Valhalla

by Ari Bach

  “Please tell me you’re on our side,” he said.

  “I am. So are they,” she informed him as Ragnar and Ruger gave chase. R team had planned to pick him up quickly, letting him rescue the lady at the cost (onlookers would believe) of his own life. That should have been a pleasing way for Kristian to leave the outside world. What complicated matters was that he had not only a taste for heroism but for action. Kristian wanted his apparent demise to have a good degree of spectacle.

  The wild and gleeful chase that ensued across the small Bayern village confirmed G team’s description of his great skills and will to action. He took Rebecca leaping from the streets to the slanted shingled rooftops of ancient shops and into windows and vats of brewing beer, then into an antique motor vehicle that he managed to hot-wire and drive at deliciously unsafe speeds, until Rebecca reminded him that they had to get caught at some point. He safely parked the car by spinning it into a tight yet parkable space and took her to hide in an alley where he said they should kiss to appear as a couple of lovers and not the objects of the chase. Rebecca stated that nobody in the entire known history of nonfiction spycraft had ever successfully used such a ploy. He responded that they did, after all, need to be caught and kissed her passionately until the pursuers arrived. But style forbade he just let it end there, not when an artificial ski slope was only meters away. In the end Ripple had to pilot their pogo to the edge of a cliff that Ragnar managed to outski them off of. They flew from the edge of the outside world into the safety of a Valhalla transport and headed north with the pleasure of the most overdrawn chase a prospect had ever given. Kristian and Rebecca saw no reason to stop kissing on the way home.

  He selected the name “Varg” within an hour of landing. Then he proceeded to make light-spirited passes at both Vibs and Violet and took his absolute rejection by both with a hearty laugh and an unspoken assumption that both were lesbians. That night the four spoke much as Vibs and Veikko had spoken to Violet, answering his questions and enjoying his naïveté about the world, which he had no clue required any underground to keep it safe and sane, having joined only for the thrill expected in the business. He stated he was happy to meet at least one English spy among them, to which Violet responded that she was Scottish, to which Varg responded that he thought all the best spies were English. Vibeke came to her defense and declared that the best English spies were best played by Scots. Violet had no clue what it meant, but it satisfied Varg, and Vibeke’s defense almost made her blush.

  Violet watched as Varg took his tour with Valfar, whom he not only understood but proved capable of conversing with on matters that Violet didn’t even bother to link up. They argued about the mass of photons, Valfar suggesting that they had none and Varg laughing that they had to if they got caught by black holes, and that they were merely “very light.” Valfar laughed at the remark and went on to explain how it would make the postulates of some relative theory obsolete. Varg replied that it would indeed, and that E did not equal MC squared, rather the square root of Y. When Valfar asked him the root of Y, he replied, “Y nought.” Both laughed, and Violet cursed her lack of attention in school.

  Varg was fitted for his suit the next day and selected a reflective gold finish like Balder’s. He and Balder seemed to relate on a level reserved for a very select group of badass men. Even on matters of belief, he seemed in line with the elder, as Violet found out when she asked, “Why don’t you talk to your parents?”

  “I didn’t live up to my name,” he said.

  “Varg?” asked Veikko.

  “Kristian,” he answered. “You know Balder’s views on the old religions?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mine are similar.”

  “Why?” asked Violet.

  “They all think sex is bad. I think sex is good. Very good. It’s just… so damn good. If they’re right and I go to hell, that’s fine, because I’ve spent my time in heaven. And by heaven, I mean in—”

  “Thank you, Varg, we get it,” Vibeke interrupted.

  “I don’t,” said Veikko, though he quite clearly did. Varg remained quiet, though. For all his apparent disregard for manners, he was careful not to offend. Similarly, for such a tough guy, he was unpredictably worried about the Tikari surgery and more so about the resulting new pal. As he would need to get the procedure done before he could sign back in to his old porn haunts, he walked on into the medical bay and did what had to be done. Though Varg walked back out with a spring in his step, they failed to spot a dagger or mechanical bug, but he wore a heavy new bandolier. The bandolier twitched. Varg let down his arm and the bandolier grew centipede’s legs and crawled off his shoulder to his hand, where it formed itself into a massive claymore sword. He let the Tikari shift its shape just enough to show them that the sword could extend its length. He held the sword with pride, then let it crawl back to rest.

  “You just don’t do anything small, do you, Varg?” Veikko remarked.

  Varg gave an innocent shrug, a silly gesture with one hand facing up and the other hand down. He said, “Balder has a caterpillar, you know. It’s nothing new.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Veikko. Violet and Vibeke didn’t either. “What’s his turn into?” he asked. Varg paused for a moment, then shrugged again.

  Having his link back, Varg became acquainted with Alopex and quickly relogged in to some of his favorite sites. He did not have time to spend at most of them. Being in excellent shape, he took quickly to På Täppan and nearly made the summit on his first attempt. By now the four, even Veikko with some reluctance, could make a genuine team effort to take the hill. The severe injuries of their first uncoordinated attempt as a quartet gave them time in the medical bay to get to know each other even better. As they told Varg of their early training and assignment, he was saddened that he’d missed the walrus detail. He was fond of anything bigger and thicker than himself.

  He approached death, injury, and kill training with great courage that didn’t completely hide a sensitive streak. He was willing to die and get hacked up and feel pain beyond anything he had ever known but he was hesitant to kill for the first time. G team had to pass over their first pick, one the rest of V team would have happily murdered. He was a dreadful man who they confirmed was planning arson and kidnapping, a wastrel who lived like a parasite and gave back nothing to the world but bad odor and littered syringes. But Varg insisted on someone else. They found a random murderer, and Varg entered the field and killed him quickly with his sword. Even then, he disliked the act and viewed it as a sadly necessary duty. He never sparred to the point of horrific injury as so many had before him. In the sparring dojo with his team, he admitted he simply couldn’t bring himself to hurt his friends.

  “That will be your undoing,” joked Veikko.

  “I can live with being undone,” he responded with a smile. “Hey, when do we learn to use sex as spycraft?”

  Violet, having asked the same question, answered, “We don’t teach what your DNA already knows.”

  “But maybe,” he pleaded, “you could help me study a little?”

  “We monitored you, remember? You’ve had enough practice.”

  Violet was amused that he had asked almost the same thing she had in so many words. She turned to Vibeke and inquired, “Does everyone ask that?”

  “I did,” she said.

  “Me too,” added Veikko.

  “Same here,” called Mishka from the next mat.

  “As did I,” added Alföðr, who had been watching from the door. He bowed into the mat and signaled Varg to spar with him. The two fought in a way Violet had never seen. Varg was a capable fighter, but as he picked up speed and the will to fight seriously, Alf began to abandon normal fighting tactics along with the shape of his body. He would surprise Varg by extending his arms past their expected reach, revealing something of his cybernetic redesign. He would flip toward and from Varg with bionic speed and power. Even reorienting himself in ways that a human with his original skeleton couldn’t.
A crowd gathered to watch. Varg adapted to every trick and on his first serious match, tied the master of the ravine, three tags to three.

  “Well done!” Alf applauded. “Next time I’ll fight fair.”

  Varg trained at the same rate as Violet had and proved most proficient at Internet duties and psychology, using the latter to bed four different local women in a week and a half. After the first mind-altering study of attention and focus, he left for Vadsø in a state so nervous he twitched like a cat. Violet linked to the others to ask if she’d looked so worried on her first test. They responded that she had, and Varg’s clever covert hack into their conversation made him even more concerned about what was to come. When nothing happened, he broke into laughter and tackled his pals with a good-natured roughhouse roll through the elevator lounge.

  By the time the sun set again, Varg was well on the road to being a skilled warrior. He seemed so crucial to the team that they had no recollection of how they’d worked without him in the past. If there was a problem, he knew the answer, and if he didn’t know the answer, he could generally find a way to hit or kick the problem hard enough that it fixed itself. He booted one machine back into order that turned out to be a projection system designed some forty years prior (and forgotten soon after) as an entertainment system. That made him very popular with the nonspy population, and soon he was using it to project his favorite ancient cinema on the smooth white western ice wall every few nights. Violet found these displays to be incomprehensible and archaic. Some were so old that they were two-dimensional and one even lacked color. Veikko loved every one of them, but Vibeke preferred to read, and Violet preferred to watch her read.

  They took Varg through most of the same teamwork exercises they had done previously, including a descent into a basement where they were supposed to surrender. Perhaps as a result of Varg’s enthusiasm, they forgot to surrender again. Instead of bearing a painful defeat, though, the quartet took on the superior opponents and won.

  “I think we were supposed to lose that one,” Vibs remarked.

  “Oh yeah, surrender and stuff,” added Violet.

  “Fuck that, we kicked fuckin’ ass!” shouted Veikko.

  “Bloody balls, V team…” moaned Ozzy.

  Øystein tried to sit up on his broken coccyx. “How are you supposed to learn when to retreat when you win everything?”

  “Sorry,” said Varg.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry,” called Veikko. “You saved my nose!”

  Varg had no clue what he was talking about, but the cheer was infectious, and he bore a grin as he carried members of O team to med bay, one over each shoulder.

  Owing to the difficulty presented by training so skilled a team, Balder filled in for Øystein on their next training chase. That gave Øystein a chance to recover but did nothing to diminish their overdeveloped abilities to hurt their instructors. Varg caught Balder by brute force long before he was supposed to and took him down with such energy that he broke Balder’s neck. Balder didn’t die but admitted it might have been the closest he ever came. After he was patched up by a very surprised medical staff, Balder and Varg were as blood brothers.

  Varg had learned in his first weeks that he and Balder were cut from the same stock. In their conversations and lessons, they shared opinions and tastes, priorities and reasons for doing what they did and didn’t do. One of the reasons surprised Violet when she heard it.

  Since Varg’s arrival she’d noticed that he didn’t fit the common amoral Valhalla style. He went out of his way to protect the weak. He didn’t take pleasure in beating the shit out of everyone and was sensitive enough not to kill his first recommended target. That worried her until she overheard him speaking to Balder.

  “Why,” Varg asked, “wasn’t I kicked out when I refused to kill G Team’s first find?”

  “Because I insisted they keep you,” Balder replied flatly. “Because I know why you refused.”

  “You do?”

  “I watch G team’s findings as closely as your team. You didn’t hesitate because you were afraid to kill. You refused because he didn’t fit your idea of justice. That’s not common here, but it’s good to have around.”

  “And they told me about the Geki….” Varg added.

  “You don’t need to worry about them. It’s not in your nature to do anything that would provoke them. Of course, Alf wouldn’t tell you that. And he didn’t tell you that the man you refused to kill never committed the crimes he was planning.”

  Varg lit up. “So he changed? He turned straight?”

  “No, I killed him myself.”

  Varg laughed at the dark humor of it. Violet never related the conversation to Veikko or Vibeke and didn’t dwell on it herself. But she did pay closer attention to Balder. His stories were like a peek at who Varg might become. She imagined Varg’s eagerness in hearing the same tales must have hinted at Balder’s character in his youth. Those who saw them together even remarked they had the same smile despite the vastly different shape of their heads. Varg was quickly becoming Balder’s protégé, but the new V team member admitted, as they turned in for the night, that he never really knew the man until he had almost killed him.

  “Must be a guy thing,” said Vibeke.

  “No,” said Violet, “I think I know what you mean.” She reflected a long while before she spoke again. “I never really knew my dad until after he died.”

  She dived into a dream state and the other three followed. She let them see deeper into her mind than she had let anyone before, laid bare her parents’ deaths and her peek into her father’s police files, and told her team just how she felt about him. After she told them about her father, she kept speaking as a new concept crawled out from the folds in her cerebrum.

  “The strange part is, he’s not the only man I respect for that kind of willpower. My dad sold me out, risked me, put me on a hook to catch a guy who had to be caught at all costs, and Hrothgar turned out to be a pathetic thug. Not even the brains behind the Orange Gang. But his brother is still out there, still in charge. Wulfgar lost his brother, and he didn’t sell himself short by coming to kill me. He didn’t stick by his family and go for revenge. He’s better than that. He’s just like my dad, just as smart, just as strong, just as ruthless. I’ve never met the man, but I feel like I know him. I respect him. That cold cunning streak I got from my dad, that I love so much about him—Wulfgar has it too.”

  There wasn’t much for anybody to say. None of the four even knew what it meant, if anything. But they talked on through the night. They spent all of their dreams together, time devoid of arguments or ill will or any of the cares of daylight, where training slowly gave way to work. As a full team, V was finally ready for small low-risk missions outside the base. Their first venture would be remembered in Valhalla as the bloodiest maiden voyage a team had ever faced.

  Chapter VII: Udachnaya

  “S TEAM says you did some fine work,” Balder began. He had called V team in their dreams to have them come to his office right after they woke up. They were expecting a new training routine—one that, given the recent trend, would surely break someone’s something or sever a body part that ought not be severed. They were quite relieved when he explained their new task. It was a real mission and, compared to training, a walk in the park.

  “One of our sister camps has a Mjölnir system similar to our own,” he continued. “They want consultants on our break-in to redesign their own security. We need S team here on our own case, but you’re quite familiar with the methods used as well, so you’ll head to Siberia tonight and stay there until recalled. Your contact in Trubka Udachnaya is named Dmitri, from their De team. He’s twenty-eight and recognizable by his black hair with a gray streak. He’ll meet you in the blue flower patch. When you land, exchange coded greetings, then shift your links to the Udachnaya network. Vibeke, as you handled most of the analysis”—Veikko and Violet tried not to look utterly useless—“you’ll be head consultation. Varg, you keep my kids alive. A
nd team—” He smiled. “—Don’t Fuck Shit Up.”

  Mishka spotted them leaving his office and jogged up to meet them.

  “Heading out to my old stomping grounds?” she asked, putting on an extra thick accent in case they had forgotten where she was from.

  “Ja, any advice?” said Varg, oblivious to the fact that she was speaking to Vibeke.

  “Yes, borscht means beet juice, and don’t try to speak Russian. And you, pet”—she took a step toward Vibs—“try not to get intimidated around all those big muscular Udachnaya boys.”

  Vibeke didn’t have a response. Varg spared her the need for one. “What’s wrong with big muscular boys?” he asked.

  Mishka didn’t enlighten him. “Take care of yourself,” she said with a last glance at Vibeke before she walked away. Varg watched her go.

  “You know, I don’t think she’s attracted to me at all,” he said.

  “Lucky you,” said Vibs with a smirk, and they headed to the pogo pad to depart. Gastric butterflies began to join them as they walked. Despite the finest training and the most detailed outlines, and despite the assumption that this would be a totally benign assignment, it was still their first mission out on their own. With the butterflies came another sort of animal in Violet’s belly, a predator that hoped beyond logic that something might go wrong and give her a chance to show off. She knew nothing would happen to allow her to try out all her new skills on a first mission, but there was an appeal to heading out to a strange land, invulnerable with her team, into the unknown.

  As they walked onto the pogo pad, their uniforms turned the dead tan color of Udachnaya soil, with flower-blue shoulders, the first genuine mission camouflage they got to wear. Violet remembered one trip to London when she was young. She’d walked around the city with her parents, seen the sights, and heard the sounds as she had a few times before.