Free Ragnarok by Ari Bach Page B

from the last century, and a science magazine we threw out a decade ago. Hell yes, I took the money.”
    â€œDo you remember what they crossed out?”
    â€œSon, they paid me another corvette not to ask.”
    â€œWhat do you remember about them? Do you know where they were from?”
    â€œThe two that spoke most had Norsky accents. Maybe Sversky. ’Nother said a little, Elline. They didn’t let on much, but you know who did? The fella looking for ’em. Unspeakable Darkness fella, you know them?”
    Pelamus nodded.
    â€œWell, they wanted to know the same damn thing, and they didn’t have a lick of gold, so they left empty. But they did know who they were looking for, just not where.”
    â€œWho were they?”
    â€œHall o’ the Slain. And boy, there’s two times you hear that name down here. Kids who want a horror story and scarred old pirates like you. Pirates who know that the name means Davy Jones. Pirates who know not to chase whales and pirates who know when to leave well enough alone.” He leaned toward Pelamus. “And I know you ain’t not none of them.”
    Pelamus headed back to his ship with his mind racing. He had heard the name before on two occasions. A survivor privateer whose ship was blown out of the water and a survivor privateer who died with the name on his lips. Neither reliable. As the name was all but a myth, they likely attributed it out of fear for whatever really attacked them. But he was in a library and he had a name to look up. So there he stayed for another month as his crew sought out to hire humans to do the parts they needed humans to do. And Pelamus studied. He studied on and on, day after day and found only enticing snips and quips about the most severe of rumored bodies. In all the time he studied, he became certain of only two things.
    First, that whatever else was false, the Hall of the Slain was real, and it owned that ravine. Second, that the Hall of the Slain was full of humans. Humans make mistakes, so the great fearsome Hall of the Slain would too. And if it took a hundred years, he would catch them when they did. The instant they set foot on dangerous ground, he would be there to take them.
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    V TEAM set foot on the Nikkei without Alopex’s protection. All they had of Alopex were a few security programs, which they stuffed into the net partitions of their brains before heading south. A Valkyrie’s net partition is already an arsenal of fatal coding attacks, immune software, spyware, ad blocking protocols, hacking systems, and defensive mechanisms ranging from common virus scanners to a last case amputation battery, which could cut off the part of the brain interfacing with one’s antenna. Such a battery would render the user unable to link to the net or Tikari forever. They would lose that sacred insect, that body part that made them a Valkyrie, but it might save their life. If all else failed, they could always call for Alopex, but that would alert C team, who they’d taken great care not to alert.
    That was why they waited nearly a month after their last run-in with C, running plain dull missions to save plain dull lives and plain dull companies until Churro’s eyes found other problems to spy and the stink of Cato’s breath was a distant memory. Despite worrying about C team for an entire month, they still lacked a C name for the project. Violet had no ideas. Vibeke’s were all deemed by Veikko to be too dull, whose own were deemed by all to be too obscene. Varg’s was the front-runner for a time until the others looked up what it meant. Its cancellation was a sad loss as the word really rolled off the tongue.
    When the time finally came, they logged in from AleGel. Valhalla had “aggressively disassembled” the company several years prior to V team’s beginnings and kept its contents on hand for various mission purposes. Their old office buildings in Norge and