Ragnarok (50 page)

Høtherus was finally quietly executed in the UNEGA High Command's basement. But his benefaction lived on in GAUNE and UNEGA hands. The most hateful weapon ever devised, literally, for it could feel hate, misanthropy, a greed for fulfilling its purpose to cause unthinkable suffering on an unthinkable scale. A weapon mind with which Veikko's Tikari was now fused.

 

 

F
IVE
MISSILES
down, two left. Vibeke jumped down from the plate and began to climb the next tube. Violet watched. She trusted Vibeke with complex hacks more than herself.

“You must not disable the missiles, Vibeke. You must launch them. Veikko has planted intel that will result in the destruction of the Ares in the event of an armed launch from this silo.”

“If there's a wave war, then what's the point?”

“That is a rhetorical question.”

“Yes, it is. Shut down and head back to Veikko, Sal.”

“Negative. My duty is to ensure the mission is successful.”

“Sal, the plan is to nuke Valhalla. These aren't nukes. We can still accomplish the original plan. We just need to deactivate these first.”

“The probability of success decreases substantially if we diverge from Veikko's intent. This mission cannot fail, Vibeke. The planet is at stake.”

“You're ticking me off, Sal. Shut down, or I'll shut you down.”

Vibeke began broadcasting a jamming signal, as powerful as she could manage.

“No, no, don't do it!” called Veikko's voice. “Please, stop!”

“Shut down and return to Veikko!”

“My mind is going, I can feel it.” His voice grew distorted, slower and deeper. “I can feel it… Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do…. No, but seriously, I'm hardwired in, so you can't do squat.”

Vibeke worked faster. She opened the sixth seal and began to activate the fail-safe. A sound echoed from across the chamber. Violet recognized it.

“He's arming the SSS robots!”

“Yes, I am. Launch the remaining missiles now, or I will kill you.”

“Kill us, and the mission fails,” said Vibeke.

“I was talking to Violet.”

Vibeke looked to her. The loud screech of the SSS tracks shattered the air. Violet took a breath.

“Don't launch 'em. I'll run. They're on tracks, I just need to get to the—”

Hundreds of rounds began to strike Violet's projectile field. She felt the cold instantly. The energy sucked out of her to keep the field active against the incoming fire. But this was unlike any fire she'd taken before. The sheer number of rounds hitting her was enough to freeze her to death within seconds. She ran.

“Goddamn you, Veikko!” Vibs shouted.

“Sal. Launch the missiles now, or she will die.”

“Are you insane?”

“I am an AI. I am not capable of insanity. Insanity is a human malfunction. You have only seconds.”

“Goddamn it! You can't believe Veikko would want Violet dead!”

“You can't believe it's worth losing your girlfriend to stop some kid in Timbuktu from growing a third arm.”

“Turn off the robots, and we'll talk!”

“We are talking. I estimate Violet has forty-seven seconds before her projectile field sucks the last joule out of her and she hits absolute zero. Launch the missiles.”

“She'll outrun you. This mission will only succeed if you stop this now.”

“She will not outrun the robots. She is already pinned down.”

“You're a liar.”

“Tikaris can't lie.”

“Yes, you can!”

“I know, I was lying. Vibeke, you're wasting her life for nothing. Launch the missiles.”

Vibeke hit the charge and boiled the fluids. There was only one bomb left. She hopped to the next tube and opened the seventh seal.

“Do not boil the warhead. Leave it intact, and I'll stop the robots. We can talk.”

“Talk is over.”

She wired into the plate and found the boiling fail-safe. Right next to the launching glitch.

“You're killing her, Vibeke. She's running out of time.”

“Violet will live.”

“If you launch, yes. Destroy the warhead, and I assure you, you destroy her with it.”

Vibeke knew Sal was right. She chose instantly. She chose wrong.

 

 

T
HE
ROBOTS
in line kept firing, their arms shaking forward and backward from the recoil, making each whole robot vibrate drastically as the rounds seared the air toward Violet.

Every round connected with her projectile field; every round was deflected. But every round cost three megajoules from her body to deflect. At 250 every second from each robot, she had gone cold in an instant.

She ran for the crates and climbed on top. The fire ceased as the robots stacked themselves to get to her height. Fire began again. The cold surrounded Violet and made it hard to breathe, but she kept running. From feel alone she had a chance of making it outside. The air within her field was already cold enough to desiccate, and her skin was going numb. Rounds flooded into her as the robot line gave chase. In a few seconds, her shield would run out of heat to suck out of her, and she'd hit absolute zero, inside and out. When the shield failed under their weapons, she would be frozen solid when the rounds hit. She would shatter, and there would be nothing left of her to recover. Not that Valhalla was there to recover her.

She ran as fast as she could, over the tarmac and toward the vents. The fire was relentless, the cold piercing. She ran faster than she ever had before, her muscles breaking inside her, brittle and stressed. The pain grew and grew as she passed over some sort of crane boundary, marked by text but nothing else.

And then she froze. Not her temperature but her motion. She couldn't move. Her suit was rigid. The robots moved closer, all fifty of them firing a barrage into her field.

She knew then what the text must have said. Magnetic Crane System. She'd run into a heavy magnetic field, and her armor was frozen in place, impossible to move. The robots kept firing. Thousands of rounds sucking the energy out of her.

Alf was clearly right about learning to read. But he only merited a fraction of a second in her mind. Vibeke took the rest. A hope that Vibs would launch the missiles and save her, somehow. But she knew there was no chance, no way. She had no choice but to save the world, the entire world over one bad girl.

Her mind grew calm as the water within her neurons turned to ice. Supercooled into a sublime state of perfect clarity.

In those last seconds, fear abandoned her. Sadness crept in, telling her Vibs would be wrecked without her. She forced the thought away. She felt Vibeke by her side, lying on the window of the GET to Iceland, her voice emotionless and her expression cold. But Violet didn't feel cold. Not at all. She remembered what Vibeke told her. It hurt at the time, but now her words resounded with hope. About to die, those words were a promise. A warm thought in her frozen brain. “Maybe in another life,” Vibeke had said.

Maybe in another life.

 

 

 

Check out the Valhalla series official blog at
http://the-walrus-squad.tumblr.com.

Don't miss how the story started!

Valhalla

 

Valhalla: Book 1

 

By Ari Bach

 

Violet MacRae is one of the aimless millions crowding northern Scotland. In the year 2230, where war is
obsolete and only brilliant minds are valued, she emerges into adulthood with more brawn than brains and a propensity for violence. People dismiss her as a relic, but world peace is more fragile than they know.

In Valhalla, a clandestine base hidden in an icy ravine, Violet connects with a group of outcasts just like her. There, she learns the skills she needs to keep the world safe from genetically enhanced criminals and traitors who threaten the first friends she's ever known. She also meets Wulfgar Kray, a genius gang leader who knows her better than she knows herself and who would conquer the world to capture her.

Branded from childhood as a useless barbarian, Violet is about to learn the world needs her exactly as she is.

 

http://www.harmonyinkpress.com

A
RI
B
ACH
'
S
artwork can be found online at http://aribach.deviantart.com/.

Ari also runs a webcomic at http://www.twistedjenius.com/Snail-Factory/ and has a Tarot deck at http://surrealist.tarotsmith.net/.

But Ari is probably best known for the humor blog “Facts-I-Just-Made-Up” at http://facts-i-just-made-up.tumblr.com/.

All the Devils Here

By Astor Penn

 

Brie Hall, a sheltered and privileged teenager, is in her final year of boarding school in New York City when disaster strikes. A worldwide biological crisis, the origins of which are unknown, quickly decimates a large portion of the population, and there is no known cure. The threat of contamination is always present, and she cannot trust anyone she sees on the road, and as time goes on, she sees fewer travelers.

While journeying to find her family, Brie meets another wanderer, a girl with a past she can't or won't divulge. Circumstances force them together to escape notice of government-issued hazmat vehicles sent to deliver them to unknown conditions. With no hope of a cure, they do only what they can to survive and remain free, picking up new skills and hardening into people they never meant to become. While struggling to answer the question of how to survive a plague, they must also ask how they can survive the version of themselves they've become.

 

http://www.harmonyinkpress.com

The Little Black Dress