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

lovebirds are done kissing, could you get your ass over here, Perez?” Jagr and Soledad stand at a fold-out table with a screen mounted above it on the bulkhead. There's a map displayed on the table.

Isn't someone missing? Oh, yes. The priest.

The little man is still buckled into his seat, crumpled like a child's doll. I hope he's not dead. I bet a dead priest means bad luck.

The slight rise and fall of his chest tell me he's merely unconscious.

The PA crackles. “We've got company.”

Jagr swears. “Who are they?”

“Remember those tanks that followed us out of Hrafnheim?”

“What? They can't be here already.”

“According to the ship's log, we were out cold for the better part of an hour. It's dawn already. They're here, all right.”

“Fuck. How close are they?” Jagr asks.

“They have reached the ice bridge.”

Perhaps an unconscious priest was enough to jinx this mission?

Jagr weighs her options. Then she swears under her breath. “Nuke it, Braden.”

Again? “Nuking shit seems to be your solution of choice, Jagr,” I observe.

“Fuck you, Perez. Do it, B.”

“That thing is huge, boss. Might have to give it all we've got.”

“Let that ice bridge fucker have it. We don't stand a chance if they get here.”

“Launching.”

Five loud, bassy thumps shake the hull in rapid succession as the nuclear projectiles fire.

A dropship doesn't use conventional missiles like ordinary military spacecraft. Dropping through the atmosphere of a hostile world, everything outside the ship is thousands of degrees hot. Missiles would burn up or detonate instantly from the heat. Instead, a dropship fires thermal-shielded canisters with the missiles inside. The canisters deploy braking plates and slow down to a safe velocity before blowing the protective shielding to release their cargo.

Down here at sea-level the missiles fire from their shells at once. Five seconds later, the ground shakes as the atomic bombs detonate on the ancient bridge.

“All but one nuke have launched,” Braden reports. “The last ejection port is buried in the ice. Scratch one platoon of Sentinels and random support vehicles.”

She groans. A broken pelvis must hurt like a bitch. “And one ice bridge.”

Finn grunts from his seat. “Did you just blow up Bifrost?”

“Yes, Goliath,” Jagr replies. “Want to make something of it?”

“No. Only asking.” Finn goes back to massaging his face, where a nasty bruise is spreading across his cheek.

Skallagrim pulls a whetstone from a pocket and begins to sharpen his dark blade.

“Very handy to have a nuclear arsenal on hand,” I observe.

“Yes, very,” Jagr confirms.

She turns back to Soledad and the map. “Right, where were we?”

You've got to admire their professionalism. Jagr just nuked a platoon of Goliaths along with an ancient bridge, and she doesn't even give it a moment's thought. I'm glad she's on my side.

“This is where our agent died.” Soledad points out a location, about a kilometre due east from our current position on the topographical map. Braden got us nearly all the way in a burning ship. Impressive.

“Hang on.” Jagr leans closer to the screen. “Isn't that …?”

“Yes, almost on the money.” Soledad taps the map and brings up an overlay that almost matches the coordinates from the head. “I did a cross-reference, and it's a perfect match.”

The place Soledad points at is slap bang in the middle of nowhere.

Jagr whistles. “This shit just got real, people.”

“What money? What shit?”

“That's classified.”

“Oh, come the fuck on. You can't be serious. We're on the same side, Jagr. I need to know what's going on.”

Braden calls over the intercom. “Come on, boss. He's earned it.”

Even Soledad nods reluctantly.

Jagr coughs. “I told you we hadn't found the source of those mysterious transmissions. I wasn't entirely honest. A few months ago, our tech people ran a series of serious AI algorithms to triangulate the origin. They narrowed it down to three potential sites on Nifelheim. Our agent was sent here with the task to find out which was the true source.”

“I guess he found it,” I nod solemnly.

“It would seem that way.”

“So, he found out what generated the signals, and the Goliaths killed him before he could spread the word.”

“Your guess is as good as mine, but that is our working hypothesis. We had no way of knowing for sure if the signal and Father's death were related, but I don't believe in coincidence.”

“But what's out there?” I try to make out anything at all from the coarse resolution of the map.

Soledad takes over. “Nothing, according to this map. But this thing is decades old. There could be anything out there.”

“So, what are we waiting for?” I look at the girls. “Let's go.”

Jagr turns to the ceiling microphones. “What's the status of the Sundowner, Braden? Will she fly?”

“She'll fly,” Braden confirms. “She's taken a beating, but she'll live. Two engines are gone, and there are a dozen holes to patch, but Soledad can fix that in a couple of hours.”

“Fine. We'll wait for the sun to rise. We don't want to stumble into a crevasse in the dark. Time for R&R, ladies.”

Soledad gets to work on the ship, and the rest of us slump into the crash seats. For a long time, the slow grating of Skallagrim's whetstone is the only sound in the bay. He keeps eyeing Finn from time to time.

The young priest comes and sits next to me with a worried expression on his face. He stares at my mangled hand. Right. I had almost forgotten that.

“You must be in awful pain, my friend. How can I help you?”

“You could get me that bundle over there.” I point the stump at the severed head where it has rolled into a corner.

Jagr looks up from her slumber. “What are you doing with that?”

“If you don't need it, I could use it.”

Jagr sighs. “Take it.” She lies down on her side in the crash seat and closes her eyes. One of the indispensable skills of a soldier is the ability to fall asleep anywhere. You never know when you will get another chance.

The priest bends down to retrieve the head. “Dear God, that is disgusting.” With a