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

of nasty shit hiding out there. Jagr motions for Hildr and Finn to take up defensive positions by the door.

A deafening electronic warble echoes around the bridge, and we drop our weapons on their leashes to cover our ears. Dust and ice rains from the shadowy ceiling and lightning bolts arc across the room. Strangely, they don't touch us.

We all scramble to grab our weapons again and raise them.

“Perez I …” There's a brief hiss of static and Aeryn goes silent.

“Aeryn?”

There's no reply.

“Aeryn?”

Silence.

Fuck. It's gone.

“Hold your fire,” Jagr whispers. She keeps her weapon trained on the darkness. “Wait.”

We hold our fire and wait.

I almost piss myself when a dark, sensuous male voice fills the bridge.

“Welcome. How may I be of service?”

The voice is deep, but there is no feeling behind it. It sounds like a primitive ship's AI.

Jagr clears her throat.

“Status report.”

“Status report. Life support offline. Drives offline. Communications online.”

If the communications systems of this ship are online, they could be the source of the comms-spikes. The comms on a generation ship need to be powerful enough to send signals over light-years of space.

Jagr swears. She must have had the same thought I did.

Jagr goes on. “Crew status?”

“Deceased.”

“Cause of death?”

“Massive blunt force trauma.”

So, they all died in the crash.

“Cause of the crash?”

There's a slight pause. “Unknown.”

“Define 'unknown'.”

“Unable to comply.”

“Galahad, define 'unknown'.”

An interminable pause.

“I am not the Galahad.”

What? We all stare at each other.

Something in the voice has changed. Maybe it's the timbre. Maybe it's the rhythm of its words, but something has changed for the worse.

“Then who are you?” I ask the darkness.

“Perez,” Jagr whispers beneath her breath. “Shut. The fuck. Up.”

I pretend I didn't hear her. “Do you know anything about Project Jotun?”

A slight pause. Then, “No. I do not.”

A construct lacks the processing power to weave the subtle web of a lie. There's something about the choice of words of this entity that gives me the creeps.

I sweep my rifle around the chamber. The light drones follow me around. Nothing moves. Then, by chance, I look up.

I wish I hadn't.

Foot-long half mechanical, half translucent organic centipedes cover the ceiling from wall-to-wall. They look like something out of a biomech engineer's worst nightmares. They scurry towards the dome's centre. Right above us.

I point them out. “Jagr, time to go.”

Jagr stares at the ceiling.

“Damn straight we do.”

We back away. When the entity realises we've seen through it, the things on the ceiling shriek into action faster than you can say “boo”.

Tiny blue lights turn on along their sides as they drop from the ceiling. On their way to the floor, they kill the light drones. Damn it, I liked those drones. They bounce off the floor with dull metallic thuds and come racing at us from all directions on their spindly chrome legs.

“Run.” Jagr opens fire on the things. She empties an entire magazine at the oncoming centipedes, and her rounds tear them to shreds. I open fire and take out another dozen, but there are too many to stop them all.

Then Wagner opens fire from the door with his heavy machine gun.

He hoses down the room with hypervelocity tungsten shells, clearing a path to the door for us. Hundreds upon hundreds of the vile things explode. Then Finn is out of ammo, and the door begins to slide closed.

Hildr and Finn put their huge shoulders against it to hold it long enough for us to get through. Hildr waves for us. “Come on. We can't hold it for long.”

We run for the opening. The priest is first through the door. He is impressively fast.

Skallagrim is not.

He draws his black sword and attacks the centipedes. That man has got some serious balls.

“Skallagrim, get out,” I shout and stop to fire at the centipedes.

“Go,” he calls back as his monomolecular sword flashes in an arc through the things, cutting them to pieces. “I will hold them off.”

I back towards the door, firing the Aitchenkai in short, controlled bursts to keep the bugs off Skallagrim long enough for him to make it out.

“Go,” Finn shouts, and I turn and run through the opening into the passageway. The door is almost closed now, and Finn and Hildr are forced to back through after me. I spin around to see how Skallagrim is doing.

One of the things drops from the ceiling and lands on his broad shoulder. Before I can blink, thin metal spikes shoot from the bug and into his sinewy neck.

“Skallagrim, no.” Hildr reaches out an arm to her brother as if willing him closer.

I slap the control beside the door to close it. Skallagrim stares in shock at his sister. Then he falls to his knees as more spikes pierce his neck and skull.

The last thing visible before the door shuts out the horrible scene is the surprise in his eyes. “Make sure they write songs about me.”

He reaches out to his sister, and with a deep resounding boom, the door seals him off.

Hildr turns on me with despair on her face. “Open the door. Open the fucking door.”

“He's gone, Hildr,” I say and lay a hand on her shoulder. Jagr stares in disbelief at the door. Not a single sound reaches us from the other side, but I can't help imagining the horror going on, metres away. I hope it's a quick death.

I slide the empty magazine from my assault rifle and replace it with a fresh one. Jagr and Braden do the same. Finn feeds another belt into his machine gun.

“Skallagrim.” Hildr falls to her knees. Despite her size, she looks so small and fragile I want to take her in my arms and hug her. Tears roll down her cheeks.

“I'll blow that fucking construct to shit,” she howls and raises her rifle.

“That is not a construct,” I say.

Jagr turns to me.

“What?”

The others turn too. Even Hildr looks up.

“What do you mean, not a construct?”

“Whatever the fuck it is, that thing is not a construct.”

Jagr stares at me. “The fuck it is.”

“It's not. Constructs can't lie.”

“So, what is it then?”

“I