Winter Song

by Colin Harvey

  When the storm of tears finally blew itself out, Karl let her go. "I believe you," he said. "I'm sorry about what he did. It shames us all." He wiped away a teartrack on her cheek with his thumb. "Why did you never talk of it? Did you really believe that I'd think any less of you?"

  "I was ashamed." Bera snorted a lungful of breath, wiping her cheekbones with the heel of her hands. "Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I did something, sometime, to encourage him. I dunno what, but–"

  "You did nothing!" Karl said. "His sort needs no encouragement."

  "How can you be sure?" Bera said. "I thought that you didn't want me – what if I got him equally wrong somehow? Maybe I somehow encouraged him, by being friendly."

  "Why would you ever think I didn't want you?" Karl gazed into her eyes, allowing himself to be momentarily distracted.

  "You… that is… every night I lay against you," Bera whispered, eyes wide, chewing on the corner of her bottom lip. "There was nothing, no reaction down there–" She pointed.

  "That was my nanophytes keeping the blood away. I wouldn't want to take advantage of a vulnerable girl… You thought that that meant I wasn't interested?"

  Bera's mouth made an "O".

  Karl held up his hand. "I heard voices."

  "Probably Arnbjorn and the others," Ragnar called.

  Karl turned to Bera. "We'll talk again. Now isn't the time." She nodded and smiled.

  Hurrying, Karl led them to a massive metal door at the end, from which all the white paint had peeled but for a few flecks. "Bera, hold a knife to Ragnar's throat."

  "Getting a girl to do your dirty work?" Ragnar jeered, adding, "Easy, Bera! No need for that!"

  "Keep talking, Ragnar –" the calm in Bera's voice was patently insincere "– and I'll take great delight in hurting you."

  Ragnar was silent.

  Karl grabbed an inset that looked as if it was a grip for manually sliding open the door, and indicated Coeo should do the same. "On three," Karl said. "One, two, three – heave!"

  Coeo and Karl strained. Nothing happened at first, so they tried again, harder. After a few seconds Karl heard the unmistakable grating sound of the door opening. When they stopped, Karl heard voices. Arnbjorn and the others. "Again!" Karl panted, heaving so violently that he thought blood vessels would pop.

  When he looked around, Bera was still holding the knife to Ragnar's throat, but as her arm started to tremble, she changed hands.

  "Don't be a fool, Allman." Ragnar sounded weary, but when he straightened, his eyes narrowed. "Give yourselves up. Bera, if you were seduced by this man's glamour, I understand–"

  "Shut up!" Bera cried. "Or by Thor I'll stick you!"

  "And murder in cold blood?" Ragnar said, stepping forward onto the knife-point. "I didn't raise you that way, my dear, whatever my failings were."

  Karl was torn for a moment between helping Bera and forcing open the door a few last centimetres. It was now almost wide enough for her – the smallest of them – to squeeze through. He braced his back against the door jamb and gave one almighty push, a great groan of effort forcing its way between his teeth in descant to Coeo's ultrasonic shout. The door juddered slowly open, screeching in protest.

  He looked up as Ragnar walked another pace forward. Blood spurted and Bera's scream almost drowned out the door, which widened so abruptly that Coeo almost fell through the gap.

  "Bera, come on!" Karl shouted.

  Bera stood rooted for a microsecond, but even as a bloodied, staggering Ragnar snatched at her, she darted for the doorway. Karl stood aside and she shot through as Orn led Ragnar's men through the door to the stairwell at the other end of the corridor.

  "Give me that!" Coeo pointed at Karl's sword.

  "No!" Karl shouted back. "Get through the door!"

  Karl stood on the inside of the doorway, sword pointed through the gap, while Coeo heaved the monolithic slab shut. "Help him!" Karl said to Bera. "No, no, take the sword, take it!" Karl threw his weight into helping Coeo.

  He glimpsed chaos in the corridor where Ragnar's men milled round like gas particles undergoing Brownian motion, while their leader staunched his wound. Karl guessed that Ragnar had moved his head so that the tip hadn't pierced a vital point; most of the spurt had been the release of pressure from the constraints of flesh. Once that pressure eased, the gush would have slowed considerably, and would be easier to staunch than first appeared. Nonetheless the distraction the wound caused robbed the intruders of vital seconds, allowing Karl and Coeo to heave the door closed.

  "Thank all your gods," Karl panted, resting his hands on his knees, "that they weren't regular soldiers, or they'd have left Ragnar and gone for the door instead." Looking up, he saw Bera trembling. "Hey, hey, no need for that!" How much heart must that have taken, he thought, to attack someone who might as well be your father – whatever his faults. He squeezed Bera while snatching a look around.

  The bridge was about ten metres across widthways, slightly less from the large window at the front to the door they'd just used. The window drew the eye, looking out over the frozen waste of Jokullag, ice stretching as far in front of them as Karl could see.

  When he finally managed to drag his eyes away from the terrible beauty of the view, Karl's heart sank. "Looks like they took almost anything that wasn't bolted down." He peered at the command console. "And quite a few things that were." Some of the fittings had been taken, wires hung from panels, metal braces on the floor went nowhere rather than to the chairs they'd once held in place. A thick coating of dust covered every surface. Still, some things are still here. It's not completely stripped like the lower decks. Maybe it was here that they changed their plans.

  "Does that mean you won't be able to send a signal?" Bera said.

  "We'll see." Karl tried several switches. "First we need to see if there's any power left. These old tubs worked on fission, which no one's used for centuries. I assume that the reactor didn't leak, or the Formers would have picked up the radiation on their orbital surveys."

  "Could they have missed it?" Bera said.

  Karl chuckled. "Not the amount that this thing would have sprayed across the landscape if it had leaked." His eyes widened. "Maybe that was why they landed down here, so as not to risk poisoning their descendants. The heat of the hull would have melted the ice, so apart from the initial impact of about a microsecond they would've landed on water."

  From behind them, voices indicated that Ragnar's men had finally sorted themselves out. There was still a two-inch gap around which fingers appeared. "From the packs where we stashed it," Arnbjorn said.

  Bera slashed at the door. The man screamed as blood sprayed the door's edge and fingertips dropped to the floor.

  Karl took a deep breath. "Right," he said. "Let's hope my theory's right. I'd want the bridge to be able to access the engines and the Aye – assuming they had one. For all of those, power's needed first. Some of this must run on emergency power. With fission batteries on hibernate, they should still be…" He hit switches and pressed buttons, and crowed in delight as console lights flickered into life. "Too many displays missing," Karl muttered. "But we'll have to make do." He said, "Just hope that however they contained the reactor, we haven't just turned it off by re-starting central power."

  "Again?" Bera said. "In simple words?"

  "Those were simple words." Karl grinned, checking the various sets of lights, muttering in time to his fingers dancing over the displays. He looked up. "Everything's there."

  "You sound surprised."

  "I am. I'd have offered you millions-to-one against emergency power, the central reactor, the datarealm, life-support and comms all green-lighting."

  Bera nodded at the door. Someone had threaded through a piece of metal as an impromptu shield which they held over the attacker's fingers. "They're still trying to open it the same way you did."

  "I'll be surprised if they do," Karl said. "Three of them plus Ragnar, who should be weakened by his bit of blood-loss, Arnbjorn – who can barel
y stand – and one of them missing fingers. I'm enhanced, and Coeo is adapted, so I'd guess that we're probably stronger than them, and we needed the adrenaline surge of total bloody panic to open it. But get ready to help Coeo grab the shield and hack off some more fingers."

  "With pleasure," Bera said, and joined Coeo at the door.

  Karl continued his search. "They can't have taken it," he muttered. "It wouldn't have been any use – unless they downloaded the datarealm? No, it wouldn't have responded to the test query." Crouching down, he felt along the inside of the panel, and grunted in triumph. "Got pushed to the back. Come out, you beauty!" he unravelled the cable with its distinctive end-plug, and swore. "Wrong bloody shape!"

  He rummaged through the cupboards, looking less and less happy.

  "What are you looking for?" Bera said from his shoulder.

  "Adapters for the jack," Karl said. "Why aren't you at the door?"

  "It's gone suspiciously quiet," Bera said. "But I can't do anything until they attack – and you said lifting off was the priority."

  "So I did," Karl said, as Bera joined the search.

  "Are these what you're looking for?" She rattled a box.

  "Yes!" Karl ransacked the contents and pulled out two or three, comparing the width and shape. "These look to be about the best fit…" He lifted the flap of skin on the back of his neck and uncovered a socket. "See if you can get any of these to plug in."

  Grimacing as she did so, Bera tried all three. "This one's just too wide – oh, that's it," she said.

  "Adaptive socket," Karl said. "As long it's the right configuration and about the right size, the socket will stretch or shrink within certain parameters. These have mostly been semi-standardised since forever. Built-in obsolescence died with the Age of Waste, before star-flight." He grinned. "You could say it became obsolescent." He puffed out his cheeks. Holding the jack in his left end, he took a deep breath. "Moment of truth time." He pressed three switches at the same time and waited, wondering if he'd hear the answering grumble in the ship's bowels. "Yes! Power's on!"

  He waited, then pressed another half-dozen switches and buttons and what he silently prayed was the right sequence. "And there's the datarealm re-booting. Hah!" He held up the lead, then inserted the jack. "Aagh! That's still horrible!" he cried.

  "Still?" Bera said. "You poke wires into your head all the time?"

  "Not all the time," Karl said. "Only when something goes horribly wrong, or you're on an antique like this." At her shocked look, he grinned. "It was probably state-of-the-art when they fitted it, but even then it would have been bloody unpleasant for the user."

  "Will… would I have to plug in like this if I came with you?"

  Karl shook his head. "Everything's voice-activated now, lovely."

  He blinked several times, widening his eyes further each time. "I'm going into a trance for a time, but it's all part of the interface." He patted Bera's hand. "Don't look so worried! This is all part of the plan." He hoped she didn't know that he was making "the plan" up as he went along.

  At the back of his mind, an image: of Loki straightening, sniffing the air… The download stepped forward–

  "We're in," you said to Karl, revelling in the purity of the glorious crystalline world of data-streams and iceberg-shaped databases. There! The history of the Kazakh government's attempts to build an interstellar empire, doomed to failure by relativity and distance. There! The meteorite, the oldest and most cliched of interstellar hazards, punching its way by sheer size through the ice-canopy intended to protect the ship. There! The routines that you need! Loki sensed the wonderful space within the datarealm; hosts of longsilent systems.

  Karl's head snapped back and he opened his eyes wide. "There!" he said with a huge grin at Bera. "We have power!" The grin faded with the power.

  Damnation, Loki said. Some of the connections are not there. I'll need to find bypasses – unless you can go and repair them?

  Karl sub-vocalised, You must be… He tailed off as he saw the Cheshire Cat image from antiquity hovering in the air. Joking.

  I am following the channels through. I believe that we have connectivity: the ship shuddered like someone feeling the cold, and lights split the gloom. We also have fuel. The tank in the engine pod is full to capacity, although the water's frozen solid. If we can thaw it, it'll split nicely into oxygen for us, and hydrogen for the drive.

  "What about the hangar we entered through?" Bera said. Won't the air vent?"

  "Not as long as the airlock we passed through holds," Karl said. "And it should – no reason why not."

  From outside, blows banged against the door.

  Karl sat in the chair next to the console. "Sit down," he called. Watching over their shoulders, Bera and Coeo did as instructed. "They can hit it with whatever they want," Karl said. "I assume they've got axes from their packs, but whatever they're using, they'll still bounce off it!" He stared at the door. "Huh, hitting the lintel – that won't help!"

  The ship juddered as the roar of the engines kicked in. "There's smoke coming from the door!" Bera said.

  The engine tone changed from a roar to a whine. Steam billowed past the window. "Whatever they're planning, they're too late!" Karl said.

  The ship tilted further, lurched, and fell back again with a spine-jarring thud. Karl cursed. Give me more power, he told Loki.

  Bera glanced at the door. "They're burning flares! That must be what the banging was – hammering flares into the lintel. They must have emptied Skorradalur of them to have got so many!"

  The ice creaked and groaned, and two lights flashed red. "Shit," Karl muttered.

  "What?" Bera said.

  "Temperature around the vents is going critical – the steam from the ice can't vent fast enough." The Winter Song pushed and heaved and writhed, battling the ice that held it on one side.

  For a moment Karl was afraid that the ship would break up, and thought about powering down.

  If you do, Loki said, our best chance is gone. Better to die trying, surely?

  Karl increased the power to full thrust.

  "I don't like that groaning," Bera said. "Will the ship hold?"

  "If it doesn't, we're dead," Karl said. "But if they take us, we're dead anyway."

  The flares detonated. A series of bangs punched the air together so rapidly that they merged into one long percussion, building to a blast that blew in the door from the top lintel. Ragnar and his men piled through the gap.

  And with a mighty lurch, the ship broke free, ice falling from its hull, passing the windows in great mansized shards. The ship tilted, and Karl glimpsed white-peaked mountains, then sky.

  Inside his head Karl screamed at Loki: Give me every last drop of power that you can wring from these fucking engines!

  And the Winter Song roared into the sky on great kilometre-long columns of fire.

  PART FOUR

  NINETEEN

  A giant hand seemed to press on Karl's chest while its owner roared in his ears as the Winter Song climbed from the lake.

  We're only climbing at three standard gravities, Loki said.

  It felt like more. I'm just out of condition, he sub-vocalised. Karl reached for and squeezed Bera's hand. Somewhere, wiring or perhaps some dust exposed to heat was burning, and the smell of it catapulted Karl back to the attack on Ship, when he'd been dreaming of Karla. He realised guiltily that he hadn't thought of his partners for far too long, but concentrated on slowing his hammering heart, wiped his hands on his leggings, and took deep breaths to crush the panic that threatened to overwhelm him as his cheeks were pushed toward his ears.

  The Winter Song banked slightly, making a minute adjustment, and Karl looked out the window at mountains to the north, glaciers marching down to the lake, while to the south the desert stretched away to infinity. He felt an unexpected pang at leaving Isheimur, which he crushed, ruthlessly and quickly. Streams of ice shards flew earthward past the window.

  I'll ease back on the thrust now, Loki said. T
he ship gradually flattened its angle from a seventy-five-degree climb to thirty degrees, and Loki throttled back to about a half of one standard gee.

  Karl exhaled a slow breath, clearing out his lungs. The jack prevented him from moving more than a couple of metres from the seat, so he twisted around, looking down the corridor at where Ragnar's men had been thrown by the take-off, and were now clambering to their feet. They shook their heads, trying to clear them.

  Ragnar looked up, his face a warring battleground of fear, wonder and delight. "Nowhere to run now, utlander!" Behind him, the others looked more scared than gleeful. Ragnar tottered toward the bridge, leaning into the slope exactly as he would in climbing a steep hill. His left hand was a bandaged mess, the cloth soaked with blood from amputated fingers.