Capítulo 13 La furia del trueno #2

Tyr lo notó, a las dos horas. Miró a Thor desde el otro lado de la sala principal de la estación y asintió con un solo gesto que decía, en el lenguaje comprimido de dos entidades que han estado en esta posición antes, te veo, y estoy aquí, y vamos a hacer esto. Thor asintió de vuelta.

A la una de la tarde se mudaron. El convoy, tres vehículos para el elemento humano, el elemento divino moviéndose por el terreno con la eficiencia de entidades para quienes la región alta de la cuenca Mackenzie era un entorno navegable más que un desafío.

Recorrieron la distancia hasta la posición de asalto en el silencio organizado de un grupo que ya había hablado y ahora estaba en la fase que viene después de hablar.

El cielo estaba despejado a altitud, la cuenca abajo, las montañas visibles al oeste y al sur, el tipo de paisaje hermoso en cuanto a cosas que son indiferentes a las categorías de bello o peligroso.

A doscientos metros de la formación geológica, Heimdall reportó lo que había estado leyendo durante las ocho horas: la actividad interna de la fuente de mando había cambiado de carácter.

La frecuencia de la nota fundamental había cambiado.

Todavía completamente presente, aún con la intensidad que había estado monitoreando, pero con un trasfondo diferente.

"Está activo," dijo Heimdall. Por el canal de comunicación, su voz transmitía el aire de alguien entregando inteligencia en tiempo real con total precisión y sin adornos.

"La fuente del comando está en estado activo.

La frecuencia tiene el carácter de una pausa, la pausa de alguien que traduce desde la percepción directa. Algo que se está preparando.

"El ciclo de carga," dijo Thor.

"Posiblemente," dijo Heimdall. "La firma de amplificación de la reliquia está presente. A baja intensidad, no es una activación completa. Algo que estaba" otra pausa "se calentó. Estado de preactivación."

"Va a empezar el siguiente ciclo," dijo Sif. Ella estaba en el canal desde su posición. "La recuperación detectó a un humano con percepción divina de alcance. Sabe que estamos aquí. Se está acelerando."

"Then we will accelerate," Thor said.

"Assault positions in three minutes," Sigrid said, on the channel.

They moved to positions. The assault composition as briefed Tyr and Thor at the geological formation's primary seam point.

Sigrid and Sif flanking, at the secondary entry points that the formation's geology created.

Freyja at the monitoring position, behind Sigrid's right shoulder, exactly as briefed.

The human hunters at the extraction staging positions, the places where they would receive the people coming up from the stronghold and move them to the waiting vehicles.

Thor stood at the primary seam with Tyr on his right and Mjolnir in his hand, the geological formation was in front of him.

Elara was somewhere inside it, and the root note was fully present in the frequency, and it was there was no honest way to describe it except old.

The oldest frequency he encountered was on this Earth in this age.

Something that predated the current order of things by a margin he couldn't measure from outside the shielding.

"Ready," he said on the channel. The confirmations came back. "Heimdall," he said. "The shielding."

"It's calibrated against divine approach from the surface," Heimdall said.

"If you go through it at full activation speed the shielding's response time is approximately three seconds.

You have a three second window after initial contact before it can direct the command class defensive response to your position. "

"Three seconds," Tyr said, beside him.

"Is enough," Thor said as he raised Mjolnir, the storm that he'd been holding since four AM was released.

The rock opened. Not the controlled seam separation that had taken Elara. The full structural response of a geological formation receiving a focused divine energy strike.

Three seconds. He went in with Tyr on his right. The stronghold was vast was the word. He'd been in Grimstalker nests before, had breached the Port Melbourne and Sydney operations, had the accumulated intelligence of decades of engagement with the genius. He had not been in anything of this scale.

The geological formations interior was a space that the standard architectural categories didn't apply to.

Not a chamber, not a tunnel, but a hollowed depth, an absence of rock where rock should have been, and the walls of it and the floor of it and whatever passed for its ceiling were covered in the resin that was the Grimstalker structural material.

All at a density and depth that told him this had been being built for the full seventy years, that every surface here was the accumulation of seven decades of Grimstalker biological production. The scale of it was unimaginable.

The command class entities were deployed in the organized defensive configuration of a group that has been briefed and is ready. The configuration was not the defensive response of a nest caught by surprise.

The first three hit them simultaneously. From the front, the sides and above, the three-dimensional engagement that was the command class’s advantage over the standard Grimstalker. One that had killed operatives before this.

Tyr took the right-side engagement with the absolute and complete readiness that was Tyr.

His left arm the one he had, the single arm, the one that remained after Fenrir had taken the other at the binding, moved with a speed and precision that the command class’s approach hadn't accounted for, and the first of the three that hit the right side was disrupted before it completed its engagement.

Thor took the left side and overhead simultaneously.

Mjolnir's arc was not the single target swing of an individual weapon.

It was the broad frequency discharge of divine energy in a radius, the hammer finding its targets with the intelligence of something that knew what it was looking for and could find it without visual guidance.

The overhead entity took the full discharge at contact range and the disruption that resulted was significant.

Command class entities at full strength required multiple engagement to destroy.

This one was not at full strength by the time the discharge connected, because it had run through the full ambient discharge field he was generating before it reached contact range.

One down. He didn't count. He moved. The stronghold's internal geography was working against them the tunnels that branched from the main chamber.

The layout that the command source had designed for over seventy years.

The defensive in-depth that required moving through layers of engagement rather than addressing a single defensive line.

Every tunnel was a position. Every junction was a kill zone.

He moved through them with the storm and with Mjolnir and with the full capacity of what he was.

The thing that was present in him that was not only operational, but that was also underneath the operational, the thought of her, the direction sense of northwest and inside and alive was the thing that ran his pace.

Not recklessly. He was not reckless. Reckless was failure mode.

Reckless got people killed, got operatives killed, got the people in the resin killed because someone moved faster than they could sustain and collapsed the forward contact before the extraction could complete.

He was not reckless. He was fully committed, without the modulation of someone holding something back for a later need.

He was not holding anything back. The second and third command class were engaged at the first tunnel junction.

Both of them were the coordinated engagement of two entities who had worked together.

The tactical intelligence of command class entities at full operational capacity.

They came from the junction's two branches simultaneously, timed to converge on his position at the same moment, with the aim of creating a response requirement that exceeded single target capacity.

He went between them. Not the either-or response that the engagement was designed to produce.

He went into the junction and through it, between the converging approach paths, and Mjolnir moved on the backswing to the right entity and his left hand, the divine physicality of the Aesir form at full expression took the left entity directly.

The grip and discharge combination that required contact range and the willingness to be at contact range with a command class Grimstalker.

The left entity's response to being taken at contact range by an Aesir at full expression was the response of something that had encountered a force significantly exceeding its own capacity.

It was not a quick ending as command class entities were durable.

But it was sufficiently compromised that Tyr, arriving three seconds behind, completed it.

Two more. He moved. The channel in his ear was carrying the operational picture Sigrid’s voice, tight and precise, from the secondary entry point: two command class entities at her position, engaged, holding.

Sif, from the third entry: one command class, disrupted, another approaching, requesting support.

Freyja, from the monitoring position: frequency picture shows the command source is in the deep section, below the third junction, moving away from the assault contact.

Not retreating, repositioning. It's moving toward the preservation chambers.

The preservation chambers. Where the warehouse people were held. Where Elara was held.