The Valhalla Covenant

Emerging with Sasha from his suite late the next morning, Reimas encountered Sean, in company with Jos and Sky. Sean had good news to report. Valhalla had agreed to the move of the core of the GI without reservation. Reports of events in Australia had flashed around the world and their actions had met with unequivocal endorsement from the Valhalla ruling body, the Conventicle.

Later, at their own meeting, Sean proposed that they delay no longer. Up until now, fifty or more had returned each night to The Bower but with each day more were approved to become core members and there was no good reason to risk staying in a place with only a small fraction of the security and facilities.

All fifty or so who had been living and working there, were told that afternoon. News of the sudden move was met with some surprise but apart from a little regret about giving up the close knit domestic arrangement they’d lately enjoyed, most looked forward to the change.

The house was closed up and the fleet of two-dozen was on its way, flying slowly north. En route, Reimas made calls to the co-ordinators of the groups they had established in the various cities to determine a schedule for assisting their immediate objectives before leaving, but also made it clear to them that if necessary they were only an hour or two away.

Valhalla had a substantial international charity wing and the plan was to find secure locations where supplies could be flown in, daily, for distribution through the GI groups to the general Australian population.

With the first consignments about to be distributed, GI operatives were sent out to secure control of the utility companies, and some of the oldest and most active Little River members, now in the GI, were assigned to take over the police force.

Even as Reimas and his widely spread squadron toured casually across the continent, through a constant round of discussions and negotiations, the GI began to take control. While many battles were fought below, those aboard the flyers co-ordinated key strikes and flew in hardware at a moment’s notice, wherever it was needed.

The relatively slow rate of passage allowed the command team to occasionally admire the scenery. Reimas had only recently understood the enormously important relationship between desire and atmosphere and knew that it had a deep effect on morale. It gave pleasure as well as getting the job done, and he intended to play it that way whenever he could.

Quite large and curved a little to efficiently use the available area ahead of the cockpit seats, the main flyer view screens could easily be cleared of technical data to give the impression that you were flying in the open through the countryside like a bird.

Using the clever autopilot system the fleet cruised low and made the most of the ‘bird’ mode, swooping and climbing in an exhilarating way over the broad valleys and wooded ranges where the type of countryside justified it.

By the time all the ground units had achieved and secured their initial objectives, night was falling on the east coast and it was time to join the new day on the other side of the world. More exactly, it was time to go back in time and relive the same day again — something made possible by the astonishing speed of the Valhalla flyers. On one hand they could drift comfortably over a landscape all day and on the other they could flash east across the stratosphere to rejoin the sun well before the day had ended everywhere.

Leaving the concerns of the day in Australia largely behind allowed those on aboard the flyers to indulge in a little casual conversation as they flew over the wide dark stretches of the Pacific Ocean.

Reimas had been talking to Sean and got around eventually to the Valhalla base.

“What sort of defences does it have?” he asked, checking the maintenance of their neat delta formation as he spoke.

“Almost everything you can think of,” Sean replied over the encrypted radio. “Hidden video cameras, radar, infrared sensors and trip wires guard the three concealed entrances.”

“Detection’s useful, I grant you, but what about actual hardware?”

“Detection’s more important than you think. If we had to use weapons, the game might well be over for us — in terms of our secrecy.”

“And that does have a value at this stage.”

“Yet if we did fail to contain any suspicious activity with patrolling guards, and a force came to take the castle itself, we do have hidden rocket silos and gun placements.”

“Enough?” Reimas asked.

“I haven’t any doubt we could resist a concerted attack by a large force.”

“Still, you’d rather not use them.”

“Secrecy and discretion are and always have been our first concern.”

“At the very least, we’re up against an enemy that will now be very interested in every little thing that they can’t easily explain.”

“With any luck,” Sean replied, “they won’t have a clear idea just how much we’ve got up our sleeves.”

“If they knew more about these flyers, they’d already have hit us as hard as they could.”

“Maybe, but we should also be aware that they might not act immediately. Who knows? They may even want something from us.”

“What? Lessons in etiquette?”

“Surely,” said Sean, patiently, “if they didn’t want something from humanity they’d have done us away by now, wouldn’t they?”

“It might not necessarily be anything significant. You might be right about them wanting something from us, but there’s no harm in admitting that there has been more of the slave in us than we might be prepared to admit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t sound so shocked. We’re here on the world scene now working in the right direction but just think how we’ve allowed ourselves to be herded up to this point.”

“What do you mean, herded?”

“I mean, cooped up in cities like most of us have been.”

“I know a lot of people dream about land and getting away from it all,” said Sean, “but is it that so important?”

“Sure it is. The more industrialized society becomes, the more obsessed with superficial concerns most people are. What we don’t see on a daily basis we don’t care about.”

“I suppose you’re right there.”

“We should all be in touch with the land and maybe you’d be surprised to know how little rural land is available for that purpose, in Australia. Thirty or forty years ago, you could get it cheap but a heck of a lot of it has been bought by multinationals, and what hasn’t been, the GU won’t let you build a house on anyway.”

“Zoning?”

“Of course,” Reimas said. “It might not be obvious, but I can’t think of a better way to control people than to have them all herded up in a nice neat enclosure called a city. It provides convenient labour, reduces the transport costs for selling stuff to their herd, and makes it a lot easy to control minds using the media, fashion and pop culture.”

“I don’t know,” Sean laughed, “I think most people enjoy those things.”

“Well, of course they do, but there’s more. Laurence has been investigating the possibility that they exercise a sort of mass mind control, using pre-programmed brain wave patterns carried on microwave frequencies. Cell phones use the same frequencies and there are towers everywhere.”

“I’ve talked to him about that,” Sean retorted, “and his theory’s only in the early stages.”

“So he hasn’t told you about the filter he’s installed on his own phone?”

There was a long silence.

“No.”

“Oh well, no need to worry, now, at least for the moment.” Reimas laughed. “We’ll be using radio more often than not, now.”

“You think they really do that, though? I mean, what could they achieve by transmitting emotional signals?”

Reimas, paused, not having considered the matter fully yet, himself.

“Maybe they keep people in a constantly depressed state so that they need to find relief through the most tangible material means — buying stuff.”

“Cell reception is pretty poor in supermarkets. You think people feel safe and happy there because they’re shielded from the waves?”

“I don’t know about the microwave emotion broadcasting but I do know the figures for depression are sky-high.”

“You have a point.”

“I also know that successive governments made it very difficult for normal people to maintain a lifestyle in the country, even before the Global Unity takeover. They spent enormous amounts on making life attractive in the city but squeezed services dry in country areas.”

“The government openly wanted Australians to leave the country areas?”

“Of course they did, with respect to the small to medium-sized landholders, at least. My family’s been in politics of one kind or another for generations, and I know that there’ve been many stories of corruption in matters big and small on both major sides.”

“Just as bad as each other, eh?”

“Absolutely. If they could cave in to the foreign banks, which they did well and truly late last century, why would they be immune to bribery over land? The politicians were paid to introduce policies that put the pressure on ordinary people living on the land.”

“Your father?”

“No, but he got no thanks for that. They encouraged the banks to foreclose at the drop of a hat, made water more expensive and difficult to access, allowed vastly increased insurance costs, and decreased services. Along with all that, they made pest and fire control more difficult, and severely restricted development applications. It was all totally pre-meditated.”

“I don’t think they’d get away with it in Britain.”

“Well, it is a lot smaller there too, and the potential for profiting on land deals much less, but they tried every trick in Australia. In my grandfather’s time they made it so a farmer had to pay for the water he collected on his own land!”

“You’re kidding.”

“They say you don’t own what’s underneath your land and, apparently, you don’t own the clouds that choose to drop water on you.”

“Just what do you own?” Sean asked.

“Only certain limited rights, and they made it harder and harder all the time for ordinary people to make use of those very limited rights.”

“Why would they want to force everyone off the land when there were so many they could control in the city already?”

“Well, for starters, it worked, didn’t it? The proportion of people on the land dropped to ten percent of its peak over a hundred-year period. With all those people moving off the land, you can imagine what happened to prices.”

“Sure.”

“City property went up and up in value to unbelievable levels,” said Reimas, “but you have to understand that this did much to reinforce a very distinct upper and lower class in the cities, while rural property values went down to almost nothing.”

“No surprises if it was the multinationals that bought it all up in the country, and wealthy investors profited in the city.”

“You bet, and in the country they bought it for anywhere between a tenth and a hundredth of its true value. Talk about corruption. There was never anything like it seen before or since and probably never will again. For maybe twenty thousand apiece, probably much less than fifty million all up, the politicians sold out the country, and reduced the value of land by at least, on average, many thousands of dollars an acre.

“Multiply that by, say, a hundred million acres, and you’ve got one of the biggest swindles the world has ever seen, say a trillion dollars, just in one country. The worst of it was that, apparently, no one in the city batted an eyelid, because, of course, it did seem to be benefiting many.”

“The city investors,” said Sean.

“Of course, but then when nobody much except for multinationals owned the rural areas, they began to put the pressure on all the city folk, and started screwing them for all the essentials of life. They had control of the food, water, raw materials and electricity supplies and they could fix prices to their hearts’ content. Only then did everyone, including the city folk, realize what they’d given up. Now look what they have. Poor services, food shortages, crime, disease, pollution and slave labour wage rates for most.”

“Slavery indeed.”

With that, they arrived in Scottish airspace.

Below them, the King’s Seat Hill behind Castle Campbell stood bold in a clear blue sky above a wide, lush green valley of woods and fields. To the west, there was Stirling, more peaks and ranges, and to the southeast, the Forth.

A wooded spur ran south from the lower slopes upon which the castle sat. It would provide good cover for a retreat to at least one of the subterranean entries, should such a thing become necessary.

Standing high on the side of the hill, the Castle itself was of grim but proud appearance, and as they came in for the approach, Sean told them that some parts of it dated from the 14th century. A narrow road snaked up towards it, and below, through an abundance of trees, was the pleasing village of Dollar.

“How do we get in?” Reimas asked.

As they moved in for the final approach, Sean contacted the operations room and arranged for each of the four main entrances into the underground hangar to be opened.

Everyone expected camouflaged doors but Sean asked all the pilots to engage auto, and distributed coordinates.

“Don’t worry,” he announced over the radio. “It may look like we’ll be flying into rock, but not so. Cloaking offers us particularly convincing camouflage here.”

All the same, the speed at which they flew toward the hillside was much reduced, which helped people overcome their natural anxiety. The moment at which they approached the steep ground was tense in each of the flyers, but the mood changed to elation when they passed through apparently solid ground entirely unscathed.

Inside, the hangar alone was huge.