by Ari Bach
Violet’s eyes, irises vibrant and striated, her pupils contracted in the bright med bay light, showing off all the more purple. Vibeke’s, so light they were almost white, like crystal, like opal. Violet could see deep into them, smell Vibeke’s cool skin over the clean chemical sting of the room.
The med bay finally came back to her. The world intruded again, having granted her one flawless moment of pure pleasure. And she noticed Dr. Niide and Varg and Veikko, and the dozens of Valkyries outside the glass wall. All staring at them. Everyone staring.
Some aghast, some aroused, some happy, and some perplexed, but all staring. A wide grin slowly bloomed across Veikko’s red face. His lips moved, finding the right words. The only proper thing he could say after seeing that kiss.
“May your first child be a masculine child!”
Violet and Vibeke laughed, Veikko stepped back, Dr. Niide returned to his work, and Varg quietly departed for the barracks. The occupants of the ravine slowly wandered off. V team was okay and returning to good health. Their mission was over. The world was safe from an apocalyptic flood. And already, Vibeke began to feel the sting of doing something horribly, dreadfully wrong.
THE LAST Wolf was finally back from Mars. Wulfgar personally oversaw their return. Countless men he’d risked, and every one of them was home safe. The venture was complete and soon to pay off.
As the last fat man reached Hashima, Wulfgar accompanied him to the vomitorium. There, the men performed the least enjoyable portion of their missions: coughing up all the water they drank at the strange Martian outpost. They’d all been through it before, drinking normal water on Earth and regurgitating it on Mars, then drinking the strange water on Mars and heading home for Earth. They knew they’d be smuggling, but the water was a surprise, as was the grotesquerie in how they delivered it. Most of them suspected something surgical, but apparently the simplest way was the best.
Wulfgar watched the Ares filter and drip and distill, capturing all the extra bodily fluids just in case the filter was too strong and removed some of the precious, expensive water.
After only fifty men, he was worried. They were short of calculations by almost a kilogram, unacceptable. Pelamus demanded at least 99.9995 percent of the fluid. Wulfgar consulted the doctors.
They’d hoped the special stomach bladders they’d implanted would contain every drop, but in the end, they were living tissue, and nothing living is perfect. A full .2 percent had been absorbed into the bodies of the smugglers.
Wulfgar contacted Pelamus and asked a question he hated to ask.
“Does it need to be pure, or can it have debris in it?”
Pelamus was angry. He wanted 100 percent of it pure, but there was no going back. What was done was done, and he had to make do with the situation. He consulted his scientists and understood that debris was inconsequential; it could be mixed and littered with anything and still work, but it had to be complete to affect the entire ocean. An incomplete sample even by .1 percent would only affect 30 percent of the world’s water.
Wulfgar received the note and, with a heavy heart, did what had to be done. He had Blue Boots head online and purchase an industrial 300-liter blender.
Chapter VIII: Home
VIOLET HAD missed the ritual before, for two entire teams. Aside from Rasekrig, she’d seen no permanent Valkyrie deaths in her time in the ravine. She was told the last man to die permanently was Rygar in 2229, killed by a giant illegal genetically engineered snail.
She didn’t know what to expect. Funerals, from what she could tell in Kyle City, were solemn sad services where people shared memories of the deceased, cried, buried them or burned them or had them dispersed at the molecular level. But there was no body to bury for Toshiro, and she didn’t expect to see anyone cry.
Nearly everyone in the ravine was present, from Governor Quorthon and Snorri to the members of every team and many civilians. Sad as she was, she feared it would be a long affair and that she’d be asked to carry out some ritual function. She looked into Norse funeral customs as soon as she heard there would be one. She wondered if there would be a boat set on fire or a slave girl passed around, then slaughtered. She doubted the latter.
Once everyone was in the mess hall, Alf waved for the crowd to be silent, then spoke.
“Toshiro has died permanently, as will we all. He died in battle on his own terms. What’s over is over, what’s done is done. Let his name not be carved on any wall, let no goods be wasted upon his grave, let no ships be burnt. We have moved on, and we will not come back. G Team, begin the search to replace him.”
He stepped down, and the room began to mill about. The funeral was over.
Violet should have expected it. She’d been as cold when her parents died, didn’t bother to give them a funeral at all. And she was among kindred creatures. Here it was an institution. The sobbing and moaning she’d feared weren’t to be found in the ravine.
There was only one more ritual to perform, one less formal. Kjetil opened some oak barrels while Balder and Varg passed out large hollowed-out horns. The kitchen staff poured each person on the teams a large horn of mead, and everyone drank.
Violet wandered and drank slowly, absorption implant off as seemed to be the tradition. Some drank their entire horn in one swig and took another. Others held their horns but didn’t seem to drink at all. Balder and Varg were among the former. Violet was almost surprised to see Vibeke drinking liberally.
She found T team, and they pulled her into a group hug, then drank together. Tahir congratulated her on the mission with no sign of sarcasm. It was the mission Toshiro died for, and Tahir wanted her to know that his team deemed it a mission worth dying for, nothing less than the salvation of the planet. Valkyries had died for far less. Violet felt uneasy staying with T team for too long, so she went to find Vibs.
She passed Veikko, who was drinking quietly with Skadi, talking in whispers. Violet had always felt a bit uneasy seeing them together, but as she passed, she felt completely different. She was happy to see them together. Whatever sting it was in the past was gone. She knew why. She’d always been alone before. Everything was different now. She was on her way to find her own girl to squeeze. She found her on a distant bean blob.
Vibeke had the dim ghost of a smile on her lips, and her eyes were set in the distance. Violet took a chair beside her and just stared at her for a moment. She tried to guess what Vibeke was thinking. About Toshiro no doubt, a good memory judging by her expression. Vibs didn’t seem to notice her, or if she did, she didn’t care that she was there. Violet hoped she was simply unseen and hoped selfishly that she was thinking about that kiss, as Violet had been through the funeral.
Violet felt hot in her suit, an unnatural heat that would persist even if she were underdressed topside in the snow. She’d missed it when the two teams died, still stuck down south wrapping up her own loose ends, and flirting with Gabrielle. She pushed that disaster from her mind and considered if she should lean in and kiss her again. She didn’t know if it was a free-for-all now or if she needed permission to do it again.
Vibeke startled her when she spoke. “We should inject it. It tastes awful, stings. I guess it would sting in our veins, but…. You know?”
“I like the taste, much better than beer. More warming,” said Violet.
“I like the feeling at least. I can see why so many people used to get hooked on it. Did you know people drank themselves to death? They wouldn’t stop, even after it made them sick.”
“Why?” asked Violet.
“Stops the pain.”
“It does at that.”
They sat for a moment as people milled around them. They caught the name Toshiro a few times.
“I’m glad we only do it on days like this,” said Vibeke.
Violet said nothing.
Vibs continued. “Funerals, I mean, not victory. Hey, you remember that time we saved the world? You know, yesterday?”
Violet laughed but didn’t say anything. She lean
ed back in the chair.
“What were you thinking about during the funeral?” asked Vibs.
Violet answered before thinking. “Kissing you.”
Vibeke didn’t change her expression, or react at all.
Violet pressed, “That’s all I’ve been thinking about since I did it.”
Vibeke kept staring into space. It made Violet angry.
“I think we should do it more.”
Still nothing. The warm fuzzy feeling turned into a sharp icicle.
“We should probably start fucking too.”
Clearly she wasn’t even listening.
“Right here on this table.”
It was almost fun.
“I’ll invite Umberto for a gangbang.”
“Did you know,” Vibeke reminisced, “Toshiro wrote a kids book before he joined up? He let me read it. It wasn’t long. But it had drawings, the main character with his horn, copper dragons, a seed fairy. It was really cute.”
Vibs snorted. Violet stewed. She was tempted to keep going and see how raunchy she could get before Vibeke noticed, but it seemed too frivolous for the night. She scooched her chair closer and put her hand on Vibeke’s. She didn’t notice or didn’t say anything if she did. Violet let the anger fade and the pleasant buzzing return, let her mind wander. She took another sip, and another. She thought drinking sounded like a great way to die.
ATARGATIS HATED her job. She worked online, and she felt her body pay for it. She was growing limp and atrophied. Every day she spent two hours working out. She ate only health cubes. All to no avail, eight hours a day of lying inert still took their toll. She decided it was time to quit.
Unfortunately B&L decided she would stay. Her contract was for another twenty years and she was doing a fine job, so they told her she could stick with the job or go to prison. That was that.
Or at least it would have been for anyone but Atargatis. She logged right into her department head’s office and demanded they renegotiate her contract. They wouldn’t, of course. And after that the job got worse and worse. The pay went down, despite a contract clause stating it wouldn’t. They didn’t honor their own word. Atargatis sued, also to no avail given the company’s lawyer system. Then her hours got cut. Then she got reassigned to synapse debugging, which she simply couldn’t do. They were torturing her.
At the end of her rope, Atargatis picked up her bow for the first time in years. She hadn’t had time for archery in so long, but well, they cut her hours so she had to do something. Once again she enjoyed the sweet thokk of an arrow flying and penetrating the soft target.
She did some digging and found the names and exact locations of her chain of command, all the way up to Will Fredard, its CEO, and she began shooting them. First came Cecelia Wongraven. She woke her from her dreamscape and put an arrow into her brain, penetrating just past her link. Cecelia’s boss Alexei Bodom suffered the same fate, one arrow, halfway into the brain. His regional manager, Johnathan Mäenpää, was found alive but pierced the next day. She had shot her way up the corporate ladder all the way to Vice President of Acquisitions Martha Amon by the time police caught her.
The doctors noted that none of the victims were dead, or really in any danger of it. Every arrow had penetrated just far enough to sever the wetware matrix. None of the victims would ever work online again. In their careers, that was an ending blow. They were all back to square one, jobless and without the ability to do the only things they were good for.
The courts didn’t care about poetic justice. Sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Atargatis considered jumping from her high ring of the George C. Fisher High Security Panopticon, a prison infamously nicknamed the Gallery of Suicide. But she wasn’t the suicidal type. Nor was she the type to live in a panopticon for the rest of her life. She vowed to escape or die trying.
Her first attempt was sloppy and brief. She attempted to wrestle the microwave from a guard and got her arm burned off.
Her second attempt was more subtle and clever but roughly as successful. She snuck from the floor detail to an out-of-prison work detail and managed to run four kilometers down the road before she was caught and sizzled by four broad beams.
The one armed, heavily tanned inmate made one last attempt to escape, and it was quite ambitious. She began by dunking and nearly drowning Frosty Haraldstadt, the kitchen supervisor, in a giant pot of chicken soup. Taking a knife, she stabbed one guard in the back and the other in the belly and took possession of one of their microwaves. She barbecued five more guards on her way to the gate. But despite her hostage, Tomas Tveitan, they refused to open the gate.
Atargatis did something nobody expected. She gave up the hostage and microwave and lay down to be taken. The prison didn’t really care, nor did they care that all her attacks were skillfully nonfatal, nor did they care about her clever reasoning in giving up—the gate was her only way out. Once it was clear it wouldn’t open based on a hostage situation, she knew the game was over and laid down her king. The prison guards were far more vicious to her ever after, and her sentence grew by centuries. Nobody at the prison was grateful for her restraint in the least, and certainly nobody there was a fan of her remarkable fighting skill.
G team, however, was very impressed.
MISHKA KEPT the radiophobic beam on her tank for half an hour longer than was necessary. She’d piloted an irradiated pogo on a mission for Valhalla, and her butt itched for weeks.
She wiped the gel off her eye and put it back in. She ran through the recording. There was no doubt it would be enough for the client. Vibeke was clearly visible and clearly crushed. She sent the video in to Red Boots. Almost immediately he linked back.
“Decent work, if a bit late. But Mars is Mars. The second half of the funds will be transferred tonight at midnight, minus the interrogation bonus. Little Boots is also willing to grant you right of first refusal for other assassinations. We need a good woman outside of the gang.”
“Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.”
“First refusal runs out in thirty minutes after each offer if we don’t hear back from you. Out.”
R team had arrived far too early for comfort. She wouldn’t be surprised if all of V team survived. She cursed Toshiro, at least she thought it was Toshiro. What kind of damn Valkyrie sacrifices himself? Vibeke was centimeters from the blast. Centimeters.
Mishka revved up the tank and trotted out of the cleanup system. She checked her Hashima nodes. No Valkyries had flown to Hashima, but with the Mars mission blindingly, spectacularly over, they’d be sending in a team to research it if not destroy it. Mishka had two distinct interests when they did: First, she had to be certain they didn’t send V team. If Vibeke had lived, and she knew deep down that she had, Mishka couldn’t have her showing up at the Wolf Gang’s door. And less importantly, they were a paying client, and she didn’t want Valhalla to erase them from the planet as they tended to do.
She set the tank to head to Nakanoshima, where she could monitor Hashima closely, and immersed herself online.
The news planetoids were going wild over the nuclear blast. It was the first in the lifetimes of anyone on Earth. UNEGA was publicly blaming GAUNE and throwing accusations like mad. GAUNE had more nuclear weapons than UNEGA. GAUNE wanted to destabilize the (mostly empty of any financial interest) region during their sensitive time of intracompany dispute.
But the company actions betrayed the truth. UNEGA truly believed it to be an act of either the Yakuza or the Unspeakable Darkness in their own fight. Presov marked the start of a full-scale earthbound civil war between Zaibatsu’s subsidiaries. UNEGA was putting the utmost pressure on Zaibatsu to take care of the problem peacefully, but the YUP was disassembled, and there was no legally usable peacekeeping force powerful enough to suppress either subsidiary.
GAUNE denied any involvement, honestly, but there was no chance whatsoever they wouldn’t try to take advantage of the situation. The nuclear blast was not an act of war, but it would be a perfec
t excuse for one to UNEGA, and GAUNE would want to take over as many assets as possible before they had the chance. With UNEGA in shambles, nobody on Earth expected GAUNE to sit back and let things resolve themselves.
Peacekeepers were at a loss to control the situation. Most of them had plans to drop a squid on it in one way or another, but the companies were closed off to their projections and pleas. Even the famous Nate Sanderson was at a loss to compel the companies to work toward a peaceful solution.
Mishka watched the situation closely. Not in the hopes of a lasting world peace, but for her next job. Assassination requests would soon be booming.
ATARGATIS, NOW named Thokk, arrived without ceremony and knew her place from the outset—replacing a long honored member. It was T team’s mandate that G send them the first replacement possible. They all had the intense urge to move on, to avoid any mourning period, and to become an effective team as soon as possible. Tahir would admit the three-person team’s prospect of constant walrus duty might have been a slight motivator.
Her adjustment was not without some problems. Firstly, she was upset that bows and arrows weren’t used at all in the ravine. She kept one for sport, but it wasn’t a Valkyrie standard. She insisted on using hers with her new arm for kill training but in time had to depend on her Tikari. She was disappointed again that Tikaris weren’t flexible enough to act as bows, either. Of course nobody who gets a Tikari objects for too long, but she was never happy about her most treasured skill going to waste.
Her age saw her butting heads with a few senior team members who didn’t recognize her life experience, reminding her it was all outside the ravine and therefore meant nothing. But she was a couple years older than anyone in O and P and felt they condescended a bit much.
Her biggest rivalry was with Balder. The first time they met, he was impressed by her name and suggested she simply shortened it to “Targ” to fit in with T team. She took offense to the name, explaining it was the name of a type of horned furry pig. Balder didn’t grasp her reference, and things were awkward for them ever since.