(sci-fi story)

Breaking news

“Now you are listening to CMM news. Today, on February 27, 2020, our astronomers from such European countries as Sweden, Ukraine and Germany, witnessed a strange space phenomenon when Mars disappeared from the screens of telescopes for almost eight hours. At the same time, not far from it, something resembling an unregistered cigar-looking asteroid exploded emitting extra-long radiant rays in different directions. We invited Professor Dupinski, a specialist in all extraterrestrial issues, to comment on these two unusual sky phenomena.”

“Good evening, firstly, I guess that our viewers should not be worried, for it is a sort of magic tricks staged by our showbiz star David Copperfield. Just a month ago he promised to take any stars from the sky for his female fans. He said he did. This magic trick just only sky rocketed his standing to a sky-high level.”

“Professor, and what could you say about the specific explosion, which happened not far from Mars?”

“That`s very simple. Our creative Chinese engineers tested breakthrough fireworks which got a reflection not far from Mars. You know that all these optic effects with their visual illusions and motion after images look so unusual that sometimes they perplex even experienced specialists in astronomy. You remember that not so long ago a spectacular Aurora Polaris was taken for hundreds of tiny explosions by a group of independent researchers around the world. They are just amateurs thinking that they are the best at everything. Professionals don`t think so. Professionals don`t wear rosy glasses they look critically at all events and move gradually from low-quality substandard work to high quality standard work.”

“Thank you! That was our guest — Professor Dubinski.”

One week before

Kaia, a cheetah-licious blonde lady with long loose hair, approached a rough granite rock covered with an ivory snow blanket. The glamour woman was dressed like a top model from a classy ski-resort wearing everything white including her groovy ski goggles.

She bit her lower lip and looked slightly irritated. After taking off her vogue white glove, she put two fingers in her mouth and suddenly whistled like a raging Viking`s wife from wild Galdhopiggen area seeking her cheating husband. “I know that you see me! Stop playing seek-and-hide, lumberjecks!”After the detailed examining of the steep rock and hard stomping on the stony land covered with frozen ice patches, she raised her voice once again, “Hey you! Stop sneak around like chickens! Show me your slasher smiles!” To her deep despair nothing happened, the white mountain tops answered with their sublime silence. Kaia stamped her foot once again and suddenly fell down losing her balance. Tears flew down from her furious light-blue eyes. Like a flash of lightning, all real and cooked-up troubles stuffed her classy coiffure head. After the landslide victory, while fighting with the last fleeing spherical ship of Snotty Snakes, the space ships of Gudmund, Hulk and Gustav were seriously damaged, her own life was hanging on the abyss edge, and this manly moron Gustav stopped courting her to pick up a younger flirty-fluffy Göta. Kaia hugged her knees and started screaming silently trying not to attract anybody`s attention.

Suddenly an oval hatch, hidden in the steep rock not far from her, moved aside and the strong hands of Gustav grabbed her like a bag of bones bringing her through the smorgasbord of zigzag corridors leading to a well lit hall equipped with transparent computer screens and other hi-tech gadgets.

“Watch out! My body is still black and blue! My leg is aching! I know that you have your own traumas. Be careful! Gustav! Besides, don`t feel me up like your dudette Göta! You made your choice, cheeky cheat!”

At last, Kaia freed herself from clingy hands of Gustav, the six feet high man with well-trimmed beard and short mustache.

Kaia looked around the airy hall and noticed smiling Folke, a bear-looking man in a black multilayed suit, blue-blooded Agnetta in a gorgeous Scandinavian gown and ladette-looking Göta, in a knitted black and white Scandinavian dress covered with white deer and black octagonal stars.

Kaia screwed up her eyes ironically and clapped her hands, “Wow! The same people, the same oak table, and the same bottles of glogg!”

“Yeah! Everything is the same! There is one difference! This time we do not invite our Ice Queen from Nordtoppen, Kaia, to take this empty Bjork wooden chair! Because of your stupidity and your oldie boss Gudmund, we almost lost our lives two weeks ago!” Folke looked at his companions and kept on, “Your brainless blabbing through walkies-talkies identified our space ships and almost …killed us. We permitted you to enter just only to convey our message to Gudmund. He BROKE HIS OWN ORDER about avoiding any gadgets for communication before the operation, during the operation and next day after the operation. Instead of it, you started yelling like kids getting ice-cream and congratulating each other on this glory blah-blah victory…As a result, you are bruised, Gudmund is wounded, and we are kicking alive like gleeful goners…”

Kaia got blushed for the first time in her last ten years not knowing what to say…

Seeing her reaction, Folke added, “In two weeks we will demand to gather our 12 Round Table Members and to choose a new boss. Gudmund was a hero of the ‘Survival Wars’ at the beginning of the XIX century but now in 2020 he got too old and tired to lead us through new challenges to new victories.”

Kaia took a seat on the floor like an outcast and burst out crying, “It was my fault…I was the first who took a walkie-talkie…All Snotty Snakes fled from the Earth like rats in all directions…I thought that it was the end…I was too emotional…Gustav ditched me…I was too happy because of the victory and, at the same time, too unhappy…Gudmund is a wise leader…No, don`t you dare!”

“Why not?” Folke sipped glogg.

“Eternals communicate just only with Gudmund…”

“You mean those seven Grand Goldie Chaps from Tartarus called ‘Wise Magi’ living just a bit longer than Gudmund, seen by nobody and heard by nobody too, right?

“Now there are only three of them. Snotty Snakes killed four of them and paid for that with the lives of several dozens of them, having lost seven key bases,” Kaia stopped crying out.

“What do they want from us, these Never-Seen-and-Never-Heard-Tartarus-Oldies?” Gustav raised his right eyebrow.

“Gudmund communicated with just only one of them…I think they are afraid of us…however… they gave us inestimable info…” Kaia stopped sobbing and wiped her wonderfully wailful eyes.

“What information could they get from their deep and dark caves located somewhere 50 or 70 miles down underground? Don` make us laughing,” Gustav grinned and drank his glass of glogg with one gulp.

“They pinpointed the exact spots where several of Snotty Snakes got landed. The Sicko Snotty who crashed our ships is also there…”

“Where is it?” The neck of Folke got strained.

“Mars. In those bunkers, our Nordic guys left in 1956. Right after the moment when these scaly freaks exploded our irrigation system with their nukes…”

“Our channels…”

“Year, our channels, built by our ancestors hundreds of years ago,” Kaia bit her lower lip once again.

“Sounds funny! At first they filled out bunkers with radiation and now they rushed there to smell it with their stuck-up noses. They can`t grasp simple things about spitting in a well with clean water…Something else?” Gustav stood up and started walking back and forth.

“Something else,” Kaia came to the table and took a glass of glogg too. “A large group of Snotty Snakes are approaching our Solar system on a something looking like an asteroid or a small planet. Nobody knows their exact number,” Kaia drank glogg and sat on the place of Gustav.

“Shitty skitsnack!” Folke hit the table with his heavy fist, ready to overthrow the oak table.

Agnetta took his hand and tried to calm him down, “Don`t you exaggerate, our Ice Queen käresta?”

“No, but for this bad news we got a good one. Our allies from Milky Way Cygnus constellation promised to neutralize them, Gudmund contacted them just yesterday…”

Folke stood up too and gazed into the eyes of Kaia, “So you came here to…”

“I would like to apologize to you for my gruesome gaffe…to ask you not to rebel against Gudmund…and to join our forces flying to…” Kaia made a pause…

“Mars?” Gustav and Folke burst out laughing. “I almost broke my backbone and Gustav has several broken ribs…” Folke was ready to turn Kaia out-of-doors.

“Though,” Gustav came closer to Kaia and gave her a once-over, “You can correct the situation, Ice Queen.”

“I am all ears,” suddenly Kaia`s hands started shivering.

“I will agree just only upon one condition. And I think that Folke will support me,” Gustav looked at Folke and after getting an affirmative nod added, “You should become my wife…right now and without any hesitations.”

Kaia got choked, “And how about Göta… Do you mean that I ought to be your second wife?”

Gustav slowly embraced Kaia, “The first one. Göta will be the second. Besides, she is not against,” Gustav turned his head to smiling Göta, who nodded her head too.

“And we will live together in this magic mountain cave, right?” Kaia looked around once again.

“No, I have already spruced up our old office placed twenty miles from here. It is just a bit smaller, though it has one substantial advantage. It has one window, and you can enjoy splendid sunsets from there.”

“Wow! One window! It is also a mountain cave, is not it?” Kaia broke free from the clutches of Gustav and started going back and forth too.

“On the one hand, yeah. On the other hand, it looks so romantic,” Gustav took a seat and continued in a low voice, “In other case…”

“I see what you mean under your ‘in other case’. You just twist my hands…To live in a ‘happy Swedish family’ and to preserve our Nordic coalition or to stay proud and independent on the ruins of our unity…” Kaia took the glass of glogg and drank the second half of it.

Gustav looked at her with deep interest, “So what variant did you choose, Ice Queen, the first one or the second?”

“Though it sounds a little bizarre for me, I would choose the first variant,” she put her shaking hands in her deep pockets.

Gustav came to her and stretched out his heavy hand, “I knew that you are a smart woman. So let`s strike a deal…”

Kaia stood up and got blushed once again, “Right here, on this table?”

Gustav and Folke did their best to keep their faces dead-pan.

“No, there is one vacant sleeping room here…It will be yours…” Gustav could not hide his slightly visible smile. He led Kaia to her sleeping room not forgetting to turn back and to wink at Göta, Agnetta and Folke…

Folke put his hands behind his head and pronounced thoughtfully, “This time we will fly to the Mars…Gustav knows what for… and I…What did I forget there?”