Arctic Rising

by Tobias S. Buckell

  She’d been hunkered down, away from her phone or any connections. Focused on her own problems. She felt like she was coming up for media air and looking around, now.

  This morning the news had broken about the spheres, just as Bish said. Grainy green-hued footage of crates of spheres being packed away as they rolled off assembly lines had leaked to the world at large.

  Now came zooming maps of the world, with existing launch points highlighted. And the Arctic Circle bloomed with little red dots.

  Navy ships steamed northward at high speed in shaky videos taken by passing ships. And then Anika watched mist boats vomiting spheres, and teams of international peacekeeping forces storming them to put a stop to it.

  And then … video of the mist boats blowing up. Anika recognized the jerky movement and perspective right away, and realized this was Bish’s doing. He’d gotten his video uploaded. Somewhere, she was willing to bet, video of the holds opening and releasing spheres was floating around as well.

  Now Lars’s video from the helicopter, jerked around, trying to focus on the destruction.

  “This was not an American attack,” a fully uniformed admiral told an interviewer as the screen split. “Our policy for this crisis has been to capture store-holds of Gaia’s devices and prevent further launches.”

  Again Anika focused on Lars’s video, and her eyes widened. There she was, for the briefest second, glimpsed out of the corner of the video, leaning against the door and wincing. Green makeup and purple hair and all.

  Her own mother wouldn’t have recognized her.

  Then Lars was back to the burning ships.

  Anika changed to a different news show.

  “No one knows what a large mirror could do,” an expert was interviewed as saying. “You can’t just start moving massive amounts of heat around the atmosphere willy-nilly and not expect catastrophic results! What Gaia is doing is dangerous to us all. We can’t have maverick geo-engineering projects.”

  Another guest yelled, “Companies have been moving heat around ‘willy-nilly’ for centuries, and when people complained they were told we couldn’t say anything negative about industry or growth. That’s a complete double standard. Dumping heat and carbon is why we’re in trouble now. That was the geo-engineering project.”

  Anika turned it all off.

  She wondered where Vy was, and what she was doing. Then she hoped that Bish had found a place to stay, and wasn’t wandering Pleasure Island alone after all he’d been through.

  Halfway through the night she thought she felt someone slide into the bed behind her, breasts pushing softly against her back.

  But as she half-flailed awake, picked up empty comforters and shoved pillows aside, she realized it was a half-awake fantasy. The cold truth was that she was alone and sore and very, very tired.

  She slumped back asleep.

  * * *

  Someone shook her gently awake. Anika bolted upright, and the person jumped back away from her.

  It was Kerrie. Dressed in a top hat and a full black tuxedo with tails. “Sorry sweetie, you weren’t answering the door. Roo was worried.”

  Anika sat up and rubbed her eyes with one hand while holding the comforter over her chest with the other. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Kerrie walked out of the room, the tails gently slapping the backs of her knees.

  Once she was dressed she hunted around for a comb that would work halfway decently on her hair, then realized she had dreadlocks now and wouldn’t be combing them.

  Roo waited outside in the corridor. “I was worried for you,” he said. “And they ready with breakfast.”

  “You’re safe to come in, Roo. I won’t bite you.”

  “Alright.”

  They strolled down the corridor. “Why is this Vy’s retreat?” Anika asked. “What is her connection to this place?”

  “Back in the day Violet used to work here. After Siberia. Gave her a fresh start, right? Two years ago the old owner made a move to evict all of them, so Violet ran a deal to buy him out. A favor to her past.”

  “Siberia?” Anika asked.

  Roo looked over. “That’ll be her story to tell, not mine.”

  They took the small elevator up. Roo leaned over. “Just ask her about the tattoos.”

  “Okay,” Anika replied, while wondering what tattoos Vy had. She’d never noticed any. At least, not on any of Vy’s skin exposed in the club.

  She looked at Roo with a stab of sudden suspicion. He saw it, and laughed. “No, Anika. I know some of Violet’s past, that’s all. Is good business to know such things.”

  Fair enough.

  But Anika was realizing she really didn’t know much about Vy, did she? Why was she putting so much at risk? Why turn her life upside down just to help Anika?

  Did Vy expect some sort of debt to be paid? Was that why she’d been put in Vy’s room?

  And, Anika wondered, was that even a bad thing in and of itself?

  * * *

  Breakfast was ready, buffet style, in the commercial kitchen gleaming with stainless steel tables and equipment. The club wasn’t open yet. “Waiting for Violet,” Kerrie told her as she slid bacon onto her plate with a spatula. “A courtesy.”

  The women were all dressed differently, and Anika enjoyed the spectacle. From bikinis to suits to jeans and a loose shirt, it looked like a parade in the kitchen.

  Kerrie noticed her looking around as they filed out into the top floor dance area booths to eat. “Men don’t like particular women so much as archetypes. Objectification is a tool in this business. They’re coming in here looking for specific looks to fill fantasies.”

  “And what’s your look?” Anika asked.

  Kerrie reached into a pocket and pulled out square, black-rimmed glasses. She pulled her hair back into a bun and clipped it in place. “Hot teacher or secretary.”

  They sat down, and as everyone filed out from the kitchen, Kerrie kept the commentary going. “That’s Alicia. Tattoos and dark eyes and all black clothes, piercings, she gave you her clothes there. She works the programmers and engineers. Truth is, she’s a soccer nut and gym-rat and pretty bubbly. Tempo, over there, she’s our blonde. All dyed, she complains about the upkeep. Toya is our ample-breasted and curvy dancer, very Marilyn Monroe-ish, but also works as our resident redhead and bush-queen, as the ginger-lovers want to see the red down there to reassure themselves it’s real. All archetypes.”

  Anika nodded and watched the fifteen dancers all group around different tables, trying to guess which identity they were playing to. She didn’t see Adriana anywhere.

  The vote must have been against her staying.

  “When is Vy getting here?” she asked.

  “Another hour.”

  Anika’s stomach knotted slightly.

  * * *

  To keep herself busy she borrowed a phone to look up information about Gaia while sitting off by herself at one of the booths in the corner of the floor.

  There wasn’t much she could find that wasn’t already common knowledge. Gaia was another garage-launched green company from just after the turn of the century. Back when that wasn’t big business.

  When Ivan Cohen and Paige Greer teamed up, they began a ten-year spree of gobbling up anyone playing with alternative energy and batteries. At first, everyone assumed they were battery geeks obsessed with making gadgets last longer between recharging.

  But then Gaia began using its capital and money leverage to roll out the bigger projects: wind farms or small nuclear reactors for small towns.

  They began trying to acquire power companies, carbon sequestration companies, water filtration technology, anything that assumed global warming would get worse and these technologies would be needed.

  And now they were. And Cohen and Greer were the ones to go to if you wanted to kick oil dependency. Or turn ocean water into fresh for your coastal cities.

  Corporate headquarters was now a former Russian aircraft carrier called The Gre
en Monster after the public’s not-so-affectionate nickname for Gaia, Inc. Gaia’s home page showed video of it anchored off New York City. The mobile headquarters had left after a G-35 summit where Cohen and Greer had tried to force a controversial—and doomed in the public and politicians’ eyes—measure to ban internal combustion engines and coal-fired plants throughout the G-35. U.S. officials had walked out. The country had a two-hundred-year supply of coal; it would not be doing any such thing.

  Where was The Green Monster headed next?

  Anika bit her lips. It was already here in the Circle. It was supposed to dock at Thule three days ago.

  Now that, she thought, was interesting.

  The door cracked open, making her wince and blink as she looked up from the phone’s screen. Vy stood at the door. Anika smiled at her, and almost stood. But then froze when she realized Vy wasn’t smiling back.

  As Anika’s eyes adjusted she saw the seven men wearing gray suits who stood grimly behind Vy. Out of place here on Pleasure Island, where most people were hard workers. Functional clothing reigned in these parts, not thousand-dollar brands.

  They’d walked right past the masked bouncers outside, too. What did that mean? That Vy had allowed them past, or that the bouncers, realizing these men were more dangerous, had let them through rather than start a firefight? Then, as the doors opened further, Anika saw that two suited men stood outside with the bouncers, guns aimed at them.

  Anika shivered, but not from the blast of cold air that had swept through from the doors.

  A thin, leathery-faced Gabriel stepped out from behind Vy and her escorts. He looked around Pussy Galore’s, a twinge of disgust quirking his lips.

  “You were hard to track. Fooling facial scanners. Quite clever. So I had to intercept Violet’s ship and get her to … help us reintroduce each other.” He shook his head slightly, as if disappointed. “You should have stayed put.”

  The ladies of Pussy Galore’s melted out of the room without a word, slipping into the kitchen or back down the corridor toward their rooms, leaving Anika very much alone.

  28

  The suits spread out, two of them turning to cover the door they’d just walked in. They had their hands in their jackets—resting on guns, no doubt.

  Anika stood up, mouth open in shock. “Vy? What have you done?”

  Vy smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, Anika, it’s complicated right now.”

  Who was Vy? Anika had wondered. She still didn’t know, but she was certainly not necessarily a friend. She’d sold Anika out. Handed her back over to Gabriel.

  Anika looked around the room, but Gabriel shook his head and pulled a handgun out from a shoulder holster. “Don’t try to run, Anika. I would have to shoot you. Which is not what I want. Understand me?”

  “Yes.” Anika glared at Vy, who didn’t seem affected by this at all. “Who are you?”

  Vy looked down. “Gabriel won’t hurt you. He just needs to take you somewhere where you won’t get hurt.”

  “He is a liar, I would not trust a word of his,” Anika said. “We know for a fact he no longer works for the Canadians. He’s not an official of any sort.”

  Vy raised an eyebrow, but did not look all that surprised. “Working more than one side, Gabriel?”

  Gabriel squinted. “Don’t try to muddle your way into all this. Let’s just get this done.”

  Vy raised her hand. “Now, please…” she said, almost in a bored tone of voice.

  The two bouncers, hairy chests and zipped masks and all, stepped inside from their posts outside. They had disabled the two men who were watching them. And they were now carrying very large assault rifles. “Hands up gentlemen.”

  Hands, however, did not go up. The men in suits split, the ones on the edges of the group diving for cover and pulling guns out from under their jackets. Not for even a second did they consider disarming.

  The two club guards opened fire after a second of hesitation, surprised at the reaction.

  The three nearest suits fired at the same instant as the guards. Blood exploded out the backs of the gray material with the loud crack of the rifles, and at the same time, the pop of handguns dropped the two guards. Blood sprayed from their bare chests as they stumbled back against the doors and fell.

  Vy and Gabriel hit the floor.

  One of the suits worked his way around behind a booth, gun out, to make sure Anika wouldn’t run. She turned and glared at him. He kept his distance, though, cautious.

  In the silence that had settled over the dance floor, the very distinct sound of a shotgun round being chambered echoed.

  Gabriel, now getting to his knees, frowned.

  None of his men carried shotguns.

  Tempo, the blonde, shoved the kitchen doors open, forcing one of the suits out in front of her at the end of the shotgun. Behind her came Alicia, armed with a submachine gun.

  She turned right, focusing on another suit standing beside the door. Anika noticed that she had a half-crouch walk and the submachine gun pulled tightly to her shoulder.

  These performers had been trained to handle their respective weapons.

  “Throw down your fucking weapons,” Alicia shouted. “There are more of us, we’re well fucking armed.”

  The two men held their weapons out, handle-first, and started to get to the floor.

  But the three men using the booths for cover opened fire.

  Tempo jerked, hit, and the shotgun went off. Point blank. Blood and flesh sprayed across the floor. The second round of the shotgun hit the ceiling as she fell.

  Shards of glass from the mirrored tile shattered and fell, and Alicia fired a burst into the man by her and dove at Gabriel, who held Vy down with a gun to her head.

  Smooth hands grabbed Anika and shoved a gun against her temple. “We’re just going to sit here for a moment, and if you move, you’ll die,” her captor said.

  Anika was not going to sit passively. She elbowed the man behind her and grabbed his gun hand, shoving it up into the air.

  Right by her head, the shot sounded impossibly loud, instead of the pops she’d heard when they first started firing.

  Bits of ceiling fell down and shattered on the floor around them.

  Anika managed to twist her other arm up, and now held on to the man’s gun hand desperately with both hands.

  He grabbed her head with his free hand and smacked it into the booth’s table. Her vision narrowed, but she hung on to the gun. Her sore muscles and bruised ribs protested as they scrabbled around the cushions of the booth. The gun fired twice again into the air.

  He managed to get her up against the back of the booth and shoved his forearm underneath her throat to choke her.

  Then a loud smack staggered him. He let go of her and slumped over.

  Kerrie stood over him with a baseball bat, blood smearing the end of it. She grabbed the gun.

  Anika shoved the man off her, and he slid down under the booth’s table.

  She took a deep breath and looked around. Alicia sat on the floor, submachine gun hanging by a strap on her shoulder, crying as she held Tempo on her lap.

  A couple of the suits crawled in their own pools of blood, lost in a haze of personal pain, trying to get … somewhere.

  Two of the performers sat on chairs holding dish towels to wounds.

  And Vy had Gabriel standing up, holding his own gun to his head. Her hand shook slightly as she also scanned the room, and then spotted Anika.

  She looked relieved.

  29

  The club was locked down and quiet for the day, the neon signs over the doors turned off. Gabriel had been tied up to a pipe in a storeroom in the kitchen.

  Vy spent most of the hour after the gunfight on her phone. Within minutes she’d called in a dark-haired Italian doctor, who’d been escorted quickly through the door—which was barred shut again.

  He confirmed Tempo was dead, stabilized one of the suits, then confirmed the rest of them dead. Both bouncers were dead. Several of the performers
had cuts from glass and debris.

  A silent cleanup began, everyone pitching in to sweep up glass and mop up blood. Someone started crying halfway through.

  No one would look at Anika. And she could hardly bring herself to look up from the area she’d decided to clean up either.

  So much blood.

  * * *

  Vy touched her shoulder. “Anika?”

  Anika was sitting on the carpet just outside the elevator on the lower floor, her back against the wall. She’d meant to get back to the room for a time-out, to try and process everything, but she’d only made it a few steps out of the elevator before needing to sit. She looked up. “Hi, Vy.”

  “How are you doing?” Vy cocked her head as she reached out a hand. “The new hair is different. I almost didn’t recognize you when we came in.”

  “I thought you had handed me over to Gabriel back there.” Anika pulled herself up. “He captured us. He sank Roo’s boat.”

  “I know. I couldn’t send a message ahead. He boarded the boat we were taking here. Took us by surprise. Chernov’s dead.”

  “Chernov?”

  Vy looked over, her body language heavy and tired. “My bodyguard, assistant, you met him back at the club?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” Vy said. “I should have taken this all more seriously than I did.”

  “It’s okay. They have me staying in your room.…”

  “That was a mistake,” Vy said gently. “They should have given you your own room.”

  Anika swallowed. “Tempo, and the others. Why did they do that for me?”

  “Fight back?” Vy put a hand on her shoulder. “They’re tough people in a tough place. They don’t take well to being pushed around. It wasn’t for you, it’s how we all handle security. They all know crowd control. Most of them take personal defense classes, most of them practice target shooting. Some of them … have had rough experiences. We all have. I know you have, too.”

  “This is a lot of bad shit, Vy.”