by Aeryn Leigh
It was enough. They reached outside air, and the tank bulls-eyed the entrance again, and a corporal moved into view, the glow of a flamethrower tip. They flowed out onto the pebbles, and the flamethrower fired, the tunnel filling with petroleum flaming jelly, and the Major's command echoed around and around the epicentre. The soldier stopped the flamethrower and with the others sprinted clear as everything that could be fired was unleashed right into the tunnel. 20mm cannon rounds mixed with 9 mm parabellums turned the tunnel and the crypt into a blender of high explosive and steel-jacketed death. One third and final 75mm shell brought the tunnel walls down. The rolling waves of stone dust and smoke billowed out from the collapsed entrance, as one final creature made it out, headless, and it toppled to the ground, twitching like an beheaded chook.
Wolfgang walked up to the entrance, burning timbers at last giving the courtyard shrine visibility, to the naked eye at least. Merrion was bent over coughing. Hands picked him up, standing him up straight. Wolfgang came right up to him, his face angry. In his left hand was Corporal Handley’s leather pouch, the paper edge of a letter peeking out. "Who are you? What were those things?" With his right he stabbed at the daemon.
The man dressed completely in black laughed, mirth without humour. "I have no idea what you're saying, but hell damn, the boys are going to love you."
Chapter Thirty-Seven
VALE THE FIRST AND LAST
WHAT WAS there to be afraid about? The feared and mighty Inquisition had been vanquished, seemingly wholesale from the Republic's new gas weapon. Rumours spread like wildfire as to the weapons ability to consume corpses whole, leaving not a skerrick of flesh behind, as legion after legion of the First and Last disgorged from the Republic Armada anchored in the bay.
Reports from the First and Last's commanders indicated no resistance whatsoever. The main Inquisition seaport had fallen without a single shot fired.
Metaphorically speaking of course. As the first landing barges made their way to the jetties, the Republic warships formed a broad line and fired salvo after salvo at the defensive fortifications, covering their landing craft. But quite quickly General Sarah Versetti ordered ceasefire, as not a shred of Inquisition resistance was offered. The landing barges and smaller sailing vessels came alongside the long, extended jetties, or made it to the main docks, and no matter where they landed making first contact and history by landing on Inquisition soil, the legions of the First and Last secured the port unopposed.
It was barely morning when the general herself stepped onto enemy soil. The logistical part of the operation was fully underway, as men and women ran back-and-forth, crates of ammunition being passed hand to hand, in long daisy chains leading up to the stone fortifications running the breadth of the port. With Major Brutowsky by her side, she walked up the stone central stairway to the top, and even the general gave pause.
What the Inquisition is industry had accomplished was breathtaking. In an area the same size as Fairholm itself, was one solid mass of factories, warehouses, processing plants, and gods only knew what else. Dozens upon dozens of oil refineries still pumped. The sheer industrial output dwarfed anything the Republic had managed to deliver. Pound for pound, shell for shell, in pure material output, the Republic stood not a chance.
Just like her First and Last trapped within the Inquisition stronghold, caged like guinea pigs for experimentation, the Inquisition treated them, like all opposition, with utter contempt.
The troops around her were jubilant, the relief on their faces palpable. The marvels of the Republic's super weapon were plain to see. General Versetti looked at the major, and they both shared the same thought. With their own experiments back at Fairholm, they knew the poison gas did not have the power to dissolve flesh.
Something else had got here first. Something they'd experienced once before. But there was nothing for it now. Their objective remained the same. Push forward, inch by inch, yard by yard, building by building, destroy everything in their path that did not believe in the Republic.
Vale the First and Last.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
WHAT WE HAVE, GENERAL
A HOVERSLED FROM the gunship carried the whole procession to the Nordic ceremonial tomb, leaving the only living things back at the gunship the three warchargers. Every single other person jumped on the sled, and Ella left Painkiller on the edge of the landing pad. There was not a single scrap of space on the whole hoversled, for all intents and purposes looking like an oversized Christmas sleigh. The tunnel walls close softly, and the sled riding only centimetres away from the surface made no sound bar air whistling past as the hour long journey by foot took only minutes.
The only person not looking ahead hugged her daughter tight, as Ella's one leg dangled over the rear of the transport. Ella tried to say something, but words would not come out. A billion things screamed through her mind all that once, her mouth opened and closed, and her heart hammered.
Where had she gone wrong? Had she gone wrong? Had Ella gone wrong? What happened to innocent before proven guilty? Could her daughter be right? And the reams upon reams of information and knowledge she had discovered in the last two months be incorrect, incomplete? Maybe it was like judging the entire of humanity upon only meeting the personal army of the Gestapo? Or maybe the little spiky alien was an aberration, a statistical fluke?
In the time it took to travel the tunnel, just as they reached the end and the wide, open entrance to the ceremonial hall, did Ella find her voice.
But it was too late. The men and women around her burst into an excited hubbub as the sled eased to a more sedate pace and made its way into the throne room.
Twelve sets of power armour still stood around the throne. Twelve sets of armour unaccounted for. And on the throne the Queen Valkyrie, the Queen of Valkjurs. Ella's words died in her mouth as her daughter stared up at the white silver figure eyes like saucepans, and at that moment Ella knew.
No other person bar Amelia Gruder would have the honour and power and responsibility of operating that armour. That Nordic armour of the gods.
The sled came to a standstill.
As everybody jumped down, and immediately began talking and shouting all at once, Rob ran up the steps and retrieved Ella's crutches, the pack of German shepherds running this way and that sniffing absolutely everything. The four boy puppies peed on everything, with seemingly inexhaustible bladders.
In the mayhem, Ella thanked Rob, and made her way up the stone steps to where she found an uncharacteristically thoughtful Beowulf and Magnus staring hard at each other.
Ella began to speak, but Beowulf held up a finger. Ella held her breath then slowly exhaled. She nodded slowly, and turned around to find Marietta and Laurie standing behind her, as the others explored everything in the room pointing and yelling.
"This is quite an arsenal," said Marietta.
"That's bloody understatement," said Laurie. "You could start WWIII with all this. And end it too."
"So just one of these suits saved the day at the mountain stronghold?" asked Marietta.
"Just one," said Laurie. He craned his head back to look up at the seated figure. "That is one big fucking gun. Christ." He let out a slow whistle.
Ella followed his gaze and so did Marietta. They stood underneath its main barrel, the serrated blade easily the length of a man, mounted under something resembling a long, double-barrelled rifle or shotgun. In contrast to the elegance of the armoured figure, the weapon it held brooked no mistake for its intent or purpose. In no way shape or form did you want to be looking at the wrong end of it. It had to weigh a couple of metric tons easy. And gods only knew what it fired.
Even Ella, with access to the Nordic data library, in those long two months of waiting, could not get any further than the basic information on file. Queen Valkjur, Indominator Class. Loki-bound to a Eviscerator-level weapon.
"Amelia," said Ella, "has something to do with that." Her gaze turned to her daughter, currently sitting on top of Griffin's
shoulders, giving her re-united family the guided tour. Ella noticed the spiky alien wrapped securely in the crook of Amelia's left arm, well away from Griffin's head. Mick, Thorfinn, Rob, and Andrew walked alongside, the latter’s mouth still wide open in awe.
Laurie laughed, long, loud, and strong. “Of course she does, of course she does.” Unconsciously his right hand moved to the command implant, and for the fifth time in as many minutes, tried to get a fingernail underneath to rip it off his skull. His eyelids closed, twitching, and when they opened he spoke again. “Indominator Valkjur.” Swear to God I'm going to go bloody insane with this thing stuck in my head.
Marietta cleared her throat. She raised two fingers to her lips, and blasted a whistle. A hush fell over the vast room. "King Beowulf Hffylson," she said, slowly and clearly, enunciating every syllable, "Captain Laurie John, assemble your warriors right there." She pointed at the cleared area between the piles of dead aliens either side directly in front of the hover sled. Her face was thunder. In a very short while, a sense of decorum had been restored. "Splendid." Amelia still sat on Griffin's shoulders, looking sheepish.
"I woke up this morning, ladies and gentlemen, expecting to go for a short horse ride, then head back to my office to finish a logistical stock-take, of what remained of the Republic's defences. Call it a general's prerogative. If I want to go for a horse ride between working, then by Gods I shall." Volfango shifted slightly. "This morning. Ha! Since going on this horse ride, ladies and gentlemen, I've encountered something alien at almost every twist and turn. First with Amelia in the emergency caverns, then some kind of air warship buried right underneath my city, and now transported halfway across Elysium to a cache of ancient Viking weaponry." She looked right at Beowulf, then at Ella, Amelia and finally Laurie. "I don't care who starts talking, as long as they make sense, and start doing so now." She growled the last word.
Beowulf grinned, and put a hand on Magnus's shoulder. "You tell them," said Beowulf.
Magnus took a step forward, his left hand resting upon the hilt of his side axe. "What we have here general, are Odin's Warriors."
Chapter Thirty-Nine
ODIN’S WARRIORS
AND THIS LOYAL READER, marks the end of your passivity in this narration. There you are, safely ensconced within your orbital habitat around a shell world, or journeying between galaxies in lucid dream states, your mortal flesh tucked securely away in the bowels of the star vessel, or shooting the lava rapids on Versetti Prime, revelling in the knowledge you purposefully made no consciousness save point – all the while, reading or hearing these data slates, stories from another time in a galaxy now so far away.
Yes you, the one reading these letters forming words in your neural net, biologically gene-altered to multi-task. You. Citizen of the Korellian-Earth Empire, where no sun in its civilisation ever sets, the mightiest post-scarcity military anarcho-democracy known in this Galactic Cluster, hear these words. Listen to them.
Your origins over ten millennia old, mere fables and legends, nightmares used to settle children and younglings to sleep, the hushed words: Odin's Warriors. Mere fiction you scoff, reaching for another alcohol-construct. No proof of Nordic-Earth complicity was ever found. The countless gigadeaths, galaxies set aflame, civilisations and suns ripped in two in that war eternal, all is a matter of public record from the accused and guilty, infinite-damned wild Ska-Korels, the information stored on sentient AI's for those bored enough to look, or historians indulging themselves with What Ifs?
And indeed, it is. Yet here you are, engaging in written telepathy. Just know this as you slumber in the cold darkness of space killing time.
From this moment on, this was, is, the Path of Blood. And your hands, our hands, are red with the blood of countless trillions.
And just maybe, just maybe, my loyal citizen, we can together find the slender tendril of hope which turned the final tide. For there are times the Universe turns on the head of a single pin, one single event, and it is here we resume our story, our story of Odin's Warriors, the Valkjurs of Old. But unlike the dry, humourless fable record, believe this account, from I, your humble narrator. For I was there.
And watch out for that second hairpin lava bend. That's a killer. Trust me. I know.
Chapter Forty
MACHINES OF WAR
THE EXPRESSION on Marietta's face did not bode well. Magnus hastily went on. "It is written in our history that after a great victorious battle was fought here on Elysium, the Warriors appointed by Odin himself were taken to feast in the halls of Valhalla where the brave may live forever." He gestured around them. "The vanquished foe are all around us. But when Odin's Warriors were taken to Valhalla, on the chariots of the Valkyries, only their souls travelled there, leaving their physical, mortal Valkjur shells and instruments of war behind. And this is the legend. Right here. In the time of great need, Odin's Warriors will fight again. Scattered across Elysium were the machines of war in order to accomplish this.”
"But not anyone can use them," said Rob. "I have tried."
"You must be blooded," said Ella. She looked at Amelia with a heavy heart. "Or have something in your blood."
"Ella is correct," said Magnus, stroking his beard. "And also, wrong. It is written that only those directly in the maelstrom of battle are Valkyrie-chosen by Odin's blessing."
"So, these Odin's Warriors," said Marietta, "can be used against the Inquisition? And against the aliens that attacked you and my mother back at the stronghold? There are at least two people here they can use it. Ella and her daughter. "
Ella felt the stares upon her. "If I knew how, I most certainly would tell you."
Laurie stepped forward. "I bloody hate mysteries," he said. He reached around to the back of his neck and lifted off the pendant Amelia had gifted them all. "You said the pendant was the key, back at the stronghold before you left. Well was only one way to find out." He walked up the stone-metal steps and holding the pendant in his left hand, started walking around clockwise, touching each of the metal suits with the pendant.
Everybody stared at him. Klink. Klink. None of the power armour opened. Klink. Klink. He disappeared from view, behind the throne, and in the silence, they could hear slight muttering, and the faint tinkling of brass ringing against plate. Skippy joined him in the game, running circles around him. He reached the tenth figure. He tapped it, nothing happened. Laurie laughed, and walked around to the next armoured figure, one of two sets of battle armour a little bit bigger than the others. Unlike the others arranged around the throne, the pair of suits were identical. Yet the weapons they carried were different. Laurie approached the one holding a short stubby gun, twin barrels mounted vertically, the barrels wide enough to put a human fist comfortably inside, and in its other holding something resembling a weaponised equivalent of a Swiss army knife.
He tapped the ten-foot-high suit on its front knee, and kept walking. He managed one more step when the suit cracked open, like a gunshot. Laurie did his best not to have a heart-attack as he jumped, not noticing most of the watchers did too. The sharp retort echoed around the cavernous space. Airtight biological seals held for millennia tasted fresh air.
Laurie turned and slowly backed away, as the forward plate lifted up from unseen hinges and the inner cockpit opened like a flower. The pendant felt slightly hot in his hand. The command interface gushed information straight into his visual field. Tactical battle armour. Valkurus-class heavy assault.
Very slowly, very carefully, Laurie twisted his head around. "Ah, those that got given a pendant, go tap them.”
Griffin looked at Mick who in turn looked at Andrew, as all the others who received a pendant of Amelia that night before invasion day had the dawning realisation of what they in front of them.
Kids were let loose in a toy store. With Amelia still up on his shoulders Griffin charged up the steps as the child yelled. Those without a brass pendant only watched openmouthed as grown adults ran this way and that to each of the eleven remaining suits. T
he clinks of brass against ceramic metal sounded like windchimes on a sunny day followed by one sharp retort after the other.
Minutes later, five suits were claimed. Andrew and Rob stood forlorn at the edge of the throne platform, holding the pendants next to Marietta and Ella. All the Vikings were singing raucously, Amelia clapping along, her head the same height as the power armour. Skippy and the puppies ran around and around, barking playfully.
"How much longer should we give them?" said Marietta. "We ought to be finding your way back to Fairholm, or helping with our invasion."
"A few more minutes won't hurt," said Ella.
"Then tell me," said Marietta, "about what you have learnt in the last couple of months. You single-handedly saved everyone from the aliens, then disappeared from view. Amelia finds a stone that unleashes an airship right from the very ground underneath Fairholm."
"I would have returned to Fairholm if I could," said Ella exasperatedly. She moved positions on her crutches, feeling pins and needles in a foot no longer there. "Somethings I can control with my suit. Other things I have no control over. It seems like there is some kind of proximity limit, some kind of maximum range one can travel from this Queen Valkjur before one must return. All the equipment here is running on bare minimal power. There exists some way of recharging these power systems, but I have yet to unlock it. There is a finite amount of weapon ammunition too."