Ice Baron (Ice Chronicles, Book One (science fiction romance)) (31 page)

Onred’s face filled the small
screen. Glee glittered in his slitted eyes. “A choice morsel has fallen into my
lap, citizens of Donetsk.” The shot cut away to reveal Joshua, being dragged
into a room. His shirt had been stripped off to reveal the bombs attached to
his chest. Purple bruised his bad eye, and a red line split his charred cheek.
Anya swallowed back a cry of horror and instinctively moved behind Emelie, so
the girl couldn’t see her distress. Men strapped Joshua to a chair. One pulled
forward a machine, and still another attached electrodes to Joshua’s neck and
his chest, too, by snaking them inside of his black snow wear.

Anya put a hand to her mouth to
stop a scream. They meant to electrocute him. Torture him. And in the process
his bombs might explode.

Onred’s face appeared on screen.
His smile curdled Anya’s soul. “It is simple, Donetsk. Your destruction has begun.
I will extract
all
of your secrets from your leader, and then I will
kill him. And when I find the lovely Anya Dubrovnyk, who hides within my city,
I will kill her, too. Then the war will end.” He cackled. “Donetsk Territory is mine.”

More lights flickered. The allied
attack was well underway. However, no explosion had sounded from the communications
center downstairs. Had the men found Joshua’s bomb? It appeared so.

Then how would the extraction team
break inside Gorno? Joshua had only disabled a small slice of their internal
security. With Gorno’s main security still working, and both the communications
center and Command Central still going strong, what were their chances of
defeating the city?

Next to none. Anya had to find a
way to turn off the shields, and to stop all communications between Onred and
his fighters. She had to weaken the city’s internal defenses so Richert’s men
and Donetsk’s could overtake Gorno. But how?

Joshua had planned to plant a bomb
inside Command Central.

Realistically, Anya didn’t see how
she could possibly take over Command Central alone and plant a bomb. On the
other hand, if she could gain access by computer…

Maybe she could figure out a way
to disrupt Gorno’s communications network.

Her gaze darted about Emelie’s
small apartment. A door led to a bedroom. The main living area included a
dining table and a kitchen. A faint glow, around the corner in the dining nook,
caught her eye. Anya hurried to investigate, and her breath caught. Emelie had
turned her dining room into a computer station rivaling a small scale ZCA
Command Central. She remembered Marli mentioning that only Astana’s
technological marvels had intrigued Emelie. Now she understood why. The girl
must be a computer genius. A full screen wrapped around three walls, and three
separate keypads indicated the multipurpose use of the system.

Images flickered on the screens. A
quick inspection revealed the system was logged into Gorno’s internal networks,
too.

Anya smiled. Returning to the
living area, she tilted Emelie’s chair back and dragged her backwards into the
dining nook, so she could keep an eye on her. Then she double-bolted Emelie’s
front door and settled down at Emelie’s central work station.

“Now,” she murmured, “let’s see
what we can find.”

*  *  *  *  *

Pain sizzled into Joshua’s neck.
His muscles convulsed, and he bit back a moan. The bastards had already jolted
him seven times. His skin burned. “Warming you up,” said one fiend.

Gray colors swam in his bad eye
and his head felt like it was about to explode. In his dim field of vision,
Onred appeared, smiling. Joshua wanted to kick in the sick bastard’s teeth.

“So,” Onred said pleasantly. “I
hope you feel warmly welcomed to Gorno.”

Joshua didn’t bother to answer.

Silence elapsed. “Fine. This might
loosen your tongue.” Onred passed a small computer screen before Joshua’s eyes.
His good eye made out Anya’s frightened face. “We’ve captured your girlfriend.
She’s eagerly awaiting my return.”

The words hit Joshua like a punch
to the heart. He closed his eyes. And then the picture swam again through his
mind’s eye. It was Anya, all right. But behind her had been a darkened
doorway…and stairs. The picture was shot before she had fled from the
communications room. He gritted his teeth. The lying, two-faced cockroach.
Onred would take half-truths and feed on Joshua’s fears—if Joshua let him.

He needed to retreat inside of his
skull, as he had done so long ago…

“You will do as I say,” said Onred’s
hated voice. To Joshua, the words sounded hollow, as if coming from a great
distance. Onred’s voice merged with his father’s. The liar. The manipulating
bastard, goading him, forcing him to hurt the ones he loved most. Never again.
Never.

Pain flicked into Joshua’s cheek,
and he opened his eyes. Onred glared back. “Enough of the games. I want information.
Give it to me, and I’ll set your precious Anya free.”

Joshua did not respond.

Onred shoved another picture into
his face. A blue ball of fire filled the screen. Michael’s shield. The picture
must have been shot during the air battle in the canyon. Onred said, “The bird
is standard issue. The shield, clearly, is not. Who invented it?”

Joshua said nothing.

The territory baron’s voice rose. “Who
invented it?”

Joshua remained silent. So, he had
been right. Onred didn’t want greenhouses or land. He wanted Donetsk’s technological
inventions.

Onred abruptly motioned. Pain,
long and intense, burned into Joshua’s chest. He couldn’t stop his moan, nor,
eventually, the saliva that dripped from his bottom lip.

Onred passed the plastic handcuffs
before Joshua’s bleary eyes. Following these, he held up other technical marvels,
all stolen from Joshua’s belt. “Who invented these?”

He remained silent.

“
Who invented them?
” Onred
screamed.

“Yankee doodle.” Joshua chuckled,
because suddenly, it was very funny.

Hot pain sizzled into the back of
his head. Mercifully, everything went black.

*  *  *  *  *

Anya pressed her hand to her
mouth, choking back cries of horror. She had pulled up Alpha channel shortly
after sitting down at Emelie’s computer. She had seen every second of Joshua’s
torture. And now…was he dead? He lay so still. But his chest moved.

Abruptly, the feed went black.

Anya wiped at the tears slipping
down her face. She had to do something. Anything, to free him. But what, and
how? Hatred for Onred rose like a black virus in her soul. She wanted to rip
out his demonic heart with her bare hands. She wanted to hurt him as horribly
as he had just hurt Joshua.

Her watery gaze went to Emelie,
and a terrible, awful idea entered her mind. She couldn’t.

And yet she could.

First, though, while Joshua was
safely unconscious, she needed to figure out how to disrupt Gorno’s
communications systems. Onred would surely wait until Joshua woke up before
torturing him again. Her mind replayed Onred’s screaming demands. Richert’s
oblique, sly hints had proven right. Onred wasn’t interested in Donetsk’s greenhouses at all. He wanted ZCA’s inventions; specifically, the name of the
inventor responsible for Michael’s new shield. It boggled her mind what Onred
could do if he gained control of ZCA’s brilliant head scientists. She knew
Joshua well enough, however, to know that he would die before divulging that
information.

Anya spent the next precious
minutes delicately probing into Gorno’s computer infrastructure. Emelie
appeared to have complete access to every detail of Gorno’s system, including
security cameras in every corner of the city. Amazing. Anya wondered if Onred
knew. And she wondered why the girl wanted such wide ranging access. Did she
like spying on all of Gorno’s operations? Darker ideas entered Anya’s head. Did
Emelie spy on
people
? Maybe blackmail them? Or did she merely like the
power of knowing that she could single-handedly run Gorno? Perhaps even more disturbing,
Emelie clearly could undermine all systems from her own workstation.

Might be interesting to
investigate Emelie’s personal files.

Anya glanced at her watch, and
allowed herself one minute. Swiftly, she scanned folders. Nothing. Then she had
the bright idea to enable hidden files. One folder popped up, outlined in
purple. It was simply named, “Astana.”

Heart rate accelerating, Anya
clicked on the folder and another single folder appeared, named “Virus.” She
gasped, mind racing. Michael was right. He had said a computer virus had
attacked Astana’s satellite and computer systems. It must have infiltrated and
disabled Astana’s system before her family was abducted. That meant the virus
had been planted prior to the kidnapping. It could have lain dormant for days,
or weeks…or since Onred and Emelie had visited Astana for the peace talks.

More facts clicked together. Marli
had given Emelie tours all over Astana. Emelie had expressed interest in Astana’s
technological breakthroughs. Just as Onred had now, she realized. Emelie must
have seized one of those opportunities to introduce the virus into the computer
system. Probably the children’s network, which would explain the puzzling fact
of why that system had been corrupted.

The virus had been planted while
her marriage—and peace—to the Altai baron were being negotiated.

Anya drew an unsteady breath.

From the beginning, Onred had
never intended peace. All along, he had meant to destroy Astana. Relief, mixed
with a terrible grief gripped Anya’s heart. It wasn’t her fault. Fleeing her
marriage had not caused Astana’s destruction. But somehow that knowledge only
made the truth seem all the more terrible, because she could have done nothing
to stop it. The two-faced Altai leader had planned Astana’s destruction from
the beginning. The death of her people was written into this computer code.

With a trembling hand, Anya
clicked the folder named “Virus.” An executable file and a “readme” file
appeared. She read the text file, and then closed her eyes in disbelief. The
solution to defeating Gorno lay right here, in Emelie’s computer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“You can’t
do that,
you know.” Emelie’s thin, quiet voice spoke for
the first time.

Anya shot her a narrowed glance. “Just
watch me.”

“He’ll kill Joshua. And Marli. And
the others.”

For the first time, Anya
understood what Joshua had faced when he had ordered the hit on Yegor and his
warships when they had rescued Damon. Did the good of the many outweigh the
needs of the few? In this case, was Gorno’s destruction more important than the
possible survival of her loved ones?

Anya smiled. It must not have
looked like a nice one, for Emelie paled still further. Her dark, heavily
outlined eyes looked like coals in her white face. Anya pulled the bomb from
her belt. Using her extra set of plastic, stretchable handcuffs, she snapped it
onto Emelie’s throat. She made sure it wasn’t too tight, so the girl could
breathe. Horror widened Emelie’s eyes.

Anya dragged the girl back into
the other room. Conversationally, she said, “Does your father love you, Emelie?”

“I don’t know.”

The chair stopped with a squeak
before a plain white wall. It could be a wall anywhere. Onred would have no
clue where his daughter might be.

“When I broadcast, I’ll have to
gag you,” Anya told her.

“I’m not frightened of you.” The
girl’s pale lips pressed tightly together.

“Maybe you should be,” she
suggested. “Your father is about to kill everyone I love. I would do anything—
anything
—to
stop him.” And it was true. Anya felt like she stood at the edge of a
precipice. What did she have to lose, besides her soul? She would gladly give
that in order to save Joshua and her family. She looked steadily into the girl’s
eyes. “I’ve already killed six people today. What’s one more?” Of course, those
were all in self-defense. Not premeditated murder, like this would be.

Emelie’s eyes widened. Tears
glimmered. “Don’t. Please.”

“Please?” Anya retreated to the
kitchen to find a rag that would serve as a gag. She also found tape, and
returned to Onred’s daughter. “‘Please’ goes nowhere with me. You’re a
murderess. You’ve killed
thousands
of people. Don’t you think you
deserve to die?”

“I didn’t!” Emelie gulped out. “I
didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t
mean
to?” Anya
said in disbelief. “You created the virus. You installed the virus in Astana’s
computer systems. And somehow you think it’s an
accident
that thousands
of people died?”

“I knew he’d disable Astana, but
not…” Emelie sealed her lips. Her features hardened, as if retreating inside herself.

“You did it all because your daddy
asked you to,” Anya said in a patronizing tone.