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

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?”