Viking Love Beyond Time (Time Travel Romance) (78 page)

             
The woman gave a strangled gasp and began to massage her tortured throat, then looked up.  “Why did you not kill me Alodie?” she croaked at last.

             
Alodie snorted.  “Probably because you wanted me to, why?”

             
Emma swallowed, wincing.  “You have killed Olaf and I will be torn limb from limb by the villagers once that news gets out, I thought you might help me, either that or you would kill me quickly”.  She shrugged then shook herself, “Come, we must get your father”

             
She reached for another torch and handed it to Alodie.  Puzzled, she followed as Emma lowered herself down a steep wooden ladder and into a straw strewn corridor which led off into the darkness.  By the light of the flickering torches Alodie noticed that the corridor seemed to be hewn out of solid rock and seemed endless.  At last, after walking briskly for about ten minutes, they turned a corner, and came upon a small wooden door which Emma unlocked with a key hanging from a hook on the wall and pushing it open and ducking, went inside.

             
The room was larger that Alodie had imagined and lit by a barred  window which seemed to look out onto the fjord.  Olaf must have had the tunnel cut right underneath the village, but how in the name of God had he managed to carry out an engineering feat of this nature with ninth century technology?  Using manual labour alone it would have taken hundreds of years.

At first, she thought the room was empty but suddenly a bundle of rags stirred and looking round she came face to face with a man she had last seen at a shuttle pad in
Los Angeles
.    Words were unnecessary.  Jake opened his arms and with a sob Alodie threw herself into them.

             
“There, there honey” he whispered.  It was such a relief hearing modern English again that tears rushed unbidden into her eyes.

             
“Dad!  Oh Dad!” she sobbed.  “let’s get you out of here, now”.  She had replied, without thinking in Saxon.

             
“Actually” came a voice from the doorway. “I don’t really think I can allow that”

             
Alodie’s head snapped up just in time to see the door swing closed.  She leapt to her feet but it was too late, the door shut with a resounding ‘clang’ and to her horror she heard the squeal of the key in the lock.  “You bitch!” she screamed and was rewarded by a diminishing cackle from the other side of the door.  Alodie took a few steps backward.  “Right, stand back, I’ll blast the.........”

             
“The whole room’s mercurised”  Alodie’s hand dropped to her side as Jake got to his feet.  “Is there a male autodoc on either of those bracelets?”   Alodie nodded, her head spinning.  He held out his arm.  “Well, its good for something then, you got one on yours?”  She nodded again.

             
Jake donned the bracelet which Alodie handed to him after enabling the autodoc function  and sat down on the floor with his back against the wall.  “Dad, how on Earth does Olaf the Black, in 878, manage to have a mercurised room?” she asked.

             
He chuckled.  “It’s a long story”

             
She hunkered down next to him.  “Apparently I’m not going anywhere”

             
He sniffed, then cleared his throat.  “Your distress call was picked up by a freighter which was passing Antabulus”

             
Alodie gasped “You are joking, that’s right on the edge of the galaxy!”

             
“Yep, thing was it was picked up fifty years
before
you went through Nexus.  Of course, there was no
Star City Colossus
at that time and no Alodie Austen for that matter but E & MTC had this thing in their files.  It was completely forgotten about until Loxley discovered it, about six months before you set off.  You were supposed to get command of a class two cruiser my darling but no, thanks to that slimy bastard you got landed with........”

             
Alodie groaned and put her hand to her forehead “That bucket of bolts”

             
“Exactly, didn’t you think it was peculiar that three inter dependent components all went down at the same time?”  Alodie nodded.  “It was Bradey” said Jake levelly “he sabotaged the ship, he was in Loxley’s pocket.  Loxley not only knew it was going to happen, he
needed
it to happen, he even engineered the gar oil operator’s strike in order to delay you”.

             
“But why?” she whispered.

             
Jake scratched his grey beard thought fully.  “Saloman Loxley had
The Star City Colossus
insured way above her worth.  Just after you set off he personally bought it at a knock down price in his capacity as a director of E & MTC”

             
“So what was the point of letting me pick up my last cargo?”

             
“Another scam, E & MTC bought the cargo, they claim on the insurance.  Loxley sued the company for the loss of his ship, blaming your incompetence as a captain, he cleared, let me see, one hundred and thirty billion creds, all told”

             
Alodie breathed out, audibly, then hugged herself. It was getting very cold.

             
Jake got up and walked to the window.  “This, by the way, is Olaf’s punishment cell.  During winter, ice forms to a depth of three inches inside and it gets all the blast from the open sea.  One of his favourite tricks is to douse people with ice cold water and throw them in here, naked.  Children mostly, in January and February”

             
Alodie clenched her fists, she felt her nails cut into her palm.  “He’s dead” she muttered.

             
Jake spun round “What did you say?”

             
“He’s dead, I killed him”

             
Jake pursed his lips and let out a silent whistle.  “How, for God’s sake?”

             
“I knifed him”

             
“Why?”

             
“Because he raped me”

             
Jake groaned and put his head in his hands.  “Where is he now?” he asked, after what seemed like an age.

             
“In
Jamaica
, hopefully with the buzzards”

             
He slipped his arm round her and kissed her gently on the top of her head.  “After your mother died I wasn’t very loving toward you Alodie.  I tried to build up a barrier between us because I was afraid of loving you too much in case I lost you like I lost her”

             
She squeezed his arm.
“I know Dad” she replied, then remembering something she unfastened the top of her boiler suit and felt round inside an inner pocket.  “Here, this is yours”.

             
Jake picked up the plummy gold ring and, nodding his thanks, slipped it back on his finger.  “It almost killed me seeing that bastard wearing it” continued Alodie. “How did you find out about Loxley?”

             
He smiled at her sudden change of tack.  Nerissa used to do the same thing, that was one of the reasons he had loved her so much - still did.  “About a month after you disappeared Loxley retired.  He bought a small
Caribbean
island and went to live in the lap of luxury.  It was then I discovered he had been the owner of
The Star City Colossus
”.

             
“How did you discover that?  If I knew Loxley he would have kept that little piece of information hidden away deep in a computer bank”

             
Jake laughed.  “Pure coincidence Alodie.  I happened to be dating a lady called Susan Muskody who worked for the insurance company.  When I told her over dinner one night that you were the captain of the
Colossus
she told me about the pay out.  I put two and two together and paid a little trip to Loxley’s island”

             
A seagull cried loudly outside the window, making Alodie jump.  “Jesus, Dad, what did you do?” she asked.

             
Jake laughed.  “Got a job as a gardener.  Actually he had a serious problem with acidic soil - and one night, when he came out to smell his roses...I, er, kidnapped him”

             
It was Alodie’s turn to laugh, “What did you do with him?”

             
“Dragged him to his shuttle - you should see the gadgetry he had on that thing - flew him to Alaska, took him to the bottom of a lake and pumped him full of Winnowan Truthsay Drug.......”

“Which you just happened to have on you?” interrupted Alodie.

             
He grinned and nodded.  “Well okay, I came prepared”

             
“Dad, that stuff’s illegal, it’s used to interrogate prisoners, where did you get it?”

             
“You have a moral streak in you a mile wide Alodie and I have to tell you now I do not approve” continued Jake.  “If you must know I got it from your Uncle Dave.  He landed a job with the prison service just after you left and he liberated some for me - anyway, as you may know, it works.  He spilled the whole can of worms in short order”

             
Alodie spluttered.  “Then what?”

             
“I punched him, hard, broke two of his teeth.  God, it felt really good, I can tell you; then I made him give me a print out of the distress signal, took off from the lake, left him stranded on the shoreline, took the shuttle to the nearest spaceport and hopped on a transport to Dolwe, having first booked myself on an auto learner to bone up on ancient Norse and Saxon”

             
“How the hell did you talk them into letting you come back here?” she asked.

             
He grinned and scratched his nose.  “I didn’t.  They wanted labourers.  They were blasting a network of tunnels through a range of mountains west of
Stytcha
City
in order to transport water, anyway, they needed men.  Their idea was to go back in time to when the rock was more porous and the mountain not so high, drill a small hole, about a foot in diameter, through the mountain and mercurise it”

             
Alodie nodded, it would work. Mercurise solution was a liquid which was used to protect surfaces.  It was like a thin plastic film but was textureless, odourless and impossible to detect.  However, if a hole was drilled through a mountain and lined with mercurise the hole would be there whilst the mountain stood.  It was stronger than the rock itself.  “They couldn’t get anyone to volunteer to go back” continued Jake.  “It would have meant spending at least three years there, just sitting at the far end of an ever lengthening drill.  The original idea was to have two men - not Dolwayans, they aren’t strong enough - to go back ten million years and begin to drill, one on each side of the mountain, then pump mercurise through the hole”

             
“But as you say, they couldn’t find anyone willing to do it?” she questioned, with a smile.

             
Her father grinned.  “Apart from good ole Jake that is” he continued “So I set off in an engineering pod, pre set for ten million years earlier.  It worked too and let me tell you, if you think Dolwe is a dump now, believe me it has improved since its early history - volcanoes all over the place, and the rain!  Anyway, I was there about a day and a half.  Didn’t do any drilling though.  You see they thought I was an ignorant labourer, not a computer genius!”

             
Alodie punched him playfully on the arm.  “More fool them!” she chuckled.

             
“I spent the time working out how to re-set the pod.  It was very difficult.  It was exact for Dolwe, I could travel to any time with an error of plus or minus one tenth of a second.  The trouble was the spatial co-ordinates.  I had to get it to travel in time on Earth as opposed to Dolwe. I was prepared for a slight maladjustment, all in all
ten years
and two thousand miles ain’t bad I think”

             
Alodie hugged him.  “You are absolutely wonderful Dad, you did all this for me?”

             
He squeezed her.  “I owed you kid, and anyway, I didn’t have anyone else left in 2430 so I thought - what the hell, I hear the climate’s good”

             
She giggled.   “It is, but you didn’t actually choose the garden spot of the whole planet. 
England
’s beautiful and
Jamaica
- Lord, Dad you should see
Jamaica
now, it would take your breath away! But finish your story”

             
Jake coughed.  “There’s nothing more to tell really.  I materialised underwater in the fjord out here, bobbed to the surface and washed ashore down by the jetty.  It was June, I remember, June 871.  I was taken up to the castle, met Olaf and the rest is, as, as they say, history.  He was
not
as impressed as I had hoped with my claim to be the god Odin.  For all that he is - was - the most evil person I have ever known, he had the most impressive brain on the planet”