“What is?”
“I’ll call you later, promise.” Mellanie stepped into the taxi, which immediately pulled out into the traffic. “What’s happening to the Kingsley girl?” she asked the SI. “Do I have to bundle her into a car or something? I don’t think I’d be much good at that kind of thing.”
“We feel Jaycee would disagree, but no. A security professional has been contracted to perform the extraction operation.”
“You’re not going to hurt her, are you?”
“Absolutely not. She will be taken to a safe house, where she will be kept under confinement for the duration.”
“Okay. So what does this boy look like, then? I need to know that at least.” A file slid into her virtual vision. When she opened it she was looking at a teenage lad with wild ginger hair and a smile that was half snarl. “Well, don’t expect me to sleep with him,” she said hurriedly. “Does he even know how to use cutlery?”
“What’s wrong with him? Our female aspects concur that he is cute-looking.”
She reviewed the image again. “Maybe. I mean, physically. But you can just see the attitude problem there. He’s gotta be a behavioral nightmare.”
“Your area of excellence.”
“Ha fucking ha.”
“Mellanie, you may have to perform the contract’s primary requirement. We hope you understand.”
“I’ve done enough whoring, I think.”
“We are sure the moment of sexual consummation can be delayed long enough for you to assess the situation and try to contact Ozzie. The requirement we were actually referring to is the contract’s personality stipulation. It is a strong one. That is why Lady Georgina selected Kingsley.”
“What stipulation?”
“That the girl be sweet.”
“Hey! I can do sweet, all right? Don’t give me that crap.”
“Very well, Mellanie. If you say so.”
Once again, Wilson Kime waited to set foot on a new world. He stood in front of the gateway as dawn rose above Half Way, flooding the barren rock island with red light and intense blue-white flashes. In the generator building behind the gateway, power was starting to feed in from the stormrider.
He tried not to feel too smug about it, but with his knowledge of astroengineering and orbital mechanics, the technical types in Adam’s team had automatically deferred to him. It had taken him twenty minutes at the console in the generator building, mapping out the stormrider’s primary systems and guidance programs, before he sent up the first batch of instructions. His virtual vision produced a basic flight profile display, with a long curving white line designating the stormrider’s course as it flew around its perpetual loop. Within ten minutes of his instructions being accepted by the onboard array a new purple line appeared, short and blunt, showing the diversion he’d charted back into the plasma current. The massive machine had crept along it for nearly an hour as the plasma concentration increased around it.
Forty million kilometers above his head, the gigantic blades were spinning again as the stormrider slid back into the gale of charged particles. Wilson’s virtual vision display showed him the vast yet surprisingly fragile machine’s velocity increase as it was blown irretrievably in toward the neutron star. “It’s falling like Icarus now,” he said as Oscar walked over to stand beside him. “Wings spread wide, and way too close to the sun.”
“You’re taking a few liberties there,” Oscar said. “But I do like the imagery.”
“How’s Qatux coming on? Is he going to manage the wormhole?” Wilson checked the stormrider’s status in his virtual vision; so far everything was holding steady as its power output built rapidly.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I worked in the exploration division, remember? That makes me very familiar with the kind of large arrays you need to manipulate exotic matter. There’s a limit to what flesh and blood can achieve, even very smart alien flesh and blood. Our Raiel might just be claiming this to influence our emotional state.”
“MorningLightMountain controls all its wormholes by direct neural routines.”
“And that’s another thing: did anyone back at your supersecret revolutionary council actually verify this Bose motile creature was the genuine article?”
“Stop being such a paranoid grump.”
“First rule of being a lawyer, don’t ask the witness a question when you know you don’t like the answer.”
“Well, here comes the answer. Qatux has finished the power-up sequence.”
Ayub had parked the Volvo containing the Raiel close to the generator building’s door. The big alien had then been linked to the generator’s controlling array via thick bundles of fiber-optic cable that it had attached to the heavy tips of the flaccid flesh stems behind its tentacles. It was an arrangement that reminded Wilson of hot-wiring a car.
He started his level breathing exercise as his heart rate sped up, glad that Tiger Pansy wasn’t around to sense his anxiety. The wormhole opened as smoothly as an iris exposed to the night.
“It’s through to somewhere,” Adam declared.
“Matthew, send a sneekbot through,” Alic said.
One of the little bots scampered through the pressure curtain. Wilson hooked himself onto its feed, and saw a darkened landscape unfold. There was damp ground below the artificial rodent’s feet, ragged blades of grass snagging at its sleek body, arching fronds of tall plants waved in the distance, darker patches of trees. It hurried ten meters away from the wormhole, then raised itself up on its hind legs and scanned around. There were no heat sources within range, no electromagnetic emission points, no visible spectrum light; the only detectable motion was a persistent wind that was heavy with moisture, the tail end of rain.
“It certainly hasn’t come out in the city,” Adam said.
“Could be a city park,” Rosamund said.
“Doubtful, there’s no node carrier signal registering,” Johansson said. “Even dear old Armstrong City has a complete net coverage.”
“All right, we’re going through,” Adam said.
Wilson heard Jamas revving the armored car’s engine, and hurriedly stepped to one side. The low curving vehicle lumbered forward and slipped through the pressure curtain.
“Still intact,” Adam said. “Definitely countryside, no city visible. No wait, I can see something on the horizon. Orange light haze. There’s some kind of settlement over there. Quite a big one, I guess.”
“It should be Armstrong City,” Qatux said. “I believe the wormhole to have emerged twenty kilometers to the southwest of its southern boundary. That was my intention.”
“That should put us in Schweickart Park,” Jamas said. “I recognize the constellations. Dreaming heavens, it’s definitely Far Away. I’m home!”
“Running active sensor scan,” Adam said. “It looks clear to me. Bradley, if there’s anything out here bigger than a rabbit, it’s stealthed perfectly.”
“Thank you, Adam,” Bradley said. “Let’s go through, people, quickly please.”
The remaining armored cars and Volvo trucks started their engines.
“Come on,” Wilson said. He moved forward, feeling the pressure curtain brush against his armor suit like a gentle breeze as the red light faded out around him. And for the second time in his life, Wilson Kime arrived on an alien planet with a single giant step. Gravity fell away sharply. He wasn’t used to that, not on the CST train network; most H-congruous planets were close to Earth-standard gravity and you never really noticed the transition.
One of the Volvos hooted its horn loudly behind him, and he hopped aside. The movement sent him a good half meter into the air. He laughed as he sank down onto the ground again. His virtual hand keyed the suit unlock, and the helmet visor swung up. He sucked down native air, strong with the scent of recent rain and a hint of pine. “They could have done it,” he said wonderingly. “They really could.”
“Who?” Anna said. She dropped down off the back of a Volvo, gingerly holding her arms out for balance.<
br />
“The Aries Underground; they wanted to terraform Mars. It would have developed into something like this if they’d ever had their chance.”
“Do you ever stop thinking about Mars?” she asked.
“Not enough atmosphere on Mars to make it H-congruous,” Oscar said. He didn’t sound impressed.
“They had schemes to compensate for that. Hauling in ice from the cometary belt; genemodified bacteria liberating oxygen from the soil, orbital mirrors, transmantle boreholes.”
“Sounds expensive.”
“Planets were in those days,” Wilson told him sagely.
The Volvo carrying Qatux drove slowly through the wormhole, tailing its thick bundle of fiber-optic cable behind. Two people in armor suits emerged from the wormhole behind the truck, making sure the cable didn’t get snagged.
“Everyone through, sir,” Kieran reported.
“Thank you,” Bradley said. “Qatux, we don’t need the wormhole anymore.”
Wilson just had time for one final review of the stormrider before the wormhole closed. Like Icarus, its fate was now sealed; the thick current of plasma had pushed it a long way past the Lagrange point, its depleted thrusters no longer had the delta-V reserve to fly it back around. All that remained was the long, leisurely fall to oblivion in the neutron star’s awesome gravity.
The wormhole shrank away to nothing, its final closure sheering off the fiber-optic bundle, which fell back to the ground like a mortally wounded snake. The act of severance reinforced Wilson’s feeling of remoteness; they were truly on their own now. Judging by the silence he wasn’t alone with that thought.
“I don’t have much to say to you,” Bradley announced. “Which is just as well, for we are desperately short of time now. But I’d like to thank our non-Guardian friends for coming with us, and believing in us at the end. For those of you whose ancestors have been with me since the beginning, I would express my gratitude to them for their terrible and frequent sacrifices; it is their blood which has delivered us to this place at this time. As a consequence, the Guardians of Selfhood will be thanked by the rest of humanity for all we have endured so that our species can be free at last.”
Wilson glanced around, seeing all the Guardians who had come with them lowering their heads in respect. He joined in, more troubled than he liked to acknowledge by Bradley’s words. History would show the Guardians in a very different light from now on.
“As this is our time, let’s not waste any more of it,” Bradley said. “Ayub, would you try and contact the clans, please, quick as you can.”
“Stig!” Keely yelled. “Stig, I’m picking up something on the short wave! It’s our frequency.”
Stig leaned forward, frowning. It was dark in the back of the Mazda Volta four-by-four, a refuge where he could brood unseen. The little convoy of Guardian vehicles, five cars and seven of the lightly armored Voltas, had taken almost an hour to drive through the damaged city. All the while he’d been picking up reports from the Guardians covering the Starflyer’s exit route. Their various attempts to strike the big MANN truck had come to nothing. The Starflyer’s vehicles had good armor, and even better force fields. They also responded to any attack with extreme force. Over a dozen buildings harboring Guardian snipers had been reduced to smoldering rubble.
It had taken the Starflyer’s convoy less than thirty minutes to travel from 3F Plaza to the start of Highway One. Over two dozen additional Range Rover Cruisers had joined it, speeding out of side streets to join the convoy. With that much firepower available to the Starflyer, Stig had no choice but to order the rest of the snipers to stand down. They would have been slaughtered if they’d tried anything.
Stig’s own pursuit had been frustratingly slow, as they waited for other Guardian teams to join with them, on a route parallel to the Starflyer’s. Of course, the civic emergency services were starting to respond to the disaster as best they could by then, which pushed more people and vehicles out onto the roads Stig wanted to use. They’d eventually reached Highway One an hour later only to find the Starflyer convoy had scattered sophisticated mines behind them. The first one had taken out a Ford Shanghi, killing the five Guardians inside. After that, Stig had to order them to drive along the side of the road, avoiding the broad strip of enzyme-bonded concrete, which cut their speed still further.
“Who’s calling us?” Stig asked. He couldn’t think of any other Guardian groups operating around Armstrong City.
Keely’s smile was incredulous. “Bradley Johansson.”
“Not possible,” Stig said curtly, even as his virtual hands snatched the signal out of Keely’s specialist radio array.
“… rendezvous point four,” Bradley’s familiar voice was saying. “We should be there in twenty minutes.”
“Who is this?” Stig demanded.
“Ah, that sounds like you, Stig.”
“Sir?”
“Hey, Stig,” Adam said. “Good to hear from you, lad.”
“Dreaming heavens, you can’t be here.”
“I understand. After you were blown at LA Galactic, you finished up at our Venice safe house. Kazimir was assigned to bring you in.”
“Adam?”
“In the flesh, thankfully. We had a little trouble getting here, I don’t mind saying.”
“How? How can you be here?”
“This isn’t a secure call, Stig, I’ll tell you in a little while at rendezvous point four. Bradley tells me you ought to know where that is.”
“Yes, of course.”
“So if we’re the real deal, we’ll see you there.”
Rendezvous point four was a drainage pumping station a kilometer off the side of Highway One, sixty kilometers outside Armstrong City. There was a service track leading to it, which was unsigned. The station itself was around the back of a small hill, completely out of sight from Highway One.
Stig drove the Mazda Volta himself, ordering everyone else to wait back at the turnoff. As soon as he rounded the bend, he saw the big vehicles parked there, their headlights cutting bright beams through the night. Familiar figures were walking toward him as he parked, smiling broadly. He stumbled out, still not quite believing. Adam caught him in a bear hug.
“Good to see you, lad,” Adam said gruffly.
“Dreaming heavens, we thought you were stuck back there.”
“Hey! You should know, it’s not that easy to keep me penned up.”
“Yeah, but …” Stig broke off as Bradley appeared. “Sir!”
“Good to see you, Stig.”
Stig put his hand out in welcome. Then everything went wrong. Moving between the bright beams of light was a woman in a simple fleece and pants. She had her shoulders hunched, shivering as if she’d got a cold. Then she sneezed, and her dark hair swirled fluidly in Far Away’s gravity. Stig would never forget that elegant, deadly face, not even in the peace of the dreaming heavens. “Look out!” he yelled. His hand went for his holster. He managed to get a machine pistol out, and swung it around.
Adam stood in front of him, an arm chopping around to push Stig’s weapon away. “Stop!”
Stig stumbled back a pace. Both Bradley and Adam were holding their hands up in admonishment. Several of the other people standing outside the vehicles, whom Stig didn’t know, were tensed up.
“That’s Paula Myo,” he yelled.
“Good evening,” she said calmly, then shivered again, and pulled her fleece tighter, arms crossed in front of her chest.
“But—”
“We have allies now,” Bradley said. There was no trace of mockery in his voice.
“Paula Myo?”
“Among others, such as Nigel Sheldon, oh, and I’m sure you remember Admiral Kime.”
Wilson stepped forward. “That’s actually ex-Admiral now. Pleased to meet you, Stig.”
“Uh.” Stig’s pistol hung limply at his side.
“Oh, yes,” Adam said, and the shadows made it difficult to see if that was a smirk on his face. “I almost forgot: Mella
nie says to say hello.”
Stig couldn’t help it. He leaned a little closer, just to be sure. “Paula Myo?”
“The very same,” Bradley said. “Come now, Stig, tell me what the situation is.”
Stig allowed himself to be led over to the cluster of vehicles. Just as he started to tell Bradley about using a fuel air bomb he looked over his shoulder to check again. Paula Myo was hugging her chest quite tightly, as if she was in pain; a concerned-looking Wilson Kime was asking if she was all right. Somehow, seeing her on Far Away was more extraordinary than his blurred glimpse of the Starflyer itself.
Adam and Bradley made their plans quickly as Stig explained what had happened at First Foot Fall Plaza. The three Volvo trucks with their precious cargo for the planet’s revenge project would immediately head due south for the Dessault Mountains to rendezvous with the technical teams assembling the wind stations. Adam would head the group, taking Kieran, Rosamund, and Jamas with him to drive, despite their eagerness to join the fray pursuing the Starflyer. Paula announced she would accompany Adam, which he greeted without comment. Wilson, Anna, and Oscar agreed to stay with Paula, and see if they could help with the technical aspects of the planet’s revenge. Privately, Wilson was growing concerned about how unwell the Investigator appeared.
Bradley was going to lead the rest in pursuit of the Starflyer, spearheading it with all three armored cars. Cat’s Claws and the Paris team signed up to go with him. Both he and Stig thought their combat experience and weaponry would give the Guardians a significant advantage over the more lightly armored Institute troops.
That just left them with Qatux. Tiger Pansy had listened and watched without comment as the two teams were sorted out. Now she said, “We should go with Bradley.”
“If you wish,” Bradley said.
“Sure do,” Tiger Pansy agreed enthusiastically. “Starflyer’s pulling ahead of you. That makes for a tough chase, and when you do catch up, there’s going to be a big fight. You Guardian guys, you’re gonna go berserk, you’re all so committed and inspired; it’s like a religion. Qatux really digs that. This is where the human heat is at, so we stick with it.” She glanced over at Adam. “No offense.”
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