by Ari Bach
Violet went in first, microwave drawn to repel anything Wulfgar might fire, ready to fire herself if she saw him. Varg followed with his Tikari drawn as a sword. Then Veikko and Vibeke entered. Their own Tikaris set to detect motion. And they did detect it. Five meters. Four meters. Three meters as they walked in. They saw nothing on the floor but crates. Violet lunged around each to find what lay behind it, but there was nothing. Veikko pointed upward.
The motion was coming from the walrus trap itself. The ceiling panel was moving, jammed open. That made their directive clear. Violet linked to Alf to open the trap, then kept a suppression beam on the area. The panel fell open, offering a ramp up into the cave. Varg was closest so he walked up first, sword at the ready, Violet and Vibeke by his sides with microwaves set to deflect. Veikko’s Tikari detected motion, coming toward Varg. Varg held out a hand—he could see something. Violet held her breath. Varg took a wide stance on the floor. Veikko’s Tikari linked that the motion was inching closer. Violet tried to peer into the cave. Varg linked on high crypto, “Wait, I think I see him…. He’s coming!” Varg punched into the darkness with his bare hand, hitting meat. Violet ran up to see.
Varg had knocked Umberto out cold.
“Varg!” Violet whispered. Varg shrugged his silly shrug and backed off. Alopex linked in to their heads, “Veikko, Violet, Varg, Sector 1F. Walrus detail.”
Umberto groaned a half-conscious groan and rolled off the side of the panel, crushing one of the old crates. Then Violet heard something, a human something from below. If Umberto was obstructing the trap, Wulfgar was still in the room. And she had heard him. Somewhere. She gave a hand signal to the team, who were back on high alert. Varg and Veikko had the door covered. Wulfgar couldn’t have gone out. She heard him again: a faint moan.
He was close, but something was muffling his voice. But why was he groaning? Violet didn’t figure it out until Vibeke pointed to the crate next to the trap door—a crate smashed under the unconscious behemoth. Then it hit Violet with a degree of disgust. She held her microwave at the crate’s remains as Varg and Veikko hopped onto the trapdoor to tractor Umberto off of the crate. She held her weapon on target as the great heap rolled and revealed the flattened mess underneath. Violet just stared at Wulfgar’s remains, not knowing what to make of it all.
When Death had told her she might not be the one to kill her worst enemy, she really didn’t expect Umberto would be the one. She was struck by the horrid anticlimax to their hunt, their rapid ascent, their skilled chase of a desperate man. And here it ended, with Wulfgar dead, crushed to death by three tons of fat. His last groans had been postmortem, mere gas escaping as the blubber pressed his ribs to a pancake.
Violet sat down by his side, speechless. She looked at his ear, still intact on his fairly intact head. The link under it was broken. She poked at the broken head with her foot and spotted the second link antenna, an ugly thorn sticking out from the back of his neck, now broken as well. It was her mistake not to have given him a thorough check when they caught him. But then, like Veikko said, training lasts until you’re dead. She wouldn’t forget it the next time. In any case he was dead now, smashed by a damn walrus.
No sooner had she accepted the sad facts of her enemy’s death than Umberto came to and flopped his way to a corner near the door, glancing a look of betrayal at Varg, who in turn mumbled a useless apology to the monster. Umberto headed out to the ravine as V team began thinking up what to do with the man’s flat corpse. They didn’t have to think long because someone else had plans for it. Alf linked in, “Incoming! Two black pogos landing on your position!”
Violet jumped up before she fully registered what he meant. All four of the team fell into position around the walrus trap. Alf linked again, “Six men, in the cave. Repeat, incoming!”
Varg saw one of the first and fired. His wide stun beam did nothing. The men had armor. Not orange armor but black powered armor. They didn’t look like any of the Orange Gang men they had seen before. This was a force they hadn’t encountered, a part of the gang Wulfgar had kept secret—one of those loose ends they had kept Wulfgar alive to account for.
The men had massive wraparound microwave rifles hooked onto their armor. Varg hit the deck. Vibs and Veikko took cover. Violet, too, registered the threat and ran behind a crate. The intruders let loose with beams so powerful they set fire to the air, causing a backdraft when the door swung open again. Vibs leapt out first, knowing that such huge microwaves had to recharge. She aimed carefully and burned through the unarmored joints of one man’s outfit. The other Vs fell into position and began to fire with less success.
The armored men were picking up Wulfgar’s floppy corpse, scanning his head. Violet realized it was intact, the skull broken but not smashed. They could still fix him. She ran forward and sprang her Tikari, rocketing it into their microwaves to disable them. The others followed in kind and destroyed the heavy weapons before they could be used again. That sent the black guards into retreat, but they had made their objective—they had Wulfgar’s body. Violet ran forward and grabbed her Tikari from the air. She wasn’t going to give the corpse up.
She stabbed through Wulfgar’s shin, trying to hook into the bone and get a strong hold. The men pulled with their machine-assisted armor and his damaged leg fell apart, her Tikari ripping through his shin as if peeling a zucchini. Vibs and Varg joined in the gruesome game of tug-of-Wulfgar, but whatever they grabbed was crushed and weak. They both got hold of his feet, and both sets of tarsals pulled free of his joints with a sickening sound. Violet leapt forward to grab at his head, the least crushed part of him.
She grabbed firmly onto his jaw. The team covered her with microwaves. She had a strong grip; they wouldn’t get his head. No head, no brain, no resuscitation. She had him. Until one of the men took out a knife, a plain old blade, and began cutting through his cheeks. They made a disgusting mess of his face, but the bone gave way, and Violet fell back with the jaw in her hand. The intruders got the rest of his body, and they had the part with his brain, the only part that mattered. Veikko and Vibeke ran after them. Varg helped her up, and then she ran too, angry as hell that they’d gotten their target, that she was losing Wulfgar.
They climbed up through the cave, firing when they got a shot, flying through the hole in the rock to the outside with speed that should have caught up, but the enemy pogos had been right on top of them. The men were inside, safe with Wulfgar’s remains. The pogos shot up into the sky, into a strange green glow that writhed around Kvitøya. Violet slipped down on the rock and caught her breath. She had nothing that could tractor them back or shoot them down. Valhalla’s defenses were all grounded and would take too long to go airborne and active. Not that Alf even wanted to send them. He would be content to track them as they left. But tracking failed.
“We’ve lost them. They left through the electrical disturbance. A hazard of our location, I’m afraid. Sometimes it’s to our advantage, sometimes to theirs. Don’t worry, Violet, you’ll find him again.”
The last four words struck Violet in a way she hadn’t expected. All the anger and fury that had grown in her on the hunt were extinguished, not in a bad way but as a true relief. She suddenly understood why Vibs wasn’t screaming at the loss of Mishka and understood what was to come. Wulfgar was gone, and he would live again. He was out there, but that was why Violet was here, at Valhalla. As long as she lived, Wulfgar would never be safe. She could hunt him again, feel that same fury, and someday, end him forever.
There was nothing to be done for it now. Valhalla was there to find Wulfgar and Mishka, however long it took. They had losses and gains, and that’s how it was. That was their work. Violet and her team sat down to catch their breath on the rock and snow. Varg thought about the annoyance of cleaning up Wulfgar’s mess. Veikko thought of where first to track Wulfgar down. Vibeke thought of Mishka, another one still on the loose.
Violet looked up at the electrical disturbance that had hid the pogos in their escape. It wasn’
t a field made by Wulfgar’s men. It wasn’t a Valhalla defense. It was just a glowing green wave hovering over them. Her tactical eye gave way, and she remembered what natural phenomena lived in the northern skies. As a kid she’d wanted to see the aurora someday, and there it was, bathing them in light. It was pretty, she thought, but nothing special. She had seen far more amazing things in the last year. She was sure to see more.
About the Author
ARI BACH’s art can be found online at http://aribach.deviantart.com/.
Ari also runs a webcomic at http://www.twistedjenius.com/Snail-Factory/ and has a Tarot deck at http://surrealist.tarotsmith.net/.
But Ari is probably best known for the humor blog “Facts-I-Just-Made-Up” at http://facts-i-just-made-up.tumblr.com/.
Also from HARMONY INK PRESS
http://www.harmonyinkpress.com
Also from HARMONY INK PRESS
http://www.harmonyinkpress.com
Table of Contents
Copyright
Chapter I: Kyle
Chapter II: Achnacarry
Chapter III: Kvitøya
Chapter IV: Tikari
Chapter V: Vadsø
Chapter VI: Bayern
Chapter VII: Udachnaya
Chapter VIII: Geki
Chapter IX: Jylland
Chapter X: Austfonna
Chapter XI: Suqutra
Chapter XII: Congo
Chapter XIII: Valhalla
About the Author
Also from Harmony Ink Press