Ragnarok (30 page)

It rammed into a rock face and fell down to their southeast. Unspeakables poured out. They looked at first like a stream of black guts. It was impossible to differentiate between them. But soon the distinct beasts became clear, and they were headed for the teams. Veikko linked to Alopex and asked when the next teams would arrive. Nearest ETA twenty-eight minutes. Useless.

Mishka saw the two teams form a wedge against the oncoming Darkness. She sent her eye closer to get a good look. T team was in full armor with microwaves drawn at the front. V team was armorless and weaponless. All too easy.

She drew her left rifle and fired at V team. Plasma ripped through the air and cut off a chunk of Vibeke's cheek, cauterizing it with tremendous heat and setting fire to her hair. She ducked and rolled back away from the beam.

Tahir saw it and looked for its source, then fired a suppressing beam. His teammates fired full force at the Unspeakables, with no effect.

“Mishka!” shouted Violet, now certain she'd seen the tank. Vibeke jumped up and recalled her Tikari to find and kill Mishka. It turned around in midair and flew back toward them.

Another beam shot past Vibs, incinerating deep into the rock beside her. Then another, but the second beam was warped, twisting off target. The Yakuza were coming over the rocks to Mishka's south, firing every microwave they had at the Unspeakables, burning half of them to dust and deforming the air like a lens to Mishka's cutter rifle.

They had only seconds before the mass Yakuza microwave barrage hit them. The teams again ran south. Mishka set her tank to watch them and pursue with a fifty-meter gap, close enough to aim, far enough to remain safe from T team's microwaves.

Tahsa's Tikari spotted the trigger worm. It was caught on a cliffside, two kilometers southeast of their position. The terrain was unforgiving, sheer rock faces and jagged ground, nearly impossible to traverse by foot but mercifully impossible to traverse by tank. Again they ran. The teams reset their Tikaris to find Mishka.

Two Yakuza pogos flew overhead, and Violet looked up. The battle was closer, the great cargo ship now busily slurping away at the Ares tanks as it flew south to avoid the numerous Yakuza vessels throwing microwaves, bombs, projectile fire, and rockets. All seemed useless against its dragon-like armor.

“If the cargo flies low enough, we could tractor on, seize the ship and fly it home!” shouted Varg.

“That's a modified fang freighter. There's no way in,” replied Vibs. “They armor themselves inside, have to disassemble the whole ship to get—”

Another cutter beam flew millimeters from her throat. She cursed loudly. Two of the Tikaris spotted the beam and began calculating its point of origin.

Mishka was already tired of near misses. Time to use her rifles like they were intended. She fired upward at the mountain looming over the teams. Slowly she cut through, breaking off sixty tons of rock that began to fall onto the team.

They heard it and knew the sound. T and V ran to the other side of the valley, narrowly escaping the falling crumbling rocks. Mishka fired again, this time directly at them. The beam hit Tasha and Trygve's armor, bouncing off randomly and cutting one of the Yakuza pogos in half.

Half of it flew on and crashed into the eastern cliff. The other half fell straight down and blocked their way through a pass to the south. They'd have to climb.

A Darkness APC rolled up behind Mishka, a vehicle like a bundle of Unspeakables sewn together, now splitting up and rolling down the rocks toward the valley. She kicked her tank and sent it farther south toward the pass. One Unspeakable tried to latch on to the tank's back leg. She cut it in half without slowing down.

Vibeke's Tikari stabbed into Mishka's shoulder, just missing her heart. She shrieked in pain and anger. The Tikari pried itself out of her collarbone for another strike. The other Tiks were quickly on the way. Mishka hit the top of her tank and lowered it, leaving only a slot for one of her rifles, smaller than the Tikari could pry into.

Violet ran up the rock wall until her legs began to slip, then started taking handholds and climbing. She was directly over the crashed pogo half when Mishka fired another mountain splitting beam. The landslide knocked her down into the open pogo backside and showered her with dozens of heavy rocks that beat her down into its floor.

She couldn't see her team, but she immediately recognized motion inside the pogo. Yakuza. The man leaped at her with a microwave and fired, singeing her shoulder badly. She kicked the microwave out of his hand and caught it midair, then fried a hole through his neck. Veikko and Toshiro landed in the pogo, exchanged brief glances, and then Violet fired at a window at the bottom of the tilted pogo, warping it and knocking it out onto the ground.

“Here!” Veikko shouted, and the teams followed into the new cave.

The terrain grew only more difficult on the other side of the pass. There was nowhere to run, only spires of rock to climb around, upward to the cliff across from the fallen trigger. They wasted no time lamenting it.

 

 

T
HE
HEAT
of the microwaves wreaked havoc with the atmosphere. Aside from bending Mishka's cutter beams, they created vortices in the sky that dragged clouds down toward the battle. It rained only briefly before the tips of the clouds were tugged to the ground, throwing hailstones onto the crooked battlefield.

The rocks grew slippery, and Violet had trouble climbing, sliding down and knocking Veikko and Varg back. She had no time to apologize. A glance upward showed the Ares tanks still connected to the UD ship. There was no way to know how long it would take to siphon the entire thing. They had to get to the trigger.

Suddenly a cutter rifle fell and stuck nozzle first into the ground. It fell between Vibeke and Toshiro. Vibeke couldn't imagine how Mishka could drop one of her rifles. She looked into her Tikari. Mishka was holding it at bay with her microwave as she closed her tank's canopy. She had thrown the rifle. She realized a second after Toshiro that she'd set it to overload. She turned and ran. Toshiro did not.

The rifle was sticking up in the center of their group, in proximity to kill everyone on T team and half of V team. Toshiro thought quickly and knew he was dead no matter what; the sheer rock on either side of him meant he couldn't escape the blast. So he decided to make his death as useful as he could.

He leaped onto the rifle and held open his armor, letting it slip over the particle accelerator. The blast vaporized his chest and head and threw plasma onto the surrounding rocks, burning off one of Tahir's arms and digging into Vibeke's back, burning off chunks of her remaining suit and through her skin down to the muscle. She screamed, but her voice was nothing compared to Tahir's. Trygve froze, and Tasha fired indiscriminately into the sky, trying to hit Mishka.

Toshiro's Tikari went ronin instantly and flew to their position, permanently stuck on AI due to the fast death of its owner. It hit the ground and began digging at the spot where Toshiro died, trying to uncover him from rubble that didn't exist. Out of mercy for it, Tasha fired point-blank into its core, ending what was left of her teammate.

Mishka cursed and closed her tank before the oncoming flock of Tikaris could make its way inside. Battered by hail, they were only flying at 60 percent efficiency. They were the least of her concerns. The blast was much smaller than she anticipated: she didn't see the epicenter and couldn't fathom why. She'd wasted one of her rifles on what should have been an unquestionable victory. It hit next to Vibs. It should have annihilated them all. But she climbed out only burned. Mishka cracked her canopy a centimeter, leveled her other rifle, and fired again directly at Vibeke.

The air was still thick with microwaves between the Darkness and Yakuza. The beam missed. The Yak ground forces were flooding south toward the crashed pogo half, and the Unspeakables were coming north straight to Mishka's position. She set her tank to climb the hill behind her and reach higher ground.

Hail pummeled Violet's hands and head as she climbed toward the edge of the cliff. The Unspeakables began firing at her, assuming she was Yakuza. She dropped down and felt microwaves burn past the top of her head. She led the teams downward, west through a thicket of rock spires into an alcove.

Tasha wasted no time and started tending to Tahir and Vibeke's burns, slathering them with analgesic and stasis gel.

Trygve wept Toshiro's name. There was nothing left of him to save. He was completely, irreparably gone.

Vibeke was resolved to kill Mishka. She looked into her Tikari and caught it flying overhead, but there was no sign of her.

“The trigger is on the cliff opposite this coming incline,” explained Veikko. “It's crawling with UD. There's no cover.”

“T will cover. We can keep the Darkness off you while you climb,” promised Tasha.

“We've got our Tiks on Mishka,” said Tahir. “They should keep her from firing once she emerges. We've got your backs. Just run.”

Violet took no time to question, nor did her team. They left the alcove and ran for the incline.

Mishka spotted them as soon as they did and opened fire through the slit under her canopy. The microwaves distorted the beam just enough to miss Vibeke's head and slice an Unspeakable's wings off. It was only then that Mishka noticed the squadron of flying Unspeakables.

They began diving toward V team, grabbing Varg first and ripping into his chest. His Tikari unraveled and chopped one of the monster's claws off on its own. The team kept running.

T team laid down an expansive field of heat, sending most of the groundling Darkness behind the rocks. V was almost out of the rock field and to the incline when another beam from Mishka shot over their heads. Well over their heads, cutting the mountaintop.

The rockslide that followed was incalculable. Massive chunks of the mountain hurtled down toward them, fatal crushing weight in every boulder, and hundreds of boulders. Mishka narrowed her canopy again seconds before T's Tikaris hit.

The teams ran for the opposite side of the hill, into a patch of crouching Darkness who stood, only to run with them. Suddenly Yakuza began firing from the nearby cliff, microwaves coming down from the western sky, a mountain from the right.

Most of T team was out of the rock zone and let loose firing at the Yakuza. A flying Unspeakable teamed with them for an instant to pull several Yakuza from the wall and send them plummeting between the cliffs.

Violet was closest to T team and ran quickly out of the landslide's path. But when she looked back, she saw her team wasn't close enough.

The first rock hit Varg, killing him instantly as it crushed his chest and waist. The second sharp rock cut across Veikko's gut, crushing his pelvis and eviscerating him, sending a torrent of intestines out of him like a squashed bug. The third crushed Vibeke's legs, pinning her. Her Tikari made it back into her chest a fraction of a second before the fourth hit her back, killing her.

The rocks stopped short of burying them all. Violet ran toward them but had no Valkyrie microwave to tractor them out. The flying Unspeakable had turned on T team; their microwaves were busy.

Without thinking Violet ran straight through the center of fire and from speed alone made it to her team unscathed. The last rocks fell, one landing on her right leg and fracturing it against another stone.

Veikko called out, “The trigger! Hit the trigger!”

“I have to get you three—”

“We're dead! Now! The trigger!”

It was up the incline and across a chasm. She heard a great growl from the UD carrier, now south of them and still fending off dozens of Yakuza vessels. Its thrusters were warming up. Its tractors were powering down, ready to drop the Ares tanks. There was no more question of capturing them. Violet had to destroy them. She had seconds.

“Run!” shouted Veikko. She pulled her fractured leg from the rocks and ran.

 

 

V
IOLET
SPRINTED
uphill as fast as she could. Every muscle burned. The fracture stung. Darkness fired, burning spots across her chest, into her ribs. The Yakuza fired, a dozen blasts from their Gat-Zook rockets pounding the rocks around her and pushing her off course. She ran faster, up the hill to where she could see the chasm.

It was impossible to jump, at least seven meters. She ran faster. From behind her, a flying Unspeakable ripped into her back with its claws, following her to the edge of the cliff.

She jumped and caught the Unspeakable by the leg. It started kicking immediately. Its talons cut up her neck and back severely but didn't sever any muscles she needed. She swung from its legs and managed to grab its tail and pull to the left. That steered it, briefly toward the trigger. Close enough.

She let go and fell toward the rock; her hands hit it, grabbing for any hold. She caught one, but it only broke her fingers, dislocated her arm, and sent her on down. The worm was only a decimeter away, caught on a small jagged ledge. She tried to grab the ledge but kept falling. She tried to grab the chain-link worm, but it slipped between her broken fingers. Finally as she came to the end of the worm, she dug her fingers into the links, mangling her joints completely.

The ligaments broke and pulled from her hand, hanging on by skin alone. But she stopped falling. Hanging from the worm and her broken fingers, she pulled herself up with her dislocated arm, stretching the skin and sending pain all the way to her shoulder. But she managed to grab the worm with her other hand and pull herself up farther. And farther.

Mishka fired. Violet was barely moving. If not for the
microwaves, it would have chopped off her head. Suddenly Violet felt it easier to pull herself up. She looked down for a second and saw that her legs were falling severed to the ground. She pulled herself on up. Mishka cursed and let her rifle warm up to cut down the entire cliff.