Under A Winter Sun, page 5
Braden beams. “Yeah, I know, impressive isn't it?”
She pushes off from the ship and flicks her cigarette away into the night. It trails sparks like a miniature meteorite. “Want to touch it?”
I catch myself staring and I tear my eyes away to look up at her face instead. She's got the same severely attractive face as Jagr and Soledad, but with even more distinct features. Below the white hood, I glimpse a blue mohawk and the clean-shaven sides of her head. The neural patch cables of a military-grade ships interface fall like dreadlocks from the back of her head and down over one shoulder. Her full lips are painted blue to match her hair.
She could be a model with that face. And that body.
“Thanks, but not right now.”
“Aw, please?”
She bats her long, blue eyelashes at me. “I've been cooped up with these bitches for months.”
“Another time.” I smile and reach out my hand. “Braden, was it?”
“Corin Braden, at your service.” She shakes my hand and emphasises the service part with a wide smile and a bow. She's got a firm handshake and a delightful smile.
Jagr laughs under her breath.
“I think Braden likes you, Perez. Well, that's the team. Team, this is Asher Perez, also known as the Dread General, the Worldburner, and the Enemy of Man.”
She pops the boot of the car. “I hope he is of a friendlier disposition towards women.”
She throws two bags to Soledad, grabs a bag for herself and stamps up the lowered ramp at the rear of the dropship. She's not wasting any time.
“Come on girls, time to go.”
“Is this all?”
“All what?” Jagr asks through the noise.
“All of you.”
Jagr stops at the top of the ramp. “We have other assets in play, but for all intents and purposes, we're it. We can't send a larger team to Nifelheim without pissing off the Goliaths. This is supposed to be a low-key mission.”
Famous last words, but I can't fault her logic. I incline my head to Braden and Soledad. “After you, ladies.”
Braden the pilot goes first. As she passes me, she leans in and whispers in my ear. “There's room for two in the pilot's chair. If you're a good boy, I'll let you hold the joystick.”
I smile, despite myself. “Too bad I'm not a good boy.”
She winks at me.
Soledad goes next with the bags. She doesn't even glance my way.
I follow her up the ramp into the ship, enjoying the view of three tight, identical backsides.
They are a random bunch of characters, and apart from their obvious genetic affinity, they seem to have nothing in common.
I hope they are as good as Jagr says, or this could be a brief mission. Nifelheim is no place for amateurs.
* * *
All military ships look the same inside, and this one is no exception. Everything is a utility lead-grey colour. All flat, ugly surfaces, devoid of decoration. Random pipes and boxes with no obvious function adorn the walls. As is the navy custom, the dropship uses only muted lighting when in active operation. Like the eyepatches of ancient pirates, the general idea is to allow the troops to adapt quickly to various degrees of ambient lighting when they leave the ship. This custom also makes it less of a necessity to clean up, and this ship is messy like the room of a spoiled child. There's gear everywhere, but there's a method to the madness. Every item has been placed with great care.
We enter through the rear cargo bay. On an assault drop, the bay holds two armoured personnel carriers. Now, it's stacked with dark crates of varying sizes, tied down against the deck with straps and magnetic clamps. Many of the crates appear to contain military hardware. Judging by the amount of weaponry, Jagr expects a minor war. Then again, we're going to Nifelheim. All the weapons in the world might not be enough.
We file through the hold and into the ship's short, wide midsection that doubles as an airlock. There's a heavy door to the outside set in one wall and lockers containing heavily armoured drop suits line the walls. Through the forward door, we reach the troop bay. It's a cramped space about twice the size of my one-room flat and it smells of sweat and greased metal. Like my flat.
A dropship carries a full platoon of marines, but this ship has been modified. There are only sixteen crash couches, eight set along the port side and eight along the centre console, facing them. The starboard side of the bay has been converted into a war room with kitchen facilities. There's an integral table with benches next to a small stove almost invisible behind an assortment of crates strapped to the deck. View-screens are bolted to the walls at random intervals. Weapon racks line the aft bulkhead and there's a sliding door in the forward bulkhead, leading to the cockpit.
Jagr and Soledad are already strapping into the crash couches. Soledad performs gesture commands on a control pad on her lap and I get into the couch facing her. There's an uncomfortable moment before the memory foam in the seat adjusts to my body shape, but then I'm tucked in like a baby in its mother's arms. “Where are we going?” I lower the padded safety bar over my chest. I have no desire to get thrown around the bay if Braden has to do any emergency manoeuvring.
“Nifelheim.”
“I know that. How are we going to get there? It will take months in this bucket, and the Goliaths don't allow Terran ships within one light minute of Nifelheim.”
“They'll let us in.”
She gives me a stiff smile. “You'll see.”
She returns to her tinkering.
“So, we stow away on a private cruiser then? Sweet.”
I click the safety bar into place. It locks with a satisfying sound. I don't like the military much, but they build solid stuff.
“Do I get a cabin of my own, or do we share, you and I?”
She flips me the finger without looking up. “Dream on, Perez. You couldn't handle me.”
“I could try.”
Soledad laughs. “Shut up. I've got work to do.”
There's a crackle from the overhead speakers. “Ready for take-off in ten seconds. Buckle up, ladies. Music.” The deep bass lines of some random Crump track blasts from speakers up in the cockpit. The bass vibrates through my seat as it reclines into position for take-off. Many military ships, and dropships, in particular, have seats that swivel to ensure the occupants can withstand the heavy G-forces of combat flight. We're left staring at the ceiling. The seats' arrangement makes excellent survival sense, but it sucks for conversation.
Another vibration rumbles through the craft. Not music this time. The rumble turns into a roar of constant thunder as Braden cranks up the turbines and takes us airborne. There's a screen above my seat. It shows the parking lot recede into the night as we bank and climb hard between the starscrapers. Children wave to us from the windows. They will no doubt grow up dreaming of being starship pilots.
We leave the city behind and head out over the jungle, gaining altitude by the second. Getting a permit to land a spaceship in downtown Masada requires a lot of pull. Taking off at night from an unsupervised parking lot even more so.
My ears pop as Braden takes us vertical and turns on the big boosters once we're clear of the city. We're all pushed hard into our seats by inertia, and I can't breathe. Damn, Braden is heavy on the accelerator.
I can't think with all the noise and the vibration from the fusion engines hurling us into space, but one thing is clear. Whatever their contact found on Nifelheim, the people who run this show think it's pretty damn important. Important enough to give us access to this ship and clearance to land it in the city.
I can't wait to find out what kind of crap this is all about.
* * *
Five minutes later Braden cuts the engines, and we drift weightless through space, hurtling along serenely at ten times the speed of sound. Yes, I read the escape velocity of Elysium somewhere once and the figure stuck. Don't be so surprised.
The screen shows stars and the growing golden arc of the Elysian sunrise to the east. Hope Alpha is just below the horizon and Hope Beta is not far behind. Sunrises in binary star systems are spectacular.
The PA crackles again with the heavy music pumping in the background.
“Perez, get your ass up here.” It's Jagr.
Better do what the boss says.
Soledad has fallen asleep. Her arms and hair float free, and she looks like a drowned corpse.
I raise the bar, unstrap, and float out of my seat. It's been a while since I was off-world, and it takes a moment to align my brain to the fact there's no up or down anymore. The human brain is not built to handle navigation in three dimensions. To keep from going dizzy, I concentrate on keeping the dropship's floor as my reference down direction.
I pull my way towards the cockpit using handholds set into the walls. When the ship is under thrust the handholds double as a ladder.
I punch the green button next to the bulkhead door to open it. It slides aside on well-oiled tracks. It would appear Soledad keeps the vessel in ship shape.
I heave myself into the cockpit. The view is spectacular.
A dropship doesn't have proper portholes. They would never survive the stress of atmospheric entry and the entire vessel would burn. Instead, dropships use outboard cameras and high-definition view-screens. The screen curving around the cockpit displays a magnificent view of the black vastness of space and the myriad lights of the Milky Way.
It's beautiful.
It's also the most terrifying thing I've ever seen.
The General chained to the rear wall of my mind screams in terror, and his fear locks my body into cramps. My fists close hard enough for my nails to draw blood and I go sailing rigid as a block of wood into the screen. I bounce off and careen into an array of switches and buttons. An alarm blares and a red light flashes on over our heads.
“What the fuck?” Braden punches a sequence of buttons on a console above her head and the alarm cuts out.
The sudden noise and shouting bring my body under control and I unclench my fists and stabilise myself behind Jagr's seat.
“What the fuck was that about Perez?”
Jagr turns around and stares at me. “They said you had been in space before.”
“I have.” I forgot for how long. General Meridian was locked into an escape pod and sent drifting through deep space for forty years with no chance of escape and no way of killing himself. He doesn't like the Big Empty.
Drops of blood from my gashed palms float around the cabin like little wobbling crimson planets.
“Sorry. I'm out of practice.”
There's a shout from the troop bay.
“What the fuck happened?” Soledad shouts. “Are we dying?”
Jagr calls back. “That was Perez pushing buttons he shouldn't have pushed.”
“Fucking A. Just space the fucker already.”
I smile. I think Soledad likes me.
Bradden glares at me over her shoulder. The patch cables in her head connect to the neural interfaces in the pilot's seat.
“Don't. Fucking. Do that again,” she says through gritted teeth. “You could have killed us. I think I wet my knickers.”
“Sorry. Won't happen again.”
I grab the backs of their seats and pull myself forward a little between them. I focus on Jagr's profile and not on the shitload of nothing outside the windows. It doesn't hurt to watch her face.
“You called, Massa.”
“Yes. I thought you might like to see where we're going.”
Braden has us in a slow starboard roll. A billion stars revolve above our heads and the golden crescent of Elysium far below revolves with them. The panic wells up again inside, but I lock it down. The golden bow stretches wider as we rise above the planet and then Hope Alpha pokes through the upper layers of my home planet's atmosphere.
“I thought we were going to Nifelheim.” I look back at Jagr again.
“We are.”
She leans back in her couch and puts a boot up on the ledge beneath the screen.
She rests one slender wrist on her shapely knee like a roguish space pirate captain. “But not in this bucket.”
Her leg is a thing of beauty.
“Hey, there's nothing wrong with this bucket,” Braden says. She punches another sequence of buttons arranged above her head. Probably just for show.
“No, the Sundowner is a fine little ship, Braden. But it would take us months to get to Nifelheim in this crate, and we don't have months.”
“OK, so what are we riding on?” I glance from one woman to the other.
Braden grins and banks the ship into a long sweeping turn.
Our second sun breaks through the planet's atmosphere and bathes everything inside the cockpit in brilliant white light.
“That.” Jagr points out the windscreen at a giant starship rolling into view.
Fuck me. I'm impressed.
“That” is the Emancipation class Terran main line battle cruiser Shiloh. Flagship of the Terran Commonwealth and the greatest warship ever built.
“Nice ride,” is the best I can manage.
“It is, isn't it?” There's genuine pride in Jagr's voice. I can tell she is aware of exactly how much power and resources someone has wielded to get her and her little crew where they need to go. If I ever had any doubts that the people in charge consider this mission important, they just disappeared quicker than a virginity in a prison shower. Someone means business and is not afraid to show it.
The Shiloh is berthed at one of the many Terran military stations orbiting Elysium, but you would be forgiven for thinking it was the other way around. The ship dwarfs the satellite. Braden takes us in along the kilometre-long warship at breakneck speed. I can't imagine all the time and resources spent to construct this marvel of modern engineering. A million tonnes of hypercarbon, shaped like a tapered starscraper kicked over on its back, with four immense engines tucked to one end. It's not a beautiful ship, but it's functional.
The radio crackles. We're being hailed.
“Unidentified vessel. This is Commander Hardigan of the UNS Shiloh. You will divert your current flight path and return to your designated approach vector. Fail to comply and you will be fired upon.”
Jagr grabs a microphone from above her head and leans back in the chair. “This is Misha Jagr on the assault ship Sundowner. You will divert your asshole attitude and let us board any way we bloody like. Here are my identification codes.”
She switches hands on the microphone and places her right palm on the console between the seats. The ship reads her ID chip and relays her credentials to Commander Hardigan.
There's a moment of silence as her authority is verified.
Then Commander Hardigan comes back on the line.
“As you were, Sundowner. You may board when ready, ma'am.”
Commander Hardigan is a true professional. His voice is smooth business and there's not even a hint he just threatened to blow us out of the sky.
Jagr flips the Shiloh the finger with the slender hand still holding the microphone. “Fucking navy.” At last, something we agree on.
“Hey, Soledad,” she calls out to the woman in the back. “Get ready to dock. Gear and weapons check and ready to roll on touch down.”
Jagr runs a tight ship. If I was even the slightest impressed by military precision I'd be impressed, but I'm not, so I'm not.
Braden swings us around the Shiloh, providing an impressive view of the four massive barrel-shaped engines sticking from the ass-end of the warship. The stern of the warship is tall as a mountainside.
“Do we have time for a quick beer before we board? I think I'm about to score with Soledad.”
Jagr laughs from her crash seat. “Dream on, Perez. We're on a tight schedule. The Shiloh leaves in twenty minutes, and we need to be aboard and stowed away by then.”
Damn, we are on a clock.
Knock, Knock
The gigantic engine exhausts iris open, exposing the shimmering, iridescent blue of the fusion-powered plasma cores within. Each one of those immense openings could swallow ten Sundowners in formation.
Once the Shiloh's crew start the ignition process, there's no going back. Once set in motion, all that power needs to be released. That sounds like a euphemism. What is Soledad doing later tonight?
I hang on to Jagr's seat as Braden takes us around the warship.
The docking bay is on the underside of the great vessel, and the Shiloh towers above us. Decks on interplanetary starships stack like the floors of a starscraper, perpendicular to the ship's long axis. That way, inertia provides artificial gravity as the ship accelerates and decelerates. As we approach, immense blast doors slide apart to allow us inside. It's a giant airlock, designed to allow fighters and transports to enter and exit the bay.
An airlock on a carrier ship is an excellent idea in principle. It allows you to keep the hangar pressurised to allow the crews to work on the vessels without messing with vacuum suits. It's not such a wonderful idea when the brass vents the bay's atmosphere to launch the fighters faster. I'll never forget when they did that on the Vigilant. She was a repurposed Gray Industries heavy freighter that was shot to shit above Persephone. We were already evacuating the ship when they blew the airlock to allow our fighter ships to escape to fight another day. Hundreds of soldiers about to board their shuttles were blown into space and died hard in the cold and dark. They were expendable, the fighters were not. Those men still orbit Persephone like tiny icy moons. I knew many of those men by name. Years later, Finn and I tracked down the captain of the Vigilant in a Masada bar. I bought him drinks, and he wouldn't stop talking. He told me he quit the corporate navy circuit shortly after that debacle. A few months later, he lost his wife. He lost his miserable drunken life that night. In the end, he wasn't sorry to go. Guilt can be a bitch.
