Ashlyn Chronicles 1: 2287 A.D. by Glenn van Dyke, Renee van Dyke Read Free Book Online Page A

“It’s important!”
    “Understood, but I can’t afford to risk losing consciousness—not now. Not with the enemy fleet inbound. Besides, the doc said that I needed to take it before I had physical contact with Ashlyn.” Just saying her name made his heart race. “If we’re taking him literally, I’ll be fine, long as I don’t touch her. I do appreciate all the love though.”
    Steven put his armored glove back on and headed to the elevator. He pushed the button. Nothing happened. To his left was a door. Its sign read, STAIRS. “All right, we’ll do this the hard way.”
    Like the entry door, Steven had to ram it hard to free it from the ice. Before him lay a long flight of ice-covered stairs that disappeared into the darkness. “Gena, switch to night vision.”
    A blast of colder air from the room below hit him. “External temperature is minus 114.2 degrees and falling,” announced Gena into Steven’s comm.
    When Stratton heard the number he said, “That’s cold, Admiral—take it slow on the stairs. They’ll be as slippery as a two-bit hooker on prom night. Godspeed, sir.”
    Steven gave his team a thumbs up before he disappeared down the stairwell.

***
     
     
    “External temperature is currently minus 187.6 degrees,” came Gena’s announcement just as Steven reached the bottom of the stairs.
    Definitely the wrong time for the elevator to be broken, thought Steven, shivering. He had counted the stairs. Eight flights of fifteen stairs each. He could only hope that Tynabo had allowed time to overcome any possible chaos.
    “Time till self-destruct is T-minus ten minutes,” announced the computer.
    The yellow warning light inside Steven’s helmet flashed. His energy core was already beginning to fail from the frigid temperatures, not to mention the armor’s heating unit drawing power at an alarming rate. He was shivering, unable to stop himself.
    The room at the bottom of the stairs was of such immense size that even the highest setting of night vision could not illuminate the other side. Like something out of a B horror flick, a thick layer of dense fog clung to the ground. Rising up out of the fog he saw endless rows of frost-laden cryogenic stasis chambers.
    “Welcome to the flip-side of r-reality. You’ve just entered the T-twilight Zone,” said Steven, in a good rendition of Rod Serling’s gravelly voice over his open comm. His broken speech reflected just how cold he really was.
    “Make it quick, Admiral, or you’ll find yourself in that flip-side of reality—permanently,” said Stratton, who listened in from upstairs. “No movement on the spiders yet, but the wind is really kicking up. So we know they’re close.”
    Standing three meters away from the nearest chamber, Steven slowly rotated, letting the pull he felt guide him in the right direction. His fingers already throbbed with pain, his legs shaking. He focused, trying to block out the loud whooshing noises created by the ruptured coolant lines in the room. The area around him grew quiet—still.
    He could feel her. With each throbbing beat of his heart, she beckoned him to her side. He started forward, moving at a quicker pace through the rows. The darkness was deep and he had nothing to guide him but his heart.
    The strength of his yearning and his need to be with Ashlyn carried all the weight and desire of a life-long obsession.
    Suddenly, the room lit dimly from end to end. Steven looked around and was surprised to see just how large the room really was. As he had suspected, a series of large quakes that had shook everything from Wyoming to Colorado, over the last years, had ruptured the cryo’s coolant delivery system. Several plumes of freezing coolant had formed tall stalagmites on the floor, spewing the coolant into the air like miniature volcanoes.
    The lights above dimmed and ebbed, straining valiantly to stay lit. “Warning, stasis chamber power will be exhausted in T-minus three minutes, resulting in cryogenic