Ragnarok 03 - Resonance (3 page)

FOUR

EARTH, 778 AD

The people in the village were targets, nothing else. The raid itself, however, was more than a day in the life of a reaver band: it was Fenrisulfr's first test as battle chief. The prior training, led by him, had been subtle: drilling the fighters in slipping techniques as well as sprinting onslaughts, using individual combat as a metaphor for manoeuvring the entire band. They had taken to it only because of Fenrisulfr's own ferocity, and the
berserkergangr
lying just beneath the surface of his every movement, every twitch.

They were no strangers to warrior madness, his reavers; but they had known no one who could enter and leave that raging state as a matter of conscious will. It was why they approached him always with respect and care, knowing that only his war-hound, the ever-faithful Brandr, was allowed close without qualification.

And so, the village.

Understand them as humans, so you know their weaknesses; and as they are distracted by the everyday concerns of work, acknowledge they are simply
things
with vulnerabilities and openings you have identified, because now is the time to act, so form the wolf's-head hand shape and make the cutting gesture –
now!
– as you pull your weapons free of the ragged cloak that hid them because this is it, the battle and frightening confusion, the stink and the rage, the slippery greyish guts sliding out of meat –
there
– the slickness and stickiness of blood, warm as it coats your skin, alters the way you grip your sword-hilt, as if that mattered when all around is chaos and red rage as your vision narrows, and the screams are distant
whispers because that is what happens in battle – the howling world grows quiet – and the scheming part of you approves of the vanguard –
run, my fighters
– of the
berserker
fighters sprinting uphill, uncaring of the difficulty, using the effort to push their bodies further into warrior insanity; while the others take down the fighting villagers like two wedges inserted from the sides before all tactics are forgotten because you are in the midst of it yourself and there is only room for this:

The rage.

For Eira
.

They took her,
it
took her, the deadly Norns or the Middle World itself, and this is your response: to kill them all.

And you're deep among them now, whirling and lunging, your victims' limbs and torsos slippery with the fluids of war, with blood and sweat and worse, but your hands are raging claws so you grab and twist, smash a hilt into that face, slam an elbow down –
got it
– to the back of a neck, tear them off balance by the nose and eyes, knee into liver, and a warhammer is yours for the grabbing and three skulls – four – are crushed beneath your blows before the weight of numbers tangles you up so you drive the handle into a larynx, use hooked thumbs to rip outwards from an enemy's nose –
lovely
– taking both eyes, then elbows and teeth are your weapons in a maelstrom of moving weight –
hit me harder
– of impact –
harder, you weaklings
– where vision counts for little and feeling is everything while the spirit drives the fight because you will never, ever give up until they're—

Breaking free, breathing hard.

—dead, because you've done it: see that, the slumped pile behind you, tangled corpses and the flailing of the dying; and their squeals grow louder as hearing returns because you are sloughing off
berserkergangr
as if it were a handy cloak to be donned and shed at will. Your own warriors are staring because they have seen the wolf and it is you.

Yes!

These are your reavers, these haters and lovers of the blade,
and you snarl with salt blood in your mouth, because this is victory that burns, howling, inside you.

YES!

Now they will follow you for sure.

Across the sea, on an island linked by a causeway to the greater land, a different form of agony falls upon the pain-filled, one-eyed man called Stígr where he thrashes on a wooden cot, contained in a coating of sweat, scarcely aware of the tightness of bandages or the poultice-stink. Neither his wounds nor his memories of evil – of all the filth the darkness has caused him to perform since his limb-tearing crucifixion and the rape of his soul – torture him the most. Something far worse is hurting him now.

It is the gentleness of the monks' hands as they tend to him, and the peacefulness of their spirits, that make him weep and groan.

FIVE

MU-SPACE, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

It calmed every Pilot, this golden void of mu-space, or so the theory went. But Piet Gunnarsson, his mood matched by that of his ship, was restless in what should have been a sleep period, drifting near a crimson nebula whose thousand subtle hues were worthy of meditation and artistic awe in their own right. He had screwed up twice in a matter of subjective weeks, and it haunted him.

Most recently, as part of the squadron keeping distant watch on Fulgor, he had allowed a ship to slip past because it was heading
towards
the hellworld, not launching from it, and because its Pilot was Admiral Schenck. Call it respect for authority, from someone trying to make amends. Except, except. . .

It turned out that, if Piet had obeyed protocol and signalled his fellow Pilots to check the situation, instead of just accepting the admiral's genuine credentials, he would have found that Schenck was a creature of corruption – whose exact relationship to the Anomaly enveloping Fulgor was not clear to Piet – and capturing him would have been a triumph.

Several tendays before that, through simple self-absorption in his own troubles, Piet had ignored a distant fleet of Pilot vessels heading for Fulgor, thereby missing the opportunity to help rescue some of those poor people now merged into the Anomaly.

Two personal failures later, and here he was, still tasked with keeping a distant eye on Fulgor, remaining in position when the rest of the watch-squadron besides Alice, currently in command in realspace, had flown home to Labyrinth, and a fresh squadron – two wings, each fourteen strong – took
their place. At any time, half were in realspace on watch, and half were in mu-space, as Piet was now, theoretically resting.

The other ships and Pilots appeared to have no difficulty with the concept, as they drifted here, quiescent. But Piet's thoughts roiled, imagining Alice – why exactly
had
she stayed? – and the others on watch in realspace, some hundred kilometres from the surface of the hellworld: far enough away to prevent the Anomaly from reaching through the realspace hyperdimensions to absorb them, or so the Admiralty analysts believed.

The watchers' brief was to destroy any small craft that lifted from the surface, or flee before a larger fleet, because no one knew how long the global mind would remain satisfied with living on a single planetary surface. Perhaps it would take a thousand or a million years for the urge to spread to manifest; or perhaps it was already preparing to launch.

**Anyone else picking up movement?**

The signal was from Jakob, on the other side of the nebula.

**Not me.**

Movement in mu-space? There was no reason for anyone else to be here.

**Me neither.**

Negative replies came from everyone but Piet, who was immersing himself in long-range sensitivity, listening, at one with his beautiful ship as he-and-she cranked up maximum gain, alert for the tiniest pulse of mu-space energies that had no realspace names; and after a moment they found something.

This is it
.

With luck this could be salvation, a resurrection of pride, and – dare he think it? – perhaps a reason for Alice to take an interest in him the way he hoped.

Even as Piet-and-ship flew towards the disturbance, the nature of the approaching craft remained questionable, right up to the moment it came within viewing distance (via the tunnelling of impacted fractal-vector quasi-bosons through the ship's protective membrane, no photons involved). Then
it was too late to call the others, because ship-and-Piet had insufficiently accurate bearings, in this choppy region, to send tightbeam signals.

We have to do something
.

Ship-and-Piet could blast out a wider broadcast, but the approaching ship would sense the transmission, just as clearly as Piet's fellow Pilots would. If they remained quiescent, however, the newcomer might draw close without realising anyone was here.

Because this was a Zajinet vessel, no Pilot ship, and the aliens' major weapon systems appeared to be powered down – but that was no guarantee because some energies could be loosed with almost no warning. The one certain way to destroy the bastards was before they saw you.

Then a signal from Jakob sounded loud.

**What is your purpose, Zajinets? Know that the realspace-tan-gential planet is maximally dangerous.**

So Jakob was trying to warn them about Fulgor. All very well, if you assumed the Zajinets were not on the Anomaly's side; but after four centuries of contact, was there a single Pilot or ordinary human who could claim to truly understand even the simplest Zajinet communication? Never mind their hidden motives and political manoeuvring.

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With no change in trajectory, the Zajinet vessel continued to draw near. Piet-and-ship remained the closest among the Pilot squadron, which meant they would be first to die; and how else could you analyse the situation?

**Stay back.**

That was Jakob's command, having no effect on the approaching ship. The follow-up was to his fellow Pilots:

**Make ready but do
not
power up your resonator cavities.**

Piet and ship had already followed the first part of that
command, hearing but not processing the second, because –
look!
– something was happening, and this was it –
now
– the moment for proving courage.

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The smooth Zajinet hull was cracking open, and no one but Piet-and-ship had noticed.

It's firing!

I see it, my love
.

Piet-and-ship kicked hard into a swooping geodesic that led closer to the Zajinet ship and the risk was huge—

**Hold back. Gunnarsson, hold back!**

—with some kind of defensive sparkling around the target's hull as something launched but whatever was about to happen the rest of the squadron had to live –
Alice, if only
– and ship-and-Piet filled with massive build-up, acceleration bringing the enemy closer, close enough to be sure –
aim now
– and then there was a mental shout of triumph and release –
yes!
– as resonator cavities let loose and energy burst out in one massive pulse with Piet-and-ship arcing side-ways and hoping for escape while not betting on it since the point was the Zajinets must die and here came the explosion now.

Like a many-dimensioned snowflake formed of fire.

Beautiful flames, denoting death.

We did it, my love
.

Yes, we did
.

More vessels came out of nowhere, shimmering into existence, and for a moment Piet-and-ship panicked; but it was Alice and the Pilots she commanded, come in response presumably to a cross-continuum signal blasted through by Jakob or one of the others.

**What the bloody hell?**

A long dark tube, glistening like a beetle's carapace, was
skimming through golden space towards Alice's ship. Piet felt terrified, enough to twitch right out of conjunction trance, just for a moment. He sent a desperate signal:

**It's a Zajinet torpedo!**

Alice, in danger. He had killed the vessel but failed to stop the—

**Piet, stay back.**

Ship-and-Piet, reintegrating, slowed to take a long, curving glide around the cloud of glowing debris, all that remained of the Zajinet vessel –
we got them!
– while desperately trying to scan the tube like object that Alice was snagging, controlling, bringing alongside her ship.

**Oh, Piet, you fool. You bloody stupid fool.**

**Alice! What are you doing?**

It was slipping through her hull's event membrane – allowed inside! – through a dilated opening into a cargo bay, then hidden as everything closed up once more. Had Alice really just taken an alien bomb on board her ship?

Shining light accompanied her disappearance, as she transited back to realspace.

What's going on?

I don't know
.

After a moment to prepare, ship-and-Piet did likewise, following Alice's insertion angle.

Black space and silver stars surrounded them.

Alice broadcast a realtime image of her cargo bay's interior, as ship's bulkheads extruded tendrils with fractal branching fingers to explore the torpedo-like object's hull. It did not take the tendrils long to crack the thing open, because that was what the tube was intended to do: split itself apart in order to deliver the contents.

Oh, no
.

Which were not a detonating weapon, not at all.

Another screw-up
.

Revealed was a dark-clothed man in a foetal position: a man
who began to tremble and shiver, eyelids flickering. Within a minute, he was mostly awake.

‘H hello?' he said in Spanalian.

‘You're safe.' Alice appeared on the edge of the holo image, having left her control cabin to enter the cargo bay. ‘You're safe, my friend.'

‘Yes. Saved. Me.'

‘Who saved you? And who are you?'

‘T-Tannier. Peacekeeper. Molsin.'

A survivor of the catastrophic fighting among Molsin's sky-cities! That was incredible. But how could the man be inside a—?

‘Zajinets. S-saved me.'

Piet Gunnarsson felt his personal universe collapse.