Lady Grace & the War for a New World (Earth's End Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

cryogenic set-ups. They were the only units that had been able to go the distance, as she quickly discovered.
    The people in the bunker were supposed to repopulate the Earth; of necessity, more women than men had been included. They had brought two physicians, both women. The doctors were dead. They and the others had been assigned older technology cryogenic units. The female computer/communications officer had died. As had the two munitions specialists. Warriors, the general called them. Murderers who didn’t need any excuse to kill. A man and a woman. Both dead, thank God.
    Veronica laughed at what she’d thought. God. She knew perfectly well that God did not exist. When she looked at the dead occupant of the last cubicle, her mouth tightened.
    Beautiful Zhanna, as porcelain-skinned and delicate as a tsar’s daughter. She was the Tsar’s daughter, joining their happy family at the general’s invitation.
    “She is nothing to me, Veronica, Nothing. We’re bringing her as a breeder, that’s all. You are my favorite.” She must have been his beloved; he gave her the best cryogenics. You’d never know it from how he acted. He and the eighteen-year-old Zhanna had flamed every night. Veronica had welcomed their intimacy. As long as he was besotted with the girl, he stayed away from her. Had Zhanna been anything but a vicious power-monger as trustworthy as a viper, Veronica would have welcomed her.
    She and Zhanna married the general two days before the conflagration. No matter that two wives were illegal in the old world. The old world would soon be gone. They were wedded and bedded, then locked into the units that would save them forever a few days later when the bombs stopped exploding. She looked at Zhanna’s peaceful face in frozen repose in its glass case and spit at it. She shut the doors of the vaults quickly. She turned off the automatic releases, locking them in forever.
    Veronica leaned against the wall, shaking. She had to get out of there. As she moved around the lab, she kept thinking that she could hear him moving in his crypt. That he would get out. She wanted to level her gun at it and blow it to hell.
    But she was in hell.
    Hunger hit her with visceral force. She went to the first container and opened the door. Carefully engineered metal storage compartments filled it to the ceiling. Packs of military rations were crammed into the unit closest to the door. She pulled two packages out and made herself eat them slowly.
    When she was finished, Veronica headed for the communications center. Their computers were programmed to communicate with every satellite in operation. Also with every country on the planet and every alien world that anyone had any notion might exist. Banks of computers filled the room, which formed a large L off the cryogenics lab.
    The bunker had a digital periscope, a tiny thing that would insert itself through anything, from snow to bedrock. It could peek out and give a 360-degree view of whatever was up there. They didn’t know how long they might be in cryogenic sleep, or what would be happening above when they came to life. She and the general had worked through all sorts of scenarios, from finding themselves under a city of the future to an icepack hundreds of feet deep. Veronica activated the device and it began to deploy its arm.
    The periscope disclosed ice. She raised it higher. Ice as far as she could see. No sign of life. When she entered the bunker, the land above it had been the planet’s most productive source of timber. The Ice Age had returned. Veronica’s heart raced. She had food enough to last years. The temperature would be OK—they were far below the permafrost. But she couldn’t stay in a cement hole with seven corpses.
    Veronica turned on the computers and the satellite connection. She could feel the controls humming. Still working. Good old Russian technology. While her computer booted up, Veronica thought.
    How long had they been there, frozen? She had