Ragnarok (4 page)

He nodded, afraid. She caught a link going out. He was calling in more guards to ask about the missing parts. Guards that might not think she looked like Sanchita once they arrived. She couldn't waste any more time there. She jumped into the crippled tank and powered up its systems. Tripedal mode was about half as fast as normal. Still over 300 kph. It would do. She locked it in. The tank gave a jolt as it rotated two
legs forward and one aft. She left as the new guards entered the
complex,
never learning that the arrivals wouldn't have known she was an
impostor. Never learning that one of them, Ravi Vasquez, had removed the leg for use as a rocking chair. He would have been happy to resettle his grandmother back home and return it.

Mishka was already hunting the nets again for an eye and a leg as she galloped north. The leg was priority four, and Mishka knew the few places she'd have to break into to find a replacement. All high security. It might not even be worth the effort. An eye was priority three. Bharat was full of cheap eyes. In that same market was an AWB eye, which would, in theory, give her back her depth perception. But it could be hacked far too easily. A few kilometers south was a proper eye doctor, but his stock was limited to low-res wasteware. She kept searching for something useful. In Valhalla, Alf taught her never to fully eradicate the advertising that came with searches, but rather to filter it and skim it for potential results. Often someone was selling what they were looking for when all else might fail. As she drove right past the Vasquez residence, such an ad appeared to her.

“
Eye-Spy Yaugika 1.2.1 by Krillco with 318 lenses. Capable of shrinking to one centimeter or expanding to three centimeters to fit any orbit and come out easy. Why take it out? Because this eye can fly. Link guidance can send your new eye half a kilometer in any direction with .25 kN of force. Great fun for the casual voyeur or a selling point for the professional private eye! Comes in white, black, blue, or made to match your natural appearance. 75,250 euros. See licenses required?
”

The loss of her old implant didn't seem so bitter anymore. If she hadn't lost it, she might never have met her new Tikari. And there was one on display at a convention at the Darjeeling Dome, right there in Poshchim Bangla. She lacked the funds and licenses, and the convention was closed for the night, but the latter problem solved the former two just fine. The white tank galloped north.

 

 

A
LOPEX
WAS
running 477 distinct routines. About half of them were common ongoing processes to maintain the ravine, track teams, monitor security risks, and so on. Of the rest, there were a multitude of team projects that required special partitions, a few teams doing online work that required surveillance and security, and then some simple entertainment and dream link programs. There was only one medical program in progress. Medical almost always had priority over other systems. Of course, Alopex had never run over 70 percent capacity, so no programs had ever been overridden. There were only a select few programs that could override medical, such as the rampart system, HMDLR defenses, and some emergency shutoffs. There used to be one ultrahigh priority shutoff for an Ares Corporation hydromacrosis test, which could use 100 percent of Aloe's system and drop every defense Valhalla had. As Valhalla wasn't in the terraforming business, that program was not only obsolete but dangerous, so it was erased. In any case, the top priority running was a fairly routine program to fix a broken leg and stab wound in Violet's foot.

The second program was Alf's, monitoring GAUNE
communications for the words “Wave,” “Zombie,” and “Mutagenic.” All words commonly associated with wave bombs, “zombie bombs” to the vulgar public, “mutagenic weaponry” being the most proper term. High-level GAUNE chatter was filled with speculation about UNEGA illegally stockpiling wave bombs, but it was all mere speculation. There was no sign that UNEGA would build or deploy new weapons or try to
fool the GAUNE weapons inspectors they allowed to supervise
mutagenic wave studies. Alf was certain the threats were null but always kept an ear on the rumors. Given the severity of the issue and its potential to trigger global thermonuclear war and worse, he always had Alopex watching so that Valhalla might prevent any escalation before it grew unmanageable.

The third priority routine was unusual. It was normally a tenth-tier police monitoring program, but Vibeke had programmed it to go ultrahigh priority if it found a hit. In the year since she'd written it, the thing had never activated. For at least that one year, not a single cybernetic eyeball had been stolen. Mishka had bought her first replacement eye legally after some hard work in Africa. But the theft of a Krillco Eye-Spy Yaugika 1.2.1 from its showcase in Bharat was not to be missed. Alopex allowed a full three-picosecond delay in lower priority programs to deliver the news.

“Vibeke,” called the fox. Vibs turned away from the clear med bay wall and brightened her link to see it clearly.

“Yes?”

“Cybernetic eye theft reported.”

Vibeke barely registered it at first. It took her a moment to remember why Alopex would jump in at top priority to tell her. After that she realized it was obsolete, an old program now useless given that Mishka, last she saw her, had a perfectly good pair of eyes in her head. After the last chase through Bangla, Vibeke was sure of that. She didn't even want to think about it. They had Mishka trapped, and somehow the entire Bharatiya Sthalsena got in the way. It was the last insult in a frustrating year of near misses and hits that hit back. But in any case, Mishka was gone. Vibeke felt bad for making Aloe treat it as high priority. She would just ask one question to be sure it was a null report, and then she'd delete the routine.

“Don't suppose it was in Bangla?”

“Confirmed, northern Poshchim Bangla, Darjeeling.”

Suddenly Alopex had her complete attention. Mishka was back on the map. Vibs immersed herself online where she stood and began reading every report and every detail of the theft, then of related local reports. She found the prison break, and it all came together—Mishka had avoided their capture by turning herself in to the Bharatiya Sthalsena. Their mass presence was to catch her, and she let herself be caught by an enemy she could escape rather than be caught by Valhalla. Cunning bitch.

 

 

V
IOLET
WIGGLED
her big toe. Then each other toe. Her foot was
back, but there was still some pain in her ankle. Dr. Niide looked over the foot and spotted a microscopic air pocket stimulating the nerves. He gave her a quick stab with a hypodermic needle and let it out. She walked around for a moment and nodded. Dr. Niide then simply wandered away.

After leaving the med bay, she found Vibs staring at the rocks. She poked her arm gently with no result. She must have been immersed deeply. And urgently given that she'd gone all the way in while standing. Violet linked in without knocking. Vibeke didn't notice her, but Violet could hear the reports. Eyeball. Bharat. She was looking for Mishka again. Violet logged out and pushed Vibeke over. She caught her oblivious teammate and carried her toward the barracks.

Vibeke had taken the results of Project Abruptum badly. Worse than Project Omfavnet, their previous run in with Mishka, which was in turn worse than Project Creative: the hunt for Mishka and Wulfgar that began nearly a year ago. But Abruptum was by far the most taxing because it was the closest they'd been. Before a
diabolus ex machina
that ruined everything, Vibeke had gone to frightening depths of obsession on that mission. Violet was still concerned deeply about the civilians Vibeke was willing to sacrifice, the risks she was willing to take, the irrational raw hatred that consumed her as they drew closer to Bangla. And it wasn't over.

Violet set Vibs down on her bunk and then sat down on her own. She stared at her. Peaceful on the outside, vacant. She might have been daydreaming. Whatever storm was pounding away in her brain, her body was perfectly serene. Skin pale and smooth, hair getting longer. She sometimes let the stuff grow and cut it instead of freezing it like Violet and the rest of the world. She kept turning it black as well. A strange habit that seemed to give Vibeke some sort of amusement or peace. Soon she'd have to cut it again or start welding it down for missions, which would be a good look. It was already down to the collar of her armor in back.

Cool blue and green armor. Violet's favorite in the ravine. Not least because of the body in it. Her eyes went straight for Vibeke's chest. Just plump enough to shift to the sides when she lay down. When she caught herself staring at Vibeke's breasts, she usually stopped, erased the thoughts as best she could, and focused on whatever mission or project they might have. They didn't have one just then, and her eyes were on Vibeke's hands before she noticed they weren't alone. Veikko's head slowly dipped in from the bunk above Violet's.

“Watcha dooin'?”

“Begging for trouble,” she mumbled and lay back on her pillow. Veikko craned around upside down to look at Vibs.

“What's she doing?”

“I only peeked. The files said Bangla and eyeball theft.”

“You worried?”

“No,” she lied. “At least she has leads.”

Violet did envy her that. The chase for Mishka was frustrating, but it was still a chase. Violet couldn't muster the obsessive hatred of Wulfgar that Vibs had for her nemesis, only an active vicious hatred that for the last year, had been dwindling from starvation. He was out there somewhere, but what of it? There was no trace of him. There was no murmur of activity, no hint of a gang reforming, not a single whisper on Earth that he was still alive. It was possible that he wasn't. Dr. Niide couldn't guess the damage done to his brain from the glimpse they caught of his head. It was entirely possible and, given the lack of developments, more and more likely that whoever stole his corpse couldn't repair it.

Violet had watched for medical logs, newly grown jaws, crushed corpses, and the like without leads. Unless he had elected to stay broken and faceless, he wasn't awake.

Vibeke snapped out of the net and sat up, reorienting herself to being in bed. Violet nodded to let her know how she got there, and Vibs nodded back. Violet was trying to come up with a subtle way to ask what Vibeke had found, but Veikko beat her to it.

“What news of the one-eyed monster?”

Vibeke link dumped the answer to her team. Her escape via capture, the stolen eye, all the peripheral notes. Violet took some time to look over it, all solid notes but nothing useful for finding her again. Violet was half-relieved at that. She wanted Mishka caught or dead but hated Vibeke's distance and cold bitter demeanor when they were on her trail. It was like all sense of fun got sucked out of her. Project Omfavnet was in Varg's opinion one of the most enjoyable cat and mouse games the Valkyries ever played, but for Vibeke and, by proxy, Violet, it was something like the road rash segment of injury training. It just grated and grated away. And it was coming again.

The door opened. Varg entered and jumped over Vibeke onto his bunk.

“That link dump came a second before I did, ruined everything.”

“Sorry, Varg.”

“My heart will go on…. So what's the point, though?” he ruminated. “We knew where she was, and she's not going to stick around Darjeeling.”

“Didn't you see the link encryptions?”

Violet hadn't. Varg shook his head as well. All four dove back into the net and reviewed the logs. Vibeke scooped up a folder.

“See this? She hacked into the Dome's cameras when she went after the eye. Darjeeling's nets are so old that she could cream the security systems, but the security systems had no self-repair contingencies. They're still broken right now. They'll have to be reinstalled.”

Violet didn't see the significance, but Varg caught it. “Her footprints are still there?”

Vibeke replied quickly, “She covered her tracks and deleted the providers, but you can see the routing they came from.”

“The routing?” asked Veikko. “She was there in person. What's the point?”

Vibeke enlarged the coding prints for them to see. “Mishka was in prison. Her link was jammed. When she got out, it didn't hook into the Bharat nets. It went back to the last place she was logged into before she was caught.”

Violet was amazed by the leaps and bounds of logic Vibs took for granted. She was only just grasping the train of thought when Varg derailed it to another track. He took the files and enlarged them further, looking over lines of code and text that she couldn't make out.

“And it's all black, Vibs. There's no code at all. It even lacked—” Varg's eyes lit up. “It had no contact barriers!”

Veikko seemed to understand it. All three were in on something, but Violet had no clue. She'd suffer the indignity of having to ask. Nothing new.

“What does that mean?”

“There's only one place that has no barriers.”

And then Violet understood. In their hunt, V team had probed every job offer, every mercenary listing, every possible rumor of Mishka's specialties on every board and page she might have advertised on. They spent weeks browsing the Underground Nikkei and Dead List. They had a Chanscan reading the busiest, sleaziest imageboards and criminal channels for any sign of her. They even set an unnecessarily large partition of Alopex to look for codes and hidden messages in all of the above. But that would have defeated the purpose. Mishka wasn't talking in code to anyone. She was most certainly on her own. If she was online, she'd be offering her craft publicly. They knew she had work because they'd gotten in her way. Omfavnet cost her a pretty penny when an employer saw her clash with Valhalla and decided she was damaged goods. Project Abruptum began with a routine investigation. They had no clue at first it was Mishka working for Birlacorp in a black flag operation against themselves. But Birlacorp and Omfavnet Selskap had no listings anywhere V team could probe. C team insisted that there were none. That she must have handled it all in the real world.