Frozen by Eve Silver

Author:Eve Silver
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9940528-5-8
Publisher: Eve Silver

Chapter 6

Crystals of ice punctured the frozen surface of the lake, rectangles and columns and clusters crowned in tufts of snow, all reaching to the sky, taller than a Janson rig. Raina wove between them, feeling like she was in a holovid. Wizard was behind her, his chest to her back, his muscled thighs melded to hers, his arms around her waist.

“Where are we?” she asked into her lip-com.

“Barrow Lake.”

“It’s beautiful. Surreal.”

She slowed as they passed a single crystal jutting up at an angle. It looked like the twisted tooth of a mythical monster.

“The way is safe,” Wizard said, mistaking her reason for slowing. “The surface of the lake is frozen. Ice thickness is greater than one half of one meter.”

She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “You didn’t stop to measure, so I’m curious how you know that.”

“I am using an echo-ranging technique with acoustic waves at the ice-water interface.”

“You can hear the water below the ice.”

“Affirmative.”

“Learn something new every day,” Raina said with a huffing laugh.

Wizard tightened his arms around her and they rode the rest of the way across the lake in silence. As they neared the far shore, the land formed a series of massive dunes that obscured the view of what lay beyond. There was no sound, no warning, nothing that marked anything out of the ordinary, but Raina already had a bad feeling in her gut before Wizard said, “Halt.”

She did exactly that, and the seconds crawled past as they sat in perfect silence, her nerves strung taut. This mission was piling up complications like the north wind piled up drifts.

Wizard tapped her shoulder and pointed to one of the mounds of snow. With a nod, she eased the scooter in that direction and parked at the base. He climbed from the scooter, grabbed the anti-reflective, dielectric field glasses and tossed them to her. Then he belly-crawled up the mound of snow, and she followed. The way was steeper than it appeared from below. By the time they reached the top, she was a little out of breath. She edged forward, lying flat atop the dune, and when she raised the glasses to her eyes, her pulse slammed into overdrive. A long line of trouble stood between them and their destination.

“Reavers,” Wizard murmured.

“I do see that,” Raina murmured back. And the sight of such a large pack of them brought back ugly memories of snow and blood and Sam dying. She buried those thoughts and focused on the moment.

There were three plascannon rigs, ugly metal-plated things with thick caterpillar treads churning the snow. If she concentrated, she thought she could feel the ground throbbing, transmitting the weight and power of those rigs. Sixteen smaller—a relative term—trucks followed, metal plates overlapping at the edges like the scales of a mythical beast, equal parts ugly and deadly. They were outfitted with black and chrome ramming grilles and gun turrets.

Dozens of snowscooters fanned out in front of the convoy, and dozens more followed behind. The men

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