Icy
Passage
An
Antarctica Story
by Ann
Gimpel
Hartwood Publishing Group
96K words
Release Date: 2/5/15
Genre: Science Fiction/Romance with
a Splash of Paranormal
Lethal
cultures, bizarre illness, and political intrigue create an unlikely backdrop
for love in Antarctica, the last true frontier.
Book Description:
Fresh out of residency, Dr. Kayna
Quan opts for a tour in Antarctica. Money is short, so she hires on as medical
officer aboard a Russian research vessel headed for McMurdo Station. Primed for
almost anything, she plays her paranormal ability close to the vest. Being odd
man out in a world where most don’t believe in magic makes her wary and feisty.
Brynn McMichaels has been stationed
on remote South Georgia Island for two years, and he’s eager for a change. When
cultures of the single-celled organism, archaea, overgrow their bins in his lab
and begin shifting into another form, he worries he’s losing his mind and talks
with scientists at McMurdo, but they have problems of their own—bad ones. After
he hears about them, Brynn agrees to help. The weather’s too uncertain to send
a plane, so he hitches a ride aboard Kayna’s ship and brings his mutant culture
colonies along.
Attraction sparks, hot and
powerful, between Brynn and Kayna, but her disclosure about her magic is a
tough nut to crack. It doesn’t help that her dead father is stalking her.
Lethal cultures, bizarre illness, and McMurdo’s refusal to let them land force
Brynn and Kayna into an uneasy alliance. Will their fragile bond be enough to thwart
the powers trying to destroy Earth, and them along with it?
Excerpt:
…“Dr. Quan,”
someone screamed at her over the howl of the wind. She spun, almost lost her
footing, and snapped up another cable.
“Coming.” She
ducked through a door onto deck four, bent double, and shook her head briskly.
Water flew everywhere. She straightened, shoved her hood aside, and more water
ran down her back.
The ship’s staff
captain, second in command on the vessel and staunchly British, clucked in
annoyance as he tugged the heavy, reinforced steel door closed, latching it
securely. Muscles bulged in his arms and shoulders as he wrestled with the
uncooperative door. “Thank bloody fucking God I found you,” Harold Markham
blurted and grabbed her arm. Panic streamed from him in waves that battered her
paranormal side.
Kayna’s eyes
widened in surprise. She didn’t know Harold well, but he’d seemed imperturbable
until now. “What happened?”
“Tell you on the
way.” A corner of his mouth twisted downward. “Be grateful. This saves you from
a harsh lecture about going outside in rough seas, without telling anyone.” He
yanked on her trying to jockey her down the corridor.
“Stop that!” She
raised her voice for emphasis. “If there’s a medical emergency, I have to know
what it is because I’ve got to stop by the surgery to get my bag and anything
else I might need.”
“Oh.” An
uncomfortable look washed over Harold’s face. Worry etched lines into the skin
around his blue eyes, and he raked a hand through unevenly cut blond hair. He
lowered his voice and spoke near Kayna’s ear. “It’s one of the Russian seamen.
He caught his arm in machinery. It’s bad.”
“Amputation bad?”
It was a stupid
question since he wouldn’t know. Kayna made a dismissive gesture with one hand
and said, “Don’t bother trying to answer.” She sprinted past him, stopping in
the corridor outside the suite that contained both her surgery and living
quarters. “Maybe you should have someone carry him here,” she told Harold. “At
least I have an exam table we can strap him to.”
He shook his head.
“You need to have a look before we even think about moving him. He’s on the
raised walkway in the engine room, and there’s more blood than I’ve ever seen.”
Kayna keyed an
electronic code and let herself in. She shucked her soaked jacket, threw additional
items into her medical bag, and raced to where Harold waited in the corridor,
bristling with tension. “How do I get to the engine room?” she asked and jerked
the door shut. “I walked through it at the beginning of the trip, but I don’t
remember—”
“There’s an access
door at the end of Deck Three. I’ll be right behind you,” he cut in, his
normally cavalier voice edged with anxiety.
She fought the
rocking ship, moving as fast as she could, and hustled down one flight of
stairs. Once there, she ran toward the door that led into the bowels of the
ship where the engine took up two decks. Harold followed hard on her heels. Her
heavy bag, coupled with the ship’s unpredictable motion, almost landed her on
her ass—twice. When she glanced back at Harold, his face was set in grim lines.
He’d given up any pretense of unnecessary conversation, but he held out a hand
for her bag and opened the door just wide enough for her to squeeze through.
Adrenaline hummed
along her nerves as she navigated steep, oily steps into the heart of the ship,
grateful she could hang on with both hands. Her clumsy bag would’ve made the
stairway treacherous. Engine noise hit her in the pit of her stomach, and she
wished she had ear plugs.
Footsteps pounded
toward her, and one of the Russian engineers came into view. He motioned
frantically and added a volley of Russian. Close-cropped black hair hugged his
skull, and his dark eyes held a haggard edge. Blood spattered his dirty white
T-shirt, leaving a hell of a mess.
“Lead the way.”
Kayna didn’t know if he understood, but it didn’t matter because he spun and
raced back in the direction he’d come from. Two more twists of the corridor and
she heard screams even over the noise of the ship’s enormous twin engines.
Another moment and she saw a tall, bald man writhing in a pool of his own
blood. A close-to-severed arm lay next to him. Kayna dropped to the metal
decking and made a dive for the brachial artery running beneath the man’s arm,
afraid if she hesitated long enough to glove up, she’d lose him. Straddling his
body, she put pressure on the artery while the seaman lashed his body from side
to side like a bucking bronco.
“Get me a clean
towel or shirt,” she yelled, wondering if anyone spoke enough English to
understand, but it didn’t matter because Harold shouted in guttural Russian,
dropped her bag by her side, and sped into a side room.
She eyed the
mangled arm, and cursed softly. It looked as if a giant had twisted the
seaman’s lower arm until the severed section hung from a slender flap of skin.
Both the ulna and radius were broken, their white, jagged ends protruding
through a sea of tattered flesh. Without a sophisticated operating theater,
there’d be no way to save the sheared off limb. Blood poured from the injured
extremity, jetting from injured arteries and flowing from torn veins, but at
least the rate had slowed. She ran her free hand down the man’s neck, other
arm, chest, and abdomen, searching for further damage with a magical assist
from her psi ability.
“Dr. Quan.”
When she glanced
up, Harold hunkered next to her and handed her two bath towels reeking of
bleach fumes.
“Thanks.” She
nodded sharply. She’d been so focused on assessing if the seaman had other
significant injuries, she’d missed the staff captain returning with towels. She
folded one, tucked it into the wounded seaman’s armpit, and pressed as hard as
she could while the sailor shrieked and thrashed, clearly in agony. “Put your
hand where mine is,” she told Harold. He complied immediately, and she twisted
to reach into her medical bag for a syringe and a vial of morphine. She thought
about gloves again, but she was already coated in the man’s blood.
She guesstimated
the seaman’s weight, did some quick calculations, and hoped to hell she’d
gotten them right as she drew enough morphine into the syringe to dull pain,
but not totally knock him out. He thrashed wildly beneath her, his blue eyes so
crazed with agony they were nearly all pupil. “Hold him down so I can give him
this,” she said.
Harold started to
move his hands. “Not you,” she cried. “Keep pressure on that artery so he
doesn’t bleed out.” Harold barked a command, and four burly seamen stabilized
their wounded companion. Kayna plunged the syringe into the meaty part of his
other arm. Her jaw clenched as she waited for the morphine to spin its magic.
She dropped the empty syringe back into her bag and pushed Harold’s hands
aside, replacing them with her own.
“His arm?” the
staff captain asked in a rough voice.
Kayna looked up
long enough to meet his gaze. “His arm is probably toast. Right now I’m
fighting to keep enough blood in him so he doesn’t die. The morphine will kick
in soon. At least it will give him some relief. Once he settles down, I’ll give
him a whopping injection of antibiotics and a tetanus shot.”
“What can I do?”
Harold asked.
“Where exactly are
we?” she countered.
“Not far from the
Falklands.”
“Better news than
I’d hoped for. Have someone radio for a medevac helicopter. This man needs a
hospital. Actually, he needs a level one trauma center for that arm, but that’s
probably not going to happen.”
Harold bolted from
the engine room, and Kayna eyed the group of Russian seamen ringed around her.
She gestured to one to keep pressure on the towel and dug in her bag for a
stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, and a tourniquet. She filled another syringe
with a mix of antibiotics and readied it. The man’s body relaxed as the
morphine kicked in. Soon she could inject her antibiotic soup without anyone
holding him down. As grim and desperate as the situation was, Death was a
worthy adversary.
“Bring it on,” she
muttered as she checked vital signs and noted them. “I’m going to win this
round.”
Almost as if Death
had a corporeal presence and had risen to her challenge, a chilly breeze passed
through the overheated engine room. She’d sensed Death before when she was
pulling out all the stops to save a life, had even mentioned it to some of the
other docs when she was an intern, but they gave her such odd looks, she’d
never made the mistake of disclosing her paranormal abilities again. When it
got right down to it, almost everyone was just as psi-phobic as her erstwhile
almost-fiancé.
“Easy,” she
murmured and injected antibiotics. The man’s eyelids flickered, and for the
barest moment he focused on her. “That’s right.” She patted his uninjured hand
and hoped her tone would bridge their language barrier. “Help will be here
soon. You’re going to make it.”…
My Review:
This was a very engrossing and riveting story. Kayna is a doctor on her way to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. She is aboard a Russian Research vessel acting as their medical officer in exchange for a ride to her new position. Brynn is asked to help McMurdo Station when some of their research causes fatalities and is picked up by a Russian Research vessel heading there. Aboard he meets Kayna and there is an instant attraction. Kayna is a strong, smart and special woman who has special abilities that have made her life more difficult. Brynn is questioning his sanity when his own research cultures start to grow and change into something impossible. This story has a fantastic blend of science fiction, suspense and romance that kept me eagerly turning the pages. I loved how the relationship between the two main characters developed. This is a well written book I highly recommend to readers who love suspenseful science fiction romances with paranormal elements.
~Booklover Sue
About
the Author:
Ann Gimpel is a national
bestselling author. She’s also a clinical psychologist, with a Jungian
bent. Avocations include mountaineering,
skiing, wilderness photography and, of course, writing. A lifelong aficionado of the unusual, she
began writing speculative fiction a few years ago. Since then her short fiction
has appeared in a number of webzines and anthologies. Her longer books run the
gamut from urban fantasy to paranormal romance. She’s published over 20 books
to date, with several more contracted for 2015 and beyond.
A husband, grown children,
grandchildren and three wolf hybrids round out her family.
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