Anatali: Ragnarok

by A. C. Edwards

  A rain chilled her bones, hosing her and her friends. The Mark Threes and Shannon followed Nicky five feet behind, a mixed sense of relief if she ever felt one. Jessica spared a glance up, far up, through the smoke.

  The pinnacle of Alaska’s tallest building imploded, including floors two-twenty-three and maybe two-dozen below. A sizable chunk of the west middle-floors cascaded down the walls, ash and multi-colored fire rolling in its wake. Another inferno backlit the building from ground level south.

  Not a soul dropped from the windows or ran out the lobbies. If there had been thousands in The Spire during the flare, and perhaps twenty surviving after, she doubted there’d be a single one left now. Her chest tightened, thinking of Calvin and Trent, still praying for an answer. Until Romeo and Juliet awakened, this was their tomb, their cremation.

  From a half-mile out, Jessica watched a dot of fire streak from The Mission to The Spire, colliding at the base. The missile burst, dropping the east wall in a chain reaction. Concrete crumbled, steel warped. Four more missiles exploded in a rapid combo. The Spire collapsed, changing morning to dusk. The debris cloud enveloped them in moments.

  ~ 30 ~

  The Mission

  November 31, 4124 — 9:50 AM

  Jessica held a shivering Ayla against her chest, half naked herself. “Hit us again.”

  Ayla whined as another ice-cold spray washed over them. She set the dog down to shake; Jessica was splattered up the legs with milky-white water.

  “G-Great.” She donned her sopping-wet jacket, hoping the sun would eventually penetrate the citywide fog. “C-Couldn’t get out of town covered in that shit.”

  “It will continue to settle for the next two days, Val—”

  “I ain’t worried about that! And while I got the gist, what exactly just fucking happened?”

  “Just what it looked like,” Shannon said, floating over a dozen Mark Threes—many hadn’t made it out. “A full-out conventional assault on my Spire by The Mission, or the Sol-Union government to be exact. The moment Nicolosi unlocked me, this became inevitable.”

  “And the Umbrella?”

  “Inconsequential. The Spire had the only conventional transmitters powerful enough to pierce The Mission’s own comm jamming. As for the FTLS network—”

  “Back at square one? You’re saying all that was for nothing!”

  “No,” Nicky said. “We’re saying it’s not over. And it was unavoidable from any approach. The Umbrella and Shannon suffered the same network virus. Upon Odin’s liberation, the Jotuns set fire to Yggdrasil.”

  “Because I’m their main threat, including the end of their comm blackout. Now we’re still gagged, but much more powerful. You did a good thing, Jessie. Trust it.”

  She scowled and rearmed, stick and all. “Well, since you've been manipulating us the whole time, why don’t we skip the bullshit—just tell me what we're going to do next.”

  “You’re free to go,” Shannon said. “You have safe passage out of City Centre, and I can give you two Mark Threes as an escort out of Nome and along the coast to Anapolis.”

  “I sense a ‘but.’”

  “But I wouldn’t advise it, for your own future. From day one to now, there was never a chance to escape. Nicolosi says over a hundred were given boats. Those survivors have been captured. I guarantee it.”

  “Plan DE008.” Jessica paced. “What is it?”

  “Detainment, reconnaissance—”

  “And execution. Yeah, but what for?”

  “A countermeasure against calamities such as these. Widespread dark energy radiation creates Dvoraks and awakens people such as yourselves. It’s a danger of DETH technology they’ve prepared for since the thirty-second century, the first time they messed with dark energy.”

  “What do you mean, people like us?”

  “Lifeforms so saturated their skin should cook on the bone, their eyes should melt, yet they become stronger from it. Heightened perception and emotional sensitivity, healing, control of the irradiated dead, manipulation of matter, energy, and electrical systems. Though you don’t realize it, you could likely dominate this shell I inhabit without effort.”

  “For all the good that would do,” Jessica said, brow furrowed. Was she a monster? A god? “I’m dead.”

  “No. You’re far more alive than you should be, than you ever were. Anyone faring as well as you is channeling dark energy, one way or another. Some become the black-eyed crazies you mentioned. Others wither slowly. You and your Ayla are a perfect balance, ones of extreme rarity and value in this age where we’ve just embraced dark energy, for better or worse.”

  “And the Plan?”

  Shannon throbbed, driving his Threes in a defensive ring around the discussion. The crossing of Second and Market offered a hilltop view of bay. “What have you seen?”

  “They round us up, living or dead, then—I’m not sure. Ship us out?”

  “And why would they do that?”

  “Mass executions for a cover up. Specimen collection. A dumb-ass quarantine—we’re not infectious from what I gather. I ain’t got a clue.” Jessica dried her hair with a spare shirt from Nicky's box.

  “Those are all clues, and all are correct. The Dvoraks? Annihilated. Some of the living-captured will die from their injuries and radiation poisoning. Some will be detained for observation. Some will be released.”

  “At what cost? Silence?”

  “Of course. Word about an entire city lost due to dark energy, a repeat of Jensen-Almay, would harm not only Anatali’s interstellar colonization, but the Sol-Union’s balance on military might against outer-system moons. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is depending on DETH to unlock the galaxy. Sol-System exodus, new resources, new worlds, peace and prosperity—it all hinges on the science that destroyed Nome.”

  “But how can they cover up the loss of a whole city, especially the toy box?” she said.

  “They can't. But they can control the spin, make up any story they want about the cause and what happened after. It's an information war between who gets to tell which story.”

  “So the Sol-Union wants dark energy to succeed, but they also need to keep their wealthiest country in check.” Jessica paced, trying really hard to get it. “Anatali’s succession vote failed this year, barely, and they can't break marshal law to do their own damage control without starting a war.”

  “Right. The Sol-Union made a huge power play three days ago on the bones of our city and bodies of your family. This is why I fight.”

  She lowered her eyes, then shifted them up to the hazy, haloed sun. “I think we found common ground. Like I said, I’m already dead. Tell me how to make this right.”

  A dumb statement. Nothing could ever—

  “Nothing can ever make it right,” Shannon said, “but we can preserve, we can survive and ensure the truth is revealed throughout the system.”

  Noble, but not entirely convincing. As inviting as vengeance was against a faceless federal conspiracy, she didn’t think it would matter if the truth got out or not. Her motivation for ending the comm blackout had been to call for help, a true rescue. It wasn’t about telling her story or avenging the tens of thousands who died. That could wait until after her escape, and even then, if this apocalypse could be spun or ignored, it'll at best forgotten in a decade. And if she truly died in the process, none of it would matter—she’d simply be gone.

  So which was it: Nicky’s altruistic salvation of others, Shannon’s quest to expose the truth, or her own empty-hearted will to survive, half carried by instinct, the other half to honor those who’d already died? The Winslow brothers had fought to return home. Ayla lived to protect her. The lovers—who knew—scraped by for the future itself.

  Every goal was intertwined. Her salvation depended on escaping. Her escape required Shannon’s free communication, which would also realize Nicky’s mission of saving others. It didn’t matter why they fought anymore, only that they continued fighting.

  Flashes in the sky
preceded low booms across the city. From their hill, radiant dots pierced the dust, some flaring in doubled or tripled explosions. Black pillars merged within The Spire’s cloud, blotting out the sun. Jessica stared in silence.

  “Those are…” Nicky watered Christy, the first to awaken, her eyes slits.

  “Yeah,” Shannon said. “Television, radio, wireless and yes, the FTLS stations. Sky ports and water docks. They’re not leaving room for error, that’s for sure. But they’re forgetting something.”

  “Forgetting what?” She felt a tremor as a missile slammed into nearby building.

  “Their vulnerabilities, if they even know I survived. I have a plan—”

  A shadow streaked overhead, swirling the dust under the Umbrella. It stopped, hovering, quiet as a wraith. The black starcraft descended at The Spire’s remains, for a split-second visible over the mile. Five more followed in formation, skimming the rooftops.

  “Looks like you have your Ragnarok, Nicolosi. Alert the Sevens, the Jotuns have arrived.” The Mark Threes formed new ranks, six in front, six behind, facing west. “We should move and keep moving. They’re far more dangerous than the children of Hel.”

  She’d learned that herself.

  Not like it made any difference, but Romeo and Juliet’s eyes opened, gawking about the cityscape. Jessica would save the interrogation for later. A column, they marched down Second Street. The Mission collapsed building after building. Another shuttle squadron drew trails towards downtown.

  Arc 4

  Rosebed

  ~ 31 ~

  Rose City

  November 31, 4124 — 11:03 AM

  Gilded roads, milk and honey, Rose City dipped under Nome proper, its own dell of wealth. While a city apart, it shared every major street and the same scenery, albeit wearing rose-colored blinders. Those snarky digs into the district were endless and always amusing for Nome’s long-standing citizens. A designed side-effect of The Spire’s construction, middle and high class subcontractors, engineers, and business-folk found the city’s tax-breaks and long-term potential appealing. They settled in droves. Nome’s population swelled by twelve thousand via Rose City and The Spire alone, a twenty-five percent jump, all in the last six years.

  Divided by a sand-bed river, the western district owned its own history and identity. As Jessica saw it, the sprawling suburb had its nose turned up at its parent city. Now look at it:

  A firestorm tore west to east, splitting the cityscape in two. The swath of orange spread from treetop to treetop. Dark cells in boulevard veins pulsed away from the blaze. Shannon explained that the initial flare ring and radiation fallout were separate killers; Rose City and her own Southside slums were both closest to the failed DETH reactor.

  A nude, black-bodied Dvorak ran across Kilkare Avenue, one block up. Head on a swivel, it fell over its own feet, slamming into a picket fence before sprinting in their direction. Christy whimpered and clutched Dillon’s arm. For heaven’s sake—then again, this was probably her first encounter with the burnt, eyeless variety. While slow and clumsy on the onset, they were different than the revived white-eyed ones. These were completely ravenous.

  Between Mark Threes, Jessica arced her plasma rifle, studying the target display. A fireball collided with the corpse; it all popped in a sizzling, gray mist—vaporized.

  “Wow. That’s new.”

  “Radiation levels are much higher here.” Nicky said, axe in hand. “Even as dark energy sustains them, I suspect they have decomposed at an accelerated rate. Mind Ehwaz and yourself, Valkyrie. If you begin to feel affected, I will escort you north.”

  She trusted her health, but cringed at Kahn. He’d earned a place in the pack, saving Ayla and herself more than once. Whether special, or merely dominated and well-fed, he wasn’t expendable. Jessica hoped he’d survive this dip into the flare ring, for whatever Shannon had in mind.

  Ayla growled, ears back.

  “They’re coming,” Dillon said, his breath labored.

  “Two blocks to Lux Drive, then we turn right.” Shannon pulsed. The Threes lurched forward. “Move, move!”

  Tentative, Dillon and Christy climbed atop waiting fenders and bear-hugged the bots above the shoulders. Jessica hopped backwards on Nicky’s box, accepting a bracing wrap around the waist, her critters suspended on either side. She steadied her rifle between her knees.

  Twenty miles an hour, thirty? Forty? Private homes blurred around them, as did the dark shapes busting and scaling fences. Over the wind, a roar filled her ears, a bone-chilling chorus of hisses and snarls. They were headed straight for it.

  A quintet of Dvoraks dashed into the street, meeting their left flank. The line of Threes mowed them down, barely skipping over crushed bones. From five to fifty, the horde stampeded onto Kilkare, pulling each other down, the not-so-distant firestorm as their backdrop. Most kept running north—others altered their priorities.

  “Hold on!” Nicky shouted. Teetering right, he used Kahn as ballast. Jessica leaned to help. They skirted the corner onto Lux Drive. An errant corpse was plowed by axe and tread.

  From black lawns to black pavement, the space narrowed. Lux was an alley between apartment buildings. Now heading north, with the current, three score of Dvoraks followed behind, bouncing against the compressed Mark Threes. Ahead, the bots’ progress jerked to a halt. Stuck. Jessica wriggled to stand, peering ahead over Nicky’s shoulder. She swiveled her rifle.

  “No,” he said, “It would do more harm than good. Focus cover at our rear.”

  Five of the old-school bots formed a cup behind them at the crux of Lux and Kilkare. Enacting the barrier-by-body-count defense, hatchets split corpses by the dozen. The bodies accumulated into ramps, facilitating kamikaze leaps. The Threes retreated two yards, then created a new pile of twitching limbs and viscera, a slim arc behind the first. Twice more, they retreated. The unholy mogul slowed the main threat of the mob. Most of it diverted for easier paths east and west. Jessica fired volley after volley into the mix, further slimming the herd. Bunny congratulated her with a rising ‘combo-count.’ Eight, twelve, seventeen kills—the military was fucking nuts.

  A long screech turned her head to their halted progress. A disabled bus blocked the alley, a quarter of it’s length buried inside the left apartments. Its AG-buffered wheels were silent, steel on stone. Five Mark Threes pressed their weight against its axle, a pool of crushed gore between them and her team. Their wheels smoked in place, scooting the bus on its imbedded hinge. Rubble fell over the pivot point. Nicky and the lover’s bots slowly advanced, the space behind becoming cramped as the rear line retracted, forming another two-yard tier.

  “We’re moving!” Shannon shouted.

  Jessica fired a final volley before they cruised through the breach, Dillon and Christy spitting-distance ahead. The rear line collapsed. Two-dozen Dvoraks crested the newest mogul. The last Threes drove backwards through the gap. A new wave of debris rained from either side as the bus-door slammed shut.

  Lux and wherever-they-were, the Dvoraks flooding parallel streets, east and west, didn’t notice them—too far away, a block and a half plus. The FireBots formed a new semi-circle at a precise arm’s-length away from each other.

  “That might have been the easiest battle we ever lost.” Jessica smiled over her shoulder to Nicky.

  “You should not say such things.”

  “Oh, don’t get superstitious on me. That rocked!” Jessica sat back on his box, slapping a new ammo clip into her rifle. “But the fires worry me.”

  Shannon floated overhead from his ten bot arc. “We have twenty-three minutes to reach our destination.”

  “Which is—then what?”

  “We need to secure that smoke pillar a mile up, Lux and Lexington, before the Jotuns do.

  “What’s a Jotun? More Ragnarok stuff?”

  “Indeed,” Nicky said. “The Fate of Gods is fought between four armies. Hel guides an innumerable host from the underworld to Vigrond. Jotuns, fire giants from Muspelheim,
set Yggdrasil to blaze, destroying all that ever was. The noble Aesir of Valhalla, including the goddess Verdandi and her Einherjar, fight to the last. And the Vanir, cousin gods of primal nature, combat all beings for nothing more than existence itself.”

  “The giants fit.”

  “Yes, Valkyrie, they do. Which is why we cannot become complacent with survival itself. They will come to destroy us, if we allow them to.”

  “But those vanners?” Jessica turned a sideways glance to Dillon. “Do we know any?”

  “The school. The canal. Yes, we’ve survived them, so far.”

  Shannon tick-tick-ticked, a bot’s version of a polite cough. “Twenty-one minutes. Rose City’s fire won’t be an issue.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Please do. Let’s roll.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes? More like five.

  At windburn speed they zipped up Lux, crushing rubble and batting the rare body aside. The sky darkened overhead, far broader then the already massive pillars from the firestorm and missile sites. The scent of rain filled the air; the temperature dropped twenty degrees.

  At their left, a one-story supermarket broke the monotony of two-story homes and churches. Its parking lot appeared an anthill of Dvoraks—they climbed over cars and fought each other for dismembered limbs, dead birds, and packs of meat. The mob ignored the streams of running corpses still evacuating north. However, as Jessica’s group blazed past, a sizable chunk twisted, pausing only to hiss before jerking into a sprint. The ripple effect of turning heads surpassed the Threes’ speed—the Dvorak front pressed into the street, some blocking them off.

  From the parking lot, within the horde, corpses bounced airborne and landed on top of each other. Numerous dead-on-dead brawls competed for position on the front line. While Ayla yowled, Jessica lit the mob with volley after volley, her kill-combo escalating into the forties. Bunny said she raised a marksman rank—great. If she had the time or know-how to turn it off, she would’ve.