Adam started paying very close attention to the delay times. At one point, just after they’d left Wolfstail, Bradley was barely a hundred ten minutes behind the Starflyer. Then the Institute finally began to respond to the situation. Several groups of three or four Land Rover Cruisers were spotted along Highway One heading north. Bradley and Stig knew about them, but there was nothing they could do to avoid a clash; there simply wasn’t an alternative route. It was their turn to be shot at.
In the Volvo’s cab, they even knew the first collision point, a small Highway One town calling itself Philadelphia FA. The wait was tense as the radio grapevine spat out the occasional testimony and counterclaim. As they listened to the crackling static, thick gray clouds scudded in across the dazzling sapphire sky, drawing a veil of drizzle below them. The water turned the Anguilla grass slippery and treacherous. Even the gung-ho Guardians had to slow as the Volvo’s wheels began to slide about over the stalks they’d crushed beneath them. It wasn’t until an hour and a half after the Philadelphia incident must have happened that they were certain a convoy of armored cars and Mazda jeeps along with their companion vehicles were still racing in pursuit of the Starflyer. Checking the waystations as best he could, Adam reckoned they’d lost a good forty minutes lead time. For some obscure sentimental reason he was glad that Bradley’s group still appeared to have the truck Qatux was traveling in.
“They’ll make it up again after the Anculan tomorrow,” Rosamund said with conviction.
The Anculan River was where the biggest Guardian ambush was planned. If the Starflyer kept its speed, they should reach it by midday tomorrow. Adam hoped she was right. There were reports coming in of more Institute Cruisers on the road far south of the equator. Reinforcements. Nothing was secret anymore. The new troops knew now that there were Guardian ambush squads at each river. They could engage them before the Starflyer arrived, clearing away any threat. Bradley and Stig were also going to have to take on at least two more Cruiser patrols before they reached the Anculan.
Adam just hoped that the preparations for the Final Raid had gone unnoticed. Away in the eastern province of the Dessault Mountains, the clans were assembling every remaining warrior into an army that was going to sweep down on the Starflyer and the Research Institute and the arkship. There were no civilians living anywhere near the deep forts of the clans, no remote farms or wandering prospector to shout excited claims about an army on the march.
The Guardians he’d encountered at that brief meeting at rendezvous point four had also talked breathlessly about the Barsoomians, who were supposedly traveling in from their territory on the other side of the Oak Sea to help with the Final Raid. Together they would destroy the Starflyer before it ever reached its starship.
Although he never said it out loud, Adam hoped that was one battle that would never happen. The Institute itself would have heavy-duty weaponry to defend its valley. The loss of life would be dreadful. Now he was actually on Far Away, reviewing things on the ground, his confidence had taken an abrupt nosedive. The planet was so backward. He’d always thought his shipments were received by well-organized fighting units. In reality the clans were little advanced from Earth’s pre-Commonwealth guerrilla bands who waged war on oppressive governments from their mountain hideaway camps. The clans, bluntly, were turning out to be a serious disappointment.
His main hope now was that they would be on time delivering the components carried by the Volvos. If the planet’s revenge could be made to work, and wreck the Marie Celeste before the Starflyer reached it, they would have a breathing space. Bradley wouldn’t have to launch the Final Raid. Sheldon had promised to send a starship; it would have the weapons to exterminate the alien from orbit. A clean precise blast of energy would eradicate the problem once and for all.
So Adam Elvin, lapsed socialist activist, kept his own silent counsel as the Volvo drove on and on through the interminable grasslands, praying that the greatest capitalist the human race had ever produced would keep his word. If it wouldn’t have required so much explaining, he would have laughed out loud at the monstrous irony.
“Something up ahead,” Rosamund called out.
Adam broke his reverie to look at the radar display. There was a very broad shallow river a kilometer ahead. The radar return showed a horse on the far side, with someone standing beside it. Given their relative sizes, he thought it must be a child.
“That’s got to be someone from Samantha’s team,” Kieran said. “I bet it’s Judson McKratz.”
“What makes you say that?” Adam asked.
“I know him. They’ll want to confirm we’re genuine, and Judson knows this road better than anyone.”
“Good point.” Adam rubbed at his temples. It had been a long trip, and he hadn’t had much sleep since … probably the Carbon Goose. He was sure he had an hour on the flight. “Even so … force fields on, people.”
The river was wider than Adam realized from the radar. Grass hid it until they were only a couple of hundred meters from the bank. They dipped down a short incline, and he could finally see it was almost four hundred meters across. He whistled softly. Even with a depth that was never greater than half a meter, that was a lot of water. The gentle U-shape course it had carved for itself spoke of much higher levels rushing down from the mountains. On his map, the river stretched back to the Dessault range, where it was fed by dozens of tributaries worming their way out through the foothills.
“One at a time,” he ordered. “Ayub, stay here and get ready to give us covering fire.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rosamund inched their Volvo down onto the stony riverbed. Its suspension lowered the wheels below the chassis, and they moved forward in a series of lurches that rocked the cab about. Even in Far Away’s gravity, Adam had to strap himself in tight.
The rider standing beside the dark gray horse was an adult human male, wearing a long walnut-colored oilskin greatcoat and broad-rimmed hat that deflected the drizzle like a force field. As they drew near to the bank, Adam gawped in astonishment. The Guardians he’d met always talked about their Charlemagnes with a sense of pride; now he could see why. The beast was big and hellishly intimidating. He eyed its short metal-tipped horn, and vowed not to venture within twenty meters of the brute.
The Volvo wobbled up out of the river.
“That’s Judson all right,” Kieran said with a wide smile. He jumped down out of the cab to greet his old colleague. The two of them embraced warmly, and Kieran brought him over to the truck. Adam climbed out. The Charlemagne had tusks, he saw. It probably wasn’t a herbivore.
“Mr. Elvin,” Judson said. “Welcome. I have heard your name many times. Those who return from the Commonwealth speak well of you.”
“Thank you.” Adam waved the other truck over. “We’ve brought the remainder of the equipment you need.”
“In the nick of time again, eh?” Judson put his arm around Kieran’s shoulder, shaking him fondly.
“We’re here,” Kieran said. “Don’t complain.”
“Me?” He gave a deep rumbling laugh. “Seriously, you should be able to reach Samantha by nightfall. She’s waiting for you in Reithstone Valley, with additional transport ready to ferry the components out to the remaining stations. And after that! You are lucky I know the deepest caves in this region.” He pulled an array out of his coat pocket. “I’ll let them know you’re here.”
Adam’s array picked up a song being played on the short-wave frequency they’d been given. He suspected not many people would know it without an e-butler search of library files. Somebody here had a strange sense of humor. The sound of “Hey, Jude” washed across the eternal grasslands.
A few minutes later, his array found the salsa hit “Morgan” being played, drifting in and out of reception as the ionosphere undulated far above them. He remembered dancing to that in his own youth.
“That’s the acknowledgment,” Judson said.
“I’m curious,” Adam said. “What if it hadn’t been us?
”
Judson gave him a broad smile. “ ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’ ”
Making contact with Judson had provided all of them with a definite morale boost. After the shock of discovering the sabotage, they needed to know they weren’t isolated. A state the grassland had emphasized for hour after hour.
The Volvos drove off down the buried road again, leaving Judson behind. For all the size and power of the Charlemagne, it couldn’t keep up with the trucks’ unceasing pace. The dark clouds began to break up in the late afternoon, allowing huge sunbeams to play down past their frayed edges, like searchlights strafing the grassland. As the beams slowly angled up toward the horizontal there was finally a break in the numbingly tedious landscape. Up ahead, the foothills of the Dessault range were beginning to rise above the glistening stalks of Anguilla grass.
An hour later they were driving up the foothills. The grass had finally fallen behind them, unable to rise far up the slopes where the air cooled quickly. Ordinary grass reasserted itself, along with trees and bushes. Their road became clear again, two lines of hard-packed stone winding up the banks and following the contour lines cut into valley walls. It wasn’t long before they were level with the first true mountains. On either side of them, sharp rocky peaks smeared with snow protruded into the ice-clear sapphire sky, casting huge shadows down into the valleys as the sun fell.
Twice, Adam saw riders on Charlemagnes high above the road, watching them as they crawled on toward Reithstone Valley. It was becoming difficult to receive radio transmissions amid the mountains. The last they heard of Highway One was a Guardian ambush team engaging a Cruiser patrol at the Kantrian bridge a couple of hours before the Starflyer reached it. After a couple more engagements with Institute troops Bradley had fallen back again and was now trailing the Starflyer by nearly four hours.
Twilight brought them into yet another high valley where the alpine grass was still struggling to establish itself. Trees and bushes were confined to thickets along the side of the fast-flowing stream that cut along the bottom. Kieran was spelling Rosamund behind the wheel. As they started to climb again, he turned the headlights on. Long beams of blue-tinged light exposed the shelf that was now their road. There was no compacted stone here; the soil was a hard grit bound together with tough short grass and ragged moss. Occasional rockfall mounds had been carved away by machines decades ago, but apart from that the track appeared to be natural. Adam wondered if it had originally been formed by the local equivalent of mountain goats in the millennia before the flare. It was a little too convenient to be completely geological. He was also slightly discomforted by how narrow it was in sections. The width fluctuated constantly. There were no crash barriers; and the slope below was steep getting on for vertical. Thankfully, it was getting harder to see the valley floor as the light shrank away out of the sky. Stars began to appear overhead.
Adam went to check on Paula again. The cab’s air-conditioning unit was now blowing warm air through the vents, compensating for the chill of altitude. She moaned when he slid the composite door open, instinctively turning away from the pink twilight that shone in through the windshield.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
A skeletal face peered up at him from a nest of blankets.
Adam sniffed the air, and tried not to grimace in disgust. Paula had been sick; sticky brown fluid stained the blankets she was clutching. He thought there might be specks of blood in it.
“Here.” He handed her a bottle of water. “You’ve got to drink more.”
Just looking at it made her shudder. “Can’t.”
“You’re dehydrating, that just makes this worse.” He began to tug his dark red sweater off over his head. “Give me the top blanket and put this on.”
She said nothing, but released her grip on the blanket. He bundled it away in a polythene bag, then adjusted the vent controls for a quick blast of clear air to rid the little compartment of the rancid smell. Paula took a long time to pull the sweater on. The one time he tried to help, she pushed his hands away, determined to do it herself. He didn’t offer again; if she still had pride there was hope for her personality yet.
“I’ve got some sedatives left,” he said when she fell back down onto the cot, completely exhausted.
“No.” She beckoned at the bottle he was holding. “I’ll try and drink.”
“You need more than that.”
“I’ll try and remember.”
“The Guardians will have a doctor.”
“We’ll stick to the diagnostic array, thank you. I trust that more than any doctor on this world.”
“That’s prejudice.”
“It’s my life.”
“Look, we both know—”
“We’ve got company,” Rosamund sang out. “Trucks up ahead, coming our way.”
Adam gave Paula a long look. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“It’s hard for me to avoid you.”
He went back into the cab, glancing at the radar display. “What have you got?”
Kieran pointed out through the windshield. Several points of light were moving along the side of the mountain ahead of them, shining bright in the deep shadow.
“See if you can contact them,” Adam told Rosamund. He wasn’t particularly worried. If the Institute had by some miracle tracked them down, they wouldn’t be so blatant.
“Answering signal,” Rosamund said. “It’s Samantha all right, she says they need to get started with the equipment straightaway.”
They drove on for another kilometer before finding a broad section of the road shelf where they could all park. Samantha’s vehicles roared in ten minutes later as the sapphire sky finally faded to black, and the stars shone with an intensity Adam rarely got to see on any Commonwealth world. Seven medium-sized trucks and five old Vauxhall jeeps parked around the Volvos, all with tough primitive-looking AS suspension; their engines thundered in the thin air, exhaust pipes blowing out mucky vapor. Twenty Guardians climbed out, giving the new Volvos an inquisitive examination.
Samantha was younger than Adam was expecting, certainly still in her twenties, with an enormous cloud of dark red hair that was wound back into a boisterous tail which hung a long way down her broad back. A face that was eighty percent freckles smiled curiously at him when they met in front of the Volvos, illuminated by the bright blue-tinted headlight.
Adam took out the crystal holding the Martian data and handed it over to her with a flourish.
“Adam Elvin.” She shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’ve heard your name a lot from people who come back.”
There was something in the way she said that, almost like an accusation. “Thanks. We weren’t expecting to see you for a while yet.”
“Yeah, I know. Change of plan. Have you been following the Highway One reports?”
“Yes.”
“The Starflyer’s making better progress than we expected. We really need to get those last manipulator stations up and running. I figured it would be quicker to offload the equipment to my people now, and they’ll disperse from here.”
“Sure, hey this is your field. We’re just the delivery team.”
“You’ve done a good job. With this.”
Again, there was that tone. “Anything the matter?”
“Hey, sorry, pal.” She gripped his arm tightly. “No offense, but I’m Lennox’s mother. I was good friends with Kazimir, too. Real good friends.”
Adam didn’t understand the Lennox reference. “Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry. Kazimir was a good man, one of the best.”
Rosamund gave a discreet cough behind him. “Bruce was Lennox’s father.”
Adam looked from Rosamund to Samantha, completely flummoxed. “Christ. Uh, did you know he’s dead, too?”
“Been dead a long time, pal. Just his body been walking around out there.” Another firm squeeze on Adam’s arm. “After this, if you’ve got time, I’d like to hear about it. Be good coming from the horse’s mouth.”
> “Of course.”
“For now we need to shift our asses into gear, and sharpish. How much did you bring?”
“Just about everything we said we would. There’s twenty-five tons in each truck. Some got damaged en route, not much.”
“Yeah, heard you had some trouble.” Samantha eyed the navy people. “How’s that going?”
“It’s under control.”
Samantha mulled that over for a while. “You’re our top man in the Commonwealth; Bradley Johansson trusts you, so I will, too. But I don’t need any surprises, pal. Out here we have a very easy solution for Starflyer agents.”
“Understood. You won’t get any surprises.”
Samantha produced a handheld array that was old enough to have been on Far Away right from the start. “I’ll need the inventory, but that kind of tonnage! Dreaming heavens, sounds like we’ve got more than enough. Thanks again; this planet might just get its revenge after all. That must have been some ride to get here.”
“It had its moments.”
“Let’s hope it wasn’t for nothing. Time really is being a bitch to us right now. Can we start unloading?”
“Sure.” He got Rosamund and Jamas to open the trailers while he handed Samantha a spare handheld array and showed her how to use it. She whistled appreciatively at its adaptive-logic voice recognition, and started searching the inventory list. A minute later she was bellowing instructions to her people. Guardians and trolleybots were soon beavering away unloading the crates.
“Just how time-critical are things?” Adam asked. He was beginning to feel redundant, standing with the navy people in a little cluster while Jamas and the others were smiling away as they greeted friends they hadn’t seen in years.
Samantha sucked on her lower lip and lowered her voice. “My teams should pull through. The drivers will dose up on beezees and run the mountains like a bat out of hell tonight, each of the stations will get their load tomorrow; Zuggenhim Ridge is the farthest away, and that should be done by midday, which is cutting it fine for assembly, but I’ll take that one myself. We’re going to start the planet’s revenge the day after tomorrow no matter how many stations are ready. No choice, pal.”
The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Page 218