Free Arctic Rising by Tobias S. Buckell Page B

grimacing in pain with every movement, and checked the doors. Unsurprisingly, no latches again. And there was a metal grid bolted behind the front seats.
    On her back in the seat, she thought for a second.
    If she escaped, or tried to escape, it made her look guiltier.
    But then, she didn’t know whether her commander was trying to lock her up for life or just following the book.
    She gritted her teeth and kicked at the window.
    Nothing happened.
    Again, she tensed and kicked with her heels, and thought she heard a faint cracking sound.
    She took a deep breath, and as her feet struck the glass again the world exploded in pieces of glass as every window in the vehicle blew out.
    For a split second she didn’t understand. Then the waves of heat roiled through the vehicle and debris started raining down, plinking off the roof of the car like a spatter of hail in a quick, brief storm.
    When she sat up she saw the fiery frame of her house slump slightly. Debris smoldered, scattered out onto the road and several rows of houses back. Shattered windows slumped in frames, some tinkling to the ground well after the explosion.
    Off-duty base people were stumbling out of their doors and looking around.
    Anika reached out and used the outside door handle to open the door and step out. Something squished under her feet and she looked down.
    It was a severed forearm, white bone sticking out of the bloody end, ropy muscle fibers limp on the gravel.
    She stumbled forward, falling to her knees.
    “Claude!” she shouted. “Commander Claude?”
    This was nearly incomprehensible and apocalyptic and, somehow, even worse than some lone gunman trying to kill her on the highway. And she realized now that Claude hadn’t intended her any harm. He’d been following the book. A good man had walked right into a mess left for her.
    Someone had rigged her home with explosives.
    God. She repeated that to herself: someone had rigged her home with explosives!
    Those “MPs” that Karl told her had been here previously.
    “Claude!” she shouted again. He’d been standing behind the one MP, the driver, when she last saw him. Covering him.
    She heard a groan, maybe a whimper, from somewhere nearby.
    On her hands and knees, Anika scrabbled her way over to the remains of her front door and pulled it off Claude. She gasped. There were burns everywhere, the man was hardly recognizable.
    But the pale eyes recognized her.
    Someone crunched across the gravel. It was Karl. He was in boxer shorts, sandals, and a simple white shirt, his breath puffing in the air as he ran over. From the expression on his face, it was clear he was in just as much shock as she’d been. “Anika?”
    “It’s the commander,” she yelled at him. “Call an ambulance! Now!”
    Karl hesitated, looked down, flinched, then ran back to find a phone.
    Anika turned back to the badly burned body of the commander. Claude was going to die, and it was going to be her fault. There was no way people weren’t going to think she did this.
    “Commander Claude, what was the name of the man in Greenland?” she asked, staring right into his eyes. “Did you look it up?”
    His breath was raspy and irregular. He stirred, and then groaned. No doubt the pain was unimaginable. Anika found tears in the corners of her eyes for doing this, instead of leaving him to die in peace, but she leaned in closer. “I’m begging you, sir. Greenland. For both our sakes.”
    He kept panting for a long moment, until finally, his lips moved. Anika leaned in until they were almost touching.
    “Braffit,” Claude hissed.
    Anika waited for more, but it became clear from the faint gurgling in the back of his throat that this was all Claude could manage. She pulled back. “Thank you,” she whispered. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the flat shard of plastic the scatter camera data was on. His good hand curled around it as she pressed it there.
    If he lived, then maybe he could put it to good use. If he