Ragnarok (31 page)

Violet glanced to her right and saw the UD ship drop the tanks. It had suctioned the entire Ares out and was ready to leave. There would only be another fraction of a second before the nuke fell out of range to vaporize it. Violet pushed down against the worm, raising her up the last few decimeters as she swung her broken hand toward the bulb. She hit it. She meant it. It detonated.

The brightest light she'd ever seen struck her and blinded her and set her on fire. On fire inside and out, worse than the microwave, worse than anything in pain training, worse than any pain she dreamed could exist.

She fell back down the burning cliffside as the shockwave hit. It threw her back to the incline and put out the flames, then sheered the top off the rocks only a meter from where she rolled.

She rolled fast into the rock that crushed Veikko's stomach and hit her head on it hard enough to fracture her skull. She was knocked out. Only Veikko was awake to see the burning dust shoot down toward them. Then the buzzing began, a feeling like burning mixed with buzzing like the taste of rotten milk, like an electric shock across his body.

He had no armor to put up radiation shields. None of their pockets held radiophonic gel, none of their medicine. They were lying bare before the mushroom cloud and its heat and gamma rays. Veikko and Violet had seconds to live.

R team arrived in seconds. The airfoil fields from their pogo flickered with red sparks, trying to keep their form in the irradiated air. They set down as Ragnar tractored the rocks off of Vibeke and Varg in one powerful discharge from the pogo's microwave. He fired the tractor again to pull them inside. Ripple and Ruger ran down to pull Veikko and Violet in, Veikko's intestines unraveling as he came up.

The last of Valknut's Tikaris flew into the pogo just before it shot up into the sky. It rocketed toward Valhalla as B team arrived to pick up the survivors of Tiwaz. Ragnar stuffed Vibeke and Varg into the rescue pogo's stasis chambers. Ripple went to work on Violet, clearing the blood from inside her skull first, then starting radiation and burn therapy. Rebecca tended to Veikko's stomach and Violet's legs, putting platelet fabric on all the open wounds. All temporary, but enough to keep them alive until they reached Valhalla.

They got to work on Varg and Vibeke in stasis. Merely crushed, burned, and dead, R splinted the bones and jumpstarted them. They'd be awake and intact to walk to med bay. Veikko protested that their triage left his guts hanging out.

As they careened northward, the measures took effect and Violet awoke. The pain was omnipresent and severe, but Violet laughed. The mission was over. She'd just saved the world.

The pogo fell down into the ravine as the nurses ran out to bring in the corpses. But when the door opened, they found V team walking out on their own feet, at least those who still had them. Varg on the right held Veikko up. Veikko held his intestines in and carried Violet on his shoulder. Vibs did the same with her shredded, broken arm on the other side. They walked in triumphant.

Until Veikko slipped on his intestines and pulled the group down onto the floor. Still they laughed.

A few minutes later, they sat in med bay with the remains of T team, free of their radioactive sizzling inner suits. They were cleansed under a powerful radiophobic field and a half dozen other medical array features. Vibeke and Varg had been aligned and sealed, their organ damage and plasma burns erased. Veikko's stomach was finally under repair by a speedy robotic arm, and Violet's new legs were growing in a tank, wire frame models projected onto her person as she sat on the side of the table.

She was euphoric, the cool air on her naked skin, the feel of a reset arm and fingers, and analgic legs. And of destroying the Ares. It was finally, truly over. Concerns about the global reaction and Geki were far from her mind. Vibeke was foremost on it.

She was standing there, naked in front of Violet, grinning with the same satisfaction. Euphoric and relieved on a level reserved for sufferers of the most intense stress humans can survive. She sauntered over to Violet and put a hand on her shoulder.

Violet felt free. Completely free, and she knew Vibeke wouldn't push her away this time. Wouldn't worry about the future or decorum or rules or laws. Wouldn't worry about the woman who'd just tried to kill her.

Violet grabbed her and pulled her close and kissed her on the lips as hard as she could. Grabbed her shoulder blades and sunk her nails into her smooth skin. She wrapped her nonexistent legs around Vibeke's sides, the wireframes tightening across her back.

Vibeke kissed back and held her tight, ran her lips over Violet's. Wet and soft, sucking on her lower lip, letting Violet nibble on hers, slipping her tongue across her tongue and playfully sucking it into her open mouth. They grabbed each other as hard as they could and mashed their faces tight, let their breasts squish against each other, and felt across each other's backs in utter ecstasy.

Slowly Violet let go of her lips and tried to breathe. Her breath was stuttered and uneven. She couldn't breathe right. She felt Vibeke's nipples withdraw from her chest and opened her eyes. They stared at each other for an instant that seemed to last hours and let their hands drop and hold each other on the table. And slowly, Vibeke backed away just a bit so they could see one another clearly.

Violet's eyes, irises vibrant and striated, her pupils contracted in the bright med bay light, showing off all the more purple. Vibeke's, so light they were almost white, like crystal, like opal. Violet could see deep into them, smell Vibeke's cool skin over the clean chemical sting of the room.

The med bay finally came back to her. The world intruded again, having granted her one flawless moment of pure pleasure. And she noticed Dr. Niide and Varg and Veikko, and the dozens of Valkyries outside the glass wall. All staring at them. Everyone staring.

Some aghast, some aroused, some happy, and some perplexed, but all staring. A wide grin slowly bloomed across Veikko's red face. His lips moved, finding the right words. The only proper thing he could say after seeing that kiss.

“May your first child be a masculine child!”

Violet and Vibeke laughed, Veikko stepped back, Dr. Niide returned to his work, and Varg quietly departed for the barracks. The occupants of the ravine slowly wandered off. V team was okay and returning to good health. Their mission was over. The world was safe from an apocalyptic flood. And already, Vibeke began to feel the sting of doing something horribly, dreadfully wrong.

 

 

T
HE
LAST
Wolf was finally back from Mars. Wulfgar personally oversaw their return. Countless men he'd risked, and every one of them was home safe. The venture was complete and soon to pay off.

As the last fat man reached Hashima, Wulfgar accompanied him to the vomitorium. There, the men performed the least enjoyable portion of their missions: coughing up all the water they drank at the strange Martian outpost. They'd all been through it before, drinking normal water on Earth and regurgitating it on Mars, then drinking the strange water on Mars and heading home for Earth. They knew they'd be smuggling, but the water was a surprise, as was the grotesquerie in how they delivered it. Most of them suspected something surgical, but apparently the simplest way was the best.

Wulfgar watched the Ares filter and drip and distill, capturing all the extra bodily fluids just in case the filter was too strong and removed some of the precious, expensive water.

After only fifty men, he was worried. They were short of
calculations by almost a kilogram, unacceptable. Pelamus demanded at least 99.9995 percent of the fluid. Wulfgar consulted the doctors.

They'd hoped the special stomach bladders they'd implanted would contain every drop, but in the end, they were living tissue, and nothing living is perfect. A full .2 percent had been absorbed into the bodies of the smugglers.

Wulfgar contacted Pelamus and asked a question he hated to ask.

“Does it need to be pure, or can it have debris in it?”

Pelamus was angry. He wanted 100 percent of it pure, but there was no going back. What was done was done, and he had to make do with the situation. He consulted his scientists and understood that debris was inconsequential; it could be mixed and littered with anything and still work, but it had to be complete to affect the entire ocean. An incomplete sample even by .1 percent would only affect 30 percent of the world's water.

Wulfgar received the note and, with a heavy heart, did what had to be done. He had Blue Boots head online and purchase an industrial 300-liter blender.

 

 

V
IOLET
HAD
missed the ritual before, for two entire teams. Aside from Rasekrig, she'd seen no permanent Valkyrie deaths in her time in the ravine. She was told the last man to die permanently was Rygar in 2229, killed by a giant illegal genetically engineered snail.

She didn't know what to expect. Funerals, from what she could tell in Kyle City, were solemn sad services where people shared memories of the deceased, cried, buried them or burned them or had them dispersed at the molecular level. But there was no body to bury for Toshiro, and she didn't expect to see anyone cry.

Nearly everyone in the ravine was present, from Governor Quorthon and Snorri to the members of every team and many civilians. Sad as she was, she feared it would be a long affair and that she'd be asked to carry out some ritual function. She looked into Norse funeral customs as soon as she heard there would be one. She wondered if there would be a boat set on fire or a slave girl passed around, then slaughtered. She doubted the latter.

Once everyone was in the mess hall, Alf waved for the crowd to be silent, then spoke.

“Toshiro has died permanently, as will we all. He died in battle on his own terms. What's over is over, what's done is done. Let his name not be carved on any wall, let no goods be wasted upon his grave, let no ships be burnt. We have moved on, and we will not come back. G Team, begin the search to replace him.”

He stepped down, and the room began to mill about. The funeral was over.

Violet should have expected it. She'd been as cold when her parents died, didn't bother to give them a funeral at all. And she was among kindred creatures. Here it was an institution. The sobbing and moaning she'd feared weren't to be found in the ravine.

There was only one more ritual to perform, one less formal. Kjetil opened some oak barrels while Balder and Varg passed out large hollowed-out horns. The kitchen staff poured each person on the teams a large horn of mead, and everyone drank.

Violet wandered and drank slowly, absorption implant off as seemed to be the tradition. Some drank their entire horn in one swig and took another. Others held their horns but didn't seem to drink at all. Balder and Varg were among the former. Violet was almost surprised to see Vibeke drinking liberally.

She found T team, and they pulled her into a group hug, then drank together. Tahir congratulated her on the mission with no sign of sarcasm. It was the mission Toshiro died for, and Tahir wanted her to know that his team deemed it a mission worth dying for, nothing less than the salvation of the planet. Valkyries had died for far less. Violet felt uneasy staying with T team for too long, so she went to find Vibs.

She passed Veikko, who was drinking quietly with Skadi, talking in whispers. Violet had always felt a bit uneasy seeing them together, but as she passed, she felt completely different. She was happy to see them together. Whatever sting it was in the past was gone. She knew why. She'd always been alone before. Everything was different now. She was on her way to find her own girl to squeeze. She found her on a distant bean blob.

Vibeke had the dim ghost of a smile on her lips, and her eyes were set in the distance. Violet took a chair beside her and just stared at her for a moment. She tried to guess what Vibeke was thinking. About Toshiro no doubt, a good memory judging by her expression. Vibs didn't seem to notice her, or if she did, she didn't care that she was there. Violet hoped she was simply unseen and hoped selfishly that she was thinking about that kiss, as Violet had been through the funeral.

Violet felt hot in her suit, an unnatural heat that would persist even if she were underdressed topside in the snow. She'd missed it when the two teams died, still stuck down south wrapping up her own loose ends, and flirting with Gabrielle. She pushed that disaster from her mind and considered if she should lean in and kiss her again. She didn't know if it was a free-for-all now or if she needed permission to do it again.

Vibeke startled her when she spoke. “We should inject it. It tastes awful, stings. I guess it would sting in our veins, but…. You know?”

“I like the taste, much better than beer. More warming,” said Violet.

“I like the feeling at least. I can see why so many people used to get hooked on it. Did you know people drank themselves to death? They wouldn't stop, even after it made them sick.”

“Why?” asked Violet.

“Stops the pain.”

“It does at that.”

They sat for a moment as people milled around them. They caught the name Toshiro a few times.

“I'm glad we only do it on days like this,” said Vibeke.

Violet said nothing.

Vibs continued. “Funerals, I mean, not victory. Hey, you remember that time we saved the world? You know, yesterday?”

Violet laughed but didn't say anything. She leaned back in the chair.

“What were you thinking about during the funeral?” asked Vibs.

Violet answered before thinking. “Kissing you.”

Vibeke didn't change her expression, or react at all.

Violet pressed, “That's all I've been thinking about since I did it.”

Vibeke kept staring into space. It made Violet angry.

“I think we should do it more.”