Vikings Of Asgard Chapter 1 Welcome to Asgard

In 1984 a street gang in Cincinnati break into the wrong place and are taken to an alternate earth five million year younger than their.

Don checked the darkness before his eyes focused on his companion, DC, whom the cops knew as Douglas Carter. He watched DC slide his pry-bar into the old padlock holding the warehouse side door shut.

Clatter, bang

Steven, the third and youngest member of their group, hissed. “Blow a damn trumpet next time.”

Don smiled. Steven’s overreaction to the noise was predictable. DC and the young Black man argued every time they worked together. Yet Benny kept putting them on jobs together.

He did shift his gaze toward the street. That noise had been louder than he liked. Breaking in at midnight had advantages, but fewer people and less traffic meant the sound carries.

He saw no one, and no lights came on.

Glaring at Steven, DC pulled the door open.

Irrraak

The door hinges groaned in high pitch, and far louder noise, than popping the lock. Even DC scanned the street in alarm.

“We are not closing that door unless we come back with oil.” DC’s voice, little more than a whisper, forced Don to strain to hear him. “A year and a half without being opened. We should have thought of bringing oil.”

Still, no lights came on and no one appeared on the street.

Steven stepped into the long-empty warehouse, turned on his flashlight, and kept it pointed at the floor. He took no chance of the light being seen from outside.

“Damn,” Steven said in a whisper. His light revealed a large, brick-red shipping container. Such containers usually indicates that someone checks the place often.

DC, voice still little more than a whisper, pointed to the door they just came through. “Those hinges are rusty. Maybe it is empty and abandoned, too.” He also pulled out a flashlight, his little more than a penlight. This one had less risk of giving them away. He pointed with it. “It has a side door. Let’s check.”

DC followed Steven. Don brought up the rear. Leaving the warehouse door open bothered him. It would let anyone who looked this way know that someone had broken in.

Steven, holding his light before him and taking care to avoid all the trash, walked toward the dark gap in the side of the large red shipping container.

Don looked around and became puzzled. He couldn’t see how they had brought this shipping container in here. The door was too small and the nearest railway a mile away. The big metal container took up a third of the small warehouse floor. Was that why it was here, because no one could get it out?

DC voiced what occurred to Don before he could. “That would be the perfect place to set up the lab if it is empty.”

“Maybe,” offered Steven.

With quiet caution, they crept toward the gaping dark door. The metal feet under the container put its floor at waist height. Using his more powerful light, Steven illuminated the inside.

The container floor was clean. Seats and lockers occupied one end.

Don smiled. This would be a perfect place to replace the gang’s drug lab the cops had shut down last week.

DC, the most muscled of the three, climbed in first. He stood, then extended his hand and pulled Don up. Then he started approaching those lockers.

Don extended his hand to help the lighter weight Steven up.

As Steven stood, the door slid closed behind him, startling all three. The lights came on. Don felt a thump underfoot as if something heavy hit the floor.

From speakers in the ceiling came, “Welcome to Asgard,” in a clear, masculine voice. Then the side door slid open again.

Sunlight streamed in through the open door. The smells of a forest filled his nostrils, and the sounds of strange birds filled his ears. He and Steven stared at and listened to an early morning forest about one hundred yards away, with trees more massive than any he had seen before. He saw nothing of the midnight streets of Covington, Kentucky.

“You are now on the planet Asgard,” a voice announced.

Don whirled. A thin, brown-haired man, perhaps two inches shorter than Don’s own five-foot-eleven, stood in an open door between lockers which none of them had noticed. He wore slacks and a shirt, both of fine red silk.

“You can put that away,” he said, pointing at DC. “I just want to hire you for a day’s work. If you don’t want the job, I can take you right back.”

Don saw DC held his thirty-eight out and pointed. He hadn’t brought his, and doubted Steven was armed either. Breaking into some place armed carried a heavier penalty. DC, though, went nowhere unarmed.

“The job pays an ounce of gold each.”

The pawn shop on Madison would give them three hundred an ounce. That was a month’s wages for most people.

DC pointed his gun at the floor, not putting it away yet. “Doing what?” Cold suspicion filled his voice.

“Robbing a warehouse that is closed for the night, and no one is there. The Red Dragon,” he said, indicating the container in which they stood, “will appear inside it. As long as you don’t make a lot of noise, no one will know you are even there.”

“Valuable stuff?”

“Not very. The place supplies lumberjacks and timber companies in four states. I need enough tools to supply a small timber camp. You should be able to find and load everything on my list in a few hours. Then just keep loading the Red Dragon until it is full.”

“Four ounces of gold each,” DC counter-offered.

“Expensive.”

“Still a lot less than buying that stuff.”

“True. You have a deal.”

Don and Steven looked at each other, wicked grins on their faces. That was over a thousand each.

The brown-haired man pulled out a purse and counted out twelve gold coins, giving four to each. Being last, Don could see that only a few remained in the purse when the man finished.

Looking out the door at the forest there again, he asked, “This really a different world. It looks like Earth.”

The man in red replied, “This is an entirely different universe. This one is five million years younger than yours. This planet is identical to the Earth as it was five million years ago. It is the year 1984 on your Earth. The warehouse you are going to rob is on an Earth five years younger than yours. It’s 1979 there, but otherwise identical.”

“Time travel?” Steven said in excitement.

“Not quite. Nothing done here affects your past or present. It only changes what happens here on this planet from this day forward.”

Don asked, “How were we brought here?”

“This is the Red Dragon, one of the most advanced Interdimensional Transportation Craft, or IT, in existence. Unlike most, this ITC has no limit to how many worlds it can reach.”

With that, the brown-haired man backed into the door, which closed. Then so did the side door. They felt another thump in the floor.

Frigid air slapped Don in the face when the door opened.

“Damn, it is cold out there.”

Over the speakers came the brown-haired man’s voice. “It is January here and we are further north than your Cincinnati, in northeast Oregon. There are warm coats in the lockers.”

Three lockers to the left of the door the man had used popped open. Don reached in and picked up a coat. He knew it would be large on him and the identical one Steven had would be a tent on him.

“What have we here?” DC said as he pulled a gun belt out.

Don checked and saw one in his locker too, behind where the coat had hung.

Over the speaker came, “You won’t need the Glocks here. The closest person is the gate guard, and he is more than a kilometer away. Beyond him is no one for kilometers. You will want them later when you unload the Red Dragon, to discourage local scavengers and predators”

DC hung the Glock back in the locker.

Don stuck his hands in the pockets of the oversized coat. There he found heavy-duty work gloves and put them on. Steven and DC did the same.

“First thing on the list is four-kilowatt generators. I need four of them. They are halfway down aisle three. There are hand carts just to your right.”

The Red Dragon was two-thirds full. “Time’s up; you have been at it for five hours. The assistant manager just arrived at the front gate. I had hoped for more, but we have all the most critical supplies.”

When the door opened, warm moist air flooded the container. So did a disturbing stench.

With both hands, Steven grabbed his nose and covered mouth. “What is that smell?” came out muffled.

“Mastodons. Stay inside until I get the tractor started. It has no muffler, and they don’t like it.”

“They’re dangerous?”

“No, but where you find them, you often find what hunts them, a saber-tooth tiger or other large predators.” He opened a locker to the right of his and pulled out a .30-30 rifle. Don could see an M16 and an AK-47 in that locker.

He asked, “Should I grab the M16 or the AK?”

“You shouldn’t need either, but if you want one, then take the M16. At the moment, all the ammo I have for the AK is in the gun. But an M16 is going to be in your way unloading this stuff. I’ll keep anything big away with the .30-30. A Glock can handle anything else. Go ahead and put your coats back and get the Glocks.”

Leaving the M16 there, Don moved to the locker from which he had taken the coat. Putting the coat and gloves away, he looked at the watch he wore: 6:32 A.M.

“It is daylight back home. It will be hard to sneak out of that building now.” If someone hadn’t reported the open door, he amended to himself.

“There are other places near your home I can arrive and leave unseen.”

Pulling off the oversized coat, he hung it back on the hook. Next, he strapped the Glock on, popped the magazine, and satisfied himself it was loaded. The gun belt held two more clips, and he checked both.

As he turned that way, the far end of the Red Dragon opened. The whole wall slid straight up. Beyond, about two hundred yards away, another container, a green one, stood on a concrete slab.

DC expressed surprise, “You have more of these IPTs!”

“ITC, and yes, there are sixty-four of them here.”

“Who are you, and why do you need sixty-four of these?”

“Who am I? I am King Peter. This entire universe is mine. In a year’s time, I will have need of all of these.”

“How many live here?”

“I haven’t started populating my kingdom yet. I have just been hiring people to accomplish tasks for me. It won’t be long now before I begin the next step. Just a few more details to take care of.”

The man calling himself King Peter hopped out, climbed on the tractor, and started it.

A painful roar assaulted their ears.

Steven sprinted over to one of the cases of ear protectors they just stolen. Tearing it open, he put a pair of the headphone-style ear protectors on. Then he tossed pairs to DC and Don.

When the wagon arrived at the end of the Red Dragon, he hopped on and offered a set to King Peter.

“I have no need of them.”

Don, Steven, and DC looked at each other in surprise. How had they heard him?

Puzzled, they began loading the wagon as King Peter watched.

With the Red Dragon still half full, King Peter stopped them from loading more. “This is enough for this trip. Climb on top, and you can unload it in my warehouse.” He wasn’t yelling, yet neither the loud tractor nor the ear protectors kept them from hearing him perfectly, as if they all sat in a quiet room.

As he sat on top of the stuff on the wagon, Don’s eyes widened. He shifted his gaze between the two things he saw, trying to decide which, the mastodons or King Peter’s Castle, to focus on. Mastodons, he decided.

He didn’t know much about elephants, but these did not appear much larger to him. These were not the terrifying brutes of the movies. They possessed smaller tusks than the movie ones, too. They grazed far to the right of the castle, slowly moving away from the noise of the tractor.

King Peter stopped after only a dozen yards, left the engine running, stood, then unslung his .30-30.

Don wondered why he was going to kill one, since they were moving away.

King Peter snapped it to his shoulder, aimed, and fired in barely a heartbeat.

Crack!

A saber-tooth tiger sprang from where it had been hiding in the grass, screaming in pain.

Crack!

A second shot stilled it.

He told them, “I’ll come back for it while you are unloading.”

A few minutes later, Steven said something that Don, sitting next to him, couldn’t make out.

King Peter didn’t appear to have that problem. He answered, “The outer wall is one point five kilometers by three kilometers, and thirty-five meters tall. It is four meters thick. The central building is seven-hundred-fifty meters on each side, and thirty stories tall. It is currently sealed, and I am using other buildings and only unsealing it when I need to do something in there.”

The closer the tractor approached, the more impressive those walls appeared. The gates stood open.

King Peter answered Don’s unasked question. “Not often, but on occasion, predators do come inside, but not the really big ones such as the large cats.”

He drove them through the arched tunnel in the massive walls of the castle.

The five-story buildings flanking the gate inside those walls made the entrance longer than the stated four meters. They exited the tunnel onto a broad boulevard. Across from them sat a massive structure extending hundreds of yards in either direction. It looked to be made of polished silver.

As if the King had read that thought, he told them, “My Palace isn’t made of silver. It is actually the same color as the castle walls. The silver color is a consequence of sealing it.”

He turned the tractor to the right.

Beautiful five-story buildings lined the castle wall. As they rode down the boulevard, he saw small alleyways separated them, leading to side doors. While no two buildings looked the same, all were of a similar style and didn’t clash with each other. They were beautiful, but the emptiness of them disquieted Don.

The buildings on the road paralleling the southern castle wall looked to be warehouses, though more tasteful than warehouses usually were. The doors stood open on the first and King Peter drove the tractor inside, then shut down the engine.

Excitement filled DC’s voice, “Damn!”

Startled by his tone, Don looked to see what DC had seen. Surprised, he asked, “You outfitting an army?” Spilled cases of guns and ammunition, mixed in with electric and plumbing hardware, occupied a corner.

“It isn’t as many as it appears, three hundred M16s, and five hundred 9mm Glocks. Roughly thirty thousand rounds for each. That wouldn’t even outfit the guards this place will eventually require. Next to the guns are gas cans. Fill the tractor, then start unloading. “

“Where did you get all this?” Steven asked.

“A train yard on the same Earth you got the tools from. I got William Bonny and his crew to rob a parked train for me.”

Surprised, Don asked, “You had Billy the Kid here to rob a train?”

“Until he turned a gun on me. No one survives betraying me.” He pointed to the pile. “One of the many things his group did was pull the wagon in here, then just push everything off instead of unloading it. I trust you will not repeat that mistake.”

The man who called himself King Peter climbed down from the tractor and strolled from the building.

Steve said, “Do you really think he had Billy the Kid here?”

DC answered, “Yes. And he killed him without giving it a second thought. The man will do the same to us if you give him any excuse. He is one cold killer. Let’s get this unloaded and stacked.”

Funny, DC calling someone else a cold killer. Don once watched him cut a kid’s throat just because he wouldn’t let DC use his lighter.

He jumped down and grabbed a gas can, empty. So were the next eight. Then he found a full one. “Anyone know where the gas goes on a tractor?”

“I’ll do it,” said DC. “Used to drive one on Uncle Jim’s place down in Corbin.”

Don handed him the can and began unloading the wagon. Steven joined in.

They were putting the last case from the wagon on the stack when King Peter returned, carrying a cooler under one arm and a small cask under the other.

“Lunchtime.”

Foil-wrapped plates came out of the cooler.

“What is it?” asked Steven.

“Roast mastodon, vegetables, and sweet potatoes. You have to slow cook mastodon, or it is chewy with an unpleasant taste. This meat cooked for sixteen hours and is quite good. The cask has an excellent ale from a small English town.”

The meat tasted even stronger than venison, which Don never cared for. Yet all that hard work had him ravenous. He finished the whole plate. DC and Steven, he noted, ate it with a deep appreciation for the strong flavor.

“Okay gentleman,” King Peter said as they polished off the last few drops of the delightful ale, “let’s get this finished and you back to your Earth.”

At the Red Dragon, King Peter turned off the tractor. “The mastodons have moved on. You don’t need the tractor noise to drive away tigers anymore. As DC can drive this, he can be the one to take you to and from the warehouse. When you are finished, each of you grab a Glock and box of ammunition as a bonus. I’ll be back to take you home when you finish.”

Loading and unloading the wagon went much faster. In under three hours, they were getting those Glocks.

King Peter walked in carrying a gold bar. He addressed DC. “Do you think you can sneak eight barrels into the warehouse by next week? Six of gasoline, one diesel, and one of motor oil. This would cover that and give you a very nice profit.”

“I can do that,” DC replied with confidence.

“Good. I have another job if you want it. Any or all of you and more, up to seven people. It is a week’s worth of work here, plus making a few raids. This time, the danger is far higher and will include killing the guards protecting gold, silver, and gems. Half of that goes to me. You and your crew can divide the other half. Each man’s take will be well over a hundred kilograms of treasure.” He stopped to gauge their interest.

“The other raids are for getting supplies I need, like the run you just made. Don’t decide now. Just be there if you want to. Don’t tell anyone about the Red Dragon and Asgard. Not even people you are bringing on the job.”

Leaving the tractor there, King Peter led them back to the Red Dragon on foot.