The other Guardians were climbing down out of the trucks.
“Let’s get at it,” Olwen told them. “We can install most of our systems by morning.”
“The next wormhole cycle starts midafternoon,” Stig said. “That’ll give us enough time to get them all airborne and positioned. They can circle the city until we call them in.”
“What about the revitalization team and the engineers?”
“I don’t think they’re coming back. This place is abandoned. And if they do show up, we’ll just hang on to them so they don’t raise the alarm.”
“All right then.”
One of the trucks had been backed up as close as it could get to the underside of the first blimpbot. The Guardians let the rear gate down, and pulled out a set of wheel ramps. Stig and Olwen went over to help them. A trollybot inched its way down the wheel ramps, carrying a fat cylinder nearly four meters long. The metal ramps creaked under it, betraying the weight of the cylinder.
“Are these going to work?” Olwen asked.
“I hope so.” Stig peered up into the truck. “We’ve only got six. I’d be pleased if just one of them reaches 3F Plaza.” He could see another of the cylinders resting on its cradle inside. Crates full of decoy drone and chaff dispensers were strapped to the floor around it. “We need to fit dispensers to all the blimpbots, including the ones we’ve armed. That way the Institute won’t be able to spot the difference until it’s too late.”
“No kidding?” Olwen said.
“Sorry. I get kind of nervous around bombs like this.”
They followed the trollybot as it rolled down to the central payload bay. The Guardians started to attach the blimpbot’s internal hoist cables to the cylinder.
“We’re picking up a lot more rumors from the Institute troops,” Olwen said. “They’re all talking about some kind of attack on the Commonwealth.”
“The Primes again,” Stig said.
“Yeah, but, Stig, it was a big attack; they’re consistent about that. It’s making them very jittery. There’s even been talk about some of them breaking through to Half Way.”
“Stupid of them. They don’t know if there are any Carbon Goose planes left at Port Evergreen.”
“It was only a whisper.”
Probably true, though, Stig thought. Guardians and their supporters had taken jobs at the pubs and clubs that the Institute troops had established as their own in Armstrong City. They provided a slow but steady trickle of information on the troops and their assignments. Morale, already low, was heading downhill fast. The soldiers had all signed up for medium-term contracts to help the Institute combat raids from guerrilla bands out on the Great Iril Steppes; none of them expected to be doing urban paramilitary duties. Being the most hated group on the planet, subject to constant abuse and harassment, was taking its toll. Their officers had to let them out at night; safe together, they drank and bitched like any soldier since Troy.
“Anybody let on if they’re expecting an arrival?”
“I’d have told you. They don’t know, too low down the food chain.”
“It can’t be long now.”
She watched the heavy cylinder rise up into the cargo bay, flinching each time the ancient winch chains let out a creak of protest at the weight. “You’ve done everything you can do. It can only come through at preset times, and we know what those are to the second. We’ve got 3F Plaza covered by every kind of sensor the human race has ever invented. If those troops even so much as glance at the gateway we’ll know about it. So stop worrying, we’ve got it covered.”
Stig looked up at the blimpbots, and laughed at the audacity of the plan they’d come up with. “Right, who’s going to notice a goddamn airship on a bombing run? Dreaming heavens!”
“Nobody,” she said, smiling back with the same wild enthusiasm. “That’s the beauty. Fly them in low enough, and they’ll be over the walls of 3F Plaza before the Institute can aim a single weapon at them.”
“I hope you’re right.” He gave a start as the winch mechanism stopped with a nasty metallic grinding sound. The bomb was completely inside the bay. “Let’s work out how to get this brute secure. I really do want to have them all in the air by morning.”
Oscar didn’t expect a downtime of more than six hours. Enough to recharge the Dublin’s niling d-sinks, and reload the forward section with Douvoir missiles and quantumbusters. Fleet Command had indicated they’d be sent right back to Hanko. After the wormholes had vanished, they’d destroyed over eighty Prime ships before their armaments were depleted.
As soon as the starship eased its bulk into a docking station at Base One, the secure encrypted message popped into Oscar’s hold file. Admiral Columbia wanted to see him right away. Along with the rest of the crew, Oscar was still in shock by the way the War Cabinet had dumped shit from a great height on Wilson. Resentment was a strong twin of that feeling; he was tempted to tell his new commander where to shove his meeting, an impulse made worse by worry that Columbia was implementing a political clearout of his new office. Oscar had been one of the first people Wilson had recruited, making him a prominent loyal member of the old regime.
However, you can’t go around judging people on the basis of your own emotional prejudices. So Oscar did the mature thing, and sent a message back saying he was on his way. Sir.
“If the shit fires you, we walk, too,” Teague said.
“Don’t,” Oscar said as he left for the small shuttle craft. “The navy needs you.” Where have I heard that phrase before?
Nothing physical had changed at Pentagon II. Senior staff seemed twitchy as Oscar went through the offices and corridors, but then they were in the middle of organizing a battle to defend human worlds against forty-eight alien armadas. They were allowed to be twitchy.
Rafael Columbia had taken over Wilson’s sterile white office. He was alone when Oscar was shown in.
No witnesses, Oscar thought immediately. Oh, for God’s sake, get a grip.
Columbia didn’t get up; he simply waved Oscar into a chair with easy familiarity. “I have a problem, Oscar.”
“I’ll resign if it makes it easier. We can’t afford any more internal disruption.”
Columbia frowned in genuine surprise, then smiled briefly. “No, not that. You’re an excellent starship captain. Just look at the Dublin’s performance.”
“Thank you.”
“I have a problem somewhat closer to home. I might have made a mistake.”
“Happens to us all, sir. You should see my list.” Actually, you shouldn’t.
“I’m receiving a lot of information which indicates the Starflyer is a real and current threat. The evidence is building, Oscar. In the past I’ve always dismissed it, but I can’t do that anymore, no matter how personally uncomfortable that may prove to be.”
“It scared the living shit out of me when I found out.”
Columbia stared at him, before finally grinning a reluctant submission. “I might have known. Very well, this makes it easier. For both of us.”
“What do you need?”
“A confirmed traitor has turned up on Boongate, a navy officer called Tarlo. My Paris office is putting together an arrest team; but of course all the wormholes to the Second47 are shut by War Cabinet edict. I need that traitor, Oscar, he can prove or disprove the whole Starflyer legend once and for all.”
“You want me to fly there?”
“No. For the moment we’re keeping this dark; God knows what kind of shitstorm it would stir up if word leaks out before we’ve got it contained. I want you to be my personal emissary to Nigel Sheldon; you must emphasize just how important this is. Ask him to quietly open the wormhole and let the Paris team through. Nobody else, just them.”
“You want me to ask that?” Oscar couldn’t believe what he was hearing, even though it was very flattering.
“Your record ever since Bose witnessed the Dyson Alpha enclosure is impeccable. You were also highly placed in CST before the war. Nigel Sheldon w
ill see you and listen to what you say; I don’t have that level of political capital with him today, and I’m reluctant to bump this up a level by asking Heather to intercede on my behalf. If he agrees to open the wormhole I want you on-site at Narrabri to oversee the mission. I need your dependability, Oscar.”
Oscar stood up. He damn near saluted. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
It was another beautifully clear dawn in the Dessault Mountains as the sparkling constellations slowly washed away into the brightening sapphire sky. Samantha had no time for admiration as the gentle early morning radiance filtered through the open doorway of the ancient shelter. Her skin was hot and sticky inside the thick protective one-piece garment that she and the rest of the team wore while they were working close to the niling d-sink. Modern d-sinks had integral reactive em shielding, but the ones she was dealing with were decades old, and their passive shielding had broken down long ago. This one had been in place for sixty years, receiving and storing power from the solid state heat exchange cable that had been drilled two kilometers into the base of the mountain. She’d spent all night modifying the power emission module. Its original control array had needed replacing, never an easy thing to do with a live system. And there was a lot of basic circuit maintenance that had to be carried out; the niling d-sinks were good high-quality systems, but they’d never been designed with sixty years of continuous use in mind.
It had taken the best part of seven hours, looking through a scuffed, misted visor in the light of four paraffin lamps. Her back ached, her fingers were numb, her head was full of the coding from obsolete programs. She clambered slowly to her feet, hating the sound her joints made as she moved. It was like being an old woman.
“Run the connection verifier,” she told Valentine, the convoy’s technical chief.
“Got it,” he shouted from outside.
Samantha picked up the handheld arrays lying on the crumbling enzyme-bonded concrete floor, and closed the wicks on the paraffin lamps one by one. She was confident enough that the power connections would work. This was the ninth manipulator station they’d set up in five weeks, making her quite an expert on the old niling d-sinks.
“We got power flow,” Valentine called.
Samantha went to the open door, stretching elaborately to work the knots out of her too-stiff muscles. The sun was just rising over the foothills, revealing Trevathan Gulf, the huge valley that stretched out below her. They were on the northwestern corner of the Dessault range, only four hundred kilometers from Mount Herculaneum. Every day, she thought she could see the crest of the gigantic volcano rising through the shimmering air when she looked to the south, a gray splinter hovering tantalizingly along the horizon. Other people in the convoy said she was imagining things. Aphrodite’s Seat ought to be visible from their altitude, possibly the glacier ring as well. Today her eyes were just too tired to peer through the thin air.
Bright sunlight washed along Trevathan Gulf, sparking off the multitude of tributary streams that wound their way through forests of deciduous trees that had colonized the valley floor. The Gulf was a geological fault pushing out from the Grand Triad to split the Dessault range like a highway bulldozed by fallen angels. Its softly meandering course ran over seven hundred kilometers from the base of Mount Zeus in the west to the scrubland border of the High Desert in the east. Eighteen big rivers, and hundreds of smaller streams, drained out of it through the valleys of the sundered northernmost mountains to spill across the Aldrin Plains. Winding rivers carried the water across the grasslands to the North Sea. It was an irrigation system that supported nearly a quarter of the farms on the planet.
Translucent cottontuft clouds scudded low over the treetops, precursors to the heavy storm residue that would arrive later that morning after it had raged around the Grand Triad. Once the dark cumulus was overhead, it would rain for at least three hours. Given the Gulf’s altitude, the water was always cold, sometimes threaded with sleet. The caravan had endured the chilly, rainy climate for weeks now as they helped set up for the planet’s revenge.
“Good job,” Harvey said in his rasping voice. He was standing just outside the shelter, dressed in the same mustard-yellow protective suit that everyone in the caravan wore.
“Same old job,” she replied.
“Yes, but done well. And that is vital.”
“Are we going to start the test?”
“Aye.”
They walked away from the shelter with its thick cladding of ivy. When the hole had been drilled for the solid state heat exchange cable and the shelter erected around the niling d-sink, this had been a broad swathe of open land on the northern side of the Gulf, with just a few saplings struggling for life on the stony foothills. Now with the rain nurturing the grass, lichens, and mosses spread by the revitalization team, the trees had thrived. There was no clear ground anymore, the forest had spread out from the floor of Trevathan Gulf to rise up toward the peaks in a wavy line broken by gullies and ridges. Genemodified pines were in a majority up here on the slopes, though vigorous sycamores were always challenging them for space, and equally prolific species like white poplars and maples fell away in proportion to the altitude above the valley floor. The shelter was now surrounded by bushy weeping pines twenty meters high that crowded aggressively around spindly horn-beams and birch trees. A variety of ivy that had leaves so dark they were nearly black plagued everything; carpeting the sandy ground and swaddling the trunks of every tree. The shelter had been completely swamped by the thick creeper. It had taken them an hour to find and clear the doorway again.
Even without the ivy, the forest provided excellent cover for the shelter, and all its cousins, along the Trevathan Gulf, but reaching it was difficult. The caravan could drive across the foothills above the forest line, plowing through the streams and following the contours around sharp folds; but pushing through the trees was a specialist business. The Guardians Samantha was working with had stolen a JCB trailblazer from one of the tour companies that provided hyperglider flights over the Grand Triad. Its big forward roller-scythe of harmonic blades was the only way of chewing through the forest to reach the shelter. Once they’d reached it, the big machine had circled around in a spiral, clearing ground to set up the station equipment. Samantha knew it was the only way, but she couldn’t help thinking that from the air the trailblazer’s path must look like a giant arrow cutting through the trees, pinpointing their stations. It was a good job there weren’t many aircraft on Far Away.
The equipment they’d set up sat on the springy mat of wood chips spewed out by the trailblazer. It had taken three trucks to carry the crates that they’d unpacked. In two days, the components had been assembled into a ungainly five-sided pyramid of black metal, standing seven meters high. Dew was already collecting in the crevices and ridges as the sun rose high enough to shine on the bulky machine.
Samantha and Harvey walked around its base, toward the road that the trailblazer had carved. Two McSobel technicians were fussing over an open panel, which revealed a matrix of red and amber lights. Valentine was standing behind them. “Any minute now,” he said.
The convoy’s vehicles were parked in a line back down the broken path, out of range from the hazardous em pulses given off by the niling d-sink. When she was three hundred meters from the shelter, Samantha took her helmet off and took a deep breath of cool, moist, unfiltered air. The scent of pine was thick in the air as she trod on the shattered splinters of bark and mashed needles.
“I’d like you to handle the last two stations,” Harvey wheezed.
“Why? Where are you going?”
He pulled off his helmet. Sunlight shone on the thick translucent bands of skin that crisscrossed his cheeks and neck, giving his ruined face a milky texture. “A message came in last night while you were busy. The clans are putting together raiding parties in case the Starflyer gets through the gateway at 3F Plaza. They’ll be spread along Highway One.”
“You can’t,” she said automatically, then sucked
in her lower lip. “Sorry.”
“It’s only surface damage,” he said cheerfully. “I can still ride, and I can certainly still shoot—better than any of these lads who call themselves warriors these days. Besides, there’s a rumor the Barsoomians will join us. Now who could resist that?”
“No one, I suppose,” she said with a sigh. Trying to argue him out of it would be useless, she knew.
“Now don’t you go worrying about me. What you’re doing is the truly important thing.”
“Sure. What about Valentine?”
“He’s a good techhead, but we need someone who can drive this on. That’s you.”
“Thanks, but you know we can’t complete all the stations. We don’t have the equipment.”
“Have a little faith in Bradley Johansson, he’ll get the last components to us in time. Meanwhile, you can assemble the systems we do have, ready for the final installation.”
“I heard that we can only build another four functioning stations.”
“You heard just about right. Bradley will deliver the equipment to complete the last eight. Don’t worry.”
“He’s cutting it very fine.”
“I’m sure they have their problems out there in the Commonwealth.”
“Yeah,” she said, not liking what a gripe she sounded.
“But what?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Did you have to?”
“All right,” she admitted. “I wanted to be on the team that goes up to Aphrodite’s Seat.”
“Well, the dreaming heavens know you’ve earned a place. If you finish the last two stations on schedule, and Bradley delivers the remaining components to bring the network up to operational status, you should get to the Nalosyle Vales in time to make the rendezvous.”
“That’s bribery.”
Harvey chuckled, a nasty liquid rumbling sound.
They reached the first parked truck. Over a dozen Guardians were grouped around it, waiting. Ferelith was holding on to an excited Lennox. When she let go, the little boy toddled unsteadily to his mother, a delighted smile on his face. Samantha picked him up, and turned to face the new station they’d built. Valentine and the last two technicians were running down the track. She could just see the edge of the black pyramid about six hundred meters away in the shelter’s new clearing.
The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Page 192