Gudsriki by Ari Bach

heels and marched out of the room.
    Wulfgar was concerned that Temujin was correct about the allocations. He was using up five units, the most experienced, most clever units he had, in the search for Violet MacRae.
    Unit Alpha had scoured the ravine and found only unstable ground and a biomechanical mass that could barely move. The mass luckily seemed to know Violet MacRae’s last location. It belched out that she was likely dead, but seemed happy to explain her corpse would be in Dimmuborgir. If she survived, she’d likely be in Arcolochalsh.
    Units Beta and Gamma headed to Dimmuborgir and found only a crater where the silo was to have been. Whatever was there, it was vaporized. Units Delta and Epsilon headed to Arcolochalsh and found it burned down.
    All five teams continued the hunt, interviewed every witness, tracked every footstep. Given the uncertainty of her death, Wulfgar would not give up the search until they found her body, and if her body was vaporized, they would simply keep looking until the end of time. He had nothing to lose by continuing the search.
    Except for Khökh Khot. He looked over the reports: 1,176 dead, 1,214 wounded, 113 missing in action, 81 tanks lost, 7 battlepogos, and numerous small arms. A bad day to be sure, but he felt only resolve. He simply didn’t care about Khökh Khot.
    He cared about Violet MacRae. He’d lost his duplicate action figure and grown all the more intent upon collecting the real thing. He had such plans for her, such torments and such pleasures. He threw the Mongolian log panel down on the table and walked to his bedroom antechamber.
    The latest captives had been reviewed by Donatien. He’d thrown away the ugly ones, the diseased ones, those too close to nukes that got burned or broken. That left only twenty-eight, still too many to review personally. He had Donatien root out the platinum blondes, the dusty blondes, anything that wasn’t just her tone.
    That left seven in the antechamber. He surveyed them. Had them stripped and chained, and looked over those that reminded him of her most.
    None looked like her. Their faces were all too round or too square. Violet’s face was triangular more than anything. And she had angry eyes. None of these girls had angry eyes.
    What he wouldn’t give for a snip of her DNA. He could hit himself for not taking one while he had his toy. He’d failed to on Venus, under Hashima, and now the men he’d sent back to scrape the warehouse where they’d first met were coming back with nothing. And the ugly mass in the ravine had called her dead. Vaporized, if Unit Alpha was correct. He might never see her again. He didn’t even have a partitioned snapshot of her. In time he’d forget how she looked. He simply couldn’t allow it.
    The task forces would stay on the job. It was as simple as that. He’d rather have lost all of Mongol Uls than lived with the knowledge he’d given up on his search.
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    V IBEKE DIDN ’ T know where she would go had the boat survived the first fusillade. As the debris rained down around her, she couldn’t even bring herself to raise an arm to protect her head.
    She turned to see the Wolf pogos, still painted with YUP colors, forming a line just off the coast, launching long range missiles to weaken the UKI rear. Her area was sure to be a landing zone for Wolf troops.
    A tear streaked down her face. She didn’t know what she’d expected to come of the heart. She felt shame, a shame unlike anything else that had hit her before. Shame for losing Violet, shame for needing her, shame for thinking she could have her back. She’d become so used to Violet dying that she simply couldn’t accept that it could be permanent.
    The Wolf line became mobile, heading toward her beach. She wanted to kill them all, certainly. Killing gave her a good perspective. Ending lives, aside from the pleasure, made her own seem more worthwhile. But