The Valhalla Covenant

On waking the next morning, Reimas felt an immense sense of wellbeing and calm engagement, the most profound since he’d broken through to the astral and started the ball rolling.

After rousing Sasha, he told her that he’d been in contact with the Vezarin, and she was at least as excited as he had been. She questioned him for more than an hour, until someone knocked on the door. Jos and Sean entered and he put them in the picture.

Despite the news, they seemed despondent and ill at ease, but Reimas soon understood that it was more about how much better he felt. They were simply the way they had been yesterday, whereas he felt like a totally new man.

In addition to the amazing mental clarity he now enjoyed, having his home full of good men and women gave him great hope.

Even so, there were more that needed refuge. Once they were secured, development could begin in earnest. Lindel and Julian had been away on holidays and were due back soon. Cameron, from the meeting, had not yet been located, but Miles and Meg were safe.

Eventually Sasha ejected everyone so that she and Reimas could get up and get ready for breakfast. When they came down to the living room, Amanda and Zoe brought out a hearty cooked breakfast. Jos and Sean sat on either side.

By the time they were finished, a solid crowd had developed around them and Sean took the opportunity to ask Reimas about a technical matter concerning the flyers.

Sasha was soon drawn into a conversation with Jos, and after a while, he observed that Reimas seemed different. He noted that since the merger, he had effectively become their chief. It made sense of course, but he still felt there was something more to it.

Coincidentally, Heidi turned up at Reimas’s side while Jos was watching him, and asked if he wanted anything more. Zoe laughed, as if to say that she had hardly left him short.

“Have you got anything planned for us today?” she asked him.

Jos was by then very curious. He had begun to see the adoration in Heidi’s demeanour and in Zoe’s. Sasha, also, had seen the changes and began to wonder if Reimas, himself, had noticed.

“It’d be hard to beat the last couple of days,” Jos remarked, while his thoughts paralleled Sasha’s.

“Sean has brought in a fleet of seventeen new flyers from Valhalla overnight,” Reimas revealed. “We should go over them and familiarize ourselves. Also, we have yet to find a permanent base and organize its defences.”

“Where do you think we should be looking?”

“I’m not sure. I only know that we don’t want to be caught like sitting ducks when some trigger-happy bastards find us and let fly.”

“So you’ve something better in mind?”

“Not yet.”

“Our base in the highlands has got a lot going for it,” Sean suggested.

“What, in England?”

“No, Scotland.”

The room fell silent.

“Sounds good,” said Jos, eventually. “Why not let the old administration flounder here for a bit while we get our act together.”

Sky went to stand near Reimas, and Arabella was close behind. Beginning to sense a palette of unusual attention growing around him following his encounter with the Vezarin, Reimas was most specifically aware of Arabella’s proximity. He wondered, briefly, where she had slept.

“Right. So we should,” he responded, “but perhaps we should hear a little more about this base before we make any firm decisions.”

Sean nodded.

“Castle Campbell is all that you can see from the outside,” he began. “It’s located on the side of a high tor, and is a good facility on its own, but it’s only used as the administrative base of Zephyr. Valhalla’s main base is underground, beneath the tor. That’s where all our technology is designed and built. It’s deep enough to be totally secure and has everything — water, power, even gardens under artificial light.”

Murmurs of approval and interest grew louder.

“Underground?” said Reimas, with a little grin. “Isn’t that where the bad guys have their lairs?”

“Getting people to think such things was part of our long term strategy for cover.”

Reimas looked at him hard.

“For real?”

“Of course. It is Britain, after all — home of tall stories about the covert world.”

“Any reason why we shouldn’t take a look?” Jos asked, glancing from Sean to Reimas and back.

“None,” said Sean. “Your need is our need, and it cannot be lost on anyone that it’s the merger which brought all this on.”

Reimas held his eye.

“There is something we should do, before that,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Yes, we need to finalize the cleanup, here — take out the rest of Global Unity’s facilities here in Australia.”

All eyes were suddenly on him.

“You’re kidding, surely,” Jos protested. “A surprise strike on all the secret police bases is one thing when you’ve got the chance, but won’t they be on the lookout now?”

“At least we won’t need to re-arm the flyers,” said Sean. “We left all the spare warheads at Jos’s for the first one, but the seventeen new ones came with big payloads.”

Jos frowned. His own personal cleanup would have to wait.

“There’s a few other things I’d have liked to get from there,” he said.

“The place is still guarded.”

“Probably not heavily, and the rockets are in a lockup at the back of the garage that they mightn’t have found.”

“Okay,” said Reimas. “We wouldn’t want them to fall into the wrong hands. Organize a team and retrieve them. Report every fifteen minutes.”

“Sure boss.”

“Hey, I’m only looking out for you.”

“I know, I know. You know I wouldn’t have said it, though, if I didn’t mean it. Somebody has to lead.”

Reimas simply raised a hand in acceptance, but the tension in the room was palpable. It was seen as a turning point and many nodded half to themselves as if it only confirmed what they had long expected.

A group of eight was chosen, and while they were gone, Reimas checked out the original flyer, which had been reserved for his use, to confirm that the Vezarin’s alterations had really been made. Even now, the encounter seemed dream like. Yet his mind did feel different — powerful, energized and rippling with barely contained joy.

Breakfast over, he went straight to the flyer, and then there was no doubt. Specific new controls had been installed on the console for the shield and drive.

“You may be surprised to hear it,” Erin said to him when he returned, “but I’ve been looking forward to flight training,”

He shook his head.

“You’ll need a healthy respect for these machines. Flying anything requires real enthusiasm and care or it should not be done at all, but our new toys are, well, not really toys.”

“What’s happening?” asked Sky, joining them.

“We’re planning a little flying lesson.”

“You wish,” said Finn, slapping her on the backside, playfully, whereupon she slapped him back in the same location, but a lot harder.

“Actually, I think we should make everyone familiar with the flyers,” said Reimas. “It makes good sense for everyone to cover the basics. We’ll do that first then get on with the social engineering.”

“What do you mean, social engineering?” Sky asked.

“With the secret police down, the ordinary police and the military are getting out of hand.”

“Oh, you’re talking about the dismantling you had in mind.”

“Absolutely, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t look in on the Global Unity offices first.”

“You’re no slouch, I’ll give you that,” said Finn, “but aren’t you worried that getting rid of the police and the government might lead to chaos?”

“Perhaps, but how else are we going to do this? Really, it’s only a question of when we bite the bullet. All the old organizations have to be swept clean and new bodies set up in their place, anyway, but getting rid of them all in one blitz will expose the architects of the whole mess, the quicker.”

“No gain without pain, eh?”

“It’s rarely any other way.”

Eight flyers took off, not long after the rocket retrieval party returned, and hovered directly above the house at around three thousand metres. Each had a crew of three or in some cases four.

“For the moment, engage your autopilot overrides and let the rookies take the pilot’s seat,” Reimas instructed over the intercom. “We’re all cloaked so we can move steadily down through the atmosphere towards the Antarctic region without too much risk of being detected. Starboard pilots active.”

A few moments was required to explain his nautical terminology to those that didn’t know it but once that was under control they moved off in formation exactly a hundred metres apart.

As the squadron descended towards the vast white spread of the Antarctic continent, maintaining a modest thousand kilometres per hour, both the pilot and the co-pilot in each craft took turns at experimenting with the controls. By the time they were within a few thousand metres of sea level, even complete novices were confident with the basic controls.

Closing to within a hundred metres of the icy land surface, they rippled over the landscape at about three hundred knots in loose formation like a pack of wild dogs in pursuit of game. Given that the autopilot would not allow them closer than a projected fifty metres to anything, Reimas soon felt justified in allowing a moderate increase in pace.

Several more increases in velocity followed and, as they became more adventurous, some started to exploit the considerable potential for scaring each other. Finn set the pace, taking his craft so close to the ice walls and mountain tops in his testing of the safety overrides that, before long, all were gripping controls or armrests with literally white knuckles.

Plumes of snow and ice flew up behind into the vacuum created by their passing. Ice cliffs collapsed in their wake, raising a towering ruin of icy particles and sharp flurries like mini tornadoes to mark their passage.

Antarctica in winter meant that the sky was dark and starry but the scenery was lit by a sophisticated system of light enhancement in their view screens so that it seemed much like a bright moonlit night.

Hope took the controls of Reimas’s flyer several times and became a complete convert to flying in minutes.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever done,” she declared after performing a double twisting switchback loop to get behind Kyle, who had been in pursuit. Her eyes were fierce and bright with adrenalin.

Reimas smiled approvingly and she immediately felt a soft spot within that seemed determined to grow and grow, despite her lust for speed and g’s, until it had all but taken over her whole being. She held back tears of raw emotion with some difficulty, but Reimas turned back to the screen before the transition in her expression could register as anything other than sheer adrenalin driven volatility.

After a full day, everyone had mastered techniques well beyond those required for normal flight yet the sense of fun had by no means waned. These craft, even without the modifications Reimas’s had been given, were forgiving, relatively simple to fly and extremely quick.

“Time to get on with the real business of this trip now,” said Reimas as they passed over the eastern Australian coastline and headed north.

“Where are we going first?” Hope asked.

“Back home. We’re going to take out all the Global Unity offices, the main police buildings, the military bases and their storage facilities.”

“Only in Sydney?” Sean asked.

“No. Right throughout the country.”

“We’ll be busy for a while then.”

“All night, I’d imagine.”

Only minutes later, twelve flyers, half their total fleet, were hovering high over the CBD. It was early evening on a weekday and few people were about — good timing to get done what they had planned since there weren’t so many people to get out of the buildings involved.

“Some of you might not be aware of the steps and methods we used in the past with this sort of operation,” Reimas said. “You’ll each have a target building. It’ll appear on your console now.”

A chorus of acknowledgements came over the communicator.

“First shoot smoke canisters in. After ten minutes or so, they’ll be clear of people and we can take them out.”

“Aren’t we interested in capturing anyone?” Sean asked.

“For what?”

“Information, of course, and what makes you think these people aren’t going to get organized again and be a threat to us later on?”

Reimas knew, since his meeting with the Vezarin, that the core issue at any given time took precedence. If the plan didn’t involve particular elements, and intuitive judgement rejected them, it was better to keep things simple.

“No, I don’t think that’ll happen,” he replied over the radio. “They’ll probably be in fear for their lives and lie low. In any case, I don’t think we’re sufficiently organized to deal with prisoners yet.”

“Let’s get on with it, then,” said Sean.

With the first strike, eight buildings were destroyed around Sydney, simultaneously. From a thousand metres, they were spectacular.

Further strikes were implemented, until all the larger police stations, the main Global Unity building, the military bases and all the relevant warehouses were destroyed. Fire and rescue units tore all over the city in response and at least twenty helicopters were in the air, searching for the attackers.

Fighter jets roared in and despite finding nothing to attack, let loose heat seeking missiles in the hope that they would find a target. It seemed, for a moment that some had locked onto Sean’s and Finn’s flyers but they were able to dodge them with quick bursts of speed, and the missiles flew on. Some, in the event, returned to lock onto some of the air force planes that had delivered them. After two were destroyed that way, the rest fled the scene.

“Well that’s that,” said Jos, in awe, as they watched the last of the ground explosions.

“Not yet,” said Reimas. “We’ll do all the other cities and the larger military bases tonight, as well.”

“No half measures, eh?”

All the locations had been programmed in from the information in the database that had come from the first building raided — the secret police HQ. An invisible archangel of vengeance, the GI squadron moved from one to the next for most of the night until all the major GU bases and facilities were burning ruins.

Adelaide was last on their agenda, early on the following morning, and once the targets there were razed, the squadron accelerated rapidly back to the Southern Alps.

Seconds before slowing for the final descent, a deafening, shrieking roar assaulted their ears, closely followed by two more. Reimas looked down to the right, and saw three military fighter aircraft dropping away at extreme high speed.

As he watched, two of the three, already wobbling dangerously, tumbled into horrific spins and collided. Both pilots ejected. Locked together, the two fighters spun savagely and were quickly torn to pieces. After desperate seconds fighting a persistent wobble, the third fighter recovered and slowed to track where his buddies dropped.

Turbulence created by the massive speed of the GI flyers with their matter conversion drive had destabilized them. Deceleration from thirty thousand kilometres per hour did strange things to the air for some distance around. While the advanced Valhalla flyers could dodge anything automatically with an agility that would leave any ordinary craft in a spin, no one had predicted the danger to more primitive craft crossing their wake.

Reimas was relieved when it occurred to him that they had probably only stumbled across their path, but the fact remained that now they had a problem. The air force would know something strange had occurred in this vicinity, uncomfortably close to home.

Before long, the wreckage of the two jets came down and exploded in a large wheat field. Reimas noted that the pilots had reached the ground safely — that they were able to get up and remove themselves from their seats.

“That was a close shave,” said Jos. “What happened?”

“Turbulence,” Sean explained, curtly.

“I think you guys had better increase the tolerances a little, at least over land,” Jos suggested.

“Right,” said Finn. “We should have thought of that but, guys, be fair — this is well beyond the sort of flying anyone has ever done in the past.”

Reimas shook his head.

“I knew we’d be all right but didn’t think of the turbulence angle, either. I don’t know if the accident investigators will write this one off to pilot error so easily.”

“Maybe the other pilot was too busy to be able to see exactly what happened,” said Finn.

“Even so, they might have some questions if they manage to get a satellite feed of what happened,” Sean observed.

Reimas shook off the doubt.

“Not much they could do about it anyway,” he said, “so drinks all round when we get home.”