Page 51 of Ascendent
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“All passengers, prepare for landing.”
Sasha gripped the armrests, felt the plastic crack beneath his palms. The old Tupolev plane had to turn off the lights and the heater to take off from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. Most of the seats were duct taped, the plastic and leather cracked and torn. The bathroom door flapped on a broken hinge. The lights winked off, and the fans stopped pumping heated engine air into the cabin. The lightheadedness he’d felt since Moscow, which could have been carbon monoxide, cleared.
Treeless, dead tundra stretched for miles outside the plane’s window. Even in July, there was snow on the ground, giant swatches around the airport and as far as he could see. Dingy smog hovered, keeping the sky low. He’d forgotten how claustrophobic his home was. Once he’d seen the stars, the pollution roof over his head had suffocated him.
In the distance, the refinery’s smelters churned giant clouds of pollution and acidified smoke. Vapor, the reports said now. But the sky was still stained and the snow still had a corpse-like tinge. He felt the tickle in the back of his throat start again, the smokers cough that everyone in Norilsk had. One out of every two people in Norilsk got emphysema. Lung cancer. Throat cancer.
He pressed his forehead to the window as the old plane wheezed and groaned, as she trembled and shook. Ahead, the cracked runway to Alykel airfield carved a tar path through the snow. Alykel was an internationally designated emergency airport for flights that traveled the Polar Routes.
He felt sorry for any plane that had to make an emergency landing at Norilsk. A squat collection of decrepit Soviet bunkers, painted purple, huddled together at the end of the tarmac. Planes parked in a line seemed to gleam, but that was just the snow on their wings, the ice coating after forty years of disuse. Someone had made off with the tires and the windows long ago. The engines were gone, the wires cut free. Ice had entombed the fuselage and wings. The plane’s frozen skeleton was all that remained.
The Air Force’s OGA, the Arctic Control Group, usually staged interceptor MiGs out of Norilsk. But they were parked further north in the Arctic off Sredney Ostrov’s old ice runway, protecting the international science teams working to undo Madigan and Moroshkin’s damage.
Eighteen people were on the flight with him. Half were mining supervisors, flying back to Norilsk after a weekend in Moscow. He heard them grumbling about output and regulations, about how no international observers believed it was merely colorful vapor coming out of the smelters. Every one of them hacked like they were trying to expel a lung, or had just swallowed water and were trying to cough it all up.
The rest were scientists, fresh rotations for those working on the Kara Sea and on top of the ice. From Norilsk, they’d board icebreakers or helicopters and make their way to Novaya Zemlya. They had thick parkas and wool hats, and were obviously not Russian. They acted like July in Norilsk and Kayerkan was frigid, like this wasn’t summer and the sun wasn’t constantly shining. It was a balmy thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit outside. A warm summer day.
He felt as cold as the world, as if he could lay down on the tundra and become one with the desolation. It called to him, the nothingness. The emptiness.
Everyone on the flight had stared at him. The miners grumbled about a politician heading out to spy on the smelters. The scientists seemed wary about an unknown Russian official sitting silently on the plane. He stood out in Sergey’s wool jacket. High Society Moscow oozed from his clothes, from the gifts Sergey kept insisting on buying him. He was a Norilsk boy, born and bred, and the only clothes he’d ever had were hand-me-downs and his military uniform. Sweats and wool sweaters, jeans and old cigarette-burned jackets. He’d worn his first suit with Sergey, and he’d never shaken the feeling that he was playing dress up.
Why was he even here?
The plane hit the ground hard and bounced, jumping on wheels that screamed and burned down the tarmac. He felt every crack in the runway, every bump, every divot. They rattled and shook like they were inside a cement mixer. One of the miners passed a flask of vodka to his friends. Somehow, they managed not to spill.
The lights never came back on. The plane’s old engines whined and wheezed as they drove from the runway to the terminal parking area. A skinny man about Sasha’s age dragged a rickety metal staircase to the plane. He smoked as everyone clambered off, dragging their backpacks and duffels behind them. Sasha shouldered his duffel and followed.
He tried to stare at the man and not get caught. Men his age in Norilsk were miners or druggies. A few became cops, and more than a few died. Was this someone he’d known?
The man caught Sasha’s stare, and his cheeks hollowed as he sucked on his cigarette. He grinned, flashing broken, yellow teeth behind cracked lips oozing with sores. Sasha turned away.
He hitched a ride into town with the scientists, listened to them chatter about the Kara Sea and the destruction of the ice and the nuclear waste hidden by the Soviets in the frozen waters. They let him out in the center of town, by the bus stop the miners used. To his left and right were bars, more than a dozen, enough for every miner in town to get blitzed every night.
Eyeballs stared at him.Babushkasin thick coats and scarves, young women huddled on street corners. Lanky men who eyed him from doorways, sucking on their cigarettes, desperate to die faster than the pollution would manage it. He stood out. He screamed Moscow, screamed foreigner. These people didn’t think he was Siberian anymore. Didn’t think he was one of them.
But he’d been born in Norilsk, had lived there, and then in Kayerkan, for more than half his life. He knew this frozen, poisoned town, every nook and cranny. He set off, skipping over the sludge-filled gutters and walking down the street, his hands buried in his jacket pockets. A kilometer away was the school he’d attended. Beyond that, his aunt’s apartment building. He looked up, searching for the hockey flag she’d always flown from the balcony. Nothing.
Maybe she’d died as well.
“Hey! Hey,Moskal!” A young man slid in beside him, thick jeans pushed up over muddy boots, an oversized parka open over a garish hoodie. He had a snapback ball cap on, the brim twisted off-angled to his face. He sneered. “Moskal, what’s happenin’? What are you in town for, eh?”
Moskal. Sasha almost laughed. Sergey’s jacket, painting him a foreigner. AMoskalwas a Muscovite, a Moscow denizen, a human so out of touch with life in the Arctic that they might as well have been an alien, or a Frenchman. Moscow was the center of the Russian universe, and Norilsk was the furthest point from it. Or so it had seemed.
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Looking for who, eh? Someone who did you wrong? Did Nikolai fuck you up about the shipments, yeah? I told him, you couldn’t fuck with the China White. No, no, no, or the big boys gonna come find him. He didn’t listen!”
China White. Sasha blinked. This man, this boy, really, thought he was a drug boss. Thought he was here about heroin.
“I’ll do you one better,Moskal. I can take care of your dope better than all the rest put together. I’m the future of Norilsk. My brother, he works at the airport. We can get your stuff moved faster and quieter than anyone else.”
“That’s not––”
The boy took a step back, suddenly wary. He held up both hands. “Hey, you here about the other shipment? I told you, it’s all taken care of. Your guns are safe. They’re moving tonight.”
“I’m not here for drugs. Or guns.” Sasha glared. “Who wants to move guns?”
