Gudsriki (9 page)

“Don't care, Mishka.”

“The good souls of men must have already ascended to heaven in atomic rapture. We're the sinful remainder. You know how sinful we are. But Christ is a forgiving God, and I'll attain heaven too. I'll spread his word to those who remain and—”

Veikko tried to punch her and something moved, some semblance of an arm lifted up then fell back to the rock.

“Pull yourself together, Veikko. Then come find me when you come to your senses. Even you can be saved.”

“I'm bound here, stuck to the Ares, the—”

“‘He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and
bound him
for a thousand years.'”

“She. Skadi did it. And I'm not fucking Satan!”

“No, no you're not. But your face would give him nightmares. Enjoy your time here, Veikko.”

“Eat shit, Mishka.”

She laughed and walked away. Veikko tried to move his arm again and metal ground against metal. He tried to look over his new body. It was a tangle. But some parts were open on top. He tried to move them. Slowly, very slowly, the pieces began to fit together.

 

 

B
ALLARD
H
EIGHTS
stretched out for kilometers under the skyway. Through its transparent floor Hati could clearly see the entire arcology, tan baking to orange in the sunset light. It was one of the best-equipped places on earth for the disastrous war. There was food to last an eternity. There was geothermal power, still practically unlimited. There was a radiation screen for an emergency such as this. But best of all, nobody outside cared about Ballard Heights. It had no strategic value; really it had no value at all beyond the holdings of the company that ran it, and without the net, even those were deleted.

But the isolation was rotting the stable supports. Unable to leave the arcology, citizens were going stir-crazy. Arguments and petty fights were up 1,400 percent from before the war. Class disputes had begun to manifest. Floor 141 laid claim to an elevator and held it as their own. A group of neighbors on the 35th floor was trying to enforce their rights to the pool. The arcology's first ever instance of vandalism had cropped up when a band from 12 raided 178.

The war was a world away, the planet's darkest days evidenced only by the color and opacity of the clouds, but Hati knew something was brewing inside Ballard Heights that would become more of a threat than the radiation or troop movements. As head of the penthouse level homeowner's association she felt an obligation to fix it, or at least to keep it out, away from her tenants.

She reached the end of the skyway and entered the north ziggurat's observation deck. There she met with Épinard Quiche.

“Hati,” he said with a brutally nasal voice.

“Quiche.”

“Out with it, I don't have time for the pleasantries.”

“Fine: your protest yesterday was way out of line. That swarm of—”

“Swarm? Are you comparing my tenants to ants?”

“You had over 150 at the Ristorante d'Oro. This mob mentality is unnecessary and—”

“Mob now. My people are a mob.”

“Quiche, I think it's a reasonable request to—”

“Now you're giving orders.”

“Quiche, you're blowing this up to proportions it—”

“I'm not the one dehumanizing our citizens and barking orders to keep out. This arcology has always kept every floor open to every tenant.”

“And I'm not changing that nor issuing orders nor trying to dehumanize anyone. I'm only asking that you not lead your tenants to our establishments intending to disrupt their climate.”

“I can't rule my tenants' lives, Hati. I have no say in what they choose to do.”

“Quiche, you were standing on the salad bar shouting ‘Eat the rich.'”

“Radicchio. I told them to try the radicchio and—”

“Bullshit all you want. The next time this happens, I'm going to the senate.”

“Good luck. My brother—”

“Will bow out because this is a conflict of interest, and if he doesn't, I'll make sure the senate sees—”

Quiche held a poker face. “Are you threatening my family now?”

Hati sighed. She looked out the observation window to her ziggurat. The sun was going down behind a black cloud. In its last rays, she saw a pogo coming in for a landing on her tier. A militarized pogo.

“We have to cut this short, Quiche. Keep out of my floors.”

“Storming out now!” he called after her. “I tried to negotiate with you in good faith, and you stormed out! The people will hear of this, Hati!”

As she crossed the midpoint of the skyway, she ran into Wyvern heading the opposite way, looking for her.

“Did you see? There's a military pogo on our—”

“I saw; I'm on my way.”

“What do you think it is? How bad? Is this just a visit or like seriously the beginning of the end?” asked Wyvern.

“I don't think so,” said Hati. “It's probably a deserter, someone with family here. It might not even be with a real military. And it came alone. Negotiations first. And those should go fine, we have nothing anybody wants.”

“We have doctors, engineers, personnel to draft.”

“So does everyone else. There's no reason for them to come here.”

“Then why are they here?”

“I'm finding out.”

They came out in the penthouse atrium. They could see officers standing around the pogo through the atrium roof.

“You hear Floor 79 just raided 80's museum? They're not even stealing essentials, just prizes. It's like gang warfare.”

“It's like class warfare, and we house the highest class. They're gonna come for us sooner or later, the protests are just the beginning.”

“What are we gonna do?”

“I have some ideas.”

The elevator door opened. A soldier emerged. He stared directly at her; he recognized her.

“Hati?”

Hati stared at him. They'd finally come to take her.

“I don't have time for this,” she told him flatly.

“Hati, I need you to come with me.”

She still stood motionless.

“Hati, oh my God,” said Wyvern. “Who is this?”

“A representative. For someone I've been avoiding,” she explained.

“Hati, you need to come with me now.”

“I have a life here. And I have an emergency brewing. The arcology is going downhill, and I need to protect my tenants.”

“Not anymore.”

“You can't take her against her will,” said Wyvern.

“Yes he can,” said Hati. She knew there was no possible resistance.

The man nodded in the affirmative.

“It's for him, isn't it?” asked Wyvern.

Hati looked at her. She knew Wyvern hated him. Hated that he had anything to do with her.

“Fuck off,” Wyvern shouted at the soldier.

“Hati,” said the man, “you know he won't take no for an answer.”

“I know. But I can't just give up my life here. Not now.”

“You must.”

“Can I say good-bye to my friends? To my fiancé?”

“There's no time. Come. You'll be safe with us.”

“Fuck him,” said Wyvern. “He's done nothing but fuck up her life since the day she was born.”

The man only stared. Hati looked down.

Wyvern continued to protest. “You go back and you tell him she doesn't answer to him. He has no power here. She can stay if she wants and—”

Hati put her hand on Wyvern's shoulder. She shook her head. Wyvern started to cry.

“Of course he has power here,” Hati explained. “He sent it here to get me. And if he doesn't, he'll send more.”

Wyvern shook her head no.

“Tell my friends he took me in. Tell Brendon I'll find him again.”

“Hati—”

She hugged Wyvern hard, and Wyvern broke into sobs.

“I'll write to you too. He'll make sure you get every message. He's not a monster, Wyvern.”

“He is a monster!”

“No, Wyvern. He's my dad.”

Hati managed a faint smile and patted Wyvern on the shoulder, then turned and walked to the man with the rifle.

“Let's go,” she said.

He escorted her to the pogo and they took off, leaving Ballard Heights and Texark behind them. Wyvern headed for the hospital to find Dr. Blacha. He only nodded solemnly when she gave him the news. Hati was gone and they both knew, though they couldn't say it, that she was never going to come back.

An alert sounded. Floor 30 had just captured raiders from 28 and planned to execute them publicly. Arcology police were on the way. Everything else was heading for lockdown.

 

 

N
URSE
T
AAKE
cauterized the soldier's legs while Nurse Kampfar held her down. She'd been hit by common shrapnel and triage put her on the list to fix fast and move on. They took the next soldier, and the next.

UKI was losing the war. They held their positions until they ran low on personnel, and then the survivors fell back to repeat the process a few kilometers away, a few kilometers less, lost to Ulver. They came to a soldier with nothing left below his ribs. Kampfar called for Dr. Niide.

Dr. Niide was frustrated. Years of working in Valhalla had spoiled him terribly. The finest equipment Valkyries could steal, reliable power, every tool for every job.

The front was the opposite. There was no reliable power, no predicting when the generators would work. The equipment was beyond limited. He found himself using electrical wire for tourniquets. Tape to build splints from sticks. Fire to seal wounds. He couldn't heal people. He could only delay their deaths long enough to let them heal themselves.

He still had everything from the pogo, of course. A couple advanced stasis chambers, an assortment of field generators, a supply of every drug he could possibly need but a shortage of means to deliver them. He had to use syringes to inject them; the only hyposprays gave out on the first day. A common hypospray only has fifty charges in it. They were disposable. One was meant to bring them along for a mission in their armor, then throw them away before the next.

He had one medical standard microwave that could kill as efficiently as it could disinfect. He kept it on his side, clipped to his arm like the Valkyries did. He felt like a Valkyrie. He was in the field as they were, operating without support. An adventure, he thought. But he was never much for adventure. Adventure was hectic and unsterile. A courier burst into the medical tent.

“Eday is lost! We're bouncing to Shapinsay in ten!”

Medicine is not meant to be practiced on the bounce, he thought. He finished sealing up his patient and began packing. He detested packing.

The medical pogo lifted off and came back down in one hop. Shapinsay was clean and orderly. It held both regiments of the Orkney forces and would provide a break from the front line action. When Ulver came for this island, they'd have to take on the full base. The colonels spoke as if it were unquestionably the spot on which Ulver's advance would end. Though they spoke that way of each previous island too.

An alert sounded. Surely they couldn't be attacking already. Eday would've been a Pyrrhic victory for them. They had the island, but UKI had taken down a dozen of their pogos before getting routed.

The alert sounded in the open air. Niide missed the quiet linked warnings above all. The fight was noisy, blasts and commands shouted across the field. Here they shouted about a woman with knives.

From what Niide could gather, a single woman in a blue and green suit was tearing through the defenses, quite literally with a flying knife. That sounded awfully familiar. He stepped out of the medical tent to take a look.

He recognized a Valkyrie instantly. She hadn't killed a single man, she was simply walking in with an orbiting Tikari and the men were smart enough to keep their distance. Microwaves bounced off of her. Projectiles too. Dr. Niide shouted to let her in and put an end to it. The lieutenant heard him and, confused by the woman's invincibility, decided to order them to cease fire.

He recognized Vibeke as she drew near and walked out to her.

“Vibeke, yes? Mm, gutted Veikko on your first day before you got around to fighting. Mhmm”—he looked her over—“radiation burns, exhaustion, malnutrition, broken, yes, irreparable harm? Yes, imminent death. How have you been, Vibeke?”

“Good, and you?”

“Busy. Very busy. Too busy. Come into my tent. Gruesome fatality.”

 

 

P
YTTEN
WAS
happy with the promotion but not the delay before reaching the next post. After days there was some question if they'd forgotten the officer, buried all records in the paperwork. There were tales of it happening before, rumors of men, women, and others like Pytten getting promoted but never spotted again when the papers went missing.

So Pytten visited an old academy hangout, LeChuck's Groggery. Where there were always some humans singing chanties in the corner, where the grog was just toxic enough to ease any stress but not enough to kill you, where Tull used to hang out.

Pytten hadn't seen Tull since graduation. It was happy news that Tull of all people would be coming to explain the delay. When he arrived he met Pytten with a hug and a pat on the back. And a cringe.

“Your eye got fucked-up big time!”

Pytten was ashamed. There was no reason to be, of course. An eye lost saving a life was an eye well lost. One might even call the eye patch stylish.

“And you got more tattoos,” Pytten observed.

Tull looked himself over. “From the Tonga Trench Tribe!”

“You won the
fe'auhi
?”

“I had so many points I could have left before the last round and still won.”