Valkyrien Part 1

This be the start of another Saga I intend to write.
It be Copyright to Jared G. Juckiewicz as of this 28th Day of February, 2011.
Hope you enjoy.
Warnings. Graphic Violence. Actually, thats about the only one... oh, wait. Coarse Language...
I'd give recommended ages, but I know a seven year-old who has no problems with watching Rise of the Lycans. On the other hand, I know a few adults who can't stomach the violence...

The sound of the chopper blades, muffled as they are sound loud in my ears. So do the revolutions of the engine at the back of our compartment. It too is as quiet as they can be made, but together they make enough noise to be rather irritating to myself. What the others feel of it, or at least some of them, is no doubt worse. Who am I you ask? Well, I'll no be giving you my true name. Naught but those who've bled by my side have that. And you'll not be getting my birth name either. I was never overly fond of it, And nigh all who know it are dead. Those who know me call me Gorm. As for what I be doing, well, me and me squad are making an insertion. Into a steaming hell. What brings us here? Well, 'tis a long story. We be in the service of Valkyrien Enterprises. Its a PMC, a Private Military Corporation, which also does work as Private Investigators. Basically, something goes missing, theres a chance of violence being involved in its recovery, you call us. Or, you need information or people or occasionally, should the price be right, goods recovered and extricated from territory liable to be hostile. Or, you simply want to wreak death and destruction on a foe. I personally favour that last one, as do most of my companions.
Who are my companions you ask? Well. Lets see. Sitting across from me is a short, thin lass, with long, firey red hair, and yellow eyes. She goes by Vixen. Why? Because she is. As pretty a Kitsune as ever shifted shape. Beside her, the lanky, slavic looking chap, he's called Illus. Wallachian in fact. Claims to be a protege of Tepes, and I believe him. Then, across from him, sitting beside me be our unit sniper. She has much the same build as Vixen, but her hair is blond, rather than red, and her eyes are green. More colour to her skin, too. Don't let the fact that her rifle is bigger than she is fool you, she can pack damn near as much as a Marine. It's the elven blood in her veins. I've yet to meet anyone bar an elf or a celt who can pronounce her given name. We just call her Elf. 'Tis accurate too. And it turns out she's skilled with everything from javelin, sling and slingstaff, through bows and crossbows, though she disdains the latter, right through to the Barret M82A1 she habitually wields. Next to her is our demo expert, a gruff old chappy. He's no taller than Vixen or the Elf, but he's broadly built, with a beard damn near down to his belt. Tis obvious that he's one of the Niebelungen, the Dwarves. And he shares their talent for creation. And for destruction. As far as name goes, well, so far as he's concerned, Vaul or Vulcan will do. Thats right, gruff old chappy, dwarf, you automatically assume he'll have a Scottish name. Instead he plucks one from the Latin. Goes to show, you never can tell by looks. And that brings us nicely to the final member of our jolly crew. Well, barring the pilots, but we don't tend to mix with them much. Naw, our final squadmate is a rarity in Valkyrien. And indeed in the world by this point. Not that the rest of us aren't, these days. He happens to be a sea-dweller. Not of the merfolk. Not even a Selkie. Both of those you can find, if you know where to look.
No, he's an Atlantean. Seems that when the city sank, something to do with Volcanoes apparently, the wizards and priest and the like got together and cast a spell to save the city and its people. only it didn't work quite as intended. Seems the city sank anyway, and the people sank with it. The spell changed them that they could live at the depth they wound up at, quite comfortably. Well, now, some of them are coming back to the surface, and they tend to not like what they see. Some of them return, but Lir here didn't. Instead, he found work with us. I won't tell you how, it's not my tale to tell.
How did I end up here you ask? Full of questions, aren't you. Well. Lets see. Now this should be coming across in a cloying, sickly sweet voice. Once upon a time, A Mommy Viking, and a Daddy Viking loved each other very much. And because they loved each other so very much, they shared a special hug. And nine months later a little viking showed up. Now little viking did all the things little vikings do, and one day he got bit by a wolf. Now nothing much happened until he became a big viking and started doing the things big vikings do. And one day, when some bigger vikings tried to do bad things to him, he changed into a bigger Wolf-viking. Now enter a pedantic, almost lecturing voice. Turns out that wolf had been a Wolf-were. And it had turned me into a Were-Wolf. Well, I got unceremoniously dragged Aviking and discovered I liked battle. I also discovered that I was damnably hard to kill. So when the Vikings went the way of the Picts and the Frisians and the Wends, I wound up fighting for the Normans, and then the Scots, and then the British, and then whoever would have me. Lately its been Valkyrien.
As for how I'm in this chopper, hovering over some south american jungle hell, well, HQ got a call for a 'consultation'. Seems a girl went missing. From an influential family. Well, My squad was up next on the duty roster, so they sent me and Vixen out to talk to the family, run a preliminary investigation and so on. Well, we speak to the family, and learn little bar that they be just as bad as the Norman Nobles, or the Scots Chiefs (At least the lowland ones), and the British Peers. We got nothing useful, and a lot of derision. Especially seeing as they be an old, christian family, and well, I wear Mjollnir on my chest. As does Vixen. In fact, the only one of us who bears a cross is Iluss. The Elf wears interlocking Celticy patterns, and Vaul wears the hammer of his namesake. As for Lir, we had a hard enough time convincing him to wear clothes. Let alone body armour. Apparently, funnily enough, at however many thousands of feet down he lives, modesty is not a major issue.
Anyway, we speak to the family. Nothing. We speak to the police. They show us the crime scene. Nothing. So we turn to our various different methods. Vixen practices Seidr. She manifests it by needlework. So, there in the hotel suite we were basing out of, we have a Kitsune sewing, whilst a Were-wolf carves and casts runes, for I know a touch of Gadstalfir. A Vampire seeks truth in a basin of blood, divining from the divine fluid. The Atlantean tries seeking our quarry in a bubble, his people method of divining, whilst the Elf whispers to a pot plant in the corner, asking what is left of the forest folk for aid. Meanwhilst Vaul does his traditional means of seeking something through magic. He gets blind drunk. Whilst the combination of techniques is strange, it works. Each method forwards a clue, or a hint of the story, and after we sober Vaul up enough to get his, we put them together, and, usually, have a lead.
Well, the lead took us up into the hills to an old abandoned airfield. We were too late, by how far we didn't know. On the other hand, Valkyrien has a few contacts. We were able to get hold of a few aerial photos of the site taken recently. They gave us a view of a chopper. Then, calling in a few more favours, and having our employers do the same, we were able to trace the chopper to a drug cartel. Now what the daughter of a rather prominent, highly religious family is doing with ties to a drug cartel is none of our business. Bringing her back is. Thus the sight of us in the chopper. Vixen and I are lightly clad, and our body armour is strangely designed. See, if anything goes slightly wrong, a large Wolfman and a lithe, swift Fox-woman can be an effective distraction, if not a cause of victory. And if it really goes tits up, well, have you ever tried to track a fox or a wolf? It's not the easiest thing to do. Especially not when your quarry has a few centuries (At least) of experience on either side of the chase. The others wear camouflage and normal body armour, and the Elf has a ghillie blanket, and her beloved, modified .50 Cal. It's recoilless, for even with her Elven blood, the recoil of a normal Barrett would send her flying, she's that light.
As for the rest of us, well, silenced M-14's suit us alright. We all carry (even the Elf) a silenced MP5(SD) SMG, although sidearms are a matter of preference. I personally favour a Magnum .454, although Vaul swears by his custom Desert Eagle .50. Illus and Lir both wield 9mm, Glocks. And the Elf is normally forced to take a Colt .45 automatic, over her strident protests about not needing a sidearm. To top it all off, we all bear a melee weapon. I favour a long-handled hatchet. Vaul, a short-handled hammer. Proper pick-backed warhammer, admittedly. Iluss swears by the rapier in a scabbard that hangs upside down behind his back, just where he can whip it out in seconds. Vixen actually carries a pair of shortswords, langsaex really, and the Elf favours a short, leaf-bladed celtic sword.
The drop is easy enough, the choppers come in low, and we fast rope down. We'll signal them for Evac from a clearing on the far side of the target facility, with a trio of smoke grenades Vaul is carrying. Green signals, come right in, Cold Evac. Yellow, Hot Evac, be bloody quick. Red smoke, now red smoke means that the Daemon Murphy is playing dirty. Aerial Evac is right out, we'll try and slip out overland. It'd be easy enough for Vixen and I, we can hunt and live off the land without wasting ammo. Elf too would have no problem. As for Illus, if we can find locals, he's laughing. It's only Vaul, Lir, and the Lass we be here to rescue who would have issues, and with three of us foraging for six, it'd be doable.
So, here we are, six of us, fading into the forest. Vixen and I have daubed each other with grease-paint in camouflage patterns, my favourite part of any op. Except possibly those occasions when we help each other clean it off. With a few centuries practice, even those who have no natural skill in stealth can learn it, and though Lir has lacked that time, he learned stealth in a school where the slightest move can mean death. Lessons learned undersea were applied to terrestrial know-how, and he took to stealth as swiftly as anyone. So, we slipped up until we could see the facility. Broad fields of growing Coca. Long racks of drying Coca. No cover bar the drainage and irrigation ditches. So, we send Elf round the side to find a sniper post. Meanwhile the rest of us wait for dusk. See, none of us have a problem in the dark, the Vampire being a creature of the night, Vixen and I being able to move nigh as well by hearing alone as by smell, nigh as well by smell as a normal human can by sight in the day, and far better than any human can by sight, day or night. Lir grew up in an Abyssal trench apparently. Light isn't an issue to him. Admittedly, it took him a while to learn how to gauge his surroundings of pressure differentials as he was used to, but hey. And of course Vaul has spent centuries working underground, not all of it with the benefit of lamps.
Anyway, dusk falls, and we begin to work our way in towards the buildings, most of them crude and rough. No concern of ours. Well. Mostly. Lir's job is to cover Vaul whilst he sets up a distraction when we reach the buildings. The rest of us will to go into the... Manor is a good enough term, I suppose. Fortunately it looks to be modern construction and design. All windows and such like. Not like the old, almost fortresses they used to use. Makes entry easy. The breaching charge can go anywhere. Well, we reach the buildings easily, staying in the ditches and avoiding the roving spotlights. Outside those beams, everything is shadowed, and of course, with slight movements and keeping to the ditches, the sentrys see nothing. And then we split up. Lir and Vaul go into the buildings, warehouses and barracks and bunkrooms. Those housing labourers are left alone. Those housing military forces are mined around the edges, and the entries warded with claymores and flashbangs. As for the warehouses, lines of detcord, and packs of thermite will send their contents to oblivion. Having finished laying the cover for our escape, they exfiltrate, waiting on the far side of the facility to cover the rest of us when we come fleeing out. Of course, first we need to get in. We find a door thats unlocked, and wait until no sentrys have a line of sight. Now, Vixen and I have to go in first, on the grounds that Illuss can't do entry. Vampire. Can't enter without invitation. Of course, it doesn't really matter who does the inviting so long as they be over the threshold. As soon as we be in, Elf starts flitting from one sniper post to another. She works her way around to where Vaul and Lir are waiting, and then prepares a final post. Meanwhile, the three of us had been quietly infiltrating, and seeking a scent of our quarry.
We had of course, it being standard procedure when shifters or those with heightened senses of taste or smell, went after a kidnap victim or runaway, got entry to the victims rooms or access to their possessions. It gave us their scent or taste, and make actually locating them easier. Oh, and Iluss ability to sense a heartbeat was amazingly useful. He took point and often a roving sentry would come round a corner only to take a bullet as soon as he had. Or a sentry around a corner would suddenly drop, a bullet in his heart. Illuss had had a lot of practice. The three of us had been doing this together since we wore green jackets on the way from Spain into France. Finally, he stops, and signals us to do the same. Silently, he mouths a brief description of what faces us. And we work out what he is saying. four, guarding a door. another six in the next room. The scent of our rescuee is strong in this corridor, and it seems to go round that corner. So, we make ready. I sling my assault rifle to my back, draw my SMG, holding it one handed and bracing it off its sling, my other hand drawing my hatchet. Illus and Vixen both do similar. And then we spin into the corridor.
A short three round burst drops each of the first three of the guards. The third falls seconds later, a hurled hatchet, hurled knife, and lightning lunge with a rapier all wounding him mortally. and quietly. The falling bodies actually make the most noise. My two companions form up on either side of the door, as I draw back to take a run up. See, a Were-wolf is almost as difficult to kill as a Vampire. and can go through sealed doors without requiring prior invitation. Indeed all I need normally is a run-up, and I have that. So, a run, and a leap, and my mass and muscle and velocity tear the hinges off the door. And as soon as I'm in the door, I'm catching scents. Before my vision is even clear, I'm firing. Two of the guards are down before they even respond. Vixen drops another as he brings up his gun, and Illuss takes down the man behind the desk, but that leaves the last. Following his orders, he shoots at the girl. Following mine, I get in the way. Three rounds bounce off my chest plate, but four, five, and six mangle my right shoulder. You know, the one handling my gun. On the other hand, a swift hop skip, and a few peculiar half-steps, and I'm close enough to put an axe through his skull. A moment after that, I'm licking spraying blood off my lips, and blood and brains and flecks of bone off my axe. And wishing we didn't have a hostage to worry about.
See, its been a long time since any of us had a proper feed. Oh, the Elf, and the Dwarf, and Lir, they be mostly normal, diet wise. But ask any shifter, bar one of the veggie ones, those that shift into things like deer, or goats, or horses, or any vampire what the best meal in the world is, and they'll tell you, fresh, raw, long pork. Why do you think so many of us are military?
Anyway, Vixen is busy cutting the lass loose from her chair, and Illuss is administering mercy, and I'm fighting down an urge to shift, and rend, and tear, and maim, and feed. See, injury tends to trigger such hungers. But in the end, as it always has been, my will is stronger, and A few moments later, we be ready to leave. The trouble is, well, trouble. Someone seems to have found one of our bodies, and alarms are wailing. Illuss turns to the rescuee, and ever the gentleman, bows to her. "Milady," He says in that annoyingly posh, cultured, noble accent he tends to favour. "It is time we were leaving. Would you care to accompany us?" His attempt at courtesy is, of course, overridden by my grabbing the girl, flinging her over my shoulder, and taking off at a run towards the evac site. After a minute, I have a thought, and pass her screaming form over to Illuss. See, this would be much easier if we didn't have to worry about doors. And, well, I can't fire accurately with my right anyway, but I couldn't load with it either. So, I shift. See, my weapons all have custom trigger grips, to accomadate my shifted limbs. And there isn't a bullet softened gyprock wall that can stop a Were-wolf going through it. Illuss just has to ensure Rescuee faces the other way. And as she appears to be in a dead faint, thats easy enough to do. So, we take a shortcut. And any who get in the way get ripped apart. From ahead, we can hear the loud cracks of Elfs beloved Barrett. And there, in front of us is a pane of glass, a field, and then the jungle. So, I trigger a burst. Pretty starbursts appear on the glass. Fuck. It's bullet proof. So, Twisting to the side as I leap, I throw all my weight onto the cracks. Leading with my bad arm, of course.
Well, under that assault, the glass cracks. And then I realise this side of the house is raised some ten feet off the ground. Landing hurts. Like Hel. But, gritting my fangs till my gums bleed (easily done) I drag myself to my feet, as Vixen and Illuss land beside me. Vixen touches down in a crouch, taking the impact on her knees. Illuss on the other hand, drifts down lightly. Bastard Wampyrri... A change in Vixens scent tells me she's shifted too. Sadly, there be no time to admire her, as there, ahead of us, be a line of foes. Elf can't sort them, being busy dealing with the sharp shooters clambering onto the roofs, and Vaul and Lir can't range. On the other hand, they can blow the world to Niflheim and gone. As the smoke and dust settles Vixen and I lose it. Discarding our rifles, we howl, and rush those in front of us. Illuss follows in our wake, forced to avoid the joy of the battle in order to defend his charge.
A few minutes of glorious slaughter later, Vixen and I realise its time to withdraw, possibly hastened to this decision by the bullets that have managed to wreck our guns, the smell of hot lead drifting up from our bullet-marked vests, and of course, the ever increasing volume of fire. Hitting the quick releases on the shoulders of each others vests, we cast them aside, finishing our shifts at the same time. Where once there were two large anthropoid canids (Human looking mutts) now there be a Red Fox and a Timber Wolf, both streaked with ash and soot, fur matted with camouflage paint, diving into a darkened ditch, and streaking like lightning into the woods. Slipping out was fairly easy. The others simply headed straight for the Evac. Meanwhile Vixen and I wreaked hel. The thick undergrowth surrounding the few game trails forced our foes to follow set paths. Vaul set out a few claymores on motion sensors, tagged with Belladonna, Wolfsbane. We could smell those a mile off. Our pursuers couldn't. And where Vaul had no such traps, well we could get close enough to the trail to drag down a man or two, and fill our throats with hot blood before cutting back into the woods. Elf signalled their arrival at the Evac site with a precious round from her rifle, and we scampered to catch up.
The next dawn saw us flying out in the special hind variant Valkyrien favoured. Now, in case our rescue came to, Vixen and I had to stay shifted. All we needed was a complaint against us for immodesty... And of course, our clothes, already tattered come the end of our first shift, kinda went the way of those who'd stood against us when we made the second. So, when she did come to, two of those she had seen come to her rescue were missing, and in their place, a pair of large, filthy wardogs, one fully half again the size of the other, curled up against each other, eyes closed, snoring lightly. We'd had a chance for a feed on the way back, tearing out hamstrings and throats. Sadly, we hadn't had the time to single one off for a proper feed, but hey, maybe next time. Good paycheck coming though. That'll keep Vixen and I in flea powder, steak tartare, venison and the like for some time. Lir will be able to put more towards that pressure tank he's wanting for comfort sake, and Vaul is unlikely to start sobering up for a week. Don't ask me what Illuss or Elf spend their money on...