Exceptions to Reality

At Sea

The juxtaposition of entirely different story ideas is one of the joys of writing. This is especially true of science fiction and fantasy, wherein the writer has access to absolutely anything that can be conjured, no matter how seemingly unrelated. The only rule is that the final result has to make sense as a story. You can mix together all manner of ingredients, but the result has to be something palatable to the mind.

Grounding fantasy in the real world is always fun. You have the opportunity to upset all manner of perceptual applecarts. If your concept works well, you also enjoy the pleasure of surprising the reader. Sometimes the most disparate notions will come together to produce a viable tale. Once the story is plotted and the rough draft completed, the writer then has the fun of sprinkling it with details, like adding lace and sequins to a dress. The design of women’s earrings, for example, is not something I often find myself having to ponder when putting in those little touches that add verisimilitude to a fantasy. Nor are the minutiae of drug-running, commercial fishing, and Scandinavian mythology.

Especially not in the same story…

“Hoy, Cruz—there are five horses on the stern!”

Sandino was a big man with a squinched puss and huge arms the color of aged bratwurst. Right now his expression was slowly subsiding into his face, like a backstreet into a Florida sinkhole, swallowing his features whole. It was left to his voice, which had the consistency of toxic cheese-whip, to convey his confusion.

Although he was onboard a modern longline fishing boat, Cruz did not know much about fishing. This did not matter, because he did not care much about fishing. Boats, however, were something else. Boats could go where planes and cars could not. As far as fishing boats were concerned, the best thing about them was that they stank. The big swordfish boat reeked of blood, guts, fish oil, and sea bottom. This made it perfect for Cruz’s purpose. This was his ninth run on the Mary Anne, and there was no reason to believe it would be any less successful than the previous eight. No one suspected she carried any cargo beyond the limp mass of dead billfish in her hold. No one suspected that one particular dead swordfish contained twenty million dollars’ worth of pure top-grade Bolivian cocaine that did not normally form part of a billfish’s diet. Compressed and packed into dozens of waterproof, odor-proof, break-proof packages, this highly inhalable product of the Andean hinterland fit neatly into the honored fish’s hollowed-out body cavity.

Cruz did know enough to realize that the presence of five horses on the stern of the Mary Anne, 120 miles out from Providence, Rhode Island, was not in accord with normal commercial fishing procedure. Even if the horses had been dumped at sea, they could not have climbed aboard. Since he had not heard the metallic bang-and-rattle of the big winch that was used to haul in the longlines, they could not somehow have been lifted aboard.

It occurred to Cruz that Sandino might be enjoying a joke at his expense. A single hard stare was enough to put that possibility to rest. There was a lot of meat on Sandino, but not much of it was gray matter. Nor was it the sort of gag that Truque or Weatherford would concoct. Lowenstein—now, he was different. The computer and communications expert was clever. Cruz’s brows furrowed. Too clever to come up with a dumb line about horses on the stern.

“I don’t have time for stupid shit now, Sandino. We’ll be having to look out for Coast Guard soon.”

Cruz turned back to the thick port glass that looked out over the foredeck of the Mary Anne. Sullen and silent as they always were in the presence of their unwanted passengers, the crew of the fishing boat went about the business of securing their vessel for the night. They didn’t like Cruz and his unpleasant companions; did not like the way they comported themselves while onboard. Didn’t like the way they hectored and taunted Captain Red and his son David. Did not like the way they acted as if they owned the Mary Anne. Why the captain tolerated their presence on so many trips even his closest friends did not know. But when asked about it, Red just stared off into the distance and mumbled something about old obligations, and told the questioners to carry on. Because they loved Red, and because he always found swordfish and made them money, the crew ground their teeth and held their peace.

“Nice cloud cover,” Cruz declared conversationally to Gunnar “Red” Larson as he peered up at the night sky. “Fog would be better.”

“For you. Not for me.” Larson kept his gnarled fisherman’s hands on the ship’s wheel and his eyes straight ahead. He strove to focus only on his instruments: the radar, the GPS, the depth finder, and the weather scan. Most of the devices arrayed across the broad, glowing console he could ignore, knowing as he did the way back to the Mary Anne’s home berth the way a puffin knows its flight path back to the North Sea cliffs of its birth. He hated the wiry, soft-talking son-of-a-bitch standing next to him. Hated the man’s face, his manner, his clothing, the smelly Indonesian clove cigarettes he chain-smoked, and his friends. Most of all, he hated Cruz’s business.

No, he told himself as the ulcer-sparked pain that would not go away spasmed his gut and made him wince imperceptibly. There was one more thing he hated: the old gambling debt that had put him in bondage to Cruz more than six years ago. The debt he could not seem to satisfy. The debt from which he had begun to fear he would never emerge.

Three years ago he had stumbled drunkenly out of Portuga’s Bar and Grill on Sixth Street, his arm around David’s shoulder, and on a quiet night in the middle of the river park, had broken down and confessed all to his only son. David, fine young college-educated boy that he was, had listened in stony but sympathetic silence while he waited for his tough-as-hooks father to stop sobbing. Then he had proposed that Red immediately repeat the story to the police. The old man had violently demurred. He knew people like Cruz, he explained. Had known them most of his life. Lock up Cruz and his minions, and others of his filthy kind would take vengeance. Not out of any love for Cruz, who after all was a sly and successful competitor, but as a warning to others. To keep their mouths shut. To pay their debts.

Besides, old man Larson had mumbled, it was only one or two trips a year. Just one or two trips. Meet the courier boat in the open Atlantic, transfer the noisome illegal cargo, stuff it in a conscripted sacrificial swordfish, and it was done. No violence, no confrontations. At the wharf, that one fish would be purchased by a certain buyer from New York, and that was the end of it. Year after year. Soon the debt would be paid, he had assured a dubious David. Soon they would be free of Cruz and his grinning, scornful face. Soon, soon…

Was soon, Red Larson reflected as he stared resolutely out the port at his sulking crew and the gathering night, ever to come?

“Fog is better for you,” he repeated. “Not for me. I am responsible for the boat.”

Puffing on one of his sweet, execrable cigarettes, Cruz looked away and tittered. “‘Horses on the stern.’ You’d think Lowenstein, that squeaky little nerd asshole, could come up with something better.”

Unconsciously Larson looked away from the black water athwart the bow and over at his noxious passenger. “What the devil are you talking about?”

“I know what he is talking about. The brigand is insulting our mounts.”

Uttered in a most distinctively steely feminine voice, the observation was bizarre enough. Turning simultaneously there on the bridge of the Mary Anne, the sight that Cruz and his sulky captive captain beheld was stranger still. But not, a captivated Cruz reflected, in any way unpleasant. So taken was he by the unexpected vision that he barely gave a thought to the notion that it might somehow be connected to the putative presence of multiple horses on the stern.

Crowding onto the bridge were five of the most simply stunning, utterly gorgeous women Cruz or Larson or Nick Panopolous, who was standing with his mouth open at the far side of the chart table, had ever seen. All of them were blond. Startlingly blond, except for one scintillating redhead, and all had eyes of electric blue, save for two who flashed green, the redhead among them. Variously attired, none was dressed for open-ocean deep-sea fishing. Common to all of them, though visible more on some than on others, was scarlet underwear. One wore a severe off-the-shoulder black dress suitable for performance with a symphony orchestra. She was carrying a violin case. Despite this, her appearance was no more incongruous than that of her four companions. Lost in the rear of the crowd, though not unhappily so, was a visibly dazzled David Larson.

“Hi, Dad,” the young fisherman called out. “I’d like you to make the acquaintance of some new friends of mine.”

Before a flabbergasted Red Larson could reply, the suddenly animated Cruz stepped forward. “It is lovely to meet you all, senoritas. Though I have no idea how you come to be here, on this miserable boat in the middle of the open ocean, I gladly welcome you aboard.” He leered unashamedly at the nearest woman. She wore a comfortable brown business suit, practical flats, and stood five-nine, maybe five-ten. She was also the shortest member of the group. “I assure you I was not intentionally insulting your mounts. Though I am always available to such charming company to discuss matters of mounting.”

Pushing past him without a word, the blonde confronted the bewildered captain. Hands on hips, she looked him slowly up and down, leaned forward to peer deep into his eyes, reached out to take several of the thinning hairs atop his head and rub them between thumb and forefinger, all the while sniffing at him with a nose that was as pert and perfect as the rest of her. She smelled, old man Larson decided, of wild honey and expensive leather, of crisp fresh air and slow-warmed Cognac. Married for thirty-six years to the same woman, he nonetheless felt dizzy in the presence of this impossibly flawless golden goddess.

“Do not be alarmed,” she told him forthrightly. “My name is Herfjötur.”

“Say what, girl?” Even though she was facing away from him, Cruz continued to stare at her, and not at the back of her head.

She spun around to confront the smirking Colombian. “‘War-Fetter’ to you, blackguard.” Raising a hand, she gestured at her watchful companions. “These are my sisters. That’s Sigrdrifa. Next to her are Hrist and Róta. The tall one behind them in the evening gown is Skeggjöld.” The “tall one,” Red Larson noted, towered over his son, who stood six-foot-one in his stocking feet. “When in his misery and desperation a true scion of the Old Believers called out to us”—she indicated David Larson—“we came as soon as we could. The others would have come as well, but they are presently occupied.” She glanced enigmatically back at the confounded captain. “We are wiring Asgard, you know. Being on another temporal plane creates problems that most installers cannot imagine.”

“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.”

Exchanging glances, the women did as they were told. Ax followed sword in clattering to the floor. Cruz started to relax a little. Whatever these bitches were, they were not omnipotent. He only had to stay awake until they made port. Another day and night. He could do that. He had done similar things before, on other desperate occasions, and had always survived. Did they have any idea who they were dealing with?

One by one, the women started to file off the bridge. David Larson would not go with them, would not leave his father. That was fine with Cruz. Two hostages were better than one.

A sudden coldness brushed the smuggler’s face, chilling his skin. It was unusual to feel such on the bridge, which was always kept warm in defiance of the sometimes brutal cold outside. Taking his eyes off the doorway for just an instant, he glanced upward in the direction of the breeze.

The needle-pointed icicle that fell from the ceiling—it had been flash-frozen by Sigrdrifa, alias “Victory Blizzard”—went right through his left eye.

Staggering and screaming, he stumbled away from old man Larson, who perceptively fell to the deck as several shots from the agonized smuggler’s pistol rang out wildly. They hit nothing but a framed antique chart on the wall and a surprisingly sturdy metal purse that Hrist thrust forward to shield the younger Larson. Striding over to the wildly sobbing figure that was now rolling about uncontrollably on the deck, Sigrdrifa dispatched the half-blinded Cruz with a single swift, quick slice of the sharply curved blade she took from her elegant attaché case. The drug-runner’s legs kicked out violently several times before quivering to a halt.

“So perish all enemies of good fisherfolk.” Turning, she ululated a victory cry that was taken up and amplified by her sisters. The Mary Anne shuddered with the force of it, and members of the crew who were used to hauling in longlines in howling Atlantic gales found themselves covering their ears.

Reassembling on the bridge, with the wide-eyed crew once more crowding as close as they could to the gore-soaked scene of battle, the quintet of bloodied blondes (and one redhead) confronted Red Larson and his son.

“We have to go now,” the indifferently blood-soaked Róta informed them.

“Yes.” Hrist checked her Patek Philippe chronometer. “I have a meeting in Zurich tomorrow at nine, and with the time difference I will get little enough sleep as it is.”

Sigrdrifa nudged Cruz’s body with a high-heeled shoe. “Sorry about the mess. It was not exactly Ragnarok, but it is good to still be able to do battle on behalf of a noble cause now and then.” Raising her stained short sword, she sensuously licked blood from the flat of the blade. “Keeps a girl in shape.”

Red Larson swallowed hard. “I hardly know what to say, how to thank you…”

Herfjötur smiled. Stepping over Truque’s body, she put a reassuring hand on the captain’s shoulder. “Thank your son, who, in a moment of desperate need, had the foresight to call upon those of us who have watched over your tribe for millennia.” Leaning forward, she gave him an encouraging peck on the cheek. The old man did not blush, but he was glad his wife was not present.

As for David Larson, he was the dazed recipient of kisses from every one of the women. It was enough to make a weaker man succumb, but David had been toughened by years of hard work on the Mary Anne. Still, when she bent him back to buss him most soundly, Skeggjöld nearly sprained his spine. Her ax earrings fell forward, tickling his cheeks as he felt the salt of her tongue slide into his mouth. The salt, he knew, came from the blood she had licked off her sword. This realization somewhat mitigated his otherwise complete enjoyment of the moment.

Too awestruck to talk among themselves, the crew gathered on the stern’s deck to watch as, one by one, the women mounted their snow-white steeds. With a kick and a leap, they soared away from the Mary Anne, calling out boldly to one another as they rose into the night sky. Most prominent among them was the beauteous Herfjötur, who was still upset that in the heat of battle she had broken the heel of one of her handmade Spanish pumps.

“We’ll have to get the bridge cleaned up before we make port,” a soft-voiced Panopolous whispered to his captain. “The stains don’t look like fish blood.”

“At least we have the supplies to do that.” Red Larson looked and felt better than he had in a decade. The curse that was Cruz and his business had been lifted. The mysterious disappearance at sea of the smuggler and his henchmen should be enough to keep any curious fellow dealers away from the Mary Anne. And if it was not, Larson mused, why, his son could always put in a call for help to an escort service the likes of which was not to be found in the Providence Yellow Pages.

High overhead, the aurora borealis suddenly flashed to life, filling the night sky above the steadily chugging fishing boat with shimmering luminescence.

“You know what they say causes the light of the aurora, David?” Larson had an arm around his son’s tired shoulders. “It’s the flickering of light off the shields of the Valkyries.”

The younger Larson nodded. “From designer-branded armor I wouldn’t expect anything less.”