Ice Baron (Ice Chronicles, Book One (science fiction romance)) (18 page)

With swift finger taps, she
entered her personal codes and opened the housekeeping channels on separate,
tiny windows. A quick dig in Michael’s drawer unearthed the wireless earplug,
and she took off for the front door. Her bag lay near the door, where she’d
left it, and she scooped it up on her way out.

ZCA’s channel code was the only
vital piece of information she lacked. While Michael might have hidden the code
somewhere in his cave, she didn’t have time to look for it. Time was slipping
by much too fast. The pilots would probably use the housekeeping channels for
now, anyway, and keep the ZCA for back up. She hoped.

She dashed down the long hall,
brushing by strangers she barely noticed. Out in the crowded main cavern, she
skirted the wall, and made for the elevator.

“Fruit?” cackled an old woman as she
passed.

“No. Thank you.” Anya ran for the
elevator and pushed the button.

It seemed to take an eternity to
arrive. Finally, with a clunk, the doors crept apart. Anya squeezed inside and
punched the “up” button. With another faint groan, it lurched upward. She
pulled on gloves and zipped her coat to her chin.

When the elevator finally stopped,
Anya bolted through the cracked doors and sprinted for freedom. Moonlight on
snow glazed the cave’s entrance. She had forgotten it was nighttime.

“Hey! Stop.” A guard blocked her
path.

Bright light blinded her eyes, and
she lifted a hand in protest. “Excuse me. I need to get out.”

“You’re Anya Dubrovnyk.” A smile
lightened the heavy voice.

“Yes.” She favored him with a
strained smile. “Let me pass. I have an assignment to complete.”

“Funny thing. The Baron left
orders to keep you
inside
Tash.”

*  *  *  *  *

“Baron,” Belar rumbled. He was a
big man with shorn black hair and a goatee. In fact, all four Altai men with
him sported shorn heads and goatees. Except for variations in body type and
facial structure, each could pass as a clone of Onred. “Where’s Anya?”

Joshua assessed Belar and the
other men, measuring their threat level. “At another location. I’ll take you to
her.”

“No, you won’t.” Belar lifted a
finger. Fire spit from an Altai aircraft and the ground behind Joshua
shuddered. His bird had exploded.

Joshua didn’t bother to look. “If
you want Anya, you’ll follow my instructions.”

“Report.” A voice crackled from
Belar’s transmitter.

“Van Heisman is here. Dubrovnyk is
supposedly in a different location.”

The voice swore. “Kill him.”

Four lasers leveled at Joshua.

Belar raised a hand. “What about
Dubrovnyk? He says he’ll bring us to her.”

Another curse. “It’s a trap.”
Silence elapsed. Belar waited patiently. “Go. But send in your fighters first.
If it is a trap, send Van Heisman here. I’ll torture the truth out of him myself.”

“Roger.” Belar smiled at Joshua,
revealing a broken front tooth. “You’re going for a ride, Baron. You are a
foolish man.”

Four men sprang forward and shoved
Joshua face first into the snow. Quick hands divested him of all weapons. Tight
bands confined his wrists behind his back. They dragged him upright and forced
him toward the nearest airbird. An enemy airman climbed in first, then Joshua,
and then Belar, who settled into the pilot’s seat. Joshua sat behind him while
the airman behind Joshua held a laser to his head.

Belar cast him another pleasant
smile. “Give me the coordinates.”

“I’ll give you the first set.”

The laser poked harder into his
head. “The destination, Van Heisman!”

Belar laughed as the airbird shot
skyward. “It’s a game, Skylar. Cat and mouse. But we’ve bagged the prize. We’ll
play his game for a little while.”

Joshua relayed the first set of
coordinates. They were also the final coordinates, but Belar did not know that.
He also did not know that a dozen of Joshua’s birds had stealthily arrived
twenty minutes earlier and now waited, armed and hidden in the forested
foothills.

The radar screen showed the enemy
birds darting at Joshua’s nearby aircraft, trying to force them back.

Belar chuckled again. “You are a
fool, Joshua. And I always thought you were a worthy opponent. No wonder Onred
didn’t come himself.”

“Where is he?”

Belar snorted. “Readying the
thermal for Omsk.”

“Why blow up our cities? You need
our greenhouses.”

“We’re not interested in your
greenhouses. They’re easily replicated, once we win your flatland.”

“What do you want, then?” Joshua
could venture a guess, but wanted confirmation of his suspicions.

Belar did not answer.

The instrument panel read one
minute out from the decoy location. Enemy aircraft shot forward to scope out
the rough, hilly landscape, darkened in folds of night.

“I see an aircraft,” crackled a
voice.

“Blow it up.”

“No!” Joshua said forcefully.

The exposed craft had been left
for bait.

“Blow it up,” Belar repeated with
a chuckle. “Then we’re heading home.” He touched the controls and the aircraft
spun. “Our mission is complete, Onred. You can blow up Omsk.”

“You don’t want peace,” Joshua
said through his teeth.

Belar grinned again. In the half
light, his eyes looked like sunken black shadows, and his mouth a gaping black
hole, like a ghoulish specter. “We want Donetskis to come crawling to us,
begging for peace. When you and all of the Dubrovnyks are dead, we might take
them as slaves.”

“Enjoy hell,” Joshua said in a
pleasant voice. He lurched sideways, punching his elbow into the door release
button. Laser fire blazed, licking across his cheek as the door jerked open.

He hurtled out into deep,
impenetrable blackness.

Strange. The moon was up. It
shouldn’t be so dark.

Joshua bit into the capsule.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Anya tensed.
Her eyes had grown accustomed to
the dim light in the huge cave, and now she spotted the other guard strolling
closer. Together, the two burly men could easily force her back inside Tash.

She had to get to Joshua. This
feeling grew stronger by the minute. Anya slipped her hands into her pockets
and felt through the slit opening for her utility belt. She kicked the laser to
its lowest possible setting, and then double-checked it. Although using a laser
would be her last resort, she’d do anything to get out of this cave and find Joshua.
Even if he’d manipulated her and his kisses meant nothing, she loved him. She
would save him, or die trying.

“I’m Jason Dubrovnyk’s daughter,”
she stated coolly. “I’m first in line for power. My orders supersede Joshua’s.
Step aside.”

“Sorry.” The guard nearest to her
did sound apologetic, but he advanced one step closer. Another, and he would be
able to grab her. “But our first loyalty is to Joshua.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she murmured.
Whipping out her laser, Anya shot him in the knee. Before the second guard
could reach for his weapon, blue light spit into his knee, too. She was lucky
they’d both been near enough to hit on the first try. She wasn’t an expert
markswoman, much to her father’s chagrin.

Both men crumpled to the ground,
moaning and clutching their legs. Long ago, her father had drilled into her
that shooting the knee was the best way to incapacitate a man without killing
him. It hurt like a son-of-a-gun, but the victim would fully recover within
fifteen minutes.

Anya sprinted outside. Moonlight
glittered on the snow. To her left, dark Tien Shan spruce soared skyward. To
the south rose the sheer bulk of the Tien Shan mountain range. She pulled on
her face mask and slogged uphill, following the deep, snowy path she and Joshua
had broken earlier. The hill seemed steeper than when she’d run down it. Her
heart hammered. Sharp, cold air prickled her laboring lungs as she churned
through the heavy, knee deep snow. Ignoring the painful burn in her muscles and
the arctic air searing her lungs, she pressed on.

Long minutes later, panting
heavily, she crested the rise. Ahead lay the quiet, moonlit clearing where the
stolen Altai airbird awaited.

She had to hurry. Joshua was in
danger. She felt it. Heart thundering so loud and so hard she feared it might explode,
she plowed through the last two hundred meters. Snow flakes drifted from the
dark, overcast sky. Gasping, she punched the door release and tumbled inside
the cold aircraft.

Anya settled into the pilot’s
seat. The Altai control panel was a little different than the manual’s example,
but it took only a moment to find the two buttons to start the aircraft. The
bird hummed to life, and warm air whispered from the vents.

Encouraged, she ripped off her
facemask and murmured, “Please God, let there be an autopilot program.”

But the series of keystrokes that
should have pulled up the autopilot program did not work. She tried again, with
no better luck. For the first time, panic gathered in the pit of her stomach.

Until this moment, she hadn’t
realized how heavily she had counted upon the autopilot program. What had she
been she thinking? Could she really fly an airbird by herself? What if she
couldn’t get it into the air? What if she crashed into a tree and killed
herself? Who was she, to think she could fly a sophisticated military craft the
first time out?

“Oh, God, help me,” she mumbled.
Anya closed her eyes, picturing the pilot’s manual in her mind. A photographic
memory would be helpful about now, but the best she could remember were fuzzy
pictures. She had, however, taken care to memorize the start sequence.

First, she located the navigation
bar and punched in the coordinates for Astana. When she got closer to Astana,
she’d adjust her course for Joshua’s alternate location. Hopefully he’d
broadcast it.

Next, the altitude. When Anya
punched in “two hundred meters,” the bird shot skyward, spinning so fast she
tumbled out of her seat. Her heart pounded. She was airborne! A glance out the
window proved she hovered, spinning like a top, far above the black forest. It
was disorienting.

“Whoa,” she murmured, and with
difficulty clambered back into the seat and clipped on her safety belt.
Cautiously, she engaged the navigation button. The spin jerked to a stop and
the bird’s nose quivered northward.

“Thank goodness,” she whispered,
and punched “10” into the speed throttle indicator. The ship crept forward.
Encouraged, she increased the throttle to one hundred. A bit of gravitational
push signaled success. A sea of treetops rippled by below. 

A glance at her watch proved
fifteen minutes remained until Joshua met Onred. No time to piddle around at
one hundred kilometers per hour.

“Let’s see how fast you can go,”
she murmured, and pushed the lever forward. Several Gs of force pressed her
back against the seat. Not fast enough. She opened the throttle to Mach 1. The
instant acceleration slammed hard gravitational force, like a heavy hand,
against her body. A faint scream whistled outside, and fine vibrations shook
the bird’s hull.

Exhilaration and fear charged Anya’s
pulse. At least she’d arrive at her destination in a hurry. And then what?
Should she land?

Land.

Anya slapped a hand to her
forehead and groaned. “I am such an idiot! I am going to
die.
”

“I hope not,” said a hoarse voice.

Anya gasped, and cast a quick
glance about the tiny cabin, seeking the source of the voice. It hadn’t come
from the tiny earbud in her ear. Joshua’s forces were flying on silent. “Hello?”

“Hit the video screen, foolish
girl,” the voice snapped. “Left button above the throttle.”

When she pushed the tiny black
button, Richert’s testy face stared back at her. How had Tarim’s baron accessed
Onred’s communications system?

An inspired touch to an adjacent
button opened up a wide, black radar screen. Orange blobs bobbed on the horizon.
They must be Onred’s forces, waiting for Joshua at Astana. She didn’t see
Joshua’s birds, but they were probably flying with radar jamming on. Obviously,
Onred, in his arrogance, didn’t feel the need to jam radar. Or perhaps some of
his birds flew invisibly. Likely.

“Well?” Richert snapped. “Why are
you ignoring me? Aren’t you curious why I’m on Onred’s video feed?”

“Because you’re in cahoots with
him?”

Richert scowled. “You’d be dead if
I were.”

“So why are you spying on me?”

“Where’s Joshua?”

Anya eyed Richert with suspicion.
What were his motives? Clearly, he’d compromised the bird’s security system. He
had probably thought she and Joshua would fly this bird to meet with Joshua’s
secret forces. Probably the whole cabin was bugged with microphones and tiny
video cameras. Richert couldn’t, however, hear her tiny earpiece linked into
Michael’s phone. So, how much should she tell him?