Alan Foster - Exceptions to Reality

“War-Sister is too modest,” declared Róta. “In this plane she works for Nokia, you know.”

The one called Sigrdrifa nodded. “Having companies like hers and Ericsson right in our ancestral backyard has helped immensely.”

Hrist was shaking her head slowly. “Between battles, Odin insists on being online. And Freyja is simply impossible.”

It was a tentative Gunnar Larson who stuck his head around Herfjötur to inquire cautiously, “You’re not…?” Beneath bushy brows his eyes grew a little wider. “By my grandfather’s honored soul, you are, aren’t you?”

The spectacular blonde who was resting an elbow on David Larson’s shoulder essayed a divine smile. “Don’t you recognize us? Of course, we have to adopt our dress to the present time, or we would draw the stares of the meddlesome curious while living and working among them.”

As if you don’t draw stares as you are now, the old captain mused.

With a polished fingernail painted fire-engine red, Skeggjöld flicked one of the long earrings that dangled alongside her neck. It took the form of a pendulant hatchet fashioned from rubies and diamonds. “These sign my name, fisherman. Can you know it?”

Larson struggled to remember the old tales his grandmother had told him over hot cocoa beside crackling fires on midwinter New England nights. He nodded. “Yes, I know you, ‘Wearing-a-War-Ax.’”

Skeggjöld shrugged exquisitely. “I do what little I can with what contemporary fashion allows.”

Cruz, who had been watching and listening to the meaningless wordplay, was interested in only one thing. Well, two things. But matters of paramount importance must perforce come first.

“How did you get on this ship?” He glanced through a port. Outside, it was now black as the inside of a deserted Bronx tenement. “I didn’t hear or see another boat pull up alongside.”

“We did not come by boat,” Róta informed him coolly. “We flew.”

“Low,” Hrist added. “You have to, these days, to stay under the coastal radar.”

Cruz frowned. A glance at the stupefied Sandino showed that no plane or copter had been observed approaching. The smuggler was not entirely displeased with the attempted subterfuge. It would be a pleasure to pull the truth out of liars as attractive as these.

“I don’t know why you’re telling me these loco stories. You’ve been on the Mary Anne all along, haven’t you? That’s it!” His gaze narrowed, and the false veneer of good humor vanished. “I could almost think you were agents, planted here for purposes of entrapment. But why only women? And in such clothing?”

“Maybe,” Sandino rumbled from beside the starboard doorway, “they’re hiding something.”

“ Seguro …sure.” Cruz’s smile returned. Sandino was a good man. Dedicated, loyal. It was time to reward him. “Why don’t you have a look and see? But pick on one your own size.”

A wide, wicked grin of realization slowly oozed across the face of the muscle. Advancing, he unhesitatingly extended a hand in the direction of the bodice of Skeggjöld’s elegant evening gown. As he did so, she reached down and lifted the hem of the exquisite dress, in the process exposing more leg than Cruz or both Larsons or Nick Panopolous had ever seen in their lives.

She also revealed, running from hip to knee, a custom-fitted leather scabbard on which was embossed the cognomen GUCCI. From this she drew a mirror-bright short sword with bejeweled pommel. Bringing it around and down in a single incredibly swift, smooth arc, she hacked off the impertinent approaching forearm of the shocked Sandino. Screaming like a baby, he staggered backward, clutching at the stump of his arm as blood fountained across the bridge. Some of it spattered Róta, who brushed at it in obvious displeasure.

“For damn! This has to be dry-cleaned.”

All thoughts of mastery of the situation and any ancillary activities fled from Cruz’s mind as quickly as his balls shriveled inside his scrotum. Fumbling for the pistol he always kept holstered beneath his weather jacket, he shouted for help. In moments the interior of the bridge became bedlam.

Clutching his AK-47, Truque came hurtling through the rear door. As he tried to bring the weapon to bear on Skeggjöld, Róta (“She-Who-Causes-Turmoil”) removed from the violin case she had been holding a double-bladed ax that could have done duty in a television commercial for men’s razors. Her howl of battle reverberated through the enclosed space as she leaped into the air, kicked with both feet off the chart table as a stunned Panopolous fell backward out of his chair, and brought the ax down blade-first.

“Skull-splitter eats!” she screamed, in a piercing but not unattractive soprano.

Falling from Truque’s suddenly limp fingers, the automatic rifle fell to the floor. It was followed by a substantial portion of his brains. Behind him, Weatherford came barreling in, a pistol clutched in each hand. One blew a hole through the center foreport just as Red Larson dove for the deck. The other dropped from the big man’s fingers as he felt himself lifted off the floor in Hrist’s astonishing grasp. Long ago Weatherford had played a couple of seasons of semi-pro football, before finding out that he could make a lot more money in a game with far fewer rules. He weighed well over three hundred pounds.

Hrist banged him headfirst into the ceiling, then rammed his flailing form into the nearest port. The thick, storm-resistant glass did not give. Not right away. When it finally did, Weatherford was already unconscious, his skull crushed by “The Shaker.”

Of Cruz’s people, only Lowenstein had enough sense to avoid the furious cataclysm that filled the bridge. It did him no good. Perceiving the advent of most welcome sea change aboard the Mary Anne, members of the long-quiescent crew chased the terrified computer specialist twice around the ship, finally cornering him on the bow. There was no need to weight the screaming, kicking passenger when they threw him overboard. It was over a hundred miles to the nearest landfall, and even in the tepid Gulf Stream, the open Atlantic at night is not a kind place to weak swimmers.

Though he held his pistol tightly, Cruz had yet to fire a shot. The fight had ended so quickly and so spectacularly that he had been stunned into immobility. Shocking enough it was to see his handpicked, street-hardened professionals disposed of by a bunch of tall blondes (and one redhead), but the manner of their dispatch had been so brutal as to scarcely be believed. He felt as if he were partaking of a bad dream from which he would soon awaken.

Something hit him in the middle of his back and pushed him forward. Behind him, teeth clenched, Red Larson had taken out six years’ worth of frustration in that single shove.

“Paid off,” the captain growled. “My debt is paid, Cruz. Go back to New York. Tell your people to leave me and my family alone.” His eyes glistened as he regarded the five women: all beautiful, all breathing hard, and all drenched in the blood of his enemies. Behind them he could see concerned members of his crew, good friends all, bunching up in the ship’s corridor as they tried to steal a glimpse of the bridge.

Cornered in the center, Cruz had nowhere to turn. That these women were rather more than what they appeared to be was now brutishly self-evident. That he could not fight them, when experienced killers like Truque and Sandino had failed, was equally apparent. But he had not survived in his chosen profession for as long as he had by turning pussy in the face of adversity. Whirling, he stepped behind the old captain and put the pistol in his right hand against the other man’s temple.

“All right now! I don’t know who you are or what you are, but I have a cargo to deliver.” His voice was threatening, steady. “Don’t think you can frighten me, because there are people I work for who are more terrible than you can imagine. If I fail, they will kill me slowly. So—put down your weapons and back out of this bridge, now. Stay below, out of my way.” He pressed the muzzle of the pistol harder into Larson’s temple, so that it forcefully dimpled the flesh. “Otherwise this man dies before you can do anything to me.”