by Ari Bach
The YUP saw the shapes too and unwisely opened fire. Tired of topsider disobedience, Pelamus decided to make an example of them, one more clear than torpedoes had been. He emptied the collective bilges, and the sub leapt into open air to address the crowd. The great yellow-and-black serpent cleared the water, and with its weapons array lowered as a snake’s jaw, he caught the offending panzercopter, cleaving it in half, then splashed down in a circle around the others. YUP-colored copters that hadn’t fired weren’t attacked, but the rest were quickly annihilated.
Pelamus was content with the demonstration but wanted to make it clear that his upper hand didn’t end with one sub on the surface. He gave the order to break formation. Each black-and-yellow segment of the serpent disconnected from its neighbor and sailed into an encompassing formation, surrounding every topside craft with three individual craft. Icing the cake, his other subs came up slowly from the depths to surround the lot. Stillness prevailed again.
“Cetaceans,” whispered Veikko calmly. “Pirates. They won’t attack a cargo pogo till they know it’s devoid of cargo.”
The leviathans had shown such force and fury, it was clear nothing in the area could stop them. The few remaining copters slowly set down on the water as if to surrender. Omega turned off their floatation systems and came to a rest. As soon as everyone was on the surface, the torpedoes went belly up and withdrew their spines. They could still be rearmed instantly, but their message of reciprocation was clear. Violet didn’t quite understand. “They have us. Why give a millimeter?”
Veikko answered, “Cetaceans are slaves to naval etiquette. Even the thieves are honor bound. They’ll rescue the survivors and parlay. We’ll be fine.”
He was correct. Three other subs came to the surface. One began breaking into segments of smaller boats. Methodically, each miniboat made its way through wreckage to survivors in the water, picked them up, and allowed them aboard. As the boats got closer, Violet could see who piloted them. They wore suits like humans wore when they went underwater: yellow and black, lightly armored, with rubber fittings and joints. She couldn’t see the faces behind the masks, which were painted with baroque detail, with jaws and fangs and tentacles and artistic flourishes that no land force would bother with.
Their actions were more efficient than their wardrobe. Once the living were aboard, half the boats reformed their sub. Another sub took the remaining hovercraft in tow; another strung up the two last copters as they floated. The last sub headed for the cargo pogo. Veikko motioned for everyone aboard to remain still as two suited Cetaceans began tying the pogo to their sub with some kind of line. It was the first actual braided hemp line Violet had ever seen outside of history class. It looked old and weak, but it did its job.
The Cetaceans stood guard as the subs began docking and extending gangplanks to one another. They drew closer and closer until all four were connected into a great barge, human survivors in the middle or on their tied vessels. One of the subs continued to change shape. The tower in the middle of the boat split down the middle and disgorged an internal chamber from its center. This chamber tracked across the top of the sub. Violet could see that it was carved out of wood. It was very ornate, more like part of an old castle than the bridge of any seafaring vessel she had ever seen. Its fine wooden doors opened to reveal one suited figure, his outfit painted with far more detail and carrying far more armor than the others. He stood and surveyed the humans around him, then walked up to the side of the cargo pogo with two guards. One of his cohorts spoke, his voice distorted by his armor. “Pelamus Pluturus, lord of the Mediterranean, lord of the depths of the Red Sea, lord of thieves, father of plunder, enemy of all human rich, and vengeance bound to slaughter the YUP!” He pounded his right boot, shaped to hold a wide flat foot, on the deck.
Then Pelamus stepped forward and said something that few land folk would have expected. “Permission to come aboard?”
Veikko fearlessly responded, “Permission granted, sir.”
Pelamus came aboard. He looked around the cavernous interior of the cargo section and at the controls in the small cockpit and passenger section. He spoke with great formality.
“This is not a YUP vessel?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you allied with the YUP?”
“No, sir.”
“And your cargo?”
“Stolen,” Veikko lied, “by the YUP.”
“That was the cause of battle?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pelamus stood still. He might have been smiling in his elaborate helmet. He might have been deciding to kill them all. After a few seconds of tense silence, he spoke again. “We should like to borrow your vessel to hold a gam and sort out the survivors.”
“Granted, sir.”
Veikko seemed to have made the fish’s good side. He whispered to his team as Pelamus disembarked that he had not put them on friendly terms. He had only given him enough respect not to get killed instantly. The Cetaceans pushed every drenched survivor into the cargo pogo hold. Three suited captains came from their subs, one with two crew carrying a fine wooden table. The pogo proved a good meeting room. Its hold was large enough to accommodate everyone, and it kept out the noise of the ocean and twisting burning wreckage. Once all were seated and Pelamus’s ornate chair arrived, he sat and spoke again.
“Who here call themselves Yuppies?”
A few people timidly raised their hands. Violet thought she recognized a couple of Sasha’s men among them. Pelamus made a hand signal. His men stepped forward and executed every one of them with harpoon guns.
“Anyone else?”
Nobody raised their hand this time.
“Good. Now, who are the rest of you?”
Veikko stepped forward.
“My mates and I are from the cold edge of the north. We came as merchants, but Yuppies in the birds took all we had. Those birds have flown. The Ellines in the hovercraft defended us from the YUP.”
Pelamus looked to the Karpathians. Everyone from each hovercraft was present, all alive, though some a bit crispy. Pelamus surveyed them and considered the situation. He said, “Then your cargo is lost. We shall have this vessel for ourselves. You may go free. We offer safe passage and medical treatment for your ally Ellines if you accept.”
“We accept and offer all gratitude, sir,” Veikko said with a slight bow of his head.
Pelamus nodded, a motion that suggested he had a very long neck under his armor. Then he kept his word. His men took over the pogo—after Varg made sure to wipe its memory core of anything Valhalla related—then directed the surviving Karpathians and Valhalla teams to the subs. The boats broke their tight barge formation as suited crew directed the humans below. Violet, Varg, and Veikko were taken with Mortiis, Motoko, and a few Karpathians through dank, cramped corridors, through a maze of baroque decor that cramped the space even more. None of it appeared practical, all form before function, but on closer inspection Violet spotted functionality hidden throughout. They ended in quarters near the ship’s stern, where their escort asked, “Destination?”
One of the hovercraft men responded, “All of us to Karpathos.”
Veikko added, “If it should please your captain.”
The escort stood up straight with a click in his finned heels and left. They spoke freely.
“I’m glad you know all that polite crap,” Varg said with a laugh.
“I lived with that shit every day for my entire youth.” Veikko grunted. “I fucking hate Cetaceans.”
Violet whispered, “Don’t say that too loud.”
“Don’t worry, their hearing’s terrible in air,” he explained.
“Well, we completed our mission.”
“At the cost of two of our hoverfleet,” said Omega’s leader.
“And much of our skin,” said a Theta. “How are the fish with human medicine?”
“Your men will be fine,” Veikko replied.
“And my lunch!” said another Greek. “My lunch was on that ho
vercraft.” He buried his face in his hands. “The first real food I bought in a year. How much is lost in war….”
The Omega leader patted him on the back. “We got off easy. Who the hell are these—these people?”
“Pirates,” said Veikko. “No clue why they broke up a Yuppie fight.”
“Pirates?” Varg laughed incredulously.
“No, no, sea pirates. An old tradition. They don’t traffic information or bootleg entertainment. They steal cargo from intercompany waters.”
“He said he was after the YUP,” remarked Motoko. “Do they usually go for companies?”
“Never in their own seas. This guy’s strange.”
“You mean stranger than the rest of the fish,” said Mortiis.
“Yes.”
Violet felt very tired. She kept replaying the events of the day in her mind. It had gone haywire, but everyone seemed to be ending up in the right place. They had lost a cargo pogo, but Valhalla had five more. What, she wondered, did fish need with a cargo pogo anyway? From what little she knew of them, these were not what she expected. She had questions to ask Veikko but she stored them away in a partition. They didn’t matter just then. All that mattered was that they’d survived the fight, that Balder and Vibeke were on their way. Vibs was gone with Mishka. The triumphant achievement of their mission goal seemed more depressing than failure.
After hours of slow sea travel, they arrived at Karpathos. They disembarked with great pomp and politeness at the island port and followed the Omega and Theta teams. The injured men who had traveled by another sub were all healed. Whatever Cetacean doctor lurked below the depths of the other subs was apparently quite skilled. With links functioning again, they sent an all clear to Alf. They received only a receipt and a request to return north. They followed the teams through a Karpathian forest, where a secluded elevator took them underground. Karpathos base had no extravagant views. It was all hallways and rooms and hangar bays, the last of which they went straight toward. From there they would take a pogo back home to await news of Balder and Vibeke with bated breath.
They all got some sleep on the way home, tired as they were from the battle and the tedious sea voyage. They were all so stressed and drained from the day that they failed to notice something about Pelamus’s boat that would have given them cause for concern. Amid all the lavish decor and all the carvings, there were some panels that depicted Pelamus Pluturus standing triumphant over a burning, broken Valhalla.
Chapter XII: Congo
VIBEKE’S MIND was racing. As the aerial mosh pit faded away to the horizon and the sounds of that battle turned to dull thuds and thumps, she was left alone with Mishka. Marduk and the generator concealing Balder flew just under half a kilometer to their side. Aboard each copter were only two pilots, and a gunner, and the passengers from Valhalla. Their links were all turned off.
Vibeke felt powerless. Partly because her team was stuck in a fight that she couldn’t join, but more so because of the extraordinarily powerful woman by her side. Vibs always felt weak next to her, pinned under her, even watched by her. Even when they might have been in love in the beginning, everything Mishka did was like a reminder of her superior strength and tougher mentality. Even the plain fact she was taller was intimidating. Mishka’s very way of speaking suggested superiority—not egotism, just simple matter-of-fact power. Power she used without even trying: Every time Mishka touched her, it was like a stolen grope. Every time she caught Mishka looking at her, it was a deep, penetrating gaze.
“Eye rape,” she’d called it once, talking to Violet as they planned the infiltration of Sasha’s militia. Vibeke didn’t fail to notice that when she told Violet how it felt, Violet quickly averted her own eyes away from Vibeke’s body. Violet was, to Vibeke’s mind, the exact opposite sort of person. She was strong, willful, everything good about Mishka but not as a threat, rather as a counterpart. She didn’t mind when Violet watched her. And Mishka thought Violet was stupid, slower, a lesser version of herself. Maybe she was right, Vibs admitted. Violet wasn’t as smart or strong, and that’s why Vibs cared so much more for her. A goddess is intimidating, but Violet is human, she thought, tangible and warm and human… and so terribly far away.
Vibs reclined in Mishka’s arms that whole trip, buff arms protecting her from the wind, hot breath on her neck. She’d never felt more alone. It was a not a woman but a mission that sat behind her, holding on to her. Vibs shut down whatever part of her brain could be called herself and focused on work. Work meant deception. So she rolled over to face Mishka and kissed her neck, let her head rest against Mishka’s chest, and tried not to let herself admit that she felt safe there and loved.
Marduk, alone in his copter’s hold, just stared at the big heavy generator he had stolen. He felt sad saying farewell to his old home in the north. He wished someone wise like Balder was nearby to help him through the shift.
VIOLET FELL into her bunk, as tired as she had ever been, and completely incapable of sleep. The room smelled like boys, felt half-empty, felt too big. All that lay on Vibeke’s bed were two books. Violet tried to read the titles but gave up after a few attempts to match the letters with the images in her memory. She couldn’t do it with the books on their sides. Mishka can read, she thought. I can’t.
Violet hopped out of bed and showered, let the sound waves gently pulsate the dirt and grime from her, let the air cleanse away the smell of the Cetacean subs. Then she left the barracks. She wandered the ravine and had never seen it emptier. Everyone was asleep. She even passed by Wulfgar in his cage, sleeping curled up like a kitten, snoring an uncharacteristically purr-like snore. The brig, half-assembled nearby, was still puny-looking. Violet tried to be useful by noting some design changes to be made but gave up before long. She didn’t want to be useful that night.
She wanted Vibs and didn’t care to hide it from herself. She couldn’t admit what she wanted Vibs for, or just how overpowering that need was, but she knew that whatever was alive inside her was worse than she had feared when she had spoken to Nergal. It might have been the only thing Violet had ever encountered that she couldn’t hope to control. So for that night when she was alone, when she had no mission or duty, no prospect of sleep or consolation from her team, she let herself hope and indulged every thought of what she could never do with Vibeke when she got back.
THE COPTERS landed at night, but it was still hot as hell, so hot that Vibeke’s suit turned its rubber sections into netting and began puron cycling. She had hoped the enemy base would be something like Valhalla, but it was in every way the exact opposite. The base was small because it was mobile, resembling the body of an aircraft carrier sailing smoothly atop the jungle canopy, an ocean of treetops in the moonlight, swaying in a hot breeze. Vibs found it a most unnatural surrounding.
The panzercopters sunk into the carrier on massive flat lifts. Mishka and Vibeke hopped off and traversed the deck toward the island, a mess of artillery and white metal. The whole carrier was white, ghostlike under the moon. Every man on deck wore white, even one man with a thick black face mask. As Sasha spotted them and ran closer, Vibs could see it wasn’t a mask but a thick, hideous beard.
He greeted Mishka with three kisses on her cheeks. He turned to Vibeke and offered the same, a bit more awkwardly. She let him hug her and rub his gangly wool pad of a face against her cheek, smiling all the while as if she had been waiting her whole life to get pummeled with the man’s scruffy mug.
“Welcome to Africa!” he shouted, then spoke to Mishka in Russian. Vibs couldn’t understand it without her link, and she tried to hide that she didn’t care to. She did that well enough that he apologized and begged them to come inside and see the bridge, speaking as if he were inviting them into a gazebo for tea. He shouted to the men on the deck, ordering them to start hooking up and testing the new generator. Vibeke wished she could have seen Balder’s escape, but she was obligated to follow Sasha and make small talk and convince him of her genuine love for her worst enemy.
As Balder cut into the bow and began his covert stroll through enemy territory, his team began hacking into the brains of the unconscious. They recorded and copied everything the men kept stored in partitioned memory, then set to work charting their wetware. Within minutes, B team had convinced them that the generator was intact and functional, that they had never gone unconscious, and that for the next few days they would defend the honor of this inviolate generator. However poorly it worked, they would not let a soul but themselves open it for repair.
Meanwhile, Sasha sat down with Vibeke and Marduk in his ready room and spoke to his new recruits. “When I first arrived in Tanganyika, I went over the logs, African news, Congo history, everything. The big headline of the day was ‘Nine bodies found beheaded.’ Not somewhere in the jungle but right on the shore, right in the yard of my new owners. The next day, the headline was ‘Nine heads found.’ The next day it was ‘Bodies do not match heads.’
“They sold me here for a petty tribal conflict, where one tribe got a man elected, and he planned genocide for his old rivals. And that sad state of affairs is the norm here. The world at peace? It’s a lie, an absolute lie. This is not peace, not at all. Ages ago, long before our parents were conceived, this place was even worse. And in that diseased era—and I do mean diseased, for this land was infected with so many illnesses we couldn’t read about them all in a lifetime—there were people called missionaries who came here to try to sort out the land, to teach the inhabitants.