Tobias Buckell - Arctic Rising

If the weather got any rougher, she decided it would be better just to wipe herself down quick rather than risk another shower.

She crawled into the bed. Within minutes she found herself dozing off. This was really no worse than sleeping through turbulence, she thought.

“Anika!” Roo banged on the cabin door, and she sat up.

“Yes?”

“Your watch,” Roo said. “You been asleep for half the day, and I need to turn in a bit. Time for you to stand watch.”

She stared at him, shaking her head and trying to get up to speed. “You really want me to sail your ship?”

“We at sea for a week, yes, I need you to sail.”

“I don’t know the first thing…”

He cut her off. “Just stand there, keep an eye on the radar. Look around. See any ships: wake me up quick. Look, it’s not as hard as flying a blimp, right?”

So he knew who she was, she thought. Then she nodded. “Airship. Not a blimp. But wake you up. Okay.”

He escorted her up to the enclosed cockpit, and she hugged herself as the cold wind blew in through the eyeholes the sheets ran through.

“Four hours,” Roo said.

“And what about that Coast Guard cutter?”

“An hour ago it was still headed south.” Roo left, sliding the salon door behind him.

And then it was just her alone with her thoughts and the open sea again. The tap of saltwater spray against the cockpit windows.

It was a rhythm she felt comfortable with. Watches in the air, or watches on a deck, the life remained the same: four-hour intervals, broken down between leisure, watch, and sleep.

She chose sleep for the first two days, aided by more oxycodone.

In the cockpit, she played with the sails a bit. Nothing drastic, just trying to understand how they worked. She understood the theory. They were like plane wings. Another curved surface that wind rushed past, and where the negative pressure was created, it pulled the ship forward.

Unless you were going downwind, she knew. Then you were just letting the wind push you.

On her morning watch of the second day, she’d changed course to dodge a large container ship on the horizon. Why bother Roo? she reasoned.

But as the ship grew larger, bearing toward the Spitfire ’s right-hand side (starboard, Roo had explained), a shrieking alarm had gone off, and Roo had come running up.

He wore shorts and nothing else, his eyes wide. He looked at the container ship. “Fucking Christ, fucking hell.”

“I changed course. We’re fine,” she said.

For a moment he squinted at the ship, then relaxed and nodded. “If it gets close, the proximity alarm goes.” He reached over to the radar and hit a button, and the alarm cut off.

“I’m sorry.” She was looking at his torso. Three bullet wounds on his shoulder, one in his stomach. All scar tissue now.

Not a desk jockey.

He sat down and they watched the freighter pass together. And now Anika found her pulse racing. Seeing the large steel hull glide past made her think of the Kosatka ripping past her in the water, shoving the debris aside.

“Tack,” he ordered.

“What?”

She’d started to understand the sails, that tightening them in closer would let her point farther into the wind, but now he showed her a great deal more about how to handle the boat, teaching her until he was satisfied. “Keep further away next time.”

“I could shut off the alarm.”

“It’s tied to my thumbprint, and no, this is my home. Still rather wake up and see a close one myself. But yeah, you seem to be getting the hang of things.” He rubbed his eyes. “You hungry?”

“Yes.”

The winds died and the ocean turned to glass. They ate on the front of the boat, letting the autopilot guide them along. “There are no satellites overhead, or airships, for a while,” Roo told her. “You should come out on deck and enjoy the weather!”

The space between the two hulls, forward of the cabin, was a large piece of fabric laced onto the hulls, like a trampoline. He set down a few sandwiches on plates and tossed her a soda.

“I’m sorry I was short, earlier. Not things I like talking about. After Anegada, it was too hard for me to stay in the British Virgin Islands,” he told her. “I used the leftover money and went to Britain. The BVI is a part of the empire still. Studied. And ran out of money. Didn’t know what to do, until I ended up bring recruited. Spent time with MI6: they needed more dark-skinned agents. Learned Arabic and ended up in North Africa. But I left.”

She pointed at his shoulder. “You were shot.”

“That’s another story. No, I just … left once I could. Everything we were doing, the great game. I couldn’t play. The small countries, they were pawns in a greater battle. Multinational corporations, media empires, larger nations, all fighting their proxy battles, eating through these places. I just wanted to come home and protect it.”

“So you’re in the Arctic.”

“Of late,” Roo grinned. “See, until me and a number of cohorts came in, the Caribbean nations weren’t thinking expansion. They would beg a European or a U.S. factory to open a branch down there. Beg a hotel to develop, so more tourists could be housed. But that money, the tourist brings, just leaves and goes back to the mother hotel corporation. That factory’s profits, they don’t stay.”

He took a sip of water. “When the Arctic began to melt and open, we persuaded some people in government to think a little … sideways. Oil corporation needs a nation to permit drilling somewhere in the Arctic? Well, it’s international waters. Come apply for a permit in sunny Antigua, and we’ll let you set up a satellite offshore company that feeds the profits where you need it. For a percent. So now we get a taste of the north while giving a flag of convenience.”

“Cynical.”

“Always,” Roo said, very seriously.

“Thanks for letting me, and teaching me, to pilot,” she said. “I know, with the automatic gear, all you really need is for me to be a better collision alarm than the automatic one.”

“It’s good to have something to do, to focus on, simple, when you recovering off a shock.”

Anika nodded. “You know about the airship.”

“Violet didn’t tell me much, other than your name. That’s enough. I wouldn’t be a good intelligence man if I didn’t do at least a quick search. But the deeper I dig, the stranger your problem becomes.”

Now Anika sat up. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a UNPG pilot. Shot out of the sky. Survive. The men who shot you were captured by the U.S. Navy. Now you’re on the run, Vy’s helping you. The heat is pushing hard on her. More interesting to me: the men who tried to kill you have disappeared.”

“What?”

“Poof. Like they never existed.” He threw the remains of his meal over the side. “So, if you willing, I can draw up a nondisclosure agreement regarding anything you can tell me. Because at this point, anything I can figure out about what is happening around you might be the sort of thing that could, depending on what you know and are willing to talk about, let me turn a tidy profit in terms of anticipating certain people’s movements and actions. But even more important, I might be able to help you by connecting the dots, right? That’s why Violet put us together. I know a lot about what’s happening around here.”

Anika nodded. “Let me think about it.”

“Of course. But don’t take too long.”

He leaned back and looked up at the sky. “Time to be getting back inside.”

The collision alarm snapped Anika out of a groggy sleep in her cabin a day later. Fear hammered through her and cleared her head.