sizes and shapes came rolling down in his direction from the very top. With a few fast steps he got himself moved away from the danger of being squashed flat under the heavy metal, but the sight of Skrymer´s hand moving out from the heap and stretching out at him made him look for an exit. There! The point of a Farbauter peeked inside the room through the hole it had made in the wall and by its edges it looked as if there was just enough room for him to squeeze through to the corridor. He´d just moved his one foot, when something grabbed hold of his other foot and started to pull. He lost his balance and hit his knee hard on the floor. In other circumstances the pain would have been unbearable, but the adrenaline rushing through his every vane enabled him to disregard it and turn around to look his attacker in the eyes. Here he met the blazing mad eyes of Skrymer, who held on fiercefully to his ankle. Skrymer was still half buried in the rubbles with only part of his upper body free and Tjalfe kicked his other foot repeatedly trying to hit the angry Yetten commander in his face, while tossing and turning his body to losing his attacker´s grip on his foot. Finally he managed to place a heavy boot print on the big Yetten´s forehead and Skrymer unwillingly let go as he put his hand on the red skin above his eye brows while roaring even louder than before. Tjalfe pulled himself back as far as he could with all the strength he had in him and got to a safe distance, but this only made Skrymer even angrier!

His eyes were lightening fire as he fixed them on Tjalfe as if his gaze alone would stop the human child from escaping. Then he shifted his focus to the mountain of metal holding him stubbornly to the ground and now Tjalfe knew he had to move quickly. It would only be a matter of time before he managed to loosen the metal´s grip on his body and there was no way of knowing if and when he would ever get a chance like this again!

Tjalfe´s hands slipped numerous times on the surface of the dusty floor as he frantically tried to get to his feet. He resisted the urge to look behind him to get an idea on how Skrymer was proceeding, got up and sprinted as fast as his feet would carry him. Over heaps of splintered columns and fallen down pieces of ceiling, around the throne that had turned over and landed in the middle of the room and over a couple of lifeless guards, whom he sincerely hoped would not decide that this was the time to wake up and do their duty. He reached the Farbauter and squeezed himself into the crack between the fighter and the opening that hadn´t been there earlier. The adrenaline flooded through his veins and he barely noticed his skin being ripped away by the sharp edges of the ragged wall leaving an open wound to drip stains of blood on the floor beneath him.

But suddenly he was stuck! He couldn´t move as much as an inch neither back or forth.

Skrymer, who had for a second begun to accept the fact that the boy was actually going to get away from the Yetten´s wrath had by now managed to wrest himself out of his predicament. He had gotten to his feet and gone after the boy with a limping, but realizing the tables had now turned and the boy was the one in trouble made him slow down a bit as he smiled viciously at the human child.

"Well, well!" he said with a mad look in his eyes reminding Tjalfe of the look of the Rusen just before they left on a quest and had been drinking mead. A blend of rage, ferocity and mocking that was one of the most effective weapons against their victims. The madness beamed from Skrymer and Tjalfe fought fiercely using every muscle in his body to squeeze his way through.

"Now you´re not as smug anymore, huh?" Skrymer bellowed with a savage like expression on his face, which was smudged in blood and dirt from the scrap heap he´d just managed to rid himself of. He took his time getting to Tjalfe. He wanted to make the most of this joyous moment, where the little rebellious brat would finally meet his destiny and get what he deserved... And he looked forward to letting everyone know that he, Skrymer, would be Tjalfe´s destiny. He, Skrymer, the greatest of all Yetten warriors, would be the downfall of Thor´s favorite pet!

Tjalfe had been trying so hard to get through the gap, but for every wriggle he ended up being even more stuck. The hull of the Farbauter lay heavy on his chest and the flossed edges of the gap in the wall cut him deep in his back and by now he found it almost impossible to breath.

It blackened before his eyes and he felt his consciousness leaving him as Skrymer came close enough to stretch his arm inside the gap in the wall trying to reach Tjalfe with his hand. Like in a dream he saw Skrymers massive paw grow bigger and bigger inside the narrow space and he had to realize that it was game over. He relaxed every muscle in his body, exhaled and waited for the inevitable... Riitsch... to his great relief he suddenly felt himself slip the rest of the way through the gap with ease and fell into the empty corridor.

"Noooo! Aaaargh!"

Skrymer, who had been so sure that he had Tjalfe exactly where he wanted him, cried like crazy as the boy slipped away and out of his grasp. He just couldn´t believe he had once again managed to elude him. He was so close and then all of the sudden, whoosh... he was gone?? It couldn´t be?? It was just wrong!!

In an amazing rage at the stinging defeat, Skrymer stretched his hand and his fingers as far as he could and closed his fingers around... nothing! And then in one final frustrating attempt the giant Yetten squeezed his body into the gap with all of his strength. Then he was stuck...

Tjalfe almost felt sorry for Skrymer as he stood there with his arm all the way inside the gap incapable of getting unstuck. The Yetten´s eyes alternately went from anger to frustration to a state of mind that resembled panic and then he had a remote look in his eyes while slipping mentally into himself as he moaned and cried in a way Tjalfe had never seen with an adult before.

Tjalfe shook his head to release himself from Skrymer´s gaze and stepped back a few paces. He felt both relieved and sad. Even the worst kind of people didn´t deserve to die like that, not even if it was a Yetten bend on taking over the entire galaxy, Tjalfe thought to himself. But there was nothing he could do. If he would even be able to somehow wedge Skrymer free, it would be like signing his own death sentence. No matter how much Tjalfe would treat him well, Skrymer was the kind of person, who would never return the favor and let him go. Tjalfe knew this and despite of his bad conscience eating him up inside, he sighed deeply and went down the corridor without looking back.

***

The huge Yetten cruiser hovered lifeless in the vast emptiness of space like a dead fish in rushing water. Sparks from the inner surface of Skrymer´s Glove jumped toward the center of what was only moments ago the only safe place to be and the horrific whirlwinds of distorted time and space narrowed the non gravity pocket in undulating movements. Numerous pockets of time lags shook the ship on the outside of the hull and the trembles made their way inside the cruiser, where Sif and Thor were sitting on the floor At the bridge with the mini scanner beeping beside them. Freya, Loki and Roeskva had already left the sinking ship in an escape pod, but despite trying again and again, they´d been unable to establish contacts with their friends still aboard the cruiser.

Husband and wife sat close together holding each other while thinking about the others, if they were alright and if they´d managed to escape. They sat there for almost half an hour without saying anything, but now Sif looked up and her eyes caught Thor with love in the midst of hopelessness as she effortlessly ignored the earthquake-like vibrations that spread through the ship´s interior.

"I love you, Thor," she said quietly. Thor smiled for an answer.

Sif picked up the scanner from the floor and fiddled nervously with it while she tried to gather courage to talk to Thor about something she found difficult to talk about, but had to bring out in the open. Everything seemed as if they would never get another chance.

"I was close to giving up out there," she finally said, briefly looking at Thor, then refocusing in the mini scanner, "as I got through the last membrane, I mean. I almost turned around and started searching for you. I wanted to find you and... die with you..."

She waited anxiously for his reaction as she had no idea what he would make of it. No doubt that it was a declaration of her love for him, but still, it was not what he had wanted.

Reversely, Thor wondered what made her tell him this. He was pleased she hadn´t stopped to look for him, of course, but he just didn´t understand why it was important to her telling him about it.

"So... what made you change your mind?" he asked.

"Because I remembered, what you said to me..."

"Said about what?"

"Well..? What you said to me about going on, no matter what..? So, I went on... just like I promised you I would..."

Thor looked puzzled.

"What do you mean?" he asked, looking confused at her, "What you promised? When?"

Now she was the one looking puzzled. How could he not remember?

"Just... before we left Alfheim..? You came to the lab just before the final briefing. I cleansed your wound and we were talking about..."

She suddenly stopped mid sentence and looked at him with a strange look on her face as she realized something. Looked? No, she stared at him. Or rather, she stared at his wound and at the congealed dark blood on his cheek. She hadn´t noticed before, but now she realized that after the briefing, just before they left the ship, he had no wound. And now he did? Furthermore the wound looked almost exactly like she remembered it, when he´d entered the lab, except it had looked older at the time. Right now, even with the blood having stiffened, it looked like a fresher wound than it had in the lab? What was going on here?

Thor tilted his head to the side, his eyes roaming from side to side as he was trying to figure out what she was looking at.

Suddenly she leaped up and yelled!

"Thor!"

He startled at her yelling.

"Your wound! I mean... you had a wound, when you came to the lab, but... you just got that wound... When you and Freya arrived here...! What´s going on, Thor?"

Thor had no idea what to say, but just marveled at her as if he thought she was at the brink of going crazy. He speculated like mad about what to say, but he never got to the point where he could speak, because suddenly the ship started trembling. The quakes were so severe that neither of them could keep sitting on the floor. As he got up, it hummed and whistled of metal being rubbed against metal all through the hull with an infernal noise, which he felt in his ribs. Both he and Sif covered their ear from the painful sound, which was accompanied by sparkling lightning that flashed through the otherwise solid hull and within a very short time they were both surrounded by a bubble each of their own. A gigantic blast exploded inside the ship and sent a powerful wave of light outwards, like when you throw a huge stone into a pool of water. Then all went quiet...

***

Tjalfes trip down the corridor felt as if it took ages and ages. Although he knew in his mind that he had had no choice but to leave Skrymer to his fate, he still felt very bad. Even the most brutal and insane Yetten did not deserve to die. And certainly not like that. But there was nothing he could do. He´d made his choice and there was only way to go: forward. He ran as fast as he could in a state of shock and determination. He had to find a way out of here and he could not count on Thor or any of the others having the opportunity to bail him out again.

The light in the corridor flickered and throughout the run down to the other end of the ship he repeatedly looked up, worried about its dangerous rippling effect that reminded him of the light at Fyrkat when everything went haywire for the first time several weeks ago and they ended up in the middle of a war they did not understand.

Rainbow colored cascades of light flowed out from the inside of the hull and corrugated ever wilder from the walls and ceiling, as it grew still deeper inside the ship. He did not know quite what to make of it, but instinctively he was quite aware that something was completely off. Before long the undulating light would fill the interior of the ship and what ever happened then, he was sure, could not be good.

He zigzagged while ducking his head from time to time in an effort to avoid running into the beams of light and gradually, as there was less and less room in the corridor, it was ever more difficult and he had to slow down, so as not to kill himself. Finally, he reached the end of the corridor and pushed the button to what he hoped would be the hangar where they kept the Farbauters. The door slid to the side with a grudging 'skreetchsssj' and revealed a huge compartment with a high ceiling. It was almost empty, as the commander had ordered all pilots to their fighters when Tjalfe and his friends had run the first time. He walked into the large room and prayed that there might be just one Farbauter left while he let his eyes touch the wall from one end to the other in a slow, searching movement. Fragments of various kinds covered the floor and scattered in small groups there were bodies of Yetten soldiers lying around, looking as if they had been dead for days. Tjalfe noted that those closest to where he was standing, had a sad shade of blue in their faces and he remembered an incident some years ago when one of the men from the village had fallen into the mud by accident as they built the great bridge across the marsh. The man had been standing in one of the holes where the large wooden pillars were meant to be the main supporters for the bridge when the stiffening boards on the inside of the pit suddenly collapsed giving way to the bog water and mud, which practically swallowed him up in a matter of seconds. When they were able to pull him up, he had drowned. He had the same cold blue-black color in his face, Tjalfe now saw in the faces of Yetten soldiers staring reproachfully up at him. Back then, Tjalfes father had explained to him that this was the color, a person would get when drowning, but here inside the cruiser, there was no water to drown in and he couldn´t figure out what ever could have made their faces this color?

At last Tjalfe´s eyes found what they were searching for. At the very end of the hangar room, furthest away from the large door to freedom, there was a Farbauter sparkling in competition with Tjalfe´s relieved eyes. He almost stumbled his feet as he started running to it, while being thrilled to observe that the flickering light had not yet breached to the hangar. He sped up and jumped over the various obstacles between him and the Farbauter. Dead Yetten warriors, dropped weapons and destroyed equipment were passed with ease as he approached his salvation.

Suddenly he heard the whistle of a strong wind that hit him hard and threw him a few meters back! The wind stopped blowing in one stroke when he landed, and he took no time to speculate on the cause of the wind, but simply fought to his feet and continued his run. Whoosh! Once again his body was pulled backwards and again the wind stopped, almost before it had begun. This time he stayed down and crawled on all four while grabbing hold of whatever he could reach in its path and with a massive render of determination he fought against the gusts of wind that started and stopped, as if someone had put huge bellows in the other end of the hangar. With a final effort, he pulled himself all the way to the Farbauter, grabbed the landing gear and with difficulty he got himself pulled up to the top and slid down into the cockpit head first. He resisted the urge to rest after his efforts, ignoring the pain in his body that made it hard to get positioned right in the pilot´s seat in the front of the Farbauter. He hovered his hand over the console, as he had seen Loki do it, but nothing happened...

Then he remembered what Freya and Sif had said when they talked about Loki and trying to decide if he could be trusted or not. Only a Yetten could use the consoles! Now what? He looked out the window and got an idea. He released the safety belt. Out of the cockpit again, over the ship´s nose and with a thud, he landed on the hard floor. He uttered a sound of pain as his one hand hit the floor in an awkward way. Then he crawled to a dead body close to the Farbauter and grabbed the arms of the fallen Yetten. It felt like it took hours to pull the corpse to the ship and he had absolutely no idea how to get him dragged the last bit of way over the top of the ship and into the cockpit. Meanwhile the flickering light began reaching inside the hangar with pulsating movements and he knew he had to move even faster. He felt a rush inside his body as adrenaline pumped new strength into his weary muscles and aching joints. Miraculously he managed to pull the Yetten, which had to weigh at least four times his own weight, up on his shoulders and balanced his way to the top of the Farbauter. Then he opened the hatch and let go of the Yetten. With a thump the body fell inside the cockpit with Tjalfe right after and then he glanced briefly at the hole, that was his only means of escape. Fortunately there had been none of the mysterious gusts of wind as he had trawled around with the Yetten balanced on his shoulders, but as he looked down to the end of the hangar, he found the reason why they´d even been there in the first place. Covering the huge gap an almost invisible force seemed to keep the air inside the ship. He hadn´t noticed it before, as he was busy trying to survive, but now as he sat safely inside the Farbauter, he could see how there was the occasional sparkling like a thunderstorm here and there inside the gap. And with each sparkling a strong gust of wind just above him and outside the Farbauter caused all kinds of stuff to slide across the floor and in some cases even lift a few feet above it like small frog like jumps. It was probably only a matter of time before the invisible force would collapse completely and let all the air rush out of the hangar.

This was probably what had killed the bluish Yetten before the automatic systems had filled the hangar with air again. He grabbed a hand on the body and moved it over the console and with a sigh of relief he heard the beautiful sound of the engine starting up and the cockpit sliding down on top of him and the dead warrior shutting tight with a click. Apparently just in time, because shortly after the invisible wall of the hole to freedom collapsed. Every last bit of air left the hangar and rushed out into the black emptiness bringing everything with it that wasn´t firmly secured. Even the Farbauter moved in small jerks slowly sliding across the floor. It was time to get going - and fast!

He moved his hands over the console hoping fervently that he had been paying enough attention to do what Loki had done and praying that only the start up sequence required a Yetten. This was difficult enough already without having to control the ship using the hand on the lifeless body resting lazily in the co-pilot´s seat beside him. Phew! He sighed with relief as the Farbauter rose precariously up and up. Little by little Tjalfe improved his control of the ship and jerked up the engine to full power. The Farbauter jolted forward and in a matter of seconds it slipped through the gap with ample space on all sides.

He only just got out in the nothingness, when a wave of light thundered through the great ship and it exploded in all directions for a few seconds, and then sucked in on itself and disappeared into nothing. Tjalfe looked at the explosion and what he did not understand to be an implosion. A deep urge of releasing his relief went through his body and mind, but this was not a time for celebration - he wasn´t all out of the dark yet and didn´t have the luxury to just let go. Suddenly bursts of gun fire passed him from behind dangerously close to the hull.

"Aargh!"

Tjalfe jerked the controls and threw the Farbauter around in a downward short-arc, just big enough to avoid being hit by the next burst. Then he looked frantically around trying to spot where the fire came from.

"Tjalfe?"

Baldur´s voice over the radio sounded both surprised and pleased...

# Chapter 13: Fading Hope

Sif saw Thor disappear far away riding on Grani, Sigurd Fafnersbane´s black eight-legged stallion. The outline of Asgard´s setting sun formed a halo of light around his head and he had a sacred and wonderful appearance. She was proud and happy, but she also felt sadness and discouragement inside. Why would he leave her now that they had finally found each other again and declared their love for each other? Where was he going and why wouldn´t he take her with him? She tried to call out to him. She yelled and screamed inside that she wanted him to come back and pick her up. That she couldn´t live without him. That she loved him and would die if he left her ... But her throat narrowed and no sound came out of her mouth. She tried to run after him, but no matter how many steps she took and no matter how much she struggled, she didn´t move out of the spot, where she was standing. She was tied to the blue soil of the heath. Here she would stand forever. Could never leave. Would never die, but would just get older and uglier, while life inside her would drain slowly in the grisly certainty that her sadness and discouragement would never end.

Out of the blue the faces of Loki and Baldur appeared in front of her. She hadn´t even seen them coming - or heard them. They stood shoulder to shoulder looking very worried. Baldur struggled frantically with some medical equipment and Loki was unusually quiet and just kept staring blankly at her.

"She´s giving up," Baldur said his sad eyes focused on the screen on the inside of the medical suitcase, "if she gives up, there is nothing we can do for her." He looked up at Loki, who shook his head resignedly and pinched his lips together. A drop slowly slid down his cheek and his lips began to quiver. Could it really be, that the great Loki was about to cry? And why? Sif did not understand it, but frankly she didn´t even care. Thor was gone, dead, and where he´d gone, she could not follow. He had left her, just like everyone else. All the people she´d ever loved eventually ended up leaving her, one way or the other. Even Tjalfe and Roeskva had abandoned her. She was all alone and did not wish to live another day...

"Oh, Sif?" A well known face turned up just behind Loki, her eyes red with tears and her cheeks burning hot. Roeskva?? What was she doing here in the middle of Asgard´s wilderness?

"Oh, Sif?" she repeated and grabbed Sif´s hand, "Please don´t leave us. Please don´t die on us." Roeskva looked back over her shoulder at Tjalfe, who stepped a bit closer. He took Sif´s other hand, squeezed it and looked at her with pleading red eyes.

"Sif, you have to fight," he prayed, "we need you."

Sif´s heart melted at the sight of the two children who prayed for her life. Even now, in the midst of her grief, she could not help but smile. Just for a brief second. It wasn´t a big smile either, but apparently enough for Loki to notice, because suddenly his eyes widened and he poked Baldur.

"She is moving!" He almost yelled, "Baldur! Look! She is moving! "

Baldur took his eyes off the screen and looked intently at her. He leaned forward, frowning, as if the few extra centimeters would make him better able to see anything.

"No, I´m sorry," he finally said, shaking his head, "You are seeing things, because you want her to fight. There is nothing there."

"Well, she did, Baldur! She moved! I´m sure of it!" Loki insisted and then he approached the children.

"Go on!" He commanded, but with a tenderness in his voice that the children had not seen before, "keep on talking to her. Tell her to fight! No, beg her to fight! "

The children did as he said and held her hands firmly while telling her how much they loved her and how much they needed her. They reminded her of everything they had gone through together. About the time of Alfheim before being abducted, the bailout from Brimir, their first failed escape attempt in the Farbauter and especially how she had refused to give up even when everything seemed to be hopeless.

Tjalfe and Roeskva backed each other up in the most amazing way and even though they both felt as if all their words were probably more directed at the other than at Sif, it still gave them an inner peace. And the more they spoke, the more they begged, the more it they felt hope growing inside.

The pleading of the children had a soothing effect on Sif´s heart and she felt warmth spread through her body. It started at the hands where the warm hands of the children caressed her skin. Then it spread up through her arms and further into her chest. From there it spread through the rest of her body and eventually reached her toes. Sif shook her head and slowly her eyes opened.

"Yes!"

Loki´s loud cry gave Baldur such a shock that he jerked his arms turning over the tray with medical equipment. With a quick reaction he tried to catch it, but that just made things even worse and the entire contents of the tray crashed to the floor with a loud noise! Crash! Bang! Pieew!

He looked at the others with a smile holding a sterile sponge in his hand, the only thing he´d actually managed to catch before the rest of the equipment toppled.

"Oops," he said with his head slightly bowed and his eyes glowing as he let go of the sponge and let it descend to the floor like a leaf falling from a tree during Fall.

All the clatter and fuss woke Sif. She sat up and looked around with confused eyes. They were all there: Loki, Baldur, Tjalfe and Roeskva stood at her bedside and Freya leaned against the wall behind them.

"Thor?" was the first thing she said. Loki stepped a bit to the side revealing the bed behind him, where Thor lay quiet in a spider web of tubes in his mouth and nose.

Baldur put his hand on her chest and pushed her gently down.

"You´d better lie down again," he smiled happily, "you´ve had a rough ride and you need to rest."

Sif looked concerned at the motionless Thor, but Baldur smiled reassuringly and nodded his head.

"He´s quite alright, Sif, there is no need to worry," he said, "even the most fierce can´t bring down Thor. He´s just resting for a bit. The tubes are nothing but a precaution."

Sif wasn´t quite convinced, but she accepted Baldur´s promise and since she was too tired to protest, she lay down nicely and after a while she fell asleep.

Loki observed Sif as she fell asleep and when he felt quite sure that she was away in dreamland, he pulled the kids aside.

"Come with me," he said seriously, "there is something we have to talk about."

Roeskva glanced at Tjalfe, who nodded an 'ok' and then they followed Loki to the dining room. Here Loki pointed to some seats where the kids could sit down. He then pulled a chair from another table and sat with them. He looked them both in the eyes with a serious look on his face. Tjalfe recognized his look. It was the same kind of look his father had in his eyes when they visited them and asked for their permission to go to Asgard. It was the kind of look he noticed when it had dawned on both his father and his mother that they would probably not be seeing each other again for a long time. Maybe even never again if Thor wasn´t able to prevent the Yetten from kidnapping them. Tjalfe did not know for sure what Loki was about to say, but he had a bad feeling about it. He had a clear sense that he would not like, what Loki was about to tell them.

Loki took a deep breath.

"First I want to say that we are very proud of both of you," he began. It was obvious that he meant every word. Both his voice and his face showed pride.

"We all are," he continued, "both Baldur, Freya, Sif and me - and Thor, of course. He is probably the most proud of us all."

Loki waited a moment and let the praise seep into the children. Then he continued.

"However, there is something else, I need to tell you and I know it´s going to upset you, so you might as well prepare for a bit of a shock..."

He paused for a moment, trying to figure out how best to say it, but Roeskva beat him to it.

"We can´t go home, can we?" she asked bravely, even though she already knew the answer to her question. Loki shook his head in quiet frustration.

"No, you can´t. I´m sorry," he sighed, "We haven´t found a way to prevent the Yetten from abducting you again, whenever they please. We can´t risk bringing you home to your parents, because if we do, they will find you shortly. They know where you live and they will not stop before they can lay their hands on you. Not before they are satisfied that you have told them everything, they think you know."

"But," Tjalfe objected, "we don´t know anything..." Loki leaned forward and looked Tjalfe straight in his eyes.

"Tjalfe, you´re a bright kid, "he said with recognition, "you know much more than you show."

Then Loki leaned back in the chair crossing his legs as his hands rested on his lap and his eyes were firmly fixed on Tjalfe like a father trying to reassure his only son of his worthiness.

"I´ll be quite honest with you, Tjalfe," he said abruptly, "I had serious doubts about you when Thor started educating you - to say the least. In fact, I believed you were just another stupid kid from an inferior race not worth wasting time on. Actually Thor and I bumped our heads on that very subject quite a few times."

The muscles around Tjalfe´s mouth tightened. He was angry and was just about to give Loki a piece of his mind, when Loki lifted a finger as if to say: 'wait, there is more...' and then Loki continued.

"But the truth is: I was wrong. During these past few weeks I´ve come to realize that Thor saw something in you. Something I hadn´t noticed, because I was simply too thick headed. You´re amazing. You both are." To this point, Roeskva had fought her own jealousy, but hearing Loki include her in the praise made her shine like a sun.

"I´m not sure, what it is about you," Loki went on, "but for some reason, I can´t explain, you seem to understand much more than even some of the brightest kids in Asgard." Loki smiled as he said it, but then his smile disappeared and he leaned a bit forward with a much more serious look on his face.

"This is a good thing, of course, but it does bring some very dangerous challenges to the surface," he explained, "for one thing, we are not the only ones, who figured out how smart you are. The Yetten knows too, and they will do whatever it takes to get you to tell them everything you know - and I really mean 'whatever it takes.' They will stop at nothing to gain the information they seek. And even worse: even if you tell them everything, they won´t be satisfied. They will still assume you know more than you´re telling them, even if you don´t. If they catch you again, it´s far from certain that we are able to save you. This time we were lucky, more than we were skilled. Next time we might not be as lucky."

Tjalfe and Roeskva nodded their heads. It all made sense and they too were sure that the Yetten would never leave them alone as long as they thought they had information to provide.

"But..." Tjalfe looked at the floor, while fidging with the edge of his shirt. Then he lifted his head and found Loki´s eyes.

"But what then? Are you going to take us to Asgard?"

Loki shook his head.

"No, Tjalfe. You don´t belong in Asgard. You belong on Earth. We can´t risk bringing you to Asgard. There is no way of telling what our nature will do to you. You could get sick or be poisoned through the food we eat, maybe even die. We´ve visited Earth from time to time, but we never stay for long, because we don´t know what your nature or your air could do to us. Taking such a risk is all part of the territory, when you´re an Aseir soldier, but taking risks on behalf of others is a whole different matter. We can´t put you in danger like that."

"But what then? What´s going to happen to us?"

"Hmmm... well, that is a tough one to answer, but... suffice to say that Thor has a plan and it just might do the trick - I for one believe it will..."

"Thor??" Roeskva looked very surprised.

"But Loki... Thor hasn´t even woken up yet. How could he have a plan deviced already? And..." she paused for a moment trying to figure out what it was that nagged her. "...and by the way: when we last saw Thor, he strongly believed, he could find out how to prevent the Yetten from ever taking us again? How...? Has he changed his mind?"

Loki had a strange look on his face as he scratched his head while his mind worked overtime to find the words to explain it all in a way they could understand.

"Ehm... well... yeah... but the Thor in there sleeping..." He pointed in the direction of where the hospital bed was. "Ehm... that Thor is going to wake up in a few hours or so and then... Then he will come up with this plan... A plan that he is going to explain to me just before I disappeared at the Fyrkat fortress..."

Loki´s eyes flickered from Tjalfe to Roeskva and back again and his eyebrows were raised clearly revealing his own inability to really understand it himself.

Fortunately, Tjalfe and Roeskva seemed to be even more puzzled than he was.

"I don´t understand a thing!" Tjalfe uttered looking very confused.

"Okay, let me try to explain it in another way..." Loki started all over, "You will be going back to Earth to live almost the same place where you were born, but you are going to live there in another time than you´re used to."

The children gaped at him. They sat still for a while without saying anything. They starred with astonishment at Loki, who still was fighting the battle of his life to find an even feasible way to explain the complexity of such terms as time and space to children of a race that hadn´t even invented the steam engine yet. This was, after all, a science that the Aseir had only begun to scratch the surface of.

"Another time?" Tjalfe broke the silence tilting his head to one side as he waited for Loki to explain and Roeskva was sitting still with her hands in her lap palms up as if she was in some unconscious way trying to catch her eyes that were about to fall out of their sockets in disbelief.

Suddenly Loki had an idea and lit up in a smile.

"Look... if I want to go from here to the rear of Alfheim," he began, "I could walk down there or use one of our carts, right?"

Tjalfe and Roeskva nodded their heads and he went on.

"Now, if I walk, it would take me more time to get there, than if I were to use a cart?"

Again they nodded.

"But... what if I had some kind of cart, that could bring me to the other end in an instant? Then my trip would take no time at all. Literally: no time whatsoever."

"Like when we use the bracelets?" Tjalfe suggested.

"Exactly!" Loki responded in relief that they understood, where he was going with this, "just like the bracelets. But what if I had a very special kind of cart that could bring me to the other end of Alfheim and arriving there one year from now, but in such a way that inside the cart no time would´ve passed at all?"

Tjalfe stopped to think.

"So..." he said, stretching his sentence as he was figuring it out, "you wouldn't get older, but the ship and everyone aboard it would be a year older?"

"That´s it, Tjalfe! And we do have such a cart!"

"Yeah, but..." Tjalfe hesitated, "as I understand Thor, the bracelets can´t move us more than a few years into the future and what good could that be? I mean, the Yetten probably won´t give up, just because we´ve moved ourselves forward a few years in time..."

"Did he really tell you that?" Loki was surprised. He clearly hadn´t understood the extent to which Thor had worked to expand this boy´s understanding of science.

"Yes, he has," Tjalfe replied, "he also said that you cannot go back, only forward. So even if we could travel far enough into the future, how will we ever be able to visit our parents again? "

Now it was really getting hard on the already tried Loki.

"Ehm... well... yeah, that is true... however... Thor seems to have found a way to travel far enough forward in time and..."

"And he´s even found a way to travel back in time, hasn´t he?" Tjalfe interrupted.

"Yes, he has... and that´s why..." Loki stopped mid sentence looking like someone, who had just taken a blow to the head. Was there no end to this boy´s ability to surprise?

"Wait," he said with raised brows, "How do you know?"

Enjoying his moment, Tjalfe leaned back in his seat with a huge smile on his face as he bathed in the obvious admiration beaming from Roeskva.

"Well, he hasn´t. Not yet, that is. But he will as soon as he wakes up."

Loki stared at Tjalfe his face frozen as if it was made of stone. He just couldn´t believe what he was hearing. How could a mere boy of human origin be able to deduct this? Even with all the education, Thor had given him, it was nothing compared to the years of school needed to understand theory of this caliber. He shouldn´t know even the basics of time travel, the curving of space or temporal paradoxes, for that matter. How could he reach to this conclusion, which was the right one, without being formerly schooled in the more basic disciplines, such as physics and mathematics, not to mention the more hard core theories on particle physics and chemistry? It was at the very brink of what Loki could cope with and he had to muster all of his mental strength to get hold of himself and his body language. He wasn´t all that keen on revealing that Tjalfe understood these things better than he did, although this seemed to be the case. How embarrassing...

"Ehm... well... I suppose..." he began, but he was very aware of how stupid it sounded, "you´re absolutely right, Tjalfe, that´s how it is. What you just said, I mean. But how did you come to that conclusion?"

Loki was rather pleased with himself as he sudden found a way to regain his position as the higher ranking of the two: asking questions. This was his field, interrogation, and he was very good at it. During all his years in the Yetten security service, before he was recruited by Odin and enrolled in the Aseir fleet, interrogation was definitely what he did best.

"Well, for one thing," Tjalfe began, as he did what he could to not hurt Loki more on his self esteem than he´d already done, "Thor is the only one who can reprogramme Miolner properly. Baldur could easily hit both Sif and Thor with time distortion pockets just before Brimir exploded. That could be done with minor adjustments in the system. But there is no way he could reprogramme Miolner to get both of them and me in the Farbauter at the same time. It would take far more complicated recalculations to merge pockets differing in both sequencing and time distortion as much as those did and Baldur isn´t able to do it. It takes someone like Thor. Or maybe Sif, but she didn´t get to the bridge before later.

"Okay, but he could´ve made those changes earlier and entered them in a submerged programme ready for deployment?" Loki tried, but Tjalfe shook his head.

"No, he couldn´t know what kind of circumstances there would be when the need for reprogramming rose. Not at the time when he left Alfheim, anyway. Besides, Baldur said that he had gotten the instructions for reprogramming Miolner from a friend with a scar on the cheek."

"Which Thor has, remember? Sif shot him and the medical equipment healed the wound and left only a scar?"

"That´s right. He has a scar now. He didn´t then. When he boarded the cruiser, it wasn´t a scar. It was a wound. And before he left the Alfheim to find us, he had neither scar nor wound. The only viable explanation is that he must have solved the issues with time travel some time in the future. Then he´s traveled back from a time when his wound had already become a scar. During this visit he called on Baldur and told him how to reprogramme Miolner and then he´s returned to his own time."

Loki thought deeply about Tjalfe´s theory. It did make sense, but there was still something about it that didn´t seem to fit exactly, although he couldn´t quite put his finger on what it was. He decided to let it go. At least for the moment. He still hadn´t told Tjalfe who made the changes in the shield´s system and was guilty of giving the Yetten the chance to abduct Tjalfe and Roeskva in the first place. He didn´t look forward to that moment of truth either. Although he´d acted on direct orders from Odin, his consciousness still tormented him and he had no intention of telling the kids about any of it. Not yet, anyway. He nodded his head acknowledging Tjalfe´s theory giving the boy a feeling of pride and acceptance.

Aversively, Tjalfe looked at Loki in a way that gave him a notion that maybe the boy knew much more than he had already told him. But maybe it was all in his mind. Maybe this was just his bad consciousness speaking.

***

# Chapter 14: Endgame

What neither the kids or Loki had noticed was that Freya had sneaked after them to the bridge and followed them inside just before the door closed. She had squeezed completely flat on the floor behind a console by the door and from there she had heard the entire conversation. She still did not trust Loki and was determined to expose him as the traitor, he was. By order of the Odin ..? Ha! She wasn´t going to fall for that one. Just the fact that he did not tell the kids the whole story, was proof enough of his bad character! He was to pay for his betrayal, he was, but it had to be done by the book. She needed evidence first and she just might be able to obtain them by talking to him. She had already enabled her communication device and set it to record everything that was said At the bridge for the next few hours. But she had to wait a bit. The kids had to be out of the way first. She would not risk putting their lives in danger and when Loki found out that he had been caught, she wasn´t sure what he would do. Take them hostage? Shoot them so he could escape while she was busy trying to save their lives?

So, instead of giving in to her impatience, she lay quietly and waited for the children to leave the bridge leaving her and Loki alone. As the sound of the door´s swooshing sound announced that the children were out of danger, she got to her feet. There was no reason to jump up like a jack-in-the-box as she had set the door in advance to a lock down the instant it closed behind the kids preventing him from getting away. The door could only be unlocked, if she used her personal security code.

"Right, Freya," Loki said, turning to her, "I do believe we have some unfinished business to take care of before Thor wakes up? Then we can get the kids off to safety."

"The only thing we need to fix right now is to get you put behind lock and key," she replied coldly and trembling with anger, "you betrayed us, Loki. But even worse: you used innocent children and in your treachery you risked their lives!"

"Yes, Freya, that´s exactly my point," he simply said, without showing any kind of emotion. As if he had just given her the recipe for a cake she liked. She was seething with rage at his indifference and fought the urge inside her to shoot him on the spot.

As Loki turned to the console she raised her rifle and pointed it directly at him. He stopped his motion for a moment and held his hands where she could see them.

"I just need to show you something from the computer," he said, "but you could download it yourself if it´ll make you less nervous."

Freya´s mind worked so hard that it was almost audible. What was he up to? He was shrewd enough to lay a trap for her making the console exploding in her face as soon as she touched it. On the other hand, he might have predicted this to be her conclusion and instead laid a trap, where the console killed the one who stood by when he opened the computer? And then again, he could also have foreseen that she would think that he had foreseen it and deviced yet another trap? What should she do? Open the computer herself? Let Loki open it?

Loki made a small motion with his hands as if to say: now what?

"Have you decided?" He asked, and she could have sworn that he was laughing inside, "who do you want to operate it?" Then he took a deep breath.

"Well, Thor did say you would most likely make this more complicated, than it has to be..."

The fact that Loki would even mention Thor, only made matters worse and her blood was boiling with anger.

"No matter, though, he deviced a brilliant solution, of course," Loki went on and leaned slightly toward the console.

"Freya calling Thor," he said. And before she could react Thor´s face tuned up on the big screen. He smiled and his scar on the cheek was wrinkled by age.

"Hi Freya," he said, "I'm sorry for all the hassle, but I don´t believe there was any other way to do this. No other way I could think of, at least. "Freya was just about to say something when it dawned on her that it was a recording. Then she shut up and listened.

"What I am about to tell you, will be a bit difficult to comprehend," the old Thor on the screen continued, "but the fact is that I am now an old man and I´m speaking to you from so far away, that you no longer exist. Well, I actually don´t, to be more precise. I can only come for a visit. I´m probably not making much sense, am I? It happens quite often with old men. So before I start telling funny anecdotes from my youth, I had better explain to you what is going on, as briefly as I can. You see, a few weeks before Sif and I took the fight to the Skrymer and his glove, Loki here was ordered by Odin to change some basic codes in Alfheim´s programming making the shield break down for a split second. This was meant to put the Yetten in a position to transport Tjalfe and Roeskva onto Brimir, which was at the time inside Skrymers Glove. Don´t ask me why Odin made that decision. I simply don´t know. I have often asked him about it, but he never wants to talk about it. In any case, I managed to find a way so that I can travel in time to a degree that none of us have ever understood before. I cannot give you the details, because it will bring about such a vast number of opportunities for time paradoxes that I get headaches just thinking about it.

But whatever Odin´s reasons, none of this is Loki´s and he did not know the children would be jeopardized. In fact, he did not even know the children would be inside Fyrkat that day. He was himself taken by the Yetten and transported to Brimir, right after we rescued the children at Fyrkat and he had no way of knowing what was going to happen after that.

Knowing you, Freya, I´m sure you have a hard time buying this explanation and that you are probably ready to dismiss it as a setup using video technology to fake the recording you´re listening to right now. That´s why I´ve prepared a little something for you to prove the validity of the recording. But first, I´ll give you a little time to think."

The recording tinted away again and Freya stared at Loki her eyes narrowed in deep wonder.

"Anyone could cheat with that recording," she finally said.

"Yes," Loki agreed.

Silence...

"How can I be sure it is not a fake?"

"Thor will prove it to you if you grab the envelope located in your left pocket at the thigh."

Freya looked startled, but drove her hand slowly down to the left thigh pocket and fished out an envelope. It was an old-fashioned envelope of the type only used for messages so secret that the Aseir security would not leave the Yetten any chance to intercept them. This way they had to catch the messenger to get the information inside. She opened the envelope and pulled out a little yellow slip.

"Open it up and read," Loki asked.

"What does it say?" She asked. She still was not sure if Loki had placed a bomb or maybe something toxic in the leaflet.

"I don´t know. I am just as curious as you are."

"I´m record everything that happens in here right now," she warned him, "The system is connected to my vitals, and if anything happens to me, the recording will be sent out through the speakers and everyone aboard the ship will hear it."

Loki nodded resignedly and took a deep breath.

"Just open it, Freya..."

Freya opened the leaflet carefully while keeping her upper body slightly bent over backwards, giving her a change to avoid being hit if suddenly something dangerous was to spray out from it. Nothing happened. Then she read the message. Surprise was painted in her eyes ... Sentence by sentence and word by word, her eyes first looked puzzled, then they seemed to ease up a bit and gradually, as she read, she relaxed more and more. Finally she reached the end and sat down on the nearest chair with the rifle hanging loosely by her side.

She shook her head confused and puzzled over and over, while Loki was getting increasingly restless.

"What does it say?" He finally asked as he was fairly sure she would no longer try to kill him on the spot.

She said nothing as she handed over the slip of paper. He took it and read the first few sentences:

Loki: "Open it up and read,"

Freya: "What does it say?"

Loki: "What does it say?""I don´t know. I am just as curious as you are."

Freya: "I´m record everything that happens in here right now. The system is connected to my vitals, and if anything happens to me, the recording..."

Loki stopped reading and looked at Freya.

"Okay? This is ehm..."

"Yeah," she said quietly, "It's everything we've just done and said. There is a note at the bottom too. "

Loki read the note: "More in the envelope, located in Loki's pocket."

He grabbed his leg and brought out an envelope identical to the first. Inside was a note with the rest of their conversation until now. Word for word it said exactly what they both had said. He handed the note to Freya, but she just shook her head.

"No, thanks," she said, "I'm too tired and I can´t cope with it." She looked up at Loki and forced a smile.

"Sorry, I didn´t believe you."

Loki smiled back.

"It's okay, Freya ... I wouldn´t have done it any different, had I been in your shoes... "

Tired and weary Freya got up from the chair and took a deep breath.

"I´m going to bed," she said, "maybe we can talk about it tomorrow?"

"Sure," nodded Loki.

When Freya was out the door, the old man´s version of Thor tuned in on the screen again.

"Sorry about all the trouble I´ve caused, my friend, but I saw no other way."

"It´s okay, Thor," Loki sighed, "We´re okay. After all, that´s how war is - sometimes..."

"Yes," said Thor, "That is how war is... but it shouldn´t be what friendship is... "

Loki was somewhat surprised as he noticed how the answer from the recording was so spot on, but then he remembered that the whole thing was probably based on Freya´s recording of it all. Then he remembered the question he needed to ask Thor and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Thor´s face faded away...

# Chapter 15: A new life

Tjalfe and Roeskva were ready in the lab, where Sif was preparing a machine in the middle of the room. She was crying and the kids concluded that she was probably upset because they were about to be separated again. They had mixed feelings. On one hand, they were sad to say goodbye to all of their new found friends, but on the other hand they looked forward to coming home to Earth, although everything would be very different than they were accustomed to.

"Hi, kids, are you ready yet?" Thor had just come through the door and stood gazing with pride at Tjalfe and Roeskva. They had been through so much together and Thor felt like a father to them.

"Yes, I think so," nodded Tjalfe with a mushy voice. He looked Thor in the eye and asked him to take a message to Baldur, who had been called back to Asgard to be instructed on how to operate the new, big battleship and they hadn´t had a chance to say a proper goodbye. At Thor´s withdrawal the council had chosen to name the ship "Miolner," but he was nevertheless pleased to have both Baldur as his first officer and Freya as a security officer. Loki was put on another and apparently super secret assignment for the Aseir security service. At least that´s what they thought since he hadn´t said anything about where he was going and he had even declared that he had no clue what he was meant to do. That last bit was probably a truth with some exceptions. Loki usually knew how to acquire information about such things, despite the fact that he didn´t have the proper clearing.

"And Loki," Roeskva said, "you must say goodbye to Loki for us. Please tell him, we said hi and thank you for taking good care of us while we were aboard the Brimir."

"I will," Thor replied and then turned his eyes to Sif, who had finished setting up the machinery. She pointed towards one of the chairs. Roeskva was first to be put to sleep. Sif tucked down the helmet on the head of the girl and connected the cables.

"Is it going to hurt?" Roeskva wanted to know. Not because she was scared or feared pain. She just wanted to know so she could prepare for what was about to happen.

"No," Sif said with tears running down her cheeks, "you won´t feel a thing. The machine just reads everything you have experienced since you were born, and then it store it all deep inside your subconscious."

"Is this really necessary?" Tjalfe asked Thor, "I mean... I really think we have shown that we are pretty good at keeping a secret."

Thor tightened his lips together and looked lovingly at Tjalfe.

"I know, Tjalfe," he replied, "but it would be way too hard for you to live a fairly normal life a thousand years after, you were born, if you remember everything that happened here. At some point your frustration will grow to an extend where it would be almost impossible for you not to reveal yourselves. We can´t take that chance. The Yetten will be over you in no time if they find out where you are - or, in other words: when you are."

Tjalfe knew it already. Thor was right, it was just hard to imagine a life where they could not remember who they were. Would they even exist anymore? Were their experiences and memories not an essential part of who they were? He felt as if he was about to die as his personality vanished. But it wasn´t the worst of it all.

"Yeah, but ... I can´t cope with the idea that Roeskva and I aren´t going to be together, "he said, wiping his cheek, "we won´t even be able to recognize each other on the street... "

"I know," said Thor fatherly, "and I wish it could be different, but if we put you together ..."

"Then our subconscious comes to the surface, I know ... You've said it before, Thor .... But still... "

"Tjalfe, you will still have your personality," Thor tried to comfort him, "it will come to the surface because it is who you are. And everything you have experienced, including all that has happened these past few weeks, will remain inside of you. You will still be you. "

Thor grabbed his shoulders the way his father used to when he wanted to assure him of his love.

"And I promise you, Tjalfe. I will work like crazy to find a way to prevent the Yetten from abducting you again. And as soon as I succeed, you can come home to your parents again, I promise!"

Tjalfe shook his head.

"If you succeed, Thor, if..."

"Oh, I will, Tjalfe, you have my word!"

Tjalfe nodded and hoped fervently that Thor would take it as a sign that he believed in him. The last thing he wanted was to discourage Thor, so he did everything he could to hide the truth. The truth that he knew better. If Thor had ever found a solution in the future, he would have gone back and give them the serum, so they did not need to be stuck in a time that was not theirs with a family, they did not know and in a world that would be so far from their own that it was beyond their imagination. He tried to smile as he sat on the chair next to his sister, but it struck him so hard that he could not help but wonder if Thor had noticed how his body language revealed his thoughts.

Sif rigged the equipment on him, just as she had done with Roeskva and then she took a few steps back.

"I will miss you," she said and rushed forward to give them both a motherly hug. It lasted quite long and Tjalfe enjoyed every moment before Sif let go and Roeskva got the same treatment.

"We won´t miss you, unfortunately," Roeskva said, "we won´t even remember you. But still, you will always be in our hearts. Whatever this machine does to us, I´m sure love can´t be stowed away."

"No, love can´t be stowed away," Sif smiled through her tears and then she kissed her palm and blew it their way.

Sif went into the next room and looked at them both through the glass. From here she had to operate the machine, making sure it worked as it should, without affecting Thor and herself. When she had gone behind the glass, Thor stepped up to Tjalfe and whispered in his ear.

Tjalfe smiled and his smile rubbed off on Roeskva, who was now quite confident. She had no idea what Thor had whispered in her brother´s ear, but whatever it was, she knew it was something good.

Thor´s face appeared behind the glass next to Sif, who grabbed a microphone and spoke into it.

"Are you ready?" She waited for their nod and started the machine.

The last thoughts going through Tjalfe´s mind was the words Thor had whispered into his ear. It made him happy and he knew that Thor, Sif, Freya, Baldur and Loki would forever be his friends. And this certainly wasn´t a bad thing. Imagine having both Aseir, Vanes and even a Yetten for friends. That´s more than he could ever have hoped for less than a year ago.

"I was told to say goodbye from a mutual friend with a scar on his cheek," Thor had whispered to him, "and he asked me to tell you, that we will meet again sometime. And it will be before you know it. Remember, Tjalfe ... We will soon meet again... "

***

# About the author

Per Holbo lives in Denmark, Europe, with his wife and four children. Skrymer´s Glove is his first full novel.

To keep updated, please feel free to follow on twitter:

@HolboDen

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