Prime Valkyrie

by Michael-Scott Earle

  Waiola didn’t even bother to close her driver side door after she stepped out. She just reached for the other van’s door and then yanked it open. I was a bit surprised it was unlocked, but the other women didn’t seem as taken aback.

  Waiola and Hegeia jumped inside of the van, and Uma gestured for me to follow her to the back hatch. The sisters opened it up from the inside, and they pointed to a single roller table that they found. The cover of the table was more than big enough for me to fit the four guns, pistols, and ammo belts.

  “Good idea, Uma,” I said to the blonde woman, and her dark eyes twinkled as she bowed slightly to me. She then said something to Hegeia and Waiola, and the two women laughed.

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  “Not important,” Hegeia replied.

  I decided not to press her on it. Instead, I loaded up all our guns and ammo belts in the roller table. I also put my pair of revolvers in, but I left my third one tucked in the back of my pants along with a pair of speed loaders.

  “Are there any sort of uniforms in the van?” I asked Hegeia as I closed the lid to the table.

  She jumped back inside of the van, dug through some boxes, and then pulled out a few white jackets with the pie logo on them. The other two women clapped with amusement and then put the jackets on when Hegeia presented them.

  “Not one big enough for you,” Hegeia said, “but hat?” she reached into another box and tossed me a white cap with the logo on it.

  “That will work,” I said as I put it on.

  “We make good team, ya?” Hegeia said as she stepped out of the van.

  “Sure. Thanks for helping. Close the doors to both of the vans and let’s see if this building will get us to the top.”

  The women followed my orders, and then I pushed the roller table across the parking garage. From the brief drive down, I’d gotten a feel for where the elevator was located, and we were soon waiting for it to arrive.

  The door opened, and the four of us walked inside with our catering roller table. There were only four buttons to choose from, and Hegeia pressed the top one.

  Then the observer drone darted into the elevator and floated up to the ceiling.

  “Fuck. I forgot about that asshole,” I groaned.

  “Most don’t notice,” Hegeia said.

  “How do they not notice? I’ve got a black eyeball following me around everywhere?”

  “They might think we are completing our rite of passage together,” Hegeia explained. “It is quite common.”

  “I fucking hope so,” I said as I frowned at the drone.

  “There might be other elevator on the lobby floor,” Hegeia said as the doors closed.

  We moved up, and the doors to the lobby opened a few seconds later. The space was much nicer than I expected. The floors were made from a dark gray slate. The walls were glass fish aquariums, and the area was lit by a set of four large wrought iron chandeliers. The fish aquariums were the most impressive because they covered every square centimeter of vertical space on the walls. There were a handful of people admiring the creatures swimming in the illuminated water, and the sight made my heart ache a bit. It would have been nice to spend some leisure time here with Eve and Zea. As it was, I couldn’t spare the fish more than a glance. I was too busy pushing my cart across the floor and toward where I hoped the other elevators were located.

  The front doors to the lobby were on our right side, and I turned my head just as a group of armored soldiers walked through the doors.

  The men weren’t wearing power armor, but it definitely was the kind of armor that would be useful during a riot. None of the other people looking at the fish seemed to notice the soldiers walk into the lobby, so I hissed to the women and then turned my head back around, so I was staring at the corner across the room.

  My heart hammered in my chest, but the beast in my stomach growled and tried to force apart my self-control. I was sick of running and hiding from these fuckers. I fought against the swell of emotions and focused on my breathing. We were halfway across the smooth lobby floor right now, and we just had to continue to pretend we belonged here. Yeah, I didn’t have one of the white catering coats on, but I had the hat, and the other three women did have coats. We shouldn’t have seemed that out of place here.

  Except for the damn observation drone following us.

  I looked into the metal cover of the roller table and saw the sphere shaped drone’s reflection. It was floating a good four meters up above me, close to the ceiling of the lobby, and I doubted anyone would notice it unless they looked up.

  I bent down a little as I pushed on the table and changed my angle of view so I could check on the soldiers. There were four of them, and they approached the front desk of the lobby. That might mean they would waste a few precious seconds talking to the desk clerk, or it might mean they were going to lock down the elevators.

  A voice shouted behind us, but I ignored it and pushed the last five meters toward the elevators. The women followed me, but I noticed their backs stiffen.

  “Come on,” I said as I hit the call button for the lift. Then I glanced over my shoulder a bit and saw the group of soldiers looking at us. They hadn’t made any move to come toward us, and I wondered if the shout didn’t actually come from them.

  But then the man at the front of the group yelled again, and he pointed at us.

  The door dinged, and I turned toward the elevator. The car was empty, so I pushed the roller table inside without turning back to look at the armored figures. The three women followed me, and I was surprised at how calm their faces looked.

  “Hit the button to close the door!” I hissed at them as I reached for the revolver at my back.

  Hegeia pressed on one of the buttons, and the doors started to slide closed. Before they could shut, the observer drone darted inside of the car.

  Then the elevator started to ascend. Its pace was a great deal quicker than I thought, and I hoped the security team didn’t get a chance to turn off the lift before we made it to the top.

  “This one goes to the surface,” Hegeia said as she pointed at one of the buttons that she pressed.

  “Will it open at ground level?”

  “Ya.”

  “We’ll need to run out, escape from this building, and then try to find another car or the location of a shuttle,” I said. “Those armored men down below will take an elevator up to come after us.”

  “They weren’t chasing us,” Hegeia said to me, and her face looked confused.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “They yelled because they were closing off the elevator,” she said.

  “What?”

  “They said ‘we want to close the elevator so that the man with the bounty on his head can’t come this way.’ Then they told us to stop again, but we went inside the elevator.”

  “Really? Why didn’t you say anything?” I took a deep breath and then wiped my fingers over my face.

  “You went in too fast.” Hegeia shrugged.

  “So they don’t know it was me?” I asked.

  “They do now,” she said as she pointed to the drone.

  The robot was kind of drifting in a circle, but then it came to float above my head. I resisted the temptation to pull out my revolver and shoot it, but then the beast that lived in my soul screeched at me. He was right. King Vaish had put a bounty on my head, and having the drone floating around me all the time was a lot like keeping a spotlight on me. I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without people seeing it, and then they would know I was the man they were looking for.

  I pulled my revolver out, pointed to the underbelly of the sphere-shaped drone, and then pulled the trigger. The women all jumped when my bullet exploded through the device, and they turned to me with shock plain on their pretty faces.

  “You destroyed an observer?” Hegeia gasped as the hunk of black scrap metal fell onto the floor of the elevator car.

  “Yeah. It will be easier to go now.”


  “You will get in trouble,” she said as she shook her head.

  “I’m not planning on finishing this rite. I was already going to be in a lot of trouble.” The elevator began to slow. Then the doors opened with a beeping noise that sounded a lot like the one my drone would have issued.

  I poked my head out the elevator and looked left. It was set up a bit like the lobby at the bottom of the building, but the color scheme here was a bit brighter in hue, and instead of fish tanks on the walls, there were gray paintings. I half expected to see a platoon of armed guards, but I didn’t see anyone except for a few people looking at the artwork, and a woman behind the front desk. She held a phone-like device pressed up against her ear, and her eyes were looking in our direction.

  “Shit. She knows,” I said as I looked to my right. This was a long hallway, but I could see a small sign with glowing red rune letters hanging over a door some hundred meters down the corridor.

  “Is that an exit sign?” I asked as I pointed down to the end of the hall.

  “I can’t read from this far away, but ya. Looks like it,” Hegeia replied.

  “Let’s go,” I said as I yanked the roller table out of the elevator and then pushed it toward the back-exit door.

  My friends followed me, and I glanced over my shoulder to see if the woman at the lobby desk would say or do anything. The angle of the hallway was a bit to the left, and the few steps we had taken down the corridor prevented me from seeing her reaction.

  “Faster,” I said as I pushed harder on the roller table and began to sprint across the carpet. This almost felt like it could have been a hotel, the doors were evenly spaced, and there were runes etched on metal plates of each door like room numbers.

  As we ran closer to the doorway, I motioned for Uma to push on the roller table while I checked the door. She understood my gesture and took my spot while I sprinted up ahead to check the exit. This was another instance of me expecting a group of armored soldiers to be waiting for me with a hail of bullets, but only a blast of cold air hit my face when I cracked open the door.

  This was a loading area for the building, and I saw a few parked trucks, trash bins, and the utility cluster of pipes and electrical conduits. The whole area was surrounded by a chain link fence, but it was opened at the side where the trucks were parked. I didn’t see anyone around, and the street beyond the fence was devoid of traffic. There were other buildings beyond that street, and I guessed we would be able to take the back alleys.

  “It’s clear,” I said to the women as I motioned for them to run out the door. There were stairs down to the street, and I grabbed onto the front of the roller table so I could help Uma carry it down.

  “We can run across the street and into the--”

  Hegeia shouted something in her language, and each of them ran toward one of the trucks. These were semi-truck vehicles, but they weren’t attached to any trailers.

  “No, we need to--” I started to say, but the women had already popped open the doors to each of their three vehicles.

  Half a moment later, the truck that Uma dashed into rumbled awake, and the other two women sprung from the cabs of their vehicles.

  “Adam!” Hegeia called out to me, but I was already pushing the roller table toward the truck Uma had started. The women got into the cab before me, and I threw them the weapons, belts, and ammo from the table before I jumped in.

  Uma threw the truck into reverse as soon as I slammed the door closed, and she kicked her foot against the acceleration pedal. The truck’s tires screeched across the icy ground and then rocketed backward. She cranked on the wheel a moment before we cleared the fence, but there was a bit of a delay in the control of the semi, and we ended up twisting onto the road with perfect form.

  “Damn. That’s some good drive--” I started to say, but then the back door of the building opened, and a familiar group of armored men poured out.

  The women started shouting, and Uma grabbed on the control stick of the truck. She yanked it down as I grabbed one of the rifles at my feet, and I felt the weight of the semi lean back as she brought her foot down on the acceleration pedal.

  “Get down!” I shouted at the women as I brought my rifle up toward the window. The goons in the armor were also bringing their weapons up to aim at the truck, but the wheels of the big rig caught, and we sprung forward.

  Their shots rang out like a snare drum, and the passenger window shattered into a thousand pieces. A sharp pain blossomed on my cheek, neck, right arm, and chest, but I thought they were just shards of glass and not actual bullets.

  “Go faster!” I shouted to Uma as I leaned out the broken window with my rifle. My urging wasn’t needed. The truck engine was already bellowing, and the group of armored men was now a good fifty meters behind us.

  I still took aim with my rifle and figured that I might as well send a few of the fuckers to hell so that they would think twice about following us.

  I squeezed the trigger and passed the dot on my sight over the group of men. The rifle had a slower rate of fire than what I was used to, but the recoil felt almost nonexistent. Each of my bullets found a soft target, and the side of the building erupted in crimson. I kept the trigger down while I controlled my weapon, and they were all dead before my magazine emptied.

  “Got them,” I growled as I ducked back through the window. I was about to reach down and grab another magazine, but Waiola already had one in her hands, and she passed it to me.

  “Hurt,” the woman said as she pointed at my neck. Her eyes were wide with horror, and Hegeia let out a gasp.

  “I’m all right,” I said as I reached up to my throat.

  There was a big fucking piece of glass cutting into the carotid artery on the right side of my neck.

  “No!” Uma’s face had crumbled when she looked at me.

  “Fine!” I said as I yanked the chunk of glass out of my neck and tossed it out the window.

  “You need hospital,” Hegeia said.

  “No. We need a ship,” I said as I put pressure on my neck to stop some of the blood flow. I could already feel the injury starting to itch, but I figured it would be a few minutes before it was healed. The cut was really clean, and small, and there weren’t any bones to knit. My strange healing powers seemed especially good at repairing these kind of cuts, so I didn’t think I’d pass out from blood loss.

  “Face. Arm.” Waiola said as she pointed at my cheek and bicep. I couldn’t see the injury there, but the piece of glass sticking out of my arm was at least ten centimeters long.

  “Pull it out,” I said to Waiola. “I don’t want to take my hand off my neck.” Hegeia made to reach across her sister, but Waiola seemed to understand what I meant, and she pinched the glass shard between her fingers carefully. Then she yanked it out, and I nodded toward the window. Waiola threw it out and then moved to pull the other piece out of my face.

  The two women stared at me intently, but I turned my eyes to the road and tried to stare down the side streets. This city was large, and there was an even larger city located beneath it, there had to be an airport somewhere.

  “What about this?” I asked the women as I pointed to a hand-sized screen on the dashboard of the truck. “Is this a navigation computer? Can it tell us if there is a space or airport nearby?”

  “I will try,” Hegeia said as she pushed her finger against the screen. The device illuminated, and she began to chat with Uma in their language.

  “You. Hospital?” Waiola asked me, and her face was painted with distress. I did feel blood pouring down my cheek, neck, and arm, but I wasn’t feeling light headed.

  Yet.

  “I’m fine,” I replied, and then I leaned my head a bit so that I could glance into the side mirror of the massive truck. I didn’t see anyone following us, but the air was freezing outside, and I had to lean away from the door.

  “We found directions to airport!” Hegeia exclaimed as she pressed a few buttons on the display. A map appeared on the screen, a
nd I saw a countdown for six and a half minutes.

  “Fuck yeah,” I said. “Now turn the hot air on, so we don’t freeze by the time we get there.”

  “Ya. Good idea.” Hegeia flipped a few switches on the dashboard in front of her, and a gust of hot air pushed against our faces. It didn’t quite combat the flux of frigid air coming from the broken window, but it was enough to keep the frostbite at bay.

  “You sure no hospital?” Hegeia asked.

  “Yes. Keep going,” I said.

  “You hurt,” Hegeia pleaded.

  “I’ll be fine,” I replied, even though I was starting to feel a bit dizzy. My neck was itching like a swarm of ants were there, and I figured I’d be fine by the time we reached the airport.

  I just had to stay conscious for that long.

  “We worry,” Hegeia said after the three women spoke to each other. The differences between their personalities were becoming more apparent as we spent more time together, but what struck me more was how different they were from Madalena and the other Vaish I had met. These women seemed warm and caring, while Madalena was cold and uncaring.

  Thoughts of the Prime Valkyrie seemed to sap my strength even more, and I took a long breath to steady my thumping heart. I’d spent more time with Hegeia, Uma, and Waiola than with the woman who considered me her husband. It was probably unfair for me to call her cold and uncaring. She had indicated to me that she was angry with the events leading to me having to complete Odin’s rite of passage.

  “Adam!” I felt arms shaking me, and I gasped. Then I realized I had fallen asleep, or fainted, and Waiola was screaming at me.

  “I’m okay,” I said, but I wasn’t. I was tired, and my eyelids felt heavy again.

  Wake the fuck up, Marine. No rest when there is work to be done.

  “You not okay. Need hospital,” Hegeia said.

  “Looks like we are at the airport,” I said as I pointed to the map display that indicated we had thirty-five seconds until we reached our destination.

  “Ya, but you need--” Hegeia’s words were cut off by a shout from Uma. The blonde woman twisted the steering wheel of the truck to her right and then slammed on the brakes. The sudden stop caused all of us to fall out of our seats and slam into the dashboard, and a growl of anger escaped my throat.