Arctic Rising Read Free

“Jesus Christ,” over and over again, but she knew that was the sort of useless shit that got you killed. You needed to take action.
    She flicked the safety off.
    They’d pulled clear of the ship by several hundred feet. The two men had moved to this side of the bridge, and one of them got the RPG launcher up onto his shoulder and was aiming at the Plover .
    Anika’s heart raced as she yanked the rear window down. She could hardly focus as she aimed and fired a burst from the Diemaco, hoping she was in time. The ear-bursting chatter shocked her. It drowned out the engines.
    A flare of light burst on the Kosatka ’s bridge as the RPG launched and flew right at her. Anika scrunched low and winced. This was it.
    The entire airbag over the cabin shivered, but didn’t explode.
    “Did they hit us?” Tom shouted back at her.
    “I think it punched through the bag but didn’t explode. It just kept going. Check the bag’s pressure.”
    “We’re losing gas and lift,” Tom yelled.
    Anika propped the Diemaco up on the windowsill and tried to get a better shot at the men on the ship, forcing them to take cover in the bridge with their launcher. Waste-dumping bastards . An RPG? This was the Northwest Passage. They were just north of Canada, not in some war zone.
    The Plover slipped slowly out of the sky as the Kosatka churned on past.
    Up front, Tom got on the radio. Over her quick bursts of fire, Anika could hear him calling for assistance, his voice suddenly sounding pilot-calm as he followed a routine. “Nanisivik Base, Nanisivik Base, Base this is Plover, we’ve been hit by an RPG. We’re under fire. Repeat, under fire. We need assistance by anything in the area.”
    Anika kept the men pinned inside the bridge with her rifle. But now another man with a launcher appeared down on a lower deck. Anika swiveled to shoot at him, but he fired first.
    She kept firing just ahead of that flash of fire, trying to intercept the insanely fast blur of the rocket leaping at her airship.
    The rocket struck the bag and this one exploded as it hit a structural spar inside. Melting fabric rained down around the cabin. Alarms whooped from up front in the cockpit. “We’re going down!” Tom screamed.
    Anika could feel it: her stomach lifted toward her chest. The Plover dropped out of the last fifty feet of air in a dignified, fluttering spiral that gave Anika enough time to make sure her survival suit was zipped and to make sure that she had braced herself against the corner of the cabin.
    Outside, the waves became choppier and more defined with each split second as they rose to meet the airship.
    The Plover smacked into the Arctic Ocean with an explosion of spray and flaming debris as the burning gasbag overhead collapsed and draped itself over them with a fluttering sigh.

 
    3
    The world darkened. Electronics sparked and fizzed, then blew out for good. Painfully cold water slapped Anika’s face as it poured through the shattered windows, shocking her.
    The Arctic might be ice free, but it was still damn cold.
    “Tom? Can you hear me?” Ruined equipment and a buckled ceiling blocked her way forward. “Tom?”
    “Anika? I can get out, are you okay?”
    “I can get out through a window. Get clear of the debris, I’ll swim around to you. Okay?”
    He paused for a moment. “Yeah. See you on the other side.”
    He sounded relieved.
    The cabin’s natural displacement had kept the wreckage floating somewhat, but she knew it was starting to settle and would soon get to sinking. Anika didn’t have much time.
    She swam clumsily along to the back window and took a deep breath. There was helium in the gasbag, that was why the first rocket had gone clean through without igniting a massive explosion.
    But she didn’t want to take a big gulp of helium while swimming through the remains of the gasbag and end up passed out, facedown in the cold water.
    She ducked briefly underwater and swam free of the cabin.
    But there was nowhere to