Ragnarok (5 page)

C team was insistent about it because they didn't want anyone searching the one dirty corner of the nets that V hadn't searched. The only place online that Valhalla wouldn't risk sending Alopex or any but a senior team because the danger was too great. The only place so reckless it lacked contact barriers and risked all the demented minds who dared to venture there. The place they now knew for certain, despite the checks and assurances of C team, that Mishka had indeed been hiding.

“She's on the Black Crag!” exclaimed Violet. Her team stared at her, shocked. All four were suddenly back in the barracks.

Varg cringed. “Did you just say that out loud?”

“Oh shit,” said Veikko.

Vibeke closed her eyes. Someone had said “Black Crag.” It was only a matter of time.

“Maybe nobody heard,” suggested Violet. “Maybe the—”

All four heard the link alarm. Then came an Australian voice. The most damnable voice in Valhalla.

“V team to C team office, please. Again,” added Cato.

They skulked offline, and Violet's face burned red. They had made this walk four times before. Since they first asked for clearance, C had put a monitor on them. Every time they so much as mentioned its name, they got called into C's office for another little chat. The worst had been in September, and then they had only said the name because two and a quarter teams had just been slaughtered on it. It was the darkest day in Valkyrie history, and C team used it to teach them a damn lesson. And here they were again. Cato let them in with an expression that Violet wanted to rip off its underlying muscles.

Churro sat behind his desk looking like a disappointed father. Cato stood beside him, and Violet tried to amuse herself thinking of the man as a mother. She couldn't for long. The term “Thought Police” applied more accurately.

“Tell me, how many teams are there in Valhalla?”

Churro wasn't pulling any punches. He was in full cruelty mode from the start. Vibeke wasn't going to have it.

“We have proof Mishka was—”

“Tell me, Vibeke. How many teams?”

Vibeke stewed. “Twenty.”

“And how many did we have in August?”

“Twenty-two. But—”

“Twenty-three. We had the beginnings of a Z team. We had,” he said, smiling sardonically, “a whole alphabet.”

Veikko chided, “The runic alphabet actually has—”

“We had, V team, nine junior Valkyries! Nine lives we do not have now! Why, V Team, do we not have them?”

Because of a race war. Because of a fight Valhalla shouldn't have been involved in. Because C team didn't do their job and watch over the junior teams. Because the junior teams got in over their heads. Because C team decided to kill nine hacked Valkyries rather than try to get their brains back. Not because V team said a damn name. Violet thought it all but didn't shout it. Vibeke shouted instead.

“You told us you searched it! You told us Mishka wasn't on the Black Crag. You missed the bitch, and you fucked up! We have proof that—”

“We didn't miss her,” Cato spoke softly. “We lied to you.”

They fell silent. Churro looked at Cato, then spoke again, calmly.

“We never bothered to check for her. We don't go there unless we have to. If a job can be done in five minutes on the Crag or five years in reality, we take the long road. Mishka isn't going to take down Valhalla. I doubt she wants to. She wants to be left alone. I won't tell you to leave her alone, but you need to think about your priorities. One is defense. The Black Crag
can
take down Valhalla. It damn nearly did, and you already seem to have forgotten it. You're still talking about that damn Crag. Why?”

Vibeke didn't lose a second. “Mishka's log from Poshchim Bangla shows—”

“Yes, Mishka is there,” mocked Cato. “You did a great job. You're doing a great job and chasing a great chase. But it just ended.”

“The hell it did,” Vibs barked.

“The hell?” Claire chimed in. “Let's say there is a hell. Mishka's dead, and she's in hell. Do you follow? Do you drag Valhalla to hell with you?”

Vibs had the good taste not to answer the way she wanted to. Claire went on.

“It's not your choice if you would. If you set foot there, you put us all in danger. We told you we checked because we need it out of your mind. We still need it out of your mind even if you know for a fact she's there. We saw Mishka's missing barriers too. But did you consider what that little bit of clever tracking means? Without contact barriers, anyone there gives up all their security, all their protocol. There's no such thing as hack armor there, they don't have to wait for you to touch them to read your mind, they can grab you and kill you or reprogram you without any warning. Valhalla does not go there.”

“We go there every day!” Vibs scowled. “It's called the real world. You can get shot, and you can get followed and get hacked. And it's not like we'd go in unarmed, all the shit they can do, we can do better. And we have Aloe to watch out for us.”

“You're missing the big picture, Vibeke.” Cato kept his voice soft and demeaning. “If you have our computer with you, they can take her over. Sure you know your net combat, and Aloe has the best tricks in the biz up her sleeve, but imagine what would become of Valhalla if she were taken over by a pirate? Or rogue company? There are things in this ravine even you don't know the danger of.”

Bullshit. Violet knew. They showed her everything. There were no secrets, and she hated Cato enough to speak up. “Like what?”

“Like me,” he replied in all seriousness. Pathetic. He leaned in toward Violet. He nodded severely, tried to be intimidating. Violet hated it when he tried to be intimidating. Violet's foot hated when he tried to be intimidating. Her foot decided to launch toward his throat. Cato would hardly be a senior team Valkyrie if he couldn't block a kick. In fact he might be called merciful for not breaking her leg again in the process. He didn't even flinch. He just blocked, stood, and spoke. “We're watching you like a Geki. You can't go, so try elsewhere. Or better yet, lay off the Russian sheila for a while and take a job from the crank file. Maybe nuke Tunisia. Meeting over.”

 

 

T
HE
FLIGHT
to Venus wasn't scary. Dr. Mowat had been to Luna, Mars, and Station 9. Space flight was 90 percent dull and 10 percent beautiful. The accommodations on Venus weren't scary either. She'd have her own room. On Station 9 it was six people to a sleeping pod. Iwo Donatsu was said to have private tents for every individual. The colossal balloon that held the mine afloat was filled with breathable air. Earth air on Venus was like helium on Earth. So she'd be living and working within the balloon, the first time in space she'd have some space. Not the least bit scary.

The scary part was the airlock. It would contain a trace of Venusian weather. It would be purged of air, washed out with a blast of cleaning solution, and it would have a fast cycle of devoted oxygen to lessen the impact of the inevitable. But no matter what they installed, there would be a trace of Venus inside. A drop of rain always stuck to a panel or behind a screw somewhere, and rain on Venus is 700 Kelvin sulfuric acid. They wouldn't send people through if it still posed any risk. Legally they had to reduce it to a healthy ppm, but those last millionths were said to be damn potent and prohibitively expensive to reduce any further. Orientation said it was like inhaling a bit of Tom Yum soup.

She ran through the airlock and vowed never to try Tom Yum soup as long as she lived. The Iwo Donatsu lock closed and acquainted her with the balloon's atmosphere. It smelled fresh and alive, and somewhat artificially minty. The walls were all deep blue or green, the light cool and soft. Nothing like Station 9's nonstop brightness. Once inside, there was nothing to remind her she was on a hot orange planet, nothing to remind her she was in a mining complex. It was more like an undersea hotel, no doubt the merciful architect's way of letting the workers forget that they were, in fact, on planet hell.

There was one man in the lobby, dressed in shiny black rubber. He carried a microwave rifle on his back. He had no hair and no antenna, nor any discernible emotion. His voice was dead cold too.

“Dr. Mowat, you will follow me to your tent. I will carry your luggage.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” she sighed. He picked up her bags, heavy bags, like they were nothing. The gravity wasn't that different from Earth. She had just hauled the things in. She noticed the bumps around his sides. Powered armor or powered implants. His rubber garb was covered in too many pockets to tell which. She had to wonder if his extra punch was because he worked in the mine or something else. The man she was working for wasn't affiliated with the mines. None of his crew were supposed to be either. When she asked what they were doing on Venus if not mining sulfur, they almost terminated her contract on the spot. So she wouldn't ask here, and she wouldn't ask the man what his powered arms were for. He led her to a tram, and they sat down. As soon as the tram started, she could see the open balloon.

It looked bigger inside than out. A cavernous, foggy tunnel, half a kilometer high. The tram plodded along the very bottom, a long curved valley from which she could see the atmospheric refineries and storage bays. The refineries weren't as large as the complex of ducts emerging from them. Every meter of the walls had some sort of duct on it. Even over the hum of the tram, she could hear the throbbing drone of the air systems keeping them afloat and alive. Past the refineries she could see the city. There were tents right off of the track and tents all the way up the walls, accessible by ladder and positioned to offer a flat floor on what lower tents called their sides. There were no people to be seen. Everyone was either at work or asleep. The tram stopped at the far end of the city.

“You will stay in tent 390. You will be the only resident of this tent. Other medical staff live in tents 384–389. The hospital tent is straight ahead.”

A giant tent, but still a tent. Two floors of light green canvas unmoving in the well-controlled air. She walked toward the tent, but the man motioned for her to stick to her own dwelling.

“You will not see the patient until tomorrow. You will be summoned.”

He set her luggage down at her tent door and handed her a key
card. Then without another word, sat on the tram and headed back to the lobby. A very cold reception. She found the tent to be as spartan as the rest of space, just a cot and a bathroom. She lay down and immersed herself in a memory partition. The net didn't reach to Venus, so she blocked out the world and slept in the files for the job to be done.

Dr. Mowat knew nothing about the client. She knew his injuries, his physiological scans, blood typology, immune system, and obviously she had seen images of his face—or at least what his face looked like before. But there was no name, no history beyond medical allergies (Novusazidocillin and Carbamazepine) and the injuries she was there to fix.

The patient was in a miserable state. Mutilated and murdered a year prior and whisked away without treatment. She had seen worse lapses in treatment and time. Many a businessman had been forced to wait in stasis for several years while his company or family saved up to hire her. Her last client back on Earth had slept for three years, unlinked and unconscious, while his spine was built, then scrapped for nonpayment, then rebuilt, then misplaced, then built again. So one year wasn't bad. What was bad was that he wasn't in stasis. He was awake and aware the whole time.

The patient refused to be knocked out. They resurrected him minutes after the murder without fixing a single thing and plugged his wounds for the trip to Venus. But he wouldn't go back under for anything more than a night's natural sleep. He had been living for a year with a smashed skeleton, no jaw, no legs, and no link. Dr. Mowat couldn't think of a worse kind of hell. Or one more easily avoided—if he could afford a flight to Venus he could have stayed on Earth and been fixed in a day. If for some reason he absolutely had to be in a Venusian sulfur mine, he still could have flown in a doctor like her within the month. And with a year to wait, he could have slept. But she was paid not to ask. And not to ask about the new jaw.

The nerve damage was minimal, and scans showed the loss of his jaw was physical trauma, no microwaves or burns or irradiation. He could have had a new normal jaw grown and attached without a problem. Same with his feet. But he had ordered some of the strangest modifications Dr. Mowat had ever seen. Mostly in that they didn't fit.

The jaw, when implanted, would be about two centimeters larger than his old one. Two centimeters isn't much in some engineering, but on a face, it's night and day. And this jaw wouldn't have skin over it. It was essentially a chain saw made to fit where a mandible used to. The inner teeth and soft tissue would let him eat and talk normally, but the outer teeth, jagged blades on a fast rotary track, were something not even the Cetaceans would ask for. Rumors of modifications for the Unspeakable Darkness contained massive fangs or horns and the like, but she'd never seen someone rich enough to get a jaw like this ever get anything so bizarre. Rotary teeth, structure extendable to half a meter, chrome plating instead of skin.

It was less rare for a man with a crushed skeleton to ask for a larger build and, given the funds, for some new intracranial armor and the latest designer marrow by Ossium. Almost half of her male clients
ordered larger genitals. No reason for this one to be different. Link repair was common as cockroaches. A hidden link in the neck was not uncommon either. His hands would be bigger and stronger by far, and his feet—would also be hands. She had done palmed feet with opposable thumbs for Spetsnaz a few years back, the biggest paycheck she'd ever had until the Venusian client. She had no occasion to follow the soldiers' progress with the feet, all top secret, but she'd get to see it through this time. Two more months on Venus after the surgery. She knew nothing of the man so far but would be getting to know him very well.