Ragnarok (28 page)

She had only one chance to survive, and she took it, aiming for the cockpit. Her jump was spot on. She was obscured by the door to V team and went unseen. The cockpit slowly loomed closer and closer to her until she approached the ties holding it down and caught in their web. She held on to the thickest line of the bunch and pulled her way toward the cockpit. All over its side were handholds leading to the airlock.

She felt around for active links inside and found two. She broadcast.

“Sanchita Patel, Havildar CMP for Bharatiya Sthalsena, on your hull.”

A Yak ran to the cockpit side window and looked out. Mishka smiled and waved with her free hand.

As soon as the massive door closed, V team began scouring the rocket for Mishka. First in the darkness, looking for light, then in the dim light of their Tikaris, then in the bright light of their uniforms. After seven hours of searching, they determined she wasn't there.

She could have fallen, but somehow they all knew she'd made it to the cockpit. She didn't have Valhalla's armor anymore, only Bharatiya Sthalsena space capables. She couldn't live in deep space for months. She had to stay indoors.

And V team had to stay inside of Enyo. The door was closed, and no exit presented itself. A stalemate. The Valkyries tied themselves to the innermost scaffolding in the rocket. They took a month's worth of their cryo-tabs and their metabolisms slowed for the ride back to Earth.

 

 

V
IOLET
COULD
feel the cold, inside her and out. Her suit was sealed for prolonged space travel. It didn't grow fur or cycle heating elements. It was designed to be used in conjunction with cryo-tabs, to let her freeze. The cryo-tab included analgesics, so it didn't hurt, but it still felt cold. An overwhelming cold, a deep cold unlike anything else. It also carried with it a strange sense of calm. Coupled with the vacuum silence and darkness of the Enyo interior, it felt far more deathly than any time she'd died.

Their links still functioned in low power mode. They could still talk and still see time pass one distorted second at a time. Mercifully with their bodies working at 1/30 of their usual speed, time felt fast. Hours felt like minutes, minutes like seconds. The trip would feel like a day.

All four went into deep immersion. There things seemed almost normal, though the net was far away, and all they had was each other. In their lucid dream, they plotted ways to kill Mishka, ways to destroy the Ares, all the relevant mission issues they could think up. But there was little resolution beyond their admission they'd have to ask Valhalla to advise once they got in range.

Before long Varg receded into his porn partition and Veikko started playing solitaire, leaving Vibeke and Violet just as they were on the trip to Mars and inside the guardthing. Alone together.

In her few waking moments outside the link, Violet was completely aware of her proximity to Vibeke. Though there was no light and no air to convey warmth, she could feel Vibeke centimeters away from her, floating before her. Through the cold vacuum, Violet swore she could feel heat radiating off of Vibeke's back, an impossible feeling yet more real and urgent than anything else in the ship, more intimidating than the mission ahead and more intense than the shaking thruster behind them, rushing to Earth on a constant burn. They were willing to melt the thruster to get there fast.

She let her suit illuminate a sliver of light and stared at the back centerline of Vibeke's armor. Run a finger down the seam to unzip the back, peel off the front to expose the chest, pull that down, the metal all falls off, and the rest just slips away. Vibeke did that every day they were home, she thought, every time she jumped into the showers, every time she undressed to wander the ravine in a thin shirt and shorts (And how cold she looked in that shirt). Mishka undid Vibeke's armor once too, on some hot day in a distant jungle. And they did more. All the things Violet would never do. She should have tried on that night in the monster. Gross, covered in gore, the least romantic setting imaginable would have been better than the nothing she'd have now. She couldn't open Vibeke's armor now without killing her.

So she just crouched there behind her, doing nothing. Thinking everything. Indulging memories of brief glimpses of a bare breast or a towel that shifted to reveal another stretch of skin. Imagining sex with Vibs in comically exaggerated fantasy.

“It doesn't feel like space without the stars,” linked Vibeke.

“I wasn't thinking about stars,” Violet replied.

“What were you thinking about?”

She was thinking about bending Vibeke over the scaffold and fisting her up to the elbow.

“Potatoes,” she replied. “I haven't had potatoes since before I came to the ravine.”

“You had chips just before we left.”

“Chips are potatoes?”

“Yeah, crisps too.”

“Wow, you learn something new every day,” she chirped. A few seconds passed, nearly an hour in reality.

“What are you really thinking about?”

“Zero-g sex.”

“No wonder you can't read. Your brain only has one
compartment.”

“I should have fucked you in that guardthing.”

“You would.”

“I almost did.”

“Thanks for restraining yourself. You're a real mensch.”

“So you can never love me. I'm fine with that”—she wasn't—“so we have nothing to lose. Why not just feel good together? Friends with benefits.”

“Because we are friends. Maybe you don't value that, but I still do. But keep it up, that might change.”

“And then you'll have sex with me?”

“How do you even remember to breathe?”

“Around you, sometimes I forget.”

“How sweet.”

“Yeah, Vibs, it is sweet. And it's not just sex. Maybe you think you're incapable of love, but where do you get off denying mine? If I just wanted to fuck you, I would have the second you said it. I didn't because I'm not after your body. I mean, I am but not only your body. I want the girl that disemboweled Veikko on her first sparring match. The one who killed her father and survived prison for it. The Valkyrie who fought by my side, the woman who stood angry next to me in Cato's office. The smart one who actually gets that Cloutier shit. Cuz I sure as hell don't. It's fucking gibberish half the time, but I packed a series of it because I feel closer to you when I load it. That's not sex. It's love. And it's not my fault they come packaged together.”

Days passed. Vibeke's mind cycled through an impossible loop of love, and even lust, for the woman behind her. And hate for the way she could act.

“Isn't there anything that could make you give up this stilted bullshit and just… give in?”

Vibeke gave it genuine thought. “Only if we could go back in time and make Mishka never happen. Or if you were no more than an AI, programmed never to betray me. If you were subhuman, if you belonged to me.”

“I'm willing to belong to you.”

“You're a Valkyrie. Not a slave. I'd rather have you as a warrior friend than a love slave.”

“I'd trade.”

“I know.”

“I'd leave the team for you.”

“I know.”

“I'd give up Wulfgar. The thrill of any mission. There's nothing on either planet I wouldn't do for you.”

“Except shut the fuck up.”

Violet stopped talking. She'd happily prove that one. She wouldn't talk the entire way home. If that's all it took, it would be the easiest day of her life. But that's not what it would take, was it? Vibeke was only kidding. The best she'd ever get was a grope or maybe on some lucky day another kiss on the cheek. Vibeke was a waste. She'd be better off tying Gabrielle to a bed. At least that was a person she could stand to hurt. Or worse.

She had to push Vibeke out of her mind, somehow. To give up. Move on. She'd done it before, for a while. Pushed Vibeke out of that part of her mind. It worked for months. With practice she could do it for good. Violet had no experience with any other addiction, but the sort of mind that can stay calm through murder, through torture, through the worst the world had to offer wasn't completely helpless against a schoolgirl crush. She knew what she had to do. Abrupt withdrawal. Immediate cessation of all action, all thought, all talk. Vibeke told her to shut up, and that she would do. She'd do it better than Vibs ever imagined. She'd never speak of it, nor feel it again. It was over.

Or not.

“How about online? We could just have sex online, you know.”

“Shut up, Violet.”

 

 

C
APTAIN
P
RESTON
got his dream job. Delivery: 1 crate. 88kg. From Sidi Bouzid Spaceport to UNEGA 07. Payment: 1,375,000 euros. It would keep him alive for years, a massive paycheck just to stay on retainer for a few days in August. He hired on Burke and Samno for the trip. He didn't need them, but he owed them, and it was the best way to pay them.

He kept thinking it would fall through. It was too good to really happen. But it was happening. Launch date approached, and just as they said they would, Underwood/Dawson LLC delivered the crate. It looked like any other crate, hardly worth what they were paying. But he didn't question a thing. They paid him what they paid him because word got around—he didn't question. He didn't care what he was delivering so long as it paid enough. And 1,375,000 euros was more than enough. For that kind of cash, he'd deliver the crate if it were screaming that it were only a child.

He fired up the main engine on the Lampyrid and took off with the crate in the high security hold. From there the computer took over. It sorted out his place in traffic, it secured the right orbit, it adjusted toward UNEGA 07, and the rest was a matter of what to eat on the way.

He ate some extra spicy chili garlic jerky.

UNEGA 07 came in to view. Preston told his men to get to the cargo bay. He stayed for a moment in the cockpit to see the station. It was a beauty. Forty years in the making for a slick silver crystal in space. Not a ring or a clump of modules but a genuine Gehry VI design. Ruined, of course, by the dozens of shuttles and ships stuck to its exterior but an astounding sight nonetheless. He turned over his controls to UNEGA 07 to dock him where they pleased.

The dock was his smoothest ever. Not like UNEGA 04, which crumpled his aft docking brace. It was like a gentle caress guiding him in, like the airlock was kissing his side.

The hatches opened, and a friendly voice welcomed him. It was so real, he expected to see a woman there to greet him, but that was just 07's computer. Truly it was a masterpiece station. He floated out into the main hall, and the cargo floated behind him. The trio guided it gently down the hall toward bay 16. He opened the locker with the code they'd given him and pushed the crate inside. Job done.

He patted the crate with a laugh and joked, “Enjoy your stay!”

“Thanks,” said the crate.

Preston wasn't surprised. He didn't feel betrayed or the least bit alarmed. After all, people didn't pay him 1,375,000 euros to ship carrots.

 

 

T
HE
CRYO
-
tabs began to thaw as they approached Earth. Alopex knocked at their heads as soon as her signal was strong enough to be secure. They let her in, eager for news from home. Violet didn't know what she expected. Whatever was happening couldn't have been good. Alf spoke.

“Your mission rated a 96 percent efficiency in design but a 7 percent in practice. Better than E team's 0 percent effective. They were caught by the Yakuza and took two weeks to escape. With Mishka and without E team, you simply had no chance. It looks like our best course of action would have been to detonate the nuclear weapon on Mars.”

Veikko tried hard not to look smug. He was 0 percent effective at it.

“The effects couldn't have been much worse than what's already happening. Zaibatsu has split in half. UNEGA is nearing a state of civil war. GAUNE is considering hostile takeovers of up to 80 percent of their assets in the crisis. UNEGA has accused GAUNE of readying illegal wave bombs for deployment. Paranoia abounds.”

“What's our best course of action now?”

“Alopex suggests it's to steal the Ares and keep it unassembled in Valhalla. Too close for comfort, but at least we'd control it. This would also guarantee an assault on our base by Pelamus. We may be in for a long night under the rampart.”

Veikko spoke. “If we're going to keep it at Valhalla and defend it there, we might as well give it to Pelamus. We'll be defending the critical half anyway.”

“There may be means to render it impossible to use that we can discover while it's in our possession. H team suggests we rush research into chemically destroying the Ares. Balder suggests we hide it. C team suggests we dissolve it in the ocean. That would in fact flood the Earth, but without the YGDR S/L kick, it would take millennia. Valfar suggests we all buy boats. As you're the only team onboard, you have a say in the matter, V. What say you?”

“We nuke it as soon as we can get out of the way,” said Veikko.

“A nuclear blast on Earth on UNEGA soil, Veikko? You would all but guarantee a nuclear war.”

“All but.”

“Veikko, I realize you can set off the warhead. I realize you want to despite the risks. I won't pretend I can stop you. But don't forget the Geki, the treaty.”

“Right, we all know what the Geki will do. But if we nuke it, what will
you
do?”

Alf was silent for a moment. “I'll rejoice that the Ares dilemma is over, Veikko.”

Veikko pursed his lips.

“And then I'll sweep up your ashes and polish the floor. Any other ideas, Valknut?”

Violet thought of any scrap of a plan to propose. She might have felt worse, but even Vibeke had nothing to offer either.