Valkyrie Hunter

“Wake up Gwen, wake up or you will die!” An unfamiliar voice echoed through my head.

I jerked wake to find myself curled up into a foetal position naked in the snow. I was rapidly losing any residual heat in my body. I knew if didn’t get moving I would surely die. I could no longer feel my extremities. Ice hung in clumps from my hair and I couldn’t feel my nose. I lifted my head and tried to determine where I was. A full-blown blizzard obscured my surroundings. Numbly I eased myself up but I felt so hopeless, I was going to die. No clothes, no shelter it was a death sentence. I couldn’t believe I was brought here to die it didn’t make sense. I tried to get my feeble brain into gear. I wasn’t on Melanos the air didn’t have that stale quality to it. Suddenly with the easing of the wind I spotted a darker shape in the swirling snow. At least if were to die someone would not find my corpse in the snow. Stumbling half-crawling I forced myself onwards when all I wanted to do was lie down and just give in. It must be the stubborn Valkyrie blood I had that urged me on. Slowly but surely I headed towards the patch of darkness. The wind whistled through me numbing my bare skin. It seemed so near yet so far. With a sinking feeling I knew I wasn’t going to make it. Something human shaped loomed out of the darkness and I was gathered up in a pair of well-muscled arms. I knew whoever picked me up was a woman. I felt the hardness of a nipple pressed against my cheek through a thin top.

I must have blacked out my next awareness was waking wrapped in a thermal blanket the sound of two voices talking in the background. Unfamiliar voices talking in Galactic, one accent definitely had an Imperial twang to it. I moved slightly feeling warmth returning to my feet and hands. Even my nose didn’t feel as if it was a block of ice. I wasn’t sure where I was. From my position lying on a couch I could see walls. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble of cutting quartz panels in a riot of colours and covering the walls with it. I could see a table with what looked like rock samples. A mine I guessed seeing a small pick hanging from a hook on the wall above the table. It appeared to be an office of some type. The two voices I’d heard belonged to two women. One with mousy hair and tall the other the typical blonde of a Valkyrie. Both women wore their hair long. Mousy’s hair cascaded in waves while her companion’s hair was braided in typical Valkyrie style.

“Er hello?” I croaked. My voice rough from disuse.

Both women turned. Mousy was definitely human only a couple of decades older than I was. Her grey eyes regarded me carefully. The other woman younger was Valkyrie in every way. The older woman smiled while the Valkyrie just stared surprised.

I made to get up the older woman waved me back down.

“Don’t get up yet we haven’t purged the radioactives from your blood.”

“Radioactives?” It was that then I noticed the tubes attached to my arm. I hadn’t noticed it there. I supposed that it was washing my blood clean. I wondered if it would have effected the nanobots in my body. I wasn’t going to ask them that I wasn’t sure who they were.

The older woman spoke silencing my errant thoughts. “Yes, someone injected a radioactive serum into your blood. It’s easier to track you that way.”

“Scanners and sensors can be fooled but radioactives leave a distinct trace,” the Valkyrie said.

“Why?”

“Because it would easier to find your body when you died,” the older woman said bluntly.

I shuddered at the thought this was making less sense than my conversations with Scout.

“Then again?” The older woman was considering another scenario. “Track you if you survived. I think the latter more plausible.” She regarded me carefully. “You were a lure so we would take you in.”

“Which is exactly what we did,” the Valkyrie said.

The older woman nodded approvingly to the younger. “As Cinders said!”

The Valkyrie flashed the older woman a glare. “Ma’am!” she objected.

The woman laughed. “I’ll stop when you stop going all formal on me.”

“But ma’am,” the Valkyrie protested. “Didn’t you insist I call you that when we had visitors?” She glared at the older woman again. “Then I don’t like it when like when you tease me?” She coloured her pale cheeks flushed a rosy crimson. “Especially in front of guests.”

“Well blame your mother she took a liking to reading Hans Christian Anderson. Call yourself lucky she didn’t name you Rumpelstiltskin.”

“Yeah real funny that,” the Valkyrie replied.

“Come on, Cinderella isn’t that bad a name?” the older woman countered.

“Er excuse me?” I interrupted them.

They both turned the attention to me. I was aware that under the thermal blanket I had covering my body I was naked.

The older woman managed to look contrite. “Oh sorry we don’t get many visitors most of the time it’s just us.”

“If its possible could I have something to wear?” I was polite I didn’t know where I was. I guessed that they’d respond better if I was polite.

“Of course I should have thought of that earlier. Sorry the excitement of you being here threw it out of my mind. It won’t happen again.” The woman turned to her Valkyrie companion. “Ella I’m sure you have something in your closet that will fit. You never throw anything away.”

“I’ll get right on it Triple ‘M’,” Ella replied. With that she hurried out.

I thought I an odd name for the older woman. “Cinders and Ella,” I mused to myself. I must have said out aloud because Triple ‘M’ answered.

“Are you familiar with the story of Cinderella?” she asked me.

“I’ve seen the vid.”

The woman sighed. “Good enough I suppose but nothing beats actually reading the book.”

At that moment the machine behind me bleeped.

“Ooh good just ready for the oven!” Triple ‘M’ smirked.

“What?” stared at her shocked. I wasn’t sure if was with the crazies again.

“Joke. Lighten up there,” she told me. “I couldn’t help it, it is a Hansel and Gretel story. You know…?”

I stared at her blankly not getting the reference. “Please don’t do that too me,” I said.

Slowly Triple ‘M’ nodded. “I’m sorry no more jokes ok?” She careful removed the cannula from my wrist and tubes attached to the machine. Swabbing the wound clean with wipes. She glanced up at the reading on the machine behind me. “The machine says it cleaned the radioactives from your blood.”

“Thanks,” I said simply trying to be polite.

“Not necessary,” she replied with the wave of her hand. “I’m just glad you are alive.”

As she stepped away I began to wonder if a mad woman had rescued me. It was bad enough I’d spent the last six weeks dealing with a traumatised Keeper. I hadn’t known about Scout’s night terrors until her screaming had woken me up. I had asked for Digger’s help. But all she said was that she could deal with physical injuries but there were no Keepers able to deal with mental ones. The only way I could keep her quiet was for her to sleep in my bed with me. I tried all of what I’d learned from Kelli to get her to open up but I was at a loss. As much as I hated dealing with her trauma it was far better than what Digger had suggested. I shuddered at the thought. They would convert her back into a column of data. The same column they had put themselves into in order not to die. Scout may have been millennia older than I but she behaved and acted like a teenager. A teenager that had seen her whole family killed in front of her eyes. A family that had sacrificed themselves so she could be saved. I bet it would have affected even the most hardy of all the Valkyrie. My one and only relief in the whole thing was that Mouse had told me my team was one the way. They might be a week or two late but they were coming. My only other consolation was that Monica and Alicia were on their way to Saros.