The Valkyrie Project

by Nels Wadycki

  Yes, looked like he headed for the water to clean up. Just after the footsteps intersected with the tide, they went straight into the forest.

  The pilot—Jrue—was still limping heavily, and Ana wondered how safe he would be pursuing the suspect into the jungle, no matter how injured the other guy was.

  "You sure you can make it in there with me?"

  "Beats baking out here waiting for him to double back and take me out."

  So they headed up the beach side by side, and just as they stepped from sandy white onto lusher green, Ana heard the distinct whine of a MP-11.

  It was one of a few pulse weapons with an entirely watertight casing. They were prohibitively expensive, so she hadn't thought that there might be one on the downed ship.

  The Valkyrie gave Jrue a smack to the head as she spun, hoping to knock him to the ground. With her other hand, Ana drew her gun and aimed at the noise. It was indeed a Maxplanck model 11, held by a man she recognized from the briefing as the missing prisoner. The MP-11 was aimed and ready to blow them—and all matter immediately behind them—into more pieces than one person would be able to count in a lifetime.

  Actually, since her palm had driven Jrue down as she'd intended, he might be left with enough pieces intact to survive the blast. Not that he'd necessarily want to have survived at that point.

  "A Valkyrie, eh? I must be worth more than I thought. Of course, now I have two people that the Agency would hate to lose. And I'm not talking about the pilot there, Ms. Valkyrie. I appreciate your efforts, but I could care less if he lives."

  Ana's stomach turned at the glee that pervaded the man's voice. She couldn't make out more than his hulking silhouette against the glaring sun behind him. The shadowy figure seemed to fit the sinister tones permeating the man's otherwise gravelly speech.

  "Don't think that just because I know how valuable you are that I won't use this, though." He patted the barrel of his gun. "I am worth more to me than you'll ever be."

  This time the evil joy came sputtering out in a high-pitched laugh. This show, though, only reinforced what Ana already knew. He was a highly intelligent egotistical maniac and the world would likely be a better place if she blasted him right there instead of racking her brain for ways to bring him—and hopefully Jrue—in alive.

  The standoff lasted only a few moments before Ana lowered her weapon. She felt bad for a moment for forcing Jrue to the ground, but with him there it left him fewer available options and made his actions easier to predict. With her palms out, she set the gun on the ground.

  "The pack, too."

  She dropped her bag to the ground next to her gun.

  "You. Up."

  Jrue got to his feet, giving the evil eye to both Ana and their captor. She'd given him two chances, and he'd thought he'd be better off with her. He'd have to deal with the way she worked. Of course, they'd have to work together at least a little now if they were to reverse the situation that had them walking into an unfamiliar jungle in front of an MP-11 as well as Ana's stash of weapons and supplies.

  Jrue went first, followed by Ana, clearly the larger threat, followed herself by Johnson—their captive turned captor—and his mini arsenal. There wasn't an identifiable path through the trees, and she was fairly sure their captor didn't know the island any better than either of them, so she was trying desperately to figure out what his plan for them was—provided there was one more elaborate than just taking them deep enough into the woods to make their bodies harder to find. He knew who the Valkyries were, but was that knowledge extensive enough to know that she carried a tracking device not just in her bag and body armor, but also beneath the skin just below where the humerus connected to the scapula in the shoulder joint?

  Pieces of fallen branches cracked and ground cover crumpled softly as they marched into the stand of trees. The air grew more wet the deeper they went into the forest, while the canopy filtered out more and more of the natural light, and the number of trees seemed to grow exponentially.

  Jrue weaved a path through the old growth, and Ana considered him leading the way a definite advantage for them. About the only thing they had going in their favor at this point. Ana's mind had not stopped concocting scenarios to turn the tables, but she also hadn't stopped kicking herself for getting put in this position. She was lost in thought when Jrue tripped over a thick root and went sprawling to the ground.

  A foot came down on her knee and she also hit the ground as Johnson came around, putting the huge barrel of the MP-11 to Jrue's head.

  "Get your ass up! I'm not about to wait around for a gimpy pilot!"

  Ana got back to her feet and considered charging Johnson, but that would probably just get her and Jrue stuck to a hundred different trees. Plan B was her voice.

  "Johnson, you've already been convicted of grand larceny. You don't want to add a murder charge to your record, do you?"

  "I don't, actually. Especially once I get my pardon."

  Ana couldn't help the ‘oh really?’ look that popped onto her face like a jack-in-the-box. She shoved it back quickly, but he'd seen it before her negotiating poker face returned.

  "You don't honestly think I just crashed my transport ship on some random island, do you?"

  He had a plan. Or did he? Was he bluffing? This time Ana held her face muscles still.

  "The thought had crossed my mind."

  "And here I thought the Valkyries were renowned for their superior intelligence and not just their physical abilities—or appearance."

  A quick shudder ran through Ana's muscles. An escape plan she could deal with, but an appraisal of her appearance should not have been part of any getaway attempt.

  "Don't worry. I'm sure I'll surprise you yet."

  "You may, but this guy won't if he doesn't get moving right now."

  "He did have a piece of the ship that you crashed in his leg, so maybe you can cut him a little slack."

  "Maybe if I take his head off, I won't have to worry about his leg."

  "If you even try, I'll be on you in a second. Then you'll have to kill me before I kill you, and when I'm dead you won't have much to bargain with."

  "Really, Ms. Valkyrie? You'd give your life for this pilot?"

  "I'd give my life to make sure you get back to prison, Johnson. How long do you think it'll be before the Valkyrie Project comes looking when I don't check in?" The Agency would be notified by the tracking device as soon as her vital signs hit the floor, even with the interference established by the anomaly that was the Keys. But she was probing a little to see if he'd know that.

  Johnson let Jrue get up. He started walking again. Ana took that as a 'not long enough.'

  Johnson waved Ana past him with the MP-11 and so she followed. They continued their trudge through thick vegetation, the air still warmer and denser as they went. On the beach, where there had been a breeze, Ana had been comfortable running at high speed, but with the forest blocking the wind and trees trapping the heat from any sunlight that managed to get through, she was sweating even with their relatively unhurried pace.

  In front of her, she could see Jrue sweating as well as he struggled to limp through the tangle of roots, bushes, and undergrowth. His suit was beginning to stick to his skin. She'd already deduced he was in good shape from the cut of the suit itself, but she could now make out strong muscles bulging from his back, legs, and butt. Too bad he'd been injured so severely in the crash or he could have been a great asset for the mission.

  Ana's mental clock ticked off another twenty minutes before they reached what she had feared: a dilapidated wooden shack. It would have been considered a relic of an age gone by if it were in any more populated an area. But it seemed strangely appropriate here in the middle of a forest on an uninhabited island. The tropical vegetation had started encroaching, but the building was raised off the floor enough to keep it protected. Whoever had built it had cut down the fewest number of trees possible in making room for it. The taller trees around it had grown over, protecting
it from intruding satellite photography. When combined with the 'static' from the remaining radioactive hotspots that gave the Keys their nickname, the little hovel was well-protected from any sort of infrared sensor as well.

  "Welcome home!" Johnson said as he opened the door. A layer of dust covered everything in the single room. There was a bare-bones kitchen in one corner, a cot with a rolled-up pad in another, and a communications station in a third. It was outdated equipment, but it had been top of the line at one point, and it would suffice for his needs as well as hers—once she could get her hands on it.

  Jrue and Ana were ushered in and told to sit on the cot. The MP-11 stayed trained on them—at least close enough to take out a part of them—as Johnson fished electrocuffs from a trunk that looked like it might have been around since pirates had sailed the seas using only wind. The cuffs were modern enough though, just barely. Jrue put them on Ana, and then Johnson did the same to him. The criminal definitely wanted her to think he had it all planned out. It didn't really matter if he was bluffing or not—she'd find out soon enough.

  "You got a bathroom in this dump?" she asked.

  "Do you really think I'd believe you have to go? I'm sure you emptied your bowels before leaving for this mission, and if you didn't, then you're even sloppier than I'd thought."

  Ana had to push hard on the anger rising from her stomach to keep from charging him right then. Of course she'd gone empty before coming to this lonely island. They both knew she was testing the boundaries, but she was more upset by the little jab at the end. For a moment, she envisioned the MP-11 in her hand, blowing a hole through the side of the cabin and taking his head along with it.

  Johnson went to the comm station and flipped a few switches. The machine hummed to life, stuttered, coughed, spat up a little—not completely unlike a baby—and finally settled on purring like a kitten. It wasn't the most majestic of communications arrays, mashed together like a set piece for a short-form drama about "back in the days."

  Apparently it worked, though. After twisting dials—how long had this thing been sitting there?—and pushing some large mechanical buttons, Johnson seemed to connect to someone, because he began speaking.

  "Mirrorlake, this is Infinity Sixty-Three."

  Even more miraculously, there was someone on the other end. The voice was muffled, probably dampened by dust on the headset Johnson held up to one ear; the response crackled and hissed, too much extraneous noise for Ana to make out anything coherent.

  "Roger that, Mirrorlake. The predator has been neutralized. I repeat, predator has been neutralized."

  If Johnson thought she was neutralized, they clearly didn’t share the same lexical education. Ana wouldn’t be neutralized until her heart had stopped beating, her lungs had stopped taking in air and her brain was empty of electrical impulses. And right now, her brain was very full. She’d already spotted a hatch in the floor and deduced it to be an escape route, since the rest of the one-room building was free of any such thing. The old trunk that had provided the electrocuffs was the only weapons cache in sight, but the escape hatch might have some additional armaments stowed.

  The back of Ana's mind hoped that Jrue was making the same sort of assessments, but the corner of her eye told her that his mind was focused on trying to keep his leg still to avoid any unnecessary pain. Hopefully he could generate some adrenaline when the time came.

  "Thank you, Mirrorlake. I will await your reply." Johnson turned to his prisoners. "So, Miss V, any bets on how long before your head honchos come through with a pardon for me?"

  "About as long as it takes you to find a margarita bar in Hell."

  He laughed. "I admire your grit. Such fierceness and determination. Too bad it's driven by such anger, hate, and more than just a dash of sadness."

  Ana shifted in her electrocuffs. Johnson walked slowly from the rhythmic thrumming of the console, approaching his captives.

  "I don't know anything about you, and yet I know so much."

  Ana held still, maintaining her space, as he leaned in. His breath crept insidiously from his mouth, almost like it was trying to get inside hers. She didn't flinch. She stared into his dark, beady eyes. Glints of perverse thoughts flickered across them, but she held his gaze while her mind staggered and reeled, crumbling under his intensity. Her exterior was stone, but inside her head, a whirlpool of confusion drew her towards its swirling center. An invisible egg cracked over her head, and the innards ran slowly down from the top of her head—a childhood game meant to raise hackles doing exactly that. Only there was no friend behind her now simulating the yolk and whites with their hands. Inside her head, a finger poked at her brain, as though prodding it might cause some of her secrets to tumble out.

  The man calling himself Infinity Sixty-Three turned and the feeling vanished. How could this simple man have such a tremendous effect on her? For the past nine years, she'd seen more criminal elements than periodic ones, and had faced them all with cold steel in her hands and ice water in her veins.

  Those nine years had also provided many opportunities for positive outcome visualization, resulting in the short-form that played in her mind now: Ana was returning Johnson to her colleagues in the Agency.

  Harbor no illusions. Predict only the future you can affect.

  Visualization… and improvisation.

  Ana was glad that the electrocuffs were from an age where they could have been a housewarming gift for the owner of the old cabin in which she now sat. The guts of modern cuffs were much more difficult to expose. She electrocuted herself more than once figuring out this particular pair. She had a hard time keeping the shock off her face, but luckily Johnson wasn't paying that much attention.

  Shortly before their little mind-reading-staring-contest, Ana got the wires out, and as soon as Johnson had turned back to the comm station, Ana bounced to her feet, spun around to face Jrue, and aimed the cuffs that held her hands behind her at Johnson's spine.

  She couldn't muster a great deal of force, and he had enough bulk on him to prevent her actually getting to the spine, but the voltage imparted drove him to the ground, and, even better, caused him to drop the MP-11. Ana wished she had been able to give Jrue a little advance notice. He caught what she was doing, but was slow to move. She kicked the gun and it skittered across the hardwood floor. She chased it and Jrue flopped on top of Johnson. He was strong and athletic but not heavy enough to hold Johnson down for long. He tossed Jrue to the floor, but the pilot's sloth turned to nimbleness, and he managed to get his feet tangled with the larger man, sending him sprawling just short of Ana's position. Ana picked up the MP-11, her hands still bound behind her. She pointed the barrel between her legs.

  "Jrue! Move!"

  Somehow the pilot managed to spring up on his injured leg, slamming his other foot on Johnson's ankle as he went.

  Ana leaned her shoulder against the logs of the cabin wall, steadying her aim. As soon as Jrue had cleared the area, she pulled the trigger.

  She would have liked to look into the man's creepy undersized eyes once more as she did it, but she wasn't one for being sentimental when her life was on the line, and before she realized she'd had the thought, Johnson had been replaced by human jelly, splintered wood, and an explosive fireball. Then before she became fully aware of that thought, she was flying back through the wall that just a moment before had seemed dependable.

  As she scrambled away from the burning wreck of a cabin, she remembered her earlier thought that there were probably more weapons—and evidently some explosives—along the trapdoor escape route.

  Her positive outcome visual was now: finding Jrue somewhere among the flaming debris. She staggered a bit, and really wanted to sit, but knew that with Jrue already injured, she had to find him. She was a Valkyrie. She would decide who lived.

  She ran, mostly, around trees and small fires threatening to grow, trying to map out where the explosion would have left him. He'd been on the wall near the front door, perpendicular to her. Ana took
a forty-five-degree angle in that direction, and saw him, lying face down for the second time in as many hours.

  A moment later she noticed the fiery pieces of wood and hot metal ready to burn through the tree branches just above him. Adrenaline had reached every muscle in her body, and she surged forward calling out his name.

  He was conscious and aware enough to look at her. A smaller splinter of wood had gone into the back of his leg, and stuck out now like a crude grave marker.

  Ana pointed up as she ran. Jrue's head followed and she saw the recognition jump to his face. He started crawling. A piece of plane out of one leg, now a piece of cabin floor in the other; crawling wasn't ideal, but it was perhaps the only option he had left.

  The branches above fractured with a loud noise. They both heard it even with the roaring of fire all around. She called out again, and this time Jrue rolled. Ana saw the large splinter in his leg break as he rolled over on it, taking part of his calf with it. He rolled again and again. She hurdled the newly lit fire that burned where he had been a moment before.

  Ana hefted him onto her shoulder, and carried him to the beach as fast as her two good legs would bear them.

  She managed to only smack him with a single tree as the fire chased them towards the sand and water. She collapsed when they reached it, dropping the injured pilot unceremoniously into the grit underfoot. It was almost exactly a hundred and eighty degrees from her dream of starting a short-form by arriving amnesiac on the beach from the sea. And once again, she knew exactly who she was and what she was doing there.

  Nothing else happened, externally at least. Internally, she realized that her med kit had either been blown into as many pieces as Johnson, or it was somewhere back through the burning forest, and here lay Jrue with a brand new gaping hole in his leg.

  She summoned a second wind, and put Jrue back on her shoulder. He tried to say something, but stopped. She was already sprinting down the beach. Luckily, her ship had room for two. Certainly not more than that, but it was enough for now.