The Only Gods We Know, Ch 11: Rounding Error

In the cold, silent ledgers of Asgardian High Command, Brynja and her team were KIA. The fact provided no comfort as they drifted through enemy territory in a stolen, bleeding ship.

The Chitin-Cog transport, which Mist had named the Skittermule between fits of pained, sarcastic laughter, was a ghost. Its systems were a patchwork of bypassed conduits and prayer. They'd found a cold orbit in a thin debris field, running on minimal power, another piece of forgotten junk in the void.

The first job was damage control and taking care of the wounded. The adrenaline of the escape had faded, leaving the throb of injuries and the sour acid in the back of the throat. Brynja, her own armor scarred and pitted, moved through the cramped hallways of the alien ship. Where her gaze fell, shoulders straightened and idle hands found tasks.

"SITREP, Mist. Give me the bad news," Brynja said, her voice flat, as she entered the bridge.

Mist, her face pale and lit by the eerie green glow of the Chitin-Cog consoles, didn't look up from her datapad. "It's a shit-show, Lead. Shields are at twenty percent capacity and unsteady. Life support is stable, but the main recycler is glitchy; I've had to bypass it twice. Power cells are critical. We're running on fumes. We have maybe twelve hours before we're a cold, dead rock."

"Weapons?"

"The main plasma cannon is FUBAR. We have a few point-defense turrets, but they're running on the same power grid as life support. We fire them, we might stop breathing. It's a choice."

A fucking brilliant choice.

Brynja moved on to the makeshift med-bay they'd set up in a cargo hold. One of the surviving Einherjar, a giant of a man named Torvin who had basic combat medical training, was tending to the wounded. Hrist was propped against a wall, her face tight with pain as Torvin applied a sealant to the shrapnel wound in her leg. The armor had stopped the worst of it, but she wouldn't be kicking in any doors soon. The two surviving mages were suffering from severe neural feedback, the after-effects of Kára's desperate ritual. They were conscious, but useless, their hands trembling too much to even hold a water flask.

No one spoke of the escape. Men and women who had cheated death now stared at bulkheads or checked their own wounds with a quiet, methodical detachment. They were officially dead. No rescue mission was coming because, as far as the fleet was concerned, there was no one left to rescue. They were a loose end, a rounding error in Odin's grand, bloody math.

Brynja called a meeting on the cramped bridge. She gathered the survivors who could still function: Astrid, her face a mask of cold fury; Sigrun, solid and grim as ever; a pale but clear-headed Mist; and the Mage-Major Kára, who looked like a ghost, her authority gone, leaving only a bitter, resentful pragmatism.

Brynja let the silence stretch for a moment, her gaze meeting each of theirs in turn. "Alright, listen up," she began, her voice low but carrying an unyielding authority. "Here's the situation. We are deep in hostile territory, in a crippled enemy vessel, with limited power and no support. We are, for all operational purposes, ghosts. But we are alive."

She paused. "The old command structure is broken. The Allfather's plan for us was to die quietly in that fortress. We failed to follow that particular order." A flicker of a grim smile touched her lips. "So, a new OPORD is in effect, and it comes from me. Our primary objective is to get this crew, every last one of us, back to FOB Hlið Þrír alive. We will deliver our after-action report in person. Until that objective is met, I am the ranking officer of this ad-hoc unit. All orders go through me. Any burn?"

Kára, her hands still trembling slightly, gave a sharp, clipped nod without meeting Brynja's eyes. Astrid's jaw was tight, but her gaze held Brynja's. After a long moment, she gave a single, sharp nod. Sigrun just grunted, the sound as solid as the deck plates. The new, unofficial, and probably treasonous chain of command was established. They were no longer the Stormbringers. They were the damned.

"Lead, I've got something," Mist's voice crackled over the ship's internal comms six hours later. Brynja, who had been trying and failing to meditate, was on the bridge in an instant.

"Talk to me, Mist."

"Running passive sensor sweeps. I've identified a small, abandoned Chitin-Cog automated mining outpost on a nearby C-class asteroid. Power signatures are minimal, likely running on a decaying local reactor. Intel suggests it was probably turned off before the virus hit, part of a resource shift. Its storage… they might still hold usable energy cells we can salvage."

It was a long shot, but it was their only shot. "Give me the coordinates," Brynja said. "We're going on a scavenger hunt."

***

The "away team" was small and specialized. Brynja for command. Astrid for speed and a second gun. Sigrun for heavy lifting and her priceless shield. And Mist, to try and make sense of any Chitin-Cog systems they ran into. They had to leave the wounded Hrist, the traumatized mages, and the Einherjar Torvin to guard the Skittermule.

They took a small, short-range work-skiff they found in the transport's own hangar bay. Its energy signature was low enough to hopefully go unnoticed. The outpost was a ghost town, a maze of silent, automated machinery frozen mid-cycle, covered in a fine layer of space dust. The tension was immense; they had no way of knowing if any automated security systems were still active on a local power grid.

"Stay sharp," Brynja whispered over their squad comm. "Treat every corner as a kill zone."

Mist, her datapad already connected to the outpost's local network, guided them through the silent hallways. "Power cell depot should be three levels down, section Fimm," she reported. "According to the list, it's their main storage for new cells waiting for transport."

They found it. A large chamber filled with racks upon racks of the standard Chitin-Cog power cells, each one glowing with a faint, contained energy. It was a treasure trove.

"Jackpot," Astrid breathed, her eyes wide.

"Alright, let's not get cocky," Brynja warned. "Sigrun, start loading these onto the grav-sled. Astrid, you're on overwatch. Mist, see if you can access the main power conduit and safely drain any leftover energy from the grid. I don't want any nasty surprises."

They worked with a desperate, practiced efficiency. The silence of the outpost was broken only by the hum of the grav-sled and their own ragged breathing. They were halfway through loading the second rack when Mist suddenly froze.

"Lead… I'm detecting an active contact," she whispered, her voice tight with alarm. "Single drone, patrol-class. It's not on the local network, its IFF is clean… it's a loyalist. It must have been on a long-range patrol and is just returning. It's on a direct course with this facility."

"Fuck," Brynja swore under her breath. "Can we hide?"

"Negative. It's already pinged the open hangar bay door. It knows something's off."

"Weapons free," Brynja said, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl. "But keep it quiet. No energy weapons unless absolutely necessary. The sound and energy spike will bring the whole goddamn system down on us. Melee only. On my mark."

The patrol drone, a sleek, black machine armed with plasma repeaters, drifted silently into the depot. It turned its optical sensor, scanning the room. The moment its red light fell on them, Brynja yelled, "Engage!"

What followed was a brutal, silent brawl.

Astrid was a blur, her flight pack activating in a short, controlled burst to launch her at the drone from the side, her energy whip snapping out to tangle its weapon arms. Sigrun charged head-on, her massive shield taking the drone's initial panicked plasma burst with a shower of silent sparks.

Brynja lunged from the other side. She jammed Storm-Singer into the drone's main joint, using the shaft for leverage to wrench its torso with a groan of stressed metal. It was a close-quarters brawl, a desperate struggle against a machine that didn't feel pain or fear, only the cold, hard logic of its combat programming.

Astrid's whip snapped one of the drone's weapon arms free, its plasma repeater dropping uselessly to the deck. Brynja's spear slid between its armored plates and, with a grunt, she pried its entire cockpit open, exposing the vulnerable circuitry inside. Sigrun's shield slammed into the exposed drone, sending it careening across the room. The damaged machine crashed into the power cell rack, which collapsed on top of it.

"Load the rest," Brynja ordered, her voice shaky. "And let's get the hell out of here."

***

Back on the bridge of the Skittermule, with the new power cells slowly recharging their crippled systems, Brynja gathered her senior NCO and officers again. The success of the scavenging run had bought them time, but it had also sharpened the focus of their problem. The question hung in the recycled air like a bad smell: what now?

Astrid, her rage from the betrayal still burning hot, spoke first. "We have power. We have a ship, however ugly. We should use it. Find a way to hurt them back. Sabotage another facility. Hit their supply lines. Make them pay for leaving us to die." Her knuckles were white where she gripped the console. She wanted vengeance.

Kára, the Mage-Major, her face still pale, her authority now purely academic, shook her head. "That is a fool's errand, Valkyrie. A suicidal gesture. Our priority should be pure, unadulterated survival. The Allfather does not leave loose ends. If they discover we survived, they will hunt us down with the full might of the fleet and finish the job properly. Our only logical course of action is to find an uninhabited system at the edge of the galaxy and hide. Disappear. Live to fight another day, perhaps, but not this one."

Sigrun, ever the pragmatist, looked at Brynja, her expression grim. "My only priority is the crew. The people still alive on this rust-bucket. The politics, the vengeance… that can wait. The course that gets the most of us home alive is the one I'll vote for. And right now, the only 'home' on the map is Hlið Þrír." She wanted to complete the mission, whatever the cost.

Brynja listened to them all, a hollow weight settling behind her ribs. Astrid's fury. Kára's fear. Sigrun's stubborn loyalty. She saw three different paths forward, each one ending in a grave if she chose wrong. She looked at Astrid's burning anger, at Kára's pale face, at Sigrun's unyielding posture. Then she made her decision, her voice cutting through the debate with the finality of a closing blast door.

"We are not pirates, Astrid," she said, her gaze locking onto her friend's. "And we are not cowards, Kára," she added, turning to the mage. "We are Valkyries and soldiers of Asgard, betrayed or not. Our oaths may have been broken by those who gave them, but our duty is to the soldiers on this ship. And to the truth of what happened in that fortress."

She stood, her posture radiating a command authority that no one in the room dared to question. "We will return to Hlið Þrír. We will present our testimony. We will hand over the logs from this ship as evidence. We will force them to acknowledge what they did, to our faces."

"The long-range comms array is hot," Mist announced from her console on the bridge, her voice a low, tense hum. "I've jury-rigged a frequency hopper and made it work with an Asgardian encryption key I got from our mission data before the Jötun-Kjarni systems went to shit. It's a goddamn mess, but it should work."

Brynja stood behind her, watching the energy readouts on the main screen. "What's the cost, Mist?"

"It'll use a huge amount of power," Mist said without looking up, her fingers flying across the holographic interface. "It'll take us down to critical levels again. And the transmission burst… it'll be like setting off a flare in a dark room. Any Chitin-Cog assets in this sector watching for EM signals will find our position in seconds. We'll have company, Lead. Fast."

This was it. The point of no return. Once they sent this message, hiding was no longer an option. They would be painting a giant target on their own backs. She looked at the faces of her crew gathered on the bridge-Sigrun, Astrid, a limping but determined Hrist, the pale but determined mages. They were all looking at her, waiting for the order.

"Alright," Brynja said, her voice clear and steady. "Let's wake the dead. Mist, prepare to transmit on my mark. Encrypted burst, aimed at Valkyrie Command's main channel."

She leaned over the console. "This is the message. Word for word." She took a breath, her voice dropping into the short, formal tone of an official report. "Valkyrie Command, this is Stormbringer Actual, new callsign Ghost-Lead. Reference Operation Loki's Gambit: SITREP is multiple survivors. Repeat, we have friendly survivors. We are alive and operational in a captured hostile vessel. We are currently heading to FOB Hlið Þrír to deliver a full and comprehensive after-action report. Our ETA is unknown. Request acknowledgment."

She purposely left out any mention of betrayal, any hint of disobedience. The words had to be precise. Strictly official. By-the-book. Give them no official reason to label the unit rogue. State only the facts they couldn't ignore: their disposable assets had failed to be disposed of. Force their hand.

Astrid let out a low, appreciative whistle. "Cunning, Brynja. You're forcing them to treat us as friendlies, even if they want to put a missile up our ass."

"Let's see if it works," Brynja said grimly. "Mist. On my mark. Three… two… one… send it."

Mist's fingers danced one last time. "Transmitting."

The lights on the bridge flickered violently as a huge wave of power was pushed to the comms array. For a few seconds, the ship's internal gravity fluctuated, a sickening lurch. A single, compressed burst of data, a ghost's whisper containing their impossible truth, shot out from their stolen ship and into the void.

Then, silence.

A terrible, absolute silence followed. They had revealed themselves. They were no longer just ghosts hiding in the dark; they were a problem that Asgardian High Command would now have to solve, one way or another. Every eye on the bridge was fixed on the comms panel, waiting. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Had it worked? Had anyone even heard them? Or were they just screaming into an empty void that no longer cared?

The answer came from two directions at once.

"CONTACTS!" Mist yelled, her professional calm finally breaking, her voice sharp with alarm. Her fingers flew across her console, bringing up the tactical display. "Multiple hostile contacts, Lead! Chitin-Cog patrol fleets are changing their course! They're moving to our position, fast! They triangulated the goddamn transmission burst!"

The holotank lit up with angry red icons, dozens of them, all heading towards their tiny, vulnerable ship. The Chitin-Cog, in their cold, relentless logic, had identified a non-standard transmission and were moving to clean up the anomaly.

"Fuck," Sigrun growled, her hand instinctively going to the handle of the energy axe at her hip. "Out of the fire, into the goddamn furnace."

But then, the console pinged. A single, sterile acknowledgment rune flashed-an encrypted military tag, showing its origin code before vanishing.

Commander Geirskögul.

Brynja stared at the spot where the rune had been. A cold, grim satisfaction settled in her gut. Geirskögul knew. Which meant Tyr knew. Which meant Odin knew. They knew.

"So did they," Astrid whispered, a dangerous, wild grin spreading across her face. "The bastards know we're coming."

The reality of their new situation hit Brynja with the force of a physical blow. They were now being actively hunted by a pissed-off, technologically superior enemy. And they were racing towards a "home" that might be just as hostile, a command structure that had already written them off and left them for dead. They were caught between the hammer of the Chitin-Cog and the anvil of Asgard.

Brynja looked at the tactical display, the red icons of the enemy fleets closing in like a wolf pack. She looked at the grim, furious, determined faces of her crew. They had made their choice. They were no longer just survivors; they were evidence. And in a war built on glorious stories and acceptable losses, evidence was the most dangerous contraband of all. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to bury the evidence.

Her voice was low, devoid of heat, each word landing with the finality of a closing blast door. It was the voice of a commander with nothing left to lose.

"Mist, get us moving. Spool up the main drive. Lay in a course for Hlið Þrír, and find us the rockiest, most sensor-fouled, most miserable goddamn path you can plot. We're going to drag them through every piece of shit debris field between here and home."

"Roger that, Lead," Mist said, a savage smile flickering across her pale, freckled face. "Changing course, plotting the worst road trip in history."

***

Glossary of Military & Technical Terms

After-Action Report: A formal debriefing or document submitted after a mission, detailing the events, outcomes, successes, and failures. Brynja intends to deliver hers "in person" as an act of defiance.

Asgardian High Command: The supreme military and strategic authority of the Asgardian forces, responsible for issuing orders and maintaining official records, including the status of personnel.

Away Team: A small, specialized group sent from a larger ship or base to perform a specific task on-site, such as the scavenging mission to the mining outpost.

Burn: (Slang) An issue, complaint, or point of contention. When Brynja asks, "Any burn?" she is asking if anyone has a problem with her orders.

Contact: An unidentified or hostile entity detected by a ship's sensors. An "active contact" is one that is powered up and likely operational.

Einherjar: A class of Asgardian soldier. The context (Torvin being a "giant of a man" with basic medical training) suggests they may be the mainline heavy infantry of the Asgardian army, distinct from the more specialized Valkyries.

FOB Hlið Þrír: (Forward Operating Base Hlið Þrír) A specific Asgardian military outpost. A FOB is typically a secured, forward-deployed base used to support tactical operations. "Hlið Þrír" is Old Norse for "Gate Three."

FUBAR: (Acronym) "Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition/Repair." A common military expression for something that is irreparably damaged.

Ghost-Lead: The new, unofficial callsign Brynja adopts for herself, reflecting her team's "Killed in Action" status. They are ghosts in the system, and she is their leader.

IFF (Identification Friend or Foe): An electronic system that allows military forces to identify friendly units and distinguish them from hostile ones. The drone being a "loyalist" with a "clean IFF" means it is a legitimate enemy unit, not a corrupted or rogue one.

KIA (Killed in Action): The official military designation for personnel who have died during a combat operation.

Lead: An informal term of address for a team or unit leader, used by subordinates like Mist when speaking to Brynja.

Mage-Major: A formal military rank that combines magical proficiency with officer status. This indicates that mages are integrated into the Asgardian military hierarchy.

NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer): An enlisted military leader who has risen through the ranks (e.g., Sergeant, Petty Officer), distinct from a commissioned officer. Brynja gathers her "senior NCO and officers," showing a complete command structure.

OPORD (Operations Order): A formal plan issued by a commander to subordinate units for the execution of a coordinated operation. Brynja issuing a "new OPORD" is a formal declaration of her command and a new mission.

Overwatch: A tactical position where a soldier or fireteam provides protective cover for other units while they advance or perform a task.

Point-Defense Turrets: Short-range, automated weapon systems on a ship designed to shoot down incoming projectiles, drones, or small, fast-moving threats.

SITREP (Situation Report): A concise report providing an update on the current tactical situation, including unit status, enemy activity, and environmental conditions.

Stormbringer / Stormbringer Actual: The official callsign of Brynja's unit. In standard radio protocol, adding "Actual" to a callsign specifies that you are speaking directly to the unit's commander.

Valkyrie: An elite class of Asgardian soldier. The context implies they are high-ranking warriors, possibly special forces or officer-level commanders, who hold significant authority.