Arctic Rising

36

They ran up the stairs, boots clanging on metal, and rounded the doors. A body lay at the foot of steps that led up to the next level, blood continuing to expand out in a steaming dark pool.

In the corridor that ran past the steps, three men sat against the wall as one of the Gaia men checked their wounds.

“Up,” Roo said.

They stepped carefully over the dead man and ran up, with Paige not far behind.

Two flights of stairs, three more bodies, including one Peary volunteer being carried down the stairs in a stretcher, a raggedy-doll-like hand flopping over the edge.

Had the price been worth it? Or had more people died in vain?

The top floor was dominated by a skylight and ruined walls. They’d been knocked out by sledgehammer. A hastily boarded up gap covered in a blue tarp in the side of one major wall allowed chilled air into the entire upper floor.

In the center of the mess, Anika saw more dead men from both sides sprawled around. But it was the center of the room that drew her attention. There was a muddy white missile, with a fat, red-tipped nose, pointed skyward in the middle of the room. The tip of the missile was just a foot away from the glass of the skylight, fifteen feet above the overly open-spaced third floor. It sat in a hastily constructed cradle of two-by-four timbers that raised it up into launch position. A crude wooden crane had been constructed out of more wooden planks to pull the missile up into position.

A glance out through a small hole in the tarp showed that no one had noticed the missile being cranked up because this side of the house was hemmed in by a large water tower and several more industrial-looking buildings, most likely automated small-scale factories.

Anika turned around.

So here it was.

A fucking, honest-to-goodness, nuclear missile.

They all gathered around it, like mystics around some obelisk.

“Did it get armed, is it going to launch?” Paige asked a grizzled-looking man sitting near a laptop and table filled cables leading back to the missile.

“Nyet,” he said emphatically. “Prelaunch system check only. And yes, it was aimed at the solar shield. It takes off to detonate, it is not for the ground.”

Paige turned back to look up at the missile. “It’s not really that big, is it?” she said, wonderingly.

“All it had to do was knock out the shield with the electromagnetic pulse,” Roo said. “It didn’t need to be.”

“We’re safe for now,” Paige said, visible relief on her face. “We stopped them.”

Anika felt her legs weaken a bit. It was from relief, as well. She’d been carrying tension since she stepped foot in Thule, imagining that, at any second, a flash would be the last thing she saw before some detonation just above her.

That was ridiculous, they now knew for sure. This missile looked like it would climb fairly high. Its job was to get above the shield and then detonate. It wasn’t a terrorist’s device, intended to destroy people and civilians on the Arctic ground.

Vy had grabbed her gloved hand and squeezed it really hard. “Jesus, Anika. It’s over. We got it.”

“You’re damn right we got it,” Paige said. “Come on. Yuri’s a Russian military ordnance specialist, he’ll work with some contractors by phone to make sure it’s turned off properly. We’re going to head back to HQ. I want to talk to Ivan about what we do next, but I also want to make sure we take care of you guys for helping us out.”

“I need tickets. Anika and I need to get out of the area,” Vy said.

There was a weary satisfaction in the air on the drive back. Paige, in particular, leaned back against the seat with a private smile on her face.

“Now we only have one big problem to face,” she said.

“The blockade.” That was still a massive problem, Anika thought. And she didn’t want to be in Thule as all that continued to play out. The retreating demesnes probably had the right idea.

“Yes.”

Back at the top of the elevator they were waved through security. Anika noticed Roo frown. “What?” she asked him in a quick whisper.

“Look at the submachine guns,” he whispered back.

The men had them slung over their shoulders, at the ready, even though they were standing behind the desk.

“They weren’t doing that earlier, the guns were out of sight.”

Roo nodded, and Anika really wished she’d slipped something past security. A knife would do.

Down the elevators, back into the Gaia complex’s heart, then across to the conference room, where an ebullient Ivan Cohen waited with a twenty-person retinue of dark-suited, older men from a variety of countries.

Something didn’t quite feel right, though. They looked nervous. Eyes on the ground, shuffling. They did not look like the normal boardroom of a trillion-dollar corporation.

Then again, what did Anika know about what these sorts of people should act like.

Certainly, she felt it shouldn’t be like nervous servants, waiting for their employer to find something wrong with their work.

There was champagne on the tables. Ivan passed a glass over to Paige. “We’ve stopped them from destroying the most important public engineering project of this century,” he said. His eyes were wide, almost dilated. Flushed with success, Anika thought. “Congratulations.”

Paige set the slender glass down on the table. “Ivan, we still have a problem.…”

Ivan shook his head. “I took care of it.”

Feet shuffled throughout the room. They were like nervous birds, feathers ruffling as they were disturbed.

Anika was getting a bad feeling.

“Ivan, what do you mean by that?” Paige asked slowly and calmly, as if he were a child.

He waved at all the board members. “They all finally grew a pair—collectively, that is. They came down here to demand you and I step down as CEOs so they could negotiate a surrender with the blockade. They’re worried about the impending invasion. Can you believe that? Step down. Now? Here we are, on the brink of quite literally saving the world, and they’re going to try and pull some bullshit procedure and give up.”

“They’re scared,” Paige said. “It’s understandable. We didn’t think there would be such a strong military reaction. Or nukes. Or any of this. Look, if anyone here wants to leave, they should get out now. It hasn’t been the first time I’ve encouraged you.”

One of the suits next to her fumbled with his hands. “We can’t leave now. Ivan gave an ultimatum.”

Paige looked confused. “A what?”

Roo glanced over at Anika and pointed at the door. Get out, he mouthed. But as they turned to leave Gaia Security stepped forward blocked the door.

Vy grabbed her arm. “I don’t like this.”

Ivan raised his hands and pressed a button on a small controller in his hands. The windows looking out under the polar waters darkened to be replaced by screens showing virtual clocks.

“All of the Earth’s systems have checks and balances in them against damage. But for hundreds of years we’ve shit out pollutants and dumped carbon into the air. Even today archeologists are finding that, as far back as history goes, we have scarred the land that gave us life. We’re a cancer. A virus. A problem. Paige says, give us properly balanced markets, and we can be good. But that’s not true. The world’s religions know it. Man is sinful, dark. We are capable of great evils. Just ask the fucking whales. The Earth needs a protector, not more arguing, not more markets, not more products. It needs a solution. It needs Gaia.”

“Ivan, we talked about this. We’re playing in the realm of nation states now—not just trying to influence policy, but actively challenging them,” Paige said.

“Nation states have done a shitty job as stewards of our world, Paige. Eventually, someone had to challenge them. I know it will be dangerous, but we’ve been simulating a showdown like this for two years. We’ve used our most powerful resources to crowd-source possible scenarios, used multiplayer online games to test responses. We know it’s ninety percent likely that we’ll win here. We can’t wait any longer, and it’s too late to back down now. We’re playing our cards.”

“Jesus, we’ve got to get out,” Vy whispered. They edged closer to the door and the grim men with submachine guns.

Paige had been stepping closer and closer to Ivan as he spoke. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Ivan. You really did it? The ultimatum? We didn’t agree together…”

He grabbed her hand and held it. “The blockade has ten minutes left to turn around. It is within Thule national waters, and has crossed sovereign borders. If it doesn’t leave, Thule will be forced to protect itself. After that, we get on with the business of saving the world. Paige, I’ve waited all my life for this, I’ve seen too many attempts to do things thwarted. There’ve been billions of dollars spent convincing everyone the Pole wasn’t melting, that doing anything meant it would cost people money, so that oil companies could keep doing what they were doing. It is time for action, now. Our time is finally here. The planet’s time. We can defend it now. The moment they said you had the nuke, I’ve been waiting for that moment my entire life.”

Ivan breathed heavily, sweat beading his forehead. He was nervous, and shaking. Paige grabbed his other shoulder and looked him right in the eyes.

“Ivan, what happens when that ten minutes finishes up? Our simulations said there was a chance they would decide to escalate instead of negotiate.”

“You know the scenarios,” he said, turning for the table.

Paige pulled him back. “Ivan, it’s one thing to run simulations. It’s another to actually do these things. We can’t. It’s not you.”

“Oh, but this is me,” Ivan said. “I’m scared. I’m angry. But more than that, I’m tired of the long fight. I want to see something get done. And quickly.”

Roo had moved through the milling crowd to stand on the other side of the open door from Anika and Vy. He clearly intended to get out past the two men blocking it from the outside, but he was waiting.

What are we waiting for? Anika mouthed.

He shrugged and held up a finger. Just wait.

Ivan shoved Paige back. People gasped. “Don’t try to stop me, Paige. Not after all we’ve done together.” He was trembling.

She recovered her balance and strode forward. “You’re letting them get to you, Ivan … you and me, we don’t split apart. Not after all we’ve built together.”

“You let them get to you,” Ivan said sadly. “You’re the one taking your eyes off the bigger picture. I’m so sorry.” He sat down in front of one of the screens that, just hours before, Anika had been using to scan for leads on the missile.

Roo held up his hand. He wanted to see what was going to happen next. Up on the glass the countdown faded away, replaced by video of the recognizably flat-topped shape of an aircraft carrier.

It was flanked by two destroyers.

The countdown hit all zeros and flashed, and Ivan tapped a virtual keyboard on the table. “The sun is the most powerful source of energy in the world,” Ivan said. “We hardly use it as a tool. It’s a shame that I have to harness it like this, but maybe after this demonstration they will understand. Those hundreds of millions of floating spheres can reflect the energy of it back out into space, cooling the planet and stopping the warming trend.

“They can also refocus the reflected light anywhere I want.”

A pure line of light stabbed out of the sky. As it touched the ocean’s surface, water boiled and flash-vaporized into steam that hung in the air.

The beam of light continued to move across the water, and Anika could see the carrier begin to tilt, turning as it tried to get out of the way. Spray from the backs of the destroyers kicked up as turbojets engaged and shoved the boats up onto their hydroplanes as they tried to scatter.

Moving implacably on, the beam of light, so bright it almost washed out the video feed, struck the carrier amidships. It slowly sliced through the upper decks, boiling metal splashing and pooling. Secondary explosions ripped through the carrier as the light struck something deep inside.

Like a welding torch wielded by a god, it continued to burn the carrier’s structure, ripping deeper and deeper, until the telltale steam blew up out of the horrible crack in the ship’s center.

The focused beam of light snapped off as Ivan tapped at the computer.

For a moment, Anika thought that the carrier might be okay. It was still moving forward, after all, pulling itself out of the massive cloud of steam created by the mirror’s attack. Smoke still poured out of the crack, and she thought she could see movement. People running to put out the fires? She hoped so.

Then the crack widened. And kept widening.

The two parts of the carrier began to slowly, torturously, split apart. The further it ripped, the more of the massive ship’s insides became visible. The edges of the inside decks glowed cherry hot. More smoke gushed out. Debris tumbled into the still-boiling water in between the two halves.

Water kept flooding into the cracked-open parts, and pieces of the carrier started settling into the ocean while vomiting smoke into the air.