Judas Unchained cs-2

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The Ables ND47 went through the gateway at close to a hundred kilometers an hour. The gold haze tore away from the front of the engine revealing the twilit landscape of the station yard. A big Audi Luxnat ten-seater was trying to turn onto the track. The train smacked into it, shredding the bodywork to splinters of carbon. Adam winced in guilt. Hope the Investigator didn’t see that.

  Dozens of other vehicles were jouncing their way across the multiple tracks, converging on the gateway. Cameras showed him exhausted runners flinging themselves down as the train hurtled past. He took in all the peripheral scenes with a swift sweep through his virtual vision display grid, concentrating on the tracks ahead. Radar showed them intact. The force field over the Far Away section was an impenetrable bubble.

  “We’re closing the wormhole now,” Nigel Sheldon said.

  “Thanks for nothing,” Adam retorted gleefully as the signal faded. Sensors were showing him some kind of firefight up ahead. His virtual hand throttled back on the power, and began applying the brakes. The cab’s array connected with the local traffic control. Adam used the authority codes he’d been given to open a route directly to the Far Away section. It was a superfluous order; the points were still open. The Ables ND47 rolled onward, using the same route the Starflyer had taken not thirty minutes before.

  Adam concentrated on the firefight. Over twenty vehicles were clustered together outside the force field, guarding the point where the tracks led into the Far Away section. His sensors showed him weapons fire emerging from fast-moving locations. Whoever was launching them must be stealthed, the sensors couldn’t lock on to them.

  “This has to be the navy team,” he said.

  “We agree,” Wilson said. “One moment, I’ll try to contact them.”

  “Got another one,” Vic claimed as the ground close by sizzled from a burst of maser energy.

  Alic was jammed into a shallow drainage ditch beside Vic. Jim and Matthew were fifty meters away, using a raised roadway for cover.

  The vehicles that had escorted the Starflyer’s train were spread out ahead of them, making sure no one got close to the big dome of energy that protected the station’s Far Away section. They’d encountered vigorous resistance from a kilometer out. It’d taken time to creep forward. Vic’s missiles had disposed of eight, but Alic didn’t want him to waste any more. They’d need serious firepower if they ever caught up with the Starflyer.

  A particle lance swung up and over his shoulder, and he raised himself up so its sensors could lock on to the closest four-by-four. He fired, and the vehicle exploded in a spectacularly violent fireball. The blast wave slammed overhead, sending a rain of small stones rattling down on Alic and Vic.

  “Good shooting, Boss,” Vic said.

  Masers and a burst from a magnetic gatling cannon pounded the ditch. Alic and Vic started to crawl along through the trickle of dirty water in the bottom.

  “Edmund, any progress?” Alic asked.

  “No, man, sorry. All I can see is about ten cars and such ringing the gateway to Half Way. There’s been no change since the train went through. They’re just waiting for anyone to try and take them on.”

  Alic wanted to give the man a swift kick up the ass. Even before they’d left for Wessex, the Paris tactical crew had come up with half a dozen safe routes he could take to the force field generator. Edmund Li had also been given powerful software to subvert Tarlo’s routines. Technical had shown him which generator components to shoot with his ion pistol. There was nothing stopping him from making the run. Nothing.

  “Edmund, you’ve got to kill that generator.” Another fusillade from an enhanced energy area denial cluster made him fling himself down. Blue flame sealed off the top of the ditch. Steaming water gurgled around his armor. “We can’t get you out.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t do it, I’m safe here.”

  A repetitive drumming sounded through the roar of retreating flame. Jim was firing his rotary launcher. The air was split by a whistling shriek as hypervelocity kinetics zipped overhead. A moment’s pause, and another of the bad guy vehicles was reduced to flaming scrap metal.

  “You can’t stay there,” Alic said; he was near to pleading now. “Tarlo will keep the force field on permanently. He doesn’t want any attempt to follow the Starflyer. That means you won’t be able to join the exodus. This planet will be abandoned. You’ll die in there, Edmund. Nobody will ever find your memorycell for re-life.”

  “Oh, Christ, I don’t want this.”

  Alic resumed crawling forward. “None of us asked for this war. Your part won’t take more than five minutes. Get to that generator, let us in. We’ll take care of Tarlo and the escort vehicles.”

  “I’ll see if I can get there.”

  “That’s fine, Edmund. Go for it, now, eh?” Alic accessed two of Matthew’s sneekbots as they scuttled over the hostile landscape, trying to triangulate on another vehicle.

  “Which one is launching those bloody area denial clusters?” Vic asked.

  “Not sure,” Matthew said. “They took out five sneekbots last time.”

  Alic’s e-butler told him it was picking up a localized secure call from Paula Myo. “Localized?” he queried.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank Christ, put her through.”

  “Commander, is that you engaging the vehicles outside the force field?”

  “Yes!”

  “Okay, stand by, we’ll take them out for you. We need you a minimum one hundred meters away from them.”

  “We are. What have you got?”

  “The Guardians tell me they have zone killers.”

  “Guardians? You’re with the Guardians?” He didn’t know why he was surprised; the universe wasn’t operating logically today.

  “I am. We’re in pursuit of the Starflyer. Stay down.”

  “Trust me, I’m down a long way.” He and Vic were clinging to the bottom of the ditch. He strengthened his force field to maximum.

  “Do you still have a contact inside the Far Away section?” Paula asked.

  “Yeah. He’s proving reluctant to shut off the force field generator.”

  “Why? We need the force field down.”

  “He knows. I think he’s finally doing something about it.”

  “Good. Heads down, here it comes.”

  The sneekbots showed Alic something like a man-sized jet-propelled moth descending on the cluster of vehicles. There was a dazzling green flash, and every sneekbot signal vanished. Vivid green light flowed into the bottom of the ditch like a pervasive liquid. Then the ground thumped Alic upward as if he’d been caught in an earthquake. A prolonged thunderclap howl reverberated across the land. Alic could feel it through the suit’s insulation.

  “Clear,” Paula said.

  Alic slowly clambered up out of the ditch. Each of the remaining escort vehicles was lost inside a thick swirl of flame. He watched a big Ables ND47 approaching down the same track the Starflyer’s train had used. It was braking hard, with sparks zipping out from the huge wheels.

  “Now that’s what I call making an entrance,” Vic said.

  The Ables ND47 came to a halt. A small door opened in the side of the first wagon.

  “Get in, please,” Paula said.

  Alic and his arrest team sprinted across the blackened land. He noticed the zone killer had left the rails intact. Up on the front of the engine, a couple of dark cylinders twice the size of his armor suit were extending ponderously from the bodywork on malmetal stalks. He didn’t recognize the type of weapon, but he knew he didn’t want to be close by when they went off.

  There were several bright flashes from above the engine’s chrome intake grille, accompanied by a crack. Something like a black nebula swirled across the gap between train and force field. A broad arc on the force field’s surface started to glow a gentle copper; static flames thrashed about close to the ground, raising a pack of small dense dust devils.

  Alic jumped up into the dark wagon. Outside, there was a terrific
boom as the weapons fired.

  Edmund hit the outside door running. Behind him, the administration block’s network was crashing from the disruptor software he’d loaded in. The sensors couldn’t see him; but Tarlo would know for sure someone was inside the force field. Someone who was trying to sabotage the Starflyer’s return. It didn’t take a tactical genius to work out what the next stage had to be.

  The building housing the force field generator was an elongated geodesic hall of pearl-gray composite. He could see it protruding over a warehouse on the other side of the parking lot. Once he was there, this nightmare would be over.

  His parked Honda came to life as soon as he loaded in the drive orders. It accelerated hard, wheels spinning on the damp concrete, and headed out toward the main road. As a distraction it should gain him a few seconds—so the Paris tactical experts claimed. Edmund sprinted in the opposite direction; if he could just make it to the cover of the warehouse he should be okay.

  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.”