The Ragnarök File

The nineteen corpses told a tale Tessira hadn’t wanted to hear.

Men and women she’d spent the better part of an eighteen-year deployment with had seen their last sunrise. It would’ve made a horrific enough nightmare, but the wound in her side made it real. The jagged piece of laminated ship hull sticking out of her torso screamed its silent tale of hopelessness, as it was all that was left of her only way off this planet.

Worse, the enemy certainly heard the explosion that told of her team’s betrayal. When the ship went up in smoke, the only possibility was the United Capital’s decision to end the Generation One Aesir program.

“So,” she whispered, staring at the lifeless bodies, “they threw us out?”

Tessira and her comrades had been part of an elite fighting unit in the last six wars between the United Capital and the Federation of Outer Worlds. They’d been engineered with all the beneficial mutations human genetics could support and raised in strict military settings. Killing had been her playmate since the age of five. Equipped with the latest UC technology, they were sent into clean up problems the ordinary military couldn’t handle.

Or, she thought, we were.

Plasma rounds went off in the distance; the tell-tale whine of energy cells charging up sang the song of her inevitable demise. She’d run through every scenario of what could’ve happened. Every fiber of her being wanted to believe the FOW had somehow smuggled a bomb onto their exit ship.

The evidence, however, sang like a tenor. Only the people who built the ship could’ve known where to place the bomb to destroy the ship completely. An enemy would’ve caused the ship to crash, not turn into shrapnel.

Rumbling footsteps told of an enemy force she couldn’t possibly fight against. As she pilfered a wound seal pack from one of her teammates’ bodies, she sighed and leaned against a stone. The dark grey nanotech melted out of the pack like a candy bar in the heat. With one gloved hand, she grasped the shrapnel and yanked it out. She gritted her teeth to avoid a shout. A spurt of blood sprayed across the ground before gray nanotech covered the wound.

Why am I bothering? She thought, sighing.

She sighed and watched the columns of smoke come up from over the hill. Swiping a gloved hand through her curly black hair, wet from perspiration and her friends’ blood, she retrieved a smoke pack from a corpse’s pocket and lit up. The long drag helped her focus the typhoon of emotions running through her mind. This was the end, and a lifetime of fighting the good fight would come to an end at the hands of her own government. No doubt the bureaucrats had agreed to sacrifice them for some meaningless meeting with the enemy.

“Stupid fools’ll never come to the table,” she whispered to no one. The FOW had declared in their manifesto that the UC would be destroyed down to the last man. Her government had traded people’s lives for a meeting that would never happen.

She thought of Rokna, his stupid boyish grin and the bright look on his face whenever he spoke of his loyalty to his home. Her mind drifted towards Alanir, who had planned on retiring to one of the agricultural worlds and making his living farming. Now none of them would do anything ever again.

“Ah hell,” she uttered, stamping out her cigarette. “Stop moping.”

This whining and bellyaching wasn’t her. In one swift motion, she pulled the broken armor panel off her suit and replaced it with a spare from one of the corpses’ packs. Polonak’s energy cannon had its power cell shattered, but the one in his pack still had juice. She stuck it in the cannon, charged it up, and draped it over her shoulder. She grabbed the blade from his hip and attached it to her belt. Finally, a spare helmet replaced her broken one.

She marched up the hill. Not fifteen meters farther, she saw the enemy force heading towards her. A hundred enemy infantry, she thought.

Fingers pointed and voices she couldn’t make out shouted. She grinned and positioned her energy cannon. As she loosed a plasma bolt, the first row of enemies ducked out of the way, allowing the brilliant blue light to collide with the ones behind them, scattering body parts and pieces of equipment as human flesh liquefied instantly.

Streaks of light passed by her as she ran, ducking and weaving. Her energy cannon gave its piercing screech as the power charged up and shot energy into human meat. Electric shocks stabbed at her as weak plasma shots collided with her armor and a hint passed through.

“Nice to see the Federation’s plasma still sucks!” she cried, colliding with the mass of humans.

Knives and close-range lasers collided with her armor, scouring the outside and stabbing her with needles of pain. It didn’t matter, she roared and swung her blade, the power lighting it up. The screams of men echoed as her glowing blade cut through soldiers. She used her energy cannon, useless at close range, as a battering ram and bashed helmeted skulls in.

A laser tore through her right leg, cutting a dime-sized hole completely through her calf. She screamed as the armor released nanotech to seal the wound.

The distinctive shriek of a laser pistol charging up sounded in her ears. Behind me, she recognized. With a scream, she drove her blade backwards into the spot the Federation soldier’s power pack was.

The pack exploded, throwing her to the ground and causing a cacophony of screams as soldiers suffered third-degree burns and melted limbs.

Her head rang from the shockwave that passed through her, knocking her forward to the ground. Now, it’s over, she thought, unable to move. Federation soldiers lie dead around her, but there were still at least forty who were intact enough to end her. Meanwhile, she couldn’t even move her body. Cranial and central nervous system damage was always the risk with close-range explosions, and her last-ditch effort had resulted in at least fifty dead.

“Is this it?” someone asked.

“It’s the last of the UC’s troops in this sector,” someone else replied. “We’ve driven the rest out or destroyed them.”

A pair of strong hands reached under her and flipped her over. She stared up at many pairs of angry eyes. Her mind sent commands to her limbs to reach for her blade and swipe at them, or at least drive fists and feet into bodies. The connection seemed severed.

“Just kill me already!” she demanded.

A dozen pistols and rifles pointed at her, but a man at least two decades older than his comrades stepped forward, raising a hand.

Why was he looking at her with a confused expression? She was the pride of the UC, a killer raised to massacre FOW fascists that wanted genocide in the Inner Worlds. There was no reason to be kneeling over her suit of armor like he was, staring intricately.

“That voice,” he uttered, swiping his hand across the front of her helmet.

“Now that you mention it,” someone offhandedly commented.

Bile rose in her gut at the fact that this FOW vermin was touching UC property. If she could, she’d end him for his insolence. Instead, his gloved hands reached for a pair of connection points on her neck guard. Air hissed as the seal broke, and he gently pulled her helmet free.

The men gasped and stepped back at once. At least four pistols got dropped. The man blinked and stared in horror. What, she wondered? What was so strange? She was the enemy. It wasn’t exactly a difficult proposition.

“General,” someone whispered.

Tessira blinked in confusion. “General?” she whispered. That wasn’t right. General was a standard military rank. As an Aesir, she was a Section Master, an internal rank used exclusively by the program.

Even more confusing were the tears forming on this man’s face, even as his teeth grit in rage. “So.” The man spat the word like so much bad rations. He shut his eyes and breathed in and out. Finally, his eyes opened. She’d only seen such rage on rare occasions. “That’s why they were winning.”

“What you doing?” she managed.

The man stood and pointed at her, then walked away.

Before she could protest, several pairs of strong arms lifted her up and draped her on their shoulders like a casket. They marched on and she sensed they walked towards the landing zone.

“No wonder,” the man shouted.

She couldn’t see what he was doing, but it didn’t matter. “Don’t you desecrate them!” she cried.

“Are they all copies?” someone shouted.

“Yeah,” the older man replied. “Tag her and let’s bring her with us.”

A needle entered her neck an instant before she could argue, and she went out like a light.

“She awake yet?”

Her eyes shot open.

Analyze the situation, she thought, remembering her training. Act.

She could feel her body.

She could feel her body!

Bursting forward off the exam table, she landed on her feet and in a burst of speed, had the man against the wall by his neck, right hand free and waiting to block a gun or knife.

Moments passed as her heart jackhammered in her chest, and she scanned her eyes across the room, looking for other attackers she knew would come. If she was in a Federation ship, then those genocidal scumbags would be eager to end her. Why they hadn’t already was a mystery she didn’t have time to consider.

Instead of attackers and troops of men, this room had only one person, and he was a skinny doctor, untrained and lacking even the physique necessary to be military.

“Where am I?” she demanded. “Why am I alive?”

The door slid open. A quick shove launched the doctor across the room and she leapt back, tensing her muscles, ready to strike like a shark at whoever was ready to end her.

When the door opened, her thick leg muscles launched her forward, crossing her arms like an ‘X’ and driving the man into the hallway wall. Her enhanced strength effortlessly knocked him backward.

It was the man who’d called her “general.” She pulled back a fist and prepared to cave his evil FOW face in.

“Why,” she asked, ignoring her training and asking a question of the enemy, “why did you call me ‘general?’”

Every fiber of her being told her he was ready to strike, to attack, and she stepped to the side, so no one hiding in the room could get behind her.

Instead, he looked at her with a solemn look and said, “It’s nice to see you again, General Solenra.”

She blinked in surprise. “What’s that name?” Even as she spoke the words, torrents of decades-old memories poured down on her. The fragments of thoughts belonging to her and yet not her stabbed at her like needles. “I’ve heard that name. Talk!”

Tears began to drip from his eyes. “You…” He paused, choking on his words, breathing deeply in and out. “They made you an Aesir.” The idea apparently filled him with a sad feeling of irony, as he let out a chuckle then crushed it with a clear of his throat.

“TALK!” she shouted.

“You were General Solenra Takalo,” he said, lowering his gaze, barely able to look at her. “You were my commanding officer when I was newly enlisted. You became a hero of the war and were the reason we survived.”

Her blood ran cold at the thought. Her mind fought against decades of training and finally, curiosity won, and she remembered what she’d heard. Solenra Takalo had been the most successful general in the Federation’s military. Only in the past decade or so had the UC been able to turn the tide.

“That’s impossible,” she argued, a chuckle in her voice. “She was killed at the Battle of Ironclad World, twenty-two years ago. I would’ve been fourteen at the time.”

He nodded, a sad smile on his face. “That must’ve been where they got her DNA,” he explained, “made a copy of her, and once you were old enough, extracted the genetic memory and altered your mind.”

Her head tilted in confusion. “You’re a liar,” she replied.

He grinned. “Am I?” he said. “What do you know about ‘Mjölnir?’”

At the mention of the hammer of Thor from Norse Mythology, a dam broke in her mind. “What did you…?” Her question cut off as a thought entered her mind. Her arms slumped at her side as her mouth dropped open in shock. “Oh my god.”

He sighed. “That’s what I thought,” he replied. “The doctors told me they could break through the mental blocks the UC put on you.”

She ignored him as ancient thoughts flooded her mind.

General Solenra Takalo had been captured by the UC in their campaign to end the FOW’s rebellion and force them back into submission. The Outer Worlds had been nearly broken, and their rebellion had fought back from the brink thanks to her battlefield tactics. Then, the UC hit paydirt. Their most successful enemy had fallen into custody.

When they couldn’t break her, they took her genetic material and cloned her repeatedly until they had one with perfect genetic memory. Memories of being cloned, tortured with mind experiments, and cloned again returned to her mind. Eventually, they found a version of her they could get all the FOW’s deepest secrets from.

“No wonder the United Capital is winning,” she uttered.

“Mmm-hmm,” he agreed. “Once they had your memories, they knew all our deep dark secrets.” He chuckled. “Then they made a superhuman clone of you and brainwashed you to fight against us.” He spat in anger. “A last bit of rubbing salt in the wound.”

She let out a sorrowful laugh. “And,” she noted, “that’s why they betrayed my team.”

An anger like no other filled her. He shook his head. “That’s how the UC operates,” he said. “crush any opposition and dispose of any useful tool the moment it becomes a problem.” He led her back to the room where she sat down. “I know it must’ve been tough for you, but I’ve spoken to my superiors and, if you want, you can retire to one of the Outer Worlds. You are, under Federation law, the General. Your crimes against us are easily dealt with.”

She stared at him with fire in her eyes. “No,” she replied. “I want to enlist.”

The UC stole her and used her up like a can of spray paint.

They would learn the cost of betrayal.