Gudsriki (11 page)

None looked like her. Their faces were all too round or too square. Violet's face was triangular more than anything. And she had angry eyes. None of these girls had angry eyes.

What he wouldn't give for a snip of her DNA. He could hit himself for not taking one while he had his toy. He'd failed to on Venus, under Hashima, and now the men he'd sent back to scrape the warehouse where they'd first met were coming back with nothing. And the ugly mass in the ravine had called her dead. Vaporized, if Unit Alpha was correct. He might never see her again. He didn't even have a partitioned snapshot of her. In time he'd forget how she looked. He simply couldn't allow it.

The task forces would stay on the job. It was as simple as that. He'd rather have lost all of Mongol Uls than lived with the knowledge he'd given up on his search.

 

 

V
IBEKE
DIDN
'
T
know where she would go had the boat survived the first fusillade. As the debris rained down around her, she couldn't even bring herself to raise an arm to protect her head.

She turned to see the Wolf pogos, still painted with YUP colors, forming a line just off the coast, launching long range missiles to weaken the UKI rear. Her area was sure to be a landing zone for Wolf troops.

A tear streaked down her face. She didn't know what she'd expected to come of the heart. She felt shame, a shame unlike anything else that had hit her before. Shame for losing Violet, shame for needing her, shame for thinking she could have her back. She'd become so used to Violet dying that she simply couldn't accept that it could be permanent.

The Wolf line became mobile, heading toward her beach. She wanted to kill them all, certainly. Killing gave her a good perspective. Ending lives, aside from the pleasure, made her own seem more worthwhile. But she knew that pleasure would elude her with the incoming troops. She'd lost too much. The core of herself, she thought. She'd become soulless.

Seven UKI soldiers were approaching, targeting her.

“Leave the area, ma'am.”

She went through the motions of a conversation. “I would, but my boat got blown up.” She was headed for the boat. She forgot why. But it was as good a purpose as any she had left. “Can I have one of yours?”

“No, ma'am, just walk away or swim. We don't care.”

She wasn't that useless. “I'll fight for you if you give me a boat.”

“I'm not authorized to make that decision, ma'am.”

“Then get someone who is.”

“You need to leave this area! Now or we will arrest you!”

“Okay, fine, arrest me.”

Seconds later all seven UKI soldiers were restrained on the ground in their own cuffs. The violence perked her up. Her sore fists reminded her of something good.

“Now if I let you go, will one of you get someone who can lend me a boat?”

“Yes, ma'am….”

Vibeke waited. Two Wolf cargopogos neared, drawing heavy fire from the UKI but keeping their distance just out of range until other pogos destroyed the artillery. Three platoons of soldiers from the UKI camp marched toward her, fronted by a very angry-looking officer.

“You have ten seconds to vacate before we open fire. Leave now!”

“I need a boat.”

“I need twenty buck-naked slave girls and a king-sized bed, but nobody's getting what they damn please today, kid. Now move! Five seconds!”

“I'll fight for you.”

“I have hundreds of men, I don't need one more girl. Two seconds.”

“If I kill all the Wolves that come ashore by myself, will you reconsider?”

A blast echoed from the south.

“That was our last southwest artillery. That pogo's landing, kid. You want to stand here with your nifty little knife toys when they get here, you feel free, but you don't get to come running behind our line when they walk ashore, and we're not wasting a breath to bury you.”

“Fair enough,” said Vibeke as she turned her back on the army and faced the landing personnel pogo. A second personnel pogo neared in the sky.

The front gates of the Wolf pogo opened and a squad of soldiers with microwave rifles marched out toward her. Vibeke followed proper tactics this time.

As the pack of Wolves advanced, she set her Tikari to berserker mode and ran into the thick of them. The body parts began to fly. Blood began to stain her. She flipped through the old dance, the loose kata that annihilated countless men. Her field absorbed hundreds of hits, and she froze over quickly.

She thought of Violet frozen, an ice sculpture before she shattered. She turned the thought to rage and caught Bob in midair and began to bash instead of slice. It was slower, but it felt better, the crunching of skulls under the butt of her knife. The rewarding agony of survivors. She gutted them as they cropped up. Dug into them with a ferocity she couldn't trace. She was still thinking of Violet.

The dumb bitch who couldn't take a damn hour to learn to read the text that would have saved her life. She broke a Wolf's arm backward. If Violet had taken one day, one damn day to learn, Vibeke wouldn't be on that island. She severed a man's Achilles tendon and realized the leg wasn't even attached anymore. Violet had left her right when she needed her most. Had ceased to exist and all because of her own damn stupidity. Vibeke stabbed a man in the stomach and ripped upward with her blade, all the way to his throat. Blood spewed from his mouth and burned hot on her face.

She screamed in anger, in disgusted regret, in absolute hatred of Violet, of the subhuman thing she was dumb enough to love. She activated Bob's thruster and sent him through five more men before her, through their stomachs. She punched into the cavity of the first and flipped him by his own duodenum. She clawed at the wound of the next and threw him to the ground. She pushed in and ripped out the third's diaphragm. The fourth was trying to run. The coward. She recalled her blade and cut off his head before stabbing so deep into the skull of the last that Bob had to turn insect to pry his way out.

She caught her breath. Dripping with blood and panting heavily she turned back to the UKI troops who stood in shock.

The second Wolf pogo was about to land but, upon seeing the carnage, rose back up into the air and hunted for another landing spot. Vibeke walked up to the lieutenant and flicked some blood from her Tikari onto the ground.

“I need a fucking boat.”

The officer was stunned. She rammed her Tikari back into her chest, blood, gore and all. The officer considered.

“There are three waves incoming. Help us hold the island against all three, and when it's over you can have a boat.”

“Thank you, sir,” she stated flatly. “Where are the barracks?”

“Last tent on the right, down that way,” he said, still astounded.

She walked to the tent and barged in, coated solid in blood punctuated by chunks of flesh and skin.

“Rain lockers?”

The soldiers stared. One pointed to the water showers. She walked over and pulled off her suit. Showered off. Ejected Bob and let him wash off in the sharp spray. She was rubbing the gore from her hair when she realized how long it had grown. It was a tangle, a liability. She held it out in strands and had Bob cut it short again, then rubbed the gunk from her suit. When she switched off the shower she turned to find about fifty men staring at her.

She couldn't fathom why. Her nudity? Her unorthodox haircutting procedure? Her annihilation of the Wolves?

“What?” she asked.

“Where can we get one of those knives?”

She looked down at Bob, sitting next to Nelson. She kicked Nelson at the soldier.

“Here's one. Keep it.”

Nelson flew back to her feet. The soldier just stared. She looked at Nelson angrily and kicked him again with her bare foot. As the wing sliced into her, she wondered how it hadn't the first time. She didn't care. She kicked again, and again, cutting her foot to ribbons. The crowd was starting to filter away. Only a few remained to watch her.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” she demanded.

“You're fucked up,” said the soldier who had asked for a Tikari. He shook his head. “Who are you?”

She marched up to him and delivered a kick to his chin with her shredded foot, knocking him onto the ground. She straddled him, still wet and naked and accompanied by two Tikaris. She grabbed his head and held it to the dirt and leaned in close to his ear, and she whispered.

“I'm your new roommate.”

She stood. Without a word, she headed back to Niide to take care of her foot, anticipating his lecture about wasting resources on noncombat injuries.

Vibeke stayed for two more days as pogo after pogo of Wolf troops cut landing spots into their artillery coverage. She was always on the front line of each landing to shred the incoming forces. And then she was always the center of attention in the barracks. Soldiers avoided her but stared constantly. The only person who would speak to her casually was Niide, but aside from a few small repairs he was too busy to see her socially. Not a loss as she couldn't speak to him without thinking of Violet's heart, sitting uselessly in a stasis field.

And that meant thinking of Violet, who she tried to stay active enough not to consider. She could throw herself into every fight on the shores and in those sublime moments of slaughter Violet was usually away from her mind. The Wolves quickly turned to fire on her specifically before landing, but the UKI had finally grown to appreciate her as a resource and laid down covering fire for her. She generally took one landing pogo for herself and let the troops fight any others that landed. Then, when she was finished, she'd send the Tiks to help as she caught her breath. She showered and slept and woke again.

Nobody spoke to her in the mess tent. She was regarded with suspicion by the common troops and some degree of anger or jealousy. After two waves of Wolves she had taken nearly half the kills and was still going strong. Her survival was a personal affront to the platoons that had lost men. Her skills a fantasy, an aberrant illusion.

Sergeant Therion warned her men about trusting a single combatant right in front of her: “We had a girl like her at Achnacarry, monster of a girl. Big celebrity at first. But not for long. Beat up her own squad when things got—”

“Violet?” she shouted.

Therion turned around. “You fight her?”

“I fucked her.”

“Who the hell are you people?”

“Valkyries.”

A rifleman mocked her with a few notes of Wagner.

Therion stared at her.

“Don't think for a second that we need you, or anything like you.”

“I don't. I just need a boat.”

“To go where?”

Vibeke had no reply. She simply didn't know where she wanted to go. Anywhere would be away from the front. She'd miss the moments of violent clarity it offered, but it didn't feel like her fight. She didn't have a fight just then. Not any purpose.

She realized after Therion walked away that she had to face the fact it was time for her to die. Violet was gone forever. The world was gone forever. She could rule the place with her talents, but the thought brought her close to tears. She didn't want it anymore.

But for now she'd settle for a boat to leave, or death in a battle to earn it. She didn't know which appealed to her more. She stood to depart for the coast for the final fight.

 

 

H
ATI
SAID
nothing for most of the trip. It was only when she heard gunfire that she grew concerned.

“Is that normal around here?”

“Nothing's normal,” said the envoy, “but that's very far away. And we have projectile fields on this thing. He didn't send a car for you; he sent a tank.”

“Naturally.”

“He's a good man, your father.”

“You know he's really not.”

“He's changed.”

“Right.”

“He's changed a lot.”

They sat in silence for a half hour. The man spoke again.

“I can sympathize, getting ripped away from your home, your friends.”

“How long were you with my father?”

“From before your uncle died. I'm one of his top men.”

“Of course you are. He wouldn't send a grunt for me.”

“No, he wouldn't. He cares for you a great deal.”

“That's why he's left me out of his entire life.”

“Yes, exactly. Sarcasm or not, that's exactly it. He never wanted you to do…. What he does. Didn't want you tainted by it.”

“Until now.”

“Times are hard. He wants you where he can protect you.”

“Ballard Heights was paradise compared to Europe. It wasn't in danger.”

“Everywhere is in danger. You remember your vacations at Turtle Creek?”

“He told you about Turtle Creek?”

“He briefed me on you.”

“And how to manipulate me emotionally if I didn't come.”

“Exactly, yes. Anyhow, Turtle Creek is gone. It took a nuke and then a wave bomb.”

“Why would they wave bomb Turtle Creek?”

“Some were set to cover thousands of kilometers. We don't know its true target, but Turtle Creek is filled with high radiation and a new hemorrhagic fever. One that lives in the eyes, mostly. They melt.”

“Ballard—”

“Ballard Heights is fine for now. But if two thousand nukes—we think it was about two thousand—have gone off, there are still another eight thousand left to use, and God knows what the other side's generals are planning.”

“God knows what my father's planning.”

“He's your dad, and he'll protect you at any cost. Surely you don't disagree with that?”

Hati shook her head. “No, no, I don't disagree with that.”

“You want to know how I met your father?”