Valhalla

by Ari Bach

  T team suggested they devote extra practice to incursion jumping, as both Tasha and Toshiro had broken limbs on their last drop and had to sit out while the rest of their team fought. H team asked only that V stay out of their way. R team asked them to get tracking injection pellets, a matter of some dispute: It would make it easy for R to find them should they need to be withdrawn, but it would also make them easy to track should the enemy not jam their links. Every team elected not to have the pellets.

  Then there was the matter of M team. Motoko and Mortiis were not invited, and they stewed about it terribly. Partly because they were still suspected by C team (and nobody else in the least), partly because they were not a complete team, and partly because there was nothing left to do after the initial duty allotments. They elected to handle tracking and monitoring. Balder’s team usually did so, but they would be flying transports and battle pogos. C team didn’t object, so they at least got to watch. Motoko reminded V team that Marduk was also a traitor to be dealt with, but Balder’s intel suggested he had not been on the carrier when they departed. That left V team with one less goal and left everyone wondering just where Marduk was.

  M team, in their monitoring duties, constantly followed the tracking nodes Balder had planted on the carrier. He had placed twelve around its bowels. Four had been found and destroyed, but the rest were working perfectly, and it was likely Sasha suspected that they were. So as planning neared completion on December 20, it was a bit of a surprise when they showed the carrier heading north toward Valhalla. The carrier was slow as snot dripping, and it wasn’t much of a match for the ravine, should it make it so far. But the message was clear: If you don’t hurry up and come for us, we will come for you. It was time to attack.

  A brief debate ensued about what music to listen to on the way south. The votes were three for “Carmina Burana,” twelve for “Ride of the Valkyries,” eight for “Peer Gynt,” two for “Pagan Prosperity,” and one for “The Ballad of Roger Young,” but as they had listened to Wagner’s opus the last thirty-two times, Grieg won and the native Norsk were happy. The teams headed for their pogos. H took a cargo pogo; V, T, and S took to the transport pogos, each piloted by one of Balder’s team; and Balder hopped into the heaviest, most brutally armed battle pogo they had. It was almost a fair match for a panzercopter. Varg spotted him as they boarded.

  “Balder!” he called, catching his attention. Just as Balder had told them before Udachnaya, Varg reciprocated, “Don’t Fuck Shit Up!” Balder smiled, and the teams flew south.

  VIOLET SAT in the transport section of the craft with her team. She felt a peculiar mixture of anticipation and camaraderie; she had never flown into battle with so many teams behind her. She had a sense that the day really belonged only to Vibeke, so Violet was but one of her supports. She found that position most comfortable. As for the battle to come, she felt on top of it. That feeling didn’t fade at the sight of the carrier.

  Sasha hadn’t even made it out of the jungle when they arrived. As the troops flew in, the carrier turned and ran like a spooked wildebeest. Nobody mistook it for an escape attempt. It was a maneuver designed to give them time to launch their two remaining panzercopters, armored as at Udachnaya, along with an array of defense drones and heavy antiaircraft fire. The battle commenced. Balder began heavy fire and engaged one of the copters. Borknagar, piloting V team’s transport, started firing with their pogo’s light artillery to clear a path through the defense drones. H team’s cargo pogo was the fattest target, so they were engaged by the other copter. Bathory quickly flew the T team transport under the jungle canopy to engage the tanks, seen dropping from the carrier into the trees.

  As V team flew closer, they could see that the Mjölnir system was powered up on the carrier’s beakhead. There were men around it, all in white armor, hunting for a target. Borknagar flew them in so close to the island that they dared not fire, but their deck was crawling with armored men. Borknagar linked to Balder one word, “Strafe.”

  Just then, the panzercopter that Balder had taken on burst into flames and dropped from the sky. He sped over toward the carrier and began strafing the deck. The battle pogo’s dual GAU-80s started hurtling lead onto the men below, whose armor was nothing to the 40 mm rounds. Borknagar flew in close behind and took out a few more with the transport’s punt gun. The carrier’s artillery continued its assault. Borknagar skillfully ducked and dodged their microwave beams and rounds just long enough to dive at the deck. Violet expected to get butterflies so close to the jump, but they were strangely absent. She was hungry to get onboard and start the fight.

  As soon as they came within five meters of the deck, Varg jumped, Vibeke half a second later, then Veikko, and finally Violet. She hit the air just as Varg hit the deck. He rolled past some bodies and pounced upward with sword in hand. Pokey unwrapped from around his torso and bisected an enemy who stood with his microwave aimed, sending half of him over the side of the deck. Vibeke and Veikko headed straight for the hatches to keep a path secure, throwing men out of the way with microwave tractor pulses. One unfortunate was thrown before the carrier’s own artillery; pieces of him showered Violet as she landed and rolled. She stood to find the deck slick with blood. She too came up fighting, her white armor and hair speckled. She took stock of what had to be done. There were still men on deck. Veikko was readying thermite for the hatches. She and Vibeke took the offensive as Varg hopped into a forklift and firmly convinced its driver to get out.

  Early link updates started coming in from the teams. Down below, T team was focusing on one tank at a time, their pogo unleashing an assault on the shields for one T at a time to drop in, displace the drivers, and target the next tank to be taken. In the sky, Balder was defending H team’s cargo pogo from the last copter as S team aimed for the carrier artillery and drones. The sky was a chaotic mess. Veikko sent a short link that V was about to blast the hatches.

  As soon as the charges were wired, Varg linked them to run from the hatch. Veikko was about to object when he saw why—Varg was driving the forklift full speed into the structure. They fled just as the lift plowed through, breaking off the hatch, the corner of the island, and a few panels of the bulkhead. Varg leapt onto the deck and the lift, with half the structure, flew over the gunwale to the forest below. Violet sent a link to ground teams. “Falling objects.” That would be enough. Vibeke was already running full force into the exposed passageway, almost colliding with two armored men and a set of much thicker emergency hatches. Vibeke fought one of the men hand to hand. Violet zapped the other’s joints. Once they were out of the way, Veikko found a use for his thermite charge and began melting through.

  As soon as the edges of the hatches were molten, Violet set one of her own concussive charges, and the four cleared the immediate area. The charge went off, sending the hatch spinning into the passage behind it, dripping with molten metal. The hatch took out two armored men. Vibs and Veikko ran in to fight another three. Violet kept watch outside for anyone else coming in.

  The deck was growing clear of men, and whoever was left was busy fighting off H team, which was coming in for a landing by the Mjölnir. The Mjölnir was beginning to fire, but nobody felt their uniform flex. None of the shots were connecting—good news as V team headed into the belly of the beast. Veikko sent a link update. “We’re in.” Not to be outdone, T team stated that they had caught their first tank.

  As soon as the guards were dead, the passageway began to scramble. Blocks from the bulkheads began flying across to reshape the passages, turning them left, right, straight, up, down, and into dead ends. Violet was disoriented at first, intimidated at the mess they’d have to fight through. She and the others loaded Balder’s maps. The true routes glowed as lines amid the frantic reassembly of the physical passageways. The disorientation ended just in time for Sasha’s men to arrive and give resistance. V team dodged the flying bricks and zapped the occasional soldier within as they made their way toward the aft command deck.

  Now they
were in incursion mode. They covered each other and secured the shifting passages methodically. Unarmored guards attacked them to no avail. Lightly armored guards attacked them to no avail. As they penetrated deeper into the carrier, armored guards with grenades attacked them, also to no avail. Varg and Violet took the front and broke through everything thrown at them with fatal and efficient tactics, staining themselves with more and more blood to the point their camouflage was useful only for intimidation. Exactly why S team had suggested it.

  Violet was growing concerned at the ease with which they were getting through. Albeit slow, their progress was without flaw or injury. They might have been meant to get in part way if there were a trap. She didn’t have to link it to the others; they all knew. Balder’s notes sprung into their vision from time to time to let them know where he had seen what as he snuck about. His little explanations were accurate about every detector trap, every guard station along the way, every internal defensive system and how it could be disabled. He really took the surprise out of life.

  H sent out a link update. “Mjölnir retrieved, loading in progress.” Other teams chimed in: B team reported both copters and fifteen drones down. S team was working on the carrier artillery. T team claimed two enemy tanks seized and one destroyed. Everyone on the outside was half done with their duties. V team reported that they were nearing the command center. Then a massive blast racked the ship. It shuddered and came to a stop, inertia sending all four Vs up against a bulkhead. A solid bulkhead—the blast had destroyed the scrambling system. It was a straight jog to the bridge.

  Before them were four unarmored guards and two heavily armored hatches. To their surprise, the guards knelt and surrendered, placing their microwave rifles on the floor and backing away. V team let them go. Varg and Violet kept watch as Vibeke unloaded all her thermite onto the hatches, padded with some conc-foam so the blast wouldn’t deafen them. Veikko kept watch to kill anything that came out at them. This was it, the last barrier before the siblings. Anticipation was at its highest in Violet’s mind. No matter what the outcome of the next minutes, it would be significant; perhaps extremely good, perhaps extremely bad, but there was no chance of anything in between. Violet stood at full battle readiness, ready to be surprised by fighters or anything else. Vibeke set off the blast.

  Before the smoke could clear, they fired off broad stunning beams and stormed the room. Varg ran in holding his Tikari high, and Vibs had her dagger ready. Veikko and Violet breached the command center, pointing microwaves into every corner. Nobody was inside. T team reported another tank captured. V reported nothing. The room was empty. They immediately suspected that this was the trap—that they were in a zone ready to explode or flood with gas. But nothing happened. They scanned the room with their eyes, then Tikari, then consulted Balder’s notes. Balder linked to them directly, not to tell them what went wrong but to tell them he had just shot the last drones. Just about everyone was done but them.

  Veikko linked to H to see if they had spotted Sasha or the command staff on deck. They had not. S team had seen no sign of Sasha or Mishka, just a great deal of carrier that S team was busily blowing up. V team left the room, weapons ready for more soldiers, but there were very few left alive. Violet began to wonder if Sasha and Mishka might have been among the armored soldiers they had passed or killed, a deception tactic. Vibeke was either thinking the same or listening to Violet’s thoughts, because she sent a message out to T and S. “Check the faces of anyone masked.” Vibeke didn’t appear upset as she sent it. She was too focused on the job to feel any way about it; that was good: She was fighting from her mind and not her heart.

  As they walked out of the bridge, Violet spotted an unarmed man in white, one Balder had seen while undercover and link-labeled for them as a member of the command crew. She grabbed him and held him against the bulkhead. The others looked at him and understood her intent once Balder’s label loaded. Varg said in his deepest voice, “Where are they? Where are Sasha and Mishka?”

  “Never!” the man shouted proudly. Veikko sprang his mantis Tikari directly onto the man’s neck, where it crawled like a giant insect up toward his ear. The man was clearly unnerved by the thing and spoke again in a panic. “They’re in cargo bay three, lowest deck, around the fuel tank with a Mark 17 Gatling array and several armored guards!”

  The team looked to one another with slight surprise at how scared men could be of insects. Veikko’s Tikari injected the man with a light sedative and hopped back into Veikko. The man passed out, and they followed Balder’s map to the nearest lift. After checking it for traps and allowing some unarmed technicians to leave, they headed down into the belly of the beast. Stuck in the lift for a moment, Violet asked if she had heard correctly. “Did he say fuel tank?”

  “Yes,” replied Vibs. “Not everyone has a quarkamajig like Valhalla. It was in Balder’s report.”

  “Yeah, didn’t you look over what he loaded into your head?” chided Veikko.

  “Did you, Veikko?” asked Varg.

  “I almost thought about considering it,” he admitted. S team linked that they had just destroyed the last cannons onboard. V team was now severely behind.

  The lift display showed that they were approaching the base cargo bay, one massive doughnut-shaped room around the fuel tank. They refocused their microwaves to avoid penetrating the tank.

  The instant the lift gates opened, Gatling fire came in. They were ready for it and had already ducked below the line of fire. Varg sent his centipede out and saw the lay of the land. Several guards in heavy armor, one Gatling array positioned just in front of the fuel tank, where they couldn’t risk grenades. The centipede ran straight for them, below the sight of their masked eyes. Behind the array was Sasha, Mishka by his side—they had chosen the bay for their last stand. Vibeke linked the other teams. “Siblings sighted, base cargo deck.”

  “Backup?” asked Skadi.

  “Bragging,” responded Vibs. She was about to claim her prize. She nodded to Veikko, who took an ultralocalized heat grenade from his armor. He set it for a range of one meter and set it to go off no more than two meters from the Gatling array. He handed it to his Tikari and sent it in. The Tikari flew it out over the Gatling array. The armored men saw it and fired at it with all they had. Veikko displayed extraordinary evasive skills and dropped the grenade on target, fusing the Gatling barrels together and escaping without a single hit to his bug.

  Armored men moved in on the lift. Varg lit a smoke cookie for cover, and V team moved out of it. They systematically attacked the leg joints of any armored men they encountered with microwaves, then Tikaried the neck joints and melted the enemy microwaves with their own. They moved quietly, employing not only the sound dampers on their boots and knees, but the techniques they’d learned months before, making themselves nearly invisible and moving past the guards with ease.

  Violet found herself by Vibeke’s side up against the disabled Gatling array, the enemy’s last defense. Vibeke grasped her knife and Violet her microwave. Violet stood first to cover Vibs as she moved in. But as she stood, she saw that Sasha and Mishka were gone, replaced by another six armored guards. They set to work fighting the group.

  Varg and Veikko, approaching from the right, saw the siblings taking cover on the other side of the fuel tank, behind two massive crates. Varg linked it to Vibs as she fought. Veikko pursued them. As he rounded the corner, he saw what they were running for: another ten guards. These guards had the same armor but different arms. They had projectile miniguns and they opened fire, showering Veikko with hundreds of rounds. He ducked behind the crates and called for help.

  Oddly enough, it was H team who responded to his call. Having taken the genuine, functional Mjölnir system onto their pogo, they left the thing turned on and resolved to help V team. In less than ten seconds, the entire side of the bay crunched under the Mjölnir’s magnetic force. Most of the guards’ armor did the same. What rounds were in the air jumped backward into the mass of metal with the weapon
s that fired them. V team’s uniforms flexed painfully in such close proximity, Veikko’s most of all. Then they were rocked by the shift in weight of the carrier as the hull gave way and the tight metal heap fell out over the side.

  Vibeke and Violet ran over to the sunlit opening. The fuel tank was leaking slightly. Most of the crates had gone overboard. Standing between two huge crates that stuck to their places were Sasha and Mishka. They didn’t run. Varg had a pretty good idea why, so he linked a hyperencrypted message to Veikko. The two sent their Tikaris along the floor toward the crates. Violet stood beside Vibeke with her microwave drawn to cover her. Then Vibeke did exactly what everyone knew she would.

  Her team didn’t expect her to run toward them out of rage. They expected it because it had been planned. They’d planned for her to run at the two because Sasha and Mishka would see it as the emotionally unstable member of the team moving out of position for revenge. Thus, they sprang their last trap early, and the team was ready for it. The giant crates broke open to reveal Udachnaya’s stolen FKMA robots, so Varg and Veikko hacked into them through their Tiks on the floor and leveled the robotic guns at Sasha and Mishka. They didn’t open fire and steal the kills. After all, it was Vibeke’s birthday (in seven months).

  Vibs charged with her team behind her. Sasha had a microwave, but Violet countered it with her own, firing a suppression beam as he shot at Vibs. Mishka launched her Tikari but Veikko’s knocked it out of the way. Vibeke cornered her prey before the breach and attacked in flawless form, driving them toward the edge. Varg backed her up by engaging Sasha with his sword, keeping him at a disadvantage to allow Vibeke to fight his sister.

  Mishka fought with the fury of hell. Vibeke, being quite scorned, fought with fury like nothing hell hath. Though Mishka was more adept at sparring, Vibeke had an attack she wasn’t even thinking of. To Mishka, Vibs didn’t have a Tikari, so she was caught off guard when she saw the dead knife coming at her. Vibeke thrust it toward her with a force that shredded the muscles within her arms and that strained every tendon and ligament and burned from every ounce of hate that had grown in Vibeke. The blade, beyond razor sharp, sliced into Mishka’s eye as if it weren’t there. The orbit of her skull gave way like shattered ice. The blade wasn’t slowed at all as it left the side of her face and plunged into the back of her brother’s neck, upward into his skull, cleaving his medulla oblongata in half. It lodged in Sasha with such force that he was thrown deceased off his feet, out the fissure in the carrier’s hull into the trees below.