by Ari Bach
“It’s ‘lesbian,’” explained Vibs. “Librarians deal with books.”
“Whatever, it worked. They probably raped the bitch to death.”
“Violet!”
“What?”
“We… we don’t do that to people!”
“Well yeah, we don’t. But they do.”
“Violet, you can’t set someone up for… for that.”
“Why not? And why don’t we rape people exactly? We torture them to death. Why can’t we top ’em off with our—”
“I can’t believe you! It’s sick, it’s wrong, nobody should ever face that. Not even the worst.”
“Oh, so you don’t want Mishka to get raped? Were it possible, I mean.”
“No!”
Violet considered it.
“Well, you’re a kinder woman than I.”
“Violet, we kill rapists. We kill anyone who turns an assault sexual. It’s the worst thing people can do to each other.”
Vibeke seemed genuinely disgusted. Violet knew she had to relent.
“Well, I’m sure Gabrielle explained her way out. She’ll be fine. Better than she deserves.”
“Violet, we need to talk about this.”
“No, we don’t. I get it, it’s wrong. I’d never actually do anything. It’s just… philosophical.”
Vibeke brooded on it. She acted for the next week like she had more to say but never got to it.
In time things went back to normal, or so Violet thought.
Vibeke actually never thought of her quite the same way after that brief but profound disagreement. She knew Violet wouldn’t have understood why if it came up again. Vibeke wouldn’t tell anyone else about it. There was no reason to deflate their opinion of Violet. And Violet surely knew better than to say or think the way she had again. Vibeke alone would bear the burden of knowing what she knew. That Violet, in one serious way, had been completely backward.
But then, who in the ravine wasn’t in some way? In the end Vibeke decided not to judge. She’d corrected the problem and checked in on Gabrielle, who had indeed explained the situation to Swastikult. All was well on that front. X and Y were the pressing matters of the month. Worse things had just happened.
Chapter IX: Hashima
VIOLET WALKED the branches with Vibeke and Alf. They asked once more to participate in the Zaibatsu cleanup, but Alf declined.
“Even if it were not a Geki request, political matters this fragile are always handled by our most senior teams. Junior teams are great for sneaking in and blowing up, assassinating warmongers, but the experience necessary to forge treaties takes decades to learn, let alone master. Zaibatsu is more complex than Swastikult. Infinitely more complex. I’ll be overseeing it personally. Don’t worry, we’ll have Veikko back.”
Violet wondered what would be left of him if the Geki subjected him to their fear all the time he was with them. She pushed it from her mind. It was too horrible to consider. She could only be thankful, infinitely thankful he’d saved her from it.
“I’ve reviewed your link dumps about Hashima,” Alf went on, “I approve them fully. You’ll depart tomorrow to implement them.”
The three stepped off the branch by the barracks and defuzzed their feet. Vibeke nodded to Alf and headed for V team’s room. Violet stayed for a moment.
“Alf, a question.”
“Go on.”
“Veikko told me last night that the Geki were simply men working for UNEGA and GAUNE. Is that true?”
“We suspect it. Balder is certain of it. I have doubts and suspicions myself, but Veikko wasn’t lying.”
“Then why don’t we kill them? Why do we let them have power over us?”
“It’s uncertain we have a choice. If their abilities are all just tricks or if they truly could annihilate the ravine in an instant. But our teams have seen their fire, the Geki in action. All who have believe they constitute a superior force to all Valhalla can muster. But more importantly, they have always acted righteously. If they are the arm of the world governments, I don’t mind submitting to them. I consider it reasonable and just.”
“I did until they took Veikko.”
“And I question it too. But I remain inactive against them. Fear is a powerful weapon. It takes the Geki to instill fear in Valkyries, but we’re certainly guilty of the same.”
“What? We don’t use fear as a weapon.”
“Of course we do! We are feared, even more than the Unspeakable Darkness. And we use that fear to get our way. The Hall of the Slain has a dreaded reputation for a reason. We earned it, and we keep it alive.”
“We act fairly, though, don’t we? Aside from a few indiscretions….”
“Those indiscretions are the meat of who we are. We do act cruelly. What seems normal to you after two years in the ravine was once enough to kick you out of Achnacarry. You have no monopoly here when it comes to childhood cruelty. We aren’t the noble poet warriors of old.”
“Snorri said you were a poet warrior before you came here.”
“Snorri calls me such as a joke. Nobody called me a poet warrior. They called me a serial killer. I snapped easily and blew up big when I did, and not metaphorically. When the police harassed my parents I blew up their headquarters. When my parents saw the carnage and called me a monster, I killed my parents. Your Lilliputian eccentricities are nothing compared to my youthful lows. I was a monster, and I haven’t changed all that much.”
“But you did change when you came here?”
“When I came here, here was a pack of savage Wolves. Clear walls to mock the injured, sharp rocks to cut those who fell out of line. They hazed the new flesh in ways to make Achnacarry look like preschool. When I came here, the last boy in a four-man runeless team—it was all men back then—they beat me my first night for not using the right towel. They beat me all night and beat me more in the morning. The next night I killed them all in their sleep. In all the time you’ve been here, you never wondered where my team was? They’re buried under the library. Every foundation in this ravine is built on buried men. Valhalla is not a place for good men and women. It’s a place for you and me.”
“Still, we save the planet. We don’t torture anyone to death unless they really deserve it.”
He almost laughed.
“Yes, we have saved the Earth forty-three, sorry, forty-four times. But it is not our responsibility. It’s what we do when we’re bored. We’re killers and crackpots, and we fight those who would end the world only because they taunted us as children. You think Veikko wants to stop Pelamus to save humanity? He wants to stop him because he hates his relatives. He hates Fish and won’t see the world taken over by them. Why, Violet, did you save the world from deluge? For the good of the weaklings who made your childhood so dismal or for your own sense of reward?
“But someone has to defend the weak and—”
“No, nobody has to. If it can’t protect itself, it deserves to drown, let it die off. If someone wants to champion the human cause, so be it. If you want to then feel free, use our microwaves, but it’s not our responsibility. Our only responsibility is to ourselves.”
She didn’t know if he was playing devil’s advocate or trying reverse psychology, all to teach her why it really was a cause worth fighting for. She could have asked, but she was afraid. She knew deep down that he would tell her it was the truth. That he believed it. By implication she knew she might have agreed with every word of it. She could call herself a bad girl in taunt, but there were some things too dark to admit of herself. Alf broke the uncomfortable silence.
“You should read Håvamål sometime. It deals with all these trifles.”
She was about to say she couldn’t when he dropped the pretense that he wasn’t disappointed. “And you really should learn to read paper text. You’re the last girl here who can’t.”
He walked away. That hurt. It was the first time the inability ever felt like an inability. It was the first time Alf had ever said anything that really distressed h
er. It was the first time she ever saw Alf as a flawed man and not the fearless leader of the pit. It was also the last time she would ever see him.
VEIKKO FELT nothing. No fear, no pain. It occurred to him suddenly that the Geki had killed him anyway. There was only darkness. But there was a feeling, something there in the space with him. He realized quickly that it was fear. He was afraid, only so afraid that it didn’t register like the usual Geki fear.
Like the dead nerve endings of a terrible trauma, the fear had knocked out part of his brain, overloaded it, numbed it. But it was coming back. And it was bad. It was worse than ever before. He was swimming in fear, drowning in it. A vortex of fear. As if the Geki’s voice was omnipresent and incarnate, flowing around him. Like he was melting away into the whirlpool.
He tried to scream, but the fear stifled him. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. He couldn’t even be certain he still had them. He tried to think, but it was hopeless. Soon he was overcome by fear completely. His mind focused in on it like the worst imaginable pain. He was unable to avoid it. He searched for something, anything to focus on instead, but nothing else existed. Until a dim light appeared.
A dim light moving closer. Becoming clearer in the darkness. He could make out the texture, the color before long. Then the ears. He knew what it was, but he couldn’t understand why in the depths of hell he was seeing a walrus in a pair of pink bunny slippers.
VIOLET WAS angry. Angry at Alf, angry at herself. She stormed out to Special Arsenal 2 to pick up a razor-chain whip and practice against some meaty but nonsentient grown targets on the range. Shredding something that could bleed always made her feel better.
She reached SA2’s door and kicked it open to reveal Tahir and Thokk having sex on a crate of field knuckles. They were shocked to see her and quickly covered themselves with their discarded armor. They separated, stood up, and quickly became annoyed at Violet’s lack of flight.
Violet couldn’t move. She was transfixed by the sight of them naked together, violently thrusting and bouncing. She felt an instant envy like nothing she’d felt before. It was animalistic, beyond that it was an all pervading stink as if the Geki of Envy had burst into the air before her. The image tore through her rational brain, the part that might have told her to get lost.
She stared at Thokk, thinking of her pale, spread thighs from a moment before. Her moans, the way she grabbed Tahir’s back and pulled it in toward her again and again before they jumped up at the sight of her. She saw their faces, angry at her and shouting for her to get out. It all skipped over her head. She could only see their faces in ecstasy a moment before.
They were on the same team. It was possible, not only possible, but it had happened after only days. She was furious. It should have been her and Vibeke. Without question she should have been fucking Vibeke on that damn crate for the last two years.
“For the love of shit, Vi, get out!”
She had no intention of leaving just then. She walked straight in, grabbed a chain-whip, and made sure to stop by the door and thoroughly sign it out. She pressed the fingerprint button and spoke properly. “Violet from Valknut team checking out chain-whip zero one from special arsenal two, on October seventh in the two thousand, two hundred and thirty-second year of the common era at fifteen thirty-two hours and seventeen seconds.”
The two just watched her, Tahir going flaccid and Thokk staring daggers at Violet for it. Violet linked the light off and slammed the door on them, then marched to the meat range.
She ordered out a standard target and went to town, slashing meat off its sides, splattering blood on the walls and floor. She gave up on skill within seconds and went for power. She cut the target in half, then cut it from its hanger. She kept whipping, with all the anger she could muster, and that was a lot. She shredded the target until she was cutting into the floor without any semblance of form or aim, finally throwing the whip down at the target and walking away, cursing under her breath.
She shoved her way past an onlooking citizen and headed for the barracks. She threw the door open and walked in. Vibs turned to her, her face pale in the room’s light, her roots glowing under the black, her mouth slightly open, surprised.
“Tell me I’m not a useless bloody idiot.”
“You’re not! What happened, Vi?”
“Nothing.” She sat on her bunk, right next to where Vibs was standing. She was eye level with Vibeke’s breasts, centimeters away. The image of Thokk’s chest bouncing with every thrust flickered through her mind. Vibs didn’t step back.
“What’s wrong?”
“Things… things just aren’t….” She exhaled. She couldn’t even put it into words.
Vibeke looked her over, genuinely concerned. She saw blood spatter.
“Is that from the range?”
“Yeah, the range.” The useless range. There was too much anger, too much regret to whip out of a simple target. Because it wasn’t anger and regret. It was lust. The image of them pounding away had Violet furiously aroused. She was sick of talk and dispute. Sick of Vibeke’s insolence. Sick of restraint.
“Take off your suit.”
Vibeke feigned shock. She practically expected it of Violet at that point. What she didn’t expect was the strike of heat she felt herself at being ordered to undress. Despite all the calm logic filling her head, the thought of doing as ordered occurred to her and held a sharp appeal.
“What?” Vibs took a breath and turned away. If Violet stopped, she’d be okay. It would go away.
Violet didn’t stop. “I said take off your goddamn suit.”
Vibeke turned to face her. “For the hundredth time, that’s not something we can do.”
Violet saw through her. “You want it too, damn it.”
Vibeke looked down. She couldn’t look Violet in the eye just then. She spoke to the floor. “It doesn’t matter what I want. I chose to be a Valkyrie, I chose this life for myself.”
Myself. Violet’s anger boiled up again. She didn’t even think to tell her that it was working for Thokk. Vibeke had said she chose it for herself. For herself.
“Then how about me, you selfish bitch? You can beat yourself up all you want, but you have no right to take it away from me.”
“I don’t fucking belong to you! I don’t owe you!” Vibs snapped back. Talk about selfish.
“Yes, you fucking owe me! I just saved the bloody fucking world. The least you could do is eat me out or something!”
“You’re out of your mind. Just think about what you’re—”
“I’ve thought about it for two years, Vibeke! I’ve thought about you and craved you. I’ve wanted you naked in my arms since I met you, and I’ll go insane if I have to wait another second.”
“You are going insane, look at yourself. Look at yourself, Violet. A team can’t work like this.”
“I don’t give a shit! I just want you. Now. Just get in bed and—”
“Violet! Stop! It’s not gonna happen.”
“I love you, Vibeke.”
“I don’t love you, Violet.”
It wasn’t true. Even then, Vibeke felt a force behind her chest telling her to give in. She could throw it all to the wind and give in. She could be in bed with her in seconds if she just gave in. It might be better for the team if she gave in. She wouldn’t let herself think it. She had to get out of there.
Violet stared. She wanted to speak but had nothing to say, no words came. There were no words strong enough. She wanted to command Vibeke, to order her to act like she knew she should and walk straight back to her and kiss her and fuck her.
But she couldn’t. Vibeke turned to leave. She was simply walking out. Walking away. Like a Valkyrie would ever walk away from a fight. Violet was beyond furious, beyond rage.
She grabbed Vibeke by the shoulder and spun her around and slugged her as hard as she could.
Vibeke was spun around and thrown across the room, completely unprepared for it.
Good, thought Violet. She’s halfway to
her bed.
Violet ran her finger down the back of her own suit, undoing it and letting it slip off. No thought crossed her mind. She just pushed Vibeke the rest of the way onto the bed and climbed in after her. Vibeke squirmed, lying on her front. She was pushing to get back up. Violet grabbed her by the hair and held her facedown on the mattress, then ran her finger down the back of Vibeke’s suit. It pulled open across her back.
Violet took a deep breath and kissed her skin, and it was like an explosion of warmth across her lips. For years she’d dreamed about kissing that skin, and it was beyond her fantasies. Her mouth open, she dragged her lips across her back, kissing her more, harder and harder.
“You’re worse than Mishka,” said Vibeke coldly.
It pinched her ego, but Violet didn’t care. She was too happy just then, too turned on to consider it fully. She was being bad again; she knew that much but couldn’t possibly bring herself to care.
“Yeah, I am,” she replied. Let Vibs deal with that. She pulled Vibeke’s suit farther down around her ribs and touched them with her free hand, moving closer to her bare breast, dying to feel it. To squeeze it as hard as she could. To hear Vibs whimper and moan and give in and ride her face until—
“You’re worse than my dad.”
Violet froze. She was, wasn’t she? Her dad never molested her, never raped her. Violet realized it was going to be rape. What was she thinking? She pulled away from Vibs like she’d been stung. She took a deep breath and tried to bring herself back to the real world. Had she even just done what she thought she’d done?
Vibeke propped herself up on her elbows, then sat on the bedside. Violet couldn’t look at her. She’d gone too far. Much too far, incalculably too far. And she’d lost whatever scrap of Vibeke’s heart she ever had. She was worse than her dad. Violet shuddered.
Vibeke stood up and walked toward the door, pulling up her suit. God, she’d started undressing her, kissing her. Violet felt sick. Vibeke turned around and faced Violet. Violet couldn’t look up.