Tobias Buckell - Arctic Rising

“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.

Anika hit the water. For a moment the cold and shock narrowed the world to a faint pinprick, then her vision returned, and she was looking up at the surface of the water. It looked like a mirror over the world, out of reach far over her head.

She kicked off her shoes, shed her bulky jacket, and kicked for the surface.

It was so cold, it felt like the water burned her skin and face. Already she’d started shivering violently, and when she broke the surface and gasped air, it also burned her lungs and throat.

She floundered in place for a second, looking for the ship and Vy, but stopped when she saw the missile.

It rose, vomiting smoke and fire behind it, speeding up faster and faster as she and Roo watched, breath steaming the air. “It’s off,” Roo said, a note of wonder in his strained voice.

At the edge of the road, Gabriel limped to a stop, looking up at the missile.

“Jump!” Anika shouted, though it hurt to shout and seemed to take almost all of her energy. “Jump!”

Gabriel raised a hand, as if to wave, and then the sky flashed and a pillar of pure light smacked the road. There was no Gabriel, no apartments, no nothing. Anika’s eyesight was washed out by the sudden attack from the sky.

But it hadn’t gotten the missile; she could still hear its roar in the background, even as the crackle and explosions of the heat ray destroyed the entire block she’d just been standing on.

It was okay, she thought, that the cold had sapped so much heat from her body that she was starting to feel warm, at least they’d gotten the missile off.

But instead of slowing down and slumping into the water, she was feeling strong. Warm and strong.

Roo grabbed her shoulder. “Swim for the colder water,” he hissed. “We’re too close here, it’s warming up.”

She wasn’t dying. The solar shield’s beam wasn’t just chewing up the block, but the waste heat, bubbling out from the destruction, was also warming up the nearby water.

Roo was right: without their sight, they’d have to swim for colder water. It was the only way to know they were swimming away from Thule.

“This way!” he shouted.

She followed his voice out into the bitter chill, but someone else shouted from behind them. “No, this way!”

It was Vy.

Anika swam toward the voice as the ocean began to scald her. Then Vy grabbed her hand and hauled her onto a swim platform, with Roo hauling himself up right behind her.

Anika’s vision began to return as she blinked and looked around to see that she stood on the back of a very luxurious forty-foot motor yacht. She shielded her eyes and looked back toward Thule as best she could. They floated just a few hundred feet away from the ripped up, and now mostly slagged remains of it. They were just far enough away that she could feel the heat on her skin. Had they delayed by just half a minute, they would have been cooked in their skin, she realized with a shudder.

Vy left them to run up to the enclosed cockpit above the main cabin. The water started to boil as Vy gunned the engines all the way up into a full howl and got the large boat up to speed, headed back into the cold Arctic Ocean.

Anika crawled up onto the bridge with a limping Roo.

Vy looked back at them. “I heard the gunshots,” she said. “I was already near the boat when you called, when I heard the gunshots I knew you’d been found, so I took the boat out.”

Anika grabbed her in a big full-of-warm-sea-water hug, and Vy reached up to hold her hand, while still keeping them on course.

“How long?” she asked Roo.

“Anything we can hit up ahead?”

“No.”

“Then close your eyes,” he said.

The motor yacht surged on ahead. Anika closed her eyes and held on to Vy as the deck shifted under their feet.

Then the backs of her eyelids briefly lit up.

At the same instant, the engines died, the electronics burned out by the electromagnetic pulse far overhead. They surfed to a slow stop on the waves.

“Okay,” Roo said softly. “Let’s see it.”

They walked outside and looked up at the troubled sky. Far overhead, a glowing, multihued fireball of apocalypse continued expanding, punching its way through the silver cloud that dominated overhead.

“Holy fuck,” Anika said, squeezing Vy’s hand.

“Yes.” Vy nodded her head. “What the hell did we just do?”

Punctured silver spheres dropped out of the sky like a strangely light hail as they floated, dead in the water. Vy asked Roo about the risk of radiation, but he shrugged. “They said it was ‘clean,’ yeah. We should be okay as long as it doesn’t rain. Most of the spheres that drop will fall because of the pulse.” Then he left them to hopped his down into the palatial main cabin, looking for tools that might help repair the EMP damage. Anika and Vy remained outside the cockpit near the railing, watching the skies.

“I’m done,” Anika said, leaning against Vy. “I don’t have anything left. I don’t care who Gabriel worked for, I don’t care about Ivan Cohen or who caused the people on that ship to shoot me down. I just want a life again. And I don’t need to worry about my standing in the UNPG anymore because of being with you, because I’ll be on the run now. Will you come with me?” She wanted to visit her mother, then see her father again. In person. And then after that, she and Vy would find somewhere where Anika could pilot for money. They could make a life.

Vy laughed. “I’m broke, they took all my money. I’ll go anywhere you go, as long as it’s warm and has a proper day and night cycle.”

They kissed again, and with no interruptions or worries Anika could just close her eyes and feel Vy, warm against her still soggy clothes.

Anika looked up at the large gas ball in the sky. “I thought nuclear explosions looked like mushroom clouds,” she murmured.

“I think it has to be near the ground for that,” Vy said.

“Do you think we did the right thing?” Anika asked, running a hand over Vy’s cheek.

Vy flinched slightly. “We have to hope.”