Arctic Rising by Tobias S. Buckell Read Free Book Online

she could face her.
    Not without feeling guilty that she was still alive, still talking to her loved ones.
    Anika slipped the phone back in her pocket.
    This was far from over.

 
    9
    It was midnight when she got home and changed out of her uniform blues. For a moment she stood in her underwear, considering her next move.
    Go comfort Jenny?
    No. She couldn’t face Jenny. Anika felt like she’d let her down. She couldn’t face that and keep herself held together right now.
    Anika pulled on weathered jeans and a purple turtleneck, an old leather jacket, some gloves from the wicker basket near the door, and found her Oakleys.
    She pulled the data backup out of the other jeans and slid it into her pocket. Now that she knew it was the only copy, she wasn’t letting it out of sight until she handed it over to Commander Claude.
    She was still thinking about the fact that the Kosatka ’s crew had claimed to be drug runners. It didn’t make sense, and it gnawed away at her. And, she thought, she did know someone who could help answer a few questions about drug running. She let her hair out of a tight bun. It sprung loose, a halo of comfortable brown kinks she was happy to see again.
    It went against her nature to go ask someone for help. But she was sort of looking forward to this trip, she had to secretly admit.
    If she could arrange transportation.
    She walked next door and banged on the screen door. “Karl!”
    She banged again, until Karl’s blond curls appeared at the window, and then at the crack of the door as it opened. He was wearing a towel around his waist, tufts of coarse, dark hair running up from his belly to his chest, covering a fairly fit physique. “Jesus, Anika, what?”
    “I need to borrow your bike, if it is charged.”
    Karl rubbed his eyes and looked up the road. “Oh, come on, Anika. You ran your damn car down again ?”
    Anika didn’t answer that, but cocked her head. Karl sighed and reached over to the hooks screwed into the wall by the door, then handed her the keys. The key fob was made of paracord, six feet of it woven into a five-inch decorative plait. Useful. She kept telling herself she needed one. The bike’s “key” was actually just an RFID chip in a decorative logo casing that didn’t need to be inserted into the bike. As long as Anika had the keys within ten feet of the bike it would start up with a press of a button. “Make sure you plug it back in when you’re done,” he growled.
    “Thank you, Karl.”
    “Fuck off. It’s late,” he grumped. “I’m going back to bed.”
    “It’s not like I’ll get any sleep with you having a visitor over. These thin walls. Is it still Chief Evisham?”
    He closed the door. They had a good-natured sort of blackmail arrangement. She borrowed his bike and kept shut about fraternization.
    Though Anika was pretty sure he’d let her borrow the bike anyway.
    *   *   *
    The bike’s rear tire spat gravel as Anika wobbled her way out of the drive, and then she got her balance as the bike sped up. The wind snapped at her loose hair.
    Out past base housing she turned onto the paved Nanisivik highway. The bike’s motor whined as she gunned it, sucking juice for a sudden burst of speed that left a long strip of rubber down the fresh asphalt.
    At seventy miles an hour she eased back, letting the rhythm of the bike and the road’s dips canter underneath her. The whine fell away, leaving her with the just the sound of the constant hurricane of wind ripping at her.
    This felt good. She was releasing something buried deep inside.
    Now that she was off the gravel and on pavement her Oakleys finally connected wirelessly to her phone. A map appeared in her field of vision, showing her location and turn-by-turn directions.
    It was an hour’s ride, and a fun one. She wound her way around the bases of the peaks overlooking Nanisivik. She crossed over the valleys carved out by now-extinct glaciers in the mountainous hump of the semi-peninsular