The turbid gray sky above the parking lot flared brilliant white. A terrifyingly loud screech echoed around the inside of the force field. Edmund lost his footing and went sprawling painfully on the concrete. He gawped up at the force field, where scarlet lightning was now scrabbling furiously against it. The vivid streamers slithered up into the air to strike the bottom of the station force field.
White light blazed again, and the horrendous noise ripped across the Far Away section. This time he understood: someone was shooting at the force field with incredibly powerful weapons, trying to break through. He made himself get up. Blood was soaking into his shirt sleeve where he’d landed on his elbow. Wincing at the pain, and cowering as another energy blast struck the force field, he ran for the warehouse.
By the time he made it around the corner he was breathing heavily. The geodesic hall was only a hundred eighty meters away now. He dashed for it as fast as he could, ignoring the awesome burns of light overhead as they alternated between dazzling white and lurid crimson. The punishing noise trapped under the force field was just about constant. His ears were ringing badly.
He was short of breath and unsteady on his feet when he finally arrived at the door to the geodesic hall. It was open, which he didn’t expect. He took a quick glance inside. Nothing was moving. Edmund pulled down a ragged breath and went in.
The generator was a large cluster of metal and plastic shapes laid out along the floor, as big as a house. White and red light took turns to fluoresce the composite arching overhead. The stentorian roaring was muted inside. He identified the power injection points, and put his hand down to his holster.
“Shit!” The shock stabbed through him as his fingers closed on empty leather. There was no pistol; it must have dropped out when he fell. “Oh, fuck. Fuck!” He stared helplessly at the bulky generator. He had no idea where the control console was—that’s if there even was a control console. His head twisted from side to side, searching for something he could use to smash a section of casing. That would be as much use as screaming at it to switch off, he decided. There was nothing else for it; he’d have to go back for the ion pistol.
The interior of the hall flared with blue-white light. An ion pulse ripped through the air, and struck the generator casing. A dazzling purple discharge seethed down the dark metallic composite, partially obscured by a fountain of smoldering plastic droplets.
A second ion pulse hit a power injector, exactly where the Paris experts had told Edmund to aim. It was suddenly very quiet. The alternating red and white light outside had stopped.
Very slowly, Edmund Li turned around to face the person who was shooting, knowing what he’d see. Tarlo was standing to one side of the open door, his arm outstretched, holding an ion pistol.
“Why?” Edmund asked.
Tarlo simply smiled as he swung the pistol around to point at Edmund Li’s head. He fired again.
Adam was sweating inside his armor. He’d calculated the firepower of the atom lasers himself. It should have been enough to break the force field, especially with the dump-web stressing it. Instead he was watching the awesome energy blasts ricochet dangerously.
The force field vanished. “Dreaming heavens,” Adam grunted. “Your inside man did it.”
“What do you know,” Alic said. “Edmund came through.”
Adam moved the Ables ND47 forward cautiously. Radar scanned ahead, showing him the tracks were broken less than a kilometer in front of them. “We’re not going to get much farther in this,” he told the teams back in the wagons. The sensors showed him the phalanx of vehicles around the gateway that led to Half Way. He launched another zone killer. The triangular shape streaked away from its launcher on top of the engine, curving in a short ballistic arc. It detonated in a cascade of green scintillations that sank toward the ground in a display of perverse splendor. Harsh orange fireballs spoiled the beauty as the vehicles and their munitions exploded.
The train braked again, grinding over the last few meters of track before coming to a halt in front of the shallow blast crater that had destroyed the rails. “End of the line,” Adam said. He unlocked the wagons.
“I’m staying here,” Vic announced as Kieran gunned the armored car down the ramp.
There were eight of them crammed inside, Vic, Alic, Wilson, Anna, Bradley Johansson, Jamas, Ayub, and Kieran up in the driver’s seat. All of them wore armor suits of various marques, though externally there was little difference: stone black figures that outlined a rough human shape. Additional weapons packs distorted their basic humanity.
“I understand,” Bradley said
“No you don’t. He’s still here.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I can feel it. Getting in was too easy. Tarlo’s a smart bastard. He doesn’t play a straight game.”
“Then you should stay inside this armored car,” Bradley said. “It is extremely well protected.”
“No. I’ll find him out there. Hey, I’ll be covering your ass. He’ll have something planned for you.”
“My team has planned for most eventualities.”
Vic stood up. “But not all of them.”
“As you wish,” Bradley said.
The side door slid open. It was dim outside, the air layered with smoke from the ruined vehicles.
“You coming, Boss?” Vic asked.
“We know the Starflyer’s real,” Alic said. “It’s just on the other side of that gateway. That’s my priority. Jim, Matthew, if you want to go with Vic, that’s fine by me.”
“I’ll stick with you, Boss,” Jim said.
“Sorry, Vic,” Matthew said, “but this is bigger.”
“That’s okay.” The big man stooped to get through the door. “I want this for myself. And Gwyneth.”
“Good luck,” Alic said.
Adam climbed down the ladder on the side of the engine, thankful for the suit’s electromuscle. It was a long way to the ground, and he was getting tired after days of high-pressure preparation. Three armored cars were waiting beside the broken track for him, blunt olive-green ovals with a smooth skin of passive deflector panels riding on ten independent mesh-flex wheels. They were in a triangular formation around three Volvo trucks. The Volvos were based on the twenty-wheel GH chassis, developed for rough terrain on developing worlds. They’d been customized with a cruder version of deflector paneling than the armored cars, then beefed up with extensive electronic countermeasures, turning them into squat brutes a dull gray-blue in color. With their diesel tanks full they should have the range to dive from Armstrong City to the Dessault Mountains, where the components they were carrying were desperately needed for the planet’s revenge.
As Adam made his way over to the armored car taking point duty he saw Vic walking away, and shook his head in regret. They could have done with a genuine professional. Personal feelings were always bad news in combat situations.
The armored car’s side door slid open, and he climbed in. There was one seat left, opposite Paula Myo. Oh, crap.
“Do you want to drive, sir?” Rosamund asked.
“No, that’s okay. Just remember what I taught you.”
“If she does that, she’ll probably wind up in suspension, just like you’re going to,” Paula said.
“We’re not in that courtroom yet, Investigator. We both have to live through the next couple of days first, and personally I don’t give us particularly high odds.”
“You want us to kill her for you, sir?” Rosamund asked. She sounded very hostile.
“Oh, dreaming heavens, no. Let’s just all stay civilized, shall we? All of you, leave the Investigator and me to work out our own little problem by ourselves.”
“Okay. But you just have to say the word.” Rosamund fed power to the engines, and the armored car rolled forward.
“You should watch your mouth,” Adam told Paula. “Remember this is my home ground.”
“To the best of my knowledge you’ve never been to Far Away.”
�
��No, but these are my people.”
“I don’t think so. You’re a black market arms dealer who gave them some training. Do they know how many innocent people you slaughtered before Johansson sheltered you?”
“You two,” Bradley said, “knock it off. We have a different war to fight today.”
Adam bit back on his next comment. He was sure the Investigator was smiling inside her helmet. His virtual hands pulled sensor images from all the armored cars out of his mission display grid. They were heading across the last few hundred meters of ground in front of the small gateway. It shone a pallid coral-pink in front of them.
“It’s open,” Rosamund said.
“Pay attention to the weapons,” Adam told her. There were over twenty maser cannons covering the gateway, the first line of defense in any alien invasion. Ironic, Adam thought, ultimately they wound up facing the wrong way. The X-ray lasers on the armored cars began firing, targeting the cannon.
Adam switched his attention to the person next to Myo. He was wearing absolute state-of-the-art armor, which Adam envied; despite his every effort and contact in the black market he hadn’t been able to get his hands on the suit that the navy had used to equip all its Lost23 insurgents. “Hello, Rob,” Adam said. “Good to be working with you again.”
“For you, maybe,” Rob retorted. “I didn’t even know it was you last time, and I wound up with a two-hundred-year life suspension.”
“We almost made it though, didn’t we? Almost stopped the Second Chance. If we had, we wouldn’t be here today.”
“Is this supposed to make me feel better?”
“Just pointing out how things go full circle.”
“Elvin, you took no part in the Second Chance assault,” Paula said.
“I planned it, I organized it. The damn thing would have worked if the SI hadn’t thrown in on your side.”
“Look,” Rob said. “I didn’t know I was working for you. And the only reason I took the job was because I owed some very bad people a lot of money. Okay? We’re not comrades, we’re not buddies; that’s it, period.”
“Were you recruited through an agent?” Paula asked.
“It’s in my file,” Rob said. “I cooperated fully with the police. Much good it did me.”
“Give it a rest,” Adam snapped at her. “We’re about to face the Starflyer itself.”
“I ask, because Vic may be right. This is very easy. Why has the Starflyer left the gateway open to Half Way?”
“You think it’s going to ambush us? We’re ready for that. This is what I do, plan combat scenarios. I know you don’t like the idea, but have some faith in me, Investigator; you wouldn’t be chasing me unless I was good.” Even as he said it, he checked his virtual vision grid. The maser cannons were being taken out one at a time, slumping over to the ground as their mountings turned sluggish. They were only a hundred meters from the gateway now, bumping along the single track that led to Half Way. It was discomfortingly easy, he had to admit.
“Remember Valtare Rigin?” Paula asked.
Better than you realize. Adam still got chilly when he thought how close they’d been that day on Venice Coast, and she’d never seen him. “Owner of the Nystol gallery on Venice Coast, the one Bruce targeted.”
“Yes. We didn’t release the information at the time, obviously, but our forensic team found that Rigin’s memorycell had been removed postmortem.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Tarlo took the head of the Agent on Illuminatus, complete with memorycell. Do you understand, Elvin? The Starflyer is building up a very intimate database on your activities. Now I don’t know how many more of your contacts it has captured and subjected to download. But it knows who you use, who you want, what equipment you’re buying. Tell me this: if it has all that, is there any way it can deduce what you’re doing today, now?”
Adam hated the question. He knew what he would like to answer, no, no way, but the stakes were too high for that kind of pride now. “I don’t know. I never tell the Agent what the operations are, especially last time. I just needed people with combat experience.”
“Let’s hope that’s not enough.”
“Wait a minute,” Rob said. “You mean that thing knows my name?”
“Yes,” Paula said.
“Oh, shit.”
“We’re ready,” Rosamund said.
The last maser cannon had been eliminated. They were right in front of the gateway to Half Way. Mild ruby light shone through the milky opaque pressure curtain force field. Nothing was visible through it.
“Send the drone through,” Adam said.
The little winged bot zipped through the force field. Its camera showed a landscape of naked rock beneath a dark fuchsia sky. A single set of rails ran from the gateway into the head of a deep valley, dipping down toward the calm sea.
“Nothing,” Rosamund reported. No electromagnetic activity, no thermal spots. They’re not there.
“Take us through,” Adam ordered. “And send the drone out over Shackleton; let’s see if there are any planes left.”
Vic watched the last Volvo truck disappear through the red pressure curtain. He’d jogged away from the Guardians as they knocked out the maser cannon; the big T-shaped weapons had keeled over to lie smoldering on the scorched ground amid the still-burning wrecks that the zone killer had taken out. It was like being back on Illuminatus, walking through the aftermath of Treetops.
He knew their easy passage was all wrong. The local network had crashed thanks to Edmund, but the hardened security links should have been resistant to the disruptor software. Tarlo would have retained fire control. If he’d wanted, he could have engaged the Guardians. The maser cannon were old, but they could have probably taken out a couple of the Volvos. It didn’t make a lot of sense, unless Tarlo wanted the Guardians to get through to Half Way. Why?
Vic reached the geodesic hall containing the force field generator. His sensors couldn’t detect any personal force fields or weapons power packs. There was an infrared source lying just inside the door, human-sized. He went in.
The corpse sprawled on the enzyme-bonded concrete only had half of its head left. An ion pulse had blown the face off and incinerated most of the rest. Vic was pretty sure it was Edmund Li. It certainly wasn’t Tarlo. Of course, there was no way of knowing just how many Starflyer agents there were left on this side of the gateway. He switched his suit sensors to active scan, and swept around the dark hall. The two shots that had disabled the generator were easy to detect, the casing was still hot where they’d hit. There was no sign of anyone else in there.
A huge explosion outside made Vic crouch down instinctively as his force field strengthened. As soon as he went back out through the door he saw a giant gout of flame and black oily smoke rising up from the long building that housed the Half Way wormhole generator. The gateway at the front of it was now nothing more than a concave semicircle packed with complex machinery. There was no red luminescence, no alien starlight diffused by the pressure curtain. Another explosion ripped out from the generator building, sending debris flying for hundreds of meters. Flames took hold inside, licking around the huge holes blown in the roof and walls.
Vic started jogging toward the dead gateway, heedless of the exposure. His sensors scanned around constantly, searching for any motion, any hint of human activity.
Someone was walking toward him, stepping unhurriedly over the burned earth in front of the gateway, making no attempt to conceal themself. Vic didn’t need confirmation, he knew who it would be, but his visual sensors zoomed in anyway.
He stopped ten meters short of Tarlo. The Starflyer agent wasn’t using any of his wetwiring, his inserts were inert, power cells switched to inactive mode. He simply stood there in a glossy suit of semiorganic fabric refracting a moiré shimmer; his blond hair swept back and held in place with a small black leather band.
“Vic, right?” he asked the hulking armor suit. “Gotta be Vic.”
Vic switched on the suit�
��s external audio circuit. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Cool. How’s Gwyneth?”
“Does it matter to you?”
“Part of me, man, yeah.”
“She’ll be okay. Why did you do it?”
Tarlo’s handsome face gave a sympathetic grin. “It’s what I had to do. Man, that Paula Myo, what a ball-buster. I always knew she’d be the one who blew me.”
“Who am I talking to?”
“Both of us, I guess. My part is over, so it doesn’t care anymore. It’s just waiting for you to kill me.”
“You failed, though. The Guardians got through.”
“The Guardians got through. I succeeded.”
“It was a trap.”
“What do you think?”
“I think I’ll take you back for a memory read.”
“Man, it’s too late for that; Qatux has gone through with the rest of them.”
“How did you know—” Vic’s suit sensors showed one of Tarlo’s inserts powering up. He fired his ion rifle, which blew Tarlo’s body in half.
All the trees in the forest were identical, elegantly rotund, and rich with red-gold leaves that reminded Ozzie of New England in the fall. This, though, was high summer, with a bright sun high overhead, and warm dry air gusting through the branches. Ozzie had stripped down to his T-shirt and a pair of badly worn shorts; not that it stopped him sweating hard from the effort of carrying his pack. Orion was wearing cutoff pants and no shirt; his expression martyred as he lumbered on in the grinding heat of the afternoon. Tochee seemed unaffected, its colorful fronds flapping loosely as it slid along.
Ozzie was pretty sure he knew where they were, though his newfound pathsense wasn’t quite as precise as a satnav function. He’d started to pick up on a few signs in the last half hour. This path was now quite neat, the kind of track that you’d get when someone took care of it, rather than just a route that people and animals walked at random. There were no dead branches lying across the way, and remarkably few twigs. Several boggy puddles had been filled with gravel so travelers didn’t have to detour. Then he even saw where branches had been cut on trees close to the path; they were long healed over now, just knobbly warts in the sepia bark. All the things a government land management agency would do to keep the path open for walkers.
The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Page 199