Ragnarok

by Ari Bach

  She stuck to the Crag and opened her own listing, the same as she had on the original Black Crag: Single Assassin, dual cutter rifles, one tank, top skills, and ready to prove them. She kept it open to anyone on the continent, off continent for a fee. And she waited.

  She wandered the Crag with protective whiskers out, a popular measure now that people knew why the contact barriers were down. She recognized several alcoves from the original Crag, or at least new alcoves mimicking them. There was a Thuggee alcove, several Muslim alcoves free from the police that monitored them on the Nikkei underground, and one new alcove she’d never seen before but recognized instantly. It bore the same cross she’d once worn on her Tikari. A Russian cross.

  She entered the alcove and saw the decor. Icons of ikons, saints. Copies of prayers long forgotten, written in Cyrillic. A blank avatar in priestly garb approached her. The whiskers highlighted him, and her defenses went active, ready to kill him.

  “I mean no harm,” he said.

  “I know,” she replied and lowered the defenses. “This place….”

  “You’re Mishka, aren’t you?”

  She was stunned.

  “I’m Nikita, Sasha’s boatswain mate, from Carrier Dva. I recognize your avatar.”

  “You survived!”

  “Barely. My body is crushed and in stasis. So there’s not much to lose. I thought I could continue Sasha’s mission online, the only place I can still move. I tried on the Undernet, but it was too risky. But now that we have so many crags….”

  Mishka used the lack of contact barriers to hug him and kiss his cheeks three times. It turned out he had a modest following already. He told her about the remains of Sasha’s crew, how most had dispersed and taken work as it came. But he and a few other faithful held out hope of seeing her again and began their ministry partly in hopes of finding her.

  They spoke for hours about matters of faith and felony. She promised to visit his body in Krym when she had the chance. He promised nothing less than the resurrection of Sasha’s regime. Mishka was hesitant to accept it. Her belief was undiminished, but her enthusiasm was. She admitted she had little taste left for Africa.

  “Nor do I,” said Nikita. “But I’ve always liked the north. Much cooler.”

  “I liked the north too, once upon a time.”

  “Ah, there’s more to the north than your old friends and nice weather. There are people with open minds. People who listen when you speak.”

  “You think there are converts?”

  “Well, no. Not short of the seventh seal breaking open before their eyes. But we believe the seals will open, do we not? The Christos may return in our lifetime, or may not. But if he does, that’s where I’ll be. I have nothing to do now but wait, and welcome those who will wait with me. What of you?”

  “I have a few things to do while I wait.”

  “People to kill?”

  “Vibeke isn’t a person.”

  “And revenge is hardly Christian.”

  “Iisus has to forgive me for something.”

  “Then I ask only one thing. Pray. Open your heart and ask for a sign, a real sign. If revenge is in God’s will for you, he will deliver it. But if it is not, when you pray and you feel deep within that this is not God’s plan, you must give her up. Abandon your plans for vengeance. Can you do this?”

  “I think I have to, don’t I?”

  “Certainly not. We all have free will. The entire point of free will is that we can choose to follow God’s path or choose to stray. Only with the freedom to sin, can we truly choose to be good.”

  “You have Sasha’s way with words.”

  “And you have his blood. Don’t spill it without reason.”

  They parted, and Mishka headed back to her advert. It had a single reply. She moved to touch it, but first she gave a moment to superstition and thought to herself. Whatever this response tells me, this is the path I’ll take. If it tells me to quit and be a nun, I’ll walk back to Nikita’s alcove and stay there forever. If it tells me to run from this assassin’s life, I will. But please, God, please let your will give me the one thing I want most. Give me Vibeke.

  She touched the response, and it loaded Vibeke’s face.

  The job came from Türkiye. An assassination with a torture and fact-finding bonus. One female, about twenty, organization unknown. Vibeke. Posted by an agent named Red Boots linking out of Hashima Island. Mishka accepted the project before asking a single question. She was in shock. Never had any prayer been answered so resolutely or fortuitously. Never. She was face-to-face with proof of God. And God’s will was her own.

  Red Boots gave her all the info she needed, and more. Mishka knew where Vibeke was based better than Red, though she could hardly march into Valhalla to kill her. Of more interest was the Wolf Gang itself. Though Mishka couldn’t surmise that the Ares Project was at stake, she assumed that V team was working on taking the gang down. A covert hack into her employer’s visual cortex revealed their motive—Wulfgar Kray was behind them.

  Vibeke would be on the hunt behind Violet as she tore into her nemesis’s new gang, and Mishka could work with that. First she bought some pond surveillance drones and stationed them around Hashima, uploading her own mind’s images of each V team member along with specs for Valhalla pogos, the P0S, and various covert vessels they might use.

  Next she headed to Türkiye and monitored the safe house personally. She arrived the day after a fight in a nearby bathhouse. She interviewed Yellow Boots, Mehmet Aga. She recognized the tiny skin spots of a cerebral bore and the sound of a Valkyrie hypnotic suggestion. She asked to look into his brain, and after getting permission from Hashima, he let her proceed.

  She unlocked the fight without a problem and saw Violet and Weather do their work. Vibeke wasn’t among them, but she wouldn’t be far away. She only had to find where V team was heading next. Nothing useful was said in Aga’s memory, but it was clear they were on his trail. Odd that V team should be following him when they must have known the gang was in Hashima, knowing all Aga knew. What would send Violet after a lowling when Wulfgar was so close?

  Aga explained he was heading to Mars. He didn’t know why. He’d receive instructions there. V team had two courses: they’d head for Mars, likely before Aga left; or they’d head for Hashima, which quite impossibly, they hadn’t already done. There must be something damn important on Mars, she thought. Mishka hacked into the local spaceports and looked for sudden changes in passenger lists. Two cancellations, one priority bump. She examined the bump. Four individuals bumped for four different individuals. The clear sign of a team. A sloppy team that should have bumped some random passengers as well.

  Her course of action was clear. She knew where they were heading, but the security around the spaceport was prohibitive. Security on Mars, however, was nonexistent. It was a wild frontier. An ideal setting for an assassination or four. She hacked into UNEGA’s security grid and gave Sanchita Patel a promotion in lieu of her “Missing” notice, then used Sanchita’s new status to book herself an emergency ticket for the fifth, as the team would surely be monitoring Aga’s flight on the third.

  As she waited, Mishka visited the minicrag and shut down her advert. Then she headed for Nikita’s.

  “This is a gift,” he said. “Seldom are God’s plans so clearly revealed.”

  “And seldom are they so kind.”

  “If they’re kind indeed. Surely God is leading you to Mars, but…. ‘When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, he causeth that creature’s wants to direct him to that place.’”

  “Ephesians?”

  “Frank Herbert’s Dune, actually. Let us pray.”

  VALKNUT LANDED safely in the white zone, and Wart dropped them off.

  At security, they Tikaried their weapons and sent them to the hull of the next shuttle, where they welded themselves on. V team would have no weapons nor Tikari on the flight, but also no expectation of a need for them. A space flight was the most secure,
safest way to travel in existence. Not a single incident of any kind had ever been reported on a public Mars flight, so they were content to keep their weaponry in the only place it could make the flight unseen—welded to the sub-aileron plating.

  On their way in, they spotted a few of the other passengers. Three were dressed in black, the same black rubber business suits as the Wolf Gang. V team noted them and watched them carefully. They were easy to spot as all three had big potbellies, exactly like Aga’s.

  The shuttle taxied out and lifted off, taking them up to the Lasswitz, their transfer orbit liner. As the shuttle docked, the Tikaris broke off and affixed themselves to an inconspicuous beam behind the Lasswitz cockpit assembly. V team meanwhile followed the bulbous men to the cryo-bay, where they were uneventfully sealed in. The cryo-locks couldn’t open before the Martian shuttle docked. They would pose no threat.

  Varg also remained in the cryo-bay. He had no interest in spending an entire month on the cruiser awake. Veikko and the ladies elected to try it, get to know the people on board, play games, and see the stars. Varg snapped instantly into the cruiser dreamscape and headed for the orgiumorium.

  The liner taxied into high Earth orbit and prepared for its primary burn. The Valkyries had all experienced the feel of 20 g’s in pain training, so the 3-g acceleration of the burn was nothing to them. Others were less experienced and required nausea preventatives. Several begged to go into cryo but had to remain seated for the duration of the burn. As soon as the burn was finished and the Hohmann transfer had begun, fourteen more passengers headed for the tubes.

  Violet and Vibeke undid their belts and floated free, their first time in null gravity since Project Monolith. Veikko remained seated. They looked to him to see why he remained.

  “I’m gonna level with you two. I had a barf bag filled up with the perfect blend of ramen, cheese, and lemon juice to ‘spill’ on you, but I left it on the shuttle by mistake. That’s really the only reason I stayed up, so I’m gonna tuck my tail and go to bed now.”

  He undid his belt and floated away. Violet was happy to see him go. It was nothing against him in the least, but suddenly she was alone for a month with Vibeke. She felt a flutter in her chest at the thought of it.

  Of the other four who remained awake, two were a couple that stuck to their room, one was an old man who had brought physical books to read, and one was a social engineer who seemed eager to meet the girls but too timid to say hello.

  Violet and Vibeke checked out their berth. The wall was drastically curved, the waking module being much smaller in diameter than the three cryo-modules. With 148 asleep and six awake, there were still quite a few empty berths. The room was small but not too much smaller than the one back home in the barracks. It also had four bunks like home, but here each was covered in a net. The bathroom on the side was also far more complex, coming with ten paragraphs of instructions for the zero-g toilet.

  The link faded out as they left Earth’s orbit. Those who stayed awake were still able to immerse themselves in the ship’s dreamscape, but full immersion in Earth’s net was impossible at the quickly growing range. Vibeke thought ahead and stuffed forty books into her memory partition, including Burton’s complete 1001 Nights, which would more than cover the month long trip. Violet had packed a few literature files as well but not nearly enough. She’d have to link into Vibeke to borrow a few more to pass the time, if reading were her chosen activity. But it was not, and nor was it for Vibs.

  The two simply talked, for hours on end. About old missions and life before Valhalla, both were surprised at how much had been left blank over the last year, how much had gone unsaid. They talked until their voices went hoarse, and then they talked by link. Violet wasn’t used to talking by link with someone right in front of her but got used to it fast, able to eat and talk at the same time. They could even chat while exercising, leaving their breath unaffected.

  They spent a great deal of time exercising together in the gamesphere. Half arcade, half gymnasium. The gymnasium side was required. Cryo prevented atrophy but a month without gravity would wither the muscles of anyone left awake. The rules for waking travel required two hours per day, but even on the first twenty-four-hour stretch of dimming and brightening hall lights, the two logged ten hours each in the gym. Zero-g exercise was absurdly fun. The weight simulators took a dozen forms and allowed pinpointing of each muscle. The outlined routine was fairly dull, simply designed to work out each muscle group few by few, but freestyle workouts could fill ten hours easily without repeating an activity.

  And they could fill that ten hours a day with more than idle chat. They linked back and forth without repeating a story. Violet was especially happy to hear Vibs talk without the net backing her up. She was less intimidating a wit. Still incredibly smart but when she heard Vibs admit she had no idea about the names of the first Mars colonies, Violet nearly spit out her freeze dried ice cream. She seemed all the more approachable, not that she hadn’t been before, but without her cloak of knowledge, she was finally just human. And all the more beautiful, Violet thought. As they spoke, Violet often found herself transfixed on Vibeke’s link, its end blinking as she thought to Violet. Violet had never considered how oddly intimate it was to have someone else think straight into your mind. It wasn’t intimate, she reminded herself. Everyone spoke by link. But with Vibeke, having her thoughts flow in while she strained on the resistance bars or crunch pad…. Violet was in heaven.

  As was Nate the social engineer. Watching the two work out in nothing but sports bras and shorts. Nate was very happy with his decision to stay awake. It was already well worth the nausea of launch and the gravity of the burn. Nate was now alone with two beautiful women, whom he had no idea were romantically incompatible. With him.

  After a few days, he finally worked up the guts to approach them as they left the showers.

  “So I hear Mars is incredibly vibrant!” he shouted. The two stopped and floated before him. “Red I mean, I hear the shade of red is like nothing on Earth. I mean—it’s not on Earth but—I have to go.”

  It took him another day to try speaking to them again, though he still had little success on his own. Vibeke broke the ice out of pity.

  “So what brings you to Mars?”

  Violet was oddly offended to hear her talk to someone else. She told herself it couldn’t be jealousy. Vibs could talk to anyone she pleased, but after days of nothing else, the new conversationalist was terribly unwelcome to Violet.

  “I’m a peace envoy. For the PRA.”

  “I thought they were at peace,” said Violet curtly.

  “Well, they are now. It’s my job, my duty to see it stays that way.” Pride oozed from his pores. Violet nodded in repulsed amusement. He clearly took it to mean she was impressed. “I’m actually one of the most skilled negotiators around! Have you ever heard of the Evergreen Ecoterrorists?”

  He knew he had them hooked. A threesome was all but inevitable once he told them how he had peacefully resolved the dispute between the E.E. and Asda. Nate had single-handedly ceased the bloodshed from corporate police, who slaughtered any E.E. members they could find. He had, without assistance, negotiated the truce between the furious E.E. and its arch nemesis, the number one polluter on the continent. Yes, that treaty was all Nate.

  Violet and Vibeke by contrast had only met the E.E. once, a few months before Nate, having killed eighteen of them when they threatened to bomb a meat-growing lab.

  “Oh, I must have shot like ten of the fuckers,” bragged Violet.

  “I got at least five,” added Vibeke to the man’s horror. Violet was thrilled that Vibs was still on her side.

  She turned to Nate as if telling an anecdote about sports. “The trick to busting up an E.E. cell is to throw a match into their explosives and watch ’em flee one by one. They just keep coming out the door like bang bang bang.” She mimicked shooting each one as they came out.

  Vibeke was back in warrior mode. Violet was relieved to think they were t
he insiders and Nate was…. Just Nate.

  “You should have seen her,” she told the disgusted passenger. “Shredding ’em with a big fat JVX D1.”

  “No, a JVB. I don’t like the D1.”

  She had Vibs talking guns. She’d never return to Nate’s “peace” bullshit.

  “You don’t? What about the hair trigger? Just the slightest caress of your finger and bam.”

  “Exactly, the JVB doesn’t just go off on the first tap, you need at least two fingers to make it blow.”

  Nate frowned as deeply as he could, but the ladies didn’t even notice.

  “It takes two fingers because it’s a loose trigger,” said Vibeke.

  “It has generous allowances,” defended Violet. “The D1 will go off before you can get your fingers in the trigger guard. It misfires if you pump a cartridge into it too rough.”

  “It can handle a hard pump if you keep it well lubricated.”

  “Well, I prefer the solid ka-junk of the JVB.”

  Nate pushed off and floated toward the kitchen. Violet looked perplexed.

  “What was his problem?”

  “Guess he didn’t like guns,” answered Vibeke.

  “We were talking about guns?”

  Vibeke kicked Violet’s shin, sending them both into a gentle spin. Violet lightly slapped her, and the two enjoyed a lighthearted shoving match through the gangways back to their room. Violet loved any such moment of physical contact she could steal from Vibeke. For the last year, she’d satisfied herself with pokes and bumps and innuendo. But it seemed different in space, and not because of the gravity.

  There was some hope that with one month awake and aware together that something more might happen. But it wasn’t to happen that day. Vibeke asked if Violet would be bothered if she took some time to read.