Viking

by Daniel Hardman

  Viking

  Daniel Hardman

  Copyright © 2012 by Daniel Hardman

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission, except as allowed by fair use provisions. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Para mi linda estrellita.

  Table of Contents

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

  1

  Rain slanted down in sheets, threshing the grass on the hillside. Claps of thunder rumbled across the highlands and sank into the jungle below.

  A few meters above the ground, a violet glow flickered, brightened, then leapt outward as part of the sky disappeared. Beyond the emptiness, millions of stars winked coldly before atmosphere swirled into the void. Water droplets, seeping through alien leaves and soil, froze or boiled away with the abrupt drop in pressure. Sixty meters of angular metal ploughed through the opening, a crust of ice congealing as it fell.

  As the blink point stabilized, the entire module shuddered while wind shrieked across its hull. Gravity reached out with a million sticky fingers and jerked them, hard, in a very different direction than Rafa had expected. He felt his stomach lurch and the harness stretch taut around hips and thighs.

  A bone-bending thud rocked the cabin and left his ears ringing. The main lights died, leaving only dim scarlet from the emergency panels. His head snapped forward, then back again as padding caught his temples.

  Then everything was still except for reflexive profanity from several nearby cocoons and a primal thrumming overhead. The noise from beyond the hull sounded violent and disturbing to Rafa’s anxious imagination. Maybe this world was another Halifax, swarming with hungry insects alert to their presence and beating against the ship.

  Finally one of the women laughed. It was a giggle, really, incongruous in the strained semi-darkness. “It’s raining!” And she began to struggle out of her straps.

  There was a muddled chorus of grunts and murmurs as the words sank in and the crew relaxed. More clasps clicked open, and a few vikings staggered to their feet, adjusting awkwardly to the renewed gravity.

  Rafa was about to release his own harness when the module tilted. He clutched the straps ferociously. One viking, caught unprepared, careened past him and collided headfirst with a bulkhead; the metal rang nauseatingly as she crumbled to the floor.

  The storm sounds were engulfed by a surging roar. A disquieting wave of movement rippled around them. The bulkheads creaked and warped drunkenly. The deck heaved up, dropped away, and spun overhead.

  Those on their feet braced against bunks or the walls of the corridor. Several lost their grip and thudded like rag dolls against bolted furniture. The lights went out again, but the sensation of movement continued for a dozen heartbeats; then a grinding squeal ripped the blackness, and the movement stopped as quickly as it had begun.

  Silence descended as everyone awaited more disaster.

  When it seemed likely that immediate danger was past, Rafa struggled out of the web of straps, feeling dizzy and disoriented. In the ruddy twilight, someone was vomiting onto what had once been the ceiling. Another was whimpering and clutching an arm that had been twisted at a weird angle.

  More than one lay motionless in contorted positions that did not bode well.

  “I’m getting out before we start rolling again!” shouted one of the vikings as he shouldered past Rafa toward the main hatch. A crescendo of agreement followed. Whatever had caused the strange motion, they didn’t want to be around for a repeat performance.

  Rafa hesitated.

  “Nobody’s going anywhere yet.” Heward’s voice cut into the chaos.

  “Speak for yourself, soldier boy,” sneered one of the crew.

  Fluorescing plasma leapt through the air and sizzled into the metal only centimeters over the speaker’s head. In the dumb silence that ensued, Heward’s voice hissed.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, boys and girls.” He hefted a laser pistol that had materialized in his hand as if by magic, and surveyed their fearful faces. “I’m top dog here. Remember?” He tapped the insignia on his shoulder with the muzzle of his gun. “You got the implants. They bought off your prison time or financed your drug habit or whatever they did to get you here. That makes you property, not free agents.”

  Slaves, thought Rafa. Call a spade a spade, if you’re man enough. Heward was a vicious bully, every bit as slimy in his own way as the prostitutes, the rapists, the dregs that made up the rest of the crew; he seemed to thrive on the harsh posturing and fear that bound them together into a sort of dysfunctional anti-family. He’d had the vicarious reality implants that gave vikings their name from day one, which seemed to support his brag of prior mission experience. It was hard to attribute his re-enlistment to anything except masochism or a death wish. That he’d been given temporary command defied all reason.

  “...protect their investment,” Heward was saying. “So nobody leaves this ship until I say so. We don’t know what just happened, and we better find out before we go charging outside.”

  He walked down the heeling deck to the woman near the bulkhead and prodded her over with a toe. The face was a mangle of blood and bruised flesh. Heward knelt, his gun still covering the room, and felt for a pulse.

  “Roadkill,” said Whemper, a scarecrow with a dishwater mane. He seemed to think this was funny, and started to chuckle, then doubled over in a fit of coughing, spattering the fallen woman’s boot with bloody spittle.

  “Watch your cough, scab-breath, or I’ll fix it for you permanently.” Another of the crew, a scarred bodybuilder with a Jersey accent, slipped out the words with casual malice. It was the tone you might use with a dog, Rafa thought, when you had a gun and you warned it off your property—and you liked shooting things, so you didn’t really want the dog to hear you.

  You don’t shake your fist at tuberculosis, you moron. And if he’s not on the mend like he claims, a few extra paces will hardly make things sanitary.

  Whemper made an obscene gesture that the other man couldn’t see. Heward let the arm flop limply and straightened up. “Panic and stupidity get you killed,” he continued in a conversational tone. “So any chinga who wants to wet their pants better ask permission first.” He sauntered over to the crowd in the corridor and swept the muzzle of his gun toward them.

  “On a mission like this, idiots aren’t the only ones who suffer. You lose your head, maybe make a little mistake, you can kill everyone. So I can’t afford to keep you around unless you’re going to stay calm and do exactly what I tell you. Better for me just to put you out of your misery.”

  He eyed the subdued faces in the gloom.

  “Do I make myself clear?”

  When nobody answered he flipped the safety back on and holstered the gun. “Good. First thing to do is see who’s hurt and find out what the status of the module is. Fazio, take a couple guys and do a visual inspection of the ship. I want to know about the general condition of the hull, especially anything that looks broken. Whemper and Montaño, see if you can deploy a robot to get a look at what’s going on, maybe inventory damage on the exterior. You remember that from the classes?”

  “Don’t need a hypno feed to r
un a remote control.”

  “So do it. Compton, see if you can get the computers online.”

  “How? I’m no techno-weenie, and our training was a joke.”

  “If everything doesn’t start up with the basic drill, read the manual. They don’t exactly build these systems for high IQs, you know. I’m going to go have a look at the food and equipment. Chen, get your med kit and check out everybody who’s been injured. The rest of you stay and help. Meet back here in fifteen minutes. Use the radio if you need to; we’re all wired up. Any questions?”

  Again silence. Heward nodded curtly and disappeared without a backward glance down a corridor that led to the cargo hold. The malignant bodybuilder grunted at the nearest two crew members and thumbed them in the opposite direction. In a minute the room was mostly empty.

  Chen was an elfin woman in her early thirties, maybe, with a single braid of chestnut hair that ran halfway down her back. Unlike most of the crew, she sported no tattoos, no rings in eyebrow or nose, no scars or other regalia that seemed to go so naturally with the harshness of a viking mission. In fact, she was unusually attractive, except for a strange jaundiced hue to her features.

  And she knew it. She taunted the men by the way she dressed and walked and breathed innuendo with a snicker. Obviously she’d walked the streets or something equivalent; how she’d acquired any medical training was a mystery.

  Now she was kneeling over one of the forms on the deck. She motioned at Rafa without looking up. “See if you can find some large mylar bags. Big enough to put a body in. We’re going to need a few.”

  * * *

  Rafa was one of the last to return to the bloody quarters. The chore of hauling limp, bagged bodies into a vacant locker had been nauseating. He sank onto a sheet of ribbed metal at the fringes of the group, glad to be done.

  The room stank of sweat and disinfectant. Someone had turned most of the normal lights back on. The panels cast vertical shadows as they pulsed up from what had been the ceiling only minutes ago, painting the room with an eerie surrealism.

  Moans sounded from one of the bunks. Another of Chen’s deputies, a slim man with a swarthy complexion and midnight hair, was kneeling at the alcove. He had a cut over his eyebrow, and one sleeve of his jumpsuit was stained maroon. He was administering an injection.

  In a moment he straightened up and limped over to Chen, holding out the used syringe. Rafa noticed that she grabbed it carelessly, with an open, ungloved hand, and dropped it in a box in the corner.

  Heward was busy wrapping a cloth bandage around his own ankle. When he finished, he stood and tested his weight, then addressed the group.

  “All right, folks, let’s get organized. I want to hear everyone’s report. Chen, you first.”

  All eyes shifted.

  “We lost three. Cooper had severe internal bleeding. Begay broke his neck. Ahmad had enough trauma to the cranium to kill her three times over. And we’ve got half a dozen broken arms, collarbones, and ribs. One dislocated shoulder. Bryzinski’s hurt pretty bad. Concussion and punctured lung. He’ll make it though.”

  The sudden tightness around her eyes and cheeks suggested otherwise. But what could you say when the man was listening in his bunk a couple steps away?

  “How about medical supplies?”

  “We’ve got enough to stock an emergency room for a month.”

  Heward nodded in evident approval, but Rafa shook his head. Was that supposed to be plenty? He’d known all about the life expectancy of vikings before his sentencing and immediate enlistment, but the matter-of-fact planning of a quartermaster suddenly made it seem real.

  Chen wasn’t finished. “What are we going to do about the bodies?”

  “We’ll discuss that later,” Heward said with an indifferent shrug. He turned and raised his eyebrows at a skinny kid with tattoos and a nose ring in each nostril who was sprawled across the bottom of a countertop, head moving in time with unheard music. The lollipop in his mouth made him look even younger than he was.

  The kid sat up and removed the candy. “Me’n Whemper got out a robot, like you said. Took some doing. We tried three hatches before one would open.”

  “And?”

  “You ain’t gonna like it.” He waited. Then, when Heward remained silent, he shrugged. “See for yourself.” He lifted a touchpad, punched some buttons, and everybody’s wrist displays came to life.

  With each intermittent flash of lightning, the robot relayed jumbled images, a chaos of mud and stones and driving rain that loomed prominently in the center of the panorama and sloped up and right to distant foothills. To the left, the vista evened out to a grassy table before falling off into unbroken blackness.

  “Where’s the module?”

  “You’re lookin’ at it,” said the kid. “Dead center.” He nursed the lollipop, looking amused.

  “There’s nothing there but a huge pile of mud and rocks.”

  “Look again.”

  They studied the flashing screens intently. Was something glinting through the mud?

  “All the rain musta made the ground unstable. When we slammed down everything just gave way, and half the hillside behind us slid. We’re lucky we weren’t buried alive or crushed flat.”

  “We are buried alive!” Whemper’s shout was nasal and whining. “We’ll never dig out of this!” He opened his mouth to say more, but subsided in a paroxysm of mucus-heavy coughs.

  “We’re not buried,” said the kid. “We got the robot out, didn’t we?”

  “That was ten minutes ago,” Whemper gasped. “More mud’s coming down all the time.” He wiped some spittle on his sleeve and lifted his chin to ease the flow of air into his lungs. Fear showed in the eyes of many of the crew members.

  Rafa cut in. “There’s something. Eleven o’clock.”

  They all stared at their viewscreens again.

  An angle, too straight to be natural. The picture flickered and flashed. It was hard to see, hard to be sure.

  “Looks like the hydraulics on the cargo platform.” Heward’s voice was flat and emotionless. “If that’s out, then for sure we’ve got an exit.”

  Whemper scowled and spat. “We’re still in trouble. If mud can slide once, it can slide again. The ground’s unstable, and we’ve gotta get out. Now.”

  “What, just go charging out into the great unknown? You crazy? We don’t know what’s out there! What about food? What about Bryzinski? You want to just leave him behind?” Chen stood with her hands on shapely hips, contempt in every word.

  Whemper opened his mouth to respond, but Heward beat him to it. “Chen, can it. You too, Whemper.” He scanned their faces. “Remember what I said about panic?”

  Whemper looked away and coughed again.

  “Now let’s get on with it so we can decide what to do. What about the computers?”

  A tall black woman ran her fingers through close-cropped orange hair and sighed. “Guess they’re built to take more punishment than I thought. They’re all up and running. We’ll have normal communications as soon as we set up our booster station.”

  “Fine.” Heward nodded at the bodybuilder. “How about you, Bronx?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed at the nickname, and he paused before responding. “Hull’s in pretty bad shape. Sensors show metal stress in a hundred places. Some of the storage compartments are smashed in, probably a total loss of whatever’s there. Power’s on everywhere. We had a small electrical fire in one corridor. It’s out now. And the head’s unusable.”

  Chen looked confused.

  “The bathroom,” Rafa interpreted. “It’s upside down like everything else.”

  “Gee, thanks, Daddy,” Whemper said. “You gonna help the little girl go potty?” Some of the crew snickered.

  “How about the equipment hold?” Heward said.

  “Got some water and mud leaking through. The hatch is jammed, so we couldn’t get in to take a close look. Had to use cameras. Most of the machinery there was bolted down. It might still work, i
f we can get it off the ceiling in one piece. But it’ll take a while to get anything set up. Things looked pretty jumbled.”

  They digested the news in silence. Some of their supplies were gone. Maybe the vehicles, too.

  “Okay. At least we know where we stand.” Heward was in command again, businesslike and brisk. “We’re in lousy shape, but it could be worse. Now we need an action plan. The first priority is to set up the satellite dish and get in radio contact.”

  “Give me a break!” snarled one man. “Why should we care what Earth has to say? They’re the ones that dropped us in this weather and started the mud slide! Why bother linking up at all, ever?”

  “Let’s at least get out of this coffin before we waste our time on them,” added Whemper.

  “Miss the fresh air, Wheezer?” said the bodybuilder.

  Whemper spat, then scrabbled backward as the big man lunged across the room, grabbed him by the throat, and clamped his fingers beneath Whemper’s half-shaved jaw.

  “You trying to share your little disease with the rest of us, scab-breath? Is that it?” He shook the smaller man roughly. “I asked you a question!”

  Whemper’s tongue was lolling and a strangled gargle escaped from his lips. He clawed at the massive arms.

  “You know why they put me away, don’t you? I broke a man’s neck in a barroom brawl. Just snapped it in two.” The bodybuilder grabbed Whemper’s hair and jerked his head back until he was facing the ceiling. “Just snapped it in two, Whemper.”

  “But you’re not going to do that now, are you, Bronx?” Heward had the laser pistol leveled at him.

  The big man twisted around, still holding Whemper. In the sudden silence, the hoarse delirium of one of the injured and cocooned vikings sounded strangely loud.

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “And I’m telling you to think again. Unless you’ve got a death wish, you’ll play your little ego games on your own time, not when you’re on my crew.”

  The two men glared at each other. Whemper’s struggles were getting fainter. His face was a ghastly bluish gray.