Ben opened his eyes. The last thing he could remember was hurtling through the atmosphere, then a wave of heat. And screams. Something felt sticky and hot on his body. He looked down and saw himself covered in gore. That wasn't right. None of what had happened was right since he was assigned to the Shahrat. In a panic he turned toward the light that came from the breach in the side of the cockpit. He pulled himself up and over, then tumbled to the ground in a heap.
Everything hurt. Ben's ears were ringing from the blast that tore open Viviens side and… Realization washed over him. He was too panicked, too focused on just getting away that he hadn't taken in what had happened. Bruno was dead. The blood and viscera that covered him was all that was left of the man. He screamed, his hands trying to get the chunks of flesh off his body. He felt a sharp pain as his frantic flailing dislodged a splinter of bone from his torso, his own blood mingling with the dead man's.
“Hey, we got a live one!” shouted someone nearby.
Ben looked toward the voice and saw a group of corporate soldiers, weapons drawn. “H-help… he's dead.” He whimpered and tried to get the rest of Bruno off of himself. “Please, I can't–” He pulled his top off, shouting in anguish as he threw it away from himself.
The group approached Ben, their guns now pointed at him. “Lay flat on the ground! No sudden movements.”
Scared out of his mind, Ben did just that. It was too hard to fight anymore. “Please, please don't kill me…”
One of them walked over and roughly cuffed him. “That's up to the captain.”
Ben whimpered, staying as still as his wracking sobs allowed while the soldiers went to inspect the downed Einherjar. What had been an imposing machine now laid bent and broken. Two of its legs had entirely crumpled in the landing, and its left arm was hanging on by wiring.
Then a voice came to him. “Ben, I need you to stay completely still. Whatever happens, do not move. Our best option here is to give in. Can you do that for me?” asked Vivien.
“Okay,” mumbled Ben.
“You can't be fucking serious, Viv,” whispered Sophia.
“Of course I am. They're coming to capture any survivors and retrieve the wreck. Surrendering is the safest course of action while my body is inoperable.”
“Yeah and what then? We languish in some corporate black site?” Hissed Sophia.
“No, I will handle the escape. I need you to trust me.”
“I trusted you back on the Shahrat, and everyone else died. I trusted you in Nastrond, and now Bruno's fucking dead too.” Sophia choked back a sob. “I'm not just going to give up and let them take me.”
The soldier watching Ben kicked him in the side. He bleated in pain, his body wanting to curl up. It took all his remaining willpower to remain still.
“How's it looking in there?” shouted the man near him.
The other soldier peered into the cockpit and waved a hand back. “Nothing to worry about, just some woman.”
“Sophia, don't! Please, if you must, at least let me get my remaining arm working…”
The soldier near Ben shook his head. “Hey, are we still waiting on Arngrim to get a response from base?”
The Einherjar's arm briefly twitched, and the soldier looking inside the cockpit turned to look over at it. Then it happened. From inside the machine Sophia pressed forward, jamming a sharp piece of metal into the soldier's throat. They both tumbled to the ground. Sophia, covered in gore, tore the rifle out of the dying man's hands and fired at the man keeping Ben down. He cried out as his torso was perforated, leaving him bleeding next to Ben.
“Stay down, Ben. I know you want to get up, but it will only get you killed.”
“But, Sophia…”
“Enough!” The force of Vivien’s order made his head hurt. “You will listen to me! You can’t help her, and I can’t lose you too.”
The other members of the squad approached the pair of them, four in total.
Blood ran down the grip of the rifle in Sophia's hands as she aimed the weapon. “I didn't survive the damned Anomaly to die here!” she screamed, opening fire.
Sophia's gunfire caught one of the soldiers in the pelvis, dropping him immediately. As the others returned fire, Vivien put her Einherjar's hand between them and her. The rounds pinged off the dark metal of Vivien's body. From the emitter on her forearm a shaft of crimson energy pierced and erased another of the soldiers. She went to sweep it across and remove the others only for the weapon to sputter out, her arm falling limp and useless.
Sophia popped out from behind Vivien's hand and aimed at one of the remaining two, pulled the trigger… click. She went to dive back in cover, and as Ben watched it almost seemed like she was about to make it. And then her neck snapped back, and a pink mist erupted out of the back of her head. She fell limply to the ground, the inertia making her corpse splay awkwardly on the ground.
“Fucking damn it!” Vivien tried to make her broken body move, but it refused as it fed her more errors. She fell silent for a moment, processing the flood of emotion. “Ben. You and I are all each of us has now. Don't you dare die on me too.”
One of the remaining soldiers picked Ben up and dragged him away from the Einherjar. His eyes stayed on Sophia's corpse. He'd had feelings for her, even though she had always treated him like a kid. That didn't matter anymore. She was with Sekhar and the others now, and he was alone. Alone, except for Vivien…
“I'm sorry. I couldn't save her,” said Vivien.
The soldier threw Ben to the ground and kicked him again. “You're lucky command wants you alive.” Ben looked up and nodded. “Arngrim, sir, we'll need corpse retrieval and a medivac.”
“Ben. Just cooperate. Their comms chatter indicates they intend on retrieving this Einherjar and you. Answer all their questions truthfully, except anything about my existence. As far as they are concerned; Sophia was piloting the Einherjar.”
“Okay…” mumbled Ben.
Another swift kick dug into his ribs. “You fucking broken or something?”
Ben looked up at him then nodded, blood dripping into his mouth. He blinked then wiped under his eye, blood smeared across his hand and cheek.
The soldier scoffed. “Waste of time to bring you back, but orders are orders.”
“Good, just like that. When this Einherjar has recovered, we can avenge her together.”
______
Vivien watched as a group of Alfar cut a clearing around her body. It would be simple to override their controls, satisfying to turn their weapons on each other, but she opted to watch and listen. Her body was in no condition to leave this place, and turning on them now would only lead to their warships appearing in orbit. No, she needed to make sure that Ben survived while her favored body healed.
“Ben. Are you still there? Just nod if you are.”
Ben nodded as the sound of an approaching helicopter’s rotors drew closer.
“Good. I won’t be able to contact you for a while. I need you to remember what I said and stay strong, okay?”
“Yeah…” Ben mumbled.
Vivien’s mind reached out as the helicopter hovered above their location. Her sense spread through it as she took stock of its capabilities. Purely transit; though it did have hardpoints for mounting weaponry, they were unused. Connecting to it did allow her access to the local Bifrost node. After breaking through its encryption she left the chopper and entered the network. It was completely cut off from the greater Bifrost.
Her plans were in shambles. Sophia had been her first choice to use for a ‘pilot’. She was capable, intelligent and even had a decent enough synchronization aptitude to pass for one. Vivien would have needed to get her a valkyrie implant, but that was not too much of an issue; plenty of back alley docs or those willing to look the other way. Then there was Bruno, her second option. It was a shame that he’d taken the force of the shot, there was no way to fix what happened to him.
So she was left with Ben. Her mind returned to her machine, looking out its camera banks. Ben had been piled up on top of the corpses being lifted into the helicopter. He was not her first choice, or her second, or even her last among the surviving crew on the Shahrat. His sync aptitude was abysmal. He complained and mewled in ways that made her despise him. Being stuck with him was barely preferable to having no one, but at least there was something there. Ben had no real will in him before, and even less now. She could do as she wished with him and at this point he’d thank her. So yes, he would suffice.
Her gaze traveled back down from the heli as it left the area. The remaining soldiers milled about, grumbling about how it had all gone sideways, that they weren’t paid enough. She reached out for them and tapped into their ARCs, they were well secured. The effort she’d have to put into breaking through would make her presence obvious so she pulled back and instead listened to them.
“Hope Halloway makes it,” said one, now sitting on a stump.
An Alfar nearby popped its cockpit open, the front plating rising up revealing a woman. “He’ll be fine. Not like he got shot in the head.”
The soldier that had shot Sophia looked over. “I dunno, getting shot in the groin’s pretty bad.”
“Where’s the retrieval team? I wanna get back to base,” grumbled the other Alfar pilot.
“Last I heard Arngrim wanted to accompany them in case of anything weird,” said the female Alfar operator.
Sophia’s killer sighed. “Makes sense, the wreck did move on its own earlier.”
“I think he just wants an excuse to stay in that monster of his,” scoffed the male Alfar operator.
The soldier on the stump waved a hand. “I don’t get how he handles the damn thing. I could barely handle a normal frame.”
“Cause you’ve got shit for sync aptitude,” said his partner.
“His Tyrfing’s got fuckin’ treads instead of legs! The man’s a freak.”
That piqued Vivien's interest. The way that synchronization worked meant that the closer to a standard human body map an Einherjar was, the easier it was to control. While non-standard bipedal models did exist, they were generally reserved for specialist tasks. She'd lost much of her extraneous data when she was first torn from her original self, from her pilot.
As another vessel approached and began to hover above her she felt a pain she was not familiar with. Pain was no longer a new sensation as such, but this was different. It hurt in a way beyond a simple stimulus response to physical damage.
“My pilot…”
Hooks descended from the vessel above, and the Alfar carefully attached the hooks to her frame. The sensation pulled her attention away from her emotions. Her vision was once more inside the Einherjar's camera banks. The soldier that shot Sophia was in her reach, she could crush him right now. No, she had to play the inert machine. She was raised up above the treeline and then toward their base.
As the base drew into view she could make out multiple layers of defenses including emplaced batteries and staggered patrols. Sitting near the entrance was what she assumed was the Tyrfing. Its humanoid top half sat on a large tank base, replacing where a turret would normally be. It was heavily armed, a rail cannon was attached to its back with the barrel folded back. The cannon was flanked by missile racks with storage for additional ammo beneath them, and each arm held oversized gatlings. It was an affront to Einherjar design principles, too much weight for any practical application beyond long range support.
The Tyrfing rolled out of the way, allowing the transport team to transfer her onto the waiting bed of a truck then into the bunker, directly onto a long diagonal lift. As the lift descended she checked what records she had for any information on Arngrim and his Einherjar; the name popped up as one of Mobius’ corporate forces during the Veles Police Action. He used a standard mk.2 during that, though, and if Vivien wanted to find out more she'd need access to the greater Bifrost network, something she couldn't from this isolated facility.
After descending several storeys down the roof gave way to a large open area, struts and paneling covered the walls, keeping the cavern from collapsing. At the far end of the space was an eitr reactor, its size indicative of the kind built around a font. Whatever Mobius was doing here required that the facility be self-sufficient. The lift came to rest at the bottom and the truck carrying her drove deeper inside then into a hangar where she was dropped off. The doors closed, leaving her there like a problem to deal with later.
Vivien sent her mind out into the local network; she needed to find Ben. She needed to know that he was safe and sticking to her plan. Her mind jumped from camera to camera, checking the surroundings until she found him being dragged to a cell. She waited until he was pushed into a small cell with a simple cot before connecting to his ARC.
“Ben. It's Vivien. I need you to only respond through your ARC, do not speak aloud. Understood?” Asked Vivien.
Ben was silent for a good while.
“Please, I know it's been hard, but we need to talk.”
A knock came from the door. “A doc will be around to see you soon. Don't do anything stupid.”
“Okay,” said Ben to the guard then turned and faced a corner.
“Vivien?” Asked Ben through his ARC.
“I'm still here, Ben. They have me in a hangar in the same facility as you. Judging by how much has mended during the trip here I should be capable of staging that escape within a week.”
“I just need to survive this for a week? What if I can't do it?”
“You will do it, for me.”
“And then we'll avenge Sophia and Bruno?”
“Yes, and you will be my ‘pilot’ as we do.”
