The Valhalla Covenant
Prologue

The complete absence of windows made for a strange sort of office and, combined with the dim lighting that lay beyond the single lamp’s sharp pool of brilliance, it fashioned a guarded, threatening air.

From behind a wide mahogany desk, coal black eyes regarded the face of the man opposite with frigid disdain. The sharp features, he thought, were strangely brutish in their dissonance.

Empires always had their emperors, their generals, their captains and their foot soldiers but, as a general of sorts, this one had to deal with the foot soldiers more frequently than he preferred. In his line of business, he had to replace such brutes and break them in without reference to those higher up.

Left with the tough decisions and the dirty work, he was however at liberty to indulge in pleasures that few men knew, not to mention the privilege of punishing those who dared cross him in almost any way he chose. Revenge, he knew, was a cold course that few could effectively accomplish and even fewer could truly stomach.

“You have the location?” he asked, his eyes intent, though his face was effectively shrouded in darkness.

“Yes. You want complete destruction?”

“No. A shattered mess will do, but not an inferno. As the manager, the woman will have some shelter from gunfire. I want her and the child alive. Make it bad enough and she’ll think that’s it — the worst is over. Then, we’ll walk in and take her, along with the interfering brat.”

A smirk creased across the minion’s unlovely features as lurid fantasy filled his mind.

“The security guards?”

“Kill them.”

“What about the rest — the customers?”

“Whatever it takes.”

“You want us to collect?”

“No. Nothing like that. Just soften the place up and leave. I want no connection between your raid and us. Clear?”

“Yes.”

“Go,” he ordered, the final briefing over.

The short, angular Chinese stood, his stiff black leathers creaking as he turned and made his way to the door.

A large mass of frontal cloud came in and overcast the late afternoon sky, rendering the few unbroken streetlights inadequate as the traffic intensified beneath the tall towers in the evening rush.

An indistinct figure — briefly discernible as a woman by her shoes alone — emerged from the stately old Queen Victoria building, and as she stepped onto the pavement was immediately swept up into the jostling, verging on belligerent crowd.

Initially, she made good headway towards the quay end of the city centre but before long had to yield, and the rippling human tide carried her in the opposite direction across the road.

Close by, Sydney Town Hall stood like a haven in a storm; yet was as threatening in the approach as any island could be to a mariner. In recent times, too many had been crushed on its sandstone walls.

Erin knew the currents and the reefs, however, and fought to maintain her position. More space would have been afforded her amidst the crowd had she not hidden beneath a large, dull-hued windcheater and hood, but ease of movement would have been a poor trade for anonymity. Any eye-catching woman in this deranged era would always be a mark.

In the past, all unearned and unsolicited admiration had angered Erin but as she approached her thirties many things seemed different. Greater experience of general insecurities — her own and others’ — had done much over time to soften her initially hardline view of the average urban male. Everyone felt alone in this landscape, whether they admitted it or not.

Yet she wasn’t fool enough to allow any hunger for friendship or affection rule her. Consequently, on the street she nearly always covered up thoroughly, even if it did make life harder — and lonelier.

Dressed as she was, many eyes swept over her as they ranged from glaring suspiciously at their nearest neighbours to scanning the crowd for the best way through.

As she well knew, though, some were in the habit of surveying the crowd more carefully. The ‘cruisers’ and their spotters were familiar with what they regarded as lightweight strategies of sartorial deception and today as ever, were out scanning the crowds.

Erin rarely ignored any potential threat and had already noted a few spotters — ‘dandies’ as they were known in the trade. Often dressed just a little too self-indulgently, they were the ones who called in the cruisers — a euphemistic term used in the Australian vernacular with considerable emotion.

Reflective, as she walked, it seemed to her that the word had an adumbrative quality, employed as it was so curtly to paint an image of the worst sort of criminal — but she certainly had no artistic illusions about the brutality of those so named.

Most belonged to organized associations. Triads were not tolerated in the mid 21st century Australian criminal landscape, largely because the local gangs despised them, but the very same elements were triads in nature if not in name.

Local crime bosses had long emulated the strategies of such foreign groups in many ways, but most of all in stalking attractive young women to sell — and the cruisers did the dirty work.

Nowadays, the sorts of females they targeted were rarely seen after nightfall and in such a cautious climate, many crime bosses were increasingly desperate for what they cavalierly referred to as ‘stock’, causing their street crews to abandon the traditional cover of darkness and hunt during the late afternoon rush.

As with any tide, the volume of the crowd around Erin ebbed and flowed, and when it inevitably reduced, she pushed through near to the northern wall of the Town Hall. A near vacant spot towards the back and out of the main crowd flow provided sufficient respite for her to make a call.

Clamping her phone over one ear and covering the other with her free hand, she pressed the call button. After a frustrating minute or so, a belated message reported that the connection had failed.

She tried again.

Sydney, like most large cities, had long been an urban jungle, but in this sixth decade of the century, wealthy Asians seeking refuge from Fukushima’s ever burgeoning plume of deadly fallout and radiation had brought an even darker culture with them. Population exploded to well beyond a hundred million and such accelerating pressures ushered in more of both the chaotic and the spectacular.

Cruisers and the like were there in all the world’s cities, but their unlawful dominance was greater here, and seemed to affect Australia’s cultural essence with disproportionate intensity.

Everywhere, young women and men knew they could be torn away at any moment from a normal life and freedom, but in the southern land, as the Chinese so tersely called it, there was a qualitative difference of attitude. In the hearts of many, the dread of the cruisers’ secret world was compelling, like a horror movie they could not help but watch.

As an agent of the Institute, Erin had sworn to pit herself against the numerous manifestations of their dark exploitation, but the Institute also had to deal with the Global Unity Council, not mention the sorts of intemperate social undercurrents that the council’s perverse take on freedom created.

Today, however, there was something more than usually strange in the air; something watchful and brooding that made Erin’s heart pound heavily — like a mystic storm lingering on the margins of fate.

Cell coverage was still weak. Storm or no storm, fear or no fear, she either had to get a connection or make it through to the latest rendezvous more quickly than now seemed possible. She dialled again, glared impatiently at the screen then bit off a cry of disgust at the ‘no signal’ message.

More immediate considerations took over then in the shape of several curious sets of eyes, and sensing them, she lifted her own eyes cautiously towards the street. Already the crowds were thinning, albeit for brief moments. It might be possible, even advisable to make a dash for it given that the greatest danger would come after the intense afternoon rush began to melt away.

Over the road and some distance towards the harbour, she glimpsed part of the neon sign that she knew advertised the store that was today’s mission location — Brillante, the second half of the sign. A glance at the opposite sidewalk up that way revealed a significant further thinning of the crowd.

As the pedestrian light turned green she pressed forwards, but before she could set foot on the street, shrieking tyres and the soft growl of a powerful motor sparked sudden uproar.

Erin cursed wildly, struggling to back away, but was held tight as those ahead retreated from the aggressive approach of a low-slung street racer — a black Audi coupe.

Hidden to her though the driver was, the poison dart of his clear intent made her freeze, but a wave of relief followed — relief in the realization that she was not at the front of the crowd.

She took a deep breath and refocused, curling her fingers as she did so around the reassuring composite pistol in her pocket. Long seconds later, the coupe moved again and sped off with a soft growl of almost vocal frustration — its driver apparently unable to locate what he had felt so sure was there.

Erin knew all too well that they had little regard for anyone or anything but themselves. As angry dregs of an increasingly machine like culture, they indulged in only the most immediate forms of physical gratification and, when on the hunt, struck without hesitation or mercy.

While most loathed and feared them, Erin knew that an increasing number of the city’s menfolk verged now on the tipping point of submission to their own inner hatred and actually felt sneaking admiration for those who had grasped with both hands the complete abandonment of any moral code.

The desire for freedom from a routinely oppressive daily life and indulgence in what they saw only as a new benchmark of male liberation demonstrated a staggering degree of degradation in social values.

Even now, numerous lairs in various sectors of the city were prisons of daily hell for many who fell on the wrong side of that benchmark.

Yet few of the psychopaths that ruled literally with a whip hand over such dens ever openly contravened city regulations, and they guarded their own freedom with fanatical zeal. In the rare instances that their contract hunters left themselves open by breaking the rules, the police could rarely track them courtesy of their morphing license plates, ‘chameloid’ duco and an all but uniform dress code.

Erin crossed with the crowd, sharply drawing breath again after holding it too long, and began to make her way up the other side. Sprinting now and then where possible, she slipped her way through the less dense confluences of the crowd with the studied impassivity of the hardened city dweller.

Up ahead, suspended high above the sidewalk, the full sign ‘Chenault’s Brillante’ was now plainly visible. There would be security at the door in the form of two armed guards, but that was as it should be.

As she approached, the guards, heavy like so many, met her with indifferent eyes. She halted for a moment and smiled despite their wooden reserve, as the doors slid aside.

Glittering luxury shone before her. White marble, glass, timber, leather and silk stroked the senses. It was an impressive oasis of wealth — the proud asset of a substantial syndicate — and suddenly quiet; quieter than any place had a right to be in the fetid rambling chaos of this once beautiful city.

Erin cast an eye around at the people within and took note of the young woman — no, she was but a girl — at the desk. She appeared to Erin’s practised eye in some way, not necessarily related to her age, out of place. In support of that observation, her bearing seemed at least initially to discourage approach.

Several customers browsed close by but they too appeared absorbed in the moment. Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. Perhaps management had arranged for this girl to be here at this time, precisely because of her lack of experience.

After all, this firm did support the Institute, and was party to their covert arrangements for channelling funds. A young and inexperienced girl might not be expected to provide the most detailed descriptions from memory and since violence was unheard of in these dealings, safety was not an issue.

Erin’s phone vibrated. It displayed the right number for today’s mission contact.

“Where are you?” he asked, his voice distorted yet familiar.

“I’m local.”

That was code for arrival at the scene.

“On my way Pip,” he replied, and then she knew for sure who it was.

Excited on a different level now, she thrust back her feelings almost before becoming aware of them — fully aware that in the operational context they introduced an unacceptable extra element of risk.

It was a fixed part of standard operating procedure and Blaze certainly abided by it given that Erin had only recently begun to feel like she knew him at all, despite acting as decoy for him at least a dozen times. She still didn’t even know his real name.

Like most Institute operatives, Blaze was on the run much of the time with no fixed abode and nearly two months had passed since she’d last seen him.

As a rule, things went well while he was around. With him, she felt more secure. If she had any doubts at all, it was only because she knew that the smooth execution of plans in this business could never be considered a foregone conclusion.

She turned her attention back to the place and the people around her, focusing again, eventually, on the girl behind the desk. Her glance was returned although she held the youngster’s gaze only fleetingly — enough perhaps to gather a general impression.

Marginally taller and a little more slender than herself, the set of the girl’s sensuous face spoke of a thinly veiled emotional dynamo. All the same, her blue eyes softened into a smile as Erin approached.