Arctic Rising

22

Chandra called them mist boats. They had been oil tankers at one point and then obviously rebuilt. Large helipads dominated their massive prows.

But that wasn’t the largest structural adjustment: each tanker had five massive funnels grafted onto the decks. These reached up like radio towers or small skyscrapers, using the decks of the tankers as firm ground.

Mist poured out of the tips of the funnels, slowly rising up into the heavily clouded sky.

Chandra flew them in low, low enough that Anika could see the churning whitecaps at the tip of each wave below them whipped into the air by the driving winds buffeting the copter.

There were three mist boats at anchor. Chandra gained altitude and flared the copter out in a motion that made Anika’s stomach lurch, and then they dropped onto the helipad of the lead mist boat.

The tanker rode the swells. Disconcerting, because it felt, to Anika, as if she were standing on the street of a large city that rose and fell with the waves. Something this large, with the deck and metal as far as she could see, with funnels stretching overhead like downtown buildings, and all of it dominating her field of vision, all this simply shouldn’t move underfoot.

A cheerful looking blond in a red windbreaker opened Chandra’s door with an accompanying gust of cold air and peered in. “Rough landing, Chandra!” He looked like he would be much more comfortable surfing off the California coast or backpacking through Oregon.

He looked back, saw Anika and Roo, and ran a hand self-consciously through his wind-harried hair. “Hey guys, I didn’t realize Chandra was ferrying anyone out.”

“I am not.” Their pilot pushed the blond aside and got out. “They’re on their way to Pleasure Island.” He heaved the side door out of the way.

“It’s awesome to see some new faces, even if for a few hours.” The blond stuck out a hand and helped Anika out, but left Roo on his own. “My name’s Martin Frobish. Everyone just calls me Bish.”

Bish had a handcart with him. He and Chandra started pulling the boxes out of the helicopter. After a second Roo and Anika got in the line and helped.

Then together they all manhandled the unruly cart along the nine hundred feet of deck.

They pushed it through watertight steel doors into the warm fluorescent lights and gray paint of the corridors. Bish led them to the large kitchen where Lars, a burly Scandinavian who looked every bit a descendant of the Vikings, ripped open the boxes with eagerness.

He held up a fresh clump of lettuce with something approaching reverence. “Finally, a fucking salad,” he growled.

Chandra pulled Bish aside as the Scandinivian began chopping lettuce and puttering around the boxes, grabbing fresh produce with a grin. “I need to barter for the extra fuel to get to Pleasure Island, and I’ll be landing back on my way.”

“Talk to Everson, he’ll fuel you up,” Bish said softly. Then even softer. “And I’ll buy your fuel for a trip back south on your return.”

“What is happening with you?” Chandra asked.

Bish chuckled and stole a slice of tomato while Lars had his back turned. “Any of you been following the news this morning?”

“No,” Anika said. After getting Anika disguised they’d abandoned the room to head straight over to the helicopter.

Lars had his head in the fridge. He slammed the door shut, shaking the wall. “We have been fucked.” He had a pair of beers in his hand, he threw one at Bish, who snagged it out of the air with ease and popped the top.

Both men, Anika realized, had been drinking heavily before she’d arrived. Lars had bloodshot eyes.

A heavy thunk, and a steady shaking rumbled through the floor.

“Shit, they’re opening the hold doors.” Bish’s head snapped around, facing the direction of the decks.

Lars dropped his beer on the floor. “Get the backup cameras. I want everything on!”

Bish grabbed Chandra’s shoulders. “I’ll need to join you guys on the trip out. Lars, too. But first, you’ll want to see what’s going down here, man.”

Lars thudded out of the kitchen, and Bish followed close behind. “Six months ago the Hinum was a thousand-foot-long floating offshore factory owned by a Chinese corporation, further up the Arctic Circle, all in strictly multinational waters. They were closer to the oil and were using it to make plastic toys. I guess it helped the margins to be right by the source, and then they could be shipped right to Alaska, or Northern Europe.”

“It was anchored near Thule,” Lars said, leading them down a set of stairs and through a quiet and empty common area.

“I’ve seen the floating factories,” Anika said. As it got harder and harder to find nations without protective labor laws, corporations got more creative.

“The company went bankrupt,” Bish said, ducking another low bulkhead. “The creditors were fighting over who owned the factory and who could get it towed to Chittagong and have it scrapped. Meanwhile, there’s this whole multinational workforce quartered on the ship. I’m getting e-mails and pictures from a friend who’s in the middle of writing a story about the floating factory. I mean, no regulations, labor laws, or oversight. Sounds like hell? But since they’re all trapped aboard, after a few really crazy protests and a few overzealous overseers go missing overboard, they’d built a life here.”

“They had greenhouses.” Lars led them into a small room with a single bare bunk and a gray blanket. Work boots lay scattered under the bunk, heavy coats on the hook behind the door. The desk had four cases stacked on it. Lars opened one of them to reveal padded foam and a two fist-sized cameras. He moved with practiced, precise haste as he opened another case and pulled out a tripod. “You wouldn’t believe the things they grew on the decks.”

“They had everything set up,” Bish said. “Hospitals, greenhouses on deck for fresh veggies, even a small pen with chickens for fresh eggs. These workers from Thailand, Vietnam, Russia, China, they’d built a whole world on this ship. Lars and I wanted to film it before it was all ripped out and scrapped. We flew out, and my story got even fucking better.”

Lars opened another case and pulled out a shoulder-stabilized camera rig.

Bish shut the cases for Lars, but he was waving his hands around as he got more animated. An inner intensity tumbled out with his words. “So these guys revolted when one of the creditors finally got a tug boat out here to commandeer the factory. They tooled up to build weapons and held everyone off, and they declared that the ship was owned by them. Turned it into a worker-owned and -run business. Everyone had a share. They started production up again.”

“They lasted two months.” Lars pointed them out of the cabin, and everyone backed out. “Then Gaia purchased the company’s debt.”

“So get this: Lars has cameras all over the place streaming back to our box at home, and I’m interviewing everyone I can get my hands on, when fucking paratroopers literally drop out of the fucking sky.” Bish paused for dramatic effect.

“For hire?” Anika asked.

“Edgewater, yah.” Lars was leading them down the corridor again, trotting along. The rumbling grew louder now as they got closer to the decks. “Everyone is thinking: hey, Gaia purchases the debt. They are the biggest green company in the world. They are nice people, yeah? Turns out, not so nice after all.”

“It’s a whole standoff,” Bish said as they started climbing stairs again. “Gaia’s founders, Paige Greer and Ivan Cohen, make an offer: we could all accept a like/kind exchange of Gaia shares and a free ferry ticket anywhere in the Circle, or … get arrested. There we are, weapons aimed at us, gunships circling the ship. I was scared shitless.”

“They took the deal,” Roo said from behind Anika. “I remember all those workers showed up on the docks at Thule.”

“Then it got hairy when they found out I had recorded it all. I was like, you have to let me get out of here. They wanted the footage before they’d release me. I told them I had rights. They said I was in international waters, and I’d been filming on their property. I had no rights.”

“So they bargain with us,” Lars said, panting and out of breath. They’d gone up three flights, and now he walked over to a large observation window. “They promise us the story of the century if we agree to never release the footage of Gaia-paid goons pointing guns at factory workers. We met with lawyers for two days. We agreed to stay on board for six months. It was just us, Gaia had these ships switched over to their automated systems with an occasional weekly fly-in by engineers to check on the systems. After the manufacturing stuff was done, all the workers left.”

He set the tripod down in front of the window, and they all walked up to it.

Bish looked out over the decks. “But after all that, they still fucked us.”

“Fucked us hard.” Lars set up one camera to look down at the decks. Anika looked out. The deck’s floodlights revealed the source of the loud rumbling: several massive steel hatches slowly rolled themselves open. Fifteen-foot cracks of dark had appeared. They were going to be looking down into the holds soon, if the hatches kept trundling back. “You should show them a close-up,” Lars told Bish. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Might as well break the story to someone.”

Bish smiled sadly. “I was supposed to break the news about how Gaia, Inc., was going to save the world. But that news broke this morning while you guys were getting out here. At least I get some exclusive documentary footage.”

He shrugged, then turned back for the stairs and waved them along.

“Where are we going?” Anika asked.

“Down to the holds. Trust me, I’m about to blow your minds,” Bish said, grinning.