Winter Song

W
INTER SONG

"Harsh, sometimes grotesque, strongly compelling – a classical journey told in a new, uncompromising voice."

"Harvey paints a grimly convincing portrait of a subsistence existence on the inhospitable world. Harvey's novel depicts a fascinating universe of want and plenitude, to which he will hopefully return in future novels."

"An entertaining read in an unforgiving environment.
Winter Song
is a novel that has more than a few surprises up its sleeve… a story focused on human characters who developed and grew with each situation they faced. Highly recommended."

"This is a tale about personal struggle and will leave you thinking about it weeks later. [Colin Harvey] deserves a place on your shelf along with Asher, Reynolds, Hamilton and Stross."

"A believably harsh tale of survival in bleak and unforgiving environments. Karl and Bera make an interesting, unusual pair, and the terrible conditions of Isheimur are conveyed matter-of-factly. This is a yarn with brawn and brains."
- 
SFX

ALSO BY COLIN HARVEY

Vengeance

Lightning Days

The Silk Palace

Blind Faith

As editor
Killers

ANGRY ROBOT

A member of the Osprey Group
Lace Market House,
54-56 High Pavement,
Nottingham
NG1 1HW, UK

www.angryrobotbooks.com
 
Whiteout conditions

Originally published in the UK by Angry Robot 2009
First American paperback printing 2010

Copyright © 2009 by Colin Harvey
Cover art by Chris Moore

All rights reserved.

Angry Robot is a registered trademark and the Angry Robot icon a trademark of Angry Robot Ltd.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-0-85766-026-8

ONE

Karl

Karl was dreaming of his clone-wife, far away on distant Avalon, when the plasma bolt slammed into Ship's engines.

    One moment he was bathing with Karla in iodised springs beneath Jodi's Falls, soaping her up-tilted breasts in the warm sunlight of Delta Pavonis, the next a giant was sitting on his chest while alarms screeched in the emergency lighting.

    The pressure lifted and he floated naked in his bedweb on the bridge, a voice calling ever louder, "Karl, we are under attack." That Ship's too-perfect alto was gravelled by static showed how mortal the blow might be. His interface wasn't working; none of the usual displays were scrolling down his field of vision, and with no data feeding directly into his brain he was forced to use archaic Voice. "What – what's the damage?" He smelled the acrid tang of smoke and the monitors – used only by passengers – were blank.

    He coughed, his eyes stinging, and a smooth wall opened and out popped a freshly grown mask connected to an air-pack.

    "I'm not wearing that," Karl muttered between coughs. "I hate putting things on my face."

    "You're enhanced, not invulnerable," Ship snapped. "Put it on!"

    Muttering, Karl complied.

    "Thank you," Ship said. "We have lost all but emergency power in this third. In the central third we have intermittent power. The rest is undamaged. When waves from the gravity generator threatened to crush you, I had to take the engines down, and can't restart them. I'm attempting to dodge a second incoming bolt with lateral power, but it's already expanded, and complete evasion is unlikely. Time to impact is four minutes."

    Karl tried to digest the news that he was probably dead. "They must have fired as soon as they dropped out of fold-space."

    Ship didn't answer directly. "The second bolt came from different co-ordinates, indicating another ship, though it's difficult to scan through the asteroid belt. I've registered a third ship nearby." It sounded sheepish; "They must have identified us before I could see them. The first I knew was their plasma bolt coming at point-nine-cee. I had barely three minutes' warning. I'm sorry, Karl."

    "Forget it," Karl said.

    That meant there would be no respite while the others re-charged their capacitors. Even if by a miracle they dodged this second bolt, and one from the third ship, the first would have recharged and be ready to fire.

    He slipped free of the amniotic safety of the bed-web. "Are they the Aye ships we spotted earlier?" Unlikely, he knew. The ships that were each individual Artificial Intelligences rarely interacted with the Flesh-bound, who held little interest for them. He floated over to one of the screens. "Can you get this working?"

    Ship paused for so long that Karl wondered if it had died.

    "Yes," it said.

    A schematic appeared, of Ship at less than three Standard AUs from Mizar B2. Karl had thought that here on the sunward edge of the system's asteroid belt, surrounded by the myriad dots among which Ship and he had lurked, they would be safe to spy upon the Ayes. There
they
were, the symbols denoting the Ayes around the nearest of the four stars – the double pair that had so attracted astrophysicists ever since their nature had been discovered – in close orbit around the upper chromosphere of Mizar B2, doing whatever incomprehensible things Ayes did.

    Scattered among the debris of the outer belt were three perfectly spherical ships, their regularity a defiant cry to the universe. "Their signatures indicate that they're Traditionals. I'm sorry, Karl. You've been fired upon by your own species."

    Though it was debatable whether their assailants would consider Karl human, it was no surprise – Ship's design was clearly the angular asymmetry of the Radicals; the Pures, the most likely suspects among the Traditionals, would have guessed that he had man-machine interfaces, and was therefore to be despised even more than the Ayes they hated. Like all bullies they picked on him, a single target, rather than five Aye ships.

    Between the symbols denoting Ship and their assailants was the pulsing sphere of a plasma bolt, the enemy's fuel hawked up from their engine and spat out of a tube.

    "How far away are they?"

    "Two AUs spaceward."

    "Recommendations?"

    "With five… four minutes to impact, your logical course is to abandon ship."

    "Stitch that." He gazed at the monitor. "Let's see how far lateral power gets us. Are we dead centre of the bolt?"

    "Slightly to starboard, so I have already set course in that direction."

    "Good girl. What else can we do?"

    "I can get no more power through the vents." As always, Ship ignored his anthropomorphising.

    He thought. "What if we vented atmosphere from the hold?"

    Ship paused so long that Karl thought he would have to prompt it. "It'd increase velocity by an additional one per cent. Not enough. We need seven."

    "Vent the airlocks as well. Take the air pressure as low as possible, then drop it another per cent."

    "I can't do that, Karl. I'm programmed to protect you. It's an unacceptable risk."

    "And being blown up isn't?"

    "That's why I recommended that you abandon ship. You have two minutes to decide. You should leave two minutes earlier not to be caught by debris and radiation. That's now, by the way."

    "Jack it, I'm not leaving you!" Or the lump of neutronium locked in a stasis field in the corner of the hold. If the field failed the cargo would devour the ship in less time than it took to scarf down one of the tasteless protein-burgers he'd lived on for a month.

    "Karl, that's sentimental nonsense," Ship said. "The major risk to you is from exposure, but I've sent a tightbeam Mayday toward the Hanghzou Relay, which I estimate the nearest one sympathetic. It's about four light-months away. They can jump here in days once they have the signal, and the lifegel will keep you safe – even in vacuum – until then."

    "I'm glad you haven't suggested I let our attackers pick me up," Karl said.

    Ship ignored his feeble humour. "You have many months of power in your companion, which will kick in as soon as I am out of range. But before the power fails, the lifegel will need fuel, and will slowly consume your body. Even before that, there will be side-effects – weight loss, anaemia, eczema. Such skinsuits are only designed as a short-term measure."

    Karl nodded, clenching and unclenching his fists. "I wish I had these bastards in reach."

    "Adrenaline has that effect," Ship said. It added, "I am an object; you can replace me, probably even approximate my programming. But I am no more a person than any other vehicle. I am expendable. You are not. You should leave now, from Bay Eight."

    Karl slapped the wall, but it didn't make him feel any better. "Bay Eight, then. Keep talking while I'm en route."

    "Karl," Ship said. "There's something else you should know."

    "Go on."

    "I've found some data that was previously misfiled. This system was settled over four centuries ago."

    "These bastards are local?"

    "I believe not. There's no other indication of local traffic. The last records are over two centuries ago, from just before the onset of the Long Night. If the colony survived, they probably slipped back during the conflict.

    "It's unlikely that they did survive. If the war didn't get them, the planet's orbit is elliptical. During summer it would just be habitable, but its winters too cold to survive."

    "Which star is it orbiting?"

    "It appears to be orbiting both of the Mizar B pairing, at a distance that would give it a sub-Martian climate."

    "Can I reach it from here?"

    Ship said, "It's about eighteen million kilometres from here, so it will take…"

    There was a perceptible pause, which told Karl how terribly, terribly wrong things were – Ship should have been able to calculate the numbers instantly, as well as simultaneously managing a multiplicity of other tasks. "Three standard weeks."

    It added, "I will get you there. And I will download all the information I have to you. Plug in."

    Gritting his teeth, Karl wiped the dust from the jack that hung beside the monitor screen for emergencies, and inserted it in the socket behind his right ear. "Aagh! That's horrible!" he cried. "It's like someone running claws down a stone wall, really,
really
loudly."

    "I'm sorry," Ship said. "If so many of my systems weren't down…"

    "Doesn't matter," he said, blinking a lie to the two words. The symbols flashed in front of his eyes, too fast to comprehend; he would review the data later, while he drifted in space.

    Then he was pulling himself hand-over-hand down the corridor. As he rounded the first bend, Ship said, "The Ayes' behaviour is curious."

    "How… so?" He was panting from the effort as he passed the hold, with the lump of super-heavy cargo that would have paid for the trip. Particularly if he could have traded it for information on the next leg.

    "If I were to assume that they are going to continue with their actions, what the Ayes are doing to the star's upper chromosphere could have the effect of making the stars burn hotter."

    "Why would they do that?"

    "I don't know. They have never attempted to modify a star before, as far as we know."

    Karl reached Bay Eight, and paused.

    Before he could speak, Ship said. "You must go now."