Gillian Willis glared at the distant skyship moving along the horizon. Her family's little ice farm out here on Mars's polar ice cap was supposed to be a place to get away from everyone. To be self-sufficient in a way that no one could be on Earth anymore.

The little patch of ice they'd colonized had been out of everyone's way — until the dragon shifters woke up. Their anti-gravity technology made the skyships possible, and the lure of finding more of their secrets brought more human colonists out to Mars, making the once-empty planet feel almost crowded. Now, skyships passed by the Willis farm most months and it was only a matter of time before someone took too much of an interest in their lives. What they'd planned to be a quiet place where they could live in peace was destined to become a glorified truck-stop.

Assuming they could keep paying their loans long enough for that to happen, of course. It was entirely possible that wouldn't last. The ice they mined for drinking water was valuable here on Mars, but the market was getting crowded. A few more years, that's all we need, she told herself. Once the loans are paid off and we own the land free and clear, we can live off what we raise.

"What are you staring at out there?" her brother's voice crackled over the radio, startling Gillian out of her reverie.

"Just watching the future go past, Harry." Gillian sighed and turned to look back at the small colony standing on the ice far behind her. There wasn't much to the Willis family home. The glass dome covered enough space to raise their crops, the vehicle bay where they parked equipment out of the cold, and an atmosphere recycling tower that gave them air to breathe. Beside the vehicle bay airlock was a small landing pad for visiting skyships, though it was hardly ever used.

The actual living areas extended into the ice beneath their feet rather than being on the surface. This far north, the winter cold would freeze them solid if they stayed above ground.

Ice farming was cold and lonely work. And soon to be automated away, of course, but the Willis's goal had always been to make themselves mostly self-sufficient. For that, they needed their own water source, and the northern ice cap meant that they'd never go thirsty.

"Number Five isn't getting any closer," Harry warned, sounding a little sulky. "We don't have the power to waste on your suit's heater, you know."

He'd wanted to be the one to go chase down their errant mining robot, but Gillian had insisted on going herself. She knew her brother well enough to know that he'd be just as annoyed after the long hike chasing it as he would be cooped up in the dome. Her kid brother could be a pain sometimes, but at least this way she could keep him safe.

"Yes boss," Gillian said dryly, turning away and looking for signs of their wayward robot. The damned thing was meant to be around here somewhere, but it was hard to see it against the bright white of frozen carbon dioxide. Winter was setting in and the Martian atmosphere might be thin, but what there was of it was freezing. Literally: the air was turning to ice around her.

The mining robots they'd bought were supposed to handle the temperature, but they didn't seem to like carbon dioxide freezing on them. Who does? Gillian asked herself as she set herself into the ice-cold wind and pressed on. There might not be much air to push against her, but the wind was still strong, and she could feel the bite of the cold through the insulation of her suit.

"Any word from Dad?" Gillian asked as she searched. Their father was on the road to Olympus Colony to talk to the bank about rearranging their loan payments, and she'd been alone with Harry for three days already. She was really starting to look forward to Dad being back.

I should be reasonable, she thought. He's not been gone that long, not when he had to sell the big load of summer ice too. They wouldn't be able to make many more trips as winter set in, so her father had taken all the ice they had stored to sell. Hopefully the money he'd raised would put the bankers in a good mood for negotiations.

And while he was in Olympus Colony, maybe he could track down the damned robot salesman who'd offloaded these miners on them. They clearly weren't up to the polar winter. Number Three had fallen into a ravine, and now Number Five had wandered off-course somehow. It was almost as though they were cursed, and the farm really couldn't afford to replace them.

"No luck yet," Harry replied. "Dad checked in at Fuller Station, so he made it there safe. He sold the ice to Maxine, and that's the last news I can find."

That wasn't unusual, but it wasn't good news either. Gareth Willis hadn't been the same these last few years, not since his wife had passed. Going to town with all their profits was a temptation Gillian wished he didn't have to face alone.

Three days should have been enough time to reach Olympus, at least. Gillian tried to put the sinking feeling out of her mind, but she couldn't quite stop herself from worrying that he was drinking their profits rather than paying the bankers.

"I could have gone with him," Harry said, as though he was reading her mind. Gillian snorted.

"You're a little young for getting dragged into the bars and gambling joints, Harry," she answered, then felt her cheeks heat. She hadn't meant to say that out loud.

"Hey!" Harry sounded embarrassed too, but she knew they'd been thinking the same thing. "Maybe you could have gone and kept him out of trouble?"

Gillian sighed. "Dad doesn't listen to me much, you know that. And I couldn't leave you on your own out here — how would you track down a missing robot on your own?"

"I'd do better than you," Harry objected. "You're slow."

"It's not easy, walking in this wind." Gillian would have taken a lift on one of the other robots, but Three was down for repairs and Five was missing. They couldn't afford to risk another one just to drive her around. Which meant walking, or taking the one remaining crawler. And the crawler was their only way to get back to Fuller Station if something went wrong out here.

There was no way she was risking it just to speed up the search, but the biting cold that made it through her suit's insulation made her wish that she could. She tried to distract herself with her anger, and it worked a little.

The signal from the robot miner drew her south, across the frozen plain. Beneath her feet the ice crunched with every step, and her helmet darkened automatically to save her eyes from the glare of the distant sun. She kept a careful eye on her suit's battery — it was cold enough that the suit heaters had to work hard to keep her alive, and the suit wasn't in the best condition. It didn't keep a charge as long as it should have.

Nothing around here works, she thought as she crested a dune of ice and looked around for the miner. It should be nearby, according to its radio beacon, but she couldn't see it. Frowning to herself, Gillian pressed on, wondering why the damned robot had traveled so far from home. There was plenty of good ice nearer the farm, ice they'd tagged for the robots to dig out. But sometime during the night, miner Number Five had decided to set out for the edges of the farm's territory.

"Were you making a break for freedom?" Gillian asked under her breath as she spotted the green hull of the robot in the distance. It was the only splash of color in sight. "I wouldn't blame you if you did, you know. It's been a long time since I got to see anything but ice."

It wasn't that she didn't like life out here, away from everything. It was better than things had been on Earth, much better. But it did get monotonous and only having her father and brother around was something of a drag. A little more social life couldn't hurt.

Closing in on the errant robot, her frown deepened. The machine wasn't moving, and ice had formed on its surface. Worse, the damned thing had a crack running across its side. This wasn't just a software error, something had damaged the ice miner.

Flicking on her suit radio again, she hailed the ice farm. The channel was thick with static, and she had to try several times before she got through.

"I've found our missing robot," she said. "Don't know if I'll be able to get it up and running though. I can see some hull damage, and it isn't moving."

"Great." Harry's voice barely made it through the static. "Let's get it back before you freeze out there, right? I don't want to have to come and get you."

"Don't you dare leave the farm," Gillian snapped. "It's not safe."

Whatever her brother said to that was lost in a surge of static and Gillian thumped the transmitter on her suit's belt. Damn it, why are you acting up?

"I said, if you can get the robot moving you should be fine," Harry repeated himself. "The battery will have enough charge for the two of you. Or it should. But if you can't, I'm coming out to get you. You can ground me when you get back."

"No, you stay put," Gillian said firmly, trudging carefully up to the machine. As she got closer she could see that it was at an angle. The ice under its left tracks had given way — which was exactly why the robots weren't supposed to wander far. The freshly-formed ice sheet was unstable, and still needed humans to survey safe paths.

Not to mention the fact that the water around here wasn't the good kind. It was laced with contaminates and salt and would cost a lot of energy to purify. The veins of almost pure drinking water that Number Five was meant to be mining out today would net them a lot more of a profit.

"Alright, big fella, let's have a look at you," she whispered as she finally reached the bright green hull. The sudden jolt from the ice giving way shouldn't have damaged the big machine, but they'd already found out the hard way that the robots' plastic hulls weren't as resilient as they should be in these temperatures.

The short fall didn't look like the only source of damage, either. There were tears in the machine's casing, rips where something had dug into the hard plastic high up on the robot. Which ought to have been impossible out here on the glacier. There weren't any crags to hit it, and even if it had run into one of the other robots the cutting surfaces were all too low.

"What the hell happened?" she asked, getting no reply from the silent machine. "I guess I just have to hope that your error logs actually recorded something. Okay."

The inspection hatch opened easily enough, and the computer inside was still functioning. That was something, at least. A quick look at the information told Gillian that there wasn't much more good news. The automation software was offline, and the logs were corrupted. From what she could see, the machine thought it had been lifted off the ice and traveled far faster than its maximum speed. Which was impossible. Even the fastest winds she'd seen since the family moved to Mars wouldn't have been fast enough to carry the damned robot that far.

Whatever had happened to the robot, it wasn't going to find its own way back. Sighing, Gillian checked her suit's battery level again and shook her head. It was dangerously close to halfway dead, so she ought to be turning back.

Not without Number Five here, she decided. A stupid, damaged, almost useless machine it might be, but it represented a pretty big investment on the part of her family. She wasn't going to leave it out here to freeze over.

Plugging her suit into the robot's computer brain, she took direct control over the systems and sighed with relief as the engine started. The robot's own power source would last for months without recharging — as long as she could draw power from it, she'd be fine. Assuming it didn't decide to drive into a crevasse she couldn't see, anyway.

Clambering up onto the robot's bulky body, Gillian set it moving back towards the farm. The vibrations of the motor and the ice crunching under the treads echoed through her helmet, and there was nowhere designed for a human to sit. The handholds she clung to were meant for someone working on the machine, not riding it.

Still, it was faster than walking. Fast was good. Gillian looked around — the cable linking her suit to the robot's brain was too short for her to clamber to the front of the robot, so she couldn't look ahead. Instead, she looked south, in the vague direction of the nearest other settlement. Somewhere out there, Fuller Station waited, the first stepping stone back to civilization.

Something caught her eye, movement crossing her field of vision, and she frowned. Too small and fast to be a skyship, but it was definitely something. She was ninety percent sure it was something, anyway. A shooting star? Some kind of spaceship?

She focused her attention on the dark sky, but whatever she'd seen wasn't visible now. Maybe I imagined it?

As she was about to give up, something flashed across the blackness. A bright line of light in the distance, cutting through space.

What the hell is that? Bringing up her binoculars, she focused quickly and gasped at what she saw.

Flying towards her were dragons. Two of them, each flying north towards her and her farm. As she watched, the lead dragon twisted aside, dodging a blast of flame that slashed through the space he'd just been in. The dragon that had attacked him swooped closer.

Gillian's heart pounded as she watched the chase, wondering what was happening. Why were they fighting, and if they had to fight, why do it over her family's land?