Valhalla

by Ari Bach

  The megalopolis had been peaceful in an odd sort of way. It was busier and far more crowded than Kyle, but it felt the opposite. Back home pogos bounced at high speed from one deflective road panel to the next, and people wandered and trotted along in droves. London was so full that pogo lights blurred into still lines, and humans packed into solid states becoming mere texture.

  It was a comfortable place where even the outdoors had felt like a lobby with a ceiling too high to see. It was a safe, easy realm.

  Her parents, after linking briefly to one another, told her that they were going to see an opera. When Violet protested that she didn’t want to join them, her father said something that took her by surprise.

  “You’re not invited,” he said. “I’m transferring fifty euros to you. Have a look around, be safe, and link me if you need me.” Then they left her to her own devices, and the world was no longer safe.

  The comfortable London of seconds before was suddenly both frightening and exhilarating. She did no more than walk across the street and eat dinner, but it was the most exciting day of her life thus far. She hadn’t experienced the same feeling since then, not in a fight for her life nor in training for the wildest things. But she felt it as her suit changed color. She felt it as they boarded a pogo and called for clearance for departure. She could sense the same feeling in her team. Varg, of course, had more important considerations.

  “They neglected to tell us in briefing how many girls there are in Udachnaya.”

  “I’m sure,” said Veikko, “you’ll find a waiting menagerie of buff Siberian women, Varg.”

  “I’m sure you won’t,” Vibs interjected. “Udachnaya is all male.”

  “Barbarism!” Varg cried. “Why would they do that to themselves?”

  “Tradition, I suppose?”

  “Sickening. Where’d you hear it?”

  “I read their history on Alopex. They’re a good deal more utilitarian than Valhalla. They have no lounges, no gymnasium, and you won’t be setting up another Wednesday movie night, that’s for sure.”

  “I suppose not everyone gets to stay in the golden hall.”

  “Anything else we should have looked up for ourselves, Vibs?” Veikko asked.

  “I’ll let you know if anything comes to mind.”

  Violet thought for a moment. “Why do we gold plate everything anyway?”

  “Doesn’t tarnish or rust,” Vibs replied. She really seemed to know everything.

  Vibeke closed her eyes and rested against the side of the seat. The hangar controller sent them on their way. The vehicle was on autopilot, there being no risk in a trip to a random flower patch in Siberia, and no way for a human pilot to discern which field they were to land in. To avoid any would-be trackers, they took a scenic route that snaked far south of the direct line, so the trip was long and quiet. Violet stared out the window at the world below. Vibs was online, reading. Varg had fallen asleep within minutes of lift-off, and Veikko amused himself by stacking survival gear on Varg’s head.

  Violet, too, eventually drifted off. She stayed asleep for most of the trip. Bored sick as they bounced gently past Smolensk, Veikko pulled an air horn from his Varg stack. Sometime later he held it to Violet’s ear. While the pogo flew over the Ural mountain range, a terrible noise emerged from Veikko’s horn that echoed across the peaks. An instant later, Violet was wide awake, and Veikko was bleeding badly from his nose and cheek. He dug through the survival kit for med gear. Violet looked out the window as the mountains came to an end.

  She had always imagined Siberia as a wasteland of ice and snow, like Svalbarð but flat. In summer it was nothing of the sort. There were endless fields of flowers. At the speed they were flying, the fields must have been dozens of kilometers across, without interruption, without any sign of civilization or heterogeneous life. Just flowers. Orange, red, purple.

  They set down on a sea of blue petals. The flowers stretched to every horizon with only one miscolored dot, a man in a black jumpsuit. Dmitri stood exactly on target. Veikko woke Varg, who had somehow slept through the air horn, and led the team off the pogo with great formality, eager to look good on his first job. Veikko walked up to Dmitri, head raised, shoulders back, and forgot the coded greeting.

  “Something about a purple sun and red snow?” he asked.

  “When the blue sun melts the red snow,” started Vibeke, annoyed.

  Dmitri spoke loudly and quickly. “Right, yes, purple water runs uphill. Are you satisfied, yes? You have the right man standing in the middle of the blue flower patch eighty kilometers from the nearest nothing? I see you are, yes. Let’s get on with it and spare the next five poems. You Norsk and your poetics, none of that here. I am me, you are you, we get to work now, yes? Yes.”

  He knew the greeting better than Veikko, at least. They parted with Alopex and withdrew their links from the Valhalla system. Dmitri took them to a small, nondescript hole in the ground. There was no elevator. He simply jumped into the darkness. They all followed and fell some distance to a tube with an inertial conveyor. They didn’t feel the jolt of an instantaneous two hundred kph acceleration. They just watched the dark surroundings fly past. They stopped as abruptly at the edge of a gargantuan spiraling walkway, which fell far deeper into the ground than Valhalla’s ravine.

  It was clearly an old mining pipe. The soil looked so old and decrepit, it would never support life again. Overhead they could see the camouflage canopy, fake blue flowers like a dark sky in a field so expansive that a surface search team would take years to find the fake patch. Their suits matched the colors perfectly, in contrast to the Udachnaya locals, who like Dmitri wore flat black and looked at the newcomers’ boastful garb with disdain.

  Like Valhalla, a walkway was carved into the walls, but unlike their native ravine’s, this massive road was the only path there. They didn’t use the walkway to spiral down to the bottom; rather, Dmitri led them to slide down the steep dirt slope between loops, kicking up a thick tan cloud. The few structures inside had giant proportions, all black and bereft of any style, just utilitarian square slanted walls, jutting up from the sides of the pit like giant black fangs from the earthen maw.

  Dmitri pointed out each tower, only one of everything. The only hangar was big enough to hold their entire fleet. Their one barracks held all their men. It stood attached to the only mess hall. They continued past it down the loose sandy slopes. It was a jelly-legging route straight to the bottom of the spiral, where the pit dropped off to a steeper hole. Deep inside, at the base of the hole, one arsenal held almost every functional weapon in the outpost.

  Dmitri continued, “We only have about ninety people here, and only thirty-two of them are in trained teams. This isn’t a genuine base, yes, more of an arms storage facility, and if they went for our best, strongest base first, we fear our Mjölnir system is a prime target to fill in their missing pieces, given they lack a generator and we have so many.”

  “So many generators?” asked Veikko.

  “Yes, we have twelve generators and forty-four cannons.”

  “Odin’s beard,” he said.

  Violet linked quickly and silently to Vibeke. “Odin’s beard?”

  “That thing on Niide’s face. Men used to—”

  Dmitri went on. “We took the precaution of moving the generators to the deepest, most secure part of the arsenal we could fit them in, which is to say third level. They used to be in fourth. Our engineers have set up more detectors, and we have live guards stationed, along with a partition of Prokofiev. Ah yes, Prokofiev. New kids. I need to link you up.”

  He gave a burst of information from his link, catching their antenna signatures and relaying them to his net. They felt the intrusive flood of a new network coming into their heads. Like Valhalla’s, it lacked ads and immersive qualities in favor of an AI.

  Prokofiev introduced himself: an anthropomorphic wolf in traditional Russian garb. He was not fully rendered like Alopex but seemed a more fitting computer system for Udachnaya. Hi
s voice was egotistical for a computer. He spoke almost musically. “Welcome to Siberia. My analysis shows our generators are protected with far more than your estimate of three intruders could penetrate, my security designs are theoretically flawless, and I look forward to seeing what a quartet of Westerners can add to it, if anything.”

  When they crossed catwalks to the arsenal, they found Prokofiev’s attitude to be quite justified. Beyond the general security stood a barrage of detectors that could spot a dust mite even if that dust mite were invisible, holding perfectly still, and equipped with signal jamming hardware. Beyond the detectors were two tall men with Gatling shotguns. Beyond the men were two-decimeter-thick vault doors, and past those there were ultrahigh-voltage barricade fields. Within the fields were the generator safes, each one protected by its own FKMA robot—intimidating metal beasts with dual plasma cannons. Each robot had been relieved of its treads and was bolted directly into the generator housings. If someone by some miracle did manage to steal a generator, they would take an angry robot with it.

  As Varg admired the sheer masses of heavy-metal bulk, Violet and Veikko kept their mouths closed in astonishment that they had been sent to this grand stronghold to improve what Violet thought were the most impressive protective measures she’d ever seen. Vibs had other ideas.

  “First the robots need to go. The FKMA models can be hacked even with binary lattice shields. Prokofiev?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do they have BiL shielding?”

  “No.”

  “Call in some engineers. Let’s get ’em out of here,” said Vibeke with great authority. “The detector field is double redundant in at least nine places. Let’s get someone on those and move them to the next outer ring, where they’ll do some good. Keep redundant scanning only on susceptible areas behind the door and in the corners. What kind of armor does the inner arsenal core have? Prokofiev?”

  “None.”

  “At least four welders and some gear for us.”

  As the rest of V hid the fact that they shared no part of Vibeke’s inspiration, Prokofiev called in men to do her bidding and work began. Vibs revealed weak point after weak point and seemed to know exactly what each point needed. Most of the impressive, broad measures Udachnaya had taken proved either too little or too much in the wrong places. As efforts began, Veikko and Violet found their roles and set to work. Varg didn’t even try to steal Vibeke’s conceptual thunder. He just picked up a hydraulic wrench and started in on the robots. Everyone was impressed at the end of the day by Vibeke’s catches of every flaw and her truly inspired retrofitting designs. Dmitri looked at her as if she were a tiny firecracker that had just blown up a bridge. He caught Violet by the arm and asked, “She’s always like this, yes?”

  “No,” Violet answered. “She must be tired from the trip.”

  When they retired for the evening, Vibs admitted that she was as surprised as they were: Her brains had never been so useful in the past.

  “And how did you know about the robots?” Varg asked. “BiL shields don’t cover them?”

  “Not those models,” she explained. “They’re open on the bottom. They could be broken into with a linear broadcast from underneath, and the arsenal had a floor below. We’ll need to check out that floor tomorrow after breakfast. If they have breakfast here.”

  “They will,” said Varg. “The comforts are few, but they’re sure to be big.”

  “Like the bunks?” Violet remarked as they walked into their new room.

  “Yeah,” added Veikko. “Why do we all have king-sized beds?”

  “With no bed sheets…,” Vibs said as she looked over the massive mattresses.

  Violet found a gap under hers. “They have sheets, in the big giant rusty drawers.”

  Indeed, the big rusty drawers built inside the beds held great thick sheets, which were unwieldy due to their size and heft. That seemed the motto of Udachnaya—big and not always for the better. The team spoke of how they must appear to the others, soft pampered little kids playing warriors, telling the locals how to do their jobs and so on. Modesty was disallowed, of course; they were there to improve the security, so they had to point out the shortcomings. But there was some degree of surprise as to how much had come up short. Halfway through talking, they realized they were all asleep. The Udachnaya lucid dreamscape was identical to the plain black bedroom, so they hadn’t noticed the change. They agreed to change the surroundings, on Veikko’s suggestion, to a Pacific island beach. Vibs dialed up beach chairs, Violet lowered the gravity, and Varg called back to Alopex for “Program Varg 36D” that conjured a surplus of naked large-breasted native women for the background.

  “So this is life on duty,” he said with a wide grin.

  “It could be worse,” remarked Veikko.

  “It will be when we start work on the roofs. We need to test the load bearing—”

  “When we’re awake, Vibs. For now I’d prefer either making fun of cultural differences or staring at Varg’s background work.”

  “Boys. You could be fighting women for your lives, and you’d still be staring at their chests.”

  “You used to spar Mishka,” said Veikko. “Tell me you didn’t notice with, well, the sheer size of them….”

  “Sure, they’re great targets, and she feels it when they get punched. Then she gets angry and breaks your skull.”

  “Come to think of it, has she ever lost a single round?”

  “Never, she’s impossible.”

  “Katana is impossible,” said Violet. “She took on all four Fs simultaneously and won without a scratch. Even with Balder, she holds her own.”

  That got Varg’s attention, briefly, “They say Alf and Balder used to have epic day-long sparring bouts,” he said.

  “There would be a sight.”

  “Sure would….”

  And so they went on until the sun finished its circuit.

  PROKOFIEV WOKE them as rudely as an air-horn blast and directed them to the eatery. Breakfast was as big as they’d expected, full of genuine meats and eggs and greasy salty potato products. The unusual foods made their bellies happy and talkative and keen to expel noxious fumes from one orifice or another. Then it was time to plan out more security measures that they (Vibs) had invented overnight and set to work. Work went on through what would have been lunch, if anyone there had needed it.

  Moving heavy artillery out of the rooms to be altered took time. The microwave arrays alone took two hours. Organizing the security force to watch over the work took another hour, but it was necessary. If anyone tried to break in while the arsenal was in disrepair, they’d have to face the whole ravine of men to get there. The team never felt safer than they did surrounded by rows of men with Gatling shotguns.

  Rebuilding the lower floors and new roofs was so involved that even the biggest of the Udachnaya men were getting tired. They planned another two days of heavy labor, then testing, then more labor. After that, they would stay for a couple more days of debugging and simulations, and then finally they could return home to the luxury of Valhalla and be done with this monster of tasks.

  By the end of the first full day of work, a good portion of the deconstruction was complete. Walls that had to be replaced completely were gone and the vulnerable parts of the roof were ready to come off and be replaced. The sun hadn’t set overhead, but it was past the walls of the pit. The blue canopy made it dark enough to require artificial lights for roof work. Udachnaya used ancient sodium-vapor lights, which turned everything perverse colors. Their eyes played tricks on them, so nobody noticed the gentle rain of blue petals.

  Only when a strange wind tickled the back of Violet’s neck did she shut off her microwave’s welding beam and look around. Vibeke and Varg were already looking for the source. Veikko found it and signaled for them to look straight up. When V team looked skyward, they saw the canopy tearing open, pulling back like curtains to reveal the dual blades of a panzercopter, shaped like a giant hornet, painted completely in w
hite.

  Alarms began to sound. This was not a friendly craft. The flawless white paint gave it a sinister aura; the sodium lights made it glow angry yellow and cast its recessed armor into harsh shadows. But it was clearly covered in paint. White paint, same as the thieves’ carriage. Prokofiev abandoned his lupine graphic and began highlighting routes into the special arsenal. Native teams followed other alarms to their battle stations. Dmitri and his team descended with V into the arsenal, jumping down through the holes they had spent the day making in its roof. Violet followed her teammates through what few walls and doors were still intact. They headed for the second level down, where they’d stored the Mjölnir system during retrofitting. As they sealed the last hatchway from the open air, they caught their last glimpse of the copter extending drop lines. Six of them. The inner arsenal doors sealed.

  The sounds of antiaircraft fire echoed from outside. They all ducked away from the walls. Dmitri shouted to Vibeke, “Did your analysis predict they had armored air support?”

  “No, everything we saw pointed to three intruders with minimal hardware.”

  “There were six lines on that thing yes, and it takes two to pilot! Prokofiev, update.”

  Prokofiev appeared, but before he could speak, the link went dead, the lights went out, and communications went silent. The only sound was from the fight outside. Seconds later Dmitri turned on a glow patch on his shoulder. V team took his cue and set their uniforms for illumination. There were eight people in the arsenal. Dmitri’s team didn’t appear to have any plan. They could only hope for the guards outside to defeat the intruders. Everyone just watched the ceiling and listened to the fight going on around them.

  It was just like a day in training when P team had taught V team how to discern various types of fire from the sound. Violet could make out the Udachnaya projectile cannons, the Gatling shotguns of the guards, the panzercopter armor deflecting them, faint microwave hums from artillery-sized batteries, the flight noise of drone missiles, the impact of missiles, and drop charges. She saw that her teammates were listening to the same sounds and coming to the same conclusions about the level of battle going on around them. They were caught in an all-out firefight, the kind people died in without so much as a chance to fight back. They all knew it was a possibility, but only Veikko said it.