Ragnarok (29 page)

“Very well, the Ares is coming home. Your mission is now to capture the Ares water by any means necessary and bring it here. If you lose the Ares…. You make the call. We read you at twenty minutes to orbit. Our intel suggests they plan to dock at UNEGA 07 and transfer the Ares to a cargo shuttle currently docked there.

“UNEGA 07 will be over Presov when you arrive, and there's an alarming buildup of Yakuza and UD shuttles in that area. It's clear the Unspeakables intend to steal the Ares on its way down.”

“Any sign of the Wolves?” asked Violet.

“None. We're inclined to concur with your analysis that it was a feint to distract the Yakuza. Yak assets have fallen apart in the last month. We can't even tell who seized what yet. Regardless, when this is all over, we'll head to Hashima and slay the Wolf. And Varg?”

He was almost startled. “Yes?”

“Our teams online keep getting requests to buy the Skunkworks Blackwing, so we can assume the entire net knows we have it. Would you happen to know anything about that?”

“I might have confirmed something to that effect, yes.”

“If you survive, your next mission will be to rectify the situation.”

“Will do.”

“Stay frosty, kids, or rather thaw out and get ready to fight. We have four teams en route to Presov right now, but there's nothing to suggest the Yaks or Unspeakables intend to keep it in the region. Orbit's a long way up. You're the only team we know will be there wherever they go. Capture the Ares and get it back to Valhalla. That's your mission. Don't Fuck Shit Up.”

Alopex sent them link dumps of all the relevant information. There was little time once they were thawed. UNEGA 07 was only forty minutes away.

 

 

G
RISTLE
CHECKED
his scope and waited for the hall to empty. When it was, he got out of his crate and entered the locker code. He floated out into UNEGA 07's main storage hall and took a deep breath. It was finally time.

His entire life had lead up to this moment. Seventeen years prior, he was born in Qabis to a pathetic family of farmers. He was the first in his line with any ambition to do more. To that end he got a job in town. It annoyed his parents at first, but in time they agreed to let him follow his own path. They were even proud when that path led him to Ez-Zitouna University. He took his tests and made his way in as an adult at sixteen.

There, majoring in medical ethics, he met Gloom. Gloom was a transhumanist. He didn't look human. He was tall, sleek, glowing white with big, deep green eyes. He was beautiful. And he taught Gristle, named Moncef at the time, that he too could be something more. But Moncef became greedy. The mods he wanted weren't, well, they weren't legal. He confessed it to Gloom and expected to be let down, but he was not.

Gloom knew some people who would do those mods. They were in fact his “other” employers. They called themselves Underwood/Dawson LLC or “UD” for short, but they had another
name for those among them who leaned toward darker, less legal modifications. Thus Moncef left college early to join the Unspeakable Darkness.

He traded his arms for tentacles. He got new eyes like
Gloom's. He had his body lengthened and twisted, and he got those illegal suckers he wanted, the kind with spines. He got the illegal legs he wanted, not armed but copyrighted and not affordable by anyone but the richest CEOs. But most importantly, he took the traditional jet black skin. The glossy, slick black of the Unspeakable Darkness. He took it after an oath of loyalty and after learning its symbolism and severity.

He survived the initiation in which the black was injected into his every pore over the course of five days, the Dark Trial all Unspeakables withstood. And he was reborn as Gristle of the Unspeakable Darkness. His parents were informed of his death, as Moncef was indeed dead. The obsolete larval stage of a new man.

His first mission was a high honor. And an easy task to perform. All he had to do was get in a crate and withstand a bit of zero-g. He was there on UNEGA 07 before he knew it, flown by a particularly polite pilot.

His mission came with some degree of freedom. So long as he finished by 1500 hours, he was free to wander the station. Heaven. He was free to wander heaven. He floated about, guided by his phenomenal legs, which had pressure ports for swimming or null gravity. He looked out the windows and saw Earth far below, far behind him. He felt only vaguely sad he would never return.

And then he saw a woman. A woman in uniform. She was beautiful, floating in her blue jumpsuit, arms covered in patches, hair short but free floating. She would be his last sight. She screamed of course. Humans weren't used to the UD. It was sad she had to die scared, a bittersweet end. But no problem for Gristle. He had been spotted, and it was time to perform his mission before someone might prevent him.

He detonated his marrow bombs and ceased to exist.

UNEGA 07 took longer to fall apart. There were fires and shrapnel, the ugly demise of a beautiful place. Most of it fell back to Earth, burning up over the Caspian Sea or splashing down in voluminous sprays of water.

All crew were lost, the worst disaster in the history of space exploration. But all to a purpose. Somewhere out there was a ship that was to dock there. It wouldn't anymore. It would go down in the atmosphere, all except for one part that the Unspeakable Darkness could now steal and sell at an extraordinary record profit.

Worth every life.

 

 

A
LOPEX
REPORTED
the destruction to V team. With nowhere to dock, Enyo could enter orbit and be swarmed by the UD, or it could fall to Earth. The UD would have a plan to harvest it in the sky, the Yakuza might not.

Alopex reported that the buildup of UD and Yakuza fleet over the High Tatras was monumental, a massive battle had already begun. She confirmed the UD had one vessel of massive cargo capabilities. None of the Yakuza vessels seemed to. As soon as news of the station's destruction had reached Valhalla, T team departed in the P0S to grab the Valkyries in space if necessary. But the space flight was almost over. Alopex confirmed Enyo didn't have enough fuel to adjust its course, and without the station's tractoring system to slow it down, it would enter the atmosphere and crash in the High Tatras.

V team began cutting their way out. The rock was thick, and the microwaves were small, but their best hope was to jump in space and hope the P0S caught them. The microwaves quickly proved incapable of penetrating the rock.

Alopex linked that the cockpit had left Enyo and was coming in for a soft landing over the mountains. Mishka was safe on Earth. Vibeke hoped that, if nothing else, Enyo would hit her when it fell.

Suddenly a blast cracked the small moon in half. The sides fell away in seconds, leaving the spent rocket falling through the atmosphere. The wind was too great and the rotation of the rocket too unpredictable to risk unhooking themselves. Violet called out to T team.

“ETA three minutes,” they replied.

Vibeke shouted and linked at the same time, “We impact in one!”

The mountains hurtled toward them, jagged and gray. As they grew closer, they could see the UD cargo vessel. It was massive and under attack. Closer, they saw dozens of pogos, UD wyrms, unidentifiable vehicles in the insane furball of combat.

Suddenly, the rocket jolted. They knew instantly that it was a tractoring beam because it flexed their suits. It hit again, and again, until it caught the rocket and began slowing its descent.

The massive magnetic force also began deforming their Thaco armor. They hit the emergency bolts and broke off their armor seconds before it twisted into shapes that would have killed them inside. That also broke their connection to the rocket.

Very suddenly they were falling free over the mountains in only the internal, soft portions of their suits. No more Thaco armor, no more inertial negators, no more emergency parachutes, or anything that could halt their fall.

 

 

T
HE
E
NYO
cockpit set down in a small clearing. Mishka linked to her tank. It was only minutes away.

“There are two Yami fleets, one to the east and one to the south,” said Supika.

Sonohoka reviewed the Yakuza datastream. “We have seven carriers, fourteen destroyers, nineteen battle pogos. All fire is focused on the Yami cargo vessel.”

“Where are the stowaways?”

“Not detected. They don't appear to be on the Ares rocket.”

“Find them, now.”

“Yes, Havildar Patel, but the Ares—”

“The Ares is a secondary concern compared to the stowaways. I need their location now!”

“Yes, Havildar! Scanning!”

Mishka's tank was under a kilometer away. She stepped outside. The thick air was like pudding in her lungs, the smell of rock overpowering compared to the synthetic air she'd breathed for the last two months. She crouched down and gathered some dirt in her hand. It was mostly pebbles, gray and chipped. She heard the tank and stood.

It limped quickly up to her position and stopped, its underside steaming. Mishka linked it to open its cargo hold. Inside were her two cutter rifles. She took both and strapped them in an X on her back. She stormed into the cockpit hatch.

“Have you found them?”

“I believe so, Havildar. They've fallen from the rocket, nearing terminal velocity. They'll die upon impact in one minute and forty—”

“They won't die,” she said. “They never do.”

She looked at their position on the map and left the cockpit. She opened the top of her tank and hopped in, leaving it open to keep the rifles on her person. She linked the map into her tank and told it to run at top speed. If they splattered on the rocks, she'd be there to vaporize the remains.

 

 

V
TEAM
drifted farther apart as the wind rose up from beneath them. The crags seemed to fly toward them. The wind ripped the trigger from around Varg's neck, and it fell toward the cliffs.

The P0S hurtled toward them, pointing straight down and matching their speed, it swept forward to engulf Violet in its open cargo hold, then Veikko and Vibeke. It pulled up as it captured Varg and closed the hold only seconds before it started scratching the mountains. It was still planing upward when it hit the mountainside full force, tearing off the bottom of the fuselage and shaking V and T teams to their bones. The smart foam inside the shuttle expanded and cushioned them, nearly suffocating them.

The P0S shattered through more rock and slowed, breaking its nose cone beyond repair and tearing off the left wing. It came to a screeching stop at the bottom of a rugged valley, steaming and shattered. Violet stumbled out of the cracked hold, Varg behind her. They looked back to see Veikko and Vibs climb out uninjured.

T team was close behind, pouring out of the cockpit. Immediately they came under fire. Projectile shots from a Yakuza force rattled across the spent hull. V team was painfully aware of the loss of their armor, which generated projectile shields and defended against microwaves. They were essentially naked to every weapon. T team provided cover. They all ran toward the rocks.

“Well, no more P0S, thank God. We'll have to use the Burp,” coughed Toshiro.

Tahir linked back to Alopex, “Tell H team the die is cast. We have crashed the Rubicon.”

“Thanks for the… for the uh… the saving and shit,” Veikko called out.

“No problem, it was worth it to wreck that thing,” said Trygve.

They looked around the sharp rocks and tried to get their bearings. The landmarks weren't pleasing.

To the north was an air battle, dozens of Yakuza shuttles and pogos firing on one massive ugly UD cargo ship. The battle was gradually spilling south toward them. To the east was a land battle where a legion of Yaks fired at rolling masses of deformed Unspeakable. To the south, as best as they could estimate, the trigger had fallen, and in the distant west, Violet saw for the shortest instant a three legged tank.

“We head south. We need to find the trigger,” said Veikko.

“We can't detonate it on Earth, Veikko, the Geki—”

“Fuck the Geki!” he shouted. “Fuck the Geki. It's on Earth, Vibs. The Ares is here, on the planet. There's no way to capture the Darkness ship that's tractoring it. The UD has the Ares. They will escape, and they will sell it, and the world will flood.”

“The nuke will—”

“You know I'm right, Vibs! You know it. Look!”

She looked toward the aerial fight. The UD ship had the rocket tractored in midair. It was extending a sharp fueling pipe. It was going to siphon the Ares into its own tanks.

“If you have a better idea, Vibs….”

A series of blasts hit the nearby rocks, shattering their scant cover. Violet looked over to see Yaks with Gat-Zooks on a nearby plateau, loading another ribbon of rockets into the massive machine.

Before anyone in V or T could run, they fired again, but this time hitting well over the teams' heads. Violet looked up. Deformed black body parts were raining down on them. There were Unspeakables up the hill, the Yak's true targets. They had little time before the Yaks eradicated them and turned back to the Valkyries.

V and T began running south. All seven with flying Tikaris ejected them and sent them to scour the landscape for the trigger. None could activate it, and none could lift the heavy organic, but left to their own AI search patterns, they'd be perfect for finding it. Violet was very aware that without her microwave or Tikari, she was now completely unarmed.

They heard a scream, a guttural deranged scream coming from overhead. A Darkness shuttle was broken and trying to land. Its organic engines belched out a bloodcurdling howl. Its flight path was erratic, and there was no telling where it would touch down. V kept running south until they had reason to expect it would hit them.