Arctic Rising Read Free Page A

surface. The heavy fabric of the gasbag sat on the water.
    Lungs bursting already, Anika kept moving along, looking for light.
    There.
    She burst free and up out of the water. The wind stung her face, but she’d never been so glad to see the gray clouds overhead.
    Shivering, almost convulsing despite the survival suit, she pulled herself on top of the floating debris and looked around.
    “Tom!”
    She pulled herself up over a large spar attached to a pocket of fabric, still filled with helium and listlessly floating just above the surface, hoping to spot Tom and orient herself.
    Instead, she found herself staring at the bow of the Kosatka . It had turned around and was now bearing down on the remains of the Plover . A massive bow wave piled up in front of the Kosatka, rippling through the debris of the fallen airship and scattering it even further.
    Water surged through the mess, soaking Anika.
    The ship shoved its way through like an old icebreaker, leaving a mess of even smaller pieces of airship behind it. The mounds of cloth, broken spars, and helium and air pockets underneath that kept the mangled wreck still afloat, slapped up against the side of the Kosatka, screeching against the old, barnacled hull.
    Anika watched its bubbled and rust-pitted bulk sweep past her, a giant moving wall of metal. After it pushed its way through the worst of the debris, the engines coughed back to life, thrumming so powerfully her chest ached. They’d coasted through with them off to protect the propellers.
    The churning water threw Anika around, doused her, and then just as abruptly, the water calmed a bit, broken by the ship’s passing. Anika floated in the quiet, listening to the fizz of disturbed air bubbling around her.
    It was so damn cold, it was almost all she could think about.
    After a moment she fumbled around inside her suit and pulled out the EPIRB. It was the size of a small flare in the palm of her gloved hand. She broke the seal on it and then put it back inside a zippered pocket.
    The tiny radio beacon inside the device activated, and it began to pip audibly to let her know the distress signal was going out. She lay back, still shivering, and yanked the suit’s inflation strings.
    The survival suit filled with air and bobbed on the surface.
    Anika yanked the hood as tight around her face as possible, pulled her legs up to her chest as best she could, then wrapped her arms around her chest and waited for rescue.
    So damn cold.

 
    4
    A ferry skidded on hydrofoils over the dark ocean, floating almost magically on the air above the waves. When it slowed, the foils sank deeper into the sea, unable to hold it up. The ferry’s hull slowly settled down into the water, until it looked just like any other ship.
    High above the ferry a parafoil hung in the wind. The taught cables beneath it vibrated and sang as the kite-sail began to dance a figure-eight pattern overhead, allowing the ferry to slow down enough to meander through the debris.
    Anika tried to sit up, forgetting for a second where she was. The movement sank her, and cold water washed over her face and dribbled down the sides of her cheeks. It even got inside the suit a bit, down her neck and onto her shoulders.
    As the ferry picked its way through the debris of Plover, Anika waved weakly at it. “Over here!”
    Someone on the deck spotted her and the ferry changed course.
    An orange life preserver hit the water a few feet away. Anika clumsily paddled over to it, then pulled it on underneath her arms.
    Three burly men in plaid shirts and blue coveralls hauled her out of the water and over the railing, grunting as they helped her onto the deck.
    The contrast of sudden heat from the ferry cabin and the cold water she’d been pulled out of started her shivering again, her teeth pressed against each other so hard they felt like they would shatter. Her muscles spasmed, like she was having a seizure.
    One of the men threw a first aid kit on the dirty metal floor in