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

Still, I can see Jagr's point. Our cover story is sketchy. But against the Goliaths, it holds a greater chance of keeping us alive than weapons would.

Soledad stares at Jagr over the scarf. Jagr stares back. Soledad breaks eye contact and pulls on her anorak. I bet Jagr is great with dogs.

“Can I have a pink one, boss?” Braden asks.

“This isn't a pride parade, soldier.” The snarl in Jagr's voice is not sincere. I can almost hear her smile. It must be an inside joke because even Soledad laughs, and the tension breaks.

“A girl can always dream.” Braden rolls her eyes and pulls on her anorak.

We follow suit.

I sweat profusely, even though the smart insulation of the clothing does its best to regulate my temperature.

“Right people. There's a miner's pub on the beach. That's where we'll meet our contact. I've not spoken to him myself, but Command informs me he is trustworthy.”

Command, huh? That's the first time I've heard anyone mention the people in charge. I hope they're not as incompetent as people in command usually are. You don't want to mess up when you're around Goliaths.

“Braden, lower the ramp.”

Braden taps a command on her wrist terminal and the Sundowner lowers her tail ramp, letting in the icy chill of Nifelheim. After the recycled air on the Sundowner, the air smells fresh. Crisp.

It freezes the small hairs in my nose to ice in seconds and the first few breaths are painful as hell.

Jagr stands to the side and watches her small team disembark. I sidle up to her.

“Who's this contact of yours? Is he army?”

“No.”

“Navy?”

“No.”

“Special ops?”

“Nope.”

“So, who is he?”

“He's a priest.”

Jagr walks down the ramp, leaving me behind with my mouth hanging open.

“He's a what?” I hurry after her, trying to reconcile myself with this fresh piece of information.

“He's a Christian missionary,” she says without looking at me, “sent here by the church to baptise the heathens.”

“Well, that usually turns out well.”

“The Jarl has taken an interest in Christianity. He requested a priest. We recruited the priest to our cause. Beggars can't be choosers, Perez. We take what we can get.” Is she talking about the priest? Or me?

“Do you trust this priest?”

“Only as far as I can throw him.” She pulls down the shaded snow goggles over her eyes. “But he's all we've got.”

Great.

We've landed twenty kilometres from the space needle construction site. The hypercarbon spire is visible far out to sea, where it stretches from the immense raft it's anchored to, all the way into low orbit. It hangs from the satellite that will become the Nifelheim spaceport. Construction vehicles travel up and down the thick cable, transporting workers and supplies. It's the second greatest construction project in the system, after the particle accelerator in the rings of Avalon.

In the sky beyond the needle, the gas giant Nirvana looms like an evil presence in the icy sky. A thunderstorm rages across the face of the planet. It's beautiful.

This mission is so doomed.

Do We Know Him?

The miners' pub is a squat building set against a gloomy cliff between giant blocks of dirty ice. Its walls are made of ice, and the roof of crude iron sheets. A deep layer of snow covers everything, and if you didn't know it was there, you could miss it altogether. A handful of mining vehicles are parked outside, but apart from them, there's not much to show the place is inhabited.

As we walk closer, the muffled sound of voices trickles from inside.

The thermometer on my terminal says it's thirty degrees below freezing, but it feels much colder thanks to a light wind. The sky is still clear, but ominous clouds are drawing in from the west. We'd better get inside before the bad weather hits.

Jagr opens the door and the voices inside fall silent.

The pub is full of bearded giants.

Except for their size, these Goliaths would not have raised any eyebrows at the Viking court of Harald Hardrada. They all stand over two metres tall, and they are almost as wide in their heavy clothing. They all wear cloaks made of long white garm fur. The garm is Nifelheim's apex predator, named after the dog that guards the entrance to Hel in Norse mythology. When a Goliath is fifteen years old, he goes off into the icy wilderness to kill one. Then he makes a cloak out of it and wears it all his life. Those cloaks smell as bad as you think, and the atmosphere in the pub is pungent.

There is a bar made of rough concrete, a dozen metal tables and a score of rusted iron chairs and stools. Everything is slightly too large in here, and I feel like I'm six years old again. The chairs and benches are covered with furs. Not garm fur, but a darker, scraggly kind. A huge gas fire burns in one corner.

Our contact is not here. Everyone in the bar is a Goliath and not one of them appears to be a Christian priest.

“Where's our man?” I whisper to Jagr, trying to work my frozen lips.

“How the fuck should I know.” She peers around the place. “Don't worry. He'll be here.”

The Goliaths eye us with mild disinterest like we're nothing more than annoying bugs. They respect only brute strength, and they do not see us as a threat. If only they knew. I could arm wrestle every man in here and win, and so could the girls. If the Goliaths knew that, they would stand in line to try us on, and we don't have time for that.

There's not much else we can do but go to the bar.

The Goliaths follow us with pale, deep-set eyes under bushy eyebrows. One giant elbows another and grunts something with a hoarse laugh. I catch the word “draugr”, which means some kind of ghost. The elbowed Goliath swears and punches his companion's arm. Ghosts? What's going on here?

Jagr slaps her hand on the bar. “Beer.” Even indoors the temperature is close to freezing and her breath steams