Arctic Rising

35

Paige Greer arrived at the surface and waved them over. “We’re scrambling men,” she said breathlessly as they raced down the sloping road with her.

“Where’s Roo?” Anika asked.

“Up ahead.”

Three armored cars braked to a stop at the entrance to the polar preserve and Gaia’s underground facility. Roo opened one of the doors and waved them in.

“How’d you find them? That was quick, wasn’t it?”

“I’m that good,” Roo grinned. “It was lead.”

“For shielding?” Anika asked.

“They didn’t want another scatter camera to hunt them down, so they purchased sheets of lead. Gabriel mentioned that they would be shielded and hard to find. So far most of the hunt has been for the radiation. But I went hunting for lead. Once I found the lead, I found four possible locations. This is as close as we can get this quick.”

“We’ll get teams out to each building,” Paige said. “See if we can secure local help to check them out. See if anything turns up.”

“They won’t give up easily,” Anika said, thinking of Gabriel.

“I know,” Paige said.

They stopped a block away from the target, near a cluster of dome-shaped silvered buildings jacked up on piston stilts.

“This is the Peary demesne,” Paige said. “We secured the right to place our men around the building, but volunteer community police are insisting they accompany us.”

More Gaia flatbed trucks ripped up ice as they braked to a halt.

“Not a dictatorship here, then?” Anika asked.

Paige brushed hair out of her eyes. “Peary’s modeled after Brazilian participatory budget and radical municipal democracy, with a few variants. People committee-vote on all municipal budget matters and draw up the budgets and where tax money goes; municipal employees serve as expert consultants, but have no say in the budget or projects list, they are contractors that execute what the voters decide every quarter needs done. Stops backscratching and corruption. These guys take it a step further: there are no municipal employees, municipal spots are volunteer positions. If you can’t find the time, then you can pay to have a subcontractor do your duty. But it means you’re stuck with waiting for damn amateurs to run out here.”

Several Peary citizens were indeed showing up, pulling on bright red-and-blue vests over their bulky cold weather gear and waving at them.

“Location two is clear,” one of the security detail reported.

One of the Peary volunteers walked over and introduced himself as the on-duty sergeant. He wore large goggles, and Anika could see information was scrolling across his field of vision. Probably some sort of software package that let the volunteer police link up with each other.

“We have a hundred community protectors moving in,” he said. “Thirty are in full riot gear. Nonlethal instruments. I have four snipers that should be in position within twenty minutes. Twenty of my regulars are armed with low-caliber pistols. If you need more manpower, we can call in other Thule citizens from neighboring demesnes.”

Paige nodded. “Okay. My force will go in strong, are you okay with hanging back? We want you to catch anyone who bolts.”

The volunteer nodded. “How hard are you going in?”

“They’re possibly sitting on a nuke, how hard do you want us to go in?” Paige looked carefully at the sergeant.

He grimaced, and looked upward, accessing some piece of information from his goggles. “We’re in a hard spot,” he said. “Because my fellow police want to remind you, legally, that you have not proven without a doubt the people you’re hunting are the ones inside this building. You could be going in full force…”

He never finished his sentence—the sound of gunfire erupted from the building in question.

“We found them!” someone shouted, unnecessarily.

Everyone ducked behind one of the large pylons holding up the nearest building.

“They’re shooting up the block,” someone shouted.

Roo shook his head. “We should have gone in without asking the demesne for help,” he chided Paige. “All they needed to do was grab a volunteer policeman and hold him hostage, let him tell them when any alerts came for him to assemble…”

Paige opened her mouth, then closed it. “Shit.”

“We should have done a person-to-person communications-are-compromised routine,” the sergeant muttered. Then he whispered into the palm of his hand, “Snipers: fire when targets present.”

“Sergeant, they’re going to be in there trying to arm that thing,” Roo shouted. “Time is not on our side.”

“We’re going to rush the building with you,” the sergeant told Paige. “We’re all in.”

“Glad to hear it.” Paige tapped an earpiece. “The Peary volunteers are following you in. Give them five minutes to assemble, then break down the doors.”

“Paige, I can use a weapon,” Anika said. She’d given hers up to get into Gaia headquarters, but not retrieved it.

Paige put a finger up to her lip and shook her head. “You’ve come far enough, Anika.”

The gunfire slowed, and Anika watched Peary volunteers in a wide assortment of winter jackets keeping low, advancing over the snow, dodging around the metallic forest of pylons underneath everything.

Three and a half minutes passed in what felt like a handful of held breaths in between pauses in the gunfire, and then the attack began. Anika left the cover of the pylons to watch.

Gaia Security used clear bulletproof riot shields to protect themselves as they stormed up stairs. Door rams were deployed, and after three swings, the doors crumpled back.

Men and women poured inside, and the sound of gunfire increased. A full-on fusillade of distant firecracker pops of varying tones and frequencies, shouts, and more door cracking.

And much like popcorn, after a while, it slowed down. An occasional shot sounded, randomly. Then quiet.

Roo started walking toward the building.

“Mr. Jones,” Paige said sharply.

But he ignored her and kept walking. Anika stood up and jogged after him, and Vy joined them.

“They didn’t have a chance to fire it,” Anika said. “Right?” She hadn’t seen anything. She’d been looking for that flash of smoke, the contrail of a missile, or a rocket, or whatever it was.

But all there had been was gunfire.

“Right?” she repeated.