Ice Breakers

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Maya knows her job as mining supervisor, and she knows it well. But do the higher-ups listen to her? Of course not.

But when the biggest ice storm yet hits Xeunite, Maya finds her incompetent bosses the least of her worries. As the storm rages, Maya faces life-and-death decisions—ones she might not survive.

With "Ice Breakers," Kristine Kathryn Rusch offers up an unexpected heroine of the highest order.

"Kristine Kathryn Rusch is one of the best writers in the field."

—SFRevu

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jan 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215625255

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

Ice Breakers

ICE BREAKERS

KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

WMG Publishing, Inc.

CONTENTS

Ice Breakers

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About the Author

ICE BREAKERS

Perfect time for the equipment to break. Maya lashed the handle of the Ice Breaker against the pole, fighting the wind with every movement. Her environmental suit—a little too old and a little too tight—blocked the cold, but nothing blocked the wind.

She cursed the higher-ups with each breath. Money-grubbing assholes. She’d been telling them for the past five years that the equipment was on its last legs, that it would break at the exact wrong possible moment, and then they’d lose millions.

But did anyone listen? Of course not. And now, the equipment had broken down at the worst possible moment.

She wrapped an arm around the pole, and braced herself. Most of the equipment was deep in the ice, sturdy enough to handle the high winds that came with Xeunite’s storms.

But this storm, this was a motherfucker, the biggest they’d seen since they started mining Xeunite’s northernmost ice-covered continent. The ice coated everything, but beneath it was a cornucopia of minerals that formed the basis of almost every piece of equipment on every ship and settlement from here to Megnacia.

ClaaLorus Systems had guessed the minerals would be here, spent a small fortune to secure not just the rights but the land, and had been digging in the ice ever since.

Maya had been head of operations for the past five years, and she’d never seen a storm warning like this one. Sustained winds of a hundred and fifty miles per hour and snow mixed with ice. The temperatures, always lethally low here, would go to unimaginable levels considering the wind speed.

Her environmental suit was up to the challenge, but her body wasn’t. There wasn’t a lot to protect her out here. Early this year, she had ordered her team to move the equipment to an ice plain that had once been a gigantic freshwater lake. Ice and snow-covered mountains ringed it on three sides, protecting the area from some storms, but not this one.

This one was coming from the east, directly into the gap between the mountain ranges, and, if her computer simulations were accurate, would form some kind of weather vortex that could