Winter Song (34 page)

    "You won't get away," Thorir said.

    "Quiet, Thorir," Arnbjorn said in a low voice. "Or I'll cut you down where you stand."

    "And I'll swear it was self-defence," Orn added.

    Karl slid through. "You next, Ragnar!" he called.

    "I'm not–"

    "DO IT!"

    Ragnar slid through, followed by Coeo.

    Karl looked around at bare metal floors that might once have been grass-covered, or had some inorganic coating. Now there was only a tidemark of scattered debris, abandoned clips and pegs, and bare wires spilling from gape-mouthed cupboards. The air in the corridor was centuries-stale, laden with dust and rust.

    Karl pointed to what looked like the cowl of some huge engine of some sort. It weighs a tonne, he thought. It'll do. "Bera, help me block that hatch with this."

    It screeched as they slid and walked it across the hatchway, drowning out the murmurs of Ragnar's men talking that drifted through the hatch. "That's that done." He wiped his hands clean. He picked up a length of plastic. "Turn around," he said. Ragnar did as he was told, looking truly nervous for the first time Karl could remember.

    Karl fastened the plastic strip into impromptu handcuffs around Ragnar's wrists and told Coeo, "Bring him."

    They stalked the corridors, leaning at a thirty-degree angle to offset the ship's tilt, ransacking cupboards, throwing open cupboard doors, checking every glass panel for working finger-readers. Karl called out commands in Kazakh and every neighbouring language, without success. The W
inter Song
must predate voiceactivated Ayes, Karl sub-vocalised.

    Keep trying, Loki replied.

    There was nothing. The W
inter Song
was as dead as Karl had feared. Every connecting door had to be opened manually and the inertia tubes between floors were inoperative, forcing them to tramp up stairways.

    Karl stopped at every floor. At the fourth, Ragnar, who had been silent until now, said, "You're wasting your time, utlander."

    "Maybe," Karl said. "Maybe not."

    "My people may fear this vessel," Ragnar insisted, "but – trust me – they'll stare into the eyes of their fear and will it to be silent. Give yourself up, and it'll be taken into account when sentence is passed."

    "He's no outlaw," Bera insisted, "as any court will decide." She might as well have not spoken.

    They tramped up more floors, empty but much better fitted out.

    Why didn't they strip it fully? Karl wondered. Did one faction dream that the ship might fly again if they didn't completely gut it? I suppose that whatever they could take would be absolutely swallowed by the needs of their descendants, but still, it would have helped, even a little.

    On the third such floor, a hatch in the ceiling had bolts all around it and clips on the bolts. Karl read a sign on the hatch: Emergency Access Only.

    "This is the top deck," Karl said. "So the bridge should be here." As they resumed, he caught Bera's eye. She smiled but it was a feeble effort. The empty ship seemed to cow her more than it did Coeo, who brought up the rear-guard, unsheathed claws resting lightly on the nape of Ragnar's neck.

    As they checked every door Karl said lightly, "Was Thorir the baby's father?"

    Bera's eyes gazed into the past, and she made a moue with her mouth. When she spoke, she seemed to reminiscence, as if she hadn't heard the question: "Ever since I could remember, he was always laughing and joking. Maybe I'm seeing things differently now, but I think that he was always a little too friendly. You know?"

    "I think so," Karl said.

    "Then one night, he got drunk…" Bera blinked several times. "I kept saying no, you mustn't, but you wouldn't listen, would you?"

    Karl brought her back to the present. "Did he rape you?"

    "What was that?" Ragnar stepped closer, but stopped at Coeo's warning growl.

    "Never mind," Bera called. "I'm no longer your concern."

    "Your father gave you into my care!"

    Something inside Bera seemed to break then. Maybe Ragnar's reminder was one reprimand too many, or maybe anything would have set her off. Bera began to cackle. "Of all the stupid things you could say," she cried between shrieks of laughter, "that's the worst of them all. Your bloody care?" Her voice broke, her laughter turning to sobs. Karl gently led her away, cradling her as tenderly as any newborn baby.

    "I… I w-w-wasn't going to speak of it, not ever. Ppoor Hilda, and her children, the shame they'd face – even if anyone believed me."

    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 barely 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."