Ragnarok (3 page)

Veikko strained a full five seconds before trying to get on Violet's good side. “I vote for purple. The Purple Burple. There's some technical name for a burp, but I can't think of it….”

Violet was about to threaten a second backhand when she looked down to the white smart-foam and found it covered in blood. Her wound was leaking again.

“I have several fractures in my leg and an impalement through my foot,” she declared flatly. Veikko looked down at her foot. Varg and Vibeke peered in from the flight deck.

Veikko replied, “Yes, yes you do.”

All knew the shuttle was completely lacking in any first aid
equipment, and Violet had already applied the best any of their armor had to offer. There was little to be done for the battered appendage. Violet stared at her foot uselessly and exhaled. Soon they would arrive at the ravine, and Dr. Niide would fix the wound. Vibs sent a quiet link back home so he could ready his surgical robots.

The knowledge that she would soon be perfectly repaired struck Violet the opposite way it should have. She felt a subtle wave of apathy. It was an odd thing to feel at the end of a successful mission, and Valkyries were taught to mention any psychological oddities they might experience. So Violet might have told her team that she felt like shit had Veikko not interrupted with a far more dire revelation.

“Eructation! A ‘Ructus.' That's the term,” he said, looking proudly toward Violet, “for a burp. Cetaceans call it
röyhtäily
.” Veikko nodded. Pain seeped into Violet's foot, and the slow flight home in the P0S felt all the slower.

 

 

S
IRAJ
/
T
EPES
S.C.S.
owned fourteen prisons, jails, and detention centers in Bharat. The Hugli River Detention Center was by far the
most infamous of them. Built to house 6,000 inmates, it actually housed well over 25,000 the last time anyone counted, which was over ten years before Mishka was imprisoned there. The “Ergosphere of Kolkata” gave up on prisoner census after 2219 because none of the guards could accurately estimate how many prisoners thick were the piles on which the visible prisoners stood. Since then, matters had only grown worse as every disease from the bubonic plague to swine flu to the hemorrhagic strain of emu fever invaded and mutated amid the human petri dish into unnamable flesh eating pestilences. The culture that grew with equal virulence among the inmates was one of murder, cannibalism, and torture, so Mishka fit right in
.

In fact, it was exactly where she wanted to be. Not that she wanted to be in prison, but she didn't have much of a choice. As long as she lived, Vibeke was going to chase her. From the events in Bangla, that much was clear. After a year on the run, Vibs had come within seconds of dragging her back to Valhalla in chains, and if capture by the Bharatiya Sthalsena was the only way out, it would have to do. She knew she'd be able to escape, so the only real loss was her new eye. They confiscated it as soon as she was processed. She'd grown very attached to her eye in the last year. She wasn't happy about needing a new eye in the first place, but once implanted it grew on her. The poor thing transmitted from the possessions office until a cauliflower-eared guard smashed it under foot.

That was the least of her immediate problems. She was thrown into a holding room that rivaled the worst days of the old På-Täppan pile. She managed to stay atop the heap of people, which was so thick and unstable that she couldn't stand upright. All she could do was crawl cautiously over the mess of sweaty limbs, bleeding sticky prisoners, and shreds of prison clothing. Her own was in tatters within seconds; both sleeves and a pant leg were torn off by hands reaching for anything they could grip to pull themselves out of the mess. When they caught her flesh she twisted them off or bit them off. She had to lessen the number of oncoming attacks. One corner of the room had people piled so high they nearly reached the ceiling. She headed for it.

The instant she secured her penthouse, she began to plot escape. The ventilation shafts were unsuitable, as there were none. The heat was so intense and the air was so foul that she estimated less than an hour before she would succumb to the conditions and would be rendered unconscious or insane, as seemed the symptoms. Her first priority was defense. She elected to make a shiv. After fending off several attacks from her inmates, she took the time to break one of their legs more thoroughly than usual. She snapped his femur with force in the right direction to leave a sharp, jagged edge. The terrible sound kept attackers at bay for a time. She estimated the direction of the internal
blade and sawed it free to create an opening, then reached into the
wound and began cutting through the connective tissue of the hip with her fingernails.

No sooner did she have the bone knife in her hand and ready to go than the crowd crouched still, staring at just about the most disturbing thing most of the pickpockets and petty thieves had ever seen. Mishka had to smile with the knowledge that the creation of her weapon was a deterrent so strong she might never need to use it. Now her mind was free to contemplate an exit. The only one she could see was the way she came in. She worked her way across the man-pile to the trap door through which prisoners were dropped. It was within reach but flush sealed to the ceiling. So she waited. In only seven minutes, it opened to expel a bruised, beaten mess of a woman. Mishka used her as a step to the door, leaving her to presumably worse uses by others.

Microwave fire began the instant Mishka caught hold of the floor above. She took two stun rays to the wrist, losing her femur shiv as the door closed. She expected the crowd to attack her as she fell, but found them all keeping their distance, well aware that she might want to make another blade. Just then a valve on the south wall opened and a heap of humanity poured out into the adjacent ventricle. Mishka leaped and made sure that she was among them. The new room was bigger and smellier, though it had a floor instead of a pile. A sorting area where newcomers were forced by guards into whatever ring of hell came next. It contained men who hadn't seen her weapon-forging techniques, so as soon as she spotted a guard, she ran for him. In seconds she had cracked his armor like a crab shell. In seconds more she had his doleo and used it to send waves of pain through the other inmates who grabbed for it.

Having quickly mastered the new room, she hunted for an exit. This room had the same rotten walls as the last but no people-heap. The bases of some walls had serious decay. She was looking for something to widen the cracks when a three-meter-tall humanoid stomped up to her. She had fought enlarged gang members back with Valhalla, men who had every bone lengthened and every muscle bloated to provide a fearful visage to their enemies. It had worked so far for this man; he was still alive. But Mishka had seen the schematics. A solid surgery could strengthen a person if it added a decimeter to his height, but this oncoming thing must have added a meter and change. His bones were longer, but they were weaker. He bared his sharp black teeth as he prepared to grab her with a hand that could fit fully around her waist. She didn't even think of using the doleo as a simple baton to cause pain. She had to get to the wall over lines of cowering prisoners and oncoming guards. She extended the doleo to its full length and ran for Gargantua, forcing the doleo into his mouth to the back of his throat, putting him down to serve as her pole vault box. She flew over him into the wall with enough force to put a deep dent between two of the worst rotting breaches.

She felt cool air from the outdoors. So did others. Mishka elected to stand back as they started beating down the wall, savagely attacking their only hope of escape. Every guard left in the room was on her, and in numbers their armor would be harder to crack. She broke the doleo in half, knowing the inside of a doleo contains a powerful burst-discharge battery. Keeping the other guards at bay with a barrage of strikes, she tore the coating off the battery and threw it to the floor, then flipped one of the guards down and crushed the battery. The discharge nearly vaporized him within his metal armor. Bolts struck the other guards and knocked them unconscious.

Prisoners had since worked the wall loose and began to pour out. The first twenty men had been microwaved by outdoor guards. Another twenty still fled the heat and decay of the indoors before the crowd began to understand that death waited outside. Once they were finished dying, Mishka made her move. Shaking the powdered guard from his armor, she donned the hot metal and ran for freedom. It began to grow hotter as soon as she was outside, hit by microwave beams. She'd hoped to pass for a guard, but they either didn't buy it or didn't care. They were roasting anything that emerged.

The situation was difficult. Ten guards running at her on the ground. Ten more firing at her from walls and towers. Thirty corpses around her. Armor keeping the beams off but heating up badly. It would knock her out in under a minute. She burrowed quickly under the thickest concentration of bodies and forced the armor off herself. Microwaves were still hitting the body pile above her. Some were starting to burn. Luckily the ground guards were almost there. She heard shouting, and the microwaves ceased. Soon after, the corpse atop Mishka began to move. They were pulling it away.

Mishka rolled limply to get a view of the guard that was prodding the bodies. He was careless. She sprang and seized his microwave, then used its stock to knock off his helmet. He turned away but exposed his familiarly deformed, bloated ear. She shot through the front of his temple to blind him, and he dropped. Others were coming. She took cover within the bodies as guards opened fire again. She surveyed the weapon; it only had stun, burn, and dig functions. Dig would have to do. She fired at the fattest corpse in the pile and waited for fire to cease
again. It ceased after only thirty seconds. Then she felt the guards
prying again. They'd be more cautious this time. Using the guards' motions as cover, she worked her way into the hollow man. If he stayed facedown she could stay hidden. He stayed facedown.

Minutes later the guards had the situation under control. Mishka prayed they would skimp on proper investigation and cleanup. She waited almost twenty minutes, but nobody touched her makeshift tauntaun. She could just make out a hand grab the microwave she discarded. Her prayers were answered when she heard the bulldozer. She wasn't able to hold on to her cover for long as the bodies rolled, but she didn't need to; nobody was watching anymore. They pushed the pile straight into the Hugli River.

Once underwater, more accurately under sewage, she swam fast for the opposite bank, where only a razor-wire fence blocked the bank.
Halfway across she emerged from the prison's link jam and ads flooded in. Behind the fence was a market. She cautiously surfaced and scanned for guards. None on this side, none watching from the other. All busy sealing the hole or dumping another dozer-load of bodies. She emerged from the river and spat out the foul slime that had seeped into her mouth, then climbed the razor wire. Climbing the stuff was never her forte in training, and her palms paid the price, but injury training was one of her best subjects. She topped the fence and dropped into the m
arket.

She had three priorities: number three, find a new eye; number two, find her tank; but number one was something she could do immediately. She had to. With great urgency she scanned the signs and link labels of the market and found her destination. After her stay in the prison and swim through the sewage, she had little time. She ran, pushing aside anyone in her way, throwing the door open so hard it snapped a hinge. She jumped over the counter and grabbed a clerk by his collar. Customers ran, the clerk cowered in fear. He could see Mishka was desperate, ravenous, and homicidal.

“Please,” he begged. “Anything you want! I'll give you anything!”

“Hand sanitizer!” she demanded. “Alcohol gel, antiseptic alcohol gel! Now!”

With her wounds clean and stinging, she broke open the store's first aid kit and regrew all but one cut in her skin. She stuffed the dermal regenerator in the elastic of her waistband. She ran back outside and quickly hid in an alley—the market was swarming with Bharatiya Sthalsena. She ducked into a weak crate and killed the man sleeping inside, then headed online.

She hacked the Bharatiya Sthalsena net in seconds. It showed every soldier on the streets. None were coming for her. Only a few were following search protocols. To the side of the operations files, she found records. Impounds. Impound lots. HRDC lots, HRDC unconventional vehicles. One listing for a four-legged tank. HRDC lot address—only three kilometers away. Back to the street ops pages. Personnel on duty. Bharatiya Sthalsena soldiers by height. Female. 1.87 meters. Hugli River Marketplace. One: Sanchita Patel. Highlighted, two blocks north, one block east.

Mishka sprang from her box and found her quarry. With the element of surprise, it was an easy takedown. Her uniform was a perfect fit, and her army ID chip was poorly implanted, easy to cut out of her palm. It didn't even have a removal detector. Mishka walked toward the impound lot and hacked back onto the authority net. The HRDC lot site had the easiest security yet. She created a new log: Sanchita Patel authorized to pick up white quadrupedal tank impounded four days prior. All too easy. As she approached the lot, she stuffed Sanchita's chip into her palm and hastily healed the last bit of skin. One handshake and her tank was hers.

Such as it was. Her quadrupedal tank now had three legs. She demanded an explanation. The HDRC guard shrugged. Who the hell would take one leg off a tank? She stormed across the lot looking for the missing limb. Nothing. When she came back to the guard, she seized him by the throat.

“That tank had four legs!” She checked the net logs. “It had four when it got here! You're responsible for this lot?”