Ragnarok (24 page)

 

 

Y
ELLOW
B
OOTS
arrived on the next shuttle. Two Tikaris were there to watch him. Hanging on the ceiling, Violet's observed him getting off the shuttle and walking into the baggage claim. But it saw something else, a man behind him. Also wearing a black rubber business suit.

Violet's Tikari stuck to Mehmet, while Veikko's stayed to monitor for more Wolves. It counted eight men in black, all with a similar build. They watched Mehmet and the chubby quorum check into their rooms without incident. For two days the men didn't move. They stuck to their rooms immersed on the Mars net, doing nothing notable, or wandered the hotel, still doing nothing notable.

When it came time for the next shuttle to arrive, Veikko sent his Tikari to count men of similar bellied build and garb. The team sat in Tarkas bar, snacking on spicy synth beef sticks while it worked. The Tikari had counted four new men when there was a commotion in the jetway.

Veikko turned up his tympanum to hear what people were shouting.

“I want every room searched…. They're here without question… I want them brought to me.”

Veikko could tell it was a female voice.

“Kill the three if you can, but the girl lives. I need her alive.”

It sounded bad.

“Vibeke Dyrsdatter, extremely dangerous.”

“Uh, Vibs…?”

Vibeke looked into Veikko's Tikari feed just in time to see Mishka coming out of the jetway with four security guards.

She turned pale, livid. Before she could tell Veikko to send his Tikari into her heart, an alarm sounded. It was broadcast across the link and by sound in the halls. But the link also carried an image. Vibeke's
picture, clear as Mishka remembered her. Consider extremely
dangerous. Apprehend at all costs. Kill all accomplices.

“We've gotta move!” whispered Veikko.

Half the bar was now looking at them. At least two Barsoom cops among them, already reaching for sidearms. Varg tightened the trigger worm around his neck. Vibeke and Violet were ready to go.

“We're surrounded,” said Violet.

“Almost,” replied Veikko.

He leveled his microwave at the bar's window and fired. The team had their mask fields up within a fraction of a second, before their ears popped. The cold still hit them like Kvitøya ice. All four jumped one floor to the ground and headed for the nearest rocks. Microwave beams burned the rusty dirt around them as the police fired. Violet's suit absorbed a few hits, as did the others, but they made it to the rocks alive. Veikko's Tikari flew from the window into his chest.

Violet spoke first, “I'll leave my Tikari here to watch Aga, but we need to find somewhere safe.”

“There's nowhere safe,” said Vibeke. “She has the entire Martian police force after us!”

Varg linked to the three, “The PRA will house us!”

“They're in a crater across the planet from here!”

“Then we better get going,” muttered Veikko out loud.

Inside, Mishka heard the alert come in from the police, all four spotted. They'd blown out a window and gone outside.

“Follow them!” she demanded.

“We can't, we can't go outside, it's—”

Mishka grabbed the officer by his collar. “I'm following them outside right now. I expect your men armed and armored behind me
immediately
, is that understood?”

“Yes, ma'am!”

The police scrambled to get into outdoor gear. Mishka didn't have any, but she had oxygen, and that would have to be enough. She linked into the local map and found the bar where they'd escaped. It was on the same side of Barsoom but almost a kilometer north. She calculated the distance given the cold and the air available in her jumpsuit. She could make it.

Mishka fired at a window, and it blew out onto the surface. Travelers ran for cover and oxygen masks fell from the ceiling across the terminal. Mishka jumped out the window as her escorts pulled masks on.

“Who the hell is this lady?” one asked.

“Manifest listed her as Sanchita Patel,” said the commander, “a Red Beret Havildar.”

“Damn, I can see why.”

Mishka ran north. The cold cut into her painfully. She ignored it. She readied her microwave.

Veikko linked into the local police net and hacked the PRA files. He immediately found the most recent sight listings and checked the Barsoom file. Most recent contact with PRA: 3.5 years ago. Spotted in Aureum Chaos 14km east of Barsoom Colony.

“We head east,” said Veikko authoritatively. The others had no reason to question it. They had to get moving, and that was as good a chance as any other.

As soon as they left the rock, Mishka spotted them. She couldn't outrun them, and if she reached them it would be four to one. Mishka linked to the police and demanded a rover sent to their position. Then she ejected her eye.

The eye shot for V team at top speed. Mishka aimed for Vibeke's head. At top speed, though, it couldn't correct its course fast enough, and it flew by her, missing her by centimeters.

Violet, running behind her, saw it. “Black dot!” she called out, not certain what she'd just seen.

But Vibeke knew the file by heart. It could only be Mishka's new eyeball. “Microwaves!”

Violet pulled hers out but couldn't see the dot. Mishka slowed it down and reversed its course. At half speed she shot for Vibeke's temple. This time it could correct course. Violet spotted it coming and fired a wide beam in its direction. The eye briefly shorted out and fell to the rusty surface.

Mishka cursed, her link to the eye was disrupted. It would come back, but that wouldn't be critical—her rover was on its way.

She linked to the rover and told them to run the four down, disable them at any cost even if it meant wrecking the rover. Its driver, Com Stockins, was more than happy to oblige. He floored the accelerator and careened toward the group.

V team was only a hundred meters from the first canyon when the rover caught up. Six gigantic wheels with a small cabin on top. Violet fired at the rover with no effect. It was mostly just rubber. Stockins laughed at the detector warning.

Mishka's eye came back online, the link restored. She sent it after the rover to see V team crushed. The rover made it to their position when they were thirty meters from the canyon. They split up, girls left, boys right. The rover followed the boys.

Varg was beginning to feel tired, and when Varg got tired, he got lazy. Not lazy meaning he slipped up, but he wanted to resolve the situation as easily and quickly as possible. Thinking fast, he took his microwave and fired at the ground with a strong repelling beam. Holding on tightly, the beam jumped him like a trick pool shot up over the rover's wheels and smack into its windscreen.

Com was surprised but unconcerned. He swerved to throw him off. Varg hung tight and turned, firing a lethal beam at the driver. The windscreen deflected most of it, and Com was only sunburned. He swerved again.

Varg used the motion to vault around the windscreen to its left and came in feetfirst, kicking Com out of the open cabin and into the wheels, and under the wheels.

Mishka cursed. She saw it happen and saw the rover slow. She sent the eye at top speed to hit Varg, but Veikko saw it coming and fired another wide beam to disrupt it.

Mishka screamed in frustration. They had a rover now. She'd not catch them anytime soon. She linked into the police and told them to monitor the rover's position, but she knew it was a lost cause. Given a perfect vehicle for Martian terrain, they were uncatchable. But Mishka reminded herself, the police were her first avenue of capture but not her best. She knew they were following Yellow Boots. All she had to do was the same.

Violet broke off the rover's tracking pip, and Varg drove the four down into the canyon and toward the last known location of the PRA. There they disembarked. The sun was going down, dim by day and growing darker as night approached. The air grew even colder, and their suits grew as much fur as they could.

They found no sign of manmade caves before it grew dark and didn't want to risk illuminating their suits. They gathered into a small nook in one of the cliffs and went to sleep for the night, huddled together for what little warmth they could keep.

 

 

V
IOLET
AWOKE
to the sound of voices, carrying softly through the thin air.

“—happy to see you!”

“I thought ya might be. Looks like you have the entire force after you now. Now you know how we've lived for the last twenty years.”

“I don't envy it,” said Varg.

Niana continued. “So where are you headed next? Trade us this rover, and we'll take you anywhere you please.”

“Violet?”

Violet snapped to attention.

“Where's Aga?”

She looked into her Tikari. She had no second link control of it that far away, but it could still send encrypted information and video over the common Mars net. It was adeptly following Aga under its own AI. She consulted its geolocator. He was north of Barsoom on the conveyor, headed farther north.

“Approaching Acidalia Planitia,” Violet reported.

“Varg's tagged Wolves are there too. Nelson reads them on the same conveyor, two cars ahead.”

“They're heading toward Vastitas Borealis‬. That's where the Ares water tanks are. I suppose you'll be wanting to catch up to him?”‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

“Yes,” said Veikko, “but we can't risk the conveyors anymore, and this rover is short range. Do you have anything that can take us that far north?”

“Sure we do, but you're not going to like it….”

They boarded the rover, and Niana took them to a small tent fort hidden in the canyons. Several PRA men in stillsuits erected another tent across the rover. In the central sealed tent was an impressive heating system and a table covered in printed maps.

“You have nearly 3,000 kilometers to cover. It takes the conveyor two days. We can get you there in one week.”

“Nothing faster?”

“The conveyor is the fastest thing on the planet. And you'll be traveling by organic runner.”

Indeed they didn't like it.

“Are you kidding?” asked Veikko.

“Nope, organic runners are the second fastest thing on the planet. Faster than that rover, faster than any skiff that can go that far. But that's not the bad news. Bad news is that they live for five days. You'll be walking the last two.”

Violet took a deep breath. They'd be heading north to the Martian lowlands, and they'd be walking for two days in the waste. It would be a superhuman feat just to survive. She spoke up. “I've got my Tikari on him. We've got the detonator here. A Tikari can sabotage a whole hell of a lot.”

“But it's on its own,” explained Veikko. “You won't be able to control it directly, only send it orders via common hackable net links. We need to be there, and just hope we can get there before they take off, before the Yakuza arrive.”

“And before Mishka arrives,” added Vibs. “She'll know what we're here for. She'll be on her way.”

“Let's just get to it. The sooner we leave, the sooner it's over,” Veikko added.

There was no more discussion. Niana took the team to the PRA zoologist. She then programmed six eggs as runners. Within an hour they were ready to hatch. Within five, the giant furry monsters were grown to adulthood.

It was frightening to see anything grow so strong so fast. The incubation system was massive and immobile, preventing them from simply taking eggs along to be grown after the death of the first batch. The runners themselves were mostly legs with only small bodies and no heads. They had eyes on the fronts of their torsos, four each, but no mouths or any other orifice. They wouldn't eat. They were born with all the energy they could consume in the form of Microstorage ATP. Only a kilogram of their body mass, but enough to keep them alive and running nonstop.

The zoologist explained that their DNA was based on snow leopards, but there was nothing of it visible in them, save for the fur. They were utterly alien, designed for the sole purpose of Martian travel. Violet would have preferred a pogo or even the P0S, but the Martian atmosphere couldn't sustain an airfoil field and actual space-capable vehicles were as rare on Mars as astatine on Earth. She tried to think of any possible way out of the walk to come, but in every instance, it was the best shot they had to catch up to Yellow Boots.

And presumably Mishka. Nelson didn't show her with Aga, but there was no question she'd be on his tail. She was looking for them, for Vibeke specifically. Violet couldn't fathom why after a year of running, she was finally seeking them out. Perhaps it was because of that year of running. Or perhaps it was something more urgent.

There was no more time to think. They strapped onto the runners, Violet and Vibeke on the first, Veikko and Varg on the next. Two carried nothing but supplies, survival gear, and a few landskiffs to use once the beasts died. On the last pair, Niana sent the zoologist's apprentice and a PRA lieutenant to monitor the beasts and take care of the Valkyries' Martian survival. She knew they were tough, but they were from Earth. No matter how they trained for Mars, they'd not grown up in its wastelands. They each carried more supplies. The apprentice carried egg harvesting tools, and the lieutenant kept an assortment of conventional explosives. Varg retained the nuclear trigger around his neck. Aside from carrying the ultimate destructive power in the universe, it was pleasantly warm and stylish.

There was no discussion or training for the ride. Anything they had to know, they'd link once underway. The zoologist tapped into the animals' self-grown wetware and programmed them to go as close to the Ares as possible, and then Niana gave them a slap on the rump, and they were off.