Under A Winter Sun by Johan Dahlgren (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

I scratch my chest with the gun. My clothes are crusty with blood.

Jagr cracks a smile. I like it when she smiles. “I'll even buy you a drink when this is over.”

Crap. She has studied my file.

“All right.” I open the passenger door and get in. The car smells like new cars have smelled since time immemorial. The heavy scent of leather and polymer always give me a headache. Jagr taps the roof and gets in. I place the gun on my lap for easy access if this turns out to be an elaborate trap.

Soledad starts the car and stamps on the accelerator. Tyres scream and I'm pressed hard into the seat. The ride we're on our way to meet waits for no man. Or woman.

Jagr twists around in her seat. “Was that what happened to him?”

“Who?”

“Gray. Was that how he …?”

I stare out the window as the empty warehouse speeds past. The memory burns in my mind. I know it's Meridian's chemistry responding to the images of the flaying and tormented Gray, but it still warms my guts. “Yup.”

“Gray was a rotten bastard, but shit.” Jagr sees the grin on my face and shivers. “You are a terrible man, Perez.”

I nod. She gets no argument from me there.

Her eyes linger and the moment stretches out, threatening to become uncomfortable. I continue to stare out the window, refusing to look at her. She tears her gaze away and faces forward again. I breathe a quiet sigh of relief. “Fuck,” she says and wipes a hand down her face, restoring her professional calm.

We shoot through the warehouse doors and out onto the broken and pitted asphalt of the street.

“Where are we going?”

A few lonely streetlights reflect in the car's shiny black paintwork.

“To the airport?”

There are no stars in the Bottoms. The ever-present mess of rusted pipes and cracked concrete known as the Ceiling makes sure of that.

Jagr has regained her composure and shakes her head in the rear-view mirror. Soledad twists the wheel, and we go screaming up a concrete ramp, heading for the upper levels of the city. “Not quite.”

Interesting.

Outside in the tunnel, the streetlights flicker, go dead and come back on again.

“Lots of power failures lately,” I remark and finger my gun.

“Are there? Haven't noticed.”

“I registered another drop in data connectivity,” Aeryn says.

“Hmm.” Here too. The world falls apart around us and no one even notices. A holiday on Nifelheim doesn't sound so bad anymore.

I study my newfound friends as the dirty streets of the Bottoms recede below.

The similarity between Jagr and Soledad is uncanny. They have the same cruel but attractive Slavic face and the same lean, fit build. Both women are the same age, about forty, give or take a few years. They even sound the same when they talk. Genetically identical. If one of them committed murder, the other could get executed based on the DNA evidence. You better hope your clones behave.

We scream out of a tunnel and enter the middle tiers of Masada. Patches of night sky become visible between the tall starscrapers. The streets are filled with people. There's another protest going on. A lot of Christ-Heads line the street, shaking crosses and chanting. They are all over the news these days. Not only on Elysium but all the settled planets. Something has them riled up. Probably semantics in some holy document or other. I couldn't care less.

“We're here,” Jagr announces.

What Are We Riding On?

We swing around the ground-level shops of an obsidian starscraper and drive out across a large parking lot. Unusually for Masada, this lot is open to the sky. It's framed by taller buildings stretching on into the sky. Hundreds of metres below are the Bottoms we just left, and hundreds of metres above are the penthouses and eyries of the elite, not quite visible through the smog of the city and the mist from the jungle surrounding Masada. The lot is empty except for a dark, ominous-looking, four-engine dropship of obvious Terran military design. It's big. Twenty metres long by eight wide, and four metres tall on its landing struts. Two stumpy wings extend from the craft with enormous swivel engines attached to the ends. The rear pair of engines are attached to the hull to allow all four engines to swing back and power the ship on high-speed assaults. A huge swivel-mounted Gatling gun hangs under each wing and one below the nose of the ship. Those things can pound a bunker to dust. The ship stands with its engines idling in the centre of the parking lot, illuminating the neighbourhood with its landing lights. The engines whip exhaust fumes and dust around the lot. Someone has got powerful friends. Kids hang out the windows of the surrounding residential blocks and stare at the ship. There are many adults too. Most of these people have never seen a real spaceship before, and I doubt even one of them has seen a warship. I always wanted to be a dropship pilot when I was a kid. They fly the toughest missions and boast the shortest life expectancy of all military pilots, but they also claim the biggest pay cheques. During the Corporate Wars, the dropship pilots had almost as many fans as the Goliaths.

Jagr turns around in her seat. “Now behave, Perez.”

“What, are we meeting your parents already?” This relationship moves a little too fast for me.

“Nope, you wouldn't want to meet them. Trust me.” There's a quick wrinkling of the skin at the corner of her eye. Was that a smile? When I look closer, it's gone.

Soledad drives the car through the swirling smoke, right up to the dropship and brakes. Hard. I bang my face on the back of her seat.

Always remember to wear a seatbelt, kids.

Warm fluid runs from my nose and I can taste salt and iron again. Damn it. I make sure to bleed all over the seat.

We exit the car and I shield my eyes against the