asked.”
“Why is that?”
He took another long drag. “Your airship transmits flight data via satellite continuously. Your scatter camera logged nothing on this flight. I think maybe there was a mistake?” He looked meaningfully at her.
“The scatter camera went off. We went in for a closer look.”
“Maybe you heard the wrong alarm,” Yves suggested. “It’s been seven months since your last event. That’s a long time. Combine that with the trauma of the attack…”
Anika stared at him. “We went in closer and got further readings. There
Yves looked uncomfortable for the both of them. “Maybe something went wrong somewhere?” he suggested. “Bad data?”
“Maybe. I have a physical backup of the data at home. Pass that back to our superiors. When I get back I can prove this wasn’t just about drugs, and that they’re lying.” Anika rubbed her temples. This sort of mess was why she always made sure to cover herself. Her father had always warned her about bad equipment and bureaucracy. “I don’t want to talk about that anymore, Yves. What’s next?”
“Next?” Yves mulled the word over. “Next.” He folded his arms and looked out over the dark harbor water.
She followed his gaze, turning around to face the rail again. “The boat.”
Yves nodded. “
“Routine?”
“We have the
“And then that’s it.…” Anika said.
“That’s it,” Yves said.
Except it wasn’t. They were lying about being drug runners. And why lie about something bad unless you were covering something worse?
“Let me come with you,” Anika asked.
Yves moved his head back and forth, as if considering. “We just needed you to identify the crew. You are not needed for this part.”
“You need me to fly you back, though, right?” Anika said.
“You wouldn’t!” Yves protested.
“You leave me here on this ship to go out there, I’m headed for the airport,” Anika insisted. “After a day like this, do you think anyone would be willing to formally discipline me?”
The dinghy that took them out was a twenty-foot-long semirigid inflatable, a fiberglass flat-bottomed hull that sliced through the waves and that had inflated pontoons around the edge.
Anika bit her lip as they slowed down and approached the rusted-out bulk of the Russian ship.
It loomed, shoving everything else out of her mind, replacing it with the implacable metal bulk thundering, surging through the water at her.
She gasped and grabbed the rope running along the pontoons, sitting down and looking up the side of the giant wall.
“Coming up?” Anton pointed at the rope ladder dangling down from the rails up above. “Are you good?”
She waved him away. “Lost my footing. I’ll be right there.” Yves was already attacking the ropes, swarming his way aloft.
Anton nodded, and then awkwardly starting pulling himself up.
The fresh-faced seaman who’d piloted them over walked forward. He tied them to the ladder, and waved her up.
Anika leaned forward and touched the hull. Paint and metal flaked off and fluttered down into the space between the dinghy and the ship.
The dinghy slammed against the
“Got a good grip?” the seaman asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to pull back a bit, so we don’t rip the sides apart on this hull. It’s rusty as hell, ma’am.” He gunned the outboard engine in reverse, the water boiling around the dinghy as he pulled away.
Nowhere to go but up. Anika scrambled until she reached the rail, then swung onto the deck.
Her boots hit the metal surface with a clang.
She was on the surface of the enemy, the ship that had tried to kill her.
8
Yves waved her down. “Coming into the belly of the beast,
The holds had been opened; the maw of the ship was wide open to the overhead sky. Light spilled into the cargo hold.
“They found her with the holds open,” Yves said. “The cranes had been working overtime. Dumping whatever it was they were carrying, yes? They ran for the harbor after that, didn’t even bother closing back up.”
They walked around, footsteps echoing loudly off the metal deck and empty hold back at them. Anton was videotaping the hold with his phone, narrating what they were seeing in a low mutter.
And what they were seeing was nothing but a dirty, dusty hold, with several piles of rusted chains scattered around.
Eventually Anton folded up the camera and slid it into his pocket. “That’s it,” he announced.
“That’s it,” Anika repeated.
“That’s it,” Yves confirmed.
They all stood at the bottom of the hold for a moment. Then, as if on a telepathic cue, Yves and Anton turned and started up the metal stairs together.
Anika followed. The echoes of their steps got higher and higher pitched as they got farther up.
Then she stopped.
A faint glimmer. In the corner of her eye.
Anika frowned. She climbed onto the rail, careful not to look down at how far she’d fall to the metal floor if she slipped. Then, balanced, with one leg on a lower rail for stability, she reached up for the faint glint, stretching until her stomach ached.
It was a fist-sized, transparent globe. And it was floating. Like a tiny balloon, it had drifted up into a nook in the ceiling along the side of the cargo hold.
Back on the stairs now, Anika shoved it inside her flight jacket. Anton and Yves considered their work done.
Maybe she could find something out.
She was more convinced now that the
Back through the harbor, onto the streets of Resolute again. Fake igloo architecture for the tourists. Large blocks of city buildings, the square tyranny of super-fast construction the world over, only here, like in the tropics, they favored bold, bright colors. Purple facades and pink pastels fought back against the constant Arctic gray and the blear of the perpetual sun.
Anton drove. Anika sat in the back of the cramped car with the constantly fogging windows, looking out at the buildings.
Something dinged, indicating a message received. Yves glanced at a wristband that lit up, and then tapped it. “Your commander, Claude, he’ll be expecting that hardcopy when you get back to base,” he said.
