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

in his robes. I groan. If something happens, he can never get it out in time to use it. Which might be for the best. The chance of him pointing it the right way before he pulls the trigger is 50/50 at best.

Jagr claps her hands. “Time to move out. Zip up.”

We zip up and pull our weapon tethers tight around our chests. A gun is no good if you lose it in the snow.

“Have fun,” Braden chirps and waves. Soledad stands with her arms crossed, looking jealous. Then she punches the button to lower the ramp for us. As soon as it cracks open, the howling wind roars into the hold. It's freezing out there, and the air inside the hold fills with icy shards. I pull the goggles over my eyes and wrap the smelly Goliath scarf around my face. Then we head out into the ice.

The wind has dropped, but with the swirling snow, it's still a bitch.

The treacherous ground with bottomless crevasses on all sides is much worse.

* * *

We make slow headway across the ice, and we often need to stop and retrace our steps to skirt the deeper gullies. Jagged shards of ancient ice reach hundreds of metres into the air. This is no place for living beings.

Jagr is on point, with her head down to follow our target on her wrist console. With the wind and the swirling snow, we can't see shit. I like surprises as much as the next guy, but this time I would much prefer knowing what we're walking into. Even with the thermal goggles, there's nothing to see. Whatever is out there is as cold as the surrounding ice.

The ground slopes upward, and our progress slows almost to a standstill. Eventually, we have to resort to clambering on our hands and knees to make our way forward.

Jagr stops to consult her console again.

“We're getting closer.”

She looks up and points into the swirling snow. “It should be another hundred metres, give or take. Look sharp, people.”

I can't tell if the others look sharp. I struggle to see them at all through the snow.

As we reach a peak, there's a sudden lull in the wind. The snow stops whirling and for the first time since we left the ship, we can make out our surroundings.

We stand at the summit of an icy ridge that curves away to our left and right to disappear into the hazy distance. The clouds part to show our two pale suns, shining cold on the bleak landscape through the remains of the dying storm.

We have climbed the side of a giant crater. It's at least two kilometres wide, and it's deep.

From the crater's floor rises the tail end of a starship at an angle, half-buried in the ice, covered with centuries of snow. It has ploughed like a spear into the ice, and the front half of the ship is deep under the surface.

Jagr fumbles down her scarf. “What the actual fuck?” The water vapour from her breath dissipates in the freezing air.

I pull the goggles down around my neck. “Is that a fucking alien starship?”

Far above, two black birds circle the ship and drift towards us. Are those the same birds I saw at the Jarl's hall earlier? There's something about them that makes the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I can't put my finger on why, but I'm sure it will come to me.

“By Odin's beard,” Finn, Hildr, and Skallagrim exclaim in unison.

The little priest does his sign of the cross again.

“What?”

I squint at the others against the icy light of the setting sun. “It's just a spaceship.”

Jagr stares wide-eyed at the ship in the crater. The stern of the thing hangs two hundred metres above the ice. “That is not just a spaceship, Perez.”

“No?”

“No, that is the Galahad.”

“The what?”

“The Galahad. That is the fucking Galahad, boys and girls!”

I try to process Jagr's words. “You mean …?”

My mind reels at the implications. For a moment, I even forget the biting cold.

“Identification confirmed. That is the colony ship Galahad.”

“What's a Galahad?” the priest asks.

“It's a dildo for the gods,” I say, deadpan.

“Oh.” The little man blushes behind his goggles.

“Yes, Perez, that is the Galahad, the first ship we sent from Earth to colonise outer space. The ship that was lost.”

She can't be right.

“But the Gormenghast settled this system,” I object.

I should know. Meridian destroyed the Gormenghast when he exploded its engines above Arcadia and killed all life on the planet. “What the hell is the Galahad doing here?”

“I guess we'd better find out.”

Jagr pulls the slide on her assault rifle and loads a cartridge into the chamber. “Let's go.”

She takes off down the steep slope towards the ship. The birds circle in the sky.

The going is much easier on the inside of the crater, even if the splint on my leg hampers me. I catch up with the others outside the wreck. It's impossibly tall.

Jagr salutes me. “Nice of you to join us, Perez.”

“Sorry.”

I pull my knife and cut the splint from my leg. I don't need it anymore. “Won't happen again.”

They built the colony ships to house a hundred thousand people for generations, so they had to be huge. If my recollection serves me right, the Galahad was the smallest of the three. It still spans an impressive kilometre and a half and weighs in at about a million tonnes. It's a beast.

The ship is remarkably well-preserved.

Like the Shiloh, it's built like a giant starscraper, lying on its side, to provide artificial gravity for the start and end burns. For the greater part of the trip, the crew and passengers were kept in a state of hibernation. Their bodies withered away over the months, years, and decades of the transit, until six months before landfall when the ship began its deceleration burn and the crew had to start a gruelling exercise schedule.

Giant sections of the armoured hull have been torn off and litter the crater, but the