Whiteout Chase

They dropped out of the ventilation exhaust pipe and landed hard in a snowbank in the amphitheater's rear staging alley. The temperature drop was instantaneous and brutal. The blizzard howled through the narrow, towering corridors of the glacier city, driving needle-sharp shards of ice into their skin.

"It's freezing!" Stella screamed over the wind, wrapping her arms around her glitching holographic dress. The projection offered zero thermal protection. She was shivering violently within seconds.

"Keep moving!" Jinx grabbed her sister’s arm, hauling her up. Through the driving snow, Jinx spotted an idling cargo hover-snowmobile parked near a stack of equipment crates. The driver was nowhere to be seen, likely having fled when the amphitheater's alarms started blaring.

Jinx vaulted onto the front seat, punching the ignition sequence. The heavy repulsor engines roared to life, melting the snow directly beneath the chassis. "Get on! Now!"

Stella scrambled onto the back pillion, clutching Jinx’s tactical vest with freezing fingers. Jinx slammed the throttle forward, and the heavy machine shot out of the alleyway, tearing blindly into the raging blizzard.

They flew over the slick, icy streets of Nova-Vail, weaving erratically around abandoned transport vehicles and glowing neon signs that were quickly being buried under the snow. Jinx kept one eye on the rear-view sensors.

It didn't take long. Two sleek, heavily armed pursuit gliders sliced through the curtain of falling snow behind them.

"We've got company!" Jinx yelled, banking the snowmobile hard to the right to avoid a sudden burst of plasma fire from the gliders. The laser blast struck a frozen fountain next to them, instantly vaporizing the ice into a massive cloud of steam.

"They're shooting at us! My hair is completely ruined!" Stella wailed, her face buried against Jinx’s back. "Do you have any idea how long hair and makeup took?!"

Jinx let out a barking, disbelieving laugh, even as panic clawed at her throat. "I'm so incredibly sorry that the lethal, unprovoked assassination attempt isn't accommodating your VIP styling schedule, Stella! I'll be sure to leave them a terrible review on the mercenary boards!"

"You are the worst bodyguard in the galaxy!"

"You're not paying me enough to die in a snowstorm!" Jinx snapped, throwing the snowmobile into a violent corkscrew maneuver to dodge another volley of fire.

The syndicate gliders were faster, unburdened by the heavy cargo chassis of the snowmobile. They flanked them, pushing Jinx toward the outskirts of the city, toward the edge of the massive, yawning glacial chasm that separated Nova-Vail from the mainland.

"They're herding us!" Jinx realized, gritting her teeth. She drew her kinetic-pistol with her free hand, firing wildly backward over her shoulder. She managed to clip one of the glider's stabilizer fins, sending it spinning into the side of a glacier wall in a brilliant explosion of orange fire.

"Got one!" Jinx cheered.

But her triumph was painfully short-lived. The second glider dropped low, aiming not for Jinx or Stella, but for the snowmobile's primary repulsor engine.

The plasma bolt struck true.

A deafening explosion rocked the vehicle. Alarms screamed from the dashboard as the engine caught fire, the repulsor lift dying instantly. The heavy snowmobile dropped like a stone, hitting the slick ice of the road at over eighty miles an hour.

They spun out of control, metal screaming against ice in a shower of sparks. Jinx wrapped one arm securely around Stella, using her own armored body to shield her sister as the snowmobile violently slammed into a snowbank and flipped, throwing them both into the freezing dark.