Under A Winter Sun, page 18
Jagr fumbles down her scarf. “What the actual fuck?” The water vapour from her breath dissipates in the freezing air.
I pull the goggles down around my neck. “Is that a fucking alien starship?”
Far above, two black birds circle the ship and drift towards us. Are those the same birds I saw at the Jarl's hall earlier? There's something about them that makes the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I can't put my finger on why, but I'm sure it will come to me.
“By Odin's beard,” Finn, Hildr, and Skallagrim exclaim in unison.
The little priest does his sign of the cross again.
“What?”
I squint at the others against the icy light of the setting sun. “It's just a spaceship.”
Jagr stares wide-eyed at the ship in the crater. The stern of the thing hangs two hundred metres above the ice. “That is not just a spaceship, Perez.”
“No?”
“No, that is the Galahad.”
“The what?”
“The Galahad. That is the fucking Galahad, boys and girls!”
I try to process Jagr's words. “You mean …?”
My mind reels at the implications. For a moment, I even forget the biting cold.
“Identification confirmed. That is the colony ship Galahad.”
“What's a Galahad?” the priest asks.
“It's a dildo for the gods,” I say, deadpan.
“Oh.” The little man blushes behind his goggles.
“Yes, Perez, that is the Galahad, the first ship we sent from Earth to colonise outer space. The ship that was lost.”
She can't be right.
“But the Gormenghast settled this system,” I object.
I should know. Meridian destroyed the Gormenghast when he exploded its engines above Arcadia and killed all life on the planet. “What the hell is the Galahad doing here?”
“I guess we'd better find out.”
Jagr pulls the slide on her assault rifle and loads a cartridge into the chamber. “Let's go.”
She takes off down the steep slope towards the ship. The birds circle in the sky.
The going is much easier on the inside of the crater, even if the splint on my leg hampers me. I catch up with the others outside the wreck. It's impossibly tall.
Jagr salutes me. “Nice of you to join us, Perez.”
“Sorry.”
I pull my knife and cut the splint from my leg. I don't need it anymore. “Won't happen again.”
They built the colony ships to house a hundred thousand people for generations, so they had to be huge. If my recollection serves me right, the Galahad was the smallest of the three. It still spans an impressive kilometre and a half and weighs in at about a million tonnes. It's a beast.
The ship is remarkably well-preserved.
Like the Shiloh, it's built like a giant starscraper, lying on its side, to provide artificial gravity for the start and end burns. For the greater part of the trip, the crew and passengers were kept in a state of hibernation. Their bodies withered away over the months, years, and decades of the transit, until six months before landfall when the ship began its deceleration burn and the crew had to start a gruelling exercise schedule.
Giant sections of the armoured hull have been torn off and litter the crater, but the core structure stands almost intact. The ice must have bled off most of the kinetic energy in the crash, or the ship would have disintegrated on impact.
We stand in silent awe, staring at the thing.
Rivera hums. “Um. There's a cave over there.”
We all turn to where he points, and there's an enormous opening in the ice, a hundred metres to our right. It's large enough to swallow the Sundowner. Something not made of snow is piled in the opening.
We raise our weapons and approach the cave in tactical formation. Except for Rivera, who keeps moving across our lines of fire. After a lot of silent cursing and vigorous waving of hands, he gets the point and moves to the back of the pack.
We reach the opening. Stacked high against the cave's walls are old worn-out shovels, picks, and buckets. Inside, where the space is shielded from the elements, are footprints.
Someone has been here to visit. Recently, from the looks of it.
I gaze up at the hull. Right there at the top, the two black birds sit watching us.
“Don't go in there,” Aeryn warns.
“Why?”
There's a pause before the construct continues. “There's a ghost in there.”
“A ghost?”
“A ghost is the nearest human analogy I can find.”
“How do you know there's a ghost on that ship?”
“I am picking up unusual emissions. There is something unknown in there.”
“Oh, shut up, Aeryn. You're only trying to scare me.” It's almost succeeding.
“You have been warned.”
The black birds gaze straight down at me. Their black eyes bore into my skull.
A sudden chill runs down my spine when I realise why they tingle my spider-sense.
There are no birds on Nifelheim.
Jagr startles me out of my musings.
“Perez. We're not here to take in the sights.”
“There are two birds up there.” I point them out with a gloved finger.
“Nifelheim has no birds.” But she still looks where I point.
The birds are gone.
“Your mind is playing tricks on you, Perez. Snap out of it, soldier. Go check that cave.”
Jagr motions for Finn and Hildr to take up positions flanking the opening then directs me to be point man. Fancy that.
I enter the cave with the Aitchenkai pointing before me while I scan the snow for tripwires or detection devices of any kind. There are none that I can see, but they might still be there, hidden under the snow.
The cave is ten metres tall and twice as wide. I bet Braden could fly the Sundowner down it. The floor is smooth. Someone has been keeping this cave in good condition, and the wear of the old digging implements tells me they have been doing it for quite some time.
I move down the sloping icy floor, sweeping the barrel of my rifle from side to side. Apart from the rusting digging equipment, the place is empty. It's a few degrees warmer in here, and I pull the smelly scarf from my face. It's still cold enough to freeze my ears off. The tunnel continues down into the darkness.
“Clear,” I call, and the others file in after me.
“All right, let's see where this thing leads,” Jagr says. “Perez, you're on point.”
The tunnel is long. Over the centuries it has been improved with steps cut into the steeper passages to allow humans or Goliaths to move up and down with ease.
After a while, we arrive at a crude opening in the starship hull, roughly two-by-two metres wide. The ice tunnel continues along the hull, and it widens further down.
The opening in the hull is not original. Someone has cut it with a plasma torch. It must have been done a long time ago because the lower edge of the cut has been worn smooth by the passage of thousands of feet. How have the Goliaths kept this thing secret for so long? Pour enough mead down the throat of a Goliath, and he will tell you anything he knows to impress you.
I glance inside, then pull my head back out. “It's dark.”
Jagr hands me something. It's two black marbles, about the size of ancient golf balls. I weigh them in my hand. They're light.
“What are these?”
“Light drones. Throw them inside.”
She motions me on with the tip of her rifle. I throw the objects into the opening.
Small rotors deploy around their equators, and almost soundlessly they take flight. Two powerful pinprick lights turn on, illuminating the ship's interior. Nice.
“They will follow you wherever you go, and shine where you look.”
“And if I want to turn them off?” In case we're compromised, I don't want to be lit up like a fucking Christmas tree.
“Clap your hands. Clap again to turn them back on. Spread your arms to make them go wider. Arms together to bring them back in.”
I try it, and the drones respond to my gestures. “Nice.” Earth tech has moved on.
I poke my head back inside. The door is cut high in the wall of one of the ship's enormous loading bays. Inside is a vast space that smells of old dust. It falls away into the depths, rises into the darkness above and stretches away to the left and right. There's a rickety metal bridge leading across the abyss to a door on the far side of the void.
The bridge is constructed of coarse metal plates, welded together with random pieces of junk. It's suspended on rusty metal wires bolted to the walls. Like the entrance, the bridge has been worn smooth.
“Do not go in there.”
“I don't think we have much choice.”
I back out of the door.
“There's a drop inside, so be careful,” I warn the others. “There's also some kind of bridge.”
Jagr checks her weapon. “Any signs of habitation?”
“Not apart from the bridge. There could be people living deeper within the hull. I can't tell from out here.”
I turn to our Goliath entourage.
“How long have you known about this place?”
“We haven't.”
There's a thoughtful frown on Hildr's face. “Unless …”
She glances uncertainly at Finn and her brother. Skallagrim grunts something in their tongue.
“Unless what?”
“Unless the stories about the well of Mimr are true.”
She spits three times in the snow.
“The what of who?” I rub my gloved hands together, trying to rub warmth into them.
“The well of Mimr,” Hildr repeats, and the Goliaths spit in unison. “It's the legendary well where Odin placed the head of the god Mimr.”
“Why?”
“To let him drink from the fountain of wisdom.”
But of course.
“That is a tale for children,” Finn says.
Hildr looks thoughtful.
“Don't you remember the stories Geirmund told us when we were children, Finn? He said he had access to the well, and he travelled there in the greatest longship ever built. What if he wasn't making it up? He could have been talking about this place.”
She looks at Finn and her brother. “What if he has access to Mimr?”
I frown. “What, there's an all-seeing head at the bottom of that hole?” I indicate the door with my rifle.
Hildr nods. “There could be.”
“Who's Mimr?” asks the priest of no one in particular.
“Mimr was an Aesir, killed and beheaded by another race of gods, the Vanir,” Hildr replies.
Rivera looks horrified. “Your gods are not very nice.”
I don't hear Hildr's reply because an icy spear of realisation pierces my gut.
A god in the ice.
In icy skies, a ship is found, a god will call. Wasn't that what Skallagrim said in that old poem? Was he talking about this ship? And this Mimr guy? But that's impossible. Unless … Unless whoever wrote that poem knew about this ship. I never believed in prophecies, and I refuse to start now.
Jagr punches my shoulder.
“You look like you saw a ghost, Perez.” She narrows her eyes. “Something wrong?”
I wipe a hand across my face and my heart slows to a more normal rhythm. “No, I'm good. Carry on.”
“Whatever.”
Jagr interrupts a heated religious debate between Hildr and Rivera.
“I've had enough of severed heads for one day. Perez, you're on point with Finn, Rivera, you're with me. Hildr and Skallagrim at the back. Stay quiet unless we're discovered. Then you shoot first and ask questions later. And shoot to kill.”
The priest raises a finger to object, but Jagr ignores him. “Let's go.”
I step into the darkness and set foot on the old bridge.
The light drones follow me at shoulder height, illuminating the dangerous path before me.
Make Sure They Write Songs About Me
Halfway across the bridge Rivera takes a wrong step, gives a piercing scream, and plunges to his death.
Or he would have if Hildr hadn't grabbed him by the robes and pulled him back to safety. She drops him unceremoniously on his head on the bridge.
Jagr swears. “Now they know we're here.”
The devastated expression on Rivera's face when he realises he might have jeopardised the mission is almost comical. He tries to stand up, but his knees tremble too much, and he drops on his ass again.
I feel sorry for the little guy and walk back to the others. “If they have any sensors set up, they already knew we were coming.” That does not seem to make the priest any calmer.
Jagr glares at Rivera. “No more fuck-ups. I'm watching you, priest.”
Rivera swallows and gets to his feet.
I'm not sure why Jagr let him tag along. Maybe as a lightning rod for disaster to protect the rest of us.
The young priest lays a hand on Hildr's muscular arm.
“Thank you, lady Hildr,” he says. “I owe you my life.”
Hildr grunts. “Pay me back later.”
If possible, Rivera grows even paler. I pat him on the back to boost his spirits, and he almost jumps into the abyss again. Bailey Rivera is not the bravest soul on Nifelheim.
We reach the opening at end of the bridge. Since the ship is at an incline, the door has been cut at an angle in the bulkhead. There's a passageway leading deeper into the ship, with smaller passages branching off to the sides. The floor has been levelled by welding steel plates to the walls. Sharp corners have been covered in layers of leather to prevent them from slicing someone's head open. The thought of a Goliath health and safety inspector making sure they cover up all hazardous areas of a giant ghostship brings a smile to my face, and I can't help laughing.
“What is it, Perez?” Jagr whispers.
“Nothing. Just thought of something funny,” I whisper back.
“Focus, Perez. Move.”
“Ma'am, yes ma'am.” I throw a mock salute and step through the door with Finn close behind.
The others stay behind.
“Do you see anything?” Jagr asks over the communicator after we've gone twenty metres down the passage.
“Nope, more doors.”
There's the occasional crescent moon insignia decorating the walls at regular intervals.
The Galahad had a Muslim crew. In the greatest social experiment of all time, some bright politician had the idea to homogenise the people on each colony ship. The Galahad was Muslim, the Gormenghast was Christian, and the Gilgamesh was Hindu. I'm not sure that was a brilliant idea. I mean, take the churches back on Elysium. As soon as we landed, the bickering and fighting between factions began. We need an external enemy, religious or otherwise, to keep our shit together.
Something catches my eye. “No wait, there's something here.”
There's a weak bluish light from a shaft angling down into the depths. I clap my hands to turn the drones off.
“There's a light,” I whisper. “Get in here.”
“There is something down there.”
“What is it, Aeryn?”
“Something bad.”
“Thanks for spooking me.”
“Always here to help.”
As we wait for the others to catch up, a crackling noise echoes up the shaft. A blue bolt of electricity arcs between the walls. It writhes there for a second, then dances off down the shaft towards the distant light.
Wagner does his sign against evil. “Mighty Thor, protect me.” Goliaths are hard to scare, and this is about as scared as I've ever seen him.
There are footsteps behind us, and then Jagr claps me on the shoulder. “What's down there?”
“No idea.”
“How far does it go?”
We stand around the opening, trying to see what's down there.
“Can't tell,” I venture after a moment.
“We could find out.” Jagr pulls the heavy backpack from her shoulders. “Soledad sent along some of her toys.”
She opens the satchel and pulls out a small remotely controlled drone, no larger than my palm, and holds it out like a cookie.
I nod. “Do it.”
Jagr detaches a remote control from the drone and throws the little machine into the air. It goes airborne almost without sound. There's a small screen on the remote where we can see what the drone sees.
She drives it this way and that, trying to get a feel for how it handles, then sends it off down the shaft.
The blue light grows brighter on the small screen as the little machine buzzes away from us, down into the unknown.
When the vast ship was under thrust, this corridor was a deep well. Pipes and tubes of unknown function cover the walls, floor, and ceiling. This could be an old elevator shaft. If so, the elevators are long gone.
On the screen, the blue light has grown bright enough to read the floor numbers on the walls. We're nearing the bridge.
A sudden movement at the edge of the display draws my eye.
“Hold it, Jagr. Back up.”
“Backing up.”
There's nothing there.
Strange, I was sure I saw something.
“My mistake. Proceed.” I pat Jagr's shoulder, and she flies off down the shaft again.
According to the markings on the walls, the bridge is not far ahead and Jagr slows down.
“What was that?”
The priest points at the screen. “I saw something. There it is again,” he squeals.
His breath clouds in the frosty air and obscures the screen. Skallagrim clamps a hand over the little man's face. The priest makes suffocating noises but otherwise falls silent.
Jagr aims the little craft at where the priest was pointing. Is there something moving there? I lean in and squint to make it out on the tiny display.
There's a hiss of static and the screen goes dead.
“Drone one lost,” says a cheerful woman's voice from the remote.
Jagr blinks. “What the fuck?”
“You heard it. We lost drone one.”
My communicator hisses with a brief burst of static. “Electronic attack detected,” Aeryn says.
“What?”
