by Ari Bach
After that they began the light risk-free work they were supposed to have done as a junior novice team. To the delight of all four, the first involved explosives. An old battleship hull had floated too near to Kvitøya for comfort. After T team had confirmed that it was not housing five panzercopters, V took over and flew in with two thermobaric bombs. Vibs and Violet set them, Veikko flew the pogo to a safe distance, and Varg detonated them. Once they had finished, they felt almost disappointed that nothing had gone wrong with the mission.
Things had returned to normal in the North. V team learned new tricks, some of which they recognized: Varg from old movies, Vibs from old books, Violet from old games, and Veikko from missions he’d observed before the rest of his team had arrived. Violet doubled her efforts to control her Tikari in complex operations. Kabar told her again and again that she was trying too hard. He said it was all about trust, but she trusted the thing. She just couldn’t get it to extend its handle flaps to change direction.
“Don’t try to extend the flaps. Just try to fly to the left.”
She sent the Tikari flying. She wanted to fly left, so she extended a flap—and the Tikari fell from the air.
“You’re trying to walk by programming your feet again. Don’t program, just do.
She threw again, and again, but the poor thing fell every time. It was starting to get annoyed with her. She wondered if Tikari ever rebelled against their humans. She asked Kabar.
“They’re three-rule safe for their owners, not for anyone else. It will never hurt or disobey you, but you can have troubles. R team did once, Ruger, I think. George wouldn’t—”
“Who’s George?”
“They named their beetles John, Paul, George… and…. I forget.”
“Ringo?”
“Ah, they told you?”
“No, but I get the idea. What happened?”
“George, like Ruger, developed a real lazy streak. Dr. Niide reprogrammed the Tikari to be more proactive, but they couldn’t reprogram Ruger. Little bug kept poking him in the lung when he lagged behind. But you don’t need to worry. You need to practice. Throw and think left.”
She threw then thought left, and the Tikari went perfectly straight.
A week later she had made little progress. As they flew a pogo south to excavate a tunnel for H team, Violet tried to steer the conversation toward her troubles.
“Did you know that R team named all their Tikari?” she asked.
“Yes, after saints, I think,” said Vibeke. “Mine’s named Bob.”
“Sal,” said Veikko.
“Pokey,” added Varg. Pokey lifted his mechanical head at the mention of his name. Varg turned to Violet. “What’s yours?”
“It doesn’t have one. You never mentioned yours did, any of you.”
“We didn’t?”
“Yours doesn’t?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“I haven’t,” Violet admitted.
“Well, what do you call it?”
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s like a body part. We don’t name our parts.”
“Actually….” began Varg.
“Don’t,” warned Vibeke. “So come up with a name, Vi.”
Veikko agreed. “I suggest Schmelgert Helgerzholm.”
Though the shape reminded her of Sergeant Cameron, and R team’s logic suggested “David,” her Tikari was soon named “Nelson.” Not long after, Nelson was capable of turning left on command.
As Violet progressed again with Kabar’s training, V team completed task after task, mission after mission. Varg got to use explosives again when they adeptly blew up a bridge to help M team catch an assassin. They flew cargo pogos for L team’s theft of weapons from a company who was best not allowed to have them. Under Alf’s direction they completed a dozen odd jobs and once, for H team, they got to test a new apparatus that made land skiffs capable of flying upside down. After proving the devices’ functionality, they spent the better part of the day skiff racing. Violet tied with Varg but came in second due to an overly complex tie-breaking procedure.
As they completed missions, analysis was coming in about their possible specialties and suggested duties. The team as a whole showed particular skills in rapid analytic response, physical abilities, and due to one mission that skewed the averages, wartime armed assault, defense, and battle tactics. Everyone knew where the skew came from, but nobody denied its accuracy. As soon as Balder returned from Udachnaya, he took over the majority of their training and supervision. K team continued to teach them more and more advanced weapons, and they continued training in infiltration and general espionage, but V team was heading for a life in offensive operations.
One day V team found they were no longer the most junior team. W started up when a sixteen-year-old named Ibrahim had the worst coming-of-age party ever. G team, who had only begun to monitor him as a possible recruit, saw him sold by his parents to a Somali labor company, where within hours he was beaten within an inch of his life just for having a small fungal growth on the bottom of his foot. Ibrahim’s first bit of job training was how to operate a heavy forklift, and nobody on G team was surprised when all his attackers were found impaled on that very machine. R team got him the hell out of there fast. He came in wounded and frightened. They had no chance for the proper explanations and offers and doubted he would adapt at all to being the first member of the newest team.
He likely would have become a rescued, relocated, and forgotten resident of Kvitøya had Veikko not barged in. Having been a first himself, he knew some of what the kid was going through. Raised in a family of sea lovers and thrown out in an emotional gorefest, Veikko also knew something about what Ibrahim had already gone through. He didn’t know the rest but he went out on a limb, and they became close friends. Veikko in the coming days would practically raise the kid, and that made Uncle Varg and Aunts Vibeke and Violet close to him as well.
Before he had been there a week, Ibrahim resolved to join the Valkyries. As the first W, and unaware of his aunt’s history, he picked the toughest W name he could think of: Wulfgar. After Violet coughed green pudding across the table, he asked if there was a problem with the name.
“No, just haven’t heard it in a while,” she said quickly. “Bad memories.”
“I can pick something else,” he said.
“No, no, it’s fine,” she said, trying to clean the green pudding off of the table, chairs, and Vibs.
“Not Wulfgar. It was a bad omen,” he said.
“Agreed,” said Vibs.
“Wart,” suggested Veikko, after the foot problem that had gotten him into their company. Violet thought to say the term was a bit dubious, but Skadi and Snot were at the table, and Snot thought it was a great name. So Wart he was, and W team began to train. Veikko stood by him in death and injury training and took to calling the boy “Grasshopper.” Nobody was sure if the name came from or inspired Wart’s grasshopper Tikari. Nobody questioned where he got the idea for a fire-yellow suit like Veikko’s or what gave birth to his growing sense of humor.
Violet also took something from that dinner conversation: The name Wulfgar had affected her far more than she wanted to admit, and she was quite relieved he didn’t keep it. She hated herself for reacting the way she did, for caring about it at all. She didn’t want a name to surprise her, to feel like a pin stuck into her side. She had been in Valhalla almost six months. Her team agreed—it was time to call in a promise from when she’d joined.
“I want to go after the Orange Gang,” she told Alföðr. “We’re not the junior team. We have battle experience and offensive ops training. We can take the whole gang down.”
“Ambitious after your first taste of blood, aren’t you? Have you discussed this with your team?”
“They’re itching for it.”
“And how itchy are you?”
“You know why I want to. I can do it dispassionately, without acting from hate. We can plan it out, make certain it doesn’t break the planet. We know how
to do this. We’re ready.”
“I will not insult you by saying you are not. And I think observation of the OG might be in order, indeed by your team. I’ll discuss it with Balder. In the meantime I think you can begin to prove your abilities on some similar but less ambitious marks. There is certainly no shortage of them.”
Balder agreed it was a waste to use V on minor demolitions—although Varg would sorely miss it—and routine activities. He began to note low-level gangs and criminal organizations they could practice on. He didn’t look for safe projects. He looked for gangs that had to be taken out. He looked for challenges and lined up some serious work for V team to do. He noticed that almost every team logged in to look over his notes. All Valhalla was eager to see the survivors of Siberia show off their talents.
Chapter IX: Jylland
AS V team slept, Balder joined their dream to give them the options he had found for their first mission. “First, we have a breakout of mental patients in Montevideo. The local police have rounded up all but four of them, who have begun sending threats to Uruguayan citizens. Most of the threats are nonsensical and involve plans to kidnap the elderly and ransom them for cat and dog pelts. A straightforward search and capture.”
“Where’s Uruguay again?” asked Varg.
“South America. It’s just outside the hot zone,” said Vibs.
“How far outside the hot zone?” asked Veikko. “I’m not in the mood for equatorial air.”
“It’s past the really bad stuff, maybe three hundred and twenty-five kelvins this time of year.”
“No, thanks. What else? Something cooler.”
Balder called up his notes. “How about Sverige? A band of body modification surgeons went rogue and started breaking into people’s homes, giving them beautification treatments while they sleep. We think they’re still working professionally, forming a sort of secret society. A confide-and-go-seek job.”
“I refuse on principle.” Varg laughed.
“I thought you might.” Balder flipped through some icons in his notes. “There’s a serial killer in Cologne—”
“Is that really what Valhalla deals with? Murderers and psycho surgeons?”
“That’s really what junior teams deal with, Veikko,” Balder explained. “You don’t get to save the world in your first year. That’s in your third year. In your first year, you get to deal with serial killers in Cologne.” He checked over his notes. “And that one just got caught. See what happens when you argue? Okay, what else…. Here’s one from your home company, Violet. G team is watching another Scot, possibly for W team, and they found some Americans openly recruiting mercenaries. They’re not totally inept, so they’ve avoided police recognition. We don’t know what they intend to do, but their chatter says it’ll be illegal and medium scale. Research and reaction gig.”
“I’m all for it,” volunteered Violet.
“Same,” said Varg. “Where in Scotland?”
“Inverness Industrial Zone.”
“I’m game.”
“Agreed. Let’s check it out,” said Veikko. “And Americans too! I’ve always wanted to meet real cowboys.”
V team took a pogo southeast toward Inverness. Varg and Veikko discussed cowboy movies in the hopes they would offer insight into the American mind. Vibeke gained a better idea of what to expect by looking over the short dossier Balder loaded into their heads. Violet piloted. She was born in Inverness, where her parents had lived for about a year before they headed for the arcology in Kyle. Violet had visited the city with her dad to see the old castles and the stuffed remains of Nessie but remembered little of either. Now she was headed for the industrial zone, the largest expanse of factories and refineries in the highlands. She set the pogo down atop a chemical factory with a broken link label. It manufactured either exfoliants or defoliants. It didn’t matter which. She chose it for the flat roof with no detector cameras.
In the alley below, link icons visible only to Valhalla links labeled the targets. The icons from G team pointed to three men walking together. The first task was to find out exactly what they intended to do. As they were recruiting openly, V team elected to approach them and offer their services. Violet, Varg, and Veikko slid down a light pole alongside the factory, out of sight of the targets. Vibeke stayed in the pogo and sent her Tikari along to watch. She would provide intel from the nets and keep a bug’s-eye view of the situation. Varg would keep watch from a street perspective and stay ready to move in closer for rescue or a fight. Violet and Veikko followed the men to a factoryside bar. They walked in as Varg stood outside the door. He linked in to Violet’s brain and watched from her eyes. Veikko linked back to Vibeke, “One tall male with hat, one short male without hat, one bald male to his left. Anyone outside?”
Vibs gave the area a quick search for any other G-team-labeled people.
“None,” she said. “Go for approach.”
Veikko and Violet walked casually to the marks and Violet, having the only local accent, spoke first.
“Hear you’re hiring.”
“Sound waves are slow,” said the bald American. “We have all the mercs we need.”
Violet didn’t miss a beat. “There must be something you still need, or you wouldn’t be out here.”
The bald man linked to his friends. His link was encrypted, not as thickly as their own but enough to hide his words from Veikko’s subtle attempts to listen in. The man turned back to them.
“You got any problem with bending laws?” he asked.
“We don’t mind bending, twisting, or snapping them in half.”
“You know the territory around here?”
“I’m a native. What do you need?”
“A place to land a couple subs and someone to bring their cargo in under the radar.”
“That we’ve got.”
“How much?”
“We get 5 percent of the value of your cargo.”
The man grew suspicious and linked to his pals again. The short man said, “You must really need our business. Why so eager?”
Violet’s lack of knowledge of standard criminal rates had alerted them. She couldn’t think of what to say. Veikko’s link protruded into her mind, just as encrypted as their opponent’s. “Ideology,” he suggested.
Violet spoke quickly. “Well, we hear you share our sympathies.”
The tall man looked irate. “What do you care? How many Scots lost any cash last week?”
Vibs immediately began searches for major financial shifts in the last week. The Irish-American Coast Consortium had just lost all its submarine shipping rights to Cetacean shippers. She linked Veikko her results so fast there was no break in the conversation’s cadence when he spoke up in an Irish accent. Veikko’s accent was so spot-on Violet had to conceal her surprise. Not only did he sound Irish, but he acted it, as if every year of his life had been spent soaking in the subtleties of culture and phrase. Even his facial expression was different, as though every muscle had reset itself into a County Cork countenance.
“I’m not Scottish,” he shouted. “I’m Irish, and it was my family, if you have to ask. My family had everything invested in the Coast Consort, not to mention four years of our lives and a lot of hopes pinned on that feckin’ thing. So when some damn Scot—no offense, dearie—steals our lanes to sell them to the clatty fish, I’ll have a damn thing to say about it.”
The growing suspicion in the Americans disappeared. Violet let Veikko do the talking and watched as he exploited every hint they gave. Like a master negotiator, he knew just what to say to make them comfortable, to feel safe. He did it so subtly Violet couldn’t follow it all. She could only marvel at the ease with which he took them in. In only four minutes the Americans took Violet and Veikko into the alley and spilled the entirety of their plans.
Veikko even managed to get the bald man to give up the carrier signal of the coming subs that were to unload derezzers bound for the offices of their enemies. Vibeke loaded it into the pogo’s computer. When Veikk
o asked if they intended to disrupt their enemy’s hard drives, the bald man volunteered that they wanted to disrupt their brains as well.
“All too easy,” Varg linked from around the block. Now it was time to sneak in, identify the heads of the plot to learn how deep it went, and seek out the hidden members. Violet began to think of the days to come, genuine spy work, but it would be tedious. Veikko thought the same and didn’t intend to wait so long.
“I want to know just who I’m dealing with. When do I get to meet the rest of ya?”
“On arrival,” said the bald man. “Jason is on one of our subs. You’ll see him on landing.”
“Ya got everyone on those subs?”
“Everyone but Kevin in Dublin.”
“Everyone, ya say?” Veikko smiled. The American nodded. It was crude, sloppy, and simple, but Veikko had just done all the research they would need to make the enemy operation unfeasible. The police could handle the rest, the grunt work of arrests and investigation. Many a mission V team had observed in training had ended as such. It was the style of most Valkyrie teams to end the threat and leave cleanup to the local authorities. V team would be no exception. They didn’t bother to shift the conversation gently or gradually move the men into traps. Varg simply came forward, pulled out his microwave, and stunned all three Americans, then cursed that he’d forgotten to say “Draw.”
The team hauled them into the back of the pogo. With the American recruiters in the cargo hold, they sped out to sea. Having the carrier signature, they found the incoming subs with ease. Violet was about to start discussing what to do about the subs when Varg seized the weaponry controls and started shooting. Neither Veikko nor Vibeke said anything against it, so Violet assumed he knew what he was doing.
He did. A short blast from the pogo microwave cannon disabled the subs; another couple welded their hatches and cargo bays shut. Both subs surfaced immediately, and Varg shoved the sleeping Americans ungently onto their decks. Vibeke sent an anonymous link to the UKI coast guard with all the information they would need to capture and detain the belligerents. The mission was over. It was brief, fast, and to Violet’s mind, dull as doilies.