The Seventh Plague

  She gained her feet in time to see the shelf of ice falling back into place, its edges cracking further, bobbing in place. The Sno-Cat was gone, swallowed by this frozen trapdoor, as if it had never been there.

  John and Tagak joined her.

  John sighed. “A dogsled is much better.”

  She didn’t disagree.

  They set off for the tents, but after they had trekked fifty yards, a low rumble rose out of the storm to the left. A shadow passed through the storm pall, a shark in dark water.

  It was a snow machine, traveling without lights.

  “Run,” Kat said.

  She pointed ahead and motioned to stay low, hoping her group hadn’t been spotted. In their haste to escape the Cat, they’d lost their weapons. The only hope was to reach the snow-covered tents and pray the enemy passed them by.

  They moved as a tight group, sticking close.

  The camp grew clearer.

  Kat’s ears strained for the sound of a motor, but the storm closed down upon them from behind, booming with thunder and cracking ice. Still, the group reached the site safely.

  Kat hurried toward the tent where she had left Rory and Safia.

  Before she could reach the flap, a gunshot blasted. Ice exploded at her toes.

  She stopped and turned.

  Anton appeared from behind the neighboring tent, accompanied by another figure bundled in a parka. Both had assault rifles leveled. They must have parked their machine out of sight and set up this ambush.

  Anton addressed the two Inuit. “On your knees. Hands on your heads.”

  They hesitated, but Kat waved them down.

  Anton’s partner circled behind them, keeping aim on their backs.

  “Rory, come out!” Anton called.

  The tent flap was thrown open, and the young man climbed through, looking apologetically toward Kat. He was wearing a new parka.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, looking down. “They caught us by surprise. I didn’t want this all to happen.”

  You and me both . . .

  But from the looks of that parka, he would be getting out of here.

  “How is Safia?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Bad. It’s like she’s worsening with the storm.”

  So at least they hadn’t killed—

  The tent flap flew open, and Safia stumbled out between Rory and Anton. Her eyes were on the maelstrom filling the world to the south. For a moment, Kat swore her eyes were aglow, but it was likely just a reflection of lightning.

  She swung an arm up.

  Then everything happened in slow motion.

  The guard behind Kat must have thought Safia was brandishing a weapon. He fired, but Rory was facing that same direction and noted the threat.

  He flung himself in front of Safia. “No!”

  In turn, Anton reacted with a skill born of his Guild training and rolled in front of Rory, his back to the shooter. The bullet struck him in the spine. He fell forward into Rory’s arms.

  As the two went down, Kat lunged low, grabbed Anton’s weapon, and spun onto her rear, squeezing off a three-round burst.

  One bullet found the guard’s neck, blowing most of it away, and sending him crashing backward.

  In that breathless moment, only one of them still stood.

  Safia’s eyes never left the skies.

  She spoke, as if to the storm. “It must not be . . .”

  5:32 P.M.

  As flames burn brighter through her skull, she stares out of two sets of eyes.

  One old, one fresh.

  She sees a cold storm roll across a burning desert toward a blood-red river. She sees a frozen lake that defies the fiery tempest rolling over it. The two sights waver and shimmer over each other, as if trying to snuff each other out.

  It is a war of ice and fire, a battle as old as the world.

  She ignores this, knowing it is but a distraction.

  Her gaze shifts farther away, to a beacon that blazes out there.

  It must not be.

  5:33 P.M.

  “You want us to do what?” Painter asked.

  He sat up on the flight deck with the pilot and loadmaster, who apparently also doubled as copilot. Behind him, the others on board crowded the stairs that led up here, all listening to their former boss over the plane’s microwave radio.

  “You must crash the jet into the Aurora array,” Hartnell said, his voice breathless with fear. “Straight into the tower.”

  Painter looked past the nose of the jet toward the blazing column of plasma. Hartnell had already told them roughly what was happening, how in an attempt to reverse the damage he had wrought, he had made matters worse. He pictured the circuit that Hartnell had described, knowing it was only a crude analogy for the colossal energies at play here, but he understood the gist.

  Hartnell needed someone to break that circuit before it collapsed on its own.

  On the ground, Hartnell and Kapoor fought to keep it stable but that could not last. Painter only had to look out the window to recognize this truth. The fiery whirlpool had been growing steadily larger, a swirling hurricane of potential energy.

  The kiloton equivalent of a thousand nuclear bombs.

  Once that reached the fragile circuit blazing brightly in the sky, it was game over.

  Painter estimated they had another twenty minutes at best.

  So there was no time for long debates.

  “We’ll do it,” he said.

  The pilot glanced over to him, his face terrified. He clearly recognized that someone had to take this bird down manually. With all the interference and storm conditions, it would not be an instrument landing.

  And they would only have one shot at this.

  Painter had also noted the photograph next to the pilot’s seat: a smiling wife and two small children. He reached and squeezed the man’s shoulder. “I got this.”

  The pilot frowned. “You’ve flown a C-17 Globemaster before?”

  “Nothing this big. Mostly private jets.” He patted the man’s shoulder. “But it’s not like I have to land this—just crash it.”

  The pilot looked dubious and clearly fought between arguing with Painter and letting him take over this kamikaze mission. His face firmed. “I’ll talk you through the basics. If you don’t feel confident—or I don’t feel you know your flight stick from your dick—then I’ll take her down.”

  “Fair enough.” Painter pointed to the throttle. “That’s the stick, right?”

  The pilot looked aghast.

  Painter grinned. “It’s the throttle, I know. And that’s your stick. There’s the HUD, the IAS, and of course, the PFD.” He ended by pointing to his crotch. “And that’s my dick, the last time I looked. We good?”

  The pilot grumbled and sank deeper into his seat. “Let’s do this.”

  Everyone on board quickly made evacuation plans, while the pilot banked for the best approach to the array. The plan was to do a fast dive through the storm layer, which Painter was happy to leave to the pilot. Once low enough, the aircraft would level off, allowing everyone to offload out the back with parachutes, leaving Painter to take the Globemaster the rest of the way down.

  Simple enough, if you weren’t the one left in the hot seat.

  “Hold tight!” the pilot radioed throughout the aircraft. “Starting descent!”

  Painter sat in the jump seat behind Willet, which offered him a bird’s-eye view as the nose of the aircraft tipped toward the cloud bank. The pilot had aligned the course to be a straight, long shot.

  As they dove steeply, Painter stared at the column of fire to the right and the dark, churning pool to the left. The space between them had narrowed considerably, even faster than Painter had initially estimated. He could guess why. The plasma storm raging through the ionosphere had worsened. The aurora boiled across the heavens, casting great fiery loops earthward and blasting out a flurry of sprites and jets.

  Such a display could mean only one thing.

  Hart
nell was losing control, the situation already destabilizing.

  The pilot must have sensed this and drove the aircraft into a steeper approach. “Hold tight!” he hollered.

  The Globemaster swept down to the black clouds. Painter cringed and gripped his seat harness, leaning back. As they dropped through the storm, the ship was immediately battered and tossed, rattled and rolled. The pilot hunched over his controls, a hand on the stick, the other on the throttle. Through the windshield, the world was nothing but blackness. Even the green lines of the heads-up display were awash with static. It seemed to go on forever, then suddenly they dropped out of the clouds, and the world returned in a grayscale of whipping snow, black crags, and white glaciers.

  The pilot raised the nose, flaring the craft, to level and slow their descent. Once back to an even slope, he adjusted a few switches, scratched his chin, then turned to Painter. “You’re up.”

  Painter unsnapped his seat harness.

  Into the hot seat.

  He changed places with the pilot, who took a few moments to make sure Painter was ready, like a doting hen.

  Painter finally waved him off. “Go. Get everyone offloaded.”

  He nodded, turned away, then back. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  The pilot patted him on the shoulder, then dropped out of the flight deck.

  Willet stayed another moment. “You’re only going to have seconds.”

  “I know.”

  The man sighed, staring ahead. Directly in front of the nose of the aircraft, the storm glowed with blue fire. The beast was waiting for him.

  “I can stay,” Willet offered. Though from the strain in his voice, it took every ounce of willpower to utter those three words.

  Painter pointed a thumb behind him. “Mr. Willet, get off my ship. That’s an order.”

  The man smiled, tossing him a salute. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  He unstrapped and climbed out of the neighboring seat, clapping him on the shoulder. “You better pull this off.”

  Painter knew Willet was talking about more than just taking out the array.

  That’s the plan.

  As Willet headed below, Painter slipped on a radio earpiece. He used a minute to further acquaint himself with the controls. There were hundreds of switches above his head and over his instrument panel, but the most important control was the flight stick at his knee.

  I can do this.

  He finally heard Willet again on his earpiece. “Birds have safely flown the coop. Heading overboard. Ship is yours.”

  Though he didn’t know for sure when the loadmaster abandoned ship, Painter sensed it. He was alone on this great big bird.

  To distract himself, he checked his attitude indicators, eyed his primary flight display for his airspeed, and made subtle adjustments to his pitch. Two minutes out, he eased on the throttle, slowing the craft for the final approach.

  Here we go.

  He hit a switch for the microwave radio. “Hartnell, are you there? Pick up.”

  The man came on the line, his voice surprised, almost amused. “Painter? You’re bringing the plane down?”

  “Someone’s got to clean up your mess. Just letting you know I’m a hundred seconds out. So you and Kapoor should get to the bomb shelter.”

  “I already sent Dr. Kapoor. But somebody’s got to keep watch at the helm. Even if it’s only to buy you another second or two.”

  Painter heard the strain and remembered the raging storm in the ionosphere, indicative of the situation destabilizing. “How much time do I have?”

  “You may need those extra seconds or two.”

  Painter silently cursed and pushed the throttle forward, regaining the speed he had just bled off.

  Ahead, he was close enough to make out the sprawling antenna array. It ran with blue sparks of energy, illuminating its spiral, turning it into a shimmery galaxy sprawled across the tundra. In the center, the column of plasma rose from the blazing tip of the steel tower. Even from this distance, he could note spasms vibrating along the fiery column’s length, shaking it with destabilizing pulses of plasma energy.

  Painter increased the airspeed. He dared not slow down like he had planned. His window of opportunity had narrowed considerably—leaving him no second to spare.

  Hartnell suddenly yelled in his ear. “Painter!”

  He saw it at the same time. A thick ball of plasma swept up from the mining pit, heading toward the ionosphere. Energy was no longer flowing down. The tower’s polarity was shifting, about to collapse. As Painter followed that lightning ball toward the clouds, he saw the likely reason.

  The fiery cauldron in the sky had arrived. Its outer edges brushed close to the column of plasma rising from Aurora Station.

  Painter was out of time.

  He throttled up and used the flight stick to drop the nose. His airspeed spun up, turning the Globemaster into a missile.

  He was about to make his move when a crosswind crashed into the flank of the aircraft. Cursing, Painter crabbed the plane’s nose into the wind, fighting to return the ship to the correct angle of approach. He lost precious seconds during this maneuver but finally reset the course.

  He hovered his hands for a breath over the controls.

  Looks good.

  Once satisfied, he flew out of the hot seat, rolled to the stairs, and dropped to the cargo deck. He sprang immediately away, racing toward the back, while the aircraft flew ahead, a missile about to crash.

  His feet pounded across the deck. There was no way he could survive bailing out the back. He was too low to use a parachute, too high to jump without one.

  So he improvised.

  Near the open cargo door, he snatched what he had prepared and strapped it to his back, then grabbed the assault rifle next to it.

  He flung himself toward the hatch—just as the outer edge of the scintillating spiral galaxy appeared to either side. The wings clipped the antenna tops as the bow of the bird slammed through the steel trunks in front.

  Oh crap . . .

  Painter reached back and slapped his palm on the ignition for the inflation tank.

  The weather balloon burst out the pack on his back, whipped into the wind drafting behind the plane, and yanked him out of the rear of the craft.

  He sailed away and up, watching the wide-bellied Globemaster plow through the glowing spiral, aiming for the flaming beast at the center.

  5:52 P.M.

  Simon Hartnell stood at the helm.

  He heard the roaring approach of the huge cargo jet, and now its splintering crash through the array. He stared up at the tower before him, aflame with energy. He remembered thinking earlier how the display had reminded him of the blazes of Saint Elmo’s fire, which would dance through the masts and riggings of sailing ships.

  He pictured the tower here as the mast to his own personal HMS Erebus or Terror. He also recalled Painter’s admonition to his ancestor who had been a crew member aboard one of those original ships.

  It seems some men reach too far.

  Yet even now he didn’t accept that.

  He stared up at his masterpiece, doomed though it may be.

  What’s far worse is never trying.

  The world exploded before him, taking away his life and all his dreams.

  5:53 P.M.

  Sailing high, Painter watched the Globemaster finish its last flight.

  The cargo plane dragged its belly through the shining array and slammed nose-first into the top of the tower. As it canted into the wide mining pit, it crushed the tower beneath its bulk, snuffing the flame of that incandescent candle.

  For just a moment, seared across his retina, he saw the remaining column of plasma whip into the sky like the angry tail of a cat—then it was gone.

  A moment later, the airplane exploded, wiping that image away. A great ball of fire rolled into the sky and quickly became a column of smoke, a dark shadow of the brilliance from a moment ago.

  Out of harm’s
way—but far from safe—Painter raised his assault rifle and shot at the balloon overhead. He took great care, shooting one round at a time, letting the air out slowly. His ascent finally topped off, and he began to fall back to earth. He had prepared himself for a hard landing, but in the end, he touched down rather softly.

  The weather balloon collapsed behind him, settling like a shroud over rock and snow. He shrugged off the pack but kept the weapon. He guessed he was a couple of miles from Aurora Station and didn’t want any polar bears marring his hike back.

  Still, he stood for a breath, staring at the sky. With the array shut down—no longer feeding fire into the sky and having sucked a fair amount of energy back into the ground—the raging vortex in the clouds appeared to be calming down. The dull crimson glow was all but gone, its inner fire no longer stoked by the plasma storm as the ionosphere cleared.

  Still, while the weather might be cooperating, Painter knew there was much cleanup yet to be done. There was no telling how contaminated this whole island might be. They could not count on the play of electricity to have eradicated all the microbes cast into the air.

  He sighed, returned his attention earthward, and set off for Aurora Station.

  Even with his parka, he had thought it would be cooler here in the Arctic.

  He touched a palm to his forehead.

  I’m burning up.

  6:25 P.M.

  “How are you feeling?” Kat asked.

  Safia sat on the camp cot in the Inuit’s hide tent. She cradled a cup of hot fish soup in her hands, courtesy of John and Tagak. “Better.”

  They had the place to themselves for the moment. Rory had retreated to another tent, where John had done his best to make Anton comfortable, but the bullet he had taken for Rory—and in turn, Safia—had severed his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. The round had also shredded through his chest, leaving him coughing blood.

  He would not make it.

  Rory seemed to know this and stayed with him.