Gudsriki (13 page)

“You killed Alf.”

“Do you care? Do you care about the ravine at all? Never did myself, to be honest. I've been working for Wulfgar since his first stay. Promised me all of Africa. Already let me nuke Tunisia. Now I'm here to kill you.”

Vibeke drew her Tikari, more out of habit than eagerness to fight.

“We never sparred, did we, Vibs?”

He ejected his Tikari. A nasty little flea that jumped to his hand and turned into a small karambit.

“Not to toot my own horn, but you don't stand a chance against me. Or anyone from a senior team, frankly. You couldn't even beat Mishka in a fistfight. I know, I watched. Sorry, doll, but this is where it ends for you.”

He sloughed off his robe into the water and stood mostly naked, wearing only grotesquely tight, black leather briefs. He posed with his knife as if someone was taking his photo.

Vibeke found the display disgusting. She felt nothing more than disgust. She'd had enough of the fights, enough of wandering. Cato seemed like as good an end as any.

“You want to kill me, ‘Will'? You go right ahead.”

He mistook her invitation for an invitation to fight. He was too self-absorbed to look her in the eyes and see that she was ready to check out.

“You think you can take me alone, sheila? You think you can take an elder without a single ally on our level? Or do you think that army behind you can do any good?”

He was enough of an ass that she at least wanted to take him with her. It was the happiest thought she'd had in weeks. She'd been dying since she lost Violet, only waiting for a good way to finish. Cato offered it. She'd fight to a deadly stalemate. He'd be expecting her to fight to live. She'd be fighting to kill them both.

She held her Tikari high and took up an aggressive stance.

“You didn't learn in the ravine, did ya, doll?” He began jumping from side to side, readying himself to strike. “I have the advantage. I have the power. I'm invincible to you, and I'm not going down before one girl with nobody by her side!”

Two Geki appeared by her side.

Fear broke into her and choked her. She could see Cato suffer the same. The soldiers behind her fled as fast as they could, most screaming in terror.

“Orders, Vibs?”

The Geki just asked her for orders. She was shocked beyond the fear. But the question pulled an answer from her like their questions always did.

“Fire at Will!”

The Geki flames erupted from under one of their cloaks, darting into Cato. He was engulfed in flames, his skin burned to black, then burned away, then his muscles, and organs and finally bones, until there was nothing left of him but vapor, and that vapor was blown away into the cold winds.

Vibeke collapsed to the ground, the heat and fear churning in her stomach. But she had to know what just happened. She struggled to speak and spat out the words.

“Why? Why are you helping me?”

The Geki remained silent. The one that had shot the flames disappeared, its cloth pulling upward. The other stood still.

“Why?” she demanded.

The Geki just shrugged. A strange and wholly familiar shrug with one hand up and one hand down. Then it disappeared.

 

 

H
E
PICKED
her up as she lay dying. Shot once in the heart, killed in the line of duty, as were they all. She was gripped with fear, unnatural fear. The kind of fear he inspired. That she would inspire someday. He took her to his home, his citadel, and placed her in the chamber. In seconds she was scanned, in minutes her new heart was grown, and in hours she was alive again, alive and well but still gripped by fear.

It had taken him months to get used to it. To be able to think again. Months of absolute hell and misery like few people would ever know.

But he outgrew it, as she would in time. He watched her every day, felt for her deeply. He was giving her a gift, he knew, but he'd never seen the price before, not from that side of the mirror. Had he been in so much agony? He knew he had, but it was hard to watch her. A kind young officer of the Garda, and a beautiful one. He couldn't admit that her beauty influenced his decision.

There were others as qualified: the woman from the craters who died defending her station; the man who caught Sandoval the Sticks; a half dozen others he'd been watching since his master died. He had to let them all die and stay dead; he could only save one. Now, he would be the teacher, and the new girl his student. As soon as she overcame the fear.

It took only two weeks before she could speak rationally, more than screams and whimpers. And he explained it to her then as briefly and simply as he could: We are the Geki. We monitor religious militias, deviant company armies, the darker unmonitorable forces that shape the earth in secret. We see that they don't fuck shit up. She understood. But it was another month before her training began.

He placed her in the chamber again. It implanted his master's flame in her arm, a smooth operation lasting only seconds.

“The flame is our weapon. It must be wielded with the utmost subtlety. It's easier to create a firestorm than light a candle. You must learn to light candles. To extinguish them with a thought. To form shapes, to make the fire dance. Then in time, you will use the flame to control, to punish, to fight. Just as you will use the fear. Your voice is now the voice of a god. None can hear it and not be struck by fear. Your every word is an order that cannot be disobeyed.”

“It's too much power,”
she said.
“It's unjust.”

“It is justice itself. We answer to our companies. I answer to GAUNE, you to UNEGA. We answer to the most common, the most mundane interests. We watch over the most esoteric, the most powerful and secretive. We are the link between the top of the food chain and the bottom, the point that makes it a cycle. As you'll see in time.”

As she grew stronger with the fear and more adept with the flame, he showed her who they existed to control. She logged into her vision systems. There was the cloak, lined with hundreds of lenses to see around her in 360 degrees on every axis. Then there was the network, the intel system. A vast net over the citadel that functioned as a satellite dish array focused into the planet, using the globe itself as an amplifier to see simultaneously into every place on Earth, to monitor automatically and report and show them the happenings they needed to see.

He explained how rarely they would interfere, and how necessary the fear; the Farnesene Pulse was to control the otherwise uncontrollable forces they were to supervise.

In time she became accustomed to her role, and together they kept the extremities in check. Forty years they worked together, a perfect team. Unsullied by ethical disagreement, or common bickering, or love. They grew old without a flaw in their duties. Until 2230.

It was a routine check on the Valkohai, who never stepped out of line. They were to see, on orders from GAUNE, that the new admiral, Risto Turunen, was going to follow the treaty. He offered no argument at all, he was proud to claim he'd never appear on the bad side of the Geki. He said it bravely with one lung full of air. He seemed unafraid, a true rarity. Of all the fearsome warriors they encountered, many feigned fearlessness. But only Risto was convincing of it.

And he was kind when her elder collapsed. He offered medical support before they jumped back to the citadel. She brought her elder to the chamber and let it diagnose him. She was surprised any natural cause could bring him down. But he spoke to her, one last time.

“We don't last forever. Find officers of the law from GAUNE who have distinguished themselves with honor. Find as many as you can, and follow the best of them. Great officers always get themselves killed. Be there when they do. Take one, heal them. Teach them as I taught you. And when you grow too old to function, tell them the same thing.”

He turned off the chamber and died. She cremated him with her flame. There were no ashes to scatter; it burned that hot. And she set out hunting for her student. She would become the master and the cycle would go on. She observed a dozen officers carefully, but focused most on one in particular. A common policeman from the edge of GAUNE who acted with guile, without fear, with utter disregard to his personal life and family, which he was willing to sacrifice completely to uphold the law and catch his target.

Just as her master had said, great officers always get themselves killed. So he did. And she was there to take his body, and heal it in the chamber and subject it to the horrible fear. And she had her student.

His training went well. He mastered the flame and overcame the fear admirably. He followed her on errand after errand and learned the ropes.

He proved a somewhat cold gentleman. He was polite to her, and flawlessly robotic on missions, but he was also flawlessly robotic the rest of the time. He seemed to have no emotion whatsoever. His coldness scared her sometimes. He could kill with no hesitation. He maintained a casual attitude about it as he burned the burn-worthy and wreaked fear upon the once fearless.

And he stayed just as cold and emotionless when he found her dead.

In two years he had never made a move she didn't sanction. He had rarely made a move without her. But on that fateful day he gave in when intel from the network reported on a girl from his past life. He was human after all. He could remain cold and objective 99.9 percent of the time, but when he heard a certain girl was involved in a sexual assault, he had to peek in and make sure she was okay. And indeed she was. Still, he abused his power. There was one person, a subhuman really, that just desperately needed burning. So he burned the subhuman to a cinder and headed home.

He found the citadel destroyed. Burned down. The intel network was annihilated, leaving him blind. He broadcast a massive extinguishing burst from his flame, then jumped directly into the smoldering wreckage.

Maggie was dead. Veikko had cut off her head and left her to burn. Without feeling he poked through her remains and her jump cloak to find the flame implant. It wasn't there. Her radius and ulna turned to powder as he prodded them. He felt nothing. He never did. In times when most people would panic, he had only ever grown more astute, more methodical. He would need that focus now.

With the intel net down he'd not be able to find Veikko. But Valhalla specialized in such things. He jumped into Alf's bedroom.

“Veikko has murdered my elder. You will kill him upon his return, or the ravine will burn.”

He jumped back home. He had to keep the cycle alive. He had to find another Geki. Someone who died in the line of duty. But he hadn't prepared, he didn't expect to for years. Decades. In fact the only people he knew who would stand a chance as Geki were in Valhalla.

But they died all the time. And there were a couple among them with just the Geki concept of justice. One in particular, and Veikko would want to kill him shortly. He jumped to Kvitøya.

Balder's Ice-CAV exploded and burned him along with it. At first the Geki didn't think anything would survive, but his head came out intact. But he couldn't save Balder when the entire ravine was watching. They would know who the next Geki was. And then nobody would respect them, nor fear them. There would be familiarity, and familiarity is the nemesis of fear.

He let Balder die. Let Mishka kill him. He cursed. And waited. There would only be one Geki for a long time to come.

The next day, he awoke to a link alarm. An implant link alarm. Maggie's fire implant was being used by someone other than Maggie. He jumped before even considering Veikko. Fire had already erupted from his palm before he realized how idiotic Veikko was to try using it. He had no sympathy for him. He had no sympathy for his teammates. It was time for Veikko to burn.

And burn he did. His Thaco fields and armor only did so much to protect him. He was blackened in seconds. In seconds more he would be dead. In less than a second, though, Varg flew the blackwing into the lone Geki and cut him in half. He barely managed to jump before his lower half fell from its cloak, out of range.

He jumped into the med pod. He didn't consider how he'd end up or what condition the pod would be in. He ended up upside down under his lower half with his feet on his diaphragm and his face in the floor inside a burnt med pod. He bled rapidly, he had only seconds of awareness to turn the pod on, if it would turn on at all. He clawed his way upright and climbed up his own legs to hit the emergency switch. He made it and pounded the switch and found it burned in place. He hit again, and again, and again until his blood pressure dropped to nothing and he passed out.

He came to a half hour later fully assembled. His last hit must have done it. His cloak would take longer to mend, and he'd have to send it back to Google's tech division to repair the sensors. It could clearly still jump, though, so he dug into the basement desk, took some thread, and sewed the thing back together.

He jumped back to the spot of Veikko's death. There was no fire implant left. No Veikko left. It wasn't over.

He had to jump to Valhalla fast. With Balder dead permanently and Veikko likely still alive, he had to speak to Alf. Without the intel net he couldn't tell where Alf was, but with some quick link-fu he managed to pinpoint his link antenna within the ravine. He jumped.

He found it next to Alf's shredded head. Before he could even register the fall of Valhalla, he heard a terrible screeching of metal behind him. He turned to see the comm tower falling from the overhanging rock. His link scan still on, he registered Varg inside. Varg. Balder's man. Falling from the ceiling and poisoned to death. Perfect timing.

He placed Varg's body in the med pod and let it do its work. He sat down in the blackened remains of the citadel. Shit was fucked up. That much was certain. He took stock. Maggie was dead, her flame gone. Valhalla was betrayed and almost certainly ended. With the ravine empty and its leaders permanently deceased he doubted the Valkyries would even return. He almost didn't notice that the link was fluctuating. When it finally caught his attention he found the entire web failing. For the first time as a Geki he got his intel from the World News Log.