The Valkyrie Read Online Free

phone to ring Val again
and as she stood there listening to it ring out and go to voicemail
the cool heat hit her. She then rooted around in her bag for five
minutes, sifting through all the crap she carried with her, before
she found her mobile. There were no calls, no texts and no
snapchats from Valour, however there were six missed calls,
seventeen texts and forty three snapchats waiting from Apollo. The
snapchats ranged from innocuous pictures of the sonnet he had just
read that reminded him of her to the less picturesque. Liberty knew
she needed to resolve this situation soon without turning into a
laurel tree out of desperation.

Housekeeping
    Glory’s classic
(battered) chariot-come-sports car pulled in to the disabled
parking bay outside of Valkyrie Unit 401’s official headquarters: a
four bedroom terraced house with pebble dashing and a lion shaped
door knocker that the girls shared in Hackney. Having hurtled away
from the village hall at the speed of light Glory felt the need to
clarify a few things for her new protégé Bea who was sitting next
to her in the front of the car. Glory was fascinated by Bea, which
was highly uncharacteristic of her. The young Bea was both at once
so very different and yet so enormously familiar to Glory that it
unnerved but captivated her. Bea had the grace of an Olympian but
something quicker, sharper and more agile to her. They were all in
likelihood related.
    Glory turned
the engine off and faced Bea “So I’ve just got a bit of
housekeeping before I show you around our digs. Some of the facts I
am about to tell you are not to be repeated. We don’t like everyone
knowing exactly what we get up and how many strings we’ve been
pulling. It’s a matter of safety if nothing else. Now in terms of
your employment with us I am legally obliged to inform you of the
following:
    1. We don’t
really have set hours and are obliged to work whenever required –
that isn’t much at the moment, what with mother’s forces done in
and everyone else castrated by the UN. It’s so much harder to coax
mortals into full on combat nowadays. We have to make do with small
skirmishes, guerrilla warfare and terrorism. Honour is mightily
pissed off; she loves a good naval battle. Has a thing for sailors,
she used to write sonnets to Nelson.”
    “Sorry but your
mother’s forces?” asked Bea.
    “Oh yeah, my
mother is Britannia, you know Last Night of the Proms, bunting and
fifty pence pieces? Valkyries technically come under Odin or Freya,
as she’s actually the Norse war goddess, but she really doesn’t
give a flying fuck under whose name it’s done under as long as she
gets her quota sorted and Odin leaves her alone to get her
pedicures. So five hundred odd years ago Liberty and I made the
executive decision that the most efficient way of hitting our
targets would be the development of a few industrialised
nation-states with a capitalist bent, Mother’s lot being the
easiest to deal with and in close proximity. Mechanised warfare is
an administrative godsend.”
    “Ok so the
whole age of European Empires was a born out of a bureaucratic
necessity?” Bea asked.
    “Yes, we
practically ran the world. We coasted through the last century what
with the World Wars. We didn’t have to make too much effort since
we hit our quotas so early on, but we’re gearing up for another
biggie soon.”
    “Doesn’t Odin
care that you did all that in someone else’s name and not his?”
    “He brought it
up once but then I let him touch my boobs and it’s never come up
again.” Glory looked at her nails and thought she’d paint them
orange next “Right where were we, ah:
    2. Any contract
you enter into with us, once you pass probation, is short term and
will last for only one hundred years after which you have the
opportunity to renew or walk away.
    3. You don’t
actually have a notice period, the contract is really easy to
breach and I can’t be bothered with all the forms.
    4. As a junior
we will