Frozen Hearts: The Ionia Chronicles: Book One

by Pamela Stewart

  “Why don’t you prop some ice under the tread and pull from the front?”

  “The ice would not be strong enough.”

  “It would if you used that hunk.” She pointed to a long column displaced by the earthquake. “And it only has to last until you get us back on the main ice sheet.”

  He ran the potential outcomes and found the odds. This plan had an fifty-two percent chance of failure. But it was a plan. And fifty-two percent was better than the two percent chance of his lifting the vehicle over his own height. It was a workable idea.

  “Agreed. I will prop the ice support. You convey what is happening to the passengers, and on my mark, they are to disembark. Make sure Ionia is assisted in the evacuation.” An uncomfortable grating rubbed against his nerves at telling a human what to do.

  Granted, she wasn’t his human, but it still made him experience more strange emotions. She inclined her head and scurried off to follow his commands.

  As she struggled over the snow piles, he scanned her vital signs. The girl was worse than she led the others to believe. T cell counts dismal, breathing challenged, her biochemistry artificially improved by her treatments which were many kilometers away. Her state was worse than even Ionia’s, but she seemed to have such a strong desire to help. He understood her motivation.

  He estimated she would be dead within two years, or sooner if she continued to put stress on her system. She used her resources to provide creative solutions and appeared very clever. It would be a loss to humanity.

  He turned back to his primary function and fired his leg hydraulics. His vision washed red--a warning that his energy was dangerously low. But he had to do it. Injured or not. Energy or not.

  Because now all their lives rested on him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Den positioned his body beneath the tread. The windstorm lulled. The blowing snow slowed and allowed the sky’s edge to glow.

  Day during Antarctica’s winter was hardly discernible from evening. If he could face the full illumination of the sun and absorb just a modicum of heat, he could regain some of his energy and ease the impending burden.

  The cold wind stirred and flash froze pieces of his face, like scalpels slicing his skin and shocking his pain receptors. Even if Ionia liked it, the skin was impractical in this environment.

  He longed for his world to become as he had been programmed to anticipate, with long nights of companionship. Soft, fragrant, flesh against flesh. His skin was designed for pleasure, to be drenched in sensation, to create a hunger.

  Not to endure -12 degree Celsius onslaughts.

  His damaged arm circuitry spritzed and jolted, sending negative feedback to his main processor. Low power level and the repair had drained his resources to critical level. If he continued with his task, there was a chance of losing function in his left shoulder, possibly worse. But his comfort was secondary to his mission. He pushed the pain to a lower level of consciousness and refocused.

  He jammed the ice block under the transport and sent a signal to the console.

  An alarm sounded from within, and the captain and passengers scrambled out.

  Ionia clung to the Feinstein boy’s side, her unfocused eyes peered out from her hood. Wisps of hair escaped the edges in a great mass of yellow-gold that caught the emergency lights and glimmered like a sun in the night.

  The boy held Ionia tightly, supporting her. Too tightly.

  His emotion center tightened his tendons and balled his hands. Den should be touching, helping, holding, and protecting her. Pain sizzled like long sharp objects jammed into his cranium. Soon enough. He climbed the wall back to the topmost level of the ice sheet. The headlamps from the transport flickered, and the pylon supporting the tread groaned. Speed was of the up most importance.

  Den ran to the front of the plane. The wind picked up to twenty-five knots, and snow slashed his visual receptors. He leaned into the weather, as the captain fell in next to him. She helped unhook the tow chain on the front of the vehicle.

  “You sure you can budge up my baby?” She pointed to his sparkling shoulder joint.

  Den wanted to frown, to say that her assessment of his capability was incorrect, but that would be inaccurate. He fought against his chassis damage and low power levels. There was no way to determine if he could or could not save her transport. All he could do was offer the calculations. “Do you want the exact odds?” Most humans, he had found, did not.

  “Not really,” she shouted over the wind.

  Den picked up the chains, and the captain waved at him to wait.

  “Kids,” the captain said, “we all need to help. If we lose my transport, we’re dead. No bleeding signal for hours on end. No people that ain’t trying to kill us.” She muttered and grasped the chain, coiling it around her forearm.

  “That stance is not advised. If the transport should slip you would go over the edge.”

  “I’d be no use without her. Haven’t you ever heard? A good captain goes down with her ship.”

  Den reviewed his DL and plucked numerous references to the custom. He didn’t understand human rituals but accepted the convention.

  He pulled, his arms quaked, his power level dipped to critical. The Feinsteins and Ionia gripped the chain, sliding gloved fingers against the plasticmetal.

  Power surged from Den’s backup source, his polymer tendons and muscles strained against the weight.

  “Pull!” The captain’s voice echoed over the howl and infused the group with a burst of energy.

  Den’s sensors flicked full alarm. The world washed in the darkest red spectrum, but he heaved with all the hydraulics in his legs, arms, and back. Raw ripping pain tore his human sinews. His left arm gave way, but he redoubled his effort with his right. Leg hydraulics ground together, knees and hips, overheated and burned, every sense in his body sent messages to stop or cease functioning. He again wondered why they included pain to such degrees in an android.

  A scream rose from his voice box and released some of the building agony. His arm socket, blood, flesh, and polyplastic stretched beyond capacity; if the stress persisted, the limb would separate. But he could not anticipate if he could keep awareness that long. His power level flashed a beacon in his vision.

  Critical, critical, critical.

  The transport wobbled back, and Den dug in his heels. All the humans fell into a heap, unable to maintain their hold. All except the captain. She held on, her face twisted, as her teeth ground together.

  The transport balanced on the edge of the chasm, only Den and the human’s strength keeping it on an uneven balance.

  There had to be some method to get it back on solid ground. But he was a droid, void of true creativity.

  But he must, or lose their only gateway to assistance.

  He searched his DLed information. Searching for some concept that may give him a direction. So few items of context. None that applied to this particular situation.

  He flashed through hundreds of images. Faster and faster. Thousands. Then he hit upon an image. A technique used on a space mission where booster rockets corrected a shuttle’s trajectory. If the back end had more support, some other force to push, perhaps they could get the vehicle on a solid surface. A convertible plane may have the technology to accomplish the task.

  Den used his backup audio at his highest volume at the captain. “Can you control the emergency booster jets from here?”

  The pain disappeared from the woman’s face. Her eyes, lips, brow all became alive and active. “I get it. One big push but it will melt the ice, and we will only have a second to get out of the way.”

  “.752 percent of a second. But it will be enough. Everyone back away. I need room to navigate.” The group removed themselves and stepped back. “Further.” Den choked on the words as the mass of metal tilted and pulled him to the edge. The ice pylon cracked and fell away. “Now! Now!”

  The captain pushed a remote control unit and the plane jumped. During that half a second, Den maneuv
ered the back treads onto the main ice sheet. His legs wavered with the stress. Torment, hot and searing, clawed in his flesh. His systems nearly locked down. He yanked one last time.

  The transport slid on the solid ice. He threw his body out of the way of the oncoming vehicle. The convertible plane skidded to a stop a few meters away.

  He lay on his back, spread-eagle, panting on the snow. His human flesh disintegrated from stress, elements, and exertion.

  A strange elated sensation cascaded over him. It was warm, positive, different from any he had withstood.

  He had acted. Without Ionia’s direct command, without concern of angering a human, he had done what logic dictated, but more. He had done what he wanted. If he could have disagreed before Ionia took the blazer, much of the current state of affairs could have been avoided.

  He could not self-motivate then, but now he had nothing holding him at bay. He couldn’t extrapolate where this line of logic would end. He would have to analyze the sensation more completely later.

  He let his processor slip into standby as he stumbled to the power outlet.

  ###

  Ionia let the chain fall from her numb hands.

  Helping Simon and Miranda's clean-up had sounded easy, but she wasn’t fully occupying her body yet. Her strength fluxed like a blazer with a bad fuel line. One minute she felt fine. The next she wanted to lie down and sleep into the next millennium.

  There was enough twilight to see Den and Cam working on the engine in the distance. Still no coms. Still stuck with no way to reach SPS. Still no way to reach her mom.

  “I’m cold.” Her voice sounded pathetic, but she couldn’t stop the stutter. And she couldn’t stand it any longer, not knowing about her mom, the dull ache in every part of her body, the ice pick of worry that kept hacking at her brain.

  It didn’t matter how many patches they slapped on her forearm. She was cold. Down to the bone, shake violently until your teeth clatter cold.

  “Let me get you another patch,” Simon said.

  He turned to go just as her legs gave way like icicles on a sunny day, and she folded down to her knees. Numb. No feeling reached through the heated leggings. Nothing from her waist down, either. She could send the command to her legs to move, and they obeyed but through a haze, as if she’d been sitting on them too long. Not enough blood to the extremities.

  A bubble surrounded her. The people and the transport a dream around her, unreal, distant, vague. Sign two that everything was not even a little ok.

  “You need to get somewhere warm.” Simon looked around and spun in a complete circle. His shoulders slumped forward, and his chin dipped.

  Poor Simon, trying to fix things that were impossible to fix. “Captain. Do you have a warming tent?” Simon asked.

  “No. Not until we get the engine going!” Cam shouted.

  Den dropped his tool and took a step toward Ionia. She hadn’t seen him closely since before she’d passed out. A knot like a jagged-edged rock lodged in her throat, blocking her air. He looked half-dead.

  His left arm hung, wire and machinery exposed. She’d already seen the patches of dark on his skin, but they had grown to mottle his once smooth complexion. His left eye appeared worse than the rest, part of the flesh hung off and made him look so much less than human.

  But his good eye was still crystalline blue. Still concerned.

  “Hey Robot Boy, I need a bit of help here. The only way any of us are going to survive is to repair the engine.” Cam’s commander tone carried over the still air.

  Den’s lips turned down hard, but he nodded.

  Miranda bounced up next to Ionia, standing on her tiptoes and wrapped an arm around Ionia’s shoulders. “Guess what I got?”

  “What?” Ionia voice didn’t sound right, but hung like an overused rag, lifeless and colorless.

  “A boncan!”

  “Really?” Simon and Ionia said together.

  “That is totally illegal. Dad would kill you.”

  “What Dad doesn’t know, and what big mouth doesn’t tell, will be fine. We are in the middle of the tundra. No narcs here and no danger of fire. The transport’s safe over there.”

  She pulled a small black can, the size of a container of vegetables, from her pocket, peeled back the lid, and slid it away. “Back! Back!”

  Simon and Miranda scrambled back and drug Ionia with them toward the chasm. The only real illumination came from the emergency backup lights on the transport that created a small island of light in an ocean of darkness.

  The boncan dissolved into a geyser of color. Green and orange twisted together, and flashes of gold twinkled, and pink and red and blue flared in tentacles of color and light. Sizzling, cracking, shots of flame burst into the sky, like a Freedom Day display.

  Images of stars, comets tailing flashes of bold strokes, rainbow streaks, and dancing yellow suns.

  “Now for the music.” Miranda’s voice carried energy, youth, and mischief.

  “You have an implant. Why am I not surprised?” Ionia said.

  Miranda’s smile burned brighter than the boncan flare. She pressed her purple glove against her face and tapped twice against her ear.

  “Play out loud. Artist Yikkut, “This Is the Time” volume three.” The tune started soft at first, strings and bass, then the beat hit. It filled the air and Ionia’s chest.

  Cam dropped her tools and ran toward them. “What in the living blazes are you doing? Shut it down! Turn it off. Those bloody exiles will be back.”

  “Can’t.” Miranda’s head dipped, but her voice had a hard, don’t-mess-with-me edge. “They’d be foolish to come back. We have a convertible plane, a military droid, and enough guns and ammo to shut them down within twenty minutes.”

  “I’m so glad you know all about living in the Wilds and military tactics, Princess Feinstein.”

  “Princess? You think I’m a princess. I’m at university level in enclass. I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You may know books, but you don’t know the Wild.” Cam’s shoulders came back, and her chin lifted, eyes narrowed.

  Miranda’s tiny hands rolled into purple-gloved fists at her side, nose flaring.

  Simon stepped up and gripped Miranda’s arm, breaking the stare-off. He shook his head, and Miranda pressed her lips together with effort, her eyes still defiant. “Fine. Sorry.”

  Cam nodded as if she’d won some contest. “And turn the bloody music down. Do you want another slide?” Cam said.

  “The ground is solid in that area beyond fifty-two meters,” Den said in his most authoritative tone.

  Cam returned to the engine with more grumbling. Free spirited, fun-loving, pirate’s- smile Cam had disappeared. This Cam appeared hopeless and overwhelmed. Ionia had always thought of Cam as an adventurer, someone who wasn’t scared of anything. Now she appeared to be scared of a lot, mainly about losing her convertiplane and thus her livelihood.

  “Let the music continue. Volume level five,” Miranda said, a bit too loudly.

  The thump returned and vibrated over Ionia’s skin, breaking through the numb. Miranda grabbed Ionia’s hands, bounced to the beat, and mouthed the words.

  Everyone knew the words to the song. Even in the furthest reaches, even in the tundra, encircled by cool blue ice, and an ocean of darkness. Ionia mimicked the words in her mind.

  “Come on, come on.” Miranda swayed and removed her hood.

  The boncan worked its power. A fortress of warm air surrounded the area around the twirling lights. “Dancing will warm you up. Move it.” Miranda bumped her hip into Ionia. The jostling punched pain through her nervous system. She bit back her yelp and gave Miranda a tight, closed lip smile.

  Simon sprung up between them. He ducked his head so his eyes would meet with Ionia’s. “You ok?” he whispered.

  She let her face relax, let the forced pleasantness melt, and shook her head no.

  He wrapped an arm around her again and pulled her into the warm nook between his shoulder an
d side, supporting her enough for the pain to subside.

  With the fire, snap crackling, the music blasting, and Miranda laughing and trying to do a back bend in her giant coat, Ionia could almost imagine they were just hanging out at the Feinstein house on a boring winter’s day.

  “I could do it if I’d brought another jacket. This is a monster,” Miranda said.

  “Sure, Randa.” Ionia let the warmth engulf her. The edge of the skyline showed a range of pointed ice in the distance. It could be mountains or just glaciers, and really there was no difference. They stood a hundred kilometers from anything, except the attackers, the SPS, and her father’s grave.

  The boncan sparkled on, flashing violet and red, cycling though a kaleidoscope. One of the beams hit a shade of yellow-orange that reminded her of her dad’s beard.

  Simon looked down at her, his face lifted with the music and fire. He seemed to be eighteen again instead of a mature adult that had rescued her. “I’m really sorry.” Simon rubbed her arm.

  “Why? You guys are helping me. Saved me. What are you sorry for?” She turned to face him fully. His dark eyes reflected the fire, making them sparkle and shine, and show just how worried he was.

  They made her feel safe, protected and cared for. They were very good eyes.

  “It’s gotta be tough,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I mean losing both. When I lost my mom, it was horrible.”

  She pulled away from him and took a step back outside of the embrace of warmth. “I haven’t. I won’t. Why would you say that?”

  Miranda muttered something under her breath that sounded like denial.

  A lick of frozen air slashed across Ionia’s face. She started shaking and stepped closer to the spewing sparklers and pyrotechnics.

  “Ionia. You need to prepare yourself for what we will find there,” Simon said.

  A small sound erupted from Ionia’s throat, and tears stung her eyes, but she held them back. He was right. It felt like an abscess tooth extraction to admit it, but he was right. “Yeah, I know.” Her voice sounded strangled and small. “But I don’t have to believe it until I see it. I have the right to have faith.”