Judas Unchained cs-2

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Bring the joystick back carefully, allow the wings time to respond as you plummet down helplessly in a microburst. Airflow around the fuselage changes as the plyplastic adjusts in long twists. “Where is he?” Oscar demanded hoarsely.

  Jamas jerked his head toward the door into the hangar office. “You saying you didn’t hear it?”

  “It was a knife,” Wilson said in undisguised contempt. “There was nothing to hear.”

  “I couldn’t hear a thing,” Oscar said. “I was having the memory implant.”

  “Yeah, right,” Kieran sneered.

  Oscar ignored him and swung his legs around off the couch. He was unsteady on his feet.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Jamas asked.

  “To see him.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Oscar straightened, one hand holding the side of the couch. Lights throbbed in time with his headache.

  “Careful,” Anna said. “Memory implants affect neuron function for several minutes afterward.”

  “I have to see him.” Because I don’t believe you. Not Adam. It can’t be.

  Jamas and Kieran exchanged a glance, then Kieran nodded. “Okay, Rosamund will be here in a minute.”

  With the others following, Oscar walked through into the office, then out into the hangar. It wasn’t just the effects of the implant that made his movements unsteady. He could see a pair of legs sticking out from behind one of the gliders, and slowed, not wanting to see.

  Adam lay on the dark composite floor, legs and arms akimbo, the handle of a harmonic blade sticking out from the nape of his neck. A small puddle of blood had pooled around his head.

  Oscar’s legs very nearly gave way. He clung to the fuselage to support himself. All he could think of was the look on Adam’s face when they saw the Abadan crash. The ghosts will be happy tonight.

  “You okay?” Anna asked. She’d come up beside him.

  “This can’t be right,” he said in a hushed croak. “Not here. Not like that. It’s not right. It can’t happen like this.”

  “Well, it did fucking happen,” Jamas spat. “And one of you traitors did it.”

  “Just kill them all,” Kieran said. He moved back from Anna to stand beside Jamas, his carbine covering Oscar and Anna. “That way we’ll be sure we got the bastard.”

  “Where were you when it happened?” Anna asked.

  “Shut the fuck up, bitch.”

  “I mean it,” she said, her eyes alight with cold wrath. Her gaze flicked over to Jamas. “Was he with you?”

  Jamas shifted uncomfortably. “No.”

  “Jamas!” Kieran protested.

  “That means neither of you can vouch for the other,” Wilson said. He walked over to stand with Anna and Oscar.

  “We were only apart for a couple of minutes, that’s all,” Jamas said.

  Wilson gazed down at Adam’s corpse. “And how long did that take?”

  “Are you saying we did it?” Kieran asked.

  “Can you prove you didn’t?”

  Kieran snarled at him, shifting the muzzle of his ion carbine around. Jamas’s hand slowly pushed the weapon down. “He’s right.”

  “What? You can’t be serious!”

  Jamas looked even more unhappy.

  Rosamund barged in through the hangar door, dragging Paula Myo along. The Investigator was still wearing Adam’s cherry-red woolen sweater, her face was beaded with perspiration, while her lips had turned almost black. Oscar and Wilson automatically went to help carry her. Paula groaned as they took her weight; she was barely conscious. They lowered her to the floor with her back resting against the hyperglider’s cradle. She shuddered violently, her head lolling about. Then she saw Adam’s body and gasped. Her hands came up to rub at her eyes; she was blinking almost continuously. “Is he dead?” she asked.

  “It pretty much fucking looks like it to me,” Kieran shouted.

  “Shut up,” Wilson snapped. He was kneeling beside Paula, hand feeling her forehead. “Paula, can you understand me? Do you know where we are?”

  Her eyes closed for a long blink as she switched her attention from Adam to Wilson. “Far Away, we’re on Far Away.”

  “Do you remember the sabotaged crates?”

  “Yes.”

  “We need your help. Whoever did that has now killed Adam.”

  “What if it’s her?” Kieran asked.

  “Well?” Wilson asked Rosamund, who was staring down at Adam’s corpse.

  The Guardian woman stirred herself. “We were in the Volvo the whole time.”

  “So you say,” Oscar barked. He knew he shouldn’t have said it, they were already drowning in hostility, but he still couldn’t believe it was either Wilson or Anna, and that sounded way too much like a convenient alibi for comfort.

  Rosamund’s hand went straight to her holster. She was glaring at Oscar.

  Paula coughed feebly, and brought her hand up to her throat. “I can’t confirm Rosamund was there with me.”

  “You bitch.”

  Paula waved her silent. “But she can for me.”

  Rosamund gave the Investigator a suspicious glare. “What do you mean?”

  “There is only one door to the Volvo rest cabin. If I was the Starflyer agent, I couldn’t have got out to do this without Rosamund knowing. She says I didn’t. It wasn’t me. It also makes it unlikely that it was her, but not impossible.”

  “Okay,” Jamas said. “So who did murder him?”

  “I don’t know. Yet.” Paula tipped her head back. “Wilson, where were you?”

  “I went over to the generator building. I managed to start it up, as you can see. The town has power, the hypergliders are charging up.”

  “It is not far to any building. Is the generator difficult to start?”

  “No, it isn’t. It was primed ready. I had to physically press three buttons. It started straightaway.”

  “Did anyone go with you?”

  “No.”

  “We left the hangar together,” Anna said. “I went to find the tether cables for the hypergliders.”

  “Did you find them?”

  “Yes. There’s a stores building at the end of the hangars. They’re kept in there.”

  “Oscar?”

  “Memory implant. The induction systems are at the back of this hangar. I didn’t know anything going on outside. In fact, the killer could have been in there with me, I wouldn’t have known.” The thought made him clammy with nerves.

  “I see. Jamas?”

  “Kieran and I went to find the jeeps to tow the hypergliders.”

  “I called Adam and told him we found them,” Kieran said. “Their tanks were just about empty, so Jamas went and found the main tank. I stayed with the jeeps to take a look at their radio modules. We need them for the observation. I was going to look for the tether anchor drill, but I hadn’t heard from Adam for a while. Jamas came back, we headed right over here and found him.”

  “And then the others arrived,” Paula said.

  “Yeah, these two came in together.” His carbine pointed out Wilson and Anna.

  “Is there any sign of anyone else here?” Paula asked.

  “No,” Kieran said. “I’ve not seen anyone.”

  “Me neither,” Wilson said.

  “You and Adam were talking together in the Volvo after we found the sabotage,” Rosamund said to Paula. “Did you have any idea who the traitor was?”

  “No.” The Investigator seemed to be losing interest.

  “Adam was only going to take two gliders,” Kieran said; he gave Oscar a strange look. “That’s what he told me.”

  “When?” Paula asked.

  “It was just about the last thing he said. I’d told him we’d found the jeeps, and he said we only needed two.”

  Jamas smiled brutally. “He knew it was one of you.”

  Oscar held back from saying anything. The Guardian trio were so hyped up and trigger-happy they probably would shoot someone if they had h
alf an excuse.

  “He didn’t say that to me,” Paula said. “We were still trying to work it out.”

  “Then there’s nothing else we can do right now,” Wilson said. “We need to get the hypergliders over to Stakeout Canyon. There’s not much time left.”

  “Are you fucking insane?” Jamas cried. His carbine swung around to point at Wilson, finger tight on the trigger.

  “This changes nothing,” Wilson retorted. “We kept going after the crates were sabotaged, we keep going now. Only this time we do not split up again. From now on we do everything in groups of at least three. Everything.”

  “You’re not flying up that mountain,” Kieran snarled. “You’ll wreck the planet’s revenge.”

  “There won’t be any planet’s revenge without the observation from Aphrodite’s Seat. All three of us will fly. That way the odds protect us.”

  “Dreaming heavens!” Kieran appealed desperately to Jamas and Rosamund. “What do we do?”

  “He’s right,” Rosamund said bitterly. “They have to fly.”

  ***

  The control center for the planet’s revenge was huddled at the back of a cave in Mount Idle, named so because it was a lot smaller than the surrounding peaks. It had slumped over the millennia since the Dessault range had been formed, its rocky pinnacle crumbling away into a lackluster mound, while its sides were liberally smeared with long swathes of loose scree. Even the cave wasn’t worth the Guardians using as one of their forts: too small, too visible with its yawning mouth.

  Samantha’s Vauxhall jeep reached the entrance long after dark, its headlights revealing a slight shimmer in the air caused by the force field the Guardians had established a couple of meters inside. Three sentries greeted her, and the force field reduced to allow her to drive right in.

  There were a number of Charlemagnes stabled inside, along with a variety of battered four-by-four vehicles she knew only too well. Two huge dapple gray horses were also standing next to the Charlemagnes; the saddles on the posts beside them were beautifully sculpted black leather with embossed gold patterns of DNA.

  “Barsoomians,” Valentine said in a respectful tone.

  The control center itself was right at the back of the cave, which was illuminated in a soft green light. Ten wooden tables were arranged in a circle around the large array, covered in consoles, screens, and supplementary electronic modules. Three or four Guardians were sitting at each one, engrossed with the schematics and data flowing across the screens. The array itself was a black cylinder two meters high with a couple of small red LEDs glowing on the top. Samantha gave it a solicitous glance; she’d been part of the assembly team, which made it her baby. And a troublesome one it had been. It had taken them over a year to integrate the bioprocessors and get the software running smoothly as they ran innumerable simulations.

  She went over to Andria McNowak, who was in charge of the control center. Heavily pregnant, she sat at the head table directing all the other operators as they gradually brought the network of manipulator stations up to their pre-storm readiness status. There was a constant background mutter as they talked to the array. Not for the first time, Samantha wished OCtattoos and inserts were as common here as they were in the Commonwealth.

  The Barsoomians were standing behind them, monitoring the performance of the large array’s bioprocessors. In the gloomy light of the cave their gray robes of semiorganic fabric gave them a spectral presence, enhanced by the impenetrable shadows that filled their hoods.

  Samantha gave them a slight bow.

  “Greetings to you, Samantha McFoster,” one said.

  She recognized the deep whispering voice from the faint reverberation it always carried. “Dr. Friland, thank you for coming.”

  “These are fascinating times. We are pleased to help remove this blight from our planet.”

  “There is a rumor your people will help Bradley Johansson on Highway One. Is that true?”

  For a moment Samantha wondered if she’d been too abrupt. People always skated around issues with Barsoomians, fearful to give offense; but today was too important for that kind of political nicety crap. She was aware of Valentine holding his breath beside her.

  “We are watching events along Highway One,” Dr. Friland said. “We will offer assistance where practical.”

  “I’m sure Johansson will be grateful for any support.” She smiled awkwardly at the fluid shadows inside his hood, and turned to Andria, who was giving her a reproachful look. “Have you loaded in the Martian data?”

  “Yeah,” Andria said. She faced the front again, and gestured at the portal that was projecting a topographic map of the Dessault range from the Grand Triad in the west across to the Institute valley in the east. It looked like the cloudscape of some gas giant, with the tips of the mountains poking through as various fast-moving stormbands streamed past them. “We’re running the fifth simulation now. The genuine meteorological patterns allowed us to refine the behavioral algorithms. I don’t think the old software would have coped with the real thing. Even now, I’ve still got doubts. This is a lot more complex than we ever thought.”

  “All we can do is give it our best shot. Have you got all the manipulator stations on-line?”

  “Yeah.” Andria’s hand tapped at one of the screens on her table. It showed the stations scattered across the Dessault range linked together by thin red lines. The main communications relays were handled by masers, set up at high altitude on remote pinnacles, and protected by force fields. Samantha had always been skeptical about how they would hold together in the midst of the superstorm, but short of laying armored cables right across the range they had no choice. It was one of the reasons they’d established the control center on Mount Idle, where they had direct line of sight with Mount Herculaneum. They were also far enough south to escape the direct blast of the storm when it came.

  “How’s Zuggenhim Ridge?” Samantha asked.

  Andria grinned knowingly, and pulled up the telemetry. “Sweet. You did a good job.”

  “Thanks. And the observation team?”

  “Ours? They’re not going to make it; they’re still a couple of hours from the glacier ring. It’s down to the navy people now. Do you think they can land up there?”

  “I don’t know. They think they can. We just have to wait and see.”

  “There’s no way we can do this blind.”

  “You’re going to have to draw up a contingency for that just the same.”

  “Yeah right,” Andria declared sarcastically.

  “Shame Qatux stayed with Bradley. We could do with that kind of brain-power to help us out right now.”

  “I don’t think even a Raiel would be any use to us now,” Andria said.

  Both the Barsoomians turned to face them. The shadows thinned out inside Dr. Friland’s hood, allowing green eyes to gaze down on Samantha. “Did you say a Raiel is on Far Away?”

  Samantha looked up to the tall Barsoomian; for some inexplicable reason she felt guilty, as if she’d been concealing the fact from them. “Yes. It’s traveling with Bradley Johansson. I don’t know much about it; this is all secondhand gossip from Adam’s team.”

  “It must not come to harm.”

  Samantha took in the control center with an impatient gesture. “We’re doing our best.”

  “Short-wave signal,” Andria announced. “Strong one. Coming from the west.”

  “Adam’s team,” Samantha said. “Is it for us?”

  “Hang on.” Andria touched several icons on her screen.

  ***

  They turned into Stakeout Canyon just after midnight. It had been a long smooth run from Stonewave, directly south across the wet desert, then around the western flank of Mount Zeus. The massive volcano had become visible in the late afternoon as the layer of fog finally began to dissipate. Bright sunlight shining in level from the horizon had illuminated the vast naked lava fields as they rose out of the flat glistening landscape. They were too close to catch a glimpse of th
e summit seventeen kilometers above, although they did catch the occasional sparkle along the crest as its fractured ice band reflected the dying sun. The flashes faded away soon enough as the sapphire sky bled down to violet before quickly turning black.

  Rosamund turned on the jeep’s headlights, creating long shimmering strips of light across the bare rock. The vehicle had been custom made in Armstrong City, fitting a smooth composite ellipse over a standard Toyota four-by-four pickup chassis. Air flowed unbroken over its low-friction paintwork, making it virtually imperious to the winds. It was designed to anchor itself to the ground if it was caught in the open when the morning storm arrived, with four big screws underneath that could wind themselves deep into the hard sands of the wet desert.

  Paula sat on the bench seat in the back. If she hunched right down she could see between Rosamund and Oscar and out through the narrow band of windshield. She’d slept away most of the journey through the afternoon, coming awake in sudden bursts to witness a near identical landscape each time. As they progressed, the slope of Mount Zeus had grown larger along the horizon until it became a barrier across the world. Now in the dark it was completely invisible while the stars twinkled directly overhead. The drone of the diesel engine filled the interior along with the metallic clanking of the hyperglider trailer they were hauling along, making conversation difficult. Not, she imagined, that Oscar and Rosamund had been trying to say much to each other. The two other jeeps were following them across the wet desert; Wilson and Jamas in one, while Anna and Kieran brought up the rear.

  She fumbled around on the cushioning to find the bottle, and sipped at the mineral water. For once it didn’t make her want to gag. In fact, she realized just how thirsty she was. She finished the bottle and sat up a little straighter. Just about every muscle in her body was aching and debilitated; it was all she could do to hold herself upright. Her headache translated every slight jolt into a flash of burning light somewhere behind her eyes. She shivered, though she didn’t feel quite as cold as before.

  “Where are we?” she asked. The weak croak of her own voice surprised her.

  “Hey!” Oscar turned around, a big smile on his face. “How are you feeling?”