by Ari Bach
Dmitri walked into the room from another bay, carrying equipment. All four V teammates ran to help him, to do anything they could. Dmitri sent them for parts, and Prokofiev told them where to dig. Violet ran to the north end of the bay for recoil springs. She delivered them to Varg, who was helping to assemble something that resembled a slingshot with a field projector for power. It could lob mortar shells all the way to the generator.
Varg took charge of aim. A massive Russian man loaded a shell, and Varg let loose. The field projector kicked in as the springs hit their apex and sent the shell flying past the copters. They reloaded. One of the enemy must have seen it, because one copter broke off and headed for them. Varg fired. Another miss. And again, a hit that did little damage to the coming panzercopter. It drew close enough to hit with the more accurate mortar. Varg didn’t even ask for the mortar. He just picked up a shell, ran to the window, and lobbed it by hand. It hit the windshield and exploded harmlessly. He threw another; it missed. He threw a third, and it hit one of the rotor caps. Without a cap, the field rotor suddenly extended infinitely from its spinning emitter. It connected with one of the Udachnaya buildings and stuck like glue. The copter suddenly spun out of control. The thing had to eject its front emitter assembly and fell to the ground. Che team stormed it and slaughtered the crew.
Veikko gave Varg a complex high-five ritual as Violet looked out the archer’s hole. The chaos continued in and around the arsenal. Dmitri’s men were fighting hand to hand to keep the intruders from hooking the last generator. Tse team was blowing up any enemies they could spot. Varg and Dmitri spoke by open link. Dmitri had a plan to aim the slingshot. Violet didn’t understand him, but Vibeke did. They set to work and in under a minute had hooked the carriage holding the sling into a Prokofiev hardwire port.
With targeting information from Prokofiev, Varg loaded five mortar shells into the sling and launched another volley. Several of the shells hit the new cargo-copter-to-be and cut it in half. Three copters down. One was busy firing what it could at the men holding the arsenal; the last deployed new cables. The slingshot team called for its coordinates.
Prokofiev calculated, but before it could respond, the other copter left the fight and headed for engineering. Prokofiev alerted them to an antimatter spray solution forming in the craft, adding that the silo’s shield generators were down. This meant “Run!” They did. Everyone ditched their positions and fled the silo before the spray hit. The Valhalla few turned on their strongest deflective fields. Their suits sucked the energy out of their bodies and put it into thin spheres around them. The amount it stole rendered Violet cold and tired almost instantly. She barely saw half the building cease to be. The rest caved in around her. Prokofiev disappeared again.
Violet was alone, stuck in a mess of debris. She called out for Vibeke, Varg, Veikko, and Dmitri, but the sound of her voice echoed at her like a mocking refrain. Her link couldn’t get through. The antimatter weapon had contaminated it all with a form of radiation that jammed the signal. At least, she hoped that was why she couldn’t contact them. She kept her defense shield on in case of another attack or further crushing debris. It drained energy from her so fast she could feel the cold.
She pushed around on the wreckage, but it was all rock solid, more than solid—it was pressing with great force against the vacuole that her field made in the avalanche of twisted metal and sand. She had to keep the field on. Fine, she thought. If she fell asleep, she wouldn’t have to think.
But she couldn’t fall asleep. She sat in the space for an hour, tired, sick, and freezing but unable to pass out. Her brain got the better of her. She had failed in every way she could have failed. She had seen men die for her mistakes. Her entire team could be dead. She couldn’t link to them, couldn’t hear them, couldn’t even dig her way out. She might be trapped there forever, to die for her pathetic misdeeds.
TWO HOURS later, the twisted metal ceiling twisted more and revealed the night sky. Veikko’s look of relief to find her was comforting. Varg and Vibeke stood nearby. There were no panzercopters, only the ruin of Udachnaya and a pile of dead intruders in payment for one magnetic generator, successfully stolen. Udachnaya had lost nineteen men and nearly all its defensive capability in the attack. Prokofiev was operating at a quarter capacity, and the enemies had accomplished their objective. V team found Dmitri in the remains of the medical bay, where medics were busy dealing with dozens of men in dire need.
“That was not three men with minimal transportation! Are you four okay?”
“Yes,” said Veikko. “Have you contacted Valhalla?”
“Prokofiev has sent word, but our link to Alopex is gone, so it’s a cable transmission. Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll call you back before you have to clean this mess up.”
Nothing was further from their minds (except for Varg, who would later admit his pleasure at not having to reassemble their base). Now that the chaos was over, they had only more time to think, and thinking about it hurt them all. There were a hundred times they could have died and a dozen they didn’t know how they survived. The medical team gave them a very quick triage and some radiation shots, then got back to work with the dying.
“Actually,” continued Dmitri, “it is likely they’ll vaporize the place and find another. Our little gangs have a very pragmatic attitude toward losses, but we shall see. Once our wolf returns home—”
Prokofiev appeared, at horrible resolution.
“Valhalla requests immediate return of V team by pogo. Teams D and E will arrive within the hour with arms, a contingent of engineers, and a medical detail. Vladivostok and Abu Simbel are on standby for assistance. All bases on second degree security lockdown.”
Dmitri said. “That means you need to get back now. If your pogo doesn’t arrive in their projected window, they’ll shoot you down. Liev will escort you to the tube. Liev?”
“Dead,” called a medic.
Dmitri smiled a hateful, sarcastic smile. “Well, then. You know the way, yes?”
They did know the way. The conveyor system in the tunnel was down, so they had to walk. When Vibeke reminded them of the time window they had to make, they ran. What had taken them seconds to travel before took almost five minutes at full running speed. They came out at the pogo and piled in out of breath. Veikko hit the controls, and they took off into the night. Nobody spoke on the trip home. Veikko played no tricks. Varg didn’t sleep. Violet didn’t look out the windows.
She felt shame but didn’t feel crippled with emotion. This time she wasn’t worried that the coldness was insanity but relieved that she was numb to the matter. This was part of life now, not a family disaster but her job. She would be shot at more. She would see more die, people she knew. She would kill more. How many had she just done in? She had no idea. There would be no cops to tell her what she had accomplished this time. It happened as she imagined war must have felt back in ancient times. You kill anyone you can on the other side.
After dwelling on it for an hour, she found the whole thing philosophically compelling. Beyond the shame of their prediction of three men—she cringed as she thought of it—beyond the shame of her pathetic failure behind the lathe, beyond the soreness and pain she felt, there was a part of her that felt… satisfied? Had she enjoyed what just happened? She couldn’t admit that, but the fact remained, something had happened, something big, and she had been a part of it, for better or worse. She lived. Her team lived. Survival was quite an accomplishment, really. She did not let herself imagine how she would feel had any one of her team not survived.
When they started their approach to Valhalla, Alopex appeared in the cabin and told them to delink and return to their home network. They all disconnected from the thin dying Udachnaya link and let the clear, sharp Valhalla link flood into their heads. It was like a shower for Violet’s brain. All the slimy grit of battle left her mind, cleaned away by the fluffy white fox. The pogo fell into the hangar, and their suits turned back to their native colors. Only once their old co
lors were restored did Violet notice they were covered in blood and debris.
Chapter VIII: Geki
ALOPEX LED the team to a small chamber next to the pogo pad, an industrial-sized sonic shower. She directed them to take earplugs from a slot in the wall, then sealed the door. A deep rumble began to sound from the showerheads. The dirt and blood and scraps of debris that clung to their uniforms and faces fell into the air, so thick they could see it dancing and floating to the walls. Violet was suddenly eager to clean her Tikari, but holding it up to the shower would only clean its blade, not the blood she had stuffed with it into her ribs. That would have to wait.
As soon as they left the shower, Alopex told them to head for Alf and lit up a path along the floor. They followed in silence. There were few people along the way. They didn’t see anyone from the teams. Violet wasn’t sure what was to come. There would surely be a heavy debriefing and investigation, but how would people act around them after what had happened? Part of her said nobody would raise an eyebrow, that this was business as usual to them. Part of her said that such modesty was the worst form of conceit, and that she and her team would be treated as wounded children, coddled and hugged and pitied. The idea of Alföðr acting in such a way was grotesque. Mercifully, he was quite the opposite. They came to him on the ravine floor.
“So, how was Siberia? Weather all right?”
Violet didn’t know if it was a joke. She looked to Veikko, who seemed afraid to laugh if it was.
Alf went on. “You’re all wondering if there was more you could have done, if it was your fault. Get over it. You did fine. When a team of your experience is faced with a threat on this level, the best you could be expected to do was stay out of everyone’s way. But of course, Udachnaya’s protocol was to use whoever was closest to the guns regardless of their survival probability. Thirty-six died in that assault, more than half of them our allies. The enemy gained their objective and did it by catching us totally off guard.”
“We told you….” Vibs was almost stuttering. “We told you it was probably three people….”
“Here, it almost certainly was. There was no panzercopter fleet here, no drop teams. They most likely sent a select few here because they had someone on the inside and knew how to get in and out. They wanted to steal without waking the giant. This gave them the added benefit that if they failed in their mission, we would underestimate their capabilities. Only when they failed did they use brute force, and at an advantage.”
“There’s a double agent here?” asked Varg, clearly more excited at the prospect than afraid.
“Almost definitely, in the population or, I fear, among the teams.”
“What do we do now?” asked Vibeke.
“You four go to the medical bay and get a once-over. D team and E team are heading out to Siberia with Balder. S and M are attempting to track the invaders with our most expensive gadgets and gizmos, including one machine that costs over, well, no matter. C team is internal affairs. They’ll want to ask you all about what you saw, a full and most likely repetitive debriefing. Then you will be interviewed by… another interested party.”
He said the last words in the tone Violet’s parents had used when they told her bad news. It was disconcerting coming from him, as if he felt sorry for them having to meet that “interested party.” He could laugh about the weather in Udachnaya, but he was dead solemn about what was to come. Violet suddenly felt like the disaster wasn’t at an end.
Alf headed for his library. V team headed for the med bay. As they walked north toward the bay and gym, they began to see crowds. Residents and teams were standing, staring as they passed. Violet couldn’t make out what they said and linked to each other. Condemnations? Pity? Whatever they were saying, Violet didn’t like those whispers. There was no way they were anything good.
They came to the med bay, walking under a cantilever of the gymnasium to the entrance. Most people from the gym were out to see them, staring as they entered. There was only one person in the bay. The link called her T. Nachtgall, nurse third class, junior grade.
“Dr. Niide and the senior med staff are en route to Udachnaya. They said you weren’t too beaten up. Uh, are you?”
All four shook their heads.
“Okay, um, I don’t have X-ray eyes. So….”
She meant they had to disrobe. Violet was never more aware of the medical bay’s transparent front wall. Who the hell, she wondered, designed a medical ward, realm of the colonoscopy and catheter, with a giant transparent wall? The crowd from the gym hadn’t the classic decency to disperse as V team stripped off their suits for exams. Violet felt like she was in summertime Scotland again.
The four sat on their respective exam tables, all unclothed and all growing certain they did not need to be. Varg alone sat without the least degree of modesty, and the others sat trying not to stare at what he had reason to be immodest about. The nurse approached Veikko first. He held up his arm for dermal regeneration on a bad scrape and asked for a muscle patch on his shoulders. Vibeke needed nothing. The nurse came to Violet, who had one request.
“I got blood in my Tikari port.”
“You’re injured there?”
“No, I stabbed a guy, put it back in.”
“Ewwwww!” shouted the nurse.
“Yes.”
“That’s really horrible!”
“Yes. Can you clean it out for me?”
“No!” she shouted as if she had taken offense. “Why the hell did you do that?”
“I was in a hurry. Why can’t you do anything?”
“Like what? What am I supposed to do that you can’t?”
“I don’t know,” she said, growing irate. “Disinfect it? Wash the port out? Test me for…. cholera or something?”
“No, just go… go shower or something. And don’t do that again.”
“Thank you so fucking much,” Violet barked as she hopped off the table and grabbed her suit. She didn’t bother to put it on; she just marched as fast as she could out of the med bay. The nurse moved on to Varg, who alerted her to a sensitivity in his inguinal ligaments. Violet marched out of sight of the crowd and into the gym, empty with everyone outside staring at the med bay. The gym washroom was also empty, and beside the sonic showers was a water sink with a water hose. She ejected her Tikari into the basin and gave it a thorough cleaning, let it shake off, then put the hose into her chest. The water froze her ribs and lungs, but she didn’t mind at all. The more it hurt, she thought, the cleaner it got. The metal parts of her port stayed cold after she was done, a discomfort that lingered after the Tikari jumped back in.
She dressed and walked into the På Täppan room. The hill was only a meter high without the three-meter people heap on it. She sat on the empty hill and cursed the inept nurse, the transparent wall, the crowd. The whole damn day. The whole damn mission. It was a joke to Alf, disgusting to the nurse. How could she even talk to her team about it after her failure in the machine room? Everything about it was rotten, like a dead rat in the walls, stinking up everything and impossible to find and excise. Violet didn’t know how tired she was until she noticed she was asleep, in the lucid dreamscape. If she were dreaming, she knew one thing she could talk to without shame.
“Alopex?” she called.
“Yes, Violet?”
“What the hell happened?”
“Please make your inquiry more specific.”
“What happened in Siberia?”
“Analysis is underway. Early findings suggest a devoted strike force attacked Trubka Udachnaya in order to obtain weaponry they were unable to steal in a previous incursion here. The force consisted of at least thirty-four and no more than forty-four individuals, five panzercopters, and extensive light armament. Udachnaya responded with heavy artillery fire, incapable of full defensive capacity, and improvised attacks including semifunctional batteries and use of the targeted Mjölnir system. The strike force showed 92.9 percent efficiency, with Udachnaya forces responding with 88 percent th
eoretical efficiency and 32 percent active efficiency. Infiltrators succeeded in the theft of one Mjölnir generator, seven Gatling shotguns, and two FKMA robots. Abnormalities in the strike included extreme heavy armor and excessive offensive commitment.”
An obedient little fox. Not a single word outside the analysis, cold and robotic, almost like Vibs. Almost like herself, Violet thought. “What was abnormal about it?”
“Armored aircraft are limited in the amount of shielding they can carry and still fly. The enemy panzercopters had 800 percent of optimal shielding, as well as Kraken assault systems. Flight capabilities were significantly impaired. Personnel carried heavy armor atypical of land assaults, as well as contingency gear that was not deployed, including—”
“Gas masks?” she realized.
“Affirmative.”
“Why would they have gas masks if they weren’t using gas? Have our Russian agents ever used toxic gas?”
“Negative. Toxic gas has not been used in any Udachnaya or Valhalla assault, or any known dispute for over thirty years. No suggestion of its use has been implied or threatened in twenty years. Gas masks of the style deployed at Udachnaya are used currently only for deep gas-giant mining operations, methane-carbonizing reverberator assembly, sexual fetish and disguise, algae farming in toxic env—”
“Likelihood of disguise purpose in attack?”
“Under 10 percent.”
“Why?”
“Deduction based on purpose in disguise. There is little likelihood the attackers would be recognized by our forces or Siberian allies.”
“Update to include factor: one or more members of Valhalla or Udachnaya are double agents.”
“Calculating.”
As Alopex worked, a new avatar appeared at her side, a giant brown tarantula, watching her with several eyes. He spoke to Alopex in a recognizable voice. It was Alföðr.