by Ari Bach
“Veikko, what—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. Just get to the safe house, and I’ll resolve the situation. Situations. Take the Wolf pogo. I’ll steal something nice for myself.”
“Veikko, you need to tell us what you’re planning.”
“Maybe a Hyundai if I can find one.”
“Vei—”
“Shhh. Trust me, there’s a method to my madness. Wait for me with the Frasers.”
“What about this book? Why do we need Alf’s old intel?”
“Did you look through it?”
“Briefly, his handwriting’s not the best.”
“Just hold on to it for now. I’ll let you know if we need it.”
“Veikko, you’ve never in two years not informed us of every detail of an operation.”
“I didn’t tell you about my hangnail on project Thanatos.”
“Veikko, what’s going on?”
“I’m solving the problem, Vibs. Trust me. There’s a reason for everything.”
Veikko stood and bowed, then jogged out of the restaurant. Violet and Vibeke looked to each other. They didn’t bother to link. They were both thinking the same thing. Veikko seemed to know what he was doing, but it was completely unlike him, unlike any Valkyrie to leave his teammates out of the loop. He was planning something unusual, irrational.
They had to trust him. That’s all there was to it. They stood and headed for the Wolf pogo, still silent. Vibeke started it up and set it for Arcolochalsh. Violet felt nothing at the thought. It was a tactical decision devoid of sentimentality. It had to be done.
Because they were going to kill her if she returned. Everything had changed in an instant. She had lost the ravine by punching Vibeke and gained Vibeke by—something she didn’t fully understand. Mishka was dead, but Violet couldn’t comprehend how that changed matters, or even if it was what did. She grew concerned that Vibeke’s love for her might be as impermanent as the prior rejection of it. They boarded the pogo and set course.
She tried to tell herself it was different now, that it had changed forever. She had an instinct to enjoy it while she still could.
“Wanna make out?”
“I’m worried about Veikko.”
“Me too. Wanna make out?”
“Not right now, Vi.”
“’K, how about now?”
“You have fewer settings than Wulfgar’s copy of you.”
“It’s a long trip, Vibs.”
“It’s a long life, Violet. We have plenty of time.”
“Yes, and we should spend it kissing.”
“We’ll have to make a living.”
“We should apply as orbitliner attendants. Spend the rest of our lives alone in zero-g.”
“I was thinking assassins.”
“We did just kill the competition.”
Vibeke sighed in relief. Mishka was gone. Probably. Vibs had tried not to let herself gauge the actual odds again. Part of her said Mishka was unquestionably still alive. If you don’t see a Valkyrie’s liquified brain, they’re still alive. But Mishka wasn’t a Valkyrie anymore. No more Dr. Niide. No more friends to save her. She had to have died.
Violet looked over Vibeke. For the first time she was thinking of Mishka and smiling. She shifted around to behind Vibeke’s seat and put her arms around her, hanging them in front of her chest.
“I’ve wanted you so long I don’t know what to do now that I’ve got you.”
“I don’t know what couples do either. I think we’re supposed to, like, have dinner together and talk about… stuff.”
“Well, we’ve done that for two years.”
Vibeke took one of Violet’s hands and kissed the back of it. She didn’t put it down, but kissed it again and held it on her lips.
“Two more hours to Kyle,” said Violet.
“Talk to me. Tell me everything,” Vibeke replied.
“About what?”
“Everything,” she said.
VEIKKO USED an emergency link carrier to call the police. They arrived within minutes. Two officers, one pogo. They found Veikko lying on the cold ground.
“Sir, are you awake?” asked the first officer.
The second approached him and prodded his body. He didn’t move. One readied his scanner to take a pulse. Veikko sprang into action and attacked both simultaneously. He knocked both out within the first second of his attack, then continued to break both their necks. He piled them into the back of their pogo, alive but paralyzed. Just in case he needed them.
He flew north and examined the police sensor array. It wasn’t too shabby, standard collision avoidance and terrain survey equipment, but also a long-range com landscape tool and high-end defensive arrays. He set the longest scope to observe the ravine.
CATO WAS busily hacking the GAUNE meteorological database. If the weather was going to be bad in Maynila, GAUNE’s conglomerate, Graco would delay their attempt to take over UNEGA’s conglomerate, SM Prime Holdings. Then Cassandra would have time to hack in and crash their stock, making GAUNE give up its Maynila operations altogether, operations they’d never have started if the UNEGA monitor junction in Poprad hadn’t been evacuated due to a nuclear event.
“Veikko,” he muttered under his breath. All of Valknut. The upstart team had been a nuisance since Udachnaya and this, this was the last straw. If the Geki didn’t kill Veikko, Cato would. If Violet returned, he’d be first in line to end her, for ever touching her teammate. With some luck Vibeke would turn civilian, and Varg would stick with the PRA. There was some dim hope of ending the accursed team forever.
With all that was about to happen, V team had to detonate the first nuclear blast to grace the globe in 200 years. How did the damn Geki not kill them all in that instant? As far as Cato was concerned, they deserved what they got at Veikko’s hand. They’d gone soft. Everyone was going soft. Everyone but Cato.
Cato was about to do for the ravine what Balder never could, what Alf never would. He logged out of GAUNE but didn’t return to Alopex. He stayed offline. That would be critical.
Cato crossed his arms and leaned against the rock wall. Truly he was above and beyond any other Valkyrie. He had more guts, more vision. Or so he thought. That’s why he never saw Veikko coming.
THE FRASERS door was lit. They were home. Violet knocked.
Mrs. Fraser fainted as soon as she looked. Mr. Fraser stared at the video-door for a full five seconds before he understood why. He opened the door and let the undead in. He didn’t even ask her companion to explain. He tended to his wife first. As she came to, the duo explained a standard Valhalla contingency tale to spin when encountering someone known previously.
“They had to make the Wolf—the Orange Gang think I was dead, or they’d have pursued me till I was. They gave me some work with—”
“No need to explain, lassie. I’m so happy to see yeh, yeh could tell me you were brought back t’ earth by the devil himself, and you’d be welcome in these walls, and I migh’ buy the old man a drink for havin’ brought yeh.”
“Another friend may be joining us soon,” said Violet, suddenly worried he might not.
Vibeke picked up on it too, “may be.” There was every reason to think he’d lied, that he intended to die to get them free and clear of the ravine. And every reason to think he did have a plan, something brilliant. Or at least audacious.
They observed the niceties and then retired to a guest bedroom.
“What do you think he’s going to do?” asked Violet.
Vibeke only cringed.
THE WOLVES appeared on the HMDLR’s outer field. A large pack of them, bearing fangs. Alf linked the external defenses to activate. The array outside the rampart erupted from the ground, shaking the earth beneath Balder and his team. The Bs rode individual roving guns. Balder stuck to his old Ice-CAV, a giant horseshoe crab of an armored tank. Perth team took his right flank, Wunjo team his left, both teams in APCs. Alf’s tank made the surface on HeR Mode to lend its arms and legs.
Othala and
Sowilo manned the small battle pogos, two per vehicle. Everyone else was on the way to Hashima or busy trying to ease the tensions of a postnuclear cold war.
Alf monitored the incoming fleet. All glossy black, classy pogos. One of them a Rolls-Royce. Wulfgar hadn’t lost his sense of business style. It would be business for him. Wulfgar was not a master of warfare. He’d not start shooting, and indeed his fleet circled the ravine without firing a shot. He was there to do business. He would begin with an offer. There were two cargopogos. One surely contained the Ares. But the other… Wulfgar had something planned.
VEIKKO ARRIVED two kilometers south of Kvitøya. It was no longer a ravine, but a dome. The rampart was closed. And under siege, pogos circling. A hopeless endeavor, he thought, but it afforded the opportunity he needed. As he flew closer he saw Balder’s Ice-CAV on the surface. Balder was the only man that ever drove it. The enemy acted strangely. They weren’t making any kind of assault. Their patterns were merely defensive, protecting the cargopogos.
Veikko logged into the police pogo’s mainframe and dug his way into the personnel files for William Testling of Sydney, Australia. UNEGA police records appeared. Testling had died in action in 2212. Veikko knew, of course, that he had not. He’d hacked Cato’s files the first time they had a run-in with the old bastard. He’d gone no further. There was little to learn and no point in learning it, but now he had a cause and a necessary effect. He looked through the records. He found Will Testling’s link frequency and carrier ID. Something that wouldn’t change, even when he entered Valhalla. And with that information, Veikko could forge his messages.
Cato would be among the teams calming tensions between UNEGA and GAUNE. The likelihood he’d be signed into Alopex was almost nil. Veikko had to risk it. No plan comes without risk. He signed in, and no alarms tripped. He was the only Cato online within the system. Internal voices were hard to mimic but not as hard as real ones. He didn’t have to mimic Cato’s voice, only his cadence, his mannerisms. Easy job, being a total dick. He’d test it on the one girl certain to forgive him if it didn’t work.
“Alright listen up, Skadi,” he said, imagining an Australian accent, “need you to veer away and check out the blip to the south, looks like a police pogo.”
“Cato? I thought you were—”
“Don’t pay ya to think, sheila. Get on it.”
On his sensors he could see Skadi turn toward him, away from the action. It worked. He linked into W.
WULFGAR’S CARGOPOGO lowered the drill. Alf armed the defense array but didn’t fire. The drill was small. It wouldn’t afford entry to any pogo. He remained calm and linked out through Alopex.
“Do not fire on the drill. We could use another drawbridge anyway. I’ve anticipated this. If Wulfgar wants to speak to me, let him come.”
The teams stayed ready to fire.
The drill fell from the cargopogo and rocketed toward the side of the rampart, bit spinning at terrible speed.
WEATHER HEARD Cato over the link.
“Weather, emergency incoming! Fire on 66-86! Wire-guided!”
“Negative, Alf has ordered us not to strike,” she replied.
“Pig’s arse, fire now!”
“Negative, Cato. I’m not even detecting the drill at 6—”
“That’s because you’re blind, doll. Weather. Trust me. Fire at 66-86!”
“Cato, I need to—”
“No time! Fire!”
It was on W’s project Harbinger that Weather last directly disobeyed Cato. She paid for it. He had told her to detonate the charges exactly one hour early. Out of contact from her team, she couldn’t risk them still being in the blast zone. The charges remained still. An hour later Weather finally heard from her team. They had been out of contact at the critical moment but got a message to Cato through his Tikari, which had been monitoring them for purposes of his own.
Cato informed her of the new time, the new brief moment in which they could have destroyed the bridge. But she didn’t. She didn’t trust her elder blindly, and for it, Harbinger was a waste of two months of planning. The arms made it through on time, and a tribe was slaughtered. She ran to Veikko and told him everything. He remembered.
“Weather. Fire.”
Weather fired a wire-guided missile at the coordinates, trusting Cato blindly.
It hit Balder’s Ice-CAV exactly on the side. Molten copper shot through its armor and into the cockpit, with white fire behind it. Balder was engulfed in the blast, killing him instantly and burning his body to a cinder. Veikko’s plan was going perfectly.
VARG WOKE from a digital orgy as soon as Balder’s link went dead. It snapped him out of his cryostasis and left him freezing in the Blackwing cockpit. He turned the vessel around and hit the thermobaric thruster. It deployed and ignited a field of gas behind it, creating a light brighter to Earth than any star but the sun. The entire planet would see the Blackwing, know that it survived. But he’d be home in hours, for whatever he’d find.
THE FORCE of the drill’s thruster chipped the first half meter in and gave its bit a chance to grab. The rock began to shatter around it and the drill burrowed in.
The drill entered the rampart practically unnoticed. Balder was off link. For the first time, Balder had died. A death nobody knew if he could survive. Skadi turned her pogo around and darted for the rest of S team, which had been engulfed in the blast and crashed.
Alf too ignored the drill, in shock at W’s missile. He said nothing. Nothing needed to be said. Weather knew what she’d done the instant it happened. Her Tikari saw it from atop the APC. She lamented her choice to see through it. To trust Cato. She vowed she would kill him the instant the Wolf crisis ended. But before she could resolve, she got a link.
“Weather,” said Veikko, “I need you and Wunjo to listen to me very carefully.”
He had killed one Geki. He had the fire implant. He had killed Balder, and sadly a few more. Sigvald and Snot’s pogo was in the blast. Good thing he’d directed Skadi and Svetlana away. He didn’t want to kill any more Valkyries than absolutely necessary. But they were necessary, there was no question of that.
The framing of Cato had succeeded absolutely. Veikko didn’t know it, but he guessed correctly that Alf marched straight for C team’s office. With some luck he’d kill him on the spot. With equal luck Cato would kill him. Alf would need to die too; there was no question. But he could live to see Veikko’s plan unfold just a bit further. He linked to Skadi and gave her the same link dump he gave W. Every step, every point, every reason he had. He knew she’d understand.
Then Veikko saw B team amid the rubble. He watched in horror as they lifted Balder’s remains from the wreck. His head and one shoulder were intact. His brain was unharmed. He’d be back. And then Veikko would be doomed.
ALF KICKED C team’s door open.
Churro began, “We’re looking into—”
Alf shot Churro with a confined beam, cutting him in half through the heart. He swung the beam through Claire and Cassandra, killing all three. Then he leveled the microwave on Cato.
“You may take them to med bay once you’ve answered to my satisfaction. You lose a part for every dodge. Now. What have you done?” he demanded.
“Alf… that wasn’t me… I—”
Alf shot him, cutting off his left ear.
“Damn it, Alf, why would I—”
His right.
“It wasn’t me! For the love of God, Alf, let me explain!”
“Explain.” He kept the microwave on Cato’s head and walked up to him, holding the weapon to his temple, ready to blind him.
“That wasn’t my link, I wasn’t in Alopex, check the log signature!”
“I will as soon as we’re not being drilled. Take your team to Niide. When this is over, the log will determine your fate. I’ll investigate if you’ve told me the truth. If you’ve not, you will live forever in pain to regret what you’ve done.”
Alf walked out and climbed the power plant branches toward the dril
l site.
MISHKA’S TANK emerged from the water. She saw the CAV get hit. Balder’s Ice-CAV. Impossible, a shot from their own APC hit Balder. An unthinkable accident. An unthinkable opportunity. She rode up onto the land and set her tank to run at top speed for the wreckage.
The tank limped wildly toward the destroyed CAV. Everyone on the field saw it. The Valkyries recognized it. Everyone knew without question that Mishka was to blame, except those few who Veikko had told the truth. Those were the only Valkyries not firing at the tank. Everyone else let loose.
The tank outran all they threw at it and skidded down into the crater surrounding Balder. She fired at B team, killing Bathory and Borknagar. Brock made it to his gun and fired at the tank to no avail. She ran him down, impaling him on the tank’s right leg. That put her right over Balder’s remains.
She opened the escape hatch under her tank and grabbed his remains, then set the tank to head for the water.
The fire ceased. Valkyries knew what she had taken. None of them even gave chase. None of them would be fast enough.
Except for one tank. Alf’s. Eight legs, the fastest tank of its kind. The smartest too, on HeR mode. He sent it for her. She couldn’t outrun it, but she had to talk to them anyway. She stopped her tank just short of the water.
“Mishka?” asked the tank in Alf’s voice. He was immersed in it atop the YGDR S/L.
“I want Balder to live. As much as you do. But I want to live too.”
“Say it, Mishka.”
“I want everyone in the ravine to stop hunting me. Every Valkyrie.”
“Done.”
“Link them! I want to hear every voice say it!”
Mishka knew that they would have to keep their word. She had offered a fair trade. If they kept their promise, Mishka would be free and have no reason to pester the ravine again. If they broke it, they’d have a new active enemy with near omniscient intel.