Ragnarok (8 page)

A large obelisk in the room, black and glowing green at its seams, held the wealth of the YUP. From the obelisk alone, their funds were monitored, sold, bought, and held. Standard topside company business. No link could penetrate the obelisk, nor could any bank or police force freeze their holdings. Only three men in the world had access to the wealth within. Jabir Al-Himyari, Harun bin Nusair, and Steve Al-Sulayhi, Chief of Finances. Steve's head was in the hands of Captain Crockeri. Crockeri had proven herself in every single battle she fought against the Yuppie navy, and her place beside Pelamus was more than well earned. So she had the honor of hardwiring Al-Sulayhi's head into the obelisk, unlocking it, and then letting the head die while in its mechanical embrace.

As it registered his death, the obelisk began hunting for the CEO to input the new financial officer. As he was dead as well, it kept looking. Pelamus was careful to slaughter every employee in line, all the way down to Ellessey MacReedy, the spy who had informed Pelamus of the financial mainframe's order of succession. The human, traitor to his species, would be well rewarded by theirs. Having betrayed the YUP out of love for a Cetacean woman, he would soon be granted gills and fins and brand new eyes, the great vibrant eyes of a sea-dweller to replace the beady little lifeless orbs from which humans saw the world. And he would happily lose his link as well. Cetaceans in general had little need of the computer world. It was vulgar, ugly, and constant. Ellessey wouldn't miss it. He only needed it for a few more minutes.

Unaffected by the heads at his feet, he logged in and accepted leadership of the YUP, such as it was. Pelamus had truly wrecked the company, stealing their fleets, their resources, and killing a tenth of their worldwide employees. Before the end they were begging for bailouts. In Cetacean terms they were scaled, gutted, and undercooked. So thoroughly had the piratical rampage destroyed the company that what Ellessey would transfer to Pluturus from the obelisk was less than a third of what he had taken already. But it completed the hostile takeover, and when it was done, Pelamus was the richest Cetacean on Earth. His fleet was still the second strongest Cetacean navy. The Valkohai were technically stronger, but a military ruled by pacifists, never to see a fight, could hardly be considered a fighting force. Even among Cetaceans there were doubts that the fleet existed at all. In any case they would never fight with Pelamus. They were a defensive body. Cetaceans, until Pelamus, had no true offensive force.

And what to do with it now that he had one? Pelamus and his crew walked quietly from the blood soaked office. He walked with confidence that nobody would pester him, no employee alive would dare, no land cops would know of the massacre for quite some time, and even if they did, it would be a local police department against the joined militaries of the former YUP and of the greatest pirate ever to live. Pelamus was confident, and for his confidence, all the more barren of aspirations. The lack of an immediate need was haunting. Sickening. By the time Pelamus reached the hatch to his flagship, he was deep in thought, trying to recall his youthful dreams.

First as a guppy, he wanted to visit Atlantis. Then, as he grew older, he wanted to meet Poseidon and Neptune. Eventually his father took him on a package trip to Atlantis and let him shake the fins of furry costumed actors playing each god. Now he mused, he had such plunder that he could retire into a trough of his own, buy most of the Pacific, buy Atlantis, and hire Neptune as his personal fry cook. He laughed. His more serious dreams, he recalled, were those inspired by the books he read after school. Those in his grandfather's mildewed library. When he set out under Jolly Roger, he donated them all to the library in the bay by Alexandria, and it was there he set his course.

The great fleet headed northwest toward the Kemet Nile. Pelamus headed to the berth deck for a walk. On the bulkheads were more reminders of his youth. Wood carvings along every surface and stanchion depicting his grandfather's exploits. The founding of the Ionian Colony, carved by Breluga the Elder in 2191. The defense of Patmos, 2192 by Vermircelus. It was Pelamus's favorite as a tadpole because of the guts on top of the pile of gold. The first gill implantation unassisted by land robotics, carved by Breluga in 2197, his last work before he died. Shot to death while visiting a land museum displaying his works, shot eight times, then stabbed in the chest with one knife and beheaded by another. By humans. The damned filth, the apes from which Pelamus was ashamed to have evolved.

He stewed and mused about the state of land races as they passed the Suez gates, which Pelamus was amused to know he now owned. His mind passed from fantasies of revenge to fantasies of superiority, and even, for a moment, of equality. His father once said that peace was no fantasy. That Cetacea could live in harmony, even in trade with the land. Unlikely, Pelamus snorted. But then he came to the very last carving. Untitled, carved by a convert from the far north in 2204. Pelamus had seen the man. He was still mostly man when he made the thing. He died a Cetacean a few years later. Nuala had been at his funeral where he was sent into the darkest deep. But his carving depicted what he claimed to be “An accident waiting to happen.” A disaster for men but, the artist bragged, a Cetacean dream come true.

His father didn't want him to hear just what, and the artist never explained. Pelamus had to guess. He stared at the carving for hours, as he had done when he was young. The curves and pits warmed his fingers, and he ran them over the smooth dark wood. As a child he was fascinated by the strange land formations. Jagged rocks around a deep ravine. The ravine was filled with buildings, land buildings. Ugly boxes like they loved to build. And in the center was a giant tree. Too big to be real, reaching up all the way to the sky, which held two moons and no sun. Every carving in the boat had a sun and a moon, save for this. Two moons. And the narrative pieces: Water flooding in from the ravine's edge. Fire leaping up from the boxy structures. And one Cetacean man, one who looked remarkably as Pelamus would come to look, holding a trident up with one hand, catching a drop of water in the other. A mystery.

After docking at the library, Pelamus went straight for the art section. He studied the symbolism of every carving done undersea. Within an hour he understood the two moons—night without day. That meant the location was either far north or far south. In two hours he was buried in a pile of literature on the history of the arctic circles. By nightfall he was studying geographic records of pits and canyons. A week passed before he discovered a science journal that shattered the mystery. In reading a one-page update on an obscure experiment that failed miserably, Pelamus became a believer in his father's peace. And he had a purpose in life greater than any pirate had before him. He was to be the messiah of the seas, or the harbinger of the next deluge.

The road ahead, he knew, would be difficult. He broke down his mission into outlines within outlines, goals to reach goals to reach goals. He consulted his captains and some scholars of the library. He sent for humans to scour the nets. He would need humans. Cetaceans, for all their enhancements, were only at their best in water. And half the key to peace was very far from the sea. Half of the key was in a place lacking not only water but proper air. A place so far away it cost a life's fortune for every kilogram sent, and the key hidden there was listed as weighing 250,000 kilograms.

But that meant money and work, and nothing else. Pelamus had more than enough in the bank. The other half of the key was that ravine. No science journal even hinted at where it was. It had been top secret when it began and was a closer kept secret now. There was only one lead in fact, one left by the absolute destruction of every other. Though the science journals offered no clues, a paper record in the pits of the library held accounts of financial transactions for the Ares Company, mentioned only once in the journal as the company responsible for the ravine. On page 1902, a mildewed and decrepit page, was the listing for payments on the delivery of several million euros of parts to…. Redacted.

Of all his time in the library, Pelamus had never seen a censored word. Censored in bonding grease marker, and that meant it was censored while at the library, or at least after the volume headed underside. He marched to the eldest librarian present in the hopes he might remember something, anything about the desecration which could cost Cetacea everything. Pelamus and the seas were in luck.

“They gave no names. Just four humans who wanted to look through our collection,” said Dewey Otlet Putnam LaFontaine the Fourth. Not only the eldest librarian but the eldest Fish in Abu Qir colony.

“Anything you remember will help, no matter how—”

“Little? Child, I'm senile as silt. I remember their shiny suits, I remember the books they wanted, I remember why they wanted them, and I remember what I bought with the gold they handed me.”

“Gold?”

“They paid me off, son. There was something dangerous in our books, something that could get them all killed. Now I was appalled at the thought of censorship. If they asked to take a line from Twain or a word from Shakespeare, I'd have kicked them out then and there. But they found their books and gave me a corvette's worth of solid gold to take out a few spots in a tax log, a company financial serial from the last century, and a science magazine we threw out a decade ago. Hell yes, I took the money.”

“Do you remember what they crossed out?”

“Son, they paid me another corvette not to ask.”

“What do you remember about them? Do you know where they were from?”

“The two that spoke most had Norsky accents. Maybe Sversky. 'Nother said a little, Elline. They didn't let on much, but you know who did? The fella looking for 'em. Unspeakable Darkness fella, you know them?”

Pelamus nodded.

“Well, they wanted to know the same damn thing, and they didn't have a lick of gold, so they left empty. But they did know
who
they were looking for, just not where.”

“Who were they?”

“Hall o' the Slain. And boy, there's two times you hear that name down here. Kids who want a horror story and scarred old pirates like you. Pirates who know that the name means Davy Jones. Pirates who know not to chase whales and pirates who know when to leave well enough alone.” He leaned toward Pelamus. “And I know you ain't not none of them.”

Pelamus headed back to his ship with his mind racing. He had heard the name before on two occasions. A survivor privateer whose ship was blown out of the water and a survivor privateer who died with the name on his lips. Neither reliable. As the name was all but a myth, they likely attributed it out of fear for whatever really attacked them. But he was in a library and he had a name to look up. So there he stayed for another month as his crew sought out to hire humans to do the parts they needed humans to do. And Pelamus studied. He studied on and on, day after day and found only enticing snips and quips about the most severe of rumored bodies. In all the time he studied, he became certain of only two things.

First, that whatever else was false, the Hall of the Slain was real, and it owned that ravine. Second, that the Hall of the Slain was full of humans. Humans make mistakes, so the great fearsome Hall of the Slain would too. And if it took a hundred years, he would catch them when they did. The instant they set foot on dangerous ground, he would be there to take them.

 

 

V
TEAM
set foot on the Nikkei without Alopex's protection. All they had of Alopex were a few security programs, which they stuffed into the net partitions of their brains before heading south. A Valkyrie's net partition is already an arsenal of fatal coding attacks, immune software, spyware, ad blocking protocols, hacking systems, and defensive mechanisms ranging from common virus scanners to a last case amputation battery, which could cut off the part of the brain interfacing with one's antenna. Such a battery would render the user unable to link to the net or Tikari forever. They would lose that sacred insect, that body part that made them a Valkyrie, but it might save their life. If all else failed, they could always call for Alopex, but that would alert C team, who they'd taken great care not to alert.

That was why they waited nearly a month after their last run-in with C, running plain dull missions to save plain dull lives and plain dull companies until Churro's eyes found other problems to spy and the stink of Cato's breath was a distant memory. Despite worrying about C team for an entire month, they still lacked a C name for the project. Violet had no ideas. Vibeke's were all deemed by Veikko to be too dull, whose own were deemed by all to be too obscene. Varg's was the front-runner for a time until the others looked up what it meant. Its cancellation was a sad loss as the word really rolled off the tongue.

When the time finally came, they logged in from AleGel. Valhalla had “aggressively disassembled” the company several years prior to V team's beginnings and kept its contents on hand for various mission purposes. Their old office buildings in Norge and Empresargentina often came in handy for luring targets into false organizations; their fleet of limopogos was frequently called in for travel requiring some degree of class (and as often for Valkyrie nights out); and their website proved an invaluable asset for excursions into the net that were expected or required to be traced. V's first step was to hardwire in to the Tromsø office netscape and repeat the words “Black Crag” over and over until they were certain that C team didn't monitor the AleGel server.

Tiwaz team was more than happy to watch C from back in the ravine, one Tikari per member. V's own Tikaris were all safely chested with their AIs online, so the team appeared to be eight rather than four. As Valknut wired in to the AleGel net, T reported that Cato was busily hacking a Zolfo isotope shipping satellite, Churro and Claire were asleep offline, and Cassandra was a potential threat as she was looking over V team's psychological data. According to Toshiro, she had linked to her team some time earlier to explain that she expected V to do exactly what they were doing. Churro had fortunately believed V team's assertion that they were linking out of Alopex and heading south to look into illegal port mods in Ersfjordbotn. Cato backed him up over Cassandra, certain that his fearsome display would deter the team and set them straight.