by J. R. Rain
Ayla laughs.
“What about that is funny?” I almost glare at her.
“The ‘big sleep’? You’re stuck in the 1940s.”
“Yeah… yeah…” I look over the amplifier and figure the best place for the charge is right in the spear hole, about halfway between the main electronics on the floor and the ring at the top. Without the glacier overhead, the blast might’ve launched that donut straight out the dome. In that case, I’d have put the charge on top of it, but thousands of tons of ice will contain the pressure wave.
“Shame to blow the ship up,” says Ayla. “Why are you bothering with a bomb anyway? The machine’s already shot.”
“It’s broken too much to use, but not too much for humans to take it apart and study it. Do you want them learning our secrets?”
Ayla regards me with surprised respect. “Why, Mina, I didn’t realize you had such a superiority streak in you.”
“It’s not superiority. No one in their right mind lets children play with dangerous things.”
She laughs. “Humans are children now, huh?”
Yeah, yeah. So what if it did sound condescending. Not worth the argument or the hour it would drain out of my life. I set the timer for twenty minutes, start it, and stuff the brick-sized charge into the spear hole. “This charge isn’t going to scratch the ship. It’ll clean out this room, yes. Possibly warp the walls, but the rest of the ship will be fine. The real shame here is that the Russian government is probably going to sit on this thing and hide it from the world. Maybe even make some breakthroughs for themselves.”
“This isn’t the only one, Mina. Starship, I mean.”
I stare at my sister. “What? You know about another?”
She examines her fingernails. “There are some archives in the Dominion’s possession. After what you showed me, I now think they came from Elysar. The archives said some of the same things about Siberia here as they did about Chichen Itza. It kinda makes sense now how the Mayans had such an advanced knowledge of stars and planets. Ooh. I wonder if the human sacrifice thing is what history did to conceal the occasional reckless vampire?”
“Who knows…? Fascinating to think about really, but we’re literally on a timer now.” I trot toward the door.
“So wait… that’s it? You’re leaving?”
I don’t slow down. “Yep. Saw what I needed to see, about to blow up what I needed to blow up…”
“What about the ship?”
“It isn’t going anywhere. I’m not an archaeologist. Someone else can get famous. Are you coming or would you rather be caught by the Russians?”
Ayla jogs up behind me.
While hurrying down the spiral staircase to the lowest deck, a thought occurs to me. “How did you just walk right in?”
She giggles. “Mostly followed you. And you did compel the two guards outside to ignore everything.”
At the bottom level, I back out of the stairs, glaring at her. “You read my mind?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know we can’t do that.” She grasps my shoulders and kisses me on the cheek. “I started to program them to forget me, but saw you already did.”
Affectionate contact with my sister hasn’t happened in a long time. Not since a little while before she moved out of the mansion where we grew up. I never suspected she’d fall in with the Dominion, and seeing her be so normal after… is putting me on edge. However, among vampires, shooting each other in the face is roughly equivalent to a spirited fistfight between drinking buddies. We were never violent as kids, but I knew a boy who routinely stabbed his little brother in the head to shut him up. The two of them played guns with live ammo, too. Total Addams family situation there. Despite being an Origin, the thought of a pair of tween vampire boys running around firing actual guns at each other as a form of tag strikes me as psychotic. We regenerate, but we still feel pain like humans do.
We hurry down the corridor to the airlock, cycle it, and step out into the glacial tunnel. A blast of icy air hits my cheeks like a flying cloud of razor blades. Shit! It’s cold. I tug my face covering back up, having acclimated to the surprisingly warm interior of the ship. Ayla also pulls a fleece mask up.
I glance at her. “So, how are you planning to get out of here? Do you have transport waiting?”
“Not exactly. I snuck in on a supply helicopter a day or so ago.”
“Wait.” I face her. “You were going to pop me in the head to take me back to the Dominion, and you had no transportation prearranged?”
“I’d have worked something out. You’re the reckless one, I’m the spontaneous one.”
“Reckless and spontaneous aren’t that different.”
“You can’t see right now, but I’m grinning at you. You’re reckless. We both do random things at a whim, but you’re thoughtful enough to consider that what you’re going to do is potentially dangerous or bad… and you still do it. I still act with a degree of self-preservation; just wait until the last minute to come up with a plan.”
“Right.” I roll my eyes and head toward the steps. “So, what’s your plan now?”
“Leave the camp.”
“Oh, and then what?”
“Take whatever ride you have waiting for you back to civilization.”
I stop at the bottom of the stairs and look back at her. “There’s a flaw in that plan.”
“You’re going to arrest me?”
“Argh.” I stare down. “No. I’m an intelligence agent, not a cop. Besides, you’re my sister. The problem is that I don’t have transportation waiting for me. I’m on my own to get back to friendly territory.”
She blinks. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.” I pull my visor down off my head and snug it in place before tugging my hood up.
“You have no plan at all?”
I grin. “I said I have no transportation. A plan is in the works. C’mon, let’s go!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Arctic Fox
I reattach the cleats to my boots, then start up the ice steps. “And shh. There aren’t supposed to be women here. If they hear us talking, we’re going to have to fight our way out.”
“What’s your plan then?” she whispers, her voice echoing up the shaft. “Or is it still in the works?”
I pause halfway up and look back at her. The closest city is Nordvik. It’s roughly 200 miles southeast of us. I’m commandeering a truck and heading there, then mind controlling or driving to the nearest small airport that will take me to the nearest major airport.
My sister mentally gawks at me. There’s no, like, spy helicopter waiting for you out on the glacier?
Nope. They don’t know how long I’ll take or if I’ll be captured. No sense risking a crew plus classified aircraft. The risk of me making my own way out is far less than a potential international incident. Besides, the only way a US helicopter is going to reach Severnaya Zemlya is from an aircraft carrier and the Russians will notice that.
Oh, right.
Yeah. ‘Oh, right.’ I mentally sigh at her. How is it you’re here and you don’t understand all that?
I’m not the trained spy, dear.
So how did you get here?
Ayla bats her eyes at me. Combination of mind control and flashing my tits.
I break eye contact before I think that she only does that because she adores being thought of as pretty. Vampires don’t need to show skin to get what they want. Ayla merely likes the ego boost.
She swats me across the hood. “I am not vain. Well, not that vain. I just have nice tits. They work for me.”
No, she didn’t read my mind. My sister merely knows me too well.
Upon reaching the top of the ice shaft, I peer out into the tent. Vadim and Timur are significantly closer to drunk, but still playing cards. Everything still sounds quiet. Neither man reacts to me as I climb out of the hole. Ayla follows, surprisingly without saying a word or making noise. She may not be a trained spy, but for getting past humans, she m
ight as well be.
Acting like I’m sneaking around will invite scrutiny I can avoid by merely walking like a normal person who belongs here. Inches from the tent flap, a weak feeling of unease comes over me. Ayla stops short at the same time. We look at each other. She shrugs and grabs Vadim’s AK. Anatoly’s AK still hangs off my shoulder on a strap. While debating if I should leave it there or hold it at the ready, the crunch of approaching footsteps outside explains what set my intuition off.
Screw it.
I leave the rifle where it is, hoping to look like a non-guard, and walk out of the tent. A pair of guys close on the left both spin toward me. I offer a brief ‘hey, what’s up’ wave and keep going like I know where I am and have somewhere to be.
“Stop,” says the guy on the left. “What are you doing wandering around this late?”
Ayla steps out behind me.
“Intruders!” shouts the other guy.
I raise my left arm and tap the touchscreen button for the bomblet I planted in their radio system. A dull thud comes from the command trailer, along with a man screaming. Both guys pointing rifles at us flinch at the explosion. Ayla opens fire.
Shit.
I grab my sister and drag her with me as I run to cover behind a large ice mound.
Still shooting, she yells, “Hey!”
One guy goes down, dead on his feet. She nails the other one in the shoulder and gut. He hits the ice shouting for backup. Floodlights go on everywhere, momentarily blinding me in the unearthly glare.
“Gah! Fuck!” I yell, hiding my eyes behind my arm, looking like the vampire that I am.
Snaps and pops come from overhead, bullets chipping away at the pile of ice we’re hiding behind.
Men’s shouts surround us from everywhere. Footsteps crunch around us on both sides. I squint at the light, but the initial pain from the rapid change in brightness is gone. Ayla leans out to the left, snapping off a few more shots. I swing the AK off my shoulder, but before I can pop up, a guy in a white parka with a rifle runs into view on my side.
I aim and fire two rounds into his chest faster than he can draw a bead on me. He still shoots, but misses, the bullet spraying me with ice bits. He falls over backward, firing a few more times into the air. Somewhere off to the left on the other side of our ice mound, a man’s voice screams about the radio exploding.
Ayla ducks back down under a hail of incoming fire that makes it snow on both of us. “There’s nine of them and about twenty more coming out of the barracks.”
Grumbling, I pop over the dome and pick off two men dumb enough to stand out in the open. When the second man falls, I wind up staring over the weapon’s sights at the grill of an Arcticfox parked behind one of the larger military tents. Idea! Seven Russian Army soldiers all pivot to fire at me. I duck, and after what feels like two seconds to me, a barrage of incoming bullets rips at the ice where I’d been.
I pat Ayla on the arm. “Follow. Out to the right, about forty feet. All the hostiles are on the left, but if we run as fast as we can, they shouldn’t be able to hit us.”
“Got it. On three?”
“No. As soon as it feels ri—now!”
The instant the urge to move hits me, I leap up and sprint for the snow crawler, not bothering to engage the Russians, or look back for my sister. I know she’s right on my heels. Running across open ice with nothing to hide behind would be suicide for a normal person. Our agility gives us an edge, but an expert marksman could still tag us if we simply ran in a straight line—so I zig a little, and my sister follows suit.
Bullets kick up sprays of white at our heels. They stop shooting at us as soon as we’re behind canvas. Not that a tent will stop 7.62x39 rounds, but the men don’t want to destroy or explode whatever’s inside. I zoom around to the driver’s side, jump up on the three-foot-wide tracks, and climb in the door. Ayla leaps on the other side and scrambles in. She leaves her door open, covering the corner of the tent with her rifle while I mash the start button and hope this thing’s engine hasn’t frozen.
Evidently, the electric warmer had been running. The Arcticfox’s diesel starts without too much protest… and shit. This thing has two joysticks, not a steering wheel.
Ayla puts a bullet into the forehead of the first man to come around the tent corner. “Go!”
“Working on it.”
A switch on the console labeled ‘park brake’ is glowing, so I hit it. The light goes off, but the loud warning beep makes Ayla jump and fire into the tent. She opens her mouth to yell at me, but pivots to the rear and shoots at guys coming around the other side, trying to get behind us.
“Go!” A clank accompanies a bullet hitting the cab. Ayla shrieks in anger and swings her rifle left to fire at a guy peering around the front side of the tent. “We’re going to be surrounded in exactly two seconds, Mina!”
I grab and push both sticks forward. The Arcticfox jolts and accelerates straight. Ayla keeps shooting out the open door, trying to hold off the twenty or so guys firing at us. Bullets hit the back end of the snowcat so rapidly it sounds like we’re in a hailstorm. This thing is probably armored, being a military model and all. As far as I can tell, nothing’s penetrated the cab.
It doesn’t take me long to work out that each stick controls the track on that side. Steering is a function of making one track drive faster or slower than the other. I turn us away from the encampment, shifting the incessant clanking of incoming fire to the rear wall of the cabin instead of the flatbed enclosure or tracks. Ugh. Hopefully this thing doesn’t die on us.
Ayla hangs out her door, emptying the rest of her magazine at the soldiers. Incoming fire picks up as soon as she stops. I shove my rifle at her and keep driving. She grabs it and resumes shooting to the rear.
A dull whud shakes the ground.
“Eep!” yells Ayla. “Are they launching missiles at us?”
“No. Pretty sure that was the C4 going off in the spaceship.”
“Oh. Hey, yeah. They stopped shooting at us and are running around in a panic.”
I laugh. “Probably think we planted more bombs and are taking cover.”
She keeps the rifle aimed out the door for another few minutes. Once I steer into a small valley, she scoots inside and closes the door, then cranks up the heat.
“Whew!” she gasps. “We made it.”
“Yeah. Such as it is. Driving off into the middle of nowhere.”
Ayla leans over and looks at the console. “What’s the range on this thing?”
The gauge shows the gas at around eighty percent full. “I have no damn idea, but I wouldn’t bet these things are built with fuel economy in mind. Depends on the size of that tank. If this thing doesn’t get us to Nordvik, it’ll get us as close as it can.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“Right now? Away from the camp.” My armband ‘smartpad’ has a compass app, which shows me we’re heading mostly west, drifting a hair south… so I bring us around in sluggish turn. I’ll head south for a while, then veer southeast.
She pulls her hood down, then removes her eye protection and facemask. Honestly, the cab is getting quite toasty. Screw it. I do the same. Wow. Never did I expect a mission to end and I’d be hanging out with my older sister. Especially after she turned out to be Dominion.
“Well, that was fun.” She brushes snow crystals off her sleeve. “But, I suppose we should go back to being enemies now.”
“Must we?”
Ayla gives me a look like I just asked her if we need to drink blood. “Probably. After all, I believe in the Dominion’s end goal. You don’t. So… yeah.”
“Their end goal is both unrealistic, cruel, and self-defeating. Too many humans, too few vampires. And they’re not dumb anymore. We’ve been doing just fine for a couple thousand years living in the shadows out of sight. Why can’t Origins enjoy being superior? Why do some need to recreate a set of circumstances that almost exterminated us?”
“You’re oversimplifying it. And,
it’s the principle of the thing. We don’t believe that humans should have any authority over us.”
“Being sovereign isn’t the same as trying to enslave humanity.” I stare out at endless miles of ice. Damn this thing is slow… still, 20 MPH beats walking.
“It’s not that easy for me to just change my mind like that.” She waves dismissively at nothing in particular. “Although some human ideas are good.”
She huffs.
“At least let me give you a ride?”
Ayla glances at me. “Or I could steal the truck and leave you out here. I do, after all, have the only gun.”
“You could, but what if I froze to death out here?”
“Someone will find and thaw you out eventually.”
“You’re forgetting that of the two of us, I’m the one with combat training.” I turn my head toward her, smirking. “Someone would find and thaw you out eventually.”
We stare at each other for a moment.
“Fine.” She rolls her eyes. “Just drive. And keep your eyes on the road.”
“There isn’t a road.”
“Well… keep your eyes on the crevasses or whatever.”
I laugh.
Neither of us speaks for a while. The droning engine plus the rattle of the tracks on top of the repetitive white ground rolling by is almost enough to lull me into a trance.
“You wouldn’t have done it,” says Ayla.
“Of course not. You are my big sis. You read me stories when I got scared at night.” I glance sideways at her. “I can’t let you compromise my mission, but I wouldn’t have left you out here alone.”
She brushes at her coat, a mild petulant look on her face. “Do you know how difficult it is to be the evil agent if you’re going to keep reminding me of growing up together?”
“Hah. See, you admit you’re evil.”
“Pff.” She swats at my shoulder. “You decided to play spy, so I took the other team.”
“Oh, this is my fault?”
“Fault?” She blinks.
“Or… this is a game to you.”
She grins.
“Ayla, you realize this isn’t pretend. Real people are getting hurt.”