Ragnarok (35 page)

The rest of the mission wound down, and Valhalla broke its last ties with Swastikult. Its last battle ties at least. Violet stayed behind a night for personal reasons, and Gabrielle was happy to welcome her. There were two bunks in her room, one recently vacated by one of the deaths online. It was morbid but not so perverse Violet turned it down.

She and Gabrielle sat on her bunk that night and talked, mourned the dead but held hope for the future. The war was over. V team had ended it. Gabrielle was impressed.

Violet stroked Gabrielle's hair gently and leaned closer. If her eyes were open, she'd have seen Gabrielle was getting weirded out. She kissed her on the lips, a gentle kiss like she'd dreamed of with—well, it didn't matter who she dreamed of before. She was kissing real lips, and she was ready to do a whole lot more.

Gabrielle jumped back.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Violet was startled. “Kissing you?”

“Whoa, we…. What are you doing?”

“Kissing you, you know, lips and things? What's wrong?”

“You're a girl!”

“No shite, what's going on?”

“You're a… lesbian.”

She'd heard the word before. It was an antiquated word like Tory or Whig. She assumed it was a political party or nationality. “No, I'm Scottish. What the bloody hell is a lesbian?”

But Gabrielle seemed panicked. Violet couldn't fathom why or what she'd just been called. Had Gabrielle thought she was male or something?

“Why don't you…? Just wait here. Just wait here for me. Then I'll come back, and we can…. Okay?”

“Okay,” Violet said, still at a loss for what was going on. Gabrielle left, but she'd said she'd return, and she seemed suddenly amicable. Violet lay back on the bed and waited. And waited. She figured she'd give Gabrielle a pleasant surprise when she returned and took off her suit, then crammed it behind the bed. The door clicked as soon as she was undressed.

Two large bald men walked in. Violet pulled the blanket around herself. “Who are you?”

“We're with Gabrielle,” one of them laughed.

“Yeah, she sent us to uh… set you ‘straight,'” said the other. They seemed terribly amused about themselves. Violet didn't understand. She sat upright in bed, and the two men moved toward her.

A moment later, the door burst off its hinges. Violet emerged covered in the men's blood and looked around the hall. She was sickened enough by what the men intended to do, but she was more than anything pissed the hell off at Gabrielle. Luckily, she spotted her in the hall and could have a discussion with her.

Violet shouted, “Oi!”

Gabrielle ran as soon as she saw Violet but didn't stand a chance. Violet caught up with her in seconds and grabbed her by the hair and pulled. Gabrielle's feet fell out from under her, and Violet tugged her hair again, making her head hit the floor hard.

“What the fuck was that?” Violet demanded.

“You're a freak!”

“
I'm
a freak? Do you know what those men wanted to do?”

“They wanted to give you what you deserve. You unnatural…. You're not fucking natural!”

“What the hell do you think is wrong with me?”

“You like girls!”

“Duh! But what's wrong with me?”

They had reached an impasse of understanding. Violet gradually figured out what the problem was at least but couldn't fathom how Gabrielle could see it as a problem. It made her all the angrier. She heard footsteps coming down the hall and looked back to see a dozen Swastikult men looking at them: Violet naked and covered in blood, holding her suit in one hand and Gabrielle's hair in the other. She stood and pinned Gabrielle against the wall as the men came closer.

She was angry but growing somewhat amused at how awful it was. Jilted but she had the instincts to transmute it into skill and focus. She thought quickly of a proper fate for Gabrielle.

She kissed her on the lips, even more passionately than she wanted to in bed. She slobbered on her, rubbed her face on her, and bit her lip. Then she spoke loud enough for her conservative pals to hear.

“Thank you so much for showing me how hot it could be with a girl. I'd never have tried being a librarian if not for you.”

She kissed her again and walked away. The men didn't chase her, but they seemed quite angry at Gabrielle. Violet left surprisingly happy for such a nasty turn of events and headed back north to where people had fucking brains.

“It's ‘lesbian,'” explained Vibs. “Librarians deal with books.”

“Whatever, it worked. They probably raped the bitch to death.”

“Violet!”

“What?”

“We… we don't do that to people!”

“Well yeah, we don't. But they do.”

“Violet, you can't set someone up for… for that.”

“Why not? And why don't we rape people exactly? We torture them to death. Why can't we top 'em off with our—”

“I can't believe you! It's sick, it's wrong, nobody should ever face that. Not even the worst.”

“Oh, so you don't want Mishka to get raped? Were it possible, I mean.”

“No!”

Violet considered it.

“Well, you're a kinder woman than I.”

“Violet, we kill rapists. We kill anyone who turns an assault sexual. It's the worst thing people can do to each other.”

Vibeke seemed genuinely disgusted. Violet knew she had to relent.

“Well, I'm sure Gabrielle explained her way out. She'll be fine. Better than she deserves.”

“Violet, we need to talk about this.”

“No, we don't. I get it, it's wrong. I'd never actually do anything. It's just… philosophical.”

Vibeke brooded on it. She acted for the next week like she had more to say but never got to it.

In time things went back to normal, or so Violet thought.

Vibeke actually never thought of her quite the same way after that brief but profound disagreement. She knew Violet wouldn't have understood why if it came up again. Vibeke wouldn't tell anyone else about it. There was no reason to deflate their opinion of Violet. And Violet surely knew better than to say or think the way she had again. Vibeke alone would bear the burden of knowing what she knew. That Violet, in one serious way, had been completely backward.

But then, who in the ravine wasn't in some way? In the end Vibeke decided not to judge. She'd corrected the problem and checked in on Gabrielle, who had indeed explained the situation to Swastikult. All was well on that front. X and Y were the pressing matters of the month. Worse things had just happened.

 

 

V
IOLET
WALKED
the branches with Vibeke and Alf. They asked once more to participate in the Zaibatsu cleanup, but Alf declined.

“Even if it were not a Geki request, political matters this fragile are always handled by our most senior teams. Junior teams are great for sneaking in and blowing up, assassinating warmongers, but the experience necessary to forge treaties takes decades to learn, let alone master. Zaibatsu is more complex than Swastikult. Infinitely more complex. I'll be overseeing it personally. Don't worry, we'll have Veikko back.”

Violet wondered what would be left of him if the Geki subjected him to their fear all the time he was with them. She pushed it from her mind. It was too horrible to consider. She could only be thankful, infinitely thankful he'd saved her from it.

“I've reviewed your link dumps about Hashima,” Alf went on, “I approve them fully. You'll depart tomorrow to implement them.”

The three stepped off the branch by the barracks and defuzzed their feet. Vibeke nodded to Alf and headed for V team's room. Violet stayed for a moment.

“Alf, a question.”

“Go on.”

“Veikko told me last night that the Geki were simply men working for UNEGA and GAUNE. Is that true?”

“We suspect it. Balder is certain of it. I have doubts and suspicions myself, but Veikko wasn't lying.”

“Then why don't we kill them? Why do we let them have power over us?”

“It's uncertain we have a choice. If their abilities are all just tricks or if they truly could annihilate the ravine in an instant. But our teams have seen their fire, the Geki in action. All who have believe they constitute a superior force to all Valhalla can muster. But more importantly, they have always acted righteously. If they are the arm of the world governments, I don't mind submitting to them. I consider it reasonable and just.”

“I did until they took Veikko.”

“And I question it too. But I remain inactive against them. Fear is a powerful weapon. It takes the Geki to instill fear in Valkyries, but we're certainly guilty of the same.”

“What? We don't use fear as a weapon.”

“Of course we do! We are feared, even more than the Unspeakable Darkness. And we use that fear to get our way. The Hall of the Slain has a dreaded reputation for a reason. We earned it, and we keep it alive.”

“We act fairly, though, don't we? Aside from a few
indiscretions….”

“Those indiscretions are the meat of who we are. We do act cruelly. What seems normal to you after two years in the ravine was once enough to kick you out of Achnacarry. You have no monopoly here when it comes to childhood cruelty. We aren't the noble poet warriors of old.”

“Snorri said you were a poet warrior before you came here.”

“Snorri calls me such as a joke. Nobody called me a poet warrior. They called me a serial killer. I snapped easily and blew up big when I did, and not metaphorically. When the police harassed my parents I blew up their headquarters. When my parents saw the carnage and called me a monster, I killed my parents. Your Lilliputian eccentricities are nothing compared to my youthful lows. I was a monster, and I haven't changed all that much.”

“But you did change when you came here?”

“When I came here, here was a pack of savage Wolves. Clear walls to mock the injured, sharp rocks to cut those who fell out of line. They hazed the new flesh in ways to make Achnacarry look like preschool. When I came here, the last boy in a four-man runeless team—it was all men back then—they beat me my first night for not using the right towel. They beat me all night and beat me more in the morning. The next night I killed them all in their sleep. In all the time you've been here, you never wondered where my team was? They're buried under the library. Every foundation in this ravine is built on buried men. Valhalla is not a place for good men and women. It's a place for you and me.”

“Still, we save the planet. We don't torture anyone to death unless they really deserve it.”

He almost laughed.

“Yes, we have saved the Earth forty-three, sorry, forty-four times. But it is not our responsibility. It's what we do when we're bored. We're killers and crackpots, and we fight those who would end the world only because they taunted us as children. You think Veikko wants to stop Pelamus to save humanity? He wants to stop him because he hates his relatives. He hates Fish and won't see the world taken over by them. Why, Violet, did you save the world from deluge? For the good of the weaklings who made your childhood so dismal or for your own sense of reward?

“But someone has to defend the weak and—”

“No, nobody has to. If it can't protect itself, it deserves to drown, let it die off. If someone wants to champion the human cause, so be it. If you want to then feel free, use our microwaves, but it's not our responsibility. Our only responsibility is to ourselves.”

She didn't know if he was playing devil's advocate or trying reverse psychology, all to teach her why it really was a cause worth fighting for. She could have asked, but she was afraid. She knew deep down that he would tell her it was the truth. That he believed it. By implication she knew she might have agreed with every word of it. She could call herself a bad girl in taunt, but there were some things too dark to admit of herself. Alf broke the uncomfortable silence.

“You should read
Håvamål
sometime. It deals with all these trifles.”

She was about to say she couldn't when he dropped the pretense that he wasn't disappointed. “And you really should learn to read paper text. You're the last girl here who can't.”

He walked away. That hurt. It was the first time the inability ever felt like an inability. It was the first time Alf had ever said anything that really distressed her. It was the first time she ever saw Alf as a flawed man and not the fearless leader of the pit. It was also the last time she would ever see him.

 

 

V
EIKKO
FELT
nothing. No fear, no pain. It occurred to him suddenly that the Geki had killed him anyway. There was only darkness. But there was a feeling, something there in the space with him. He realized quickly that it was fear. He was afraid, only so afraid that it didn't register like the usual Geki fear.

Like the dead nerve endings of a terrible trauma, the fear had knocked out part of his brain, overloaded it, numbed it. But it was coming back. And it was bad. It was worse than ever before. He was swimming in fear, drowning in it. A vortex of fear. As if the Geki's voice was omnipresent and incarnate, flowing around him. Like he was melting away into the whirlpool.

He tried to scream, but the fear stifled him. He couldn't move his arms or legs. He couldn't even be certain he still had them. He tried to think, but it was hopeless. Soon he was overcome by fear completely. His mind focused in on it like the worst imaginable pain. He was unable to avoid it. He searched for something, anything to focus on instead, but nothing else existed. Until a dim light appeared.

A dim light moving closer. Becoming clearer in the darkness. He could make out the texture, the color before long. Then the ears. He knew what it was, but he couldn't understand why in the depths of hell he was seeing a walrus in a pair of pink bunny slippers.