Ragnarok (44 page)

“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.

 

 

W
EATHER
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.

 

 

V
ARG
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.

 

 

T
HE
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.

 

 

A
LF
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 drill site.

 

 

M
ISHKA
'
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.

Alf immediately sent the question out to every Valkyrie. Affirmatives flooded in from across the globe, everyone was willing to promise for Balder's sake.

Alopex sorted the requests and located each Valkyrie across the globe and beyond, then contacted them in whatever way would reach. When the link hit Violet outside of Alopex, it was uncoded. And it hit Vibeke.

Violet looked to her. Vibeke had only hours earlier watched Mishka die. She was so happy at the prospect that she lost all control, and for that brief time, she was a completely different person. Free, happy, and in love. Now Mishka was alive, and she had to promise not to hunt her. She had to, there was no choice.

She had seen Mishka die, so she thought, and somehow she could tell herself that was enough. She had the catharsis she wanted. And she had Violet. Everything would be better, she just had to let go of the past.

“Yes,” she said. Violet too.

The link finally hit Varg in space. He replied yes instantly.

Veikko signed out of Cato's link and sent his own into Alopex without signing in again. He said, “Yes,” then thought fast. He couldn't allow Balder to live. This was his only chance to end the man. He hacked into Thokk's new link. She didn't stand a chance. She knew nothing of link warfare yet and didn't even know that her affirmative reply wasn't heard, or that the “no” that flashed involuntarily through her head for an instant was sent by Veikko in its place. To Mishka and everyone else listening, Thokk said no.

A hundred voices linked her name in anger and exasperation. They knew her disputes with the man but never imagined anything so cruel of her. G had made a mistake. They had brought in something terrible.

Mishka cursed and fired a microwave beam directly into Balder's brain, destroying him.

Tahir in extreme shock, betrayal, and rage pulled his microwave and shot Thokk through the head.

Mishka headed into the water. They'd never stop hunting her now.

 

 

W
ULFGAR
'
S
HUD
told him the bit door was free. He stopped the drill, leaving its back end like a plug to the hole. Nothing would get in or out. He opened the door.

It swung down with him latched to it, landing him right on his feet. He walked over the bare rock.

He kept away from the edge of the ravine. Surely he'd be shot instantly by their security systems. He looked instead for a slick incline, a drop into the rock. A walrus trap.

He'd been dead the last time he passed through it, but the place still felt oddly familiar. He found the trap in only seconds, marked as promised by his spy. He walked down inside. His implanted sensors betrayed a dozen traps around the inner lining to the room below, but all were turned off. Again the spy came through.

He stepped onto the rafters, and they pivoted down, allowing him into the room of his death. They hadn't cleaned up the scars from his men's microwaves, nor the stain of his blood on the floor where he had been crushed.
Filthy
, he thought.
Unsanitary
.

The storage room door opened, and the golden ravine burst into his eyes. It was beautiful, the rock lit in vibrant gold, the hundreds of towers built into stalagmites, into stalactites hanging from the outcroppings overhead, and in the center a glowing tree with hundreds of branches. And on its highest branch stood a man with a spear.

“Wulfgar,” said Alf.

“You have me at a disadvantage.”

“In more ways than you think.”

“You lead this ravine?”

“You could say that.”

“Then I have an offer for you. I assume that, as any good leader would, you have no wish for bloodshed?”

“You assume wrong.”

“So an offer to avoid a battle would mean nothing to you?”

“It would mean little. We can annihilate your fleet.”

“But surely some of you would die.”

“What's your offer, Wulfgar?”

“Champion warfare.”

“Intriguing.”

“I hoped you might think so.”

“The terms?”

“If my champion wins, you turn over control of the ravine to me. If yours wins, my fleet departs.”

“And how do we know you'll comply?”

“Because I represent myself, and the match is to the death. If I am dead, the fleet will dissolve.”

“I accept.”

“Then I want to fight Violet MacRae.”

“Violet MacRae?”

“Blonde girl? About yay high, wears purple? Kinda cute?”

“Violet has been expelled from the ravine. If she returns, she'll be killed. And you don't get to choose your opponent's champion, Wulfgar. You'll be fighting me.”

Wulfgar was damn angry. No Violet. And a very different opponent. He grumbled at himself, how stupid to have expected such fortune.

“Too great a letdown. To be honest, I'd prefer to go back to the battle.”

“Too late, too late. You'll honor your agreement. Stab me in the back now, and I'll do the same, literally as you turn.”

Business, he reminded himself. He'd made a deal, and he had a job to do. And if he failed, he wouldn't be alive to regret it. Wulfgar stepped onto the power system and kicked off his little boots. His feet had a good grip on the warm branch. His compound mechanical jaw was ready to tear the man to shreds.

“Very well. But I still don't know your name.”

“Alföðr.”

“Your real name.”

“It's long and Tibetan, and it would be a waste of time to recite to a man about to die.”

Alf's Tikari lengthened, a formidable spear. He held it high and waited for Wulfgar to come. Wulfgar walked toward him. All the man had was a spear. Wulfgar had the finest fighting body money could buy. Even impaled on a spear, he was confident he could—suddenly he was impaled on a spear. He quickly realized it wasn't just a spear. Its legs began to writhe inside his wound. The Tikari sprang inside him and stabbed in eight directions.

It pulled itself out of him and formed a tarantula. The tarantula attacked, viciously. Alf was quick behind it. He delivered a punch with an unnatural arm that knocked Wulfgar off the branch and down to a branch below. He landed with a painful thud that seemed to squeeze blood from his wound.