by Ari Bach
“She’s up,” called Varg. “Hey, Vi. I hope you don’t mind, we all watched your fight with the Yak while you were out, well done!”
She couldn’t speak.
“Mission?” she linked.
“Got Masamune’s head right here. H is hacking it now. Vibs dropped the spy off in Türkiye, and W headed over to watch him. Marks at 88 percent. You got a 99.8 percent for your sword fight.”
“Nice,” linked Violet as she let her head fall back and allowed sleep to carry her away.
The next day, Masamune’s intel belonged to Valhalla, and V team was reassembled to read it.
“The Yakuza are planning to bring the liquid components of the Ares Project back to Earth. They’re working for Pelamus Pluturus, a pirate responsible for the destruction of the YUP. Pluturus can have only one plan in mind—to take over Valhalla and reintegrate the Ares Project in order to flood the globe.”
Alf stopped speaking and sighed.
“E Team will see that the Yakuza are not able to bring the Ares home. This is obviously our top priority for the time being. Valknut, we need you to follow the spy that Vibeke delivered to Türkiye. If forces are working in opposition to the Yakuza, we need to know who they are and what they plan to do.”
W team linked in from Türkiye.
“The spy seems to be named Mehmet Aga, or at least that’s what he told the medic. He used a public medic near the safe house for his microwave burns. We hacked the funds he spent, and they came from a small account opened from Hashima Island, an old mine and tourist trap.”
“V,” said Alf, “I want you to join W team in Türkiye and follow Aga wherever he goes. If Aga leaves the planet, V will follow. W will monitor the gang’s earthly assets in Istanbul. L team will check out Hashima. Any other matters?”
Nobody spoke.
“Very well. Head to the pogos, and Don’t Fuck Shit Up.”
V TEAM arrived at W’s roost across from Aga’s safe house. Wart filled them in on recent events.
“He met with a man in a black rubber business suit. The man called him ‘Yellow Boots.’ The man in black called himself ‘Red Boots.’ He seems to have been Aga’s actual escape from Ukiyo before Vibs picked him up. We hacked back to Ukiyo and found he was knocked out in the first volley during the meeting. He informed Aga that Vibs was not his intended flight to Türkiye, but neither seems to know what to make of it. Red Boots informed Aga that ‘Little Boots’ was very upset.”
“Little Boots? What’s with the boots?”
“Well, that seems to be the designator for a rank in the gang. The ‘Wolf’ Gang.”
“Wolf?” asked Violet.
“The Wolf Gang. Caught it when Red told Yellow off about trusting a female pilot when there are no women in the gang.”
“What else?” Violet pressed.
Weather explained, “Nothing else. Aga sticks to the safe house, no visitors except for a hooker and pizza delivery. I checked out the prostitute, looks genuine. Walter checked the pizza out for messages or contacts and came up dry.”
“More greasy than dry.”
“Where did Red go?”
“Headed to Ukiyo, Widget’s on him there.”
Widget linked in, “He eats, he sleeps, he wanders. Harassed a shop owner about fumbling a deal but hasn’t given any info on the gang.”
“So what’s the call, V?”
Veikko thought for a moment. He looked to Violet. Violet was agitated. The mention of a Wolf Gang had her mind racing. Likelihoods and chances. She told herself there was no chance it was Wulfgar. He’d not name a new gang anything so obvious if he were alive. All signs pointed to dead. No, it was just a gang. She shook her head as if to say she didn’t consider it a possibility. But her mind still raced.
“We infiltrate,” decided Veikko. “I’ll pose—”
“I wouldn’t,” said Wart. “He and Red exchanged some serious coding when they met. Nothing we can even guess at.”
“Hmm. Well, I’d like to monitor a bit closer than this, maybe bore the guy. Any ideas?”
Varg asked, “How often with the prostitutes?”
“Just one so far,” said Wart, “but he put the call out on the local Craig, unsecured.”
“Let’s meet him there,” said Veikko.
It was only two hours before Aga sent out an unprotected link to the Craig. He headed straight for the escort section and started looking over the available women. Violet, Weather, and Widget all posted their likenesses, Vibeke being recognizable. Veikko operated a covert hack into the four other available avatars and exchanged their likenesses for Larry, Moe, Curly, and Shemp to ensure he selected a Valkyrie.
After a brief study, Aga selected Violet and Weather and gave them a bathhouse address along with 750 euros each. All signed off.
“Oh my goodness, I’ve got nothing to wear,” Weather realized. They’d have to stop by a clothing store on the way. As they selected appropriately inappropriate robes, they tended to another matter.
“We need working girl names,” said Violet. “The Craig numbers won’t do in person.”
“What kind of names do they have?”
“I don’t know, sexy names, I suppose? Like Jasmine or Jade?”
“I don’t feel like a Jasmine or Jade,” said Weather. “How about Violet and Heather?”
“Sounds good, I’ll be Heather.”
They chose a matching pair of revealing robes and left their Thaco armor with the boys. Weather concealed a cerebral bore in her new handbag and both kept their Tikaris securely chested. Microwaves were deemed too bulky and left behind.
They went to the bathhouse and met the doorman.
“We’re here for Mehmet,” said Violet.
“Last door on the left,” he replied and let them in.
It was hot and humid even in the small foyer. A hall stretched off to the left, and they followed it to the end. The heat was even worse, as though there were a fire behind the door. Weather knocked. No response. She tried the knob, and it opened, vomiting steam out into the hall. They removed their shoes and walked in.
“Welcome, welcome, ladies,” said a figure shrouded in mist.
“Hello, Mehmet,” Violet tried to say in a flirtatious voice. She in fact had no idea how to sound flirtatious and sounded drunk.
“Come closer, let me see what I bought!”
They walked up to him and saw him clearly. The big potbelly wasn’t the problem. He was hairy. Absurdly hairy. Nearly everyone Violet had met until that moment had been depilated and given a haircut, then taken Alopigaid and grown no more. Even Vibeke used the stuff everywhere but her scalp. Mehmet appeared to have not only a thicket of curly black hair covering every part of his body but a tuft of the stuff on his upper lip. Violet had never been so revolted. It took all her training not to gag at the sight of his furry form.
Weather seemed to take the sight better and spoke first. “So what can we do for you tonight?”
“Hmmm,” he purred, “come closer, you, the blonde one.” He pointed to Violet.
Swallowing her disgust, she walked up to him and knelt down centimeters from his lap. She let her robe slip halfway off her right shoulder.
“You’re very pretty girl. Very pretty. Do you like pretty things?”
What kind of idiot question was that, she wondered. Concealing her ongoing repulsion to the man, she nodded slowly.
“Would you like to see something pretty?”
Oh dear God, she thought. She knew what he was talking about and knew the things were the least pretty parts humans had. She turned her cringe into a smile and nodded. He began to loosen his towel and stand up.
He fell back down to the bench with the bore on his forehead.
“Thank fucking Odin,” Violet shouted. “You couldn’t have done that sooner?”
“I did it as soon as he wasn’t looking at me!”
“I was down there for half an hour! I almost saw his… his… willy!”
“Well, you didn’t, shall we ge
t on with the hack?”
“It would’ve had hair, Weather. I’d be traumatized for bloody life.”
“Shush, let’s get on with it.”
Weather stood guard as Violet immersed herself in the bore. The first thing she saw was heavy hack armor. She linked to Alopex to solve it and move in.
His brain was dimly lit and loosely partitioned. Once inside she only had to skip over the barriers from functions to memories to active thoughts. He didn’t have much in the way of active thoughts, all were related to his grotesquely hairy member and Violet kneeling before him.
Preconscious zones had more to them. Violet deleted the sexual aspirations and sent the rest as a brain dump back to Valhalla for analysis, then started looking around herself, monitoring the info stream and origin pool. She saw the faces of the other Boots men, some absurdly buffed out henchmen in armor. Black armor, familiar black armor. She’d seen it before.
A second later she’d have recognized them from Wulfgar’s rescue. The men with the high powered wraparound microwaves who took his body after it was crushed. But before that, she saw his face. Or at least half of it. Wulfgar Kray with a metal jaw. And a deranged look in his eyes.
Death had changed him. He was still composed, but the insanity that took over when he bit off her hand was closer to the surface. Present right behind his eyes, seeping out. She thought briefly that she’d killed the man and left the monster. It was frightening, genuinely scary in a way she had to actively think to control. She was face-to-face with Little Boots. His image flickered out of the origin pool and on to Valhalla.
They would know. She’d found Wulfgar again. She was suddenly delighted. She’d found him, and she was on the team actively working his new gang. She would get to take him down.
Violet heard a scream. She unlinked herself immediately and turned to see Weather clutching her face. She saw blood coming from under her hands.
Violet ejected her Tikari and told it to kill. She didn’t know who was in the room yet, but she sensed their shadows in the mist. She trusted it to avoid Weather and herself and find whatever target had attacked. She grabbed Weather and pulled her down to the floor, then entered her Tikari.
She came to its eyes just as it sliced through a man’s neck. It targeted the next man, and she saw his microwave pointing at her—at her Tikari. She flew down toward his stomach and ran him through.
Violet returned to her own eyes and scanned the room for more men. She saw none. She kept her Tikari alert and looked to Weather.
Her eyes were fried out. The door opened again. Violet readied her Tikari in the air. She elected not to kill the next man to enter. She’d fight him and learn who he was first. Her Tikari would kill anyone else coming in.
Violet leaped up and kicked toward the newcomer’s head. The robe she was wearing caught her leg and wouldn’t let it swing that high. She lost balance and fell back onto her left hip. Suddenly the man had a microwave on her. She called in her Tikari to cut off his hand. It did in an instant. She grabbed his hand off the floor and pried his microwave from it. He didn’t make a sound.
Violet scrambled up as best she could in the absurd robe and leveled the microwave at the man’s head.
He was dressed in black with a black hat. He stared at her with what looked almost like a grin.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
He smiled. “I’ve already linked out. They know you hacked Yellow Boots. They know you’re here. They will kill you both.”
Suddenly Violet heard a secure link from across the street to her and Weather. It was Veikko. “Jammed him, didn’t get out.”
“Who are you?” she asked again.
“Fahrenheit. You killed The Elbow and Jimmy Pig Lips.”
Violet winced at the strange names.
“We’ll bore him later, just kill the fucker!” shouted Weather.
Violet assessed their priorities and agreed. She shot him in the heart with a full beam, and he flopped over onto his side.
“We’ve gotta get you home,” she told Weather.
“No, clean up first. We can’t let them know we hacked him.”
Weather ejected her Tikari and started to look through its eyes. She linked to Veikko, “We need Valkyrie microwaves in here now!”
Violet checked the bore on Mehmet’s head. It was complete. She removed it and put it on Fahrenheit’s head. Weather, adeptly using her Tikari’s eyes, began moving the dead men into a pile in the corner. She nodded to Violet.
Violet recalled her Tikari to her hand and held it as a knife. She pulled up her robe and headed to the door. With no suit and no microwave, she went slow, scoping out the corners and clearing the hall methodically. No more hostiles were coming.
Varg arrived soon with their suits and microwaves. Violet changed fast as Varg used her microwave to disintegrate the first two bodies, then once the bore was complete, turned the last man to ash. The room was thick with the smell of fine cooking. He tractored the ashes into a small mass and dropped it into a dispersion toilet.
Violet set the bore back on Mehmet and linked in. She posted a simple hypnotic that he got laid and fell asleep. It wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny, but unless he got hacked by Wulfgar, and he went straight for that memory—Wulfgar.
Violet couldn’t believe it. As they ran from the building and returned to the pogo, she kept replaying his face, his mutilated metal face, in her mind. She’d found him: the man who hunted her, who had eaten the flesh from her wrist, whom she had killed. She said it over and over to herself. Her hunt was suddenly active. Weather took to the pogo, and it launched to take her to Dr. Niide at top speed. Varg and Violet returned to their room with the rest of W team.
HOURS LATER they had watched Aga return to his safe house and monitored him for any signs of awareness. He showed none concerning his hacking. They got a link from Valhalla as soon as Weather arrived.
“She has new cosmetic implants but seems to prefer looking through her Tikari. Eccentric, but that’s nothing new here. If that’s what Weather wants, that’s how she’ll see.”
Weather would be fine. Violet asked Balder about something even more pressing. “And the intel?”
“Well, you found Wulfgar. Congratulations on that, Vi.”
“Permission to take him down?”
“L team is on it, already at Hashima and ready to infiltrate. Aga has a ticket to Mars on the third—”
Violet considered L team, not without a bit of envy. Would she return from Mars to find that Wulfgar was dead? She calmed her mind, assuring herself it would be okay if he was. But she felt distant from it. She was at least present at his last death. This time she would be in a transfer orbit when they went in, out of range of Aloe or even the common Earth net.
But such was saving the world. She exhaled. Vibeke suddenly elbowed her in the side. She didn’t know what to make of it. Then Varg spoke up.
“Request V team exchange with L.”
“Request denied, you have experience with Aga, you should be on Mars.”
“Respectfully,” said Veikko for the first time in his life, “we have more experience with Wulfgar Kray than L team, and a senior team should head to Mars for the more important project.”
Alf sounded amused. “You raise a good point, V, but—”
“Fuck buts,” said Vibeke. “You’re not sending Laguz to end our arch nemesis while we’re in cryo.”
Our arch nemesis, she said. Vibeke had never called Wulfgar her own. Violet felt a sudden throb of gratitude and camaraderie. When she had simply given up, her team fought for her, and Vibeke had taken her nemesis on as her own. Violet wanted to speak but found herself choked up.
“Have L monitor,” said Veikko. “We’ll kill Wulfgar when we get back.”
“Inefficient, V,” said Balder.
Varg retorted, “Aren’t you the one who held up Ehwaz for a year and a half because of an incident involving your—”
“Okay, okay,” interrupted Balder quickly. “Granted, but se
eing his gang doesn’t bring back the Ares is your top priority. I’ll have L team monitor Hashima passively.”
“Good,” said Veikko.
“So how about Mars?” asked Vibeke.
“Well,” explained Balder, “Yellow Boots is definitely part of a Wolf mission to Mars, but he seems to know nothing of its specifics. Not locked in a hidden partition, not disguised or camouflaged. Very strange. But the bore says he does have a ticket to Mars for the third.”
“I suggest we take the flight on the first. W can monitor him here while we’re gone. But we’ll arrive before him, and he won’t get the chance to recognize Violet or Vibs.”
“Excellent. I’ll speak to our allies there and inform them of your arrival. E team may join you soon. Their intel suggests a heavy Yakuza presence heading to Mars in two weeks. It looks like the Wolves are ahead of the Yaks in a competition to ship and sell the Ares water to the Fish. A lot of animals on this project. Speaking of which, have you named this one, for the records?”
“Daunting.”
“Appropriate, V. All sounds good. Get your asses to Mars. Oh, and V team—”
Veikko replied, “Don’t Fuck Shit Up?”
“It’s under the redwood.”
Balder closed the link. Nobody on V team knew what he meant. All looked to Varg, but he just shrugged. There was no time to delay; the flight to Mars left in two hours. Wart flew the pogo to take V to the spaceport. Veikko handled the ticket hacks as they flew. The Marsden family would find themselves rebooked for the next flight, and Valknut team would go in their place. Walter and Widget took off to monitor Aga and see that he made his own flight. If he changed his plans, V team would be headed for Mars with no hint of where to begin.
MOST OF the Nikkei Underground was back to its horrible normal state. Only the space where the Black Crag once stood was different—there were now 450 Black Crags. Once the secret of the original was out, imitators took over the space and offered an expansive variety of barrier-free sites.
Mishka chose the second tallest in the hopes it would lack the overgrown popularity of the tallest but still offer plenty of work. She was quite right. It held less than 15 percent of the avatars but almost as many job offers. Assassinations, illicit deals, information trafficking. She checked the local regions first, from UNEGA Bhaarat to Persia, but there was little paying well and not obviously a trap.