Tobias Buckell - Arctic Rising

The sense of déjà vu disappeared in a gut-punching series of explosions. They both turned around to look out the back of the truck. Vy had crouched lower, and she turned to look at them through the glass. “What was that?”

“Mines,” Roo said. “Shit.”

Anika couldn’t see any SEALs—they’d found cover as the firefight suddenly ripped the streets open. Bullets cracked into the street surface, throwing up sprays of chipped ice with every single shot.

And the fizz-schwish of an RPG filled the air. Orange flames exploded underneath a nearby building. A pylon splintered, and the entire structure slumped slightly over to its side.

“Get down, Vy!” Anika slouched down, patting the bulletproof vest she’d acquired, just to reassure herself it was still there. Glancing at the rearview mirror she saw that Vy was lying down in the bed of the pickup. Good.

“They’re ready for us,” she said, a cold lump in the back of her throat.

“Very ready,” Roo agreed, as Gaia Security began to pour out the doors of buildings all around. “Looks they’ve moved out the civilians, maybe purchased the surrounding buildings and taken over the whole area. Shit.”

One of the SEALs, fifty feet away, was dragging a body back through the pylons at them. Anika kicked the door open, getting low, Diemaco slung under an armpit, and made her way over. She ducked from pylon to pylon and grabbed the wounded SEAL’s shoulder.

Vy dropped the truck’s tailgate and helped them get the wounded man up. Anika winced as she realized the man’s right leg was hanging more by cloth than by leg.

“You need to get him to the hospital,” she said. “It’s by the harbor.”

“Someone needs to drive,” the SEAL said, ripping a pants leg apart and pulling open a medical kit. “He’s going to bleed out if I leave him.”

Roo tapped Vy on the shoulder. “Get him there, you’ve been in Thule before.”

“There’ll be others who get hurt,” she said, leaping down and getting inside the cab.

“Maybe, but we have other trucks. Go.” Roo slammed the door shut and slapped the window.

Vy looked over at Anika. “I’ll be right back,” she mouthed.

“I know.”

The pickup peeled out, sliding underneath the buildings and dodging pylons, and Roo and Anika got to cover.

Gallo joined them a minute later, slipping in low and shoving his back against the thick concrete pylon they were favoring. “Goddamn it, I told you guys to stay in the trucks.”

“Violet took your guy to the hospital. You’re stuck with us.”

“That was Ricardo that stepped on the mine,” Gallo said. He tapped his earpiece. “Neil says he’s got him stable, but he might lose the leg. They really moved quickly to secure this area, Jones.”

Roo sighed. “They’re more prepared than I could have anticipated. I looked through their files, only a few of them have Special Forces experience.”

“Well, this is a case where the numbers matter as well,” Gallo grunted. “We’ve got fifty or sixty Gaia Security spread through the surrounding buildings, and ten or fifteen in the target building itself.”

The clatter of bullets died. Their side had their positions and wasn’t wasting ammunition. The other side couldn’t see any movement.

In the lull, Gallo continued, his voice level and calm, and almost oddly reassuring. “If I knew for sure I could get Gabriel into that building, I would order my men to cross the roads, risk the mines, and head up those stairs. But I guarantee you we’re all going to die in the crossfire from these occupied buildings. We just don’t have the tools to do this right.”

Anika looked across at the scuffed ice. The house that had been hit by the RPG finished settling one corner onto the ground. They were so close. They were within a couple hundred feet. She crouched over the assault rifle, pulling it close to her. “What tools?” she asked.

“We need air support,” Gallo said. “But the bubble cloud’s in the way, and Thule has filled the air with antiaircraft mites that choke the inlets. Very effective nontraditional air warfare. We could try for missile strikes if we pull back, but that still leaves the mines.…”

“What if I can get you air support?” Anika asked. “Is it still doable?”

“What?”

She was already on the phone Paige had slipped her back in the office before she’d gotten on the submarine. Anika clenched her free hand. Please, please, please still be there, she whispered to herself quietly. Still be in partial control of the cloud.

“Yes?” hissed a strained, brittle voice.

“It’s Anika. We need your help, Paige. I can stop Ivan. But in order to do it, you’ll have to help me destroy the cloud, so that it can be rebuilt somewhere else, controlled by all of us, not just Ivan. You can’t hold him back for very long. What happens next?”

There was a long pause. “What are you doing, Anika?” Paige whispered. Anika could hear her cough wetly through the phone.

Over the occasional burst of gunfire, the crack of nearby bullets as the lull faded away and the Gaia fighters pressed them back, Anika explained.

“Anika!” Roo shouted. “They’re going to push up on us now. Is time to leave.”

Anika shook her head and held a hand up. “Paige. I talked to an officer from the blockade in town. They will attack, and when they do, it will be the blockade, and everyone left in Thule, who pays the price. We detonate this nuke high up, over the water, the shield goes down. We can end this.”

A long moment stretched out so long Anika checked the phone to make sure the call hadn’t been dropped.

Finally Paige coughed and croaked, “The moment he knows you’ve overrun them there, he’ll focus the shield on that building and vaporize you all.”

“Can you hold him back?”

“Not for very long anymore. He’s almost locked me out. You will have to move quickly … if I agree.” Then suddenly Paige’s voice changed sharply. “Wait.”

There was more silence. And then one of the Gaia men shouted. They stopped firing, and several of them leaned back and looked up into the sky.

From their position under the building, behind the safety of a pylon, they couldn’t see what they were pointing at.

A solid beam of light descended and struck an empty square three blocks away. Steam hissed and boiled over, and the façade of a nearby building slumped.

Distant screams reached them.

Paige returned. “He’s trying to destroy the building you’re talking about, and the nuke. He must have just gotten the news that you’re attacking and doesn’t want to risk you getting the nuke.”

“We’re beaten back; he has to know we haven’t taken the building,” Anika protested.

“He won’t take the chance. He’d rather sacrifice them than risk you taking it.” Paige sniffed.

“Paige, you can’t support this,” Anika said.

“I know. I know. Give me the coordinates you want attacked, and then get ready to move. I’ll bake the street. I will not fry my own employees, but I can startle them and make the buildings they’re in intolerably hot but survivable. They’ll be more interested in getting away than in you, I’d bet. That’s the best I can do.”

“Thank you, Paige. Thank you.”

She didn’t say anything.

Anika pointed at the phone, and then repeated the situation to Gallo. “Knowing that, are you still in?”

He looked thoughtfully around. “So we’ll have to move the missile. Mr. Jones, is the equipment still up there?”

Roo nodded. “When we initially captured it, they’d knocked out a wall, then put tarp over it to stay warm. The tackle is still there. We can lower it over the side into a pickup and drive like hell to a better location.”