by Ari Bach
“Honestly, I never heard of such a thing until I turned landlubber. If there are fish armies, they weren’t talking about it where I came from. Plenty of pirates and gangs. It’s like America down there. A degenerate, dank world. One time I made noodles and—”
“For the love of Odin, Veikko, not that story on her first night here.” Vibeke stared daggers at him. He stayed quiet long enough for another man to clear his throat and approach their table.
“Hi, Violet, I’m Øystein. I’ll be helping with your training.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, and he waved and departed.
“Othala team,” Vibeke thought aloud, “… Ozzy, Orchid, and…. Shoot, who else?”
“Opeth,” said Veikko. “She’s from the Israeli craters, like Gehenna from Gebo team. They’re both covered in tribal scars and tattoos. You won’t find anyone in this pit that fit into the outside world, over or under water. A good deal of us have had military careers as short and distinguished as your own. Balder even fought in the paroxysmal holocaust and the Catholic uprisings.”
Violet had never heard of either event. There was so much she didn’t know. She feared she would take ages to learn enough just to converse with her new friends. Veikko caught her worried expression.
“You’ll catch up,” he said. “As soon as you start orientation tomorrow, you’ll be butter in the porridge.”
“How many people are there exactly?”
“There are seventy-two people across nineteen teams. Alf doesn’t have anyone else in A, only three of us in Valknut. Then there are just under three hundred people in the ravine: civilians and doctors and specialists.”
“Where will I start out?”
“Individual training begins the first day,” said Vibeke. “They start out with the tailor. You’ll get your Thaco armor tomorrow.”
Violet looked around. Everyone was clothed neck to foot, all in the same skintight armored jumpsuits of varying colors.
“It’s very comfortable,” Vibeke continued. “Keeps you cool in heat and warm in cold. If you go outdoors now, it’ll grow fur. If it’s hot out, it goes thin. Changes color for camouflage, or style, deflects most projectiles and beams. And much, much more. It’s like a second skin.” She looked at Veikko again. “Just don’t think you can go without bathing.”
Veikko hid his face.
“Is it powered for lifting, jumping?”
“No,” said Veikko. “We prefer to grow our own muscles.”
“But they do hook into specialty gear,” added Vibeke. “Vacuum gear, water gear, gravity suit, varia suit, acid suit, sticky suit, powered suit if you really need one. Anything.”
“Sticky suit?” Violet felt lost again.
Veikko grinned.
“It’s a sex aid for—”
“It’s for air travel and scaling,” Vibs interrupted. “Sticks to things, like the outside of pogos or flat walls. But before armor you’ll do the medical stuff, not too different from your army checkup.”
Violet remembered the army routine. “Then the oath?”
Veikko laughed. “No, none of that old crap. There is a sort of treaty. You have to memorize it, but that’s not hard because it’s four words long: ‘Don’t Fuck Shit Up.’”
“He’s actually telling the truth on that one,” Vibeke said. “It’s meant to be vague and subject to interpretation, but its nature is altogether serious: No party, whether they work for selfish gains or altruistic causes, is allowed to set the outside world into chaos. Underground individuals and organizations alike are all subject absolutely to it.”
“Robot,” Veikko whispered. He threw one of Violet’s uneaten “grapes” into the fire and watched it pop.
“Makes sense,” said Violet, “but who enforces it?”
“We don’t know much about them,” she said, “only that they scare the hell out of everyone here, even Alf. I’ve never seen them, but the description is black cloaks, always in pairs. Or one pair. See, we don’t know if it’s all the same duo or if there are thousands of them. In theory, they never come out, never have anything to do. But when they do, it’s final. They’re judges, jury, and mass executioner when they need to be. From what I’ve heard, they seem omnipresent and near omnipotent. They’re called the Geki.”
“And they control fire as a weapon, which probably looks really cool if it’s true,” said Veikko. “Now you know as much as anyone here.”
Violet was as happy to be told every detail as she was intimidated by the meaning of it. They were letting her in on the secrets as if she were trusted. She was trusted, she reminded herself. For the first time, she was included at the deepest level, and it made her feel worthy of hearing it all. She wanted to thank them for it, subtly. “Not a lot of ‘need to know basis’ here, is there?” she asked.
Vibeke seemed to understand her gratitude and answered, “No, no oaths, no salutes, no secrets from friends. If you’re loyal, you’re loyal because we’re worth your loyalty. If you turn on us, there would be a reason, either our fault for warranting it or our fault for selecting you. Either way we’d deserve it and have to fix the problem one way or another.”
She said “or another” with the clear meaning that they would kill her. Violet wasn’t offended by the idea. It made perfect sense. Vibeke was honest in the exact way the cops weren’t.
“You actually tell people the truth here,” Violet said with admiration.
“Well, she does,” chuckled Veikko.
“Secrets only make things inefficient. If you tell the elders that someone’s a traitor, they don’t ignore you. If someone discovers something, they don’t hide it from the juniors. If you’re in, you’re in. Alf knows what Balder knows what I know what Veikko knows and you’re about to learn.”
“And there’s gonna be a lot, tons of mind-rotting crap,” added Veikko, “But really, the guys in G team checked you out when they recruited you. They know how much your brain can hold, and they wouldn’t have taken you in if you couldn’t handle it.”
Despite Violet’s worries to the contrary, Veikko saying so didn’t feel like patronizing compliments. She wasn’t sure why, after a childhood of nothing but euphemism and white lies, she trusted them to do what nobody else had and treat her as an adult. It was what she had waited for her whole life. Now she had it, and it felt so good that she expected it to disappear by the next morning. Nothing so good could possibly last. She stopped the line of thought when a crowd of seven approached their table.
“I am Hellhammer!” shouted a giant, imposing man in black armor.
“And I’m Heckmallet,” said a petite woman with a squeaky voice.
“Hetfield,” called another man who appeared to be covered in burn scars. “Hammet’s in the medical bay, recovering from a slight bout of Descolada. We’re Haglaz, research and development specialists. Enchanté, Violet.”
She nodded kindly, forgetting every name as she heard the next. Another spoke. “I’m Necrosis—we’re Naudiz team.” He pointed to his companions. “Neurosis, Narcolepsy, and Nail Fungus. Goes by ‘Nails.’”
Nails nodded.
“Hi. Hi, pleased to meet you.”
The seven left her to continue talking with her team. She tried to remember where the conversation had left off. “What’s after the medical checkup and armor?”
“Then we link you up,” answered Vibs, “after we install a second Tikari link.”
“Tikari?”
Violet heard a gentle buzz and felt a gentle weight on her shoulder. She looked over to see the least gentle thing she had ever seen. If a dagger and a ladybug had a child, this would be the result, and that’s very nearly what it was.
“Tikari,” said Vibeke as the creature fluttered onto her arm. “They link in to a second antenna you’ll have installed and act like a new body part. You can see through their eyes, listen through their tympana. They work as spies or tools or….”
The thing tucked in its legs to form a handle, its shell becoming a hilt, and the win
gs extending to become a Carlin dagger.
“…weapons.”
Veikko chimed in with great pride in the technology. “They can fight on their own, have a link range just over a kilometer. It can record stuff, relay stuff, run simple missions, anything you think into it. An AI takes over as soon as you take your mind off it or send it out of range, so it’ll just act like a pet unless you give it a standing order. The AI is like Vibeke-level smart so expect some personality after a while, mostly based on yours. But never forget, it’s a weapon. Those wings are part of a blade, and they’re made from permarazor steel. Do not ever, under any circumstances, try to pet it.” He held up his hand to show the scar from a very deep cut.
Veikko took a deep breath and explained more. “A Tikari can do damn near anything. It’s durable. You could bury it in Ganymede mud for ten years, and it will jump out ready for action. It can handle objects with great care with its legs. It can fly, walk, climb, and kill. It can send any sensory impulse and act as your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and fingertips. It can fight in twenty-four styles, including berserker mode, where it’ll kill everyone but you, so, um, please don’t use that one around me. You can even set it as a mine, kamikaze mode. In knife form it can fly by gyroscope and rocket power, cut down an entire tree and still stay sharp enough to perform delicate surgery, which it can do in bug form, knowing how to perform over six hundred operations, none of them cosmetic. It can cut through bone, even sever a limb in one stroke. It can hide itself from M-scans, C-scans, X-scans, and P-scans. Same with the port—even the metal in it can pass for your real sternum. The AI can manifest online as its own avatar and set up a Roth IRA and protect its owner with tons of crazy hacks and viruses. Unlinked, it can find and return to its owner from across the solar system and stay in orbit indefinitely. It can heat its blade to eight hundred kelvins, trim your toenails, weave a basket underwater, and play back ten thousand songs.”
“What can’t it do?” Violet asked.
“It’s not very good as a towel,” Vibeke said as her Tikari wandered off.
“Where’s yours?” she asked Veikko.
It crawled out of a vent in his armor over his chest—a green-and bone-colored creature, more like a praying mantis. As the Tikari crawled onto the table, Veikko explained, “They make it out of your sternum and rib cartilage, and it goes back to sleep there. They replace your bones with a plasticized port for it. Doesn’t hurt. Your skin also gets a slight mod to open and close seamlessly. The organic materials make it impossible to fool or forge, and the devoted link is unhackable. That’s why it’s so short range. Most teams all have the same sort, the same insect and same blade. You saw R team’s double-dagger beetles. We enjoyed your double-dagger beetle battle. But there are all sorts of bugs around here. I got a mantis spade, but Vibs went with a ladybug Carlin knife, so the line is broken. You can get whatever you want.”
It sounded like an extraordinarily useful thing to have, but the enormity and insectity of it was hard to get past. Violet didn’t particularly want a bug living in her chest, nor did she want to have surgery or spend time learning to use such a complex thing. “Do I have to get one?”
“You kidding? They’re the greatest things in the world. You’ll love it like a pet, body part, and trusty Swiss army knife all in one.”
“And if I don’t?” she asked, figuring they had to have more conventional weaponry around.
“Well, we have a couple lightsabers if you prefer, but they’re the most annoying, impractical things to handle. They burn everything they touch or cut it in half and cauterize it. You can find both in the ice-gear closet if you want to play with them, but bring a mask. They stink up the place with ozone. And they don’t repel each other if they clash. They just stick together and smell worse.”
“Trust us, you’ll love yours,” said Vibeke.
Violet felt trepidation at the thought but had no will to avoid the inevitable. When in Rome she would do as the Romans, and when in Kvitøya she would get a second link installed for a robotic knife insect made from her sternum, which would be replaced by a docking port for it to live in while seeing and hearing for her or flying from her hand to kill someone.
“Any other mods?” she asked, afraid of the response.
“Intraskull armor,” Veikko said. “But we know you got that as a kid.”
“Of course, everyone does. I mean, are there any more living bug robots or weirder stuff?”
“No, we stay pretty human. Unless you die.”
Vibeke nodded. “Yeah, if you die, you can count on med team to fill you with their latest gizmos. They’re phenomenal, and they’re not limited by a budget. If you die and you still have a brain, they wake you up again. Always. Almost everyone on a team has died. You’re not even called a junior team till one of you has been killed. Tahir—the guy you just met—he only died last week. Got torn in half in a Skuzz factory. Big celebration. The doctor gave him some great robotic legs.”
Violet looked to Vibeke to ask if he was kidding. She only continued on the same line. “Balder’s the only guy in the elder teams who’s never been killed. His whole team’s died many times, even irreparably. They keep the same names as their predecessors, but most of them aren’t much older than us. G team, the recruiters, they keep having to replace them. The latest new guy to take the name Bathory might have been in V team if not for the last Bathory getting blown up. Borknagar died too, but not badly, just lost his heart and lungs. Dr. Niide gave him all sorts of new stuff, gills and vacuum inhalers.”
A woman waved from the buffet line. Violet waved back.
“That’s Svetlana, Sveta for short—her real name from before she got here, I think. She’s in S team with Skadi, Sigvald, and Snot,” said Vibeke, “Anyhow, you exercised a lot before you came here. That will help, as will the bit in the Royal Armed Forces. It’s good you know how to go linkless. You’d be surprised at how much we work offline.”
Suddenly the intercom sounded: “Veikko, Vibeke, Violet, Sector 5B. Walrus detail.”
“Oh fuck.” Veikko stood up. “We have enough people now.”
“What? What for?” Violet asked as she and Vibeke stood. The trio left the table following Veikko’s lead. He walked as if he was following something invisible to their destination.
“Three people is enough for walrus detail,” explained Vibs. “They get in sometimes.”
“Walruses? How secure is this place if a bunch of blubber heaps can wander in?”
“That’s the thing. Nobody’s seen them get in, so we don’t know what to seal off.”
“How many live here?”
“Tons of ’em. Though each is about three tons, so it doesn’t take many. Kvitøya used to have polar bears before they went extinct. Once the bears were gone, the walruses took over and got fatter. This island used to be bigger too, before the melt, and covered in ice.”
“So we have to round them up?”
“We do now.”
Violet had been there an hour, and already there was work to be done, work she didn’t know how to do. “I haven’t been trained in that.”
“There’s not much to learn,” Veikko assured her. They walked a short way to sector 5B, and he showed them to a locker full of sonic equipment.
“It will run from the sticks. We want to move it toward the cages.”
He pointed to a cluster of giant metal cages nearby. They followed Veikko to an alcove of rock where a massive frightened animal sat. It was nearly amorphous, just fat and tusks. Violet had never seen any living thing so gargantuan and grotesque, but it was clearly scared and alone. She waited for Veikko’s lead.
He headed to the ridge behind it and set his sonic emitter to encourage the creature out of the nook. Vibeke and Violet had no trouble using their own sticks to keep it on course. With three wands directing it, the walrus predictably moved for the open direction, and without question right into the cage. Veikko linked a message to the cage system and automated cranes took over, hauling the beast up to
the surface, where it was released. The three headed back to the cafeteria to finish eating.
“How often does that happen?” she asked as they walked back.
“Not very,” said Vibeke.
“Yes, very,” retorted Veikko. “Tahir said he lost count after a week.”
“It’s not that much.”
“It’s that much, and when one team has three people, they get all the calls. Until we find a fourth, we’re screwed. You were the harbinger of doom, Violet.”
“Don’t let him pester you about being a third. Every team has full walrus detail for a while.”
“When we get a fourth, it goes back to rotating around teams. But with just Vibs and I, we didn’t have enough members to do it at all.” He called melodramatically, “How I dreaded this day….”
“Shush. They don’t come in all that often.” Violet knew Veikko would keep arguing, so, as they took their seats, she started a new thread of conversation. “How long does training last?” She turned off the warmth field on her plate and dug in again.
“Till you’re dead,” said Veikko. “You don’t graduate from anything, you just progress. And most training isn’t simulated; it’s all done for real. You just start out with the light work and get deeper and heavier. We’re just starting on some of the important stuff, surveillance, communication.”
“Like what, specifically?”
“We had to observe the vomitorium at a coprophagiac colony by smell alone,” Veikko said solemnly.
“Har har. Our last assignment was a month of net surveillance and research. G team found a potential recruit, so we had to study their background and personality and online activity. Then data analysis: can we trust this person; will they be capable of our kind of work? We made a positive recommendation and asked to make contact.”
“So what happened?”
“You thought Vibs was a program,” Veikko snorted with a broad smile.
“We liked you anyway, and Reid team brought you in.”
As they explained the thorough research involved in approaching new recruits, Violet began to understand more of why she’d been selected. Her entire life was recited to her in terms that seemed not like a biography but a resume. Her problems in the past were not a sad time in school but a prerequisite for a necessary psychological landscape. Her capacity for violence was a positive now; even her compulsive tendencies (which she did not know she had until Vibeke told her) made her a good candidate for their kind of work.