Valkyrie Hunter

Ella did something to her comms and a holo emerged to float above her head. It showed a grainy exterior view of a full-blown blizzard. I could barely make out a dozen figures in combat armour.

“That can’t be good,” I commented.

“No, not good at all,” Ella replied.

“Can’t we comm for help?” I could have kicked myself for not thinking about it earlier. “We could hold them off until then?” I glanced at Miranda. “What weapons do we have?”

“A pistol and an AR 32,” Miranda said with a shake of her head. “All it would take is one frag grenade to deal with us.”

I knew whatever I said wasn’t going to cut it with Miranda and she was right. I thought about the fight in the ruins and the limpet mine that attached itself to Jervic’s chest. I glanced down to see my hand opening and clenching I shivered. We couldn’t hold them off with what we had. “The comms?”

“The comms are bad at the best of times they are impossible in a blizzard,” Ella said her eyes on the holo.

“We’ll need to head down into the valley,” Miranda said. “Before we can get a comms out.”

“Valley?” It did seem logical to me surely you had to go higher to get a comms signal?

“These mountains form some sort of natural barrier to comms signals. Going down to the valley is our best option.” Miranda must have known the question I was about to ask.

“In the meantime they will be chasing us?” I hated to rain on their parade I couldn’t see the difference them getting us in here or out there.

“Not if I can help it?” Miranda declared. She turned to Ella. “Cinders, get Gwen’s radioactive sample and lay a trail to Charybdis and chuck the rest down her throat.” She frowned. “I was going to examine it to determine who has beef with us. But needs must.”

“And I’ll coil a rope down it,” Ella added.

“Charybdis?” I’d heard the name from somewhere but I wasn’t sure where.

“Don’t you know any Greek Mythology?” Miranda queried me.

“No,” I replied.

“What the heck do they teach you at school?” she said to me directly.

“Apparently nothing,” I snapped back.

“Touché,” Miranda said. “Cinders be careful don’t get any of that shit on you.” She rose from the table. “Gwen follow me. We need to kit you up.”

The sudden appearance of a shuttle looming out of the blizzard drew my attention back to Ella’s holo. It tried to hover dancing wildly in the face of the blizzard. I saw the door open and several crates were either dropped or thrown out of the shuttle as the wind and snow buffeted it. The doors shut and the shuttle tried to move off. A savage gust of wind pushed it sideways as it tried to rise. I was unsure what happened next, as all I saw was a brief flash of light. I guessed the shuttle had crashed and exploded. Try as I might I couldn’t summon any sympathy for it.

“That will wake the neighbours,” Miranda said.

“Neighbours?”

“Did you think we inhabited these mountains alone. There are others here.” Miranda clicked her fingers. “Let’s move here people they ain’t going to wait for a invitation to come in.”

I hurried after Miranda as she led me back into the hallway. She stopped beside a quartz panel and flipped it open to reveal a set of controls. She touched a button and steel open latticed shutters dropped from the ceiling to cover the archways.

“That’ll stop them from trashing the place,” Miranda said closing the panel with a click.

She gestured to me and we were off again. She led me through a series of rooms some looked like workrooms. She stopped in the last room her face determined and pulled open a door one of several around the room. The room itself was devoid of anything and the door she opened seemed to be a walk in closet. Hanging on racks were thermal suits like the one I’d used on Melanos. Under each suit were a backpack and a footlocker. Miranda opened one of the lockers and pulled out a pair of boots.

“These might be a little big but I’m sure extra socks will compensate for that.”

I dressed in a thermal suit close to what I estimated my size was. Even that was too big for me. These suits had obviously been designed for the Valkyrie body shape. I had to roll up the pants legs and cuffs but it still hung loose on me. The boots were closer with the extra socks but I knew I’d suffer with blisters later. The overall effect made me feel like child trying on her parents’ clothes. The only good thing was that the packs had adjustable straps. Once Miranda was satisfied that I was dressed she moved over to a safe built into the wall of the walk in closet. It had a thumb print lock. The little light above the thumb print panel flashed green and it opened. She pulled out a pistol with a holster and belt and handed them to me. She passed me a spare clip and pulled out a Confederacy coil assault rifle with two spare clips and strapped it to her chest. Then she took out a set of knives and stuck then into her pack.

She closed the safe and turned to me her mouth a tight line. Her eyes wavered between anger and sorrow.

“Let’s go Gwen.”

We entered the deserted room and exited through another door. I stepped into a domed room the dome reaching from the ceiling to the floor a perfect hemisphere in stone. In the centre of the room almost dominating it was an irregular shaped fissure. A large translucent rock stretched out from the wall and hung partly over the fissure. I noticed the translucent rock had a number of chips in it.

“That is Charybdis,” Miranda said pointing to the fissure. “And that is Scylla.” She muttered something I couldn’t quite hear under her breath when I didn’t react, then said. “I haven’t got time to go into the story here.”

I was about to reply when Ella stepped through the door a long coil of rope around her chest. She had on thick gauntlets. In her hands was a dull metal box the lid, open a crack.

Miranda took control. “Gwen help Cinders with the rope.”

“Be careful,” Ella warned me as I approached. “I don’t want any radioactive contamination on you.”

I eased the rope off Ella’s shoulders carefully.

“Good,” Miranda said. “Tie the rope to the ring and let it drop down Charybdis.”

I tied the rope to an iron ring bolted into the rock beside the fissure. I dropped the rope down it.

“How far down does it go?” I asked Miranda.

“About a couple of thousand metres,” she replied.

I whistled thinking about it. “That’s a long way down.”

“That’s my hope. It may be weak but I do hope that they’ll take it.”

“Mind!” Ella interrupted.

I stepped back as she shouldered me out of the way. She touched the box to the rope and threw the box down the fissure. Her gauntlets followed. “If you excuse me I’ll grab my stuff and be back.” She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and put them on. Once her gloves were on she stripped naked throwing her clothes and boots down the fissure.

“While you are at it,” Miranda said conversationally as if a naked woman didn’t phase her and as it did me. “Get Pickie for me. I forgot her in my haste to get here.”

“Ok Triple ‘M’,” Ella said without hesitation.

“Picky?”

“My geologist pickaxe. It’s got me through a lot of scrapes.”

We waited for Ella’s to return. Despite my earlier aggressive stance I just wanted to get out of here all these delays were starting to unsettle me. A sudden dull boom had me extremely worried.

“Should I go a help?” I directed my question to Miranda standing there calm as nothing serious was happening.

“No Gwen, Cinders has this?”

The door slid open and I instantly reached for the pistol strapped to my hip. Ella emerged through the door dressed in her outdoor gear a pack on her back.

“They breached the outer door,” Ella stated calmly. “I’ve left a few surprises to slow them down.”

“Good,” Miranda said. She turned to me. “Come on Gwen time to leave.” She gave a sigh and shrugged her shoulders.

I followed Miranda around the fissure. On the other side shielded by the translucent rock was another door. She punched in a code on it and the door slid open. I saw her take one last look as we entered the tunnel behind it.