Judas Unchained

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Did you have to?”

“All right,” she admitted. “I wanted to be on the team that goes up to Aphrodite’s Seat.”

“Well, the dreaming heavens know you’ve earned a place. If you finish the last two stations on schedule, and Bradley delivers the remaining components to bring the network up to operational status, you should get to the Nalosyle Vales in time to make the rendezvous.”

“That’s bribery.”

Harvey chuckled, a nasty liquid rumbling sound.

They reached the first parked truck. Over a dozen Guardians were grouped around it, waiting. Ferelith was holding on to an excited Lennox. When she let go, the little boy toddled unsteadily to his mother, a delighted smile on his face. Samantha picked him up, and turned to face the new station they’d built. Valentine and the last two technicians were running down the track. She could just see the edge of the black pyramid about six hundred meters away in the shelter’s new clearing.

The latecomers all pulled their helmets off.

“Everyone here?” Valentine asked. Without waiting, he raised a handheld array, and entered the activation sequence. Samantha brought up her own handheld array, juggling Lennox onto one arm as she tried to watch the power supply symbols.

The air around the clearing sparkled as the pyramid generated its base force field eight hundred meters wide, stabilizing the whole structure. She could feel the ground trembling slightly as the force field permeated the rock beneath them, anchoring itself solidly into place. It was that single function that had made construction of the generators so difficult, almost half of the components had to be custom built for them inside the Commonwealth. Standard force fields couldn’t permeate solid matter for more than a few meters at best. Nothing moved inside the bubble of energy, the leaves on every tree were stilled as the now-lustrous air solidified.

“Stage two,” Valentine shouted.

Samantha tilted her head back, and pointed for Lennox. The little boy stared up curiously into the sky.

Five long blades of air shimmered above the existing force field. Their shape was tenuous at first, but as the initial energy surge was absorbed, the air calmed as its molecules were rearranged and locked into new shapes. There was only the faintest of diffraction layers left to reveal the contours, slight pressure fissures cutting through the clear sapphire sky, but it was sufficient for the naked eye to make out. From Samantha’s angle, it was as though the blade shapes were made from high-quality glass. They curved away gently from each other, expanding until they were half a kilometer wide and separated by three kilometers; then they began the long curve back to a single point eight kilometers above the fresh clearing in the forest.

“The universe’s biggest egg-whisk,” Harvey growled.

As Samantha watched, grinning at his description, thin streamers of cloud hit a couple of the unyielding blades and twisted sharply away. Gentle gusts were washing against her as the breeze that blew constantly along Trevathan’s Gulf was deflected by the blades.

“Stage three,” Valentine warned.

The blades began to move, rotating clockwise, very slowly. After five minutes they’d finished a complete circle, and stopped. Samantha felt the wind they’d stirred race across the road in a giant slothful pressure wave, causing the trees to sway. Her protective suit flapped about, while her sweaty hair swirled around her head. Lennox laughed delightedly.

“We did it,” Harvey said. “Again. What was the power use?”

Samantha consulted her handheld array. “Four percent.”

“That’s a lot.”

Above them, the blades vanished. Then the base force field released its grip on the surrounding rock and air. A zephyr swept along the road as the air currents churned back into their original patterns.

“Initialization uses a disproportionate amount of power,” she said. “Don’t worry, there’ll be enough for the planet’s revenge.”

***

Four identical black Cadillac limousines drew up outside the big old converted warehouse in Darklake City’s Thurnby district. Mellanie stepped out of the first one, her expensive Fomar pumps just missing the soggy mass of leaves and paper that clogged the gutter. She’d chosen the most sober clothes from her own range to wear, a neat black jacket with slim white lines marking out a square pattern. Matching pants and a cream blouse finished off the image. This way she had a whole Paula Myo authority figure thing going for her. It felt funny coming back here as a take-no-shit professional troubleshooter, backed up by six very tough wetwired CST security operatives.