Valhalla

by Ari Bach

  One day Galder and Gehenna approached Violet at lunch. Galder spoke plainly. “What do remember about Heather Lyle?”

  “Private Lyle? From Achnacarry?”

  “Yes,” said Gehenna. “We’ve been watching her for W team for a while now.”

  “Well, I kicked some of her teeth out. She might not like me.”

  “She actually never blamed you for that,” said Gehenna. “Though she thought you were insane, she also thought you were, as she told a Sergeant Cameron, ‘One badass babe.’ Once she got new teeth, she completed training at Achnacarry and proved herself in the combat-free military world. While stationed in the Israeli craters, she expressed concern for you and sadness at your faked death by the Orange Gang.”

  “But the station,” said Galder, “wasn’t easy for Heather. Her individualist tendencies put her on the shit lists of enough officers to land her in trouble again and again. When she became disillusioned with the pointlessness of her career, she tried to leave, but her contract was so Machiavellian as to leave her stuck in the service of Scotland and its subsidiaries. When they gave her twenty-four-hour medical cleanup duty, the last bonds she had to her sad employ snapped, and she deserted. Desertion means if she’s ever caught, she’ll spend the rest of her life in slavery so unspeakable that I won’t speak of it, but this is a Grade-A Achnacarry commando, and Valhalla’s not about to let her go to waste.”

  “Subject to your approval,” added Gehenna. “Wart has given his.”

  Violet didn’t have to think long. Veikko looked forward to getting a “daughter,” and Violet looked forward to seeing former Private Lyle again. V team saw R team in their dreams the night before pickup and asked if they could come along.

  “You can bring her in,” said Ragnar. “We wanted to go to Türkiye for Anma Günü tomorrow.”

  So the Rs took their holiday trip, and V team headed for Edinburgh. G called them in flight to tell them to make haste, as the police were on their way to pick Lyle up. That was a benefit if they could time it right. The cops would see her die and close the files on her. She wouldn’t get the luxury of an epic chase like Varg’s or a knife fight like Violet’s, but they expected she wouldn’t mind.

  Heather was sleeping atop a mountain crammed with memorials and statues, at the top of an ancient rock staircase named Jacob’s Ladder. Jacob’s Ladder was covered in drunk vomit and trash, so the cops were making a slow ascent. V team landed their pogo behind a tall conical monument and Tikaried the air to get multiple views of the situation. Heather awoke and spotted the incoming police but didn’t run. Violet was surprised to see the state she was in, homeless and desperate, and if she wasn’t going to run, she looked quite ready to fight. Veikko’s Tikari saw the police were well armed. Vibeke gave their precinct a quick hack to see their directive. It was a brutal one: “Subject is highly trained and highly dangerous. If given any resistance at all, shoot to kill.”

  Violet wasted no time and made contact. Knowing exactly what an Achnacarry-trained soldier could do when taken by surprise, she called to her as she approached.

  “Heather Lyle!” she shouted.

  Heather turned around, expecting to see more police closing in. When she saw Violet she was surprised, to say the least. She called, “Violet? Is that really you?”

  “Yes.”

  “No it’s not. You’re dead.”

  “Faked. I found something better than Achnacarry. You can join us or leave with the cops.”

  Heather pushed aside her disbelief. “Gee, let me think. Okay, you. What do I have to do?”

  The police were nearly to the top of the stairs.

  “We have to convince the cops you’re dead. You need to run from them and take cover under those pillars. They’re going to get knocked over in one minute. We’re gonna pull you out half a second before you get crushed. They won’t see it.”

  “You will?” Heather didn’t seem to believe it. “Violet, if you really are Violet—”

  “Trust later. It’s death or the cops.” Violet disappeared into the shrubbery. Heather knew she would have died anyway rather than go with the police, so the offer was golden. She saw them come up the stairs. They ordered her to freeze. She did not. She took cover by the pillared monument and sure enough a blast, courtesy of Varg, knocked the monument off its rocks and onto Heather. The instant Varg had triggered the blast, Veikko tractored her out with the pogo microwaves. He did it so fast it nearly broke her neck, but she landed far from the police’s view, and Veikko had a med kit ready for the expected whiplash. He quickly sprayed some fragments of burnt flesh cloned from Achnacarry’s records to supply a “body.” Violet and Varg rendezvoused with their Tikaris and boarded. Vibeke kept her hack active long enough to hear the words “suicide bomb” reported, then cleared them for takeoff.

  From the back of the mountain, the pogo flew low into the traffic of Edinburgh. Heather looked at the team around her, her heart racing and mind reeling.

  “So I’m dead and you’re the angels?” she asked.

  “Demons, sorry. You’re going to hell.”

  “Shut it, Veikko. My name is Vibeke, this large blond fellow is Varg, and Violet you know. We’re spies.”

  Veikko continued, “And we’re gonna remove your sternum and turn it into an insectoid—”

  Violet gave him a backhand to the face.

  “Oh!” said Heather. “You really are Violet!”

  The flight gave them time to explain what they would have online, given the chance. As Heather was on the lam, she’d kept her link off, making both W recruits “raw catches” who didn’t know what was coming. Vibeke had been such a rescue, so this was Veikko’s third experience at welcoming such a person. His humor was terrible as usual, perhaps even worse, but it did seem to break the ice and set Heather at ease with all that was to come. As Heather came to laugh about her fears, Violet admitted there might have been method behind Veikko’s madness. She failed to regret the backhand.

  Veikko explained the rune system to Heather as they flew, and by the time they landed, she had dropped the first letter of her old name in favor of the new. Wart and Weather met that night as Veikko watched from his link. Weather got the same Tikari as Wart, a grasshopper that formed a mek’leth knife. As Wart’s suit took the yellow shade of Veikko’s duotone suit, Weather’s took on his reds. Veikko volunteered again, as he had with Wart, to handle their training, but that was still O team and P team’s job. Easy as it was to forget, V was the most junior team and not yet cleared to train new recruits.

  AS VIOLET slept, Alopex knocked at her brain. “V Team, I have news.”

  “Report.” Vibeke and the others joined.

  “Four military targets in Africa have been attacked by a Mjölnir system. Readings suggest the generator from Siberia was used. Targets had little or no significance to company disputes or strategic locations. Political tensions have risen but not erupted. Teams D, E, L, and N have been reassigned for investigation and renewed tracking options. Junior teams (V team) to remain inactive until further notice.”

  The kids stayed indoors for the rainy days to come. This meant a redoubling of training, sparring, exercising, and above all, conjecture, and rumor. There were minor Mjölnir attacks in the logs every few days, but no pattern emerged in the targets. Alföðr admitted he had no clue as to the purpose of whoever stole the system, beyond the destruction of bases in Africa. They considered every possibility from a violence-for-pleasure-seeking gang to a superior force just beginning to flex its muscle. But the fact remained—someone among them was involved. Someone right there in Valhalla. C team was hunting them around the clock, and V team was invited back to C’s offices to tell them the same things they’d told them before. Cato paced back and forth across the room.

  “Why, Violet, did Varg not come to our offices immediately after the events at Udachnaya?”

  “Ask him.”

  “I’m asking you, mate.”

  “Because he was busy flirting with a nurse.”
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br />   “And that’s why he missed the Geki too, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Do you really think the Geki would let a man miss his debriefing because he wanted to bed a nurse?”

  “Do you think they’d ignore a man they thought was betraying us? Varg killed a dozen of them. You’re grasping at straws,” Violet retorted.

  Cato stared at her. “Yes, we are. Here’s another straw: Why didn’t the intruders open fire at you until you fought back?”

  “Clearly we were too pretty to kill.”

  Cato laughed. “Internal Affairs means everyone here hates me. I don’t need you to like me, but I do need your help. Like you said, grasping at straws. Try to think, Violet. Was there any reason they might not have come in shooting?”

  Violet gave it some genuine thought. “Because they didn’t want a fight? Because one of them was from our camp and didn’t want to kill the junior team. Because they wanted to save ammo. Because they thought they had superior forces. Maybe they just don’t like killing people like—”

  “Like we do?” he sat backward on a chair. “Not related: Why didn’t you kill Wulfgar?”

  “Geki.”

  “If there were no such thing, you would have?”

  “No. His gang might have connections we haven’t seen yet, lines we didn’t cut. He was a big man once. His disappearance might bring up problems we couldn’t solve with him dead.”

  “Alf’s words. Balder’s. Wise, but not your own. Let me tell you a little bit about m’self. If not for the Geki, I’d destroy Tunisia. Utterly. I’d nuke it, wave bomb it, burn it, drown it. I’d salt the bloody earth.”

  “Why?”

  “Not your business. Point is, I would. And I won’t be going there again lest I can. So when I see you just talking to that man, I have to wonder. Why?”

  “Not your business.”

  “That, Violet, is an ass thing to say.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  C team wasn’t the only team pursuing an investigation. Back in the barracks, Violet wondered aloud with her team about every question Cato had asked. Why didn’t they come in shooting? Why gas masks? Was there really someone from Valhalla there with them? And if there were, who the hell was it?

  “It was Cato,” said Veikko.

  “Oh, that would be nice. Then I could shoot him.”

  “He’s not that—well, okay,” Vibs admitted, “he is that bad, but it couldn’t be him. He was meeting with Balder when it went down.”

  “Alopex,” Varg called up the fox, “list all Valhalla citizens and team members unaccounted for during the Udachnaya incident.”

  A huge list of icons appeared. Varg waved it away and continued. “Let’s say it was a team member. Citizens don’t generally blow things up; that’s why they’re citizens. Alopex, list unaccounted members.”

  Another list, still huge. Vibeke said, “Remove any members with active Alopex links at the time.”

  The list shrank substantially. A dozen icons floated around, all of members who were not linked in to the Valhalla computers.

  “Label list as possible conspirator list six and close.”

  The list disappeared. Veikko scratched his neck and nose, then said, “Our recruiters couldn’t have missed a previous loyalty, right?”

  “It’s beyond unlikely,” said Vibs.

  “So they must have been recruited by the enemy while working for us.”

  “Unless it was an association that we knew about but didn’t consider dangerous. Loyalty to a legitimate group that turned violent?”

  “We don’t induct people if they have so much as a weekly chess club,” Veikko stated.

  “I was in prison chess club…,” said Vibs.

  “What about surviving families?”

  “Alopex, display members with surviving family.”

  There were thirty-seven icons.

  “Limit to local base.” Sixteen icons.

  “Venn with list six of possible conspirators.” Three: Veikko, Varg, and Mishka.

  “Well, I didn’t do it,” claimed Varg.

  “Me neither,” added Veikko.

  “Why are you two even on the list?”

  “All four of us are listed because we were there, unlinked to Aloe,” said Varg, “and my family is alive, if you can call it living.”

  “And Veikko? I thought your parents were dead,” asked Vibeke.

  “No parents. I have an older brother,” he answered. “He’s in a Cetacean colony. I can’t stand the syphilitic son of a bitch, so there’s no real connection. And I can absolutely rule him out of any violent plot. He would consider violence to be ‘improper.’ He’s one stuck-up fish. A total peräevä. Who’s Mishka got?”

  “She never mentioned anyone to me,” Vibeke declared with certainty. “I know her pretty well too. Odd.”

  “Want to deploy some of your covert interrogation skills, Vibs?”

  A giant brown tarantula appeared in their chat. “You’re very clever for such a young rune. I do hope you’ll someday learn that what you discover might have been considered by your elders before you.”

  “So you already checked into her family?” pressed Vibeke, eager to hear his results.

  The tarantula scratched his head. “As it is, no, it never occurred to us. I suppose youth has its advantages. I don’t even remember having a family.”

  “So you’ll put C team on it?” asked Violet.

  “Unsubtle,” he said. “Vibeke, I think you have a capacity to talk to Mishka subtly without calling undue attention?”

  “She’s a close friend.”

  “Was that a boast of capability or a lament of having to research ‘a close friend’?”

  Vibs wasn’t about to leave that one in doubt. “Alopex, locate Mishka.”

  “Mishka is in the gymnasium, sparring pad four.”

  “I suppose you can all watch.” Vibs disappeared from the chat and walked to the gym. Alföðr and the rest of the team monitored from her eyes as she walked. She entered the gym and found Mishka fiercely defending attacks from Marduk and Mortiis. Vibs watched. Mishka saw her and proceeded to show off her most flamboyant moves, sending one man to the mat and the other into defensive mode. She flipped onto Mortiis and caused him to forfeit before she broke any bones. Mishka linked to the men. They nodded and left. Mishka glared with a grin at Vibeke as if to say she was next. Vibeke bowed into the ring.

  “We haven’t done this for a while, have we, Vibs?”

  “Was starting to miss you.”

  “You must be a masochist.”

  She launched a halfhearted kick at Vibs.

  “I know you’re a sadist…”

  Vibs fired a volley of punches at full strength but failed to connect.

  “Come on, little girl. Aim for the soft spots. You display weakness.”

  She tried again, more fiercely, with no success.

  “Harder! You went soft sparring that Scottish korova.”

  She kicked Vibs in the face. They could almost feel the pain over the net. Vibs dropped to the floor, not in pain but in tactic, and kicked Mishka’s feet out from under her.

  “Da! That’s better.”

  Mishka launched another, more dangerous attack, taking Vibs to the floor, pinning her.

  “And then you let me back on top. Soft, soft meat. You’ve been tenderized without me. Get up.”

  Mishka didn’t let her up. Vibs struggled.

  “Tender meat. Kjøtt. K-J-O with a silly Norsky line through it—T-T. Admit it.”

  “Nyet…. H-E-T, nyet.”

  Vibs tried with all her might to get up, but Mishka kept her down with what looked like little effort. She stopped trying to get up.

  “Weakling,” Mishka whispered in her ear. “You never should have left me.”

  “Who said I left?”

  “I do.” She sat up to straddle Vibs. “You may have a full team, but you needn’t spend all your time asleep with them or leave the smart half of the gym for the joc
ks in the pile.”

  “I came back, didn’t I?”

  “You came back crawling.”

  Mishka leaned in face-to-face. The four watching through Vibeke’s eyes instinctively flinched. A question suddenly occurred to Violet that she hadn’t asked Alföðr previously. She linked to him out of Vibeke’s hearing, “Is there any actual Valhalla policy on dating between ranks?”

  The tarantula patted her on the back. “I’m flattered, Violet, but you’re much too young for me.” He turned back to watch. Mishka was a centimeter from Vibeke’s ear.

  “What do you want from me now, kjøtt?”

  “Just to talk.”

  “I can’t talk when I’m busy sweating. Let’s shower off and get dinner.”

  So they did and so they did. It took an eon of banal small talk before Vibs could maneuver the conversation past current events to past events, to past missions and inductions, to life outside, to the subtle question it was all about.

  “You got any family left, Mishka?”

  “No, all dead.”

  Vibs was back within minutes of a proper farewell. Alf and her team were waiting in the real world now, back at the barracks.

  “Are we sure she’s lying?” Vibs asked.

  “Positive,” answered Alföðr, tapping his fake eye with a spear tip. “I can spot them from kilometers. She has family, and she knows it.”

  “Who?” asked Varg.

  “Aloe lists her as having family in some logs but not others,” said Vibeke. “Doesn’t have anything else. Did G team skimp on the job?”

  “Never,” Alf said with confidence. “If Aloe’s records aren’t complete, someone deleted them.”