Tobias Buckell - Arctic Rising

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.