Ragnarok (46 page)

He landed as close to Veikko as he could, hovering down into the burning plants. He opened the canopy and jumped out, then ran for Veikko. He pulled the burn packs from his chest pockets and approached his charred comrade.

“Veikko!” he called.

Veikko forced his burnt eyelids open and saw Varg. Varg was back on Earth. All he'd planned was based on Varg being halfway to Mars. He was Balder's man through and through, and if he was back, it was surely for revenge, there could be no other explanation. He tried to stand.

“Veikko!” Varg called again.

He breathed in, his lungs burned. If Varg didn't understand, he would figure it out within seconds. The fires crackled around him. The fear clung to him. He ran. He had to run. He ran into the pond.

Varg saw him run, and instantly, he became a hostile. Varg had to know why. Balder was dead, and Veikko was running. The Geki, one Geki—he thought they came in pairs—was trying to burn him to death. Veikko had done something terribly wrong.

Varg ran back to the BIRP and opened its hold. He took out the emergency skiff and hopped on, then darted for Veikko in the pond. Veikko had made it nearly all the way across. Flames erupted around Varg as he skated across the water, boiling it and billowing with steam. Varg's field barely kept him alive, the steam penetrated it and burned his skin. He didn't stop.

As Veikko approached the opposite side, Varg tilted his skiff and gave it a full burst, rocketing him into Veikko and knocking him onto the landscaped rocks. He stood, and Veikko rose to his knees in front of him.

“Dude, what the fuck?”

“Balder would have killed me, and Violet! I had to.”

Varg figured it all out. His mind burned in anger hotter than the fire behind him but still he spoke rationally.

“No, Veikko. You can't have done what I think you've done.”

“Balder wanted us dead! The Geki took me. I killed one of them. The Ares! It survived, Varg! It's in the ravine, right now!”

Varg absorbed it. “But Veikko, Balder was clear, we—”

“Fuck Balder, Varg! Balder was wrong! He'd have let the Fish take over and—”

“Didn't it occur to you he knew what he was doing? That he—”

“No! I came ashore to find the infamous, the dreaded Hall of the Slain. I dug through rumor and lies and the scum of the earth to find a hint, a clue of how to get in and when they took me, I found old men and little girls, Varg, pathetic weak fools! More of the same that calls itself the elite of the underground. It's bullshit, Varg, and you know it. Weakness! They'd let the world drown. I did what had to be done.”

“Damn it, Veikko, this isn't
Håvamål
! This isn't a place for philosophical arguments. This is the real world! We're not just kids running around Vadsø anymore!”

“You're damn right we're not! We cannot restrain ourselves! We cannot be weak now when the tide's at our door! We have to fight! Fight like men! Not like the bitches we tried to humor but like men! And men don't hide and seek, men kill! Fucking hell, Varg, you're the best man I know, you have to understand!”

“I understand, Veikko. What we do has consequences on an extraordinary scale, that's why the Geki—”

“That's why I killed the damn Geki! I'm ending the consequences! I'm ending the peace! We can rule this world in a war. You have to understand. You have to join me! Put
Håvamål
behind you and join me now.”

Veikko pulled his microwave and pointed it at Varg.

“Now do you want to die, or do you want to join me and Fuck Shit Up?”

Varg caught his breath. He was now in a terribly complex situation for a man to deal with. The villain before him had saved his life countless times, had brought him out of the depths of loneliness and uselessness and into heaven itself. He had also betrayed heaven and home, and himself, in the worst way Varg could imagine, and that, above all, corrupted all the good Veikko had done, made the highlights of his life into falsehood. And so what Veikko expected to be a long time of deep consideration lasted less than a second. Varg took his Tikari and stabbed the traitor through the heart before Veikko even saw him move. Veikko died with a grin still stuck on his face, a revolting grin that angered Varg as though Veikko, even in death, mocked him for his choice. Varg cut off his face in a single swing and left his corpse to burn.

The arcology was collapsing. Varg could hear the fire pogos swarming in, but he knew it was too late. The entire place was burning down in Geki flames hot enough to melt the supports.

He got into the Blackwing and took it to hover outside the arcology walls. Hundreds of residents fled to their porches and waved for him to help them. Varg moved the Blackwing to within centimeters of the walls and let them climb aboard, as many as he could fit on the wings. Then slowly he lowered the Blackwing to the ground a safe distance from the arcology. They leaped off the low, sleek wings, and Varg looked back to rescue more. But the fire pogos were swarming the building. He could only get in the way.

Then a microwave hit him in the back. It burned his skin through his armor, but it had been from a distance, he'd live. He turned fast and drew his own microwave to see Wart fire again. He dodged the beam and fired back.

W team had done a lot of soul-searching, and all four found that they had no souls to hinder their changing allegiance. Veikko brought them into Valhalla, taught them all they knew, and what he showed
them in his memory package taught them the rest. The team
understood.

The Wunjos detected Veikko's dying link as soon as they stepped off the APC. The great fire consuming the arcology they were to find him in explained it. Varg flying out of the flames explained the rest. W team would not let their leader's death go unavenged. Varg had to die. He didn't see them at first. They readied their microwaves and Tikaris and took positions on the street. Varg came between the four of them. Wart fired first.

Varg's suit absorbed most of it. Wart fired again. Varg ran, evading. The next instant he spotted Weather's Tikari. Knowing she was blind without it, he kicked it into a wall. It was damaged but still moving. As more microwaves tore through the sky, Varg danced his way from their aim and traced the fire to the other shooters. He sent his Tikari on foot toward Weather's and leveled his microwave at Wart. He fired at the same time as Wart, and the beams bounced off each other into the alley walls.

Weather's Tikari didn't stand a chance against Varg's giant centipede. The heavier bug finished hers and left her blind. Having completed its orders, the AI kicked in, and the Tikari decided to attack the next most likely target, Widget. She was trying to take slow perfect aim at Varg, who had rushed Wart and engaged him in a fistfight. The Tikari climbed Widget's leg and formed a sword through her heart, then head. Widget's Tikari fell from the sky. Walter saw her killed and, in a rage, ran at Varg. Wart and Walter could have killed any normal man in hand-to-hand combat, and any twenty men together. But Varg bested them both in seconds by sheer strength and speed. He knocked them cold and took back his own Tikari from Widget's corpse.

Three of the team were down and one was blind. Their Tikaris were dead or twitching from the abrupt loss of their owners. He knew they still posed the greater threat so one by one he crushed the insects under his boot. Weather, though blind, was the next greatest threat. He showed as much mercy as Veikko had taught them. He cut off her head and microwaved her brain. Then he zapped the minds of her team. He surveyed for other Valkyries, linked and scanned the area for anyone who might be loyal to Veikko.

He saw another gold pogo landing. From it walked Skadi, Veikko's girlfriend. Closest to him of everyone in the ravine. But he could see on her face that she wasn't there to fight, not for revenge nor anything else. She was the most betrayed. She was crying.

Varg watched her take a last look at the carnage of W team and set her eyes on the burning arcology. She walked straight for it, into Veikko's funeral pyre. She didn't look back.

Varg boarded the Blackwing and headed for Valhalla. Veikko's last words had made matters very black and white. He was one man, but that made him a one-man army, and if he was to die with the rest of his kind, he would die trying to take back the ravine from whatever legacy Veikko intended to leave it. The Blackwing flew north at top speed, breaking the sky in half and setting fire to old wooden churches in the mountains of Norge as it passed, deafening sheep with sonic booms and delivering Varg to his destiny in only minutes.

 

 

V
IOLET
AND
Vibeke reclined side by side on the GET observation deck's floor window, watching the Atlantic pass quickly below them. Other people surrounded them, most fiddling with their links trying to find a signal. Despite the crowd's oblivious nature, they managed to keep their hands off each other.

“It seems like everything is ending,” said Violet, “the ravine, everyone we knew.”

“And we're just getting started.”

“Rocky start.” She could still feel the echo of Vibeke's fist on the skin of her cheek.

“That's not exactly surprising, is it?”

“Was to me. I always thought it would be perfect if we got together. All sex and laughter. Sure as hell didn't think I'd be the one to wreck it. I can't even—I don't know. But my fantasies definitely didn't have Alf and Balder putting me on the kill list.”

“Yeah, you never mastered the whole rejection thing.” Vibeke's frustration showed through. “See, for future reference, when a girl says ‘No, I'm not gonna fuck you,' you're supposed to leave her alone, not break her face and rip her suit off.”

“Yeah, I think I learned that in school at some point. Right before reading text.”

She lowered her head so her forehead touched the floor window. She felt its slight vibration through her skull.

“If I hadn't done it, would we have…?”

Vibeke didn't want to admit that Violet's horrendous behavior might have actually kick-started her own action.

“Yes. And it would've been a whole lot closer to your fantasy.”

Violet saw through it. “You wouldn't have pounced on me, would you? We'd still be in a stalemate.”

“If that were true, it would probably make this the unhealthiest relationship in the history of the ravine.”

“This
is
the unhealthiest relationship in the history of the ravine,” she admitted.

“I knew we never should have started. I was right from the start. You and I aren't capable of having a courteous affair.”

But Vibeke wanted it. Once Pandora's box opened, she wanted the monster it set free. Sex with Violet was a highlight of her life. Knowing Violet loved her, knowing she'd be wrecked if anything happened to her, the perversity of the bond was alluring, exciting. She just wished to high hell it had been born peacefully. She wondered if that were even possible.

“Just an intense one,” she added.

Violet mulled it over. Vibeke was right. It wasn't just a rough start. It began with abuse because Violet didn't know any other way of expressing affection. It devolved into worse abuse because she got frustrated, and it only turned mutual when Vibeke realized she wanted to abuse Violet back.
We shouldn't be together
, she thought.
I should have been executed, and Vibeke should have moved on
.

“Well, at least we get intense,” said Violet. “Maybe someday we'll get more.”

“More what? You really think this is ever gonna be a happy hunky-dory thing? Hi, honey, I'm home and two and a half kids? No. We're gonna fuck until we hate each other, then throw each other away. I give us a couple months.”

“No, this is more than that, it—”

“I could have been your friend forever. I love you like fire in a frozen hell, but fire burns out. A couple months. A year if we can play nice. But neither of us wants to play nice, do we?”

Violet was hurt by her outlook. The idea of it not being permanent had never even occurred to her. She was taken aback at the thought it could be a fling and nothing more. After all they'd been through, all they'd done, what was the point if it wasn't forever? Then she remembered. It had never been about her one true love. It was something simpler that brought her to do her worst.

“No, we don't,” Violet answered. “That's fine, I don't need a wife. I need to fuck you. Desperately.”

“I didn't want to waste you on that.”

“Please waste me. I want to be wasted. I'd rather be wasted than—what else? What else was I ever good for?”

A hundred answers hit Vibeke's mind, but it hurt too much to think of them all, all lost. She would never confide in Violet again. She would never trust her, never fight by her side the way they used to. All that was in the past, she thought, the beautiful chrysalis for the ugly moth they had now. Most moths don't even have mouths. They don't eat. They live on what they ingested as larvae and die quickly, their only purpose being to mate. Vibeke found the metaphor all too accurate.

A ship shot in and out of view from the GET window. Vibeke felt a sour taste that Violet would say such a thing. That she thought so little of herself. And that she'd forced it. Vibeke suddenly understood Violet more than she ever wanted to. Violet was capable of what she'd done not because she was a hormone-driven animal, but because after all they'd done together, all they'd accomplished, Violet still thought she was a bad girl, one to be used and thrown away. Only someone who thought so little of herself would be capable of what Violet had done to her. She felt such empathy for Violet then that she could have taken it all back, hugged her tight, and said forever. She wanted to tell Violet she was worth everything to her. But she said nothing and didn't know why. She shivered. Violet spoke.