Arctic Rising

42

They’d ducked the truck under some buildings for cover, hoping that Ivan’s ability to ferret out their location wouldn’t be as rapid as Roo’s.

Roo ducked his head into the back window. “Gabriel, how are we going to launch this thing?”

“The more important question is where,” Gabriel replied slowly. “Anika said Ivan is hunting for us via public cameras. The moment he figures out where we are he’ll use the shield against us. Mainly what we need is a pit. We can slide the missile into it and get it pointed. The four of us can do that from the truck.”

“We have a ship,” Roo said. “Can we get it aboard Paige’s ship and launch it from there?”

“We need to be quick,” Gabriel said. “And we don’t have time to build a cradle for the missile on a ship.”

Anika had been thinking about this since she flipped off the traffic camera. It was highly unlikely Ivan had seen that, or if he did, he was probably just now collating the footage to try to retrace their footsteps. “Was all of the Pytheas demesne ripped apart from Thule, or are there any pieces left? There won’t be cameras there. We can set the missile up in the open.”

Gabriel tapped the surviving SEAL, he’d told them his name was Weirs, on the shoulder. Weirs put the truck back into gear and they clattered along again, leaving the perceived safety of their hiding spot.

The gaping ruin of tangled metal and ice where the core of Pytheas had ripped itself away from Thule stretched for a mile, looking out onto the open sea.

Sewer lines dribbled brown water. Bridges drooped, half their span severed, leading out into midair. Jagged road edges just stopped before the ocean.

In the distance, beams of light coalesced from the cloud to stab at the ocean over the horizon. Each blazing, eye-dazzling explosion meant another ship had been attacked. As she watched, the beam slowly moved from point to point.

And in the distance, near the cloud’s edge, a steady stream of explosions. It looked like someone was testing regular munitions out on the cloud.

The war had truly begun.

Walking as close to the brink as she dared, Anika looked down thirty feet to the water below. Clumps of ice bobbed and smacked against the cleaved-off edge. A mile away, Anika could see Thule’s harbor. The hospital was near there. Vy would be as well.

A few hundred feet away, a large chunk of ice creaked, groaned, and then slipped off the jagged fringe of Pytheas and into the water.

Not a good idea to stand here, she thought, and turned back for the truck.

Gabriel and Roo had found a raised walkway in front of a set of five-story apartments and driven the truck up onto it, then turned the truck and backed it up until the rear tires were on the edge of the walkway.

From there they’d all used the spare ropes to slowly, carefully, lower the missile down to the ice road seven feet below.

The missile sat on its fins pointing straight up into the air, with several pieces of rope around its midsection to brace it.

All they needed to do was cut the ropes as it launched. Low-tech, but hopefully workable.

Roo handed her his phone as she approached. “Violet.”

Anika pointed at the cables leading away from the missile toward the cab of the truck. “How far away are we?”

“Gabriel says we have telemetry. Power is good. We’re getting close.”

Anika nodded and answered the phone. “Vy? How are you doing?”

“They came in by helicopter and took them both away. They told me I should leave with them, because they were going to start the invasion. I refused.” Vy sounded tired. “The airborne attack will begin shortly.”

Anika didn’t know what to say. She was still processing that bright, burning flash.

One moment those men had been there, fighting alongside her. Fighting because of something she’d set in motion.

And then, in a flash, they had been edited out of the universe.

“Roo said you were on the edge of Pytheas. Do you want me to come out there?” Vy asked.

“No,” Anika insisted. “Roo says we’re almost ready to launch. I think it would be better if you could get to Paige’s boat, get it started and ready?”

“I’m already working on it,” Vy said. “I’ll see you soon.”

“It…” won’t be long, she was going to say, but Anika noticed a furtive movement in the distance. Someone ducked behind a building. “I have to go, Vy. I will see you at the boat.”

She cut the connection and reslung the Diemaco from her back down to across her front. “Roo.”

He turned around from leaning into the cab and caught the phone as she tossed it back to him.

“I think someone’s at the end of the street,” she said.

Roo stepped up onto the edge of the door panel and looked over the top of the cab. “I don’t see anything,” he said, looking back down at here. “Where?”

The window of the cab exploded and Roo dropped to the ground, swearing. Gabriel calmly slouched deeper into the seat, still looking at the laptop balanced between his stomach and the wheel of the truck. “I really was hoping they wouldn’t find us so quick,” Roo said, moving to the back of the pickup and grabbing a rifle and pocketing several grenades.

Weir joined them, walking in a crouch. “They’re coming from the other side as well.”

They had their backs to the open sea, the truck facing the apartment complex, and Gaia now moving in from either side. Gaia’s forces would be calling back the coordinates to Ivan Cohen any second now.

“Shit,” Anika said. “Roo, how long do you think it takes for the shield to reposition the mirrors and attack?”

“Minutes? It can’t be a quick process,” he said, looking up into the sky.

Anika ignored the impulse. When the flash came for her, she didn’t want to be looking up.

Gunfire rattled out, smacking into the ground around them. This attack was coming from their unprotected side. Weir returned fire and moved behind a concrete balustrade that decorated a set of apartments.

“Vy said the invasion began. If that’s true, we may have longer, if Ivan is trying to shock and awe them into not continuing.” She stabbed a finger at the horizon where light danced and cracked.

Roo shrugged and smiled sadly. “Gabriel?”

He raised a hand. “Just hold them off while I start the launch sequence.” He looked at Anika. He’d been avoiding looking at her, visibly tensing whenever he saw her. Now those old, cold eyes narrowed. “I wonder, have you thought about the lives we could have avoided wasting had you not remained so focused on your quest for revenge?”

Anika bit her lip. Fuck him. Now it was her turn to tense and hold something back. He was here. That was more than she would have done. And right now, they needed him to finish what he’d started. “I have.”

Roo grabbed her and pulled her back along the bed. “Keep fire on them,” he said. “You have you back covered by Weir.”

“Where are you going?”

He pointed at the road the missile sat on. “If I was them, I’d be crawling along the lip or under this walkway. Now, keep an eye on the apartments. They’ll be getting up into those windows up there to get a good shot down at us.”

Anika glanced upward. Now the dark windows looked shadowy and menacing.

“Shit,” she muttered.

“Seen,” Roo agreed, and then sprinted for the edge of the walkway and jumped down onto the road below.

The pop of gunfire started.

For the next few minutes Anika fired off quick bursts at any movement up the street while she used the apartment building’s concrete stair banisters for cover, just like Weir. She wasn’t sure half of the movement she shot at wasn’t shadows, but if it moved, she pulled the trigger, pausing only to slip out a new clip from her waistband and slap it into place.

If this worked, she half imagined she was going to die protecting the missile.

If it didn’t, either the people attacking would shoot her, or the sky would flare up and vaporize her at Ivan Cohen’s direction.

At least vaporization would be instantaneous, she thought.

She was on her last clip when Gabriel threw the laptop out of the car after yanking the cables out that led to the missile. “Weir: get ready to cut the ropes.”

“Is it ready?” Anika asked.

“I started the launch sequence. In two minutes it’ll fire. You don’t want to be standing here,” Gabriel said. “Give me your gun.”

“Why?”

Weir jogged their way, pulling out a large hunting knife.

“I’m going to shoot that laptop so that if they rush us, they can’t plug back in and stop the launch. And I’m going to hold them back from damaging the missile.”

A foot away, Weir jerked as a hail of gunfire slapped the vehicle’s far side, the ground near them, and the rails near the missile.

For a second, Weir looked like he was taking cover with Anika and Gabriel, who got down. Anika fired back over the top of the truck bed. But Weir didn’t stop running—he clumsily spun to his left and staggered sideways, out into the open, and collapsed.

“Weir?” Anika shouted, horrified. Another life on her hands?

Gabriel shook his head.

Weir was sprawled out, looking up at the sky, a red mess of brain and blood leaking out of the side of his head onto his jacket. He was dead.

The burst of fire faded. Part of the natural rhythm of the firefight.

“Anika? The Diemaco?”

Anika handed Gabriel the Diemaco and, zombie-like, pulled out the pistol from the back of her jeans. He looked down at it. “You still don’t trust me, Ms. Duncan?”

She shook her head. She was still numbed. “No.”

“Why?”

The death of yet another man just a few feet away chewed through her like an acid, and the words that tumbled out were bitter, and not even aimed at Gabriel but at the messed-up situation. “Men like you use words like ‘preemptive’ and ‘just’ and chew through lives. You even destroy countries. You run around, playing your games, imagining you are gods moving the little people around on boards like game pieces. And you are right, you are not human, you are something else. But it is not gods. I flew enough of your kind into conflict zones to know the type. You know why natural resources are the curse of a developing nation? Because the rebel army meets someone like you, who parachutes into the jungle, and they say when they get control of the resources, they’ll cut you a deal. And so you give them arms, or a loan, because maybe you don’t like the current government. And the brutal flip-flopping of overthrow, violence, and overthrow continues. I know you, Gabriel. You’re the kind of man who thinks it makes any sense to smuggle a nuclear missile around the world to kill an engineering project.”

Gabriel shifted the Diemaco. “You ignore the very simple fact that I was right, though. What exactly is wrong with you that you can’t just accept that?”

“A broken clock is correct twice a day,” Anika said. “You are correct now. But you will always be doing things like this around the clock. That is how you are. Regular people, we are reactive. Hit us, we hit back. But you walk around looking for people to hit ahead of time. You see?”

“You would just let Ivan Cohen dominate you all, then?” Gabriel sighted down the rifle and fired off a full burst at the laptop. Pieces of plastic and circuit board flew off into the air as it was destroyed.

“No,” Anika said. “Your people and him, they are the same. They dictate from on high. They are always convinced that they, and only they, have all the answers. They have to force the issue. The ends justify the means. Get rid of your masters and him, the rest of us get on with living. But since we’re stuck with each other, we have this mess. Right?”

She looked at him. She’d gotten a reaction of some kind, but she wasn’t sure.

Gabriel spotted movement and used the rifle to quickly force someone back into cover.

When he crouched back down, Anika grabbed his shoulders. “Who do you work for, Gabriel? Because the military types who picked you up, they all kept hearing back that you were retired. So who are you contracting out to?”

“I work for a group whose interests are harmed by the ice returning,” Gabriel said. “And that is all you need to know.”

“I’m about to die helping you,” Anika spat. “The least you can do is give me this satisfaction.” The satisfaction of knowing more about the forces that had turned her life upside down and led to her crouching here, wondering how many more minutes she had left.

“You’re wrong,” Gabriel said. He reversed the rifle. “About a lot of things. In particular—”

“What?”

He smacked her in the face with the butt of the rifle. Anika’s vision went dark, and she staggered backward. She had the pistol up, but as she opened her eyes, she realized he had the Diemaco trained on her. She wasn’t going to be able to shoot him. “Gabriel? What are you doing?” She was thinking about double betrayals. Wondering if he’d really set the missile to launch.

Gabriel smiled sadly. “No one’s going to miss an old spy who did horrible things no one wants dredged back up,” he told her. “But you have someone waiting for you. So you’re wrong: you’re not going to die. I’m going to hold them off, so that they don’t shoot the missile, or damage it. You, on the other hand, have about two minutes to run for safety. Do it, or I’ll shoot you.”

“Really?” She wasn’t buying it, and besides, she was still wearing her bulletproof vest. She took a step forward. He tightened his stance, grinned slightly, and shot her in the upper left shoulder, just clear of the vest.

Stuffing flew out of her jacket and hung in the air while the impact of the bullet smacked half of her body backward. Anika staggered another step back, clutching the top of her arm as blood seeped out. “You fucker,” she spat, the pain trickling down through her.

The bullet had hit shoulder flesh and exited. Gabriel had damn good aim. Her eyes narrowed and his smile faded. “Run,” he repeated, and shifted his aim at her temple.

“Where?” she responded. “We’re cut off. There’s no ‘away,’ Gabriel.”

“Take two more steps backward, and look over your shoulder.” He gestured with his rifle.

Anika took the steps and glanced. At first, she saw nothing but the ruined edge of ice, road, structure, and the ocean out past it. Then she saw it. A small antenna, rocking back and forth, hard to spot when the angle made it look like part of the jumbled mess the demesne had left behind when tearing itself away from Thule.

She turned back to Gabriel and threw him the pistol. “You’ll need that more than I will.”

“Ah, now you trust me,” he said sadly.

After one last look, Anika sprinted for the railing.

The movement prompted more gunfire, and she could hear the slap of bullets against the walkway as she slid off the raised section and dropped to the road below. She was standing right next to the base of the missile.

“Roo!” she shouted, looking around at the wall the raised walkway created on this side of the road. There were a few bodies in Gaia Security uniforms, but no Roo. “Roo!”

“Ras, woman, keep quiet. Over here.” He was slumped on the ground near the lip of a half-destroyed bridge on the other side of the road. All she could see was a hand waving her over.

Anika ran across the street, drawing fire again, and hunkered down behind a twisted steel beam. Roo’d been shot in the leg. He had ripped up an undershirt to create a makeshift compress, and tied that on tight with a piece of electric wire.

“This it,” he said to her. “Can’t hold them back much longer. I think, hearing them talk about what Ivan wants, they will kill us even if the missile goes off and they realize they lost.”

“He said he would smite us,” Anika said. “Gabriel’s holding them off, the missile’s going to launch any second. Roo, do you trust me?”

He glanced over. “We come this far and you asking me that?”

From his position in the cover of the ruins of half a bridge, they couldn’t see the sea next to the ragged edge. “We have to jump,” Anika said. “I think Vy’s here.”

Roo leaned around her and looked at the water. “You think?”

“Someone’s here. I saw them, they’re right up against the edge. We’re going to jump.”

“In water this cold, without survival suits, we’ll live for minutes,” Roo shouted.

On the road across from them, the missile began to hiss and vent.

It was going to take off any second now.

“Death by water or death by Gaia?”

Anika got Roo up on his good leg, and they hopped awkwardly along the remains of the bridge. Out over the cold water, the bridge groaned and shifted from the extra weight, protesting the indignities forced on it.

The missile fired, a hot roar of exploding gases and a deep thrum of motive power. Anika shoved Roo harder, and at the very edge he glanced over at her.

“Jump,” she said, and shoved him over first as she jumped back away from the bridge.

The last thing she saw, just before the bridge flashed in front of her, were the ropes springing off from the missile as Gabriel cut them away.