Ice Baron (Ice Chronicles, Book One (science fiction romance)) (5 page)

Carefully, Anya sat up. So far,
her body seemed to be in working order, although her head ached more sharply
now. Gripping the fingertips of one glove in her teeth, she pulled it off and
felt the back of her head. No blood. Just a small bump. Good. She slipped the
glove back on again. It wasn’t too cold this afternoon—maybe -23° C, but
extremities cooled rapidly. She didn’t want to risk frostbitten fingers.

She opened her snow covered pack,
still tied to her arm. Quick use of her compact and the first aid kit dealt
with the gash on her chin. Then she pulled on a warm face mask and pulled up
her parka hood. Last of all, she pulled out her heat insulating camouflage
tarp, re-zipped her bag, and slid her arms through the loops, using it as a
pack.

The tarp was white on one side,
and black on the other. After casting a look to the north and noting the dark,
heavy gray clouds advancing across the steppe, she smiled. Good. A storm was
approaching. She pulled the white side of the tarp over her head and around her
shoulders like a cape and tied it securely in place with the rope. Blizzards
were common, and she didn’t want to lose her prized tarp in the storm.

Micro-sensors were built into each
side of the camouflage tarp, which enabled it to change colors like the rare
chameleon. It would allow Anya to blend into her surroundings, so the search
fleet Joshua was certain to send wouldn’t find her. Even better, the tarp would
act as a shield, preventing her body heat from being detected from overhead.
She would be virtually invisible to all searching aircraft. Even so, she
intended to travel at night as much as possible, until she passed through the
Dzungarian Gate. Travel might be slow going, and she estimated it would take
three or four days of steady trekking south to reach the Gate.

Snow continued to gently fall as
she walked across the wasteland, heading for the shelter of the Tien Shan foothills. The snowfall would mask her footsteps, and the coming blizzard,
although it promised misery, would obliterate her path. Good.

Satellite images had helped Anya
plan this trip, and she knew where a few snow caves were located. She would
spend the days in those—as long as wild animals, such as bears, hadn’t already
claimed them. She shivered, and tried not to think about that right now.

She trudged for the foothills. It
would take until nightfall to reach them. If all went well, she’d continue
walking until dawn.

*  *  *  *  *

Astana

Gray, thick clouds roiled outside
Astana by the time Joshua’s small, single pilot airbird flew from the hangar. A
kilometer below, snow dusted the clear, pod base encircling Astana’s stem,
which secured the city to the earth. From the sky, the stem looked like a long
umbilical cord, interlaced with steel supports. The pod base was a domed
greenhouse, warmed by the heat generated from Astana’s life support systems.

Joshua pushed the throttle to half
of Mach 1 and allowed the familiar weight of gravity to push his body against
the chair. It still felt strange to him to live so far above the earth’s
surface. He and his brother and sisters had been born and raised in caves, deep
inside the earth. Astana was as different from his childhood home as night from
day.

Sky cities like Astana had become
popular two hundred years ago when lighter, cheaper, and stronger construction
materials became available. It was an advantage to live in cities high and free
of the ever-encroaching ice pack and snow drifts. But mostly, the Old Barons
had liked looking down on their domains. Maybe a lingering desire to escape the
damaged earth had played a part in their construction, too.

The cities looked like the flying
saucers of old.

Joshua chuckled grimly to himself.
How naïve people had been before the nuclear wars. Mankind had more to fear
from his own destructive nature than from scout ships from another world. Just
now, the space academy was starting to open its doors to all recruits; even the
disadvantaged poor, as he had been. If Joshua had still been in his twenties,
he might have joined. If he wasn’t a baron. If he wasn’t a protector to five
Dubrovnyks; the eldest of which had just pulled the stupidest stunt imaginable.

His fist tightened on the
throttle. When he found her…

He wanted to thunder at her, and
shake her for scaring him like this. But he would not. Losing control of
himself was never an option. Ever. He would not be like his father.

Joshua slowed to 100 kilometers
per hour when he reached the spot where the shuttle pilot reported that Anya had
parachuted to the earth. She couldn’t have gone far. She had been wearing all
black. It would be easy to spot her.

But it wasn’t.

The wasteland was a sea of white.
No black anywhere. Where was she?

The small flurries thickened. What
if Anya was injured, and now covered by a layer of snow? Joshua’s pulse felt
thick and sluggish with anxiety. He programmed the computer to scan the
landscape for signs of body heat.

The scan came up clean—no readings
of heat anywhere in the wasteland at all, except for a few small, faint
readings of warmth—probably voles burrowed beneath the snow, in the earth.

Joshua circled a ten kilometer
area once, twice, and then three times before a frown locked his brows
together. Visibility in the growing blizzard had become nonexistent, but his
instruments did not lie. Anya had vanished.

Violent gusts shook his craft now.
He couldn’t find her. Fear and powerlessness were old, unwelcome emotions, and
Joshua battled to suppress them. He had never failed a mission. Never. And yet
he was failing Anya now. If he didn’t find her, she could die in this storm.
Where
was
she?

*  *  *  *  *

The blizzard whipped the tarp and
buffeted Anya’s body. At times, the wind felt like a giant, invisible hand, repeatedly
shoving her and trying to push her down. Every few steps, it succeeded.

She fell to her knees again in the
deepening snow. Walking in the storm was miserable, but at least the snow wear
kept her warm, and her compass kept her on track. And the rope she’d cinched
around her waist prevented the tarp from ripping free. She would be in big
trouble if that happened. If necessary, she could wrap up inside the tarp and
use it as a shelter. She could survive the blizzard within its cocoon, as long
as she wasn’t smothered by a mountain of snow.

But wrapping up in the tarp was a
luxury she could not afford right now. The angry, spitting blizzard was doing
her a favor by erasing her tracks from the pristine white wasteland. Once she
reached the mountains, the clumpy vegetation would help to hide her trail. But
for now, cruel and wretched as it might be, the blizzard was actually a blessing.
Neither Joshua nor Onred would be able to follow her tracks, and that meant her
plan to forge a lasting peace with all of their enemies—not just Onred—had a
fighting chance to succeed.

So Anya kept walking.

Storms came from the north, and so
she pocketed the compass and allowed the wind to drive her south, toward the
mountains. Sooner or later, she would run up against the foothills, and if the
storm was still raging at nightfall, she would take refuge in one of the small
snow caves until its fury subsided.

First the Dzungarian Gate, and
afterward, Tarim Territory. Her uncle’s land.

CHAPTER FOUR

Joshua flew his airbird
like a possessed man during the
bright, sunny days following the blizzard, only stopping long enough to snatch
the required hours of sleep. His elite pilots traded off in shifts, keeping a
total of seven birds patrolling the steppe. But so far, no trace of Anya had
been found.

Birn, his first-in-command,
suggested calling off the search after two days.

Joshua told him to go to hell.

In the meantime, Onred had
delivered several broadcasts—actually, temper tantrums disguised as
newscasts—threatening an offensive strike if Anya wasn’t delivered to him
within 72 hours.

Onred could go to hell, too.

Joshua’s respect for the Altai
leader had disintegrated, and a knot of self-condemnation and fury lodged in
his throat when he realized that he had almost delivered Anya into that jackal’s
hands. Within the last few days, Onred had revealed his true colors. He was
hot-tempered and undisciplined, and Joshua now doubted if Onred’s desire for
peace was genuine. He had rejected Joshua’s attempt to return the bride payment,
and instead had called Joshua every foul name under the sun. Each day seemed to
prove more clearly that Onred took after his father, a devil named Jacan, who
had passed baronship to his oldest son before he had a chance to die. Now
there
was a living baron unwilling to surrender his territory to fate. If Onred
failed him, Jacan’s other son, Cadmus, would take over.

Anya had to be somewhere in this
frozen wasteland. Joshua’s eyes hurt from scanning the glittering white snow
pack.

Was she still alive? Sometimes, his
brain felt too bleary to think logically.

She had to be alive. He was her
protector. That job always came first in his heart. The title of Baron meant
little by comparison.

He would find her, even if it
killed him.

*  *  *  *  *

Three and a half days had passed,
and Anya estimated she would reach the Dzungarian Gate sometime tomorrow night.
She stirred the fire in her latest cave—a larger one than most—ignoring the
fact it was finally dark outside. It was time to leave her warm sanctuary.

Anya was sick of hiking through
the black, bitterly cold nights. So far, she had encountered no animals, except
for a few rodents. What did it say when she found their quiet rustlings in the
back of the caves a comfort as she slept?

Anya had never felt so utterly
alone in her entire life. She thought about her family all the time. She missed
them so much. And Joshua… It was hard, but she struggled not to think about
him. Always a painful, losing battle. It didn’t help to remind herself that he
cared nothing for her wishes, and that he had basically sold her. Even though
the bride price was largely symbolic, she didn’t feel any less like a sold
piece of meat after Onred had manhandled her.

The leaping flames warmed her
face. She needed to start walking again. With any luck, her ambitious plans for
peace would make all of this misery worthwhile. And hopefully when she arrived
in Tarim Territory her uncle wouldn’t shoot first, and ask questions later.

Maybe a few more minutes by the
warm fire wouldn’t hurt.

*  *  *  *  *

Joshua had flown in the dark for
over an hour now, sweeping over the Tien Shan foothills. Tonight, something in
his gut wouldn’t let him give up and go home. But how much searching was
enough?

It didn’t matter.

He would not give up. All the
same, he felt so worried that he’d found no trace of Anya that it made him feel
sick. In his deepest heart—a place he didn’t look often, for as a child he’d
found things hurt a lot less if he shoved his emotions deep into a black place
inside himself—he was afraid he would never find her. Clearly, if she was
alive, she was working hard to avoid being found. Fear and anger knotted
harder, and for a second, felt like a sharp ache in his chest. She had to be
out here. Somewhere.

More on impulse than by design, he
set the bird down on a level plateau. The engine whispered into silence, and
Joshua ran a palm over his rough, whiskered face. Should he give up? Even Ray,
his analytical second-in-command, was now quietly recommending that he do so.

But Anya was alive. Joshua felt
it, deep in his gut. In fact, he had the insane feeling he could reach out and
touch her right now…as if she were that close.

This illogical perception did not
leave him, even though his logical side said to dismiss it. After all, he was woolly-headed
from exhaustion. But the soldier in him had been trained and honed to act on
both logic and instinct.

“Why not?” he muttered, and
unstrapped his safety belt. He was sick of being trapped in this bird, using
only his eyes and computer instruments to search for Anya. The primitive urge
to stride into the wilderness and use brute, physical strength to fight the
obstacles keeping him from Anya overwhelmed him.

It was illogical. Joshua knew it.
All the same, he pulled on his protective gear and stepped into the dark night.
A wisp of a moon and millions of stars leant feeble light to the stark
landscape. Cold bit into his exposed face, and he closed the door behind him.
It was so quiet out here. Lonely, too.

It felt good to stand up and
stretch. A hill rose before him, and so he climbed it. The exertion felt good,
too. At the top, Joshua gained a better view of the landscape than he’d had
before. He scanned the horizon, then the foothills, and finally a small, flat
valley before him, edged by rocky foothills on the other side.