Gudsriki (19 page)

She kept the recoil thruster off, allowing the force to sling her backward. She darted without looking through lines of armored soldiers, firing clip after clip of expansion rounds through every surface that protected them, annihilating them from the inside out.

She was quickly out of expansion rounds and still outside the perimeter. It was too tall to jump and built for artillery assault. But its inflation girders weren't. Only thin enough for a single person to squeeze through, they could afford to be lost in an assault from a massive force. But for one person….

She targeted them with her Talley cannon and launched its barrels. Each sprung its fins and spat out fuel, rocketing into the girders. All six hit, annihilating the nearest inflation girder and opening a hole into the fort.

On its opposite side, soldiers took up positions above and to its edges, ready to unleash field piercing fléchettes into the girl that came through. Vibeke didn't even need to consider it; she knew they would. She unlocked the last parts of the Talley cannon and tossed half of the weapon into her other hand, deploying its last barrels and loading its last conventional rounds. As she slid through the girders, she fired all around her, blowing through the backs of every trapping soldier.

More beams hit, more rounds sucked the heat out of her. Tikaris hit the nearest of their sources. She pulled her microwaves to take care of the rest. She slid toward the medical tent, taking intense fire, returning precision bursts, killing by tens. Vibeke sped up, pushing the foot fields so hard they caught on fire.

She flipped and ducked past line after line, hurling explosives and microwave fire in her wake. The berserk Tikaris slashed through dozens. Her fire burned through dozens more. The explosives sent half a hundred to their graves and wrecked half the armored force the base could deploy. But Vibeke knew the base would have tougher things coming for her soon. She ignored the last survivors and headed for the medical tent.

Its field hit hers as she entered and shocked her within a heartbeat of unconsciousness, but she made it through. Frozen and in pain she passed the triage stage and slipped into the back of the tent, spotting the growth chamber. It was the size and shape of a coffin. Soldiers inside the tent opened fire on her. Tikaris flew through their necks.

She crashed into the chamber and immediately slid her capes underneath it. She turned them on and the coffin lifted onto her back, almost weightless. She ran from the tent.

Beams and bullets hit her again as she left the tent. She ignored the barrage and headed for the open girder. She found it packed with seven soldiers, all firing cutter rifles into her field. She drew her microwaves just in time to distort them. She didn't bother to kill them; she jumped over them, the repulse fields smashing them down into the tarmac as though they'd been crushed by the chamber. She was outside, her pogo in sight.

It was surrounded by more soldiers. Every one of them already firing, draining the last few sparks of energy from inside her. Absolute zero was only seconds away. She drew a remote from her clingers and triggered the thermite she'd deposited over the pogo's power source. The pogo exploded, killing all the men who had covered it, raining limbs down on her as she skated from the blast.

As she ran the smoke above the burst pogo curled and twisted. She saw it from the corner of her eye, the telltale air currents of a double variable blade craft. A panzercopter emerged and opened fire on her with two guns, two beams, two missile carriages, and two lightning coils.

She thought of Violet's shards, the remains of her body scattered. She was to join her in the same manner of death. Her field hit its last absorption protocols and sent its tendrils into her to suck the last joule from inside. She didn't let them in. She linked the armor to turn off the field just before she went too brittle to run. For a moment she was exposed to every scrap of metal and power the panzercopter threw at her. She saw the blood erupt from her chest and felt fire in her neck. Her body could take only a fraction of a second of that barrage. Her suit caught kilograms of metal and the repulse capes took down more. The lightning hit her full force exactly as she hoped. Her armor held the charge. Her field came back up, and the burst lit her pleasantly on fire, warming her quickly.

She kept her field air impermeable and fell into a vacuum, extinguishing the flames. The smoke around her cleared to reveal the second panzercopter coming up from the pit beside her, taking off to hunt her with a massive Oerlikon positioned out of its open side. As soon as she saw the rotors, she jumped and angled the massive growth chamber so as to slide under its blade beams, slipping off its top and swinging into the open cabin, kicking the gunner out the other side. A double kick knocked the pilot and copilot out of the craft.

She dropped the capes and let the chamber fall into the corner of the copter's front section. She pushed the controls into full force away from the base. The panzercopter leaned forward, its rotors like a propeller flying straight sideways. She jumped over the chamber as it slid down into the open side, knocking the Oerlikon out into the ocean below. It caught the sides and wedged itself in place. She jumped onto it and linked into her Tikari.

Both Tiks were right behind her. She sent hers into rocket mode and heated it to its maximum. Violet's Tikari took the cue and did the same. She sent them to work cutting into the firewall of her own copter.

The other held fire on her, unleashing hell but having little effect on its evenly matched sibling craft. Vibeke didn't bother with the controls. She aimed her microwave at the chamber as the repulse capes fell away and blew out to sea. She welded its corners to the panzercopter interior, securing it moments before it fell.

The Tikaris kept cutting.

Vibeke set the Kraken system. She didn't let it scan the other copter. She set it to destroy nothing but air. The other panzercopter was narrowing the gap. It was headed for her full force. Exactly what she needed it to do. She hit the Kraken, emitting a massive glowing cloud, as much air as the system could destroy. She pulled back on the manual controls to bring her panzercopter to a halt.

The Tikaris ceased their work and flew behind her.

She dropped a contact grenade into the firewall and pushed the manual controls upward.

The charge blew. Her panzercopter broke in half, its cockpit flying straight up without its rear half, chamber welded safely to its armor.

The pursuing craft flew into the cloud and slammed full force into the former back half of her copter, bursting into flames and hurtling down into the water.

Vibeke calmly sat down and pushed the controls toward Orkney.

At 1630 sharp, the directive to capture Vibeke at all costs reached the base on Unst. Nobody was alive to read it.

She set down outside the tomb and unwelded the chamber. She walked toward the tomb's opening. Dr. Niide walked toward her angrily, seeing what she'd brought. He was about to tell her off when she grabbed one of her microwaves and shoved it down his throat.

“
You're gonna build her and start her and use her fucking heart because if you say one more thing to make me change my mind, I'll fry your goddamn fucking larynx out and eat it for fucking dinner, you motherfucker!
”

Niide nodded and backed away from her. Vibeke breathed hard.

“First let me treat you,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Your wounds. Let me treat you first.”

She looked at her body up and down to her feet. She had eighteen projectile holes, sixteen deep microwave burns, frostbite over 39 percent of her body, three broken bones, seven fractured, more cuts than she could count, and blood loss that should have had her in a coma.

“Sure,” she said as she walked, powered solely on epinephrine, to Niide's bay.

 

 

C
HARLES
S
TAFFORD
Darger was born in 2208. His parents died soon after. Raised by the state, he was indoctrinated from an early age to think he wanted to work for the state in some capacity, being somewhat unaware of anything outside of its employ.

The notion of working for any company smaller than a country—and, of course, it had to be his own country—was unappealing. Small companies were impotent, quibbling organizations. Subject to takeover, subject to orders from their superior bodies. No, the only companies that interested him in the least were the UKI, its owner B&L, and its owner GAUNE, which nobody owned. It was too big to own.

He applied for the armed services. He ranked highly, and UKI bought him immediately. He was trained by the UOTC in Sandhurst and released into the field as a second lieutenant, which he would stay for quite some time given that the world was at peace.

He didn't mind the lack of potential for promotion. He was a cog in the great system. He could trace his chain of command directly to the CEOs of GAUNE in only twenty-six steps.

He marked flawlessly on every maneuver. By all his subordinates he was rated as the finest commanding officer they ever had. By all accounts he was simply flawless, if nothing particularly special beyond it.

Where he truly excelled was at home. With his family he spent every second off duty finding ways to make their lives a little piece of heaven. It began with roses for his wife and toys for his daughter, but the pleasure of such things was so fulfilling for him that he constantly sought to outdo himself. He took them on trips to Kalaallit Nunaat and Sudamerica, which his daughter was far too young to appreciate. He bought them absolutely anything they could express a desire for, and he thought by every possible measure he was doing everything right.

His wife thought so too, but that didn't stop her from meeting Jody Jocelyn or finding his stunning looks superior to Darger's, nor from thinking he'd be a better father, though Darger, in his many hours thinking about the disaster, couldn't fathom what he'd done wrong. The few times he'd seen them together, he felt Jody was unkind to her, even abusive in his candor.

But in the end he simply had no choice nor say in the matter. He'd done all he could as a father, and the only way he could get his young wife and daughter back would be to step over the proper boundaries. He didn't consider that for a second. But his attitude suffered, and though he never let it manifest among his men, he found himself oddly happy when the nukes began to fall.

He never looked up what became of his former family, never learned they'd been vaporized. He never had time. The world was at war, and Darger was suddenly a very necessary cog in the system. He threw himself into his work and before long found himself on the front line in Orkney.

 

 

V
IBEKE
CAME
to, fixed as much as Niide could with his available tools.

“Now we make a new Violet,” she demanded.

“I don't have the materials you wanted.”

Vibeke looked around. The heart was missing from the stasis field.

“Where's her heart?”

“I've used it.”

“Used it for what?”

“Nothing that concerns you. Doctor patient confi—”

“Used it for what?” she demanded. Nelson buzzed on her shoulder.

“I gave it to someone who needed it. A soldier.”

“You transplanted her heart?”

“Hearts do not grow on trees! I had a heart, and I had a soldier that needed one. He'd been shot through his. Now he has Violet's. It's over. It's done.”

“The hell it is.” She stormed out.

Niide called after her, “What the hell are you doing?”

“I'm getting my heart back,” she said.

 

 

A
T
FIRST
it was all about raids. Darger took his platoon out in their pogo on Ulver's outlying bases. It was on such a raid that Darger killed for the first time, or ordered men killed at the least.

Pogo warfare was hardly personal. He saw the microwaves connect but not the results. He still felt it. The strange notion that he was killing people. UNEGA people, formerly at least, but people nonetheless. But he knew Ulver was dangerous, one of the postnuclear companies that had cropped up with a will to take over the globe and put it under who knows what kind of spell.

All Darger's raids were successful in the extreme. No men lost. Four bases of operations seized or destroyed. Only one pogo damaged and easily repaired upon its return.

But the raids didn't last. Ulver moved in with former YUP fleet ships and before long, Orkney was under siege. Darger didn't take to defense as well as he had the raids. He and his men could only sit there and wait for the oncoming packs of Wolves. The waiting was terrible, nerve-racking. And it inevitably exploded into an assault. Artillery fire at first, useless against their shields, but it seemed a proper overture that still had to be observed. But then the men came.

Killing Wolves up close was very different. Darger could smell their flesh burn. It smelled sickeningly good, almost like proper cooking. He didn't let the psychology of it faze him. He made his orders, and he kept his men alive. Most of them.

The first he lost was Mika Nibal. He'd gotten to know her well since her transfer into his platoon. She wasn't a career soldier. She intended to work in weapons engineering and was only there for her field internship when the war began and she had to fight. She'd massacred Wolves from the pogo, incredibly skilled at targeting. And Darger saw her cut in half by a rifle while she was under his command.

Then it was Ulf Randay and Laylah Abdullah. Dead. And he couldn't do anything for them. His friends were dying and all he could do was keep fighting. Keep defending.

Intel said there was only one more wave coming in the latest assault. He could hold out; his platoon was in a fairly safe crevice with a good angle for killing any Wolves that passed their mark. But the Wolves were catching on. They knew what was there. They lobbed grenade after grenade into the crevice, and Darger was the first to send up an ablative field. He saved them all, as he had many times. But with his microwave aimed for the sky, he had no defense against the riflemen that came around the bend.