Chapter 15 Clash of Titans

THE COMMAND SOURCE MOVED IN SIX WEEKS. NOT SIX MONTHS. Not the year that the optimistic end of the recovery timeline had suggested. Six weeks from the day they came up out of the Mackenzie Basin rock with forty-one people and the relic in Thor's hands.

Heimdall monitoring change was reported when Elara was in Melbourne. The disruption was good news uncoordinated nests were manageable, still uncoordinated but still active.

Her arm had been properly set in Queenstown and had been in a cast for four weeks.

The cast was off now, and the physiotherapy was ongoing.

The arm was functional at approximately eighty percent, adequate but not one hundred percent.

Her ribs were healed. Her ankle was fully weightbearing.

She was, in her professional assessment, operational.

Thor was in the warehouse with her, as he had been since they returned.

They had made no formal declaration about this, no discussion of the arrangement, it had simply settled into the pattern of their daily existence of something finding its right position.

He was here. She was here. The work was here.

The arrangement expressed all three facts simultaneously.

The conversation about the Iðunn gift had not been resolved. She had met with Odin in a space that Heimdall had arranged on the outskirts of the city. Odin had presented the council's position with full clarity. She had listened. She had asked her questions. She had said that she needed more time.

Odin had said: Take the time you have. She had been thinking about what he meant by that. The phrasing, the way the time you have could mean different things depending on where you were standing when Heimdall's communication came through.

"It found another source," Heimdall said. "The accumulation level has increased. It's above sixty percent."

"How far above?" Thor said.

"The shielding is still active and my reading is limited," Heimdall said. "But the frequency signature indicates significantly above. The step change is not consistent with a gradual rebuild."

"A new amplification source," Sif said. She was on the channel from Auckland, where she'd been managing the New Zealand nest situation since the Deep Root operation. "It found something to replace the relic."

"Or it had something in reserve," Elara said. "A secondary amplification mechanism that hadn't activated because the relic was sufficient. If it's had a backup position prepared"

"Seventy years of preparation," Thor said. "It would have a backup position."

"The location?" she asked to Heimdall.

"Still the South Island," Heimdall said. "But not the Mackenzie Basin formation. The frequency is coming from" a pause, the translation from direct perception pause she knew “further west. The Southern Alps. High elevation."

"Above the snowline," Aroha said she was on the channel from Queenstown. "There are formations in the high Alps that match the geological profile. Old rock. Very deep. Access is serious you’re talking glacier country, above ten thousand feet."

"Which means the access difficulties protect it," Elara said. "Mortal access is extremely limited."

"And divine access," Heimdall said, "is going to face the same shielding we encountered in the Mackenzie Basin. Possibly enhanced it’s had six weeks to prepare for the new position."

The channel was quiet for a moment.

"There's more," Heimdall said.

"Tell me," Elara said.

"The frequency increase is not only quantitative," Heimdall said. "It's qualitative. It's darker."

"Darker," Thor said.

"The wrongness frequency at its most concentrated has shifted," Heimdall said. "As if the fundamental nature of the source has" a pause “intensified. Or as if it has incorporated something additional. Something that has changed the quality of what it is."

"The sixty percent accumulated in the Mackenzie Basin," Freyja said. She was in the warehouse. "If the transfer mechanism the relic's function of loading accumulated power into the command source directly if it is partially completed before Thor took the relic"

"It’s completed enough," Elara said. "The command source has sixty percent inside it. Not in the relic, not in an external accumulation. Inside it."

"Which means," Thor said, "the new source is building on that baseline. Starting from sixty percent rather than from zero."

"How long until it reaches threshold?" Elara said. To Heimdall.

The longest pause.

"Based on the current frequency signature and the rate of change," Heimdall said, "my estimate is" a pause “seventy-two hours."

Seventy-two hours.

"We have three days," she said.

"Less," Heimdall said. "The estimate has significant uncertainty. It could be forty-eight hours. It could be ninety-six. The shielding limits my precision."

"Best case ninety-six," she said. "Worst case forty-eight."

"Yes," Heimdall said.

She was already at the map, Thor at her shoulder.

The South Island on the map, the Southern Alps, the section of high country that Aroha would know, the formations above ten thousand feet.

Glacier country. The challenge of an assault above the snowline in the Southern Alps in what was now autumn moving toward winter.

"Aroha," she said.

"I know those mountains," Aroha said. "I've been in them. The access is two routes both serious, both weather dependent. You're looking at a full alpine approach, technical terrain above the glacier, and whatever the command source has done to the geological formation up there."

"Flight access?" Thor said.

"Helicopter can get to the glacier tongue," Aroha said. "Above that it's on foot. Or" a pause “not on foot, in your case."

"The approach for the human element," Elara said. "Me and the extraction team."

"Elara," Thor started.

"The command source keeps a human perceptible detection blind spot," she said. "We established this. A human approach element is still the right decision."

"The terrain" he started.

"I can manage the terrain," she said. "I've done alpine approaches before. Not this grade, but"

"Not this grade," he said. "At this altitude, with the approach difficulties"

"We're going to have this argument?" she said. Looking at him directly.

He held her gaze. The assessment running, the calculations visible in the quality of the look. "No," he said. "We're not."

"Good," she said. "Aroha, I need a full terrain brief within two hours. Gear requirements, approach conditions, weather window."

"Coming," Aroha said.

She was already moving, already building the next iteration of the plan. The warehouse was already shifting into operational mode around her, the hum of it.

They left Melbourne in the predawn of the second day.

The first day had been the preparation, the compressed version of the eight-day preparation for Deep Root.

Everything is running in parallel; everything was prioritized to the critical path.

The asset roster was the same: the full Deep Root team, everyone who had been in the South Island, everyone who was available and operational.

Two significant changes from Deep Root. The first was Elara's decision, the one she'd made on the first day.

After Heimdall's communication, after the full accounting of what the next seventy-two hours contained.

She'd made it in the warehouse, alone, in the early morning hours when the warehouse was quiet and the city outside was doing its preparatory work.

She was going to tell Thor. Not immediately. Not in the operational period. When the thing in the Southern Alps rock was ended. When the forty-eight-to-ninety-six-hour window had closed and when could she say it in time that the saying of it deserved.

But she knew. She had been sitting with it in the background of everything for six weeks. She knew. She was going to tell him after.

The second notable change from Deep Root was this: there was no reconnaissance.

They had Heimdall's directional read on the formation; they had Aroha's terrain knowledge.

They were going in direct. Which meant going in without a confirmed internal map of the stronghold.

Without the intelligence that a close reconnaissance would provide.

She had noted this as the operation's central risk factor and had built the response to it into every phase of the plan. Clear decision authority meant: if she read something at the ground level that contradicted the plan, she’d change the plan.

The helicopter set them down at the glacier tongue at two AM.

The Southern Alps at two AM in early winter were the Southern Alps in early winter. The high mountain environments at altitude in cold, it was both hostile and absolutely indifferent to whether you found it hostile.

The temperature at the landing point was minus twelve. Aroha had chosen the window carefully, the four-hour period when the prevailing weather pattern offered the best available conditions.

The glacier tongue was a navigational environment. The low light and the scale of the mountain above them, the route that Aroha had briefed in complete detail and that Elara had mapped in her memory alongside the combat protocols and the communication sequences.

The divine element of the assault team was different in this environment.

Thor moved through the glacier like someone for whom the terrain's challenges were of a category rather than a human one.

The conditions registered but they registered as information rather than as threat.

She kept up. She was going to keep up. She had prepared for this terrain.

At forty minutes they were above the glacier's upper section, on the rock. The technical terrain that Aroha had briefed as the critical section of the approach. The formation that Heimdall had identified above them was not visible yet.

At sixty-five minutes she stopped. "Here," she said.

Thor stopped beside her. "You have a reading?" he said.