Ragnarok (7 page)

All three began moving the canopy. Toshiro and Tasha used tractoring waves from inside the pogo hold. Tahir stayed outside to push it off any rocks or salt snags. They only had to move it a meter into the hold, but the damn thing was heavy as rock. Trygve was almost there. He'd make it on site before they lifted off. He might even get to help push the damn heavy fraggin' canopy before Tahir got hit by a—

The razor severed his head jaggedly from his neck. Half of
Valhalla watched the signal as his vision rolled across the salt and went black.

“Inform Dr. Niide,” stated Hellhammer. Most watching switched to Trygve's vision. He came to the pogo and kicked Tahir's head into the hold, then got to work on the canopy. Violet dimmed the live feed as Hellhammer spoke again. “That's the second time this month Tahir has been beheaded. I'd avoid him if I were you.”

“I don't see why you sent them at all,” argued Veikko. “If we're just gonna let the Burp gather silt, we don't need the thing.”

“And it flew fine with the spray-on,” added Violet.

“It made it through salt,” said Heckmallet, “barely, but it won't do much more without the proper canopy, and we can't make a new one. We can't simulate the armor on that thing. We don't even have the exact specs for its old windscreen.”

“I'm sure you could whip something up,” said Varg.

“Of course we can, we are H team!” Hellhammer was in quite a mood. “But T has succeeded where you failed. We will have the canopy.”

“Failed?” demanded Violet. “We stole the bloody thing! Did you want us to land and hunt for the bloody chunks of it while the hoppers were still on us?”

Veikko joined in. “Maybe we could have if we were in a better shuttle. The P0S—”

“The P-Zero has a name,” whispered Heckmallet. “It's called the Rubicon, and it's a fine shuttle.”

All gathered spoke up. “No, it's not.”

“Sucks.”

“Terrible old heap.”

“Wouldn't fly it to a landfill.”

“Wouldn't last to the landfill.”

“The trash would be insulted, worst shuttle ever.”

“Smells like urine.”

“Urine and poverty.”

“The seats hurt my balls.”

Hellhammer's avatar burned hotter. “Then have Niide remove them when he's done with Tahir's head. Get used to the P0—The
Rubicon
, because the Blackwing has no cargo capacity. It only seats one, and it's going to stay buried until H team's say-so.”

He logged out in a puff of smoke. The flock of avatars hovered in silence around the T team feed. Tahir's remains and the canopy were safely in the pogo and headed home. Skunkworks and whatever UNEGA belligerents T had spotted were busy fighting each other far below. UNEGA, on American soil. Violet spotted a tarantula in the crowd and linked to him directly.

“You're more worried about that than the Blackwing, aren't you?”

“It is cause for concern,” Alf replied. “But keep perspective. It doesn't affect us directly. I am far more concerned for a craft that can fly through our rampart than the petty squabbles of a cold war.”

“But still, couldn't this heat it up?”

“Oh my yes, it certainly will, regardless of the motives behind it. We'll see the GAUNE diplomat banging his shoe on the table and UNEGA's feeble denials. If it happens again fortifications on every coast. New proxy wars. But both sides believe the other is stockpiling mutagenics. They don't want to fight, they fear it. And this may be selfish of me, but Valhalla does best when the giants are arguing among themselves. We can get away with more.”

We can get away with more. Violet wondered how much V team could get away with.

“Damn right we can,” added Veikko. “We should let 'em go to war. War is good for business, if you're in our business. And we are. Cuz it's our business.”

Alf's avatar just stared at him.

Veikko shifted uncomfortably in reality. “How's the tank?”

“Ornery,” laughed Alf. “She hesitates to let anyone else ride her. She has your personality, I think. Just a week ago she loaded her cannons as Cato walked by. But the other tanks like her and don't envy her limb count. A fine steed.”

Veikko and Alf talked until morning, when the sun was almost close enough to rising to give the horizons some dim blue haze. Veikko maintained that as the most elite fighting force in the world, war would make them the most elite body on Earth. Balder maintained that he was happy for them not to be, given the price. Violet listened but didn't concern herself with the
Håvamål
-style discussion.

By the time Valkyries were leaving dreamspace for the cafeteria, H team was already en route to install the canopy and dry out the cockpit. T team had returned in the night and rushed Tahir's head and corpse from the pogo's stasis alcove to Dr. Niide. Tahir was in good spirits when V encountered him at the buffet line.

“It's mostly the cutting feeling, that itchy slice in your skin. Even the spaz-razors, even at two hundred kph you can still feel it. I just hate getting cut.”

“Nothing to lose your head about,” said Veikko.

“You know, you made that exact joke last time he got beheaded,” linked Vibs.

“The razors are just nasty,” said Tahir. “I'm ashamed we have the things. At least ours don't fly. Maybe we should rig them that way. Just keep them linear so the Tiks don't get jealous.”

“No,” Veikko explained. “They can turn in midflight too. Skunkworks' can be link controlled, very simple, not a tenth of a Tikari, but they're a little better than spear laun—Oh my goodness, is that spaghetti?”

Between the gray cubes and yellow hemispheres was a new bin of what appeared to be seasoned spaghetti. Quite a rarity so everyone in T and V took a generous helping. The two teams sat together by the fire, which was extra pleasant in the middle of winter. Being open to the sky, Valhalla still sucked down the frigid air from the surface and their suits had all stayed furry as they entered the building. Only now were they beginning to pull in their fiber.

“So anyways. We're in,” said Tahir. He seemed to be speaking to the V team half of the table.

“In what?” asked Violet.

“For the Bla—for the…. The Cracked Blag. We're in.”

“We're not going,” grumbled Vibeke.

“Yes, you are,” protested Toshiro. “C team forbade it!”

Violet dug into the noodles, which tasted nothing like spaghetti. Almost how she remembered fish tasting, a meaty flavor, vaguely acrid. But not bad, she had more.

“What's the point?” Vibs mocked. “We'd get our brains hacked, then C would kill us.”

“Daaark, Vibs,” said Toshiro. “My God, this stuff is good.”

“What is?”

“Spaghetti à la Kjetil,” he replied. “Really good stuff,
suspiciously good.”

“Suspicious?” laughed Veikko. “Like what, African conflict spaghetti?” He shoveled some off of Violet's plate despite having his own and slurped up a few strands. “Wow, that is good.”

“You can't go yourself, Vibs,” Tasha said, “but there's no reason you can't hire some goon to do it for you.”

“Why didn't I think of that?” asked Varg.

Veikko choked down his food to blurt back, “Because you're a—”
He stopped speaking as Kjetil emerged from the kitchen to refill the buffet. Veikko shouted out, “Kjetil! How'd you make this spaghetti? It's awesome!”

“No spaghetti!” he explained. “Centauri chitlins. Little gremlins have such long intestines!”

Toshiro pushed his main course aside in favor of some delicious green putty. Varg dug into the chitlins along with Veikko, who stated calmly, “You can really taste the chyme.”

Violet didn't write off the substance but switched to brown cylinders for a bit. There was a novelty in eating something from another star system. In the common world, gremlins cost several thousand euros a plate owing to the difficulty of cloning and raising them on Earth. It was only by chance that F team raided an illegal cloning plant that specialized in them. They managed to send the living specimens to the proper authority but arrived back in the ravine with several hundred kilos of processed meat and offal. Both at the request of Kjetil, who had been sneaking the critters into various soups, flambés, casseroles, and other dishes.

“So you hire someone to scour the place for Mishka,” linked Toshiro on high crypto. “They don't have to go through Aloe. You probably shouldn't use Aloe to contact them either.”

“Classic spy handling,” mused Vibeke. “We just need to find Fred Leiser.”

“Who's he?” asked Violet.

“An unlucky fellow from an old book,” answered Vibs. “Someone we can train to do our jobs and send us the results. Valhalla hasn't been big on agents like this, but it solves everything.”

“Why haven't we been big on agents?”

“They always betray you or sell you out, and they always ask for things we can't give them.”

“Ah!” said Veikko. “Mutual respect and benefit.”

“We do hire out specialists, especially online,” linked Tasha. “Nothing like the Blag, though. Actually I don't know of anyone who ever went there. Without dying, I mean.”

“I do,” Varg said. “A guy named Yoshi from the Nikkei Underground. Traffics information. My boss at the tofu warehouse hired him to scout all his illegal bets.”

“Can he be trusted?” asked Veikko.

“No, not at all.”

“Sounds good. What did he do on the Blag?”

“He bragged about it once when I passed him his share of Heinrich's winnings on a pickled pint game. Didn't get into specifics, but it involved mutant organ trading.”

“That's odd. They do that on the Nikkei Underground. The Nikkei Underground's already one of the most dangerous, nasty sites around. Why would they go to the Blag?” asked Vibeke.

“Because the organs were intentionally mutated. They say Høtherus was one of the first people on the Cr—Blag. Though… wait, when did he disappear?” Varg scratched his chin.

“What will Yoshi want in return?”

“My boss, Heinrich, always paid him a percent. But he's into info rackets. Has a line of people asking him about anything they can't say on the wikis. Like my boss, he always sent me to get the insider rumors on contestants. Not who won before or who could swallow the most vinegar, but who was playing dirty, who was going to sabotage who. He always knew, Heinrich never lost a bet.”

Veikko pointed out, “We do have tons of information.”

“I don't think C would like us trading with it,” Violet reminded him.

“C wouldn't like the icing on their own birthday cakes,” said Veikko, “Fuck 'em. They had their chance to search the ‘location' for her and lied. We won't sell him anything on Valhalla, no mention of Hall of the Slain. But we know loads on loads about the gangs, the companies. I can't believe we wouldn't have anything he needs. This is perfect.”

“What about Aloe?”

“Log out,” suggested Trygve. “Log in from somewhere else. You can still call her in an emergency, but that would alert C. You just need a mission cover for… what letter are you on?”

“C, actually. No name yet,” admitted Vibeke.

“Obvious, Cra—Oh, never mind.” Tasha looked down.

“Call it project Cato,” said Toshiro.

“Might alert him,” said Tahir. “What's a term for Cato that begins with a C?”

Tasha spoke fast before Veikko could answer. “What was your last C mission called?”

“After Alpha and Beta, we had to be more creative,” said Vibeke, looking to Varg.

“But we couldn't,” said Varg, “so we called it ‘Creative.'”

“It's an unofficial mission. We don't need a name,” said Violet.

“Sure you do. They're going to know about it once you find Mishka, or once you get home and ask for a heavy brain scan for parasites that only grow on the Crack Blag.” Trygve nodded. “The ravine will know. It's just better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

“We asked for permission,” said Veikko. “We didn't get it.”

“Well, then it's good that forgiveness is so damn easy.” Veikko stood up. “We'll think up a name later. Let's plan this thing.”

 

 

J
ABIR
A
L
-H
IMYARI
'
S
cranium, cleanly severed high up the neck, had come to rest at Pelamus Pluturus's left flipper. The blood drained from it to stain his boot. A happy stain for Pluturus and given Al-Himyari's notorious chemical dumps into the Mesogeios, a relieving one. Though his acts as CEO of the YUP were infamous to Cetaceans, he was all but unknown topside. Landlopers had little care for what fell into the water where Cetaceans would breathe it, ingest it in the flesh of their prey, and die from its cancers or go insane from its diseases. Al-Himyari's head would soon rot and dissolve before the gates of the Ionian Colony, where Pelamus's father, a brilliant genetic engineer, had died from the pollution.

Two meters away, under his own desk, was the head of Harun bin Nusair. Nusair was the commanding officer of the Yuppies, a light name for a dark army. Almost two years ago, his attack on the Pluturus fleet killed Pelamus's sister. Pelamus's reign of terror against the Yuppie navy came to an end with the severing of Nusair's spinal column. At long last Nuala was avenged, and for that Pelamus was suddenly, unexpectedly overcome with a feeling of sorrow. Not for his victory, but the somber afterthoughts of a long hard path left behind. The Fish had killed the last fisherman in the pond. Certainly there were others across the seas—his brothers south of Suomi; sisters in California; the simplistic clan of Mariana; and the benthic farmers of the Atlantic. But none concerned him just then. Pelamus walked over to the financial mainframe.