The Age Of Odin

Thirty-Two

Everything has a weak spot.

It was one of the great undeniable truths in life that I'd seen proved again and again during my army days.

Everything, no matter how well guarded, well plated, well protected, had a point of vulnerability. A tank, for instance. The chink in its armour was its treads — exposed, necessarily thin and flexible. Take out one of them, ideally both, and that stonking great steel armadillo was going nowhere. It could still turn its turret and fire, but only in self-defence. As a mobile offensive weapon, it had been neutralised.

Same with a fortified building, a dug-in position, a sniper's nest. However many sentries had been posted, however inaccessible and impregnable the place seemed, there was always a way in. It could always be got at. Always.

If you didn't think that, you were fucked.

With the JOTUNs and SURTs, I figured the limb joints were the thing to go for. Specifically the knees.

The lower portion of each leg was conical, shaped much like bellbottom jeans, terminating in a large flat foot. Designed for stability.

Linking this portion to the upper portion of the leg was a ball-and-socket joint, and there was space between the joint and the top of the lower portion surrounding it. There had to be, so that the joint could move freely and the two halves of leg didn't grind against each other.

The gap wasn't much more than a few centimetres. But a few centimetres would do. Just the right size for lodging a grenade in. Just the right size for keeping that grenade in place 'til it went off. And the ball-and-socket joint was, surely, impossible to reinforce.

That was what I was banking on. That was my plan.

The only drawback — and it was rather a large one — was that in order to pop the grenades in we had to get right up beside the enemy. Close enough to count their nostril hairs.

And getting blasted full in the face by either a heat beam or a freeze beam was the sort of thing that could really ruin your afternoon.

The JOTUNs and SURTs were so preoccupied with polishing off the skiers that they didn't see us coming until we were almost on top of them. They quickly made up for the oversight, however, strafing us hard with their beams. At the same time they retreated into a defensive circle, covering one another's backs.

All we could do was keep running. We were committed now. No backing out at this late stage. All or nothing. Do or die.

The head of the soldier next to me disappeared in a burst of flame. He was that ginger bloke, Allinson, Ellison, whoever, the one who'd described to me his first encounter with a troll. One moment he was charging along. Next moment he was headless, the stump of his neck cauterised so efficiently that not a drop of blood came out. He staggered onward for several steps, sheer momentum carrying him along, until his legs buckled and he fell. Poor bastard. On the bright side, there was one less coppertop in the world going around frightening the kiddiewinks.

The SURT who'd killed him swivelled a few degrees, training its nozzles on me. I was staring straight down both barrels, and knew I was pretty much dead meat. There was less than five metres between us, and whether I switched direction, dived to the ground, or backtracked, no way could I avoid being hit. Gid Coxall was about to be flash-fried. Extra crispy. Done to a turn. Toast.

Then, just as the SURT fired, someone whizzed in front of me. Skadi.

She took the force of both beams, dead-on. I heard her scream. Saw her go down.

I didn't hesitate for a second. I'd been given a reprieve. A second chance. Mustn't waste it. I sprang over the smoking ruin of Skadi's body and ducked under the SURT's outstretched arms, pulling the pin on a grenade in the meantime. I slotted the grenade into the top of the lower part of the SURT's leg, which cupped it neatly and securely. Then I hurled myself flat into the snow and hugged my head.

Blammm!

Rolling over, I watched as the SURT teetered on one leg. The other leg had been shattered in two. The broken end hung uselessly down, showering out sparks and leaking hydraulic fluid. The thing then just overbalanced, collapsing to one side and slumping flat.

Yes!

No time to pat myself on the back, though. There were still six more of the fuckers to deal with.

I got to my feet, in time to see Cy knacker one of the JOTUNs using exactly the same method. Meanwhile Thor was doing the job his own way. He launched himself at one of the two remaining SURTs and brought Mjolnir crunching down on its head. This put a crack in the faceplate but did no other significant harm.

The thunder god was undeterred. Leaping up onto the machine's shoulders, he raised his hammer double-handed and began bludgeoning away at the tank on the SURT's back. The SURT lacked hands to pull him off with, and couldn't even bring its heat beam nozzles to bear on him because its arms were too long and didn't bend back adequately. Three blows and Thor had dented the tank. Another three and something began spurting out — liquid under high pressure, the fuel that powered the heat beam. On its next impact, Mjolnir struck a spark off the SURT's armour. Result: instant, massive fireball.

Thor was thrown clear by the force of the explosion, hurtling some twenty metres through the air, clothes alight, and I could have sworn he was chuckling as he flew. As for the SURT, its back was blown clean open, and inside, through a jagged hole fringed with flames, I saw the figure of a man writhing, burning, being baked in an oven of his own suit.

Served the bastard right.

Now it was open season on the suits of power armour. We had the measure of them. We had them licked.

Which wasn't to say that more of us didn't die. Each opponent we felled cost us at least two of our own, sometimes three. Somebody would come in from head-on, get obliterated, but his frontal assault meant somebody else could slip in from behind and plonk a grenade into place while the JOTUN or SURT was otherwise engaged. I saw Backdoor Kellaway do exactly that, with all the stealth and dexterity that his nickname implied. Then, when each bad guy was down, we were able to polish him off with a couple more well-placed grenades, dropped just by the faceplate. If the explosion itself didn't turn the operator's brains to soup, the percussion wave did. We swarmed around the enemy like hornets, and they swatted us, but we still managed to sting them. Fatally.

At last there was just a lone JOTUN left, and Thor went for it as though it was one of the real frost giants he despised so much. He clobbered it left, right and centre, so violently and enthusiastically that its operator was unable to draw a bead on him. Every time he pointed an arm at Thor, it was bashed aside by Mjolnir. Eventually Thor managed to knock loose both of the feeder tubes that supplied the freeze beam weapons. Detached, they dangled like limp dicks, gushing liquid nitrogen or some such all over the ground in a hissing glassy slick. The suit was now pretty much defenceless, and the operator knew he was fucked five ways to Sunday. His face was a mask of panic. He raised the suit's arms in surrender, but Thor wasn't having a bar of it.

"Clemency? Compassion?" he roared. "Mortal, you are sadly deluded. I am Thor, god of thunder, and I bear Mjolnir, whose name means lightning. A storm knows no mercy. It flattens all with its fury, and so do I."

He made short work of the JOTUN after that. Ultimately it was sprawled on the ground and he was hammering at it like a blacksmith working at his anvil. Every gong-like blow wrecked the power armour a little further. Parts came off. Fragments flew like shrapnel. The bloke inside was long dead before Thor finished trashing the thing. Organs liquefied by the impacts, I imagined. Bones reduced to powder.

All that the rest of us could do was stand around and wait for Thor to be done. He was drenched with sweat by the end of it. Steam plumed from his head. He straightened up, surveyed the mess he had made of the JOTUN, holstered Mjolnir, planted his fists on his hips, and heaved a deep and satisfied sigh.

"Remind me not to piss him off," I murmured to Cy.

"You already did once, remember?"

"Oh yeah. Well, remind me not to do it again."

"I won't if you won't."

"Roger that."

Victory secured, Odin arrived on the scene, accompanied by Freya and Tyr. It was near dark, the sun just a red ghost on the horizon. The ruler of the Aesir took stock, casting his eye over the nine ruined suits of power armour and the thirty or so of his troops who'd lost their lives defeating them.

I piped up, "Don't suppose that was it, eh? Loki's taken his best shot and lost?"

Sombrely Odin shook his head. "Far from it, Gid. My blood brother does nothing by halves. If I know him, and I do, this was merely an exploratory sortie, to give us a foretaste of the full mayhem and misery that is his to unleash. There will be more of this kind of thing. More and worse."

Freya came over. She'd just been to examine Skadi's remains.

"My aunt still lives, All-Father," she announced, much to my surprise but not, it seemed, the gods'. "Gravely wounded, but I can detect the divine spark still fluttering within her. We should get her to Frigga as soon as possible. Summon Sleipnir."

"It is already done," Odin said. "Huginn and Muninn have conveyed word to the pilots. Skadi will be in receipt of my wife's ministrations within the hour."

Which was the best news I'd had all evening. Skadi had taken a shot meant for me, and she was going to survive. I could kiss my guilt about that goodbye.

"You have done well today," Odin told us all. "You have fought with uncommon courage, cunning and valour. Some of our comrades have fallen. It was inevitable. But we will remember them. Bragi will celebrate them in verse. They will live on in our hearts. As for these others…" he said, indicating the enemy.

"They, All-Father, belong to me," hissed a voice.

The most horrible voice I had ever heard.

And its owner was no oil painting either.