Arctic Rising

by Tobias S. Buckell

  Paige looked up at him and brushed aside stray hair. “No, Roo. I helped Ivan develop the solar shield. I have access to its guidance system. Help me up into my chair, and from here, I can do my best to degrade the performance of the shield if he tries attacking more ships. I want to see this through. To be honest, I think we need the shield. We’ve let the genie out. But I refuse to let him stain his gift to the world with more blood. I can’t have that on my conscience.”

  Anika shook her head. Paige still believed in Ivan, deep down. She still was trying to help him, after she’d been shot by him. That was a friendship born of a lifetime of understanding each other on a level Anika wasn’t sure she’d ever seen.

  “Let me look at this thing first,” Roo asked, pointing at Paige’s bloody hand, still pressed hard against her stomach. “I have first-aid experience.”

  “No, Roo, you’re wasting time,” she said, in the same sort of tone of voice a teacher scolded a misbehaving student with. “Get me up to my chair. Hurry.”

  She grunted in pain as he got an arm under her and pulled her up. Anika got the other side, and they set Paige on the oversized executive chair in front of the desk.

  Anika saw more blood spill from between her fingers as they moved her. She wiped Paige’s paling face free of sweat with the corner of her jacket.

  “A lifetime of being ignored,” Paige said. “A lifetime of knowing that everything we worked for would always be able to be subverted by millions pumped into whisper campaigns that said doing nothing was safer, easier. He thinks the only way to balance the field is by playing the same game they are: use force. He wants to use the same language. Please, don’t think him evil. He was twisted into this by larger forces. Forces that refuse to back down or negotiate. You understand, right?”

  Anika wiped Paige’s forehead free of sweat again. She didn’t really understand, and she wasn’t going to tell Paige she was wasting her life on a man who’d snapped and was a danger to everything around them. But then she thought about her father’s tales of “big men.” Men who inspired people to follow them as they outlined great visions and pulled power to themselves. They were always seductive, her father said. Bold visions, powerful statements. Here was someone who stirred your spirit. And after they swept into power, that animal charisma was still there. And long after absolute power corroded, people still believed that vision. Wanted to believe. It was hard to think that a person could change from the person you believed in to something more horrible. “How do we pilot the sub?”

  “You’re a pilot, you will figure it out quickly enough.” She opened another drawer and handed Anika a phone. “But if you do have problems, call me. It’s the only number listed in the phone. It should work, I think, as long as you’re inside our headquarters. I’ll talk you through it. Now go,” she hissed.

  Roo spun the ship’s wheel, and with a puff of pressurized air, the wood-paneled door rolled aside.

  They walked through the small corridor, barely wider than their shoulders. At the end was a small moon pool. The blue water slapped against metal grating, and the ceiling overhead reflected blue rippled waves back at them.

  The tower of a midget submarine broke the water, close enough to the grating that they could step into it and climb down the ladder. The front of the submarine was a large convex viewing bubble. The main body of it was a long cylindrical tube of metal, painted bright yellow. A cage of struts surrounded the cylinder, with equipment bolted onto it. Anika recognized none of it, though she assumed some of it was their air, some of it ballast.

  “How simple does it look?” Roo asked as Anika settled into the cockpit and looked around at the unfamiliar panels and controls.

  “Give me a minute,” Anika said. She grabbed a plastic handbook dangling from one of the joysticks on either arm of the chair.

  Attitude, thrusters. She looked down. The pedals by her feet controlled the up and down vectoring of thrusters, oddly enough. Things were not laid out like a plane, but she could figure it out, as long as she kept thinking about what she was doing.

  Paige had left a handbook with labeled steps. Power on, air scrubbers, pressurizing, and ballast.

  Anika looked back. There was barely room in the bench seat behind her for Vy and Roo to squeeze together. This was really a personal submarine.

  “Hatch closed?” Anika asked.

  “Yep. I also untied us,” Vy said.

  “Right.” Anika followed the steps on Paige’s handbook. Lights flickered on, including bright spotlights on the cage outside. They lit up the metal dock in front of them. Fans hummed inside, and relays clicked as different control mechanisms came online.

  The next step startled her, as the sub blew a mist of air and leftover water out of its tanks, then a faint thrumming started as they filled.

  They slowly sank away from the moon pool, falling into the dark blue of the deeper ocean. Anika set the small handbook aside after one last quick flip through, then grabbed the two joysticks and eased them forward.

  Somewhere behind her, on the cage, propellors kicked into motion and thrust them forward.

  When Anika glanced back up, she couldn’t see where they’d come from, just miles and miles of ice and upside-down mountains, the peaks descending down toward them.

  38

  They surfaced several miles from Thule’s docks, and Anika cut the power. They bobbed in place, half submerged, waves slapping at the top half of the craft and crashing over the structure.

  Anika turned around and looked at Vy and Roo. “What are we going to do now?”

  “Find that ship of hers and get the hell away,” Vy said, holding up the microchipped plastic case Paige had given them. “We have the keys to her ship.”

  “No, about that,” Anika said, pointing upward. From her half-submerged position in the cockpit’s bubble of glass, she could see the roiling silver sky.

  “Leave it,” Vy said.

  Roo leaned forward. “So far Ivan only threatened the blockade. He’s just asking to be allowed to deploy the device and … turn back years of disaster.”

  “The people on that carrier died,” Anika said. “They had families and friends.”

  “And how many millions are going to die as things get worse out there because we’re fumbling around with the world?” Roo said. “Worse weather. More heat. Higher oceans, more flooding out in South Asia. That’s millions of lives, Anika. Weigh those lives against those of a handful of soldiers, people doing their jobs who know it’s risky.”

  “Like me?” Anika asked. “Or Tom? Casualties? Collateral damage?”

  “Gabriel’s people shot you two down,” Vy said. “Not the company.”

  “Does it matter?” Anika asked. “Ivan’s refusal to create the shield in a way that involved everyone got them crazy about this plan to nuke it. Secrecy, power, how is he any different than any other? That mess was what got me and Tom shot down as well. And it is not the way to go about it. He’s going to get many more people killed. And what if it escalates? One carrier has already been destroyed: what if the entire blockade attacks, and air forces are drawn in? Thule dies. What if the nations decide that it is okay if everyone knows they attacked with a nuclear weapon and Thule is destroyed by Russia, the U.S., and China for its super weapon? This has the potential to get much, much uglier. What’s your feeling then, Roo? Still worth it?”

  “Versus the tens of millions that pay the price of losing their coastlines, dying in floods, dying from crop failures? What am I supposed to say to that?” Roo snapped. “Predict how many might die in this exchange compared to how many we know will continue dying? You’re thinking you’ll be able to get back through Gaia Security, and what? Fire that missile on your own? No. You can’t. You can’t finish what Gabriel started. And Gaia has the rest of the team that was going to launch the missile locked away. There is nothing you can do, Anika. Let it go.”

  “God damn it, Roo.” Anika turned back to the controls.

  Vy reached forward and squeezed her s
houlder. “I’m sorry, Anika. I see your points. Seeing Thule torn apart like this is horrific. Everyone’s lives get turned upside down if the Arctic goes back. But I think Roo is right.”

  Anika didn’t say anything, or even acknowledge Vy. After a moment Vy let go of Anika’s shoulder and folded her arms. She seemed to get lost in thought as Anika stared ahead and piloted the sub toward the harbor.

  * * *

  Anika threaded them around the giant wind turbines that powered the harbor, and got them close enough to a dock. They’d called ahead and warned the harbormaster, worried that there were mines or something protecting the harbor.

  Vy jumped to the dock, slid on some ice, and then caught herself. She tied the sub off as Roo got out and helped her.

  Anika clambered out and took a deep breath of cold, fresh air.

  “It doesn’t just go away, Roo,” Vy said softly as they both crouched over a large cleat. It sounded like she didn’t want to say that, as she stuttered. She hadn’t stopped mulling over their argument in the sub about what to do next, apparently.

  “What you mean?”

  Anika glanced across the water at them.

  Vy twisted to face Roo. “I’ve been thinking: technology doesn’t just go away. It never has. You can slow its growth, you can try and stop it. But once it’s made, it escapes. Some places have slid, some countries have locked it down, like Japan and guns, or North Korea. But worldwide, once it’s out, it’s out, right? Technology just doesn’t go away.”

  Anika hopped onto the dock. She saw exactly where Vy was going with this. They had to make Roo see it, too, before he walked off down the dock. “Vy’s right,” Anika said. “Roo, someone else will make more of these spheres. Someone with a desktop fabrication printer. Maybe millions of people. Or someone with a small factory in their garage. There are enough spheres floating around; someone will pick them up. Or leak the instructions online. Or just imitate the result. This can’t die.”

  Vy smiled. “The question is control.”

  “I’m not saying the shield isn’t necessary, Roo. The shield is, something is. The question is, who controls the shield? Do we make a choice, or do we have it forced on us by one single person. One of the reasons geo-engineering sucks for solving these issues is that whoever controls the project has this … huge fucking end-of-the-world James Bond villain-device thing. It’s as much a military problem. Who voted on this? Who got to decide? Yeah, there are too many people—what’s better, killing off a bunch of them or building better farm techniques and density? Who gets to decide? I fucking prefer democracy to one person with a vision. Because sometimes you’re safe in that person’s vision, and sometimes you’re an acceptable casualty. Get it? Who do you want in charge of that thing: an aging old rich dude who’s convinced the ends justify the means? Or some other solution, maybe even something like one of the government systems here in Thule?”

  Roo held up a palm. “You crazy,” he said.

  But Anika pressed him. “We can save lives, Roo. And you know it. You have the contacts. Who else besides us can make this happen, right now?”

  “We need the nuclear missile. And we’d need the military to turn Gabriel back over to us. Even harder: we need to convince Gabriel to help us. And I’m thinking, after what the three of us did back there, he won’t be interested in that, yeah?”

  “He’ll help,” Anika said forcefully. He needed to set that missile off, even if meant working with the three of them.

  “We’ll need to convince people to risk an attack on the missile, when Ivan all but owns the sky,” Roo continued.

  “And when we attack,” Vy added, “Ivan will try to evaporate us.”

  Anika hadn’t thought about that. She swallowed and looked forward. “I’ll go alone,” she said. “Give me Gabriel, other military volunteers. I can’t ask you two to do this, just to help me get ready.”

  “Oh bullshit!” Vy said. “I don’t like this idea. I think we’re going to get ourselves killed. But damnit, Anika, I’m coming with you. There’s no way you’re doing this by yourself. Roo?”

  Roo let out a deep breath that hung in the air between them all. “You asking a lot, Vy. Joining you two on a suicide mission…”

  The silver cloud overhead flashed, light rippling through it, bouncing around, getting redirected, and a beam stabbed out of the sky into the distant ocean.

  Anika flinched, and she saw Roo do the same.

  “There are people dying, Roo. Right now. Out there over the curve of the horizon.”

  The beam of light abruptly sputtered, split into several different beams that wandered aimlessly around, then fizzled.

  “Paige is trying to blunt him,” she said. “But it’s only going to get worse.”

  Roo was shielding his eyes with a hand and looking up at the silver sky.

  “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck y’all. Fuck duty.” His shoulders slumped and Vy started chuckling.

  “Who ever thought we’d be working together helping those guys,” Vy said, pointing out toward the blockade.

  “You a Southern girl. Always had that flag-waving thing in you,” Roo said as he pulled a phone out of his jacket and pointed at Anika. “We see what we can assemble. We reach out to whoever running the blockade, coordinate with them. We do this correct and official, right?”

  “Correct and official,” Anika agreed, as the lightning danced around the artificial clouds overhead.

  39

  Thule harbor had become a ghost town. Even the massive wind turbines, skyscrapers in and of themselves, had frozen in place, as if the wind had decided to flee with everyone else.

  Large parts of the harbor had ripped free: docks attached to floating barges towed out to sea, only their debris left behind. Around the harbor, bridges had been severed, and large chunks of the superstructure cut by high-powered welding torches or detonated in order to free demesenes.

  Anika could see, here in a conference room in one of the harbor’s taller buildings, that huge chunks of ice had been dynamited free. Large chunks of Thule, calving off and headed for the open sea, much like the free ice had once done twenty years ago. Headed for the Northwest Passage.

  Whole cities out floating around the polar sea, keeping a nervous eye on their refrigeration cables.

  Turning around in the large conference room, she could look out one of the corner windows, where she could still spot a few buildings on ice slipping away to open sea under the silver-gray sky.

  “Ms. Duncan?”

  Anika turned around. A young man in U.S. Navy uniform stood at the door. It was a wet uniform, and the young man was still shivering. The U.S. polar navy-wear was supposed to be some high-tech clothing that sealed the cuffs and trapped body heat and kept water out, not all that different from a dry suit used by scuba divers, but apparently even that still hadn’t kept him toasty. “Yes?”

  Three more navy types walked through the door, with Roo following. And behind him, Gabriel in handcuffs, his usually carefully brushed hair disheveled, a glassy look in his eyes. He didn’t seem sure where he was.

  Anika stared at him for a long beat, and he looked past her, out the windows.

  He seemed drugged. “Roo, what’s wrong with him?”

  The man standing to Gabriel’s right answered her. “He’s mildly sedated right now. He’s claustrophobic; the submarine ride over was stressful.”

  She looked at him, and he finally met her eyes. “It has been a long few days, Ms. Duncan,” Gabriel said, his voice scratchy from a deep weariness that made Anika twinge. His mouth tightened. “Please, let’s hurry this up.”

  “Commander Alexandra Forsythe,” said a no-nonsense officer with a shaved head, as she shook Anika’s hand, introducing herself. She pulled Anika over to a window. “The U.S. military has had plans for an orbiting solar mirror array for over forty years. The army in particular wanted to be able to concentrate solar light to solar stills and panels from orbit, in order to allow for better mobility. If there’s one organization on
this planet that is aware of the mobilization limitations having to ship fuel around creates, it’s people who are faced with having to mobilize hundreds of thousands and keep them moving and using their equipment. However, other than demonstration tests, it was determined that anything bigger would be a default weaponization of space and a treaty violation. Whoever did it first would trigger a rapid arms race over our very heads. So now we’re in the middle of that very real mess and, guess what? Most of our response plans are completely inadequate for this scenario because they all assumed actual orbit, not high altitude floating bubbles controlled by an actual U.S. corporation instead of some foreign country.”

  “So are you going to help us?” Anika asked.

  “Some old Brit colleague from a war-gaming conference I attended five years ago calls me up and says I have to talk to Prudence Jones, like right now. And suddenly I’m finding out about nuclear bombs being in place at the site. So here’s the problem: my superiors are dealing with politicians losing their minds. The solution to this problem, an ordered attack, will cost the lives of a lot of my people, and a lot of people who’re left on Thule. So yes, Ms. Duncan, I’m going to help you set off a nuclear bomb. I shouldn’t be helping you, I’m not under orders to do so. But it’s clearly the right fucking decision, and it’s going to be a hell of a lot easier to ask forgiveness than permission here.”

  Anika sagged from relief. “Thank you.”

  Commander Forsythe leaned in close. “But Ms. Duncan, the reason I’m up here is this: we’re going to be ghosts, you understand? I’m not here, you’re not here, and the SEALs I’m lending you, they’ve all volunteered and will swear they were never here. We would have tried to get a special operations group from the CIA, but that requires presidential approval, and time to fly them out. With that cloud overhead, we don’t really have that, so we’re making do the best we can.” Forsythe held out a pad.

  Anika looked down at it again. “What’s this?”