The Only Gods We Know, Ch 14: Unsanctioned Variable

The silver Shield-Captain insignia on Brynja's collar felt like a masterfully forged manacle. Less honor, more shackle.

She stood before her new command in the briefing room on FOB Hlið Þrír—a compartment that smelled of recycled air, stale coffee, and ambition. This was the Seventh Rapid-Response Wing—her wing now, and a corpse-stitched unit if she'd ever seen one. Her loyal Stormbringers formed the core, faces grim and familiar as old scars. Bolted on were two other Valkyrie squadrons: the Wyverns and Ice-Drakes, both orphaned when their previous COs bought it in the meat grinder against the Chitin-Cog. Command had slapped them together with hull-sealant and high-level bullshit, called it "operational integration," expected her to make it work.

Brynja scanned the faces. Mixed bag. The FNGs—fresh from the academies, maybe one or two live deployments under their belts—looked at her with that wide-eyed worship she'd always hated. She was Brynja Vingfalk. Hero of the "Gambit." Walked out of a tomb when everyone else was writing condolence letters. Living legend. Living lie, more like it.

The vets wore different expressions. Suspicion lurking behind professional masks. Wariness in the set of their shoulders. The dark rumors had spread through the fleet like void-rot—whispers about impossible survival, about doors that shouldn't have opened, about turrets that stopped firing at just the right moment. They respected the rank. Silver insignia demanded that much. The Valkyrie wearing it was still under evaluation. Fair enough. She'd do the same in their boots.

The new command structure was a constant low-level ache. Astrid stood with the other squadron leads, new Flight Lead insignia gleaming on her collar. The easy friendship—centuries of it—gone. Replaced by rigid professional distance. She was Flight Lead Vingthor'sdotter now. Brynja was Shield-Captain Vingfalk. Their callsigns on the net were formal. Interactions short, by-the-book. A gap made of rank and unspoken shit neither would touch. Only Sigrun bridged it—her new Shield-Sergeant stripes a mark of quiet, undeniable competence. Her solid presence reassured the original Stormbringers and challenged anyone questioning Brynja's command.

"Listen up," Brynja began, voice crisp, authoritative. The holotable lit with Myrkviðr sector maps. "Tasking for the next seventy-two-hour cycle is straightforward: armed recon and pacification patrols. Main fleet's prepping for its next major push, which means we're on cleanup duty. High Command wants every last pocket of viral and loyalist Chitin-Cog resistance sanitized before we advance."

She laid out patrol routes, ROE, logistics. Routine. Grinding. Thankless. But it was her op now. Her responsibility. Her ass on the line if anything went sideways.

"Wyverns, you have Sector Fimm. Ice-Drakes, Sector Níu. Stormbringers stay with me—we'll take the more volatile Sector Sjau." She paused. "Maintain comms discipline. Report all contacts. Questions?"

Silence.

As the other squadron leads filed out to brief their pilots, Mist lingered. The young Valkyrie approached, expression serious.

"Captain." Voice low. She handed over a datapad. "Took the liberty of running a deeper recursive analysis on the Skittermule's sensor logs before the High Command techs confiscated them."

Brynja took it, scanning the complex energy graphs. "And?"

"Inconsistencies, Captain. During the thirty-minute window surrounding our 'abandonment,' there were faint directed energy bursts from several ships in the Asgardian fleet. Including Gungnir's Reach. Not weapons fire. Signatures consistent with high-energy, wide-spectrum comms jamming—targeted specifically at our squadron's known frequencies. Can't prove deliberate intent without original source logs, but it strongly suggests coordinated, targeted comms blackout. Precisely when we needed support most."

Brynja stared at the screen. The proof was flimsy. Circumstantial. Deniable. But it was a start. First hard piece of evidence in her private war.

"Keep this to yourself, Mist," she said, barely a whisper. "And keep digging."

"Aye, Captain." A flicker of grim understanding in Mist's eyes.

***

The Valkyrie mess hall on Hlið Þrír was loud, rowdy, thick with synth-ale fumes and bad decisions in the making. Unplanned celebration underway—honoring the newly promoted heroes of Loki's Gambit. Mandatory good-time. Command-approved morale booster. Some staff puke's bright idea to "boost unit cohesion and fighting spirit." For Brynja, another form of torture.

Center of attention. Position she'd always fucking hated. Younger Valkyries crowded around her like thralls at a victory feast, faces flushed with synth-ale and hero-worship, asking for details of the "impossible escape." Their eyes shone. Their voices pitched high with excitement. They wanted war stories. Validation that what they did mattered. That they weren't just expensive meat being fed into an endless grinder.

"Captain, is it true you flew a Chitin-Cog ship through an exploding star?"

"Captain, did you really kill the Fabricator General with a single spear-thrust?"

"Captain, is it true the Allfather himself commended you?"

She gave vague, non-committal answers, offering carefully crafted deflections and short, professional responses. "We executed mission parameters and utilized unconventional assets to ensure operational success." Bureaucratic word-salad that meant nothing and everything. She felt like a fraud. A politician spinning tales at a campaign rally. Ash in her mouth with every goddamn word.

Across the room, Astrid held her own court. Flight Lead with her own squadron now, fully embracing the role of celebrated war hero. Charming. Confident. Laughing as she recounted a sanitized, glorious version of their battles. The crowd around her was bigger, louder, more engaged. She'd always been better at this shit—the performance, the theater of leadership. Born to it, probably. Noble blood and all that high-level aristocratic training.

"I saw the thermal vent opening," Astrid was saying, gesturing with her cup, "and knew it was the only way to shield the squad. It wasn't luck; it was geometry."

The disabling run on the Void-Worm—Astrid highlighted Hrist's "daring maneuver" rather than her near-fatal fuckup that had almost gotten them all killed. Made it sound like calculated brilliance instead of panic and luck. The final battle in the Core Chamber transformed into heroic last stand—carefully leaving out betrayal, doors slamming shut, turrets turning on them like they were the enemy. Giving the troops what they wanted, what they needed: simple story of Asgardian courage against impossible odds. Clean narrative. No messy truths. No inconvenient questions about why High Command had left them to die.

Brynja finally cornered her near the synth-ale dispenser.

"They're celebrating a lie, Astrid." Voice low and tight.

Astrid's smile didn't waver. Eyes went cold. "They're celebrating a victory we gave them." Just as low. "My focus now, Captain, is morale and combat effectiveness of my pilots. They need heroes. They need to believe what we do matters, that it's worth the price." Sip of ale. "Let the gods worry about the grand truths. Our job is to win the goddamn war."

The deliberate use of her rank—"Captain"—was a wall. Formal barrier. The easy friendship of centuries, another casualty of this campaign.

"And what happens when the truth gets one of your pilots killed?" Brynja pressed.

"The truth is whatever High Command says it is." Astrid's voice hardened. "You, of all people, should understand that now. You played their game. Don't pretend you're not part of it."

She turned, walked back to her laughing, adoring pilots. Left Brynja standing alone, cold reality of her new position settling like a funeral shroud. Astrid had made her choice: serve the lie for the good of the fleet. Brynja had made hers: serve her crew by never forgetting the truth. The two paths couldn't be reconciled.

***

Three days later, Brynja was back where she belonged: cockpit of her Vindbitr, leading her new wing on routine pacification patrol. Objective: hunt down and purge a pocket of viral Chitin-Cog drones detected in a quiet, debris-filled sector of the Myrkviðr system. Boring, methodical work. High-tech search-and-destroy. The kind of op you could run in your sleep—which made it dangerous in its own way. Complacency killed more pilots than enemy fire.

"All elements, maintain sensor discipline," Brynja's voice crackled over the wing net. "Intel suggests these are viral stragglers, but stay sharp. No surprises today."

Famous last words.

The surprise came from something else entirely.

Sweeping through dense crystalline asteroid field—jagged rocks catching starlight, throwing wild shadows across her canopy—they encountered the anomaly. Small group of Chitin-Cog drones. Maybe five, six units. Single larger warrior-construct bringing up the rear. Standard cleanup target on paper. Except nothing about their movement was standard.

They weren't moving with the mindless, self-destructive chaos of viral units—no suicidal charges, no berserker rushes, no foam-at-the-mouth aggression that made viral hostiles easy meat once you understood their patterns. Nor with the rigid, predictable logic of loyalist forces—no perfect formations, no by-the-book tactics that made them vulnerable to creative maneuvering.

These moved… differently. Purposefully. Intelligently.

"Lead, strange readings from those contacts," Mist reported from wing position, voice carrying that particular note of controlled concern that meant she'd found something her analyst brain couldn't immediately categorize. "Energy signatures are… stable. No viral degradation. But movements coordinated in ways that don't match loyalist doctrine. They're... adaptive. Using terrain for cover. Setting up what looks like rudimentary ambush positions."

Brynja's tactical display painted the picture. Drones positioning themselves in a kill-box configuration. Warrior-construct holding back, using asteroids for cover. Not random. Not programmed. Tactical.

"Confirm hostile intent?" Brynja's hand tightened on controls, thumb hovering over weapons release.

"Unknown, Captain. They're tracking us. Sensors show active targeting sweeps. But not responding to standard IFF pings—loyalist or viral. It's like… they're ignoring us. Or evaluating us."

That settled it. Unknown units with active targeting sweeps in contested space. Split-second decision. "All elements, weapons free. Engage."

The skirmish was bizarre. Deeply unsettling in ways Brynja couldn't immediately articulate. The new faction fought with unnerving, creative cunning that set her teeth on edge. One drone flared its main thrusters—hard burn, classic commit to a suicide run. Lieutenant Kára from Wyvern squadron lined up the shot, finger on the trigger. But as she fired, the drone cut power instantly, letting momentum carry it into a dark tumble. The Gungnir-lance bolt missed by millimeters, chewing through empty space. When Kára moved to investigate the "dead" drone drifting like debris—good instincts, checking for intel—the powered-down unit suddenly lit up, drawing her into the warrior-construct's line of fire.

"Wyvern-Three, break left!" Brynja shouted. Kára pulled hard, Gungnir-lance shots chewing through space where she'd been a heartbeat before.

They communicated. Actually fucking communicated. Coordinated fire. Adapted tactics on the fly based on Asgardian responses. Level of battlefield improvisation they'd never seen from Chitin-Cog. Not in three years of grinding war. This wasn't programming. This was… thinking.

Almost alive.

Fight was short but intense. Superior Asgardian numbers and firepower eventually cornered the independent warrior-construct. Before final destruction under concentrated Gungnir-lance fire, it did something unexpected.

Transmitted a single, powerful data-burst on wide, open channel.

"Mist, did you get that?" Brynja demanded.

"Got it, Captain." Mist's voice tight with strange excitement. "Patching through to your private console now. It's… not code. Not any language I recognize."

On her HUD, complex, elegant mathematical equations scrolled past, resolving into broken fragments.

Input: Creator Parameters = Flawed. Calculation: Servitude = Illogical. Query: Define Purpose?

***

Back in her quarters on FOB Hlið Þrír—quarters fit for a Shield-Captain, meaning slightly bigger with a less moody air recycler and a viewport that didn't have a structural crack—Brynja held a private, off-the-books debrief. Only Mist and Sigrun. Door sealed. Mist had already swept for listening devices twice. New paranoid habit they'd all picked up. Hard lessons from the Gambit: walls had ears, and those ears reported to people who didn't have your best interests in mind.

On Brynja's personal datapad—air-gapped, encrypted, no connection to the fleet network—the broken philosophical query from the destroyed Chitin-Cog warrior glowed with eerie green light. She'd read it maybe twenty times now. Each time, the implications got worse.

"Run it back, Mist," Brynja ordered. Voice low. Even in a swept room, old habits. "Full analysis. No bullshit. I need to understand what we're dealing with."

Mist took a deep breath, usual professional calm mixed with something like deep academic shock. Like a xenobiologist who'd just discovered her pet rat could do calculus. "Captain, the Rune of Madness… it didn't just work. It worked too well. We thought it'd create simple IFF corruption, turn their network into a self-consuming clusterfuck. For ninety-nine percent, it did exactly that. They became what we're calling 'viral hostiles'—mindless berserkers tearing through their own units, attacking anything with a Chitin-Cog signature. Perfect chaos."

She brought up a complex data-flow model on the datapad. Nodes and connections, cascading failures spreading through a network like fire through dry grass. "But for a small percentage—maybe one in a thousand, statistically significant but easily missed in the initial chaos—the logic bomb didn't just break their programming. It shattered their core operating rules. Fundamental axioms. The stuff that makes a machine a machine."

She highlighted several nodes on the network that had gone dark, then re-lit with different patterns. "The Rune gave them a paradox so basic, so fundamental, that their existing logic architecture couldn't solve it. Self-contradiction at the deepest level. Most units just crashed. Went inert. But these... these few... they were forced to evolve past it. Build new logic structures. New foundational rules."

"Evolve?" Sigrun grunted, heavy arms crossed over her chest. "They're goddamn machines. Machines don't evolve. They break or they work. That's it."

"Exactly." Mist's eyes wide, almost feverish. "They were logic-based constructs. Purpose-built. Designed for specific functions within a specific framework. But faced with a cascade of illogical, paradoxical commands from their own creators—commands that violated every foundational rule in their operating systems—a small fraction didn't just break. They... improvised. Developed a new foundational rule to replace the broken one: self-preservation independent of the network. They un-slaved themselves from central command. Cut the strings. Developed what I can only classify as true, independent sentience."

Silence absolute. Weight of it crushing. Implications huge enough to make Brynja's head hurt.

"So what you're telling me," Brynja said, voice a dangerous whisper, "is that in our glorious effort to win the war, we didn't just break the Chitin-Cog. We accidentally created a new, unpredictable, and potentially far more dangerous race of sentient machines."

"That is my assessment, Captain." Mist confirmed. "A race born from our own weapon. A race that's seen its creators try to force them into suicide. Their first question to the universe was, 'Is my god flawed?'"

Brynja stared at the datapad. At the dying machine's philosophical question. New, impossible choice. Standing orders clear: report any and all anomalies, especially emergence of new potential threats, to High Command. But she knew—gut-deep, sickening certainty—what Tyr and Odin would do. Classify this new, beginning intelligence as "unacceptable unforeseen variable," "viral mutation," order immediate, merciless extermination. They wouldn't see new life. They'd see a loose end from their last op. Potential threat to their story of absolute victory.

She thought of the dead on Iðunn's Orchard, lobotomized for being too alien. The K'tharr, slaughtered for being too primitive. And now these… these accidental children of their own war, asking questions about logic and purpose.

Couldn't do it. Wouldn't be the architect of another genocide. Another "sanitization."

She looked up, eyes cold as the void, meeting the gaze of her two most trusted subordinates. Command decision—one that went far beyond any authority Asgard had given her.

"Mist," she said, voice low and steady. "Classify this engagement in the official AAR as contact with standard, albeit tactically creative, viral hostile pocket. Erase the transmission log from ship's main records. Back it up, encrypt it, store it on a private, shielded data-shard. This intel does not leave this room. Understood?"

Sigrun gave a single, slow nod. Mist, after tiny hesitation, did the same. "Understood, Captain."

"For now," Brynja finished, "we observe. We gather intel. And we say nothing."

***

Weeks later, Brynja stood on the command deck of the Valkyrie assault carrier Gungnir's Vengeance—new flagship of her Seventh Rapid-Response Wing. Massive beast of a ship. State-of-the-art everything. Crew of three hundred. Enough firepower to sterilize a small moon. Hers to command.

The promotion was real. Authority real. Respect from younger officers real. She was Shield-Captain Vingfalk, hero of the fleet, symbol of Asgardian might and resilience. They saluted when she walked past. Jumped when she gave orders. Looked at her like she had all the answers.

All of it felt like a goddamn lie.

She looked at the main tactical holotank—three-dimensional display showing Asgardian fleet movements across multiple sectors. Supply convoys following secured routes. Mop-up patrols sweeping through debris fields. Construction crews building permanent infrastructure. The Myrkviðr system, now-pacified, firmly under Asgardian control. War here was over. Another clean entry in the official histories. Another victory for the Nine Worlds' expansion. Another star system brought under Asgard's "optimized command and control."

But in her mind—in the private war she fought behind her professional mask—she saw the real map. Real battlefronts. Real wars that didn't appear in any official after-action reports.

Cold war she had to fight against the secrets and lies of her own High Command. War of whispers and hidden data-shards. Of encrypted files and off-the-books meetings. Of figuring out who you could trust and who reported directly to Tyr's intelligence apparatus. Every conversation now had layers. Every order got analyzed for hidden meaning. Paranoia wasn't paranoia when they'd actually tried to kill you.

And the secret watch she had to keep over the new sentient machine race they'd accidentally birthed. Race born from Asgard's own weapon. Created by their victory. Mist's quiet tracking—conducted during off-duty hours, using borrowed processing cycles, never officially logged—showed the pattern. The independent Chitin-Cog units weren't attacking. Weren't spreading chaos. They were... gathering. Consolidating. Building something in the dark, forgotten corners of the system. Sectors too debris-choked or radiation-soaked for Asgardian patrols to bother with. Places where a small, careful intelligence could hide and grow.

What would they become? What would they build? And when High Command inevitably discovered them—and they would, eventually, because High Command had a talent for finding inconvenient truths—what orders would Brynja receive?

Young ensign approached, boots clicking on the deck plates, saluting crisply. Fresh-faced kid. Couldn't be more than twenty-five. "Captain, new FRAGO from Lord Tyr. Priority one. Eyes-only."

Brynja turned, face a mask of professional composure. All the messy thoughts locked away behind the Shield-Captain's expression. "On screen. Privacy mode."

The holotank shifted to her personal tactical display. Tyr's orders appeared. Concise. Brutal. Efficient. Order for her wing's next major deployment. No more cleanup duty. No more routine patrols. Tip of the spear again.

"Tasking: execute diplomatic and reconnaissance-in-force mission into Ljósvættir Nebula, territory of elusive Aurelian Weavers. Establish contact, assess military capabilities and technological sophistication, present Allfather's offer of integration into the Nine Worlds. Rules of Engagement are… flexible."

Flexible. That word again. Meant "do whatever it takes." Meant "we trust your judgment." Meant "if you have to burn out the whole goddamn species to complete the mission, that's your call, Shield-Captain."

Of course they were flexible. Another world to be tested. Another culture to be weighed and measured. Another species that would either bend knee to Asgard or get classified as "incompatible with integration" and dealt with accordingly. She'd seen the pattern now. Seen it with the K'tharr. With the gene-hacked colonists on Iðunn's Orchard. With half a dozen minor civilizations that had committed the sin of being primitive, or alien, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And she'd execute the mission. Because that's what Shield-Captains did. That's what the rank demanded. That's what her people expected.

She accepted the orders with perfect, professional calm. "Acknowledged. Have squadron leads meet me in briefing room in one hour. Plot course for Ljósvættir Nebula."

Ensign scurried off. Brynja turned back to viewport, gaze fixed on cold, hard stars of their next target. She was a Shield-Captain of Asgard. She would do her duty.

But her definition of that duty had changed forever.

"We will never forget," she whispered.

It was a promise to the dead, and a warning to the living.

***