The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (260 page)

“You can’t be serious.”

“No, I’m not.” But he didn’t like the fact that he’d actually thought of it.
True desperation.

“Good! We’ll work it out; you and me, the old team. Damnit, there’s only three possibles. How difficult can it be?”

Adam gave that a lot of thought as the interminable afternoon rolled ever onward. They’d left the sparse road behind at Wolfstail, heading directly south from the town’s T-junction along a stony farm track that vanished a couple of kilometers later beneath the advancing Anguilla grass. Once they reached its outlying fringes, it quickly grew taller and thicker, reinforcing Adam’s earlier comparison to a sea. A heavily modified variety of terrestrial Bermuda grass, the Anguilla’s individual stalks were as thick as wheat; they clustered so densely the entire mass supported itself, swaying in giant slow waves as the winds gusted over the surface. No other plant could gain any kind of niche amid its indomitable all-pervasive root mat. It had been tailored by the revitalization project office to thrive on the area’s prevalent heat and moisture, and succeeded to a degree its creators never expected.

Feathery tips reached up to the Volvo’s windows. Kieran, who was driving again, had to use the truck’s radar to see the shape of the land below the tide of grass. There had been a road here, decades ago, back when Wolfstail had been built around a crossroads, linking the Dessault Mountains to the inhabited northern lands. It was completely smothered under the Anguilla grass now, its disintegrating surface long since sealed over by the root mat. The Guardians still used the route. McMixons and McKratzes mostly; riding or driving down out of the mountains to trade with Far Away’s normal population, and transporting back the illicit weapons technology Adam and his predecessors had smuggled through the gateway in First Foot Fall Plaza. They’d placed tuned trisilicon markers along the hidden road, stiff meter-high poles invisible within the grass but shining like beacons if they were illuminated by the correctly coded radar pulse. Their unmistakable gleaming points marching across the display screen, and an accurate inertial navigation system allowed the Volvos to race on at close to a hundred kilometers an hour, a speed impossible through the grasslands without the certainty of a solid surface beneath the root map. Adam likened it to running along a precipice. God help them if they wavered from the exact line laid out by the inertial guidance. He would have been happier if control of the trucks had been switched over to the drive arrays, but their programs would have taken into account the dreadful local conditions, and crawled their way forward. Besides, the Guardians took a perverse delight in showing how ballsy they were; each of them claiming to have driven the route many times previously. Adam didn’t believe a word of it.

He tended to Paula as they plowed onward through the grass. She was in a dreadful state, her clothes and blankets damp from a fever sweat, drifting in and out of consciousness. When she was alert she was in a lot of pain. The sedatives and biogenics he’d administered did seem to have improved her blood pressure, and her heart rate had dropped a little, though it still remained too high for comfort.

“No way can this be fake,” Adam muttered as he put the diagnostic array back in its bag. Paula shivered under her blanket; her breathing was shallow, and she frowned in REM sleep, whimpering as if something horrible was closing in on her. That it must be him she was dreaming of didn’t exactly help ease his anxiety.
Not guilt though, this is not my fault.

In the pleasant climate of the cab, all everyone did was follow the chase down Highway One. They’d drifted out of range from the small road net within a quarter of an hour of leaving Highway One the previous night. As Far Away had no satellites, all that kept the countryside communities connected was radio, and its range was limited. The old-fashioned analogue short-wave units they carried could broadcast far enough to reach Johansson, but as he’d discovered last night they were erratic at best. He didn’t ask for an update directly; his own transmission would pinpoint him for the Starflyer. Last night’s request for any information on a possible traitor had been a calculated risk. Instead of a direct connection they followed the news as relayed from household to household, trying to decide what was exaggerated and what was plain fiction.

The chase had become a spectator sport, with people lining Highway One to watch the two convoys race past. At first there had been some spontaneous attempts to interrupt the Starflyer’s vehicles. Youths threw Molotovs. Hunting rifles were fired at the Cruisers. All of it completely ineffective. The Institute troops responded with overwhelming firepower, flattening entire swathes of buildings as they flashed past. After the first few times, news of the retaliation spread down Highway One and nobody attempted to interfere again. The Starflyer’s MANN truck was watched from darkened windows, or behind walls a safe distance away from the road.

Bradley Johansson’s pursuit was cheered on by a few hardy souls who ventured out to look at the man who throughout their lives had been more myth than real person.

The airways gossip allowed everyone in the Volvo to keep track of events. To start with, the distance between Bradley and the Starflyer was holding steady at just over five hundred sixty kilometers. Both were traveling about as fast as Highway One would permit, with the smaller vehicles of the Guardians having a slight edge, and closing by nearly sixteen kilometers each hour. It was the bridges that would make the difference. There were cheers in the cab each time excited shouts burst out over the radio proclaiming another bridge had been brought down.

By dawn it was confirmed: the Guardians had blown up all five major river crossings along Highway One. Adam wasn’t entirely surprised when people who’d gathered around the rubble of the Taran bridge, the most northerly crossing, started reporting that the Starflyer convoy had some kind of amphibious capability. The MANN truck and its escort of Cruisers turned off Highway One and made their way down to the river, crossing it directly. It hadn’t been easy; they had to travel for several kilometers along rough tracks before there was a place to get down to the water. When they did, that was where the Guardian ambush team struck. According to the breathless descriptions that filtered back across the Aldrin Plains, the firefight was ferocious. It was a story repeated at each broken bridge. The Guardians never managed to destroy the MANN truck, but the Cruisers took heavy casualties each time.

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.