The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (261 page)

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.”

Adam did some quick mental arithmetic. “That is going to be tight.” He reckoned the Starflyer would reach the Institute sometime after midday.

“Very,” she said. “But that’s not the real problem.”

“What is?”

“Our observation team is badly behind schedule. As soon as we heard the Starflyer was through the gateway we tried to tell them to start. They were camped in the Nalosyle Vales, and there was a bad weather front around there. We didn’t get through until early this morning, bastard short wave is good for crap all. If they have nothing but good luck, it’ll take them three days to get up to Aphrodite’s Seat.”

“What does the observation team do?” Wilson asked.

“We have to know the topology of the weather patterns,” Samantha said. “We need to plot the morning stormfronts exactly as they come around Mount Herculaneum, then we need to see what effect our manipulators are having so we can direct the damn thing properly. It’s going to be tricky enough for the control group without working half blind.”

“Satellite imagery?” Anna said.

“No satellites here,” Wilson said. “I remember talking to the Institute director a while back. Got a personal update on infrastructure.” He grinned distantly.

Samantha gave him a very interested look. “Right. Which is why we need someone on Aphrodite’s Seat. From there you can see right to the eastern end of the Dessault range. It’s also a perfect com relay point; no more crapping short wave.”

“But they’re not going to get there in time,” Adam said. That arithmetic wasn’t difficult at all.

“Trust me, we’re kicking their asses as much as we can over the radio. Not that we can say much without drawing too much attention. If anyone can do it, they will.”

“Isn’t there any other way up there?” Wilson asked. “What about flying? There must be some aircraft on Far Away.”

“Aphrodite’s Seat is above the atmosphere. In any case, nobody goes flying planes around the Grand Triad, not with the winds that hit them from the ocean.”

“I thought tourists flew over it,” Oscar said.

“Sure do,” Samantha said. “Rich morons try and catch the winds so they can glide over it. The lucky ones make it to the far side. Not onto the peak.”

“The right parabola could get you there,” Wilson said thoughtfully.

“And you know how to do that?” Samantha asked scornfully.

Wilson leaned forward with a menacing smile that shut down her attitude. Adam could see what an unfair contest it was: a young Samantha who cheerfully bossed around a team of freedom fighters and the Admiral, an exfighter pilot who had captained the
Second Chance,
then went on to command the navy.

“I’m the only human being ever to have flown on Mars,” he told her equitably. “I aerobraked a spaceplane from a two-hundred-kilometer orbit and landed on a designated site the size of a tennis court. How about you?”

“Shit! You’re dicking with me, pal.”

“Wilson.” Oscar was tugging at his arm. “Come on, man, that was over three hundred years ago. And that plane had rocket engines to help you steer, these gliders don’t.”

“That kind of flying is not something you forget or erase,” Wilson said. “Besides, the tour companies here must have skill memory implants.”

“Well, yeah,” an astounded Samantha said. “But, come on! Landing on the summit of Mount Herculaneum? Are you serious?”

“Yes, are you?” Adam asked. As soon as Wilson suggested it, Adam had begun sketching out consequences and opportunities. Even if there was only the slightest chance of success they had to make the effort. It wasn’t going well on Highway One, and the superstorm wouldn’t happen unless the control group was fully functional. After everything they’d gone through, the sacrifices they’d endured to get the Martian data here, he couldn’t bear the idea of it not having its chance.