It took the Institute thirty-two minutes to shoot down five of the remaining blimpbots after the fuel air bomb went off. Land Rover Cruisers tore through the streets of Armstrong City in twos and threes, never quite constituting a decent target by themselves. The teams would rendezvous in an open location where they could mass their firepower and slam it into the massive aging craft coasting above the rooftops.
It was easy enough for Keely to track them. She’d successfully crashed the city’s net, forcing the Institute to use encrypted radio. Transmission points were easy to track. Physically following them was more difficult. The streets were packed with people and vehicles, trying to get the injured to hospitals, forming rescue parties to pick through collapsed buildings. Lack of communications was a huge inhibitor. The emergency services had fallback radio, but they didn’t know where the worst areas were. It wasn’t just the district around 3F; the blimpbots that had been knocked out of the sky had caused tremendous damage where they crashed. Three of them had started street blazes.
The Institute troops didn’t care about any of the human problems. Their Cruisers drove through crowds and forced ambulances off the street; anyone who got in the way was shot at. When they did succeed in attacking a blimpbot it would fall to the ground, causing more deaths and damage.
Stig and the available clan warriors chased around after the Cruisers on bikes where they could. It was difficult, they couldn’t go plowing through crowds. They’d managed to wreck six Cruisers in total, at a cost of nine Guardians. He didn’t like the ratio.
“Convoy forming along Mantana Avenue,” Keely warned.
Stig checked his timer. There were eighteen minutes left before the wormhole closed. Above him stars were shining through the thinning rain clouds. “Okay, all mobile units, we’ll regroup at the 3F end of Levana Walk. Muriden, Hanna, slow them up as best you can. We’ll reinforce you immediately.” He braked the bike he’d commandeered, a Triumph Urban-retro45, and swung it in a sharp turn to head back down Crown Lane. Olwen, who was riding shotgun, slipped her ion pistols back into their holsters. “Did they get the bomb carrier?”
“Yeah.” He was busy concentrating on the road, which was littered with debris. Every other vehicle driving that evening was moving fast and swerving to avoid the bigger lumps and branches. It was adding a considerable percentage to the casualties.
Sensor coverage from the sneekbots was sporadic. Keely had left secure routes through the city’s network that the Guardians could access, but there had been a lot of physical damage, especially around 3F. Stig was supplied with intermittent images of the vehicles thrusting their way along Mantana Avenue. There were some kind of bulldozers near the front, and a couple of beefy tow trucks.
“Isn’t that another of those life-support capsules?” Olwen asked.
Stig risked shifting his focus from the road to his virtual vision grid, and saw an identical MANN rig to the first. “What do they do, clone those bastards?” A minibus full of injured heading the other way blasted its horn at him, and he throttled back, swaying in close to the pavement. The driver shook his fist as he passed.
“Damnit, we’re not going to be in time.” He watched the first Cruisers reach the bottom of the steep rubble slope that had been Market Wall. Their suspension had lowered, lifting the main body a couple of meters above the ground. They didn’t even seem to slow down as they tipped up and began climbing the pile.
Hanna’s team opened fire as soon as they reached the crown. Gatling cannon and masers replied. Headlights and targeting lasers lashed across the broken inner surface.
The bulldozers were going up in formation, flattening a crude road, shunting aside tons of debris with a speed Stig could hardly believe. Their brilliant headlights cut through the late twilight, illuminating thick clouds of dust they were churning up. More Range Rover Cruisers were speeding up over the broken stone and into the dark heart of the blast zone. They began firing at random out of the cloying dust, strafing the blackened slopes.
“Disengage,” Stig ordered as the tenth Cruiser topped the mound. “Fall back, dreaming heavens, you can’t hold that many.” They were even losing sneekbots as the Institute’s randomized firepower swept around the ruined Plaza.
The bulldozers had carved a roughly level path up to the top of the slope; now they were pushing down the other side. Dense streamers of dust congested the air around them, blurring the light beams. Five more Cruisers raced up after them, jumping the apex to come bouncing down the newly formed ramp. There were over twenty of the Institute vehicles inside the Plaza now, all of them shooting wildly. None of the Guardians were firing back; they were scrabbling desperately for cover. The MANN truck arrived at the bottom of the incline, and began to grind its way up, eight headlights stabbing up into the occluded night.
“We should have stayed,” Stig said. “Made our stand there around 3F.”
“We’d have been slaughtered,” Olwen said. “This is complete desperation on their part; they’ll do anything to clear a path for the Starflyer.”
He turned onto Nottingham Road and braked again. It was chaos ahead, with cars and vans wedged together, headlights shining on the partially collapsed buildings. People were working on the ruins, picking stones and bricks off one at a time. A city fire crew was deployed halfway along, their bots crawling up a four-story house that had somehow twisted itself around through twenty degrees.
“Run,” he said simply.
The Institute Cruisers stopped firing. There were only five functioning sneekbots left in 3F Plaza. They showed the MANN truck gunning its way down the inner slope in juddering bursts. Five Cruisers were shining their headlights on the gateway’s pressure curtain. A group of figures in flexarmor were clearing it, flinging away chunks of debris.
Stig’s timer said there were thirteen minutes left until the end of the cycle. For another fuel air bomb he would have signed away his soul.
One of the Institute people walked through the gateway. There were flashes of light on the other side, diffused by the pressure curtain.
Some kind of truck came crashing out through the pressure curtain in a burst of noise and light. Its force field was radiating a bright perilous red. Air brakes shrieked and hissed, tires skidded across the slippery ash. The mounted weapon on every Cruiser tracked the truck’s erratic journey until it came to a halt fifty meters from the gateway. Its engine was racing, snorting like a maddened animal as the red hue faded away. Frost began to form on its bodywork.
Two more identical trucks came racing through. Then brilliant scarlet light stabbed through the pressure curtain, illuminating half of the Plaza.
“That’s us,” Stig said. “It’s got to be. Adam’s on the other side. The Starflyer isn’t having it all its own way.”
More trucks were scurrying through, so close together they could have been a train. The Cruisers were forming a broad semicircle around the gateway, every weapon pointed at it. Stig counted eight trucks in total behind them. One was crawling forward, leveling up beside the MANN truck. “Keely, we need a better angle on that truck,” he said.
“I’ll try.”
A couple of the sneekbots began to move. The image was dreadful, jolting about, with dust and drizzle rendering zoom function difficult. A door expanded in the side of the capsule. One of the sneekbots dipped down behind some rubble. That left one. Its camera tried to focus as the back of the truck hinged down, a pale vapor drifted out to vanish amid the swirling dust.
“Dreaming fucking heavens,” Stig said hoarsely. The Starflyer! He came to a complete halt, oblivious to the turmoil around him, concentrating on the one inadequate feed. Every headlight in the Plaza abruptly switched off. The sneekbot countered the darkness by activating its image amplification mode. Something moved out of the truck’s screened interior, surrounded by smaller human figures. It vanished into the capsule and the door contracted.
Headlights came back on, washing out the sneekbot’s images.
“Can you enhance that?” Stig asked breathl
essly. When he replayed the image it was completely unclear, simply a patch of shaded pixels. Mobile, though. He thought it rocked as it moved.
“I dunno,” Keely replied. “I’ll shove it through the programs.”
Several Cruisers were roaring back up the path the bulldozers had cut through Market Wall. When they reached the top, they opened fire indiscriminately on the street below.
“Bastards,” Olwen exclaimed bitterly. The gunfire was audible where they were, near the end of Nottingham Road.
The MANN lorry started to move, powering its way back up the ramp, thick tires grinding the rubble flat. Cruisers formed up in front and behind it. They all started off down Mantana Avenue.
“Snipers stand by,” Stig said. “The Starflyer is on its way out of the city. Keely, alert the teams along Highway One to start wrecking the road. Did we get anyone to the Tangeat bridge?”
“No.”
He cursed under his breath, very careful not to let any hint of disapproval out into the general band. “Doesn’t matter, there’s a lot of other bridges between here and the Marie Celeste.”
Stig pulled sneekbot images out of his grid, anxious to see what was happening in 3F Plaza. Two of the trucks and seven Range Rover Cruisers had been left behind by the Institute. All of them had mounted weapons pointing at the gateway. Even as he watched, two violet lasers lashed out at some point on the ground just centimeters from the pressure curtain.
“They’re waiting to ambush Adam,” he said. “Dreaming heavens, we’ll have to eliminate them. Adam will be stranded on Far Away if we don’t.”
“We don’t have time, Stig,” Olwen said. “We have to get after the Starflyer. We can’t put together a team to get rid of those Cruisers before the end of the cycle. We can’t even get to 3F by then.”
Stig checked his timer again: seven minutes. The entire operation was fucked; totally, thoroughly, fucked. They hadn’t stopped the Starflyer. They’d killed hundreds of innocent people and wrecked a good portion of Armstrong City. And now, they couldn’t even help their comrades through the wormhole. He couldn’t bear the idea of telling Harvey that the vital equipment to complete the planet’s revenge would never be coming, that Johansson was left high and dry on Half Way, and that he was responsible for it all. Facing the ambush Cruisers single-handed would be preferable.
He realized his clenched fists had risen up of their own accord, a response to the complete futility he felt. “I’ll stay,” he said, and consciously forced his hands down again. “This is my fault. I’ll put a team together and take out the Institute ambush before the wormhole opens again. Everyone else can resume their harassment duty down Highway One.”
“No you don’t,” Olwen said. “Listen to me, and listen hard, you’re not falling back into the self-pity routine. We can’t afford that luxury. Even if we do manage to knock out the ambush, the wormhole won’t open again for another fifteen hours. The Starflyer will have an unbeatable lead by then. We’ve lost the equipment Adam’s bringing. Forget about it, Stig. If it comes through in fifteen hours, it won’t make the slightest difference, it’ll be too late. We have to take off after the Starflyer with every weapon we’ve got and run that motherfucker into the ground. We have to do that now. And you know it.”
“Yeah,” he said brokenly. “I know.”
A hundred meters from the rock shoreline, the Carbon Goose extended its undercarriage. Wilson throttled back the turbines and let the giant plane slide forward sedately through the water until its nose wheels touched the gently sloping granite shelf. They rose up out of the icy sea with that slow undulation unique to taxiing planes the galaxy over.
Flames were flickering among the debris that used to be Port Evergreen. Wilson had to steer sharply to starboard to avoid the shattered remnants of another Carbon Goose. He could see some of the armor suits moving about across the land, still checking to see if any of the Starflyer’s agents were operational. The wormhole generator building looked intact, which he took as a good sign. Adam and Paula had been working something out in the main deck. They’d sounded confident when he spoke to them just before touchdown. It wasn’t a combination he would normally put a lot of faith in, but right now he was willing to accept help from any direction.
He and Anna began powering down the flight systems, then went down to join everyone in the main deck. Morton and Alic had come back in, their suits bristling with frost. Even Tiger Pansy had come up from the main cargo deck to witness the conference. Wilson wondered just how much of their worry and nerves she was soaking up for Qatux. It wouldn’t be a difficult task; the upper deck was thick with them.
Johansson himself poured some coffee for Alic and Morton. They couldn’t sit down: the seats were too small to take their armor.
“We can go through when we want,” Adam said. “We pick our moment and ram through with the armored cars. They probably won’t even have their weapons switched on right now. The element of surprise is completely on our side.”
Morton flashed him a very skeptical look. “Go on.”
“The stormrider flies a twenty-hour ellipse through and around the Lagrange point. It spends five hours powering the wormhole while the plasma current pushes it in toward the neutron star, then fifteen hours gliding back into that original position. Right now it’s starting its return flight. All we have to do is take control of its guidance system and thrusters, and shove it back into the thick of the plasma current. It can generate enough power for us to open the wormhole.”
“But it probably won’t be able to fly back to the Lagrange point again,” Bradley said. “This will be a one-time attempt. We’ll be closing the door on Far Away until a replacement power source can be built here.”
“Given what’s happened on Boongate I hardly think that’s a consideration for us,” Adam said. “We must focus on our one opportunity to get to Far Away. This is it.”
“Good idea,” Wilson said. “Let’s do it.”
“Wait one,” Morton said. “Even if you can hack the guidance system, we still have to face the weapons on the other side. I don’t buy this bullshit about switching them off until the start of the next cycle. For a start, if they’ve got one eye open they’ll see the wormhole open up again. They’re going to know we’ll be busting our balls to find a way to open it. All they have to do is link the guns to a simple sensor. Anybody sticks their head out through the pressure curtain and zap. My suit array identified what those trucks were loaded with, you know: neutron-injected atom laser. Are you sure your armored cars can take that kind of punishment? From one shot, maybe, maybe two, I’ll even believe you if you say five. But we don’t know what the fuck else is waiting for us on the other side. They can hit us with twenty-five atom lasers simultaneously. They can even nuke us; if we open the wormhole what’s to stop them flinging a fusion bomb through at us? Sentiment? Come on, get real here. It’s over.”
“If that’s what you believe, then you’re free to take the Carbon Goose back to Shackleton,” Bradley said. “You’ll be safe over the ocean when we open the wormhole no matter what happens. But I am going back through.”
“All the Guardians are,” Adam said.
“It’s suicide!”
“It might be suicide. And that gram of doubt is all the hope we need.”
“You have a beautiful desperation about you, Bradley Johansson,” Qatux said over the general band. “It can be as powerful as base emotions in someone as compelled as you. I did not realize this before.”
Wilson couldn’t help giving Tiger Pansy a disapproving look. Childish, he knew, none of this was down to her. The woman was chewing her gum, looking almost blithely unaware of what was being discussed around her. He wondered about that; just how naïve could a porn star be?
“That sums up most of the people in this passenger deck quite neatly,” Bradley said with a forced smile.
“May I inquire why you do not move the other end of the wormhole to a location on Far Away that does not have your enemies waiting outside?�
�
Tiger Pansy’s expression changed to one of mild surprise. She rose from her seat, looking as though she was being prodded along by someone unsavory.
Bradley gave her a discomforted stare as she came to stand in front of him, regarding his face with intense curiosity.
“The gateway,” Bradley said hesitantly. “Er, helps anchor the end of a wormhole. It’s very, uh, difficult to hold the end open and steady, especially given the distance involved here. The processing power to alter the wormhole coordinate is simply not available at Port Evergreen.”
Tiger Pansy’s heavily mascaraed eyes blinked uncertainly; she reached up and touched her fingertips to the side of Bradley’s face, as if she was consoling a lover. The sight of the action made Wilson feel queasy; there was something disturbingly parasitic about it. Bradley didn’t flinch.
“I can perform the computations for you,” Qatux said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mellanie wasn’t quite sure what she was expecting as the big screened car turned onto the Rue Jolei. A burst of nostalgia, maybe? The bustling metropolitan road certainly contained enough memories. It wasn’t long ago she would have said they were all good memories.
Today she hunched down in the car’s front seat next to Hoshe Finn, and looked up at the sixty-five-story skyscraper at the far end of the road. The golden rapier-blade shape was among the tallest of the skyscrapers that dominated the downtown cityscape of Salamanca. Mellanie remembered the view from the top of it only too well. Alessandra had liked her to be pressed up against the thick window wall of the penthouse as she serviced yet another politician’s aide or family friend. Those were the memories that lingered now. She kept reliving them, trying to work out the relevance of each piece of information to the Starflyer.
“Did you ever see her security system display?”
“Huh?” Mellanie pulled herself away from the bitter recollections. For some reason, now she didn’t have Dudley to manage, the things she’d done oh-so-willingly for Alessandra burned ever more shamefully in her mind. “Sorry, what?”
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