The Only Gods We Know, Ch 8: The Grind

The air in the captured fortress of Hlið Þrír smelled of ozone, hot metal, and the stale, recycled breath of a thousand weary Asgardians settling in for a long, ugly war of attrition.

The days after the breach were a non-stop, grinding effort to turn the enemy's fortress into their own Forward Operating Base. Einherjar squads, their fancy armor now scuffed and blackened, worked to set up shooting lanes down the sterile hallways, their heavy storm-bolters mounted on temporary tripods.

Combat Mages, their faces drawn and pale, worked in shifts, weaving complex, shimmering shields of magic into the fortress's power lines to guard against digital attacks or logic bombs left behind by the Chitin-Cog. Engineers, the unsung heroes of any siege, cursed and sweated as they tried to connect with the confusingly complex and totally alien enemy systems.

No celebratory mead was passed around. No songs were sung. The victory felt as cold and sterile as the fortress itself. The enemy hadn't run in terror; their C2 node had just been cut out, and the automated defenses had gone quiet. The war hadn't ended; it had just paused.

The Chitin-Cog did not mourn their dead or lick their wounds. They didn't seem to be able to do either. Their response was immediate, logical, and non-stop. Within twelve hours of Hlið Þrír being declared "secure," the first probes began. Small, four-to-five-drone "tester" swarms would approach from different directions, testing the new Asgardian defenses, checking response times, and analyzing weapon signals. They would fight briefly, gather data, and then retreat. The fighting never truly stopped; it just quieted down to a state of low-level, nerve-wracking conflict.

Every watch, every patrol, was broken by the sudden, shrieking alarm of an incoming drone probe, followed by a brief, violent burst of defensive fire.

Brynja found herself watching Mist and a team of Asgardian technicians in what had once been a Chitin-Cog fabrication bay. They had several captured drones taken apart on workbenches, their insides exposed.

"It's… horrifyingly efficient," Mist said, her voice a quiet mix of professional admiration and disgust. She pointed with a stylus at a drone's central processing unit. "The parts are modular, they can be swapped between different drone types. The power cells are all the same. The body is stamped from processed asteroid metals right here in places like this one. They print them, Brynja. Like pages from a book. Endlessly."

Her datapad showed a cultural study based on the fortress's data-cores. There was no art, no music, no philosophy. Only production numbers, efficiency reports, and defense plans. The Chitin-Cog's entire civilization was a closed-loop system geared towards one thing: logical, efficient, overwhelming production and defense.

Later, Brynja found Sigrun watching a squad of Einherjar reinforce a broken section of the outer hull with plasteel plating and runic stabilizers. Sigrun didn't even look up from her work, her massive arms easily handling a high-energy welder.

"They don't sleep," Sigrun said, her voice a low rumble that vibrated through the deck. "They don't eat. They don't get tired or lose morale. They just… build." She turned off the welder and finally turned to face Brynja, her expression grim. "And they send their builds to die without a second thought, because they're already making the replacements. How do you fight an enemy that doesn't value its own soldiers because they can just make more?"

The question hung in the recycled air between them, heavy, cold, and with no answer.

***

The strategic reality was laid out in the C2 center of Hlið Þrír two days later. Tyr's holographic form stood before the assembled officers, his expression a mask of grim determination. Behind him, a holomap showed their situation with brutal clarity.

"Our intelligence assets have analyzed the enemy's production capacity," Tyr began, his voice flat. "The first estimates were low. For every major fabrication node like this one we take out, their network can re-route production and make two more drone swarms of the same size within three operational cycles. Their industrial capacity is… vast."

He changed the display, showing the long, vulnerable hyperspace routes back to their main bases and eventually, to Asgard. "Furthermore, our supply lines are stretched to the breaking point. Every power cell, every round of bolter ammunition, every ration pack has to be shipped across half a fucking galaxy. These lines are already being attacked by K'tharr remnants and other opportunistic parasites. We are bleeding resources, while the enemy makes their own on-site."

The numbers on the holomap pulsed, a tide of red against their dwindling blue. They couldn't outlast this. They couldn't out-produce it.

A second hologram flickered to life beside Tyr: Freyja, her expression calm but her eyes sharp and critical. "A direct, head-on assault is tactical suicide, Lord Tyr," she stated, her voice calm but firm. "Throwing our warriors against their automated defenses is like trying to empty an ocean with a bucket. We must find a way to break the machine itself."

A muscle jumped along Tyr's jaw. "And what do you suggest, Lady Freyja? We cannot sit here and wait for them to build a swarm large enough to overwhelm this entire fortress."

"My mages and Loki's intelligence assets," Freyja countered, "believe there may be a system-wide weakness. A flaw in their hive-mind logic, a backdoor into their central command network. It would require a surgical strike, an infiltration mission, not a frontal assault. We could upload a logic-virus, turn their own fabrication protocols against them. Make their factories produce flawed drones, or even turn their own turrets against each other."

"A clever trick," Tyr sneered, "if it works. And if it fails, we've wasted time and resources on stealth and tricks while the enemy grows stronger. I say we commit to a decisive, all-out assault on their central Forge-Core. A single, glorious charge to rip the heart from their network, casualties be damned."

The two deities stared each other down, a clash of pure force against subtle strategy. Before the argument could get worse, a third voice, heavy with the weight of ages, cut through the comms. Odin. He was not visible, his presence felt only as a pressure in the air.

"You are both correct," the Allfather's voice stated, silencing them both. "And both wrong. We cannot win a war of pure attrition, nor can we risk the entire campaign on a single, high-risk infiltration. Therefore, we will do both."

The holomap shifted again. "We will commit to a siege, but a targeted one. We will bleed them, but we will do it intelligently. Freyja, your teams will continue to search for this 'backdoor.' But first, we cripple their ability to build. Tyr, your primary objective is now logistics denial. Identify and neutralize their primary resource harvesting operations in the outer asteroid belts. Starve the beast. Choke its forges."

The order was clear. The war would be a grind, but a targeted one.

Brynja listened, her eyes falling to a quartermaster's manifest on a nearby console. The columns of ammunition counts and power cell shipments blurred. This was the new saga—a story told in spreadsheets.

She thought of Róta, the quartermaster, her face illuminated by the glow of a datapad. That quiet diligence felt more vital now than Thor's thunder.

The FRAGO for their next mission came quickly. Operation "Famine's Maw." Intel had identified massive, automated Chitin-Cog mining operations in the system's outer asteroid belt—huge, segmented ships called "Void-Worms" that chewed through mineral-rich asteroids, processing the ore on-site and sending it back to the central forges. Brynja's squadron, the Stormbringers, was tasked with a deep-strike, anti-logistics mission: jump to the outer belt, take out three of these Void-Worms, and get out before the Chitin-Cog QRF could respond.

This was a mission for Valkyries. It required speed, stealth, and precision. Back in her Vindbitr, hurtling through the void, Brynja felt a sliver of her old self return. This was familiar ground.

The approach was tense. They navigated through the outer rings of the Myrkviðr system, dodging drone patrols and weaving through connected sensor nets. Mist's analytical skills were priceless, finding gaps in the sensor coverage and predicting patrol paths, allowing them to slip through unseen.

They found their first target, a Void-Worm, clamped onto a massive, iron-rich asteroid, its giant grinding jaws methodically crushing the rock. The thing was immense, easily several kilometers long, a proof of the Chitin-Cog's engineering skill. It wasn't heavily armed, but it was incredibly tough and surrounded by a ring of automated point-defense turrets floating nearby.

"Just demolition work," Sigrun grunted over the comms.

"Alright, Stormbringers," Brynja said, her voice calm and focused. "This is a coordinated strike. Hrist, Astrid, you're on defense suppression. Take out those turrets. Sigrun, you're on my wing. Mist, find us a weak point on that beast."

"Scanning now, Lead," Mist replied. "The main processing core seems to be located mid-ship, protected by heavy armor. However, there are exposed thermal exhaust ports along its top spine. A direct hit there should cause a catastrophic core overload."

"You heard her," Brynja said. "Let's go to work."

Astrid and Hrist descended like angry angels, their fighters dancing through the turret fire, systematically taking out the automated defenses. Under their cover, Brynja and Sigrun lined up their attack run on the Void-Worm's top spine.

"This one's for the grunts on Hlið Þrír," Brynja muttered, squeezing the trigger. Her Gungnir-lance slammed into the exposed thermal port, followed a microsecond later by Sigrun's. The Void-Worm shuddered violently, a chain reaction of internal explosions rippling down its segmented body before it blew apart in a silent, spectacular fireball.

"One down," Brynja reported, her voice flat. "Moving to next target."

They repeated the process on the second Void-Worm, each movement a perfect, brutal echo of the last. It was on the third target that things went sideways. Hrist, flushed with success and still buzzing with a boot's adrenaline, attacked her designated turret too aggressively, flying too close. The turret exploded, but its shrapnel cloud caught her fighter, sending it into a spin, its port engine trailing smoke.

"I'm hit! I'm hit! Controls are unresponsive!" Hrist's panicked voice flooded the comms.

"I've got her!" Sigrun roared, her Skjaldmær diving to shield Hrist's crippled fighter from another opportunistic drone patrol that had just warped in.

"Astrid, engage the drones!" Brynja commanded, her mind racing. "Hrist, kill your spin! Use your maneuvering thrusters, short, controlled bursts!" She flew her Vindbitr close to Hrist's damaged craft, close enough to see the fear in the young Valkyrie's eyes through her cockpit canopy. This was the cost of a single moment of hot-headedness, a lesson learned in blood and fire. Brynja talked her through the recovery, her voice a calm, authoritative anchor in Hrist's panic, until the younger Valkyrie finally regained control.

They limped away from the battle, two objectives destroyed, one Valkyrie nearly lost, a stark reminder of the razor-thin margin for error in this cold, logical war.

***

Back on FOB Hlið Þrír, the war of logistics had a very human face. Brynja walked through the med-bay, the air thick with the smell of burnt flesh and quick-clotting agents. The beds were no longer filled with the screaming, mind-broken victims of the Root-Mind; the horrors here were more normal, more familiar, but no less grim. She saw Einherjar with limbs cut off by drone plasma cutters, Valkyrie ground crew with severe shrapnel wounds from near-misses during drone probes, and pilots suffering from high-G concussions after violent evasive moves. The medics worked with a grim, practiced skill, their faces masks of exhaustion. This was the steady, predictable price of a war of attrition.

The mood across the entire fortress was foul. The constant, low-level drone attacks, the endless patrol cycles through identical grey hallways, the lack of any big, soul-lifting victories—it was grinding them down. Combat fatigue was setting in, a corrosive acid eating away at morale. The Einherjar no longer sang loud war-hymns in the mess hall; they sat in sullen, quiet groups, nursing their synth-ale, their eyes unfocused, fixed on the grey bulkheads but seeing battles replayed in the void. They were cogs in a machine, just like the enemy, and they were starting to feel it.

Her hands, once steady on a flight stick, now traced patrol routes on holotables. She felt the weight of every name on the squadron roster, a pressure behind her eyes that never faded. She checked on Hrist, who had been grounded for two cycles after the Void-Worm run, making sure the younger Valkyrie's pride wasn't taking a bigger hit than her fighter had. She listened to Sigrun's quiet, practical reports on the Einherjar's morale. She was a goddamn commander, and it sucked.

She found Astrid in a training cage, her body a blur of motion as she went through combat forms with a frantic, almost brittle intensity. The holographic opponents, programmed to mimic Chitin-Cog drones, flickered and died, one after another, under her relentless attack.

"You're going to burn out your power cells," Brynja said, her voice flat.

Astrid didn't stop, her breath coming in sharp hisses. "Better my cells than my sanity," she spat, her energy whip cracking the air. "Call this war? It's factory work. We destroy a drone, they make ten more. We shatter a turret, a new one takes its place. There is no honor in this… this endless, grinding mediocrity!" She finally turned off the simulation, her chest heaving, her eyes blazing with frustration. "I need an opponent, not a goddamn production quota! An enemy with a soul to crush, a will to break!"

Her desperate desire for a clear, heroic opponent, for a saga-worthy duel, was being systematically blocked by an enemy that treated war as a math problem. An enemy that refused to give her the satisfaction of a worthy fight.

"Their logic is their weakness," Brynja said, more to herself than to Astrid. "We just haven't found the flaw in the code yet."

"Then we'd better find it soon," Astrid replied, her voice low and dangerous. "Before this place grinds us all into dust."

The glimmer of hope, when it came, arrived in the ethereal, holographic form of Lady Freyja. She called a high-level intelligence briefing, and Brynja, as a decorated squadron lead, was once again required to attend.

"My mages and intelligence assets have been analyzing the Chitin-Cog's command network since we secured this fortress," Freyja began, her calm expression a sharp contrast to the grim data scrolling on the holotable behind her. "They are not a true hive-mind, but a networked consciousness. Each 'Fabricator General' acts as a regional server, but they all connect to a central, primary C2 node. And we believe we've found a vulnerability."

She pointed to a complex algorithm on the screen. "Their logic is their strength, but also their prison. They cannot imagine irrational action. We have developed a logic-virus, a 'Rune of Madness,' if you will. If uploaded directly into one of their primary data-hubs, it would spread through their entire network, forcing their fabrication units to follow impossible, paradoxical commands. They would, in essence, tear themselves apart from the inside."

A murmur of excitement went through the assembled officers. It was a way out of the meat-grinder.

"The problem," Freyja continued, her expression hardening, "is that the nearest data-hub, designated 'Ymir's Brain,' is located deep within their most heavily fortified sector. Getting a team of mages there to perform the upload ritual will be… exceptionally hazardous."

As if on cue, Loki's voice, smug and dripping with cynical brilliance, patched into the meeting. "Lady Freyja is too modest," he purred. "My assets have piggybacked on her team's work. The data-hub doesn't just control their logic; it controls their IFF protocols. A successful infiltration wouldn't just make their factories build useless junk. With the right 'persuasion,' we could make their drones identify other Chitin-Cog as hostile targets. We could trigger a system-wide civil war among the machines."

The sheer, beautiful, terrifying simplicity of it silenced the room. Not just shutting them down, but turning their greatest strength—their endless, logical numbers—into their own undoing.

Tyr, who had been listening with a stony expression, finally spoke. "The risk is astronomical. But the potential reward… is decisive victory." He looked out at the assembled officers, his gaze finally landing on Brynja. "This is a mission for Valkyries. A surgical strike requiring speed, precision, and the ability to operate deep behind enemy lines." He didn't have to say it. Everyone in the room knew who he was looking at.

Geirskögul confirmed it moments later over their private command channel. "Brynja. Stormbringers are a go for Operation Loki's Gambit. You will be the primary escort for the Combat Mage insertion team. Your squadron's performance in high-threat, unconventional ops makes you the logical choice."

She looked down at the mission plan. A goddamn suicide run. An all-or-nothing gamble deep in the cold, mechanical heart of the enemy's unfeeling empire. The grind might be over, but it was about to be replaced by a single, impossibly dangerous surgical strike.

She keyed her comms, her voice flat, professional, not showing the sudden, sour heat rising in her throat. "Solid copy, Commander. Stormbringers will be ready."

Her faith in glory was long dead. Her belief in sagas was a child's fancy.

All that was left was the mission in front of her, and the warriors who would fly into hell beside her.

***

Glossary of Terms

Asgardian Forces & Technology

• Einherjar: The elite heavy infantry of the Asgardian forces. In mythology, they are the spirits of glorious warriors; here, they are highly trained and technologically augmented soldiers equipped with advanced power armor and heavy weaponry.

• FOB (Forward Operating Base): A secured, forward-deployed military position, usually a captured enemy structure, used to support tactical operations in a hostile theater.

• FRAGO (Fragmentary Order): An abbreviated military order issued to change or modify an existing operations order, typically used to provide timely updates or new mission objectives.

• Gungnir-lance: The primary armament of a Valkyrie's Vindbitr fighter. Named after Odin's mythical spear, it is a high-impact energy weapon designed for precision strikes against armored targets.

• Hlið Þrír: The Asgardian designation for the captured Chitin-Cog fortress. Translated from Old Norse as "Third Gate," implying it is a key strategic chokepoint.

• Runic Stabilizers: A technology blending Asgardian magic with engineering, used to reinforce structures and machinery with arcane energy, increasing their durability and integrity.

• Skjaldmær: Designation for Sigrun's fighter craft. In Norse, it means "Shieldmaiden," suggesting its design may be geared towards durability or defensive support.

• Storm-bolter: The standard heavy ballistic weapon of the Einherjar. It fires powerful, mass-reactive explosive rounds at a high rate of fire.

• Stormbringers: The callsign and official designation for Brynja's Valkyrie squadron.

• Valkyrie: The elite aerospace fighter corps of the Asgardian military. Comprised exclusively of highly skilled female pilots, they specialize in high-speed, precision missions such as surgical strikes, escort, and deep-space reconnaissance.

• Vindbitr: Designation for Brynja's fighter craft. In Norse, it translates to "Wind-Biter," a name befitting a fast and deadly interceptor.

Chitin-Cog Forces & Technology

• C2 (Command and Control): The central nervous system of a military force. For the Chitin-Cog, their C2 nodes are automated data hubs that process battlefield information and direct drone swarms with cold, logical efficiency.

• Chitin-Cog: A hostile cybernetic civilization composed of networked artificial intelligences that command vast, automated armies. They operate on pure logic, prioritizing production and efficiency, and appear to lack any culture or concept of individuality.

• Fabricator General: A high-level Chitin-Cog node that serves as a regional server, managing production, logistics, and defense within a specific sector of their network.

• Forge-Core: The central industrial heart of a major Chitin-Cog installation, responsible for mass production and resource refinement.

• Logic Bomb: A piece of malicious code designed to trigger upon meeting a certain condition, intended to corrupt or destroy a digital system from within. The Combat Mages guard against these.

• Void-Worm: A massive, automated Chitin-Cog industrial vessel designed for strip-mining asteroids. It functions as a mobile refinery, processing raw ore on-site to feed the Chitin-Cog's forges.

• Ymir's Brain: The Asgardian code name for a primary Chitin-Cog data-hub, a key target in "Operation Loki's Gambit."

General Military Jargon

• Attrition: A military strategy in which a belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and materiel.

• IFF (Identify Friend or Foe): An automated system that uses electronic transponders to distinguish allied units from enemy units on sensors and targeting systems.

• QRF (Quick Reaction Force): A pre-designated and equipped military unit designed to respond rapidly to developing situations or enemy contact.