by Ari Bach
I’m insane, she thought. Vibeke was completely right, and I’ve been too crazy to see it. In that moment she thought she could push her love for Vibeke away and focus only on teamwork. It would be hard, but she’d done harder things. If she could cut through forty-eight men, she could beat down her libido. And that’s all it was, she told herself. It wasn’t love. It was sex. And she’d just proven that in spades.
Vibeke stood and began to climb the stairs. Violet followed and succeeded in not staring at her butt. They passed the side rooms with caution and stepped into the shaft leading out.
Mishka sat in an abandoned ruin over the entrance with her cutter rifle ready. This time she wasn’t going to bring a building down on them or stop at anything short of two severed brain stems. She prayed, the best way to focus she knew. Deliver to me my enemies, O Lord.
Vibeke walked toward the entrance. She saw a black dot fly out through it. She recognized it instantly and fell back.
“Mishka!” she shouted, then ran back.
She bumped into Violet, pushing her back down the shaft. A cutter beam sliced through the air, burning deep into the coal as they fell down the first spiral of stairs. A fire suppressor hit the flames with a vacuum field before the entire mine went up. Violet briefly thanked Wulfgar for following proper safety procedures in setting up his tunnels of horror.
Mishka cursed. She should have risked hitting the eye to kill her. Now she was underground hunting for another exit. She had another chance, though. She didn’t know where they’d come out, but she knew where they’d go—she had seen the pogo land. She ran for it.
Violet and Vibeke ran for the first rooms branching off from the stairs. There had to be another way out. Violet ran first and microwaved two Wolves who came across their path. After a couple minutes, they realized there was no other entrance. Impossible, there were too many people there to use a single portal. The new Ares tanks—the drill, far too large for their entry route. There had to be another way.
“Side,” said Vibeke. Violet ran for the steps down to the welded aperture. There had to be a dock of some sort on the side of the island, which was built up on its edges like a battleship. They came to the aperture, and Vibeke drew her microwave just in time to see it burst open from the other side. She switched from cutting beams to killing beams and fired into the pit. But no fire came back.
They cautiously stepped down into the cafeteria hall, and then into the cafeteria ready for another slaughter. The few remaining men who saw them, though, ran for dear life, leaving them standing in an empty room, shin deep in blood and body parts.
“That must have sucked for them. I mean it was their lunch break, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah we’re… we’re not friendly people.”
Mishka came to the pogo and hacked its lock. Not one of Valhalla’s standard pogos, it was easily opened. Mishka crawled inside the back. She pulled a Carlin Knife from her ankle band and cut her way through the backseat into the trunk. There she lay in wait, linked into her rifle’s scope, keeping it aimed at the driver headrest with only a fraction of a centimeter sticking out of the seat. She had them.
Violet and Vibeke walked calmly through the room and into the next hall, where they found the Ares room and the obscured but large door through which it could exit. They looked and linked around for a door opener, and Vibeke found an open protocol. She linked it open, and it began to rise. She let it open just enough to slip through and rolled out with Violet.
Violet burst into sunlight at the side of the island. There, a platform jutted out of its side to hold several black pogos. She felt the subtle sizzle of the thermoptic field that had hidden the platform from their Tikaris. She recognized one pogo as the vessel that rescued Wulfgar from the island, that flew off into the aurora. She ran for it, and Vibeke followed.
“Oi! You ain’t registered on tha—girls?”
Vibeke elbowed the guard Wolf into unconsciousness and took his key box. They leaped into the pogo. Vibeke found the proper key, and Violet started the pogo, then lifted off at top speed.
Out of the windshield, through her scope, Mishka saw the pogo take flight. She knew instantly who it was. She cut her way back out of the seat and threw her rifle aside. She hacked the pogo to start and lifted off.
They were both in conventional pogos. Mishka knew how to catch up. She overrode the safety features on the engine and gunned it almost to the point of failure. She sped toward Violet and Vibs at nearly the speed of sound.
Vibeke saw the pogo chasing them and warned Violet. Violet overcranked the engine and steered out over the sea. But the other pogo was gaining on them. Vibeke crawled into the back and shot out the window with her microwave. The air suddenly left the pogo leaving a near vacuum. Vibs shot out the windshield past Violet, who knew to put up an inertia field to calm the air. They could breathe again.
Vibeke began firing at the pogo behind them, which continued to gain. Then suddenly, a cutter beam appeared, firing past them. Violet began evasive maneuvers, flying wildly from side to side. But Vibeke knew who it was.
“Slow a tenth!”
She wanted her to catch up. To kill her.
Violet should have gone on. But she felt a pang of guilt. She owed Vibeke everything after what had happened. She knew as she thought it that she was wrong to consider it, that it was a mistake caused by romantic thoughts on the teams, exactly as Vibs said. But she did it anyway.
The pogo slowed, and Mishka’s sped up to them, almost passing. As it reached them, microwave fire and cutter beams burned the air between them, but with the evasive driving of both, nothing connected.
“Toshiro!” called Violet.
It took only an instant to click. Poetic justice. Vibeke set her microwave to overload and waited. It approached critical. More cutter beams sliced through the air, one cut off the rear bumper. The microwave was ready. Vibeke threw it.
The explosion went off right on Mishka’s windshield, blasting it out of its grooves and into her face, splattering plasma through holes onto her arm and stomach. Her pogo shot down toward the water. Mishka tried to eject, but the windshield blocked her seat. She was trapped. The pogo hit the water at hundreds of kilometers per hour. The water spray was colossal.
Vibeke shouted at the top of her lungs, “Chug brine, you fucking cunt!” then fell back into the pogo’s seat. She caught her breath. Then came the realization that she hadn’t just shot Mishka down and delayed her. The crash would be fatal, and Mishka didn’t have Valhalla to take care of her anymore. If she died, she died permanently.
Vibeke realized it might suddenly be over. She ran through the odds in her mind. It was certain. Mishka was dead, there was no way she could survive that crash. Vibeke smiled more broadly than she ever had before. She had to control her breath to keep breathing. She shifted her way into the passenger seat. Violet looked at her and laughed.
“‘Chug brine’? What the fuck, Vibs?”
Vibeke laughed out loud, then froze to let the idea sink in. As wind struck her face, she thought about the years of hatred, a hatred so intense it blinded her to everything else. She felt it even then, victory did nothing to rid her of it. She was angrier than ever, the adrenaline surging behind it. If anything it had spilled out, where Mishka gave anger a place, that place was now gone and rage permeated every other thought.
More than anything else in that moment, she hated Violet. She had thought once that if Mishka were gone, she could finally accept her similar gaze, her strength, the things she loved that she could never love again. Instead she felt only fury that Violet had ruined it. She tried to calm her mind, thinking it was a mere momentary derangement. But as Violet kept staring at her with a coy grin, Vibeke was absolutely overcome by hate for her, and she finally realized why.
She was angry at Violet for losing control, for the last year of flirting and looking and begging, for her backward notion of consent, for attacking her the night before, but none of that rage held a candle to the fury she felt when Viole
t held her down to the bed. Because in every fantasy Vibeke had ever had, she was the one holding Violet down by the hair. The idea struck her like no revelation before it. She turned back to Violet and looked her in the eyes for only a second before she slugged her as hard as she could in the face.
Violet was too surprised to block. She had no idea what was going on. She barely took a breath before Vibeke slugged her again, spinning her head to face away from her. She felt Vibs steal the weld clip from her hair, and before the wind could take it, Vibeke grabbed the loose strands, tearing half of them out. She grasped her hair tight and forced her face into the seat of the pogo so fast it spun her body around.
Vibs wasted no time in clawing down the back of Violet’s armor, peeling it off and reaching inside and around and down, making Violet squeak. Vibs wanted to hear her squeak again. She pulled her hair to the side and jumped closer to kiss her, her mouth open as if to suck Violet’s tongue out by the root. She grabbed her breast with her other hand and rubbed it with vicious force as Violet struggled out of instinct, still completely unaware what was going on.
Vibeke kissed her neck and her back, then withdrew her hands and shoved Violet into the backseat, slamming her head into the center armrest. With Vibeke’s hands off her for an instant, Violet turned around to see her peeling off her own armor. Somewhere around this time, Violet finally figured out what was happening. Her promise to herself in the caves vaporized. Her regrets and shame failed to disappear and only confused her further. She forgot the mission, the wind in her face. She forgot how to speak and fell powerless under Vibeke as she climbed back on top of her and grabbed, groped, and rubbed herself against her with every second of lust that had built up over years past.
The pogo slowed to its regular top speed as its passengers ravaged each other in the back, and flew aimlessly over the Korean Peninsula, another car in a traffic of millions.
The younger Geki recoiled its sensors and stopped watching, giving them privacy. It was content that Violet was safe. It descended into the mineshaft unseen and found Violet’s extra corpse. With its flame, it incinerated the double, then damped out the flames that took to the coal. It was time to return to the citadel. It jumped home.
ALF AND Balder walked together around the perimeter of his library.
“A Geki came to me as I slept, a single Geki,” said Alf.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Veikko has killed the other.”
Balder said nothing.
“The Geki demanded we kill him,” said Alf. “I suspect even a single Geki could do so easily, but it wants us to. A show of loyalty perhaps.”
“I’ll do it as soon as he returns.”
They walked on in silence for a moment.
“What do we do with V team?” asked Balder. “Split it up?”
“To say the least.”
“Vibeke should stay in the ravine. As a consultant or on a new team.”
Alf nodded.
Balder went on. “I can take Varg into B team. He belongs there anyway.”
“Did you read Dr. Niide’s briefing on Violet? On her and Vibeke?”
“Yes. What do we do with Violet?”
“This ravine has never suffered a sexual predator in any way, shape, or form.”
“No, it hasn’t.”
Alf scratched his cheek. “Kill her the instant she arrives.”
Veikko logged out from his library bugs and took a deep breath.
Chapter X: Ragnarök
VIOLET SLOWLY woke. She felt wind on her shoulders, cold and bare. But also hot on one side. And soft.
She’d been dreaming offline, of such wonderful things. She’d never had so good a dream in her life, nor one that felt so real. She had to go back a day to think just where the dream began. Assaulting Vibeke, that was real, as was the torturous regret. Seeing Wulfgar again, the pain told her that was real. Mishka dying in a great ocean spray seemed less likely, too good to be true. And what happened next was completely impossible….
Vibeke gently ran her fingers through Violet’s hair. Violet shifted, inhaled with a choppy breath, and realized it happened. The hot skin on her arm and chest were unquestionable. She was genuinely pressed up naked against Vibeke. She opened her eyes and adjusted to the bare sun and dark blue sky. To the cold, angry wind.
She kissed the stretch of Vibeke’s side that appeared right before her face, then the side of her breast and her collarbone. Vibeke pulled her closer and kissed her on the lips.
Violet tried to think and wake up, but it was like the dream kept its claws in her, the sharp heated pinpricks of memory that spoke to an entire day of squeezing each other close against the cold, highlighted with several hours of sex in every form they could think up. There was no question it was the best day, dusk, night, and dawn of her life—despite the starving feeling, despite the pain of microwave burns and what was likely a fractured arm. Vibeke was hers for that day, hers in a way nothing could take back from her. Or, she thought, the other way around. No mission, no revelation, no hour online with the Patumias pleasure spool could compare to it. She thought if she only had another day to live, she’d die happier than she’d ever been. And that no day to come, no matter how good, could possibly top the recent past.
That is to say the sex was really good, and plentiful. Violet took stock of the morning after. They were in a pogo high above… somewhere. An incursion into the Wolf stronghold had met with mixed results. Wulfgar escaped, and the Ares was on Earth, but then again, Mishka was dead, and Violet and Vibs had a whole lot of sex. Alopex would rank the mission at 100 if she knew Violet’s priorities. She stared up into Vibeke’s eyes. She tried to think of anything to say and felt compelled to say at least one thing.
“I’m sorry for breaking your cheek and trying to rape you.”
Vibeke grunted. She still felt no sense of forgiveness. She simply wasn’t the type to forgive. It wasn’t in her range of emotion. She’d hold it against Violet until the day she died, but like every other feeling, she could ignore it utterly. Push it down so far it couldn’t matter. She was angrier than ever at Violet for souring the love they could have had. It would never be pure now. But then, what in her life ever was?
“You want me to say I’m sorry for waiting so long?” she asked.
Violet didn’t care. It seemed like the least important thing in the world.
“I’m not sorry for anything,” said Vibeke.
They stared at each other, felt each other’s skin.
“I’m gonna make you pay for every glance you stole in the shower. For every joke you made, every time you brushed your arm against mine.”
Violet didn’t know what to make of it. Vibeke hunched down and grabbed her hair again.
“And you’re gonna pay for what you did in the barracks every damn night of your life.”
She grabbed her hair harder and pulled her up to kiss her.
“Okay,” said Violet, “but if this hair thing is what you mean, I’m gonna go bald.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Vibeke kissed her with tooth-shattering force. Violet rubbed against her naked body again, hips against hips, breasts against breasts, lips on lips on tongues on teeth. She felt burning hot, Vibeke’s skin on one side and cold wind on the other. It felt so alien to her. As if the world knew the importance of the night before and the walls of reality had broken open to the surreal state she felt. She held Vibs tight and nuzzled again behind her ear.
“Violet, no Alopex,” said Veikko.
“What?” Violet asked, bolting upright.
“What?” asked Vibeke.
“Veikko,” she replied. Then she realized it was a link.
“Violet, don’t sign into Alopex. They’ll kill you. Tell Vibs I killed a Geki and said ‘Hi.’”
“What about Veikko?” asked Vibs.
“He says ‘Hi.’ And he killed a Geki.”
Vibeke sat up. “Okay….”
“He just linked to me from…
from over Newfoundland. He said if I signed into Alopex, someone would kill me.”
“What the actual fuck?”
“I don’t know.”
“He killed a—how? Are they after us too?”
Violet didn’t have any answers. She instinctively pulled on her suit, a foot of which had never left her in the previous day’s commotion. Vibeke began to dress as well.
“Where are we?”
Violet checked the geolocator. “Holding pattern over Neo Seoul. I’m setting it for Valhalla. It’ll be a day in this thing.”
“Are you sure we should go back? If Alopex is gonna kill you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening.”
“We have to meet Veikko. He must know.”
“I’ll set course for Vadsø. We can risk an open communiqué to him, right?”
“He did for us.”
Violet sent a link to him across the open net. “Lost Collar.”
Vibeke knew immediately. They’d meet at the restaurant where they took her for training, where she’d forgotten her collar and Veikko and Vibeke brought it back to her. Clever, Vibs thought.
“What now?”
“Well, we can’t sign in,” said Vibeke.
“It’ll be a day before we meet him.”
“Well, what can we do all day?” Vibeke smiled broadly.
Violet pulled her suit back off, and they lay down in the back of the pogo. She began to kiss Vibeke again but stopped, awash in shame for that night in the barracks. Vibs seemed to pick up on it.
“How…?” Violet whispered.
“How do we do this after what happened?”
Violet looked into her eyes. Vibeke looked somber, concerned.
“You fucked up, and I’m not the forgiving type, I’m not gonna lie, but….”
“But?”
“Maybe if we fuck hard enough nonstop until we die, we can keep our minds off it.”
Violet exhaled and nodded, and then started kissing her chest and stomach and on further down.