Valhalla

by Ari Bach

  “It was their burden, their God-given plight to tame this place. Of course, that ended with the banning of the church. Those who ended the church, they knew not what they did, and I forgive them, we must forgive them, but we must try to repair the damage done. That’s why I’m still here, after that latest tribal conflict ended. And it ended because I alone brought Western strategy to its fights, to continue in their spirit—to fight no longer for their tribal honor but for their very souls. When I have taken the land, spanked the children, and brought them to silence, I will reestablish the church over this land as it was at its height.

  “Like Spain,” he declared with infinite pride in the name. “Long before it was owned by Portugal and long, long before it was owned by Asda or UNEGA, it was owned by a company called Vatican. And they knew how to run a business. They had a division, or perhaps a subsidiary, called the Inquisition. And it brought order, moral guidance to the land! Its CEO, Thomas De Torquemada, was a true genius of the era. Centuries before Trump”—he genuflected—“Thomas established systems that made use of any means to seek out people who didn’t believe or didn’t comply….

  “That’s who I am, Vibeke, Marduk. I am Torquemada returned in this most corrupt and wild era, in this corrupt and vile continent….” Sasha reclined in his chair and casually polished the peace badges on his chest, appallingly proud of himself. He went on and on.

  Vibeke looked around the room as he spoke. It was full of old artifacts. Not weapons, like those in Balder’s office, but organic remains. There was a pelt of something yellow with a mane, a basket made from what might have been the foot of some extinct monster, even sculptures made of what Vibs assumed to be walrus tusks, though she couldn’t imagine a happy walrus in that weather. She did anything to try to distract herself from the implications of Sasha’s words, because she was deathly afraid she might agree with any of it.

  Mishka nodded along, impressed with her brother’s way with words. It was easy enough in the end for Vibeke play to Sasha’s ego, compared to that night when she would have to play to his sister’s lust. It was all necessary, Vibs reminded herself. She had to stop this madman, and to do it she had to do what spies do. They put up with the heat by remembering their cool, cold home. They put up with the degenerate philosophy by thinking of how to annihilate it. She would put up with Mishka by—she would find a way, somehow.

  Mishka took Vibeke to her quarters, luxurious for the carrier but hot and humid, sickeningly hot and humid even at night. The worst weather for sex. She had to do it to the sound of bugs scratching on the mosquito netting. She had to do it with the rat she hated more than anyone else on earth. But she did it, and did it well enough as to be believed. She was okay for a while, at least until she lay in Mishka’s arms, pressed against her naked in the hammock. Then the insects stopped chirping, and the wind blew gently in, and she was left with nothing to keep her blood boiling, no annoyance to hide behind, only a cool breeze and an embrace she couldn’t help but enjoy. Then she wasn’t okay anymore. There was pain training, there was death training, there was kill training. But there was no training for love or hate, and no drug in her armor pockets to stop her eyes from watering. She was lucky Mishka mistook her tears for sweat.

  The rest was easy by comparison. She observed Sasha’s men working on the generator, declaring angrily when pressed that they almost had it working. She observed what she could of their course through the forest, but without a link, it was all just trees and bizarre howls from within. Mishka abandoned her Thaco armor on the first night in favor of a relaxed white jumpsuit. Though it wasn’t as comfortable, Vibs stuck with her armor. It might have been questionable, but there was no way she would abandon it. So strong was her hope that she would be leaving any second that she wouldn’t leave herself hunting through closets when she could be escaping.

  Days passed. Vibeke gleaned little useful knowledge or intel. There was simply nothing to learn unless she could snoop around below decks, and that was Balder’s job. That left her with nothing but free time with Mishka, whose libido seemed to grow by the day. Finally, in the hope of releasing some of the tension, she challenged Mishka to a sparring match. Mishka was delighted at the idea. Vibeke vowed to kill her any way she could in that match.

  Of course, she couldn’t. Mishka wouldn’t let the match become anything more than a sweaty, playful romp. That would have been bad enough, but when Vibeke got a punch in, it felt so good she enjoyed it, and the instant she realized she was enjoying any part of it, her mind was wrecked. She felt dizzy, angry, pained, too many feelings to register as anything but misery. She ran for Mishka’s quarters, the only home she had there. Mishka didn’t guess why she ran away. She might have figured it out, but an alarm sounded first.

  The false generator had been found out. Vibs welcomed the snap back into survival mode. It was time to go, and she couldn’t wait to leave without saying good-bye. She turned her link on and sent Balder the alarm. Within seconds, the ceiling of Mishka’s room let loose a shower of sparks, and he dropped in. His Tikari followed in caterpillar form and receded into his chest. Vibs stood up, strong as she could look, and spoke without a quiver in her voice.

  “Collect anything good?”

  “Tons, tons, and tons,” he responded by link. “Ready to go?”

  Vibeke felt as if she’d been harrowed from hell. “Fuck yes.”

  “Follow me. Take this,” Balder said as he led her from the room. She expected to be handed something, but it came by link. It was a massive, complex map file. She loaded it into her vision as they ran down the white passage. Suddenly, an outline of the passage overlaid the genuine article. Balder linked again, “We’ll need it later. These bulkheads have scramblers. We’re heading for the lowest deck. They have a half dozen tanks hanging from this thing like offspring. Valhalla could use some tanks. I’ll link you hot-wiring instructions in a—”

  Balder was interrupted by the scramblers he had just mentioned. Though the map stayed the same, several of the square blocks that had formed the bulkheads fell out of place and darted across the hall to reshape the passageway. Instead of the right turn they were to take, it now went straight forward, and in it stood Mishka with four men in white armor.

  Balder stopped fast in his tracks. Vibeke almost slipped on the smooth tile deck. She looked at Mishka and saw her face was livid, murderous. She stood so still time seemed to have lost its grasp on her. Vibeke couldn’t move either. The terrible moment forced her to look into Mishka’s eyes. Mishka knew everything, had figured it all out the instant she saw a hole where the generator’s innards should have been. As she heard the alarm, Mishka tried to tell herself that Vibeke wasn’t part of the deception, but now Vibeke stood there with Balder, transfixed.

  Balder pulled Vibeke out of the terrible trance and pushed her to run back the way they had come. He broadcast a jamming signal that deafened Vibeke’s link and, more importantly, the bulkhead scrambler controls. It could not affect Tikari links, so Mishka launched hers, not as a butterfly but as a spinning cluster of blades, toward Vibs’ neck. It cut her hair as it passed and lodged in the bulkhead. Vibs and Balder ran past it and around a corner as it turned into a bug and pried itself free.

  Mishka and her men were giving chase, audible like a stampede coming at them from behind. Vibeke ran, but she felt pulled backward like a magnet, not by fatigue but by rage. She didn’t want to escape. She wanted to kill, to destroy that face that had stared at her, that was still burnt into her mind’s eye. The throwing star Tikari came again and hit her in the shoulder, lodging in her armor. Again it turned into a bug and tried to free itself. Vibs acted instinctively by springing her own and sending it to get the thing off her back. It jumped forward from her chest, then gave a short rocket burst to strike Mishka’s Tikari hard, knocking it back several meters. Vibs couldn’t stop to let hers back in, so it flew alongside her, keeping watch for the other.

  By the time she and Balder came to the lowest deck, they heard no footsteps behind t
hem. Vibs thought they might have outrun Mishka’s troop, but Balder knew otherwise. He motioned for her to stand back at the hatch to the outside. Vibeke checked the map and understood there was another route to the tank bay. Mishka could be right outside. Balder pulled some explosives from his armor and placed them on the corners of the hatch. Vibeke hoped Mishka was just outside when they blew.

  They took cover, and Balder triggered the charges. The hatch shot away at a hundred kph. Hot African air flooded in as it flew across the tank-bay catwalk and fell to the jungle below. No sign of Mishka. Balder ran out to the bay and ended his link jam. He started sending Vibeke tank manuals as she walked outside.

  They were under the carrier on a railless catwalk running fore to aft. Vibs could now see the carrier’s eight legs picking their way between the trees. Small one-person tanks hung from the belly of the craft, each secured upside down. The tanks were clearly high-end. Each had four legs with ports for four more, heavy armor, and armament, all painted white. Balder began hacking into the first tank to his right. Vibeke’s Tikari landed on her shoulder, keeping watch on the hatchway.

  The hatch at the other end of the catwalk was intact. Vibeke took out her microwave and steadied her aim. She set the weapon to kill. Balder’s Tikari crawled from his chest and jumped onto the ceiling as he worked. It leveled a scanning beam at the closed hatch and waited with Vibeke. Balder worked.

  Suddenly his Tikari broadcast a warning to her. “Explosive bolts.” Mishka didn’t have to blast through the hatch. She was doing it as an offensive tactic. An instant after the warning, the second hatch blew across the catwalk. Vibs ducked at the message, and the hatch flew over her head by centimeters. She could see the armored men coming. Balder’s Tikari fell from the ceiling and launched itself as a boomerang off to the side of the carrier. Vibeke began firing at the men, but her beams only glanced off their armor. Balder’s Tikari had more luck. It continued its circle around to their necks, through their necks, and back to Balder’s hand. The men and their heads fell from the catwalk.

  Balder had activated the first tank. He wiped the blood off and chested his Tikari, then motioned for Vibeke to hop into the tank. She didn’t. Mishka was standing in the hatchway. The devil’s stare didn’t work this time. Vibs was ready to fight. She linked to Balder, “Get in the tank. Get out of here.”

  He responded by voice. “That’s my line, kid.”

  “Do it,” Vibs demanded. “The bitch is mine.”

  Mishka heard her and did not like being called a bitch. Balder tried to step in front of Vibs, but she pushed him back toward the tank. Mishka ran, Vibs ran; Balder knew the score and got out of the way. Mishka and Vibeke both attacked in anger, so both were on their worst form. It was not at all like sparring. It was two sloppy attempts as murder. Both sent their Tikaris, and a razor-blade butterfly and a dagger-winged ladybug fought in the air by their masters, set on AI as their owners were so engulfed by hate that they could not control them.

  Because the Tikaris were on AI, Mishka was able to do the cruelest thing a warrior from Valhalla could do to another. Vibs thought she was aiming for her head, so she blocked in the wrong place, and Mishka punched her target—Vibeke’s second link. It snapped off and instantly the ladybug shriveled into a dagger. Vibeke screamed.

  Balder heard the scream, but he was busy defending against a new torrent of Sasha’s men, coming from the nearer hatch onto the catwalk. But he knew what had happened. There was no scream like it. He had heard it before, and his heart broke for her as she fought. And Vibeke fought on. Mishka’s functioning Tikari attacked her and cut her skin to ribbons. Mishka attacked her and managed to break her right elbow backward, but Vibeke kept fighting.

  She fought her way across the catwalk to her Tikari, only a dagger now, but a dagger was still a weapon. She slashed at Mishka, but the superior insect defended its master, leaving her hands free to attack. In agony in every way, Vibs fought on, growing tired fast as the fight grew futile.

  Balder killed the last in a squad of oncoming men and ran for their fight. He didn’t try to win it. He just took Vibs by the collar and dragged her to a tank. His caterpillar leapt from his chest to hold off the butterfly. Mishka kept fighting, but Vibeke could only kick at her. Vibs dropped her dagger on the way. Balder tried to push her into the active tank, but she broke free of his grip. She had to retrieve her dagger. She fell to the catwalk and raced toward it. She found it covered by Mishka’s foot.

  Mishka was out of breath from anger, not fatigue. Balder was standing ready to fight her. Mishka knew that if he and Vibs attacked together, she wouldn’t survive. Balder knew that if he stayed to fight, Vibs would probably get killed. Vibeke, at that moment, only wanted the corpse of her Tikari. Their states formed a brief truce in which Mishka ventured to talk. “Why, Vibeke? We have so much to do here!”

  “For Valhalla,” she said through her teeth.

  “For the fools up north? Vibeke, you and I loved—”

  “You and I were nothing! You and I were a cover story! Valhalla was in our blood, Mishka. You betrayed us all!”

  Mishka looked as though she felt sorry for her. It was a near motherly expression that filled Vibs with hate, because it was the expression she used to have as she taught her the craft. Mishka took her foot off the Tikari to crouch down. “You never had a real family. Sasha is my real family, as you could have been. Valhalla is nothing.”

  Vibs grabbed the blade and tucked it close to her chest, in pain that it wouldn’t go in. In that pain was the clarity to speak, to give a warning to the monster before her face. “Valhalla won’t forgive this.”

  “God will forgive me,” Mishka said, resolved and sure of herself.

  It broke Vibeke’s cool again. “God? You have bigger things than God after you now!” she screamed. “When I’m done with you, you’ll envy Judas in hell!”

  Balder sensed that the brief truce was at an end. He couldn’t let the fight go on. He pulled Vibs up and threw her full force into the tank. Mishka just stood there as Sasha arrived with another squad of white-armored men. Balder told the tank to raise its armor and drop to the jungle floor. As the tank’s shield closed, Mishka sent one last dart at Vibeke. Not the Tikari that fluttered on her shoulder, but one word. “Weakling….” she whispered. Vibeke heard it, and the tank broke away.

  The Valkyries could have stayed to fight on, to try to kill the heads of the traitor force. Mishka could have chased them. Sasha could have sent his whole fleet after them. But nobody made a move. War had been declared between the forces, that much was certain, but they left each other in pain so deep that the most basic pleasure of a fight had abandoned them. They were all drained of any will to fight on. For the moment.

  Balder drove the tank across the jungle and across the Sahara Desert with Vibeke crammed into the small shield dome. She cried in rage, then cried in pain, then resolved her mind in hatred. Cradling her dead blade, trying to force it back into her chest, she slowly began to accept that it would never take its place within her again. Instead she vowed she would bury it in Mishka, the traitor, her most loathsome and ultimate nemesis. And her heart was at rest, its wounds sealed with anger and its fate sealed with purpose.

  The tank galloped across the land all the way to the Sahara in only a few hours, as fast on varied terrain as most pogos were in clear sky. Balder slowed down and let it trot into the back of the cargo pogo Alopex had sent for them. Then he opened the shield onboard and set Vibeke down in the passenger bay, asleep. He took out a first aid kit and treated what he could, her broken bones and cuts, but not even Niide would be able to fix the rest.

  VIOLET WATCHED the pogo land. She and the team had run to the pogo pad as soon as they got Balder’s link, a full explanation of what had happened. Violet didn’t know what to do. The team was at a loss to help their comrade. They watched her walk off the pogo, holding her dead knife. They couldn’t find any words to say. Vibeke walked right past them. They followed her to the med bay, suddenly grateful fo
r the clear wall. Violet realized the wall might have been left clear not in mockery of those inside, but in compassion for those without.

  They watched Niide check her over, saw the nurses fix her Tikari link, but nobody tried to take the blade from her. She just held it by her chest. Violet walked away. She didn’t want to see Vibs like that. There was nothing for her to do there, not yet. She had waited days to see Vibs again, but now Violet felt utterly useless to her. She knew how to fight so many battles, to kill so many in so many ways, to accomplish feats of warfare most soldiers couldn’t imagine, but for the person who needed her, she was nothing just then, completely worthless.

  She wanted to find Balder. He must have had some use for her. She could process information, intel, something, she didn’t care what. Alopex listed him across the ravine in Alf’s library. She jogged over and noticed Veikko right behind her. Same reasons, she assumed. He stopped near the pogo pad and watched the tank walking down to the floor. He stayed with it to help. Violet continued on to the library. Alopex didn’t list it as locked, so she pushed open the door.

  She was hit by bloodcurdling fear and terror. The Geki stood between Balder and Alf. One of them twisted, moving slightly as if it were looking at her, though there was no face. Suddenly they flew upward into nothingness and the fear was gone. It was brief, short, done. That’s what Violet told herself, but she still fell to her knees from the shock of it. She put her hand over her pounding heart and sat down in the doorway.

  “That’s why you knock,” said Alf. Balder walked to her and lent a hand. He helped her stand up and directed her, not back to the door but to the couch. She sat next to Alf, who rubbed his eyes and brow.

  “They didn’t ask questions,” Balder explained. “They knew everything Vibs and I had learned. As Sasha’s actions are more in our realm of action than their own, they will not act. They only came by to tell us that they will not interfere with any attempt we make to take them down.”