by A. G. Riddle
“I’d like to read the rest of the Citium conclave archives,” Desmond said.
Yuri took one of Desmond’s knights with a rook and raised an eyebrow.
“The records after 1986,” Desmond clarified.
“There are none.”
Desmond leaned back in his chair. “You might be the least talkative person I’ve ever met.” That was saying something, given that Orville Hughes had raised him.
Yuri ran his thumb over the knight he had just taken from Desmond. “I grew up in a place where words could get you killed. Even the wrong look.”
Desmond knew Yuri had grown up in Stalingrad and had been only six years old when the Nazis had invaded. Yuri had lived under Stalin in the years after. And Desmond knew what it was like to grow up scared to speak your mind. He had gotten more than a few tongue-lashings—and worse—from Orville.
“Why did they stop keeping records?”
“You have it backwards.”
“How so?”
“The meetings stopped.”
“Then…”
“You read the minutes. You saw the fear creeping into the members.”
“They felt time was running out.”
“Yes. And there were competing projects.”
“So what happened?”
Yuri set the knight on the table. “Your move.”
Desmond advanced a pawn, barely able to focus on the game.
Yuri moved his king, positioning it out of Desmond’s reach. “A tragedy occurred. A sort of… force of nature.” He paused. “I believe you’re familiar with such things.”
The massive fire that had taken Desmond’s family—why was Yuri bringing that up? Was he trying to distract him? Was the older man hiding something?
Desmond moved his only remaining rook to protect his own king.
Yuri took it with a bishop.
Desmond studied the board. He was going to lose. He didn’t care. He wanted to know why the archives had stopped. There was something more to it—he sensed as much.
“Your focus is misplaced.”
Desmond glanced at the board, but Yuri pointed at him. “All I can tell you is that in 1986, we were forced to go into hiding. But that will end soon.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Looking Glass. It will heal all wounds. Even our deepest burns.”
Conner listened to the orders from the National Guard units coming over the radio. A curfew had been established—nationwide. Anyone caught out after dark would be taken to the X1 pandemic camps and confined.
He glanced out the window. He guessed that the sun would set in about two hours. The units were taking up positions, gearing up to conduct a grid search just after nightfall. When they did, they would find the vans off Sand Hill Road. Conner and his men would need to be gone by then.
If they weren’t, they’d have to fight.
Chapter 9
On the flat screens inside the submersible, Peyton watched the Beagle come into view. The wrecked submarine seemed almost embedded into the ocean floor now, as if the Earth were wrapping its fingers around it, trying to pull the wreck down and swallow it whole. Beside her, Nigel shivered, the messenger bag clutched tightly to his chest like a life vest.
“Our first order of business,” Lin said, “will be to equip Doctor Greene. There’s cold weather gear in a supply room here.” A map of the Beagle was spread out on the floor, and she pointed to a chamber near the submersible docking port. She turned to the two Navy SEALs sitting at the controls. “Chief Adams, you and Seaman Rodriguez must prepare to repel a boarding party. I defer to you on that matter. What can we do?”
“We have to consider our advantages,” Adams said. “First, we know the battlefield. Second, we can choose where in the sub to fight. If they want to capture you, they have to come through us.”
“And working against us?” Lin asked.
“Time and surprise.”
The submersible banked as Rodriguez maneuvered to the Beagle’s docking port.
“They can wait us out,” Lin said flatly.
Adams nodded. “Given the choice, you’d rather attack a starving, fatigued enemy. And they can do it at a time of their choosing. We must always be ready. They can rest and plan and choose their moment.”
A good analysis, Peyton thought. And deeply concerning.
“But we’ll be ready,” Adams said. “We can make the Beagle an extremely hostile environment for them to operate in.”
On the Citium submersible, Commander Furst watched the video feed from the camera they had placed on the ice. He kept hoping to see Stockton’s arm reach out of the water, grip the surface, and crawl out. But there was no sign of him. It was as if the water had paralyzed him. Stockton had extensive cold weather training. What had Lin Shaw done to him? The former Citium researcher had killed two of his men—highly trained operatives—in minutes.
Furst had underestimated her. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
The crew had anchored poles in the ice to hold battery-powered lights, which shone like buzzing lamps in an ice parking lot. The sailors were working feverishly, throwing supplies off Arktika’s deck, which was less than ten feet above the water line; the ship was sinking fast now. The captain was shouting orders and pointing. A column of men carried a long metal ramp out of the ship, clamped it to the lip of the deck, and let it fall to the ice.
A column of people poured from the ship—dressed in white clean suits and civilian cold weather gear. They carried bundles and crates, some of which had the word specimen scrawled on the side in white letters.
Furst shook his head. Priorities.
The civilians began unpacking the bundles, laying insulated pads on the ice, and erecting tents. They knew each minute they spent out in the elements would push them closer to death.
A second group began cutting into strips the red tarps that had covered the lifeboats. They placed the pieces on the ice, tacked them down with metal stakes, and spread them out, forming a large X.
Furst smirked. Futile.
The roar of an engine drew his attention. A snowmobile emerged from the aft bay doors, turned on the deck, and slowly powered onto the ramp and down to the ice.
Furst watched, hoping…but the ice held. Of course it would.
Another snowmobile followed. The drivers were wrapped in layers. Two swollen duffel bags sat on the back of each snowmobile, with a drone and radio signal booster strapped on top.
Furst smiled ruefully. He had underestimated the Russians. It didn’t mean they would survive, but it would force him to expedite his attack. He couldn’t wait out the Shaws. Help might arrive.
Lin Shaw had killed Stockton and Bromitt, men who were like brothers to him. She would soon pay for that.
Inside the Beagle, Peyton watched her mother pry open the door to the supply closet. The frozen hinges screamed like a trapped animal. Lin took a stack of thick blankets off the shelf and handed them to Peyton, then grabbed the closest suit and a helmet. Both were bulky, and reminded Peyton of the suit Neil Armstrong wore when he walked on the moon—which was likely only a few years before this one was manufactured, she thought wryly.
Over the comm channel, Lin said, “It’s old, but it’ll keep Nigel warm.” She checked the suit’s heater and oxygen supply, then pushed a button, activating the helmet lights.
Peyton was amazed everything still worked. I guess they don’t make them like they used to.
Lin squatted down, moved a pair of boots off of a steel box, and lifted the lid, revealing a row of handguns. She tucked two in the pockets of her suit and handed a third to Peyton.
“You know how to use it?”
“I’ve… had some basic weapons training.”
“That’s all you need. If you’re forced to use it down here, it’ll be at close range.” Lin looked over at her daughter, her headlamps meeting Peyton’s like two lighthouses in the night. “If forced, will you use it?”
She was asking if Peyton could ta
ke a life. And Peyton didn’t know the answer. Just the thought of it went against the oath she’d taken as a doctor. It went against her very being.
“I’ll do my best.”
Lin stared at her for a long moment. “Remember, we’re not just fighting for our lives. We’re fighting for others, too.”
Peyton felt as though her mother knew exactly which buttons to push. But with each passing hour, Peyton had begun to see a new side of her mother. She’d watched her do things she had thought Lin Shaw utterly incapable of. Like killing those two soldiers aboard the Arktika. Those sort of skills and instincts didn’t develop overnight. They took years.
Peyton had always felt that her relationship with her mother was split between two periods: before and after that day in 1986 when the Beagle sank and she was told that her father was dead. The Lin Shaw before that day had been a nurturing mother, cheerful, doting even. Afterward… she became withdrawn and stoic, hiding a deep sadness. She spent endless hours on her genetics research. She saw to her three children’s needs, but she did it with measured distance, as if she was scared to love, to get too close. And perhaps her fears had been well-founded. Her oldest, Andrew, had been taken from her—by Yuri—as a way to control her. She had never married again, or even dated.
Only now did Peyton know the truth: her mother had been waiting all those years, hoping her father would return, that Yuri would be defeated. Half of that hope had come true: three weeks ago, Peyton had found her father, who had been in hiding since the day the Beagle sank. But within two days of being found, he was killed by Yuri in the battle on the Isle of Citium.
They had recovered her brother though, and Peyton would forever be grateful for that. He was in Australia now, trying to put his life back together. She didn’t know if that would be possible after all he had done—been made to do—but she hoped.
But if Lin Shaw was once driven by hope, Peyton thought, she was no more. Now she was driven by a desire for revenge. Her mother wanted to finish her research, to build a device to counter Yuri’s Looking Glass, but her need for revenge—her driving hatred—was the only thing that could have enabled her to leave those people to die on the ship. The only thing that could give her the will to dispatch those two soldiers without a moment’s hesitation.
Peyton motioned to the gun in Lin’s pocket. “Do you know how to use it?”
“Yes.” She stepped out of the supply room. “I learned a lot of things when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong. Things I didn’t want to know.”
High above the Beagle, the Citium submersible was navigating to an indentation in the ice sheet about a mile from the Arktika. Furst and his team had made the pocket before the assault, and had used it to broadcast an update to their mother ship, the Invisible Sun. A thin layer of ice had formed since then, but the submersible punched through it easily.
When the channel was open once more, Furst said, “Ice Harvest calling Invisible Sun. Do you copy?”
“We read you, Ice Harvest.”
“Project report as follows: nest is gone, however two birds were spotted flying south at high speed. Recommend you surveil and tag.”
“Copy, Ice Harvest.”
“Destruction of nest has left some birds on the ice. Also recommend you intervene.”
“Copy, Ice Harvest.”
“Final project update: mother bird and her youngest have flown the nest, believed to be making their way to a previous nest. Going there next in hopes of capturing for further study.”
“Understood, Ice Harvest. Godspeed.”
A hundred and fifty miles north of Alaska, a cruise ship floated in the Arctic Ocean, its engines off. There were no tourists on deck or in the cabins below. The Invisible Sun was a Citium vessel, and despite its appearance, it wasn’t a cruise ship at all. It was a floating fortress.
In the CIC, a bank of screens showed satellite footage of the ice sheet. The feeds panned across the white desert until it found the snowmobile. Coordinates and speed appeared a second later, updating in real time. A second snowmobile appeared on another screen.
Captain Mikhailov watched the feeds, sizing up her adversary. “Fire at will.”
On deck, the floor of an outdoor basketball court opened up like a drawbridge, and a platform rose from within it, holding twelve long-range missiles. Two of them launched.
A few seconds later, the screens revealed the result: two hits. Mikhailov just hoped the targets hadn’t gotten a message off.
One of the satellites began repositioning to surveil the wreckage of the Arktika. Prior to now, they had purposefully avoided direct surveillance on the off chance that it would tip off the Alliance about their attack.
An hour later, the video feed showed the location. The massive icebreaker was gone, a pond of blue-green water left in its wake. A large red X was spread out in the ice, with dozens of white tents at the end of one arm, glowing green and purple in the dim light of the aurora borealis. Four lifeboats floated in the still water.
“Captain?” the tactical officer asked.
“Start with two.”
Through the windows of the bridge, she saw the missiles take flight. The screens went white as the weapons reached their destination.
Lin climbed into the submersible, dragging the suit behind her. Nigel was shaking violently now.
“Hang on, Doctor Greene. You’ll be warm soon.”
Peyton unfolded the thick blankets and wrapped them around Nigel. Lin placed the open end of the suit against the electric heater’s vent. Nigel stared at it, shivering.
“The suit’s been on ice for thirty years,” Lin said. “You don’t want to get in yet.”
Peyton ran her hands up and down Nigel’s body, trying to warm him.
A few minutes later, Lin pulled the suit back from the heater and tipped it, letting the water pour out onto the floor. She ran a rolled up blanket inside, doing her best to dry the legs, arms, and torso area.
When Nigel was suited up, the three of them crawled back into the Beagle and set about finishing their part of the preparations. They sealed the bulkhead doors surrounding the docking port, then walked back to the supply closet, where they each took a sack and filled it with duct tape and flashlights. They snaked through the passageways, gathering up the LED lights on the floor and placing them in their sacks. At the rows of bunks, they rolled the corpses toward the wall and peeled off the sheets and blankets. Their plan required every one they could find.
They closed every door and sealed every hatch they encountered. In the spaces in between, they periodically stopped, squatted low, and stretched a folded piece of duct tape across the corridor—creating false trip lines just above ankle height. The two Navy SEALs had deployed similar measures, except some of theirs were connected to actual explosives. The key was to slow the enemy, to wear away at his vigilance. Make him get sloppy.
In the longer passageways, they hung the blankets and taped them to the ceiling, walls, and floor. Beyond these, they spread out the LEDs and put flashlights in position. Adams had predicted that their adversary would have night vision goggles. These blankets would create a wall that, when removed, would release a blinding flash of light.
Finally, they met up with Adams and Rodriguez in the labs. The chambers would be their citadel—the arena where they would fight to the end, if forced.
The SEALs merely nodded when they entered.
Meals, Ready-to-Eat sat on a steel-topped table. In the corner sat a stack of guns and magazines—the sum total of the contents of the weapons lockers on the Beagle. Adams had insisted that they empty them, depriving their enemy of ammunition.
Over the comm line, Lin said, “What’s next, Mister Adams?”
“We’ve prepared the Beagle. Now we prep ourselves. We eat, sleep—in shifts—and stay ready.”
Lin said nothing, just moved to the table and took one of the MREs. She raised her visor and began eating.
Peyton did the same. Until the first bite reached her mouth, she didn’t realize
how hungry she was.
She awoke to the sound of thunder.
The lab was dimly lit. Rodriguez sat with an automatic rifle in his lap, watching the choke point they had created.
There couldn’t be thunder down here, Peyton thought. It was from above. The surface. A bomb. Or missile.
Yes. The surface had been attacked. The last survivors of the Arktika were dead.
She had no doubt the Citium soldiers would come for them next.
Chapter 10
Conner hated waiting, sitting in the van, doing nothing while his brother regained his memories. And when the curfew began, he’d have no choice but to stay put. He needed to stretch his legs. More than that: he needed to do something.
“I’m going in,” he muttered.
In the front seat, Goins turned back.
“To the office,” Conner clarified as he got out of the van. “Des may have hidden something for himself there.”
Conner had been to the building many times. He didn’t have a key, but Yuri did, and he had sent that key with him. He entered the building, climbed the stairs to the third floor, and pushed open the glass door to Desmond’s office. The Icarus Capital logo was emblazoned on the wall in routed aluminum letters. Below it was a directory of companies the firm had invested in, each company name written on a piece of paper slotted behind clear plastic.
Rapture Therapeutics, Phaethon Genetics, Rendition Games, Cedar Creek Entertainment, Rook Quantum Sciences, Extinction Parks, Labyrinth Reality, CityForge, Charter Antarctica
Conner remembered some of the investments. They were like Desmond’s children. He even incubated some right here in his office when they were getting started.
Desmond had expanded the office over the years, taking over adjacent suites and remodeling along the way. The place had been cared for, a source of pride. But now, it looked like a tornado had hit it. A Citium tactical team had searched it from top to bottom when Desmond went rogue, and they had left nothing unturned. The fabric of the office chairs had been cut open, and the foam ripped out; the round legs of the cheap IKEA desks had been unscrewed, searched, and tossed in a pile like gray metal matchsticks; even the tiles in the drop ceiling had been removed, exposing the air conditioning ducts and sprinkler lines. They had been thorough.