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

check readings on their wrist consoles while Finn and Hildr talk in low voices. The priest is asleep.

“Hang on.”

Braden's voice crackles over the intercom again. “Scanners report an anomaly. Jagr, Perez, you might want to see this.”

Anomaly? I don't like the sound of that.

“Perez. Let's go.”

Jagr pushes the release button on her seat. “Now.”

“Ma'am, yes ma'am.” I hit my release button, then push off and follow her to the cockpit.

Not too far below hangs the boiling yellow clouds of the yellow moon Muspelheim. It's named after the land of the fire giants in Norse mythology, and it's a fitting name.

The moon doesn't look anomalous to me. Unless you count the lightning bolts flashing between the yellow cloud-tops in the greatest thunderstorm I've ever seen.

Jagr grabs the headrest of Braden's seat, making sure not to interfere with the neural interface cables linking her pilot to the ship. “What have you got, Braden?”

“I don't know.”

She fingers her lips. “This is a rocky moon, right?”

“Yeah, last time I checked.” Jagr nods.

“A rocky moon would be massively heavy.”

“It would.”

“Well, this one isn't as massive as it should.” Braden swivels one of her screens around on its arm to show us an array of holographic schematics. Scrolling rows of numbers complement the bars and charts.

Jagr studies the display without uttering a word, until she sees what Braden has already seen. “What the hell?” The numbers mean something to her.

I see nothing out of the ordinary. “What is it?”

“Braden, tell him.” Jagr keeps scanning the numbers, looking for an explanation to the anomaly. “In simple layman's terms,” she adds with ice in her voice.

I scowl at her. She ignores me.

“Well, I noticed our orbit around the moon was not stable. We were drifting away from it at a constant rate, suggesting something was off about my calculations.” She waggles her head, and her blue mohawk flows like the long tail of a fish. “Yeah, I know. It's not common, but it does happen. I redid the maths and came up with the same numbers, and we were still drifting. A scan of the moon showed it weighs in at about zero point two per mille the mass of Nirvana.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I nod, trying to sound knowledgeable. I have no clue where she is going with this.

“Common sense and previous measurements say a moon of this size, with this composition, should be at least a point three or four. That is enough of a diff to trigger a warning flag in my book.”

“And what does all this tech crap mean? In simple layman's terms.” I glare at the back of Jagr's uncaring head.

“Well, Mr P. As far as I can tell — in simple layman's terms — that moon is hollow.”

A Claim of Cultural Appropriation

We drop from orbit in the Sundowner's huge armoured exosuits. Every surface on the suits is black and angled, to deflect projectile fire and offer optimal stealth performance. We look like aliens. Which I suppose we are. Humans do not belong on Muspelheim. No life does. This place is hell.

We didn't detect any satellites in orbit, so any listening devices they have will be down on the moon's surface. That means we can send updates back to the Sundowner in aimed data bursts. But Braden won't be able to signal back.

The moon's thick atmosphere does a splendid job of braking our descent. It also heats my suit alarmingly fast. I watch the heat-sensor readout climb from near absolute zero to over a thousand degrees Centigrade as we fall.

“It's hot out there, Perez.”

“Not much I can do about it, Aeryn.”

“Just letting you know. Be careful. We don't want to die.”

“Noted. Now hush.”

There's no point in pondering the risk of suit failure. If it happens, it happens. I will never even notice.

The yellow clouds get thicker as we fall, and the last electromagnetic radiation in the thin band we call light flickers out and dies. Increasing turbulence tosses me around like a marble in an ancient pinball machine.

“Approaching the ground, Perez. Get ready.”

I watch the altimeter spin through the numbers. The impact is ten seconds away when the suit triggers its preprogrammed braking routine. Powerful servos position my body into an arrowhead configuration as the suit goes into glide mode. A monofilament membrane deploys between my arms and legs, and the suit steers me towards our landing zone. The Terrans build quality stuff.

A hundred metres from the ground the glide-sail retracts, the parachute deploys, and I'm yanked skywards. I can't see shit through the sulphur clouds, and if the suit hadn't been keeping tabs, I would have splattered all over the ground. Lucky for me, the suit has my back and lands me light as a feather on the uneven yellow gravel.

“We're down. Welcome to Muspelheim.”

“Thanks, Aeryn. Where are the others?”

“Look around and I will see if I can spot them.”

The gravel crunches underfoot as I turn to survey my surroundings. I can't hear the crunching, but I can sense it through the hypercarbon soles of my suit. I've landed in a hollow between sharp rocks taller than I am. Everything is yellow in this damn place. Yellow ground, yellow rocks, and yellow clouds under a yellow sky. Visibility is poor. We dare not use active radar for fear of being detected.

“Nothing. You?”

“Nope.”

Without using the tracking beacons, it will be a bitch finding the others. Lucky for us, these suits have starlight navigation systems. Even if the stars are not visible to human eyes through the thick clouds, the suit can still detect them. They give the onboard computers plenty of references to compute my position. As I wait for the calculations to finish, I detach and fold the parachute and hide it under a pile of rocks. You can never be too careful. It would be just my luck if a Goliath went to take a leak and stumbled on it.

“Nice place to pick for a date.”

“This is not a date, Aeryn.”

“Aw.”

“If we survive this, I promise I'll take you somewhere nice.”

“I'll hold you to