Ragnarok (19 page)

Violet returned to her own eyes and scanned the room for more men. She saw none. She kept her Tikari alert and looked to Weather.

Her eyes were fried out. The door opened again. Violet readied her Tikari in the air. She elected not to kill the next man to enter. She'd fight him and learn who he was first. Her Tikari would kill anyone else coming in.

Violet leaped up and kicked toward the newcomer's head. The robe she was wearing caught her leg and wouldn't let it swing that high. She lost balance and fell back onto her left hip. Suddenly the man had a microwave on her. She called in her Tikari to cut off his hand. It did in an instant. She grabbed his hand off the floor and pried his microwave from it. He didn't make a sound.

Violet scrambled up as best she could in the absurd robe and leveled the microwave at the man's head.

He was dressed in black with a black hat. He stared at her with what looked almost like a grin.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

He smiled. “I've already linked out. They know you hacked Yellow Boots. They know you're here. They will kill you both.”

Suddenly Violet heard a secure link from across the street to her and Weather. It was Veikko. “Jammed him, didn't get out.”

“Who are you?” she asked again.

“Fahrenheit. You killed The Elbow and Jimmy Pig Lips.”

Violet winced at the strange names.

“We'll bore him later, just kill the fucker!” shouted Weather.

Violet assessed their priorities and agreed. She shot him in the heart with a full beam, and he flopped over onto his side.

“We've gotta get you home,” she told Weather.

“No, clean up first. We can't let them know we hacked him.”

Weather ejected her Tikari and started to look through its eyes. She linked to Veikko, “We need Valkyrie microwaves in here now!”

Violet checked the bore on Mehmet's head. It was complete. She removed it and put it on Fahrenheit's head. Weather, adeptly using her Tikari's eyes, began moving the dead men into a pile in the corner. She nodded to Violet.

Violet recalled her Tikari to her hand and held it as a knife. She pulled up her robe and headed to the door. With no suit and no microwave, she went slow, scoping out the corners and clearing the hall methodically. No more hostiles were coming.

Varg arrived soon with their suits and microwaves. Violet changed fast as Varg used her microwave to disintegrate the first two bodies, then once the bore was complete, turned the last man to ash. The room was thick with the smell of fine cooking. He tractored the ashes into a small mass and dropped it into a dispersion toilet.

Violet set the bore back on Mehmet and linked in. She posted a simple hypnotic that he got laid and fell asleep. It wouldn't hold up to scrutiny, but unless he got hacked by Wulfgar, and he went straight for that memory—Wulfgar.

Violet couldn't believe it. As they ran from the building and returned to the pogo, she kept replaying his face, his mutilated metal face, in her mind. She'd found him: the man who hunted her, who had eaten the flesh from her wrist, whom she had killed. She said it over and over to herself. Her hunt was suddenly active. Weather took to the pogo, and it launched to take her to Dr. Niide at top speed. Varg and Violet returned to their room with the rest of W team.

 

 

H
OURS
LATER
they had watched Aga return to his safe house and monitored him for any signs of awareness. He showed none concerning his hacking. They got a link from Valhalla as soon as Weather arrived.

“She has new cosmetic implants but seems to prefer looking through her Tikari. Eccentric, but that's nothing new here. If that's what Weather wants, that's how she'll see.”

Weather would be fine. Violet asked Balder about something even more pressing. “And the intel?”

“Well, you found Wulfgar. Congratulations on that, Vi.”

“Permission to take him down?”

“L team is on it, already at Hashima and ready to infiltrate. Aga has a ticket to Mars on the third—”

Violet considered L team, not without a bit of envy. Would she return from Mars to find that Wulfgar was dead? She calmed her mind, assuring herself it would be okay if he was. But she felt distant from it. She was at least present at his last death. This time she would be in a transfer orbit when they went in, out of range of Aloe or even the common Earth net.

But such was saving the world. She exhaled. Vibeke suddenly elbowed her in the side. She didn't know what to make of it. Then Varg spoke up.

“Request V team exchange with L.”

“Request denied, you have experience with Aga, you should be on Mars.”

“Respectfully,” said Veikko for the first time in his life, “we have more experience with Wulfgar Kray than L team, and a senior team should head to Mars for the more important project.”

Alf sounded amused. “You raise a good point, V, but—”

“Fuck buts,” said Vibeke. “You're not sending Laguz to end our arch nemesis while we're in cryo.”

Our
arch nemesis, she said. Vibeke had never called Wulfgar her own. Violet felt a sudden throb of gratitude and camaraderie. When she had simply given up, her team fought for her, and Vibeke had taken her nemesis on as her own. Violet wanted to speak but found herself choked up.

“Have L monitor,” said Veikko. “We'll kill Wulfgar when we get back.”

“Inefficient, V,” said Balder.

Varg retorted, “Aren't you the one who held up Ehwaz for a year and a half because of an incident involving your—”

“Okay, okay,” interrupted Balder quickly. “Granted, but seeing his gang doesn't bring back the Ares is your top priority. I'll have L team monitor Hashima passively.”

“Good,” said Veikko.

“So how about Mars?” asked Vibeke.

“Well,” explained Balder, “Yellow Boots is definitely part of a Wolf mission to Mars, but he seems to know nothing of its specifics. Not locked in a hidden partition, not disguised or camouflaged. Very strange. But the bore says he does have a ticket to Mars for the third.”

“I suggest we take the flight on the first. W can monitor him here while we're gone. But we'll arrive before him, and he won't get the chance to recognize Violet or Vibs.”

“Excellent. I'll speak to our allies there and inform them of your arrival. E team may join you soon. Their intel suggests a heavy Yakuza presence heading to Mars in two weeks. It looks like the Wolves are ahead of the Yaks in a competition to ship and sell the Ares water to the Fish. A lot of animals on this project. Speaking of which, have you named this one, for the records?”

“Daunting.”

“Appropriate, V. All sounds good. Get your asses to Mars. Oh, and V team—”

Veikko replied, “Don't Fuck Shit Up?”

“It's under the redwood.”

Balder closed the link. Nobody on V team knew what he meant. All looked to Varg, but he just shrugged. There was no time to delay; the flight to Mars left in two hours. Wart flew the pogo to take V to the spaceport. Veikko handled the ticket hacks as they flew. The Marsden family would find themselves rebooked for the next flight, and Valknut team would go in their place. Walter and Widget took off to monitor Aga and see that he made his own flight. If he changed his plans, V team would be headed for Mars with no hint of where to begin.

 

 

M
OST
OF
the Nikkei Underground was back to its horrible normal state. Only the space where the Black Crag once stood was different—there were now 450 Black Crags. Once the secret of the original was out, imitators took over the space and offered an expansive variety of barrier-free sites.

Mishka chose the second tallest in the hopes it would lack the overgrown popularity of the tallest but still offer plenty of work. She was quite right. It held less than 15 percent of the avatars but almost as many job offers. Assassinations, illicit deals, information trafficking. She checked the local regions first, from UNEGA Bhaarat to Persia, but there was little paying well and not obviously a trap.

She stuck to the Crag and opened her own listing, the same as she had on the original Black Crag: Single Assassin, dual cutter rifles, one tank, top skills, and ready to prove them. She kept it open to anyone on the continent, off continent for a fee. And she waited.

She wandered the Crag with protective whiskers out, a popular measure now that people knew why the contact barriers were down. She recognized several alcoves from the original Crag, or at least new alcoves mimicking them. There was a Thuggee alcove, several Muslim alcoves free from the police that monitored them on the Nikkei underground, and one new alcove she'd never seen before but recognized instantly. It bore the same cross she'd once worn on her Tikari. A Russian cross.

She entered the alcove and saw the decor. Icons of ikons, saints. Copies of prayers long forgotten, written in Cyrillic. A blank avatar in priestly garb approached her. The whiskers highlighted him, and her defenses went active, ready to kill him.

“I mean no harm,” he said.

“I know,” she replied and lowered the defenses. “This place….”

“You're Mishka, aren't you?”

She was stunned.

“I'm Nikita, Sasha's boatswain mate, from Carrier Dva. I recognize your avatar.”

“You survived!”

“Barely. My body is crushed and in stasis. So there's not much to lose. I thought I could continue Sasha's mission online, the only place I can still move. I tried on the Undernet, but it was too risky. But now that we have so many crags….”

Mishka used the lack of contact barriers to hug him and kiss his cheeks three times. It turned out he had a modest following already. He told her about the remains of Sasha's crew, how most had dispersed and taken work as it came. But he and a few other faithful held out hope of seeing her again and began their ministry partly in hopes of finding her.

They spoke for hours about matters of faith and felony. She promised to visit his body in Krym when she had the chance. He promised nothing less than the resurrection of Sasha's regime. Mishka was hesitant to accept it. Her belief was undiminished, but her enthusiasm was. She admitted she had little taste left for Africa.

“Nor do I,” said Nikita. “But I've always liked the north. Much cooler.”

“I liked the north too, once upon a time.”

“Ah, there's more to the north than your old friends and nice weather. There are people with open minds. People who listen when you speak.”

“You think there are converts?”

“Well, no. Not short of the seventh seal breaking open before their eyes. But we believe the seals will open, do we not? The Christos may return in our lifetime, or may not. But if he does, that's where I'll be. I have nothing to do now but wait, and welcome those who will wait with me. What of you?”

“I have a few things to do while I wait.”

“People to kill?”

“Vibeke isn't a person.”

“And revenge is hardly Christian.”

“Iisus has to forgive me for something.”

“Then I ask only one thing. Pray. Open your heart and ask for a sign, a real sign. If revenge is in God's will for you, he will deliver it. But if it is not, when you pray and you feel deep within that this is not God's plan, you must give her up. Abandon your plans for vengeance. Can you do this?”

“I think I have to, don't I?”

“Certainly not. We all have free will. The entire point of free will is that we can choose to follow God's path or choose to stray. Only with the freedom to sin, can we truly choose to be good.”

“You have Sasha's way with words.”

“And you have his blood. Don't spill it without reason.”

They parted, and Mishka headed back to her advert. It had a single reply. She moved to touch it, but first she gave a moment to superstition and thought to herself.
Whatever this response tells me, this is the path I'll take. If it tells me to quit and be a nun, I'll walk back to Nikita's alcove and stay there forever. If it tells me to run from this assassin's life, I will. But please, God, please let your will give me the one thing I want most. Give me Vibeke
.

She touched the response, and it loaded Vibeke's face.

The job came from Türkiye. An assassination with a torture and fact-finding bonus. One female, about twenty, organization unknown. Vibeke. Posted by an agent named Red Boots linking out of Hashima Island. Mishka accepted the project before asking a single question. She was in shock. Never had any prayer been answered so resolutely or fortuitously. Never. She was face-to-face with proof of God. And God's will was her own.

Red Boots gave her all the info she needed, and more. Mishka knew where Vibeke was based better than Red, though she could hardly march into Valhalla to kill her. Of more interest was the Wolf Gang itself. Though Mishka couldn't surmise that the Ares Project was at stake, she assumed that V team was working on taking the gang down. A covert hack into her employer's visual cortex revealed their motive—Wulfgar Kray was behind them.

Vibeke would be on the hunt behind Violet as she tore into her nemesis's new gang, and Mishka could work with that. First she bought some pond surveillance drones and stationed them around Hashima, uploading her own mind's images of each V team member along with specs for Valhalla pogos, the P0S, and various covert vessels they might use.

Next she headed to Türkiye and monitored the safe house personally. She arrived the day after a fight in a nearby bathhouse. She interviewed Yellow Boots, Mehmet Aga. She recognized the tiny skin spots of a cerebral bore and the sound of a Valkyrie hypnotic suggestion. She asked to look into his brain, and after getting permission from Hashima, he let her proceed.

She unlocked the fight without a problem and saw Violet and Weather do their work. Vibeke wasn't among them, but she wouldn't be far away. She only had to find where V team was heading next. Nothing useful was said in Aga's memory, but it was clear they were on his trail. Odd that V team should be following him when they must have known the gang was in Hashima, knowing all Aga knew. What would send Violet after a lowling when Wulfgar was so close?