Gudsriki (46 page)

“Where is she?”

“Coming.”

“We can't wait around here forever.”

“Can't we?”

The elder considered. As he sat in, though, a horrible moaning sound began to emerge from around the incline. Varg turned.

“What is that?”

“People, I think.”

“What are they moaning about now?”

The first of them came into view. Tumored and rotten.

“Wave zombies.”

“They don't feel fear?”

“Apparently not.”

“Burn them.”

“Burn us!” shouted one of them.

“Wave zombies can talk?”

“They can't. These are Christians.”

“We reject Christ!” shouted one, wavering. Afflicted by the fear.

“Okay, they're not Christians.”

“Who are you?”
Varg demanded.

“We worship the masters of fire! Those in black!”

“Oh shit,”
said the elder.

The realization came to Varg quickly. He felt nauseated.

“Are we—”

“Yeah, we're gods now. Fucking shit….”

“Command us, dark ones!”

“Burn the evil from us with your fire.”

More came into view. They cornered the Geki at the cliff, one madman drawing near.

“Be careful, Varg, you don't have a flame—”

“I have feet, sir.”
He kicked the man, sending him two meters back and into the ground.

“What do we do?”

“Well, we can burn them….”

“That'll only affirm their faith.”

“Fine by me,”
said the elder. Then to the crowd:
“Keep back!”

The crowd kept back as commanded by the divine beings.

“They command us!”

“Command us!”

“Command us, mighty ones!”

Several of the worshippers began cutting themselves and flicking blood toward the Geki. They moved back toward the cliff, disgusted.

“These people are deranged….”

“That's not what worries me.”

“Really? This doesn't worry you?”

“What worries me is what they'll do when they see us kill Mishka.”

“Sir?”

“We already have a cult.”

One of the bleeding followers took a child and prepared to sacrifice it.

“If we kill the voivod, we'll inherit hers.”

“Fine by me, sir.”

“I think our followers are even worse than the Christians.”

“Really?”

The woman laid her child down on the ground and produced a rudimentary knife from her dirty robes.

“Really.”

“Can you burn that one?”

The elder hit her with a flame. She fell back, leaving the baby unharmed.

“The flames!”

“The flames, they punish us!”

“They endow us with holy fire!”

“This is our baptism!”

“The flame is love!”

“This is some real
Life of Brian
shit right here, sir.”

“We need to go.”

“Vibs isn't—”

“We can't help her! It'll spawn more of this!”

Varg was coming to the same realization.

“We can't abandon her, sir!”

“We have to.”
He looked to Varg.
“We have to.”

They used their last jump residue to float away fast.

“They fly!” shouts came from the crowd.

“The prophets are divine!”

“We can fly too!” shouted one of the crowd leaders. Dozens began to jump off the cliff like lemmings.

 

 

I
T
WAS
a long ride to Norge, into her old stomping grounds in Tromsø. She tried to rest inside the tank but couldn't. Her mind was racing. Fear of what Mishka was doing to Nel. Terror at it. Anticipation reigned supreme. She wanted to be there, to get there faster, to kill. She got no rest. She grew tired, tired mixed with an uncomfortable rumble of panic. Her breath became staggered and shallow as she approached the northern metropolis.

The city was filled with worshippers, bands of them. The land was miserable. Shit piled up in the streets. Bodies lay wherever they dropped. There was no semblance of any attempt to improve conditions. Why would there be in the end days?

Groups were singing, “Jesus take my hand! Lift me up on high!” and, “Our God is a radical God!” as they trudged through the stinking streets.

There were more burnings and stonings about, children tortured and slaves beaten. Vibeke was beyond numb to it all. It was mere set dressing for the act to come. She spotted the Arctic Cathedral, now fully plated in gold. She didn't think to wait for the Geki. She rode Alf's tank to the front door and kicked them open with its front legs.

A great mass of tumored laity turned to look at her. She felt the utmost repulsion. They filled the pews, hundreds of them packed in. She could almost smell them through the tank canopy, their vile rotting bodies, their tumors, their disease.

And the grotesquerie of the faithful, all with prayer books, all devoted to Mishka, all in misery as a result, misery far beyond what Vibeke had unleashed on the Earth. Suddenly she felt absolved. Appropriate for a church, she thought. The horrors Vibeke had wreaked upon the world were terrible, but there was someone worse. She'd known it all along. She'd merely forgotten how good it felt to hate. Had hated herself so long, she had forgotten the others more deserving. Forgotten the Valkyrie joy of punishing them, of saving the world, cleansing it. That was Vibeke's religion: the cult of killing.

She opened fire on the crowd with the tank's biggest projectile guns. Depleted uranium hurtled through the room in a broad stroke from left to right, shattering the mindless horde to smithereens, ejecting their guts out the shattering windows in torrents, making her windshield wipers work overtime.

The tank trod on into the building, ankle joints deep in blood. A few survivors ran at the tank to be impaled on its limbs or shot at closer range. Vibeke felt phenomenal, back in her native red chunky habitat. She charged onward across the field of gore and found stairs leading down.

She ran inward, letting the tank's sides dismantle the walls as she moved between them. Letting it scope out the integrity of the floors. The cathedral was well built. It would survive the tank rummaging through its belly.

In the basement she found torture devices along the walls, hooks and chains, an iron maiden. Clergy standing in gold robes before naked bodies of various genders in shackles. Burnt and bloodied, castrated or mutilated. She targeted the clergy and fired, splattering them across their victims.

Row after row walked from their charges and held out their hands before the tank, their angel of death. She satisfied each and every one she could, impaling them on the legs, firing through their chests, burning them. The great arena of torture filled with blood and meat. No priest or inquisitor was left alive by the time she reached the next stairwell. She moved on, deeper into the crypts, where she found a door.

It was made of solid gold. Emblazoned with jewels, carved with crosses and embellished with enamel ikons. There was no place lower, more central to the church. Unquestionably Mishka's door. The tank kicked it open and gold light shined from inside.

The tank, dripping with blood and meat, walked into the inner sanctum. Its mechanics echoed off the close, golden walls. Vibeke took in the throne room, appreciating the ikons, the artwork that had gone into it. The glory of a world long past when slave labor could accomplish what a million skilled, paid workers could never kill themselves to make. In months, only months, Mishka had built such an empire, one far superior to Wulfgar's nation of Ulver. The Kingdom of God. And at the core of it was Mishka.

She'd caught Mishka in the middle of a love tryst. She hated Mishka for feeling love, or lust. She didn't deserve to feel it. But she lay back naked on her mountain of pillows enjoying the pleasures of a redhead girl who was buried between her thighs. Vibeke thought it strange that the
lithe red-headed body looked so familiar. It didn't enter her head that it was covered in metallic seams. It wasn't until the girl turned around and she saw Violet's face that it struck her.

She couldn't open fire, though she could have ended it right there and then. It was her only thought, but something stayed her hands. She wasn't overwhelmed with rage. In fact the rage died out inside her like a candle snuffed underwater. She could only stare and try to get the image sorted and understood. It was an image so wrong it didn't fit into her stream of consciousness. It was a square peg in a round neuron.

Nel stood up and wiped off her mouth, then walked naked toward the tank. Vibeke stopped breathing.

“Mishka never told you why she convinced you to keep Violet around.”

She hadn't even quantified her fears. She didn't know this was what she was afraid of. It was too unthinkable.

“Because Violet was so much prettier than you at your best. Mishka wanted to trade up.”

“Nel—” said Vibeke. She forgot every other word she knew.

“Nelson. Don't call me Nel. I'm not
your
toy. She hacked you, Vibeke. Mishka hacked you when you were asleep.”

Vibeke went cold. As if her body and mind were shutting down.

“She hacked you to make her a sex toy. Looked into your mind and saw your half-formed plans, your half-formed desires. But knew you'd never debase yourself by making Niide build you a new toy with Violet's body.”

Vibeke searched herself. It wasn't true. It couldn't have been.

“So she switched a few axons. Planted a few thoughts. And just like you loved Violet from Veikko's tricks, you wanted her back from Mishka's. You made me and for every second I've been trying to get back to her so we could fuck on your grave.”

Anger began to seep back into Vibeke's chest. It erased logic. She had no chance to question the veracity of what she was seeing. To analyze how it might have happened. Blood dripped from the tank. The robot, the traitorous thing walked back toward Mishka and sunk into her arms. They kissed, and Vibeke's hands gripped the triggers. A sloppy, wild kiss full of mock passion, a kiss performed purely for Vibeke's benefit, but a slipperier, wetter kiss than any she'd given Vibeke.

“The truth is,” Nel said, bowing her head against Mishka's breast, “even Violet would've taken Mishka over you in a heartbeat if she'd only stuck around.”

Vibeke tried to swallow, but there was a stone in her throat. She tried to breathe in, to capture air to speak, but not enough came. She barely whispered, her voice shaking.

“Nel—I thought… I thought you loved me.”

She needed Nel to tell her it wasn't real. To tell her she loved her back.

Nel smiled cruelly. “Maybe in another life.”

Vibeke's heart skipped a beat. Nausea hit her temples. Fury erupted into her veins, stinging like alcohol in an open wound.

The sting turned to fire, the fire to plasma. From deep in her guts rage erupted, stone heavy inside her, forced by geological pressure to burst behind her eyes. Her lips snarled of their own accord. Her chest filled with bile. She exploded into a guttural scream as she tried to pull the triggers. But again she couldn't press them down.

Then she realized. Mishka's hack wasn't like Veikko's, if he'd even made it. Mishka's wasn't subtle. It wasn't hidden. Amid whatever else she'd done, Mishka had rendered Vibeke incapable of killing her. She tried to pull the triggers again but stopped herself and blushed deeply. Felt hot inside her cheeks. Mishka and Nel laughed uproariously at her impotence.

Mishka waved good-bye and suddenly they were gone. There was no relief from the pressure for Vibeke. There was only the wordless misunderstanding of a primate. As if her mind had been devolved. They were gone. She didn't know how until she saw the tunnel to the surface. She wasted no time, she set forward at top speed and saw Mishka's tank, disguised as her bed, bolt onto a long range skiff and take off. Vibeke charged her tank forward, galloping toward the skiff with her hands clenched around the controls, nails breaking off against the firm black rubber.

 

 

“A
ND
THAT
'
S
why you exist,” Mishka told Nel, “because I hacked her to make you.”

Nel considered it. Immobile on the altar, she looked into Mishka's eyes and considered her plan. Wondered if it could be true. And slowly realized it didn't matter to her if it was.

“That's good to know,” said Nel. “It means I can blame you for all that went wrong, and love Vibeke for all that went right.”

Mishka scoffed. “Silly bitch, you owe me your life.”

“Mishka, I don't owe you shit.”

“I was worried you might get deluded on the trip north to find me. That's why I made this.”

Mishka produced a small cerebral bore.

“I thought I might have to hack you a little to ensure your loyalty to me. Programmed this before Vibs ever even ‘escaped' the ravine.”