Judas Unchained

He began to register the expressions around him as the damp ash pattered against his jacket. The tears, the silent rage, and the terrible anguish as people took stock of life that had been irretrievably smashed. There were hundreds just along the sections of road that he could see.

It took every shred of self-discipline he possessed to fight the guilt. “We have to,” he told her through gritted teeth. “It’ll come through unless we stop it. We don’t have anything else left to keep it away.”

“Then find something. Use us, we have weapons.”

He glanced at the ion pistol she was carrying openly, and resisted the impulse to give a derisive laugh. “Let’s assess 3F first, shall we?”

The sneekbots were scuttling their way to the top of the encircling mound that had been Market Wall. It took Stig a moment to make sense of the first images they provided. There was nothing he recognized, no features or outlines. First Foot Fall Plaza was a true crater now, and completely black on the inside where it had been scorched by the fuel air bomb. The force field over the gateway had withstood the blast; it was almost buried under fragments of roasted stone, with just a small crescent exposed, looking like milky glass as the rain washed the carbon dust away from it. None of the Institute troops had survived. He couldn’t even see any bodies. Their vehicles had vanished as well, including the MANN truck. He’d expected to see the metallic capsule lying somewhere, battered and overturned, but the sneekbots couldn’t detect any electrical or magnetic activity except for the gateway force field itself. First Foot Fall Plaza was a confirmed dead zone.

“It’s not going to come through into that,” Olwen said. “We’ve got a chance.”

“You’re probably right.” Stig checked the time in his virtual vision. “We’ve got fifty-five minutes left of this cycle,” he told everyone on the general band. “Our job is to make it as difficult as possible for the Starflyer to come through. It isn’t going to risk itself without an escort on this side, so I want Muriden’s and Hanna’s teams to dig in here on Market Wall. If anything comes through the gateway, shoot it with the plasma rifles. The rest of us: we’re splitting into mobile units. We have to prevent the Institute from getting close to 3F Plaza. Keely will update us on the location of any vehicles. If they look like they’re gathering into a convoy we hit them hard.”

It wasn’t a good omen, Wilson Kime calling over the general band that the radar had given them away, then two seconds later having to jump off the Carbon Goose’s loading ramp into pitch-darkness. Morton knew they didn’t have any choice. Options on this trip had vanished when the wormhole back to Boongate had slammed shut behind them. So he’d shouted out the obvious, and flung himself off. Didn’t bother to check if anyone agreed. Supposedly, leading by example was the sign of good leadership, except no one had ever said he was in charge.

The huge plane shot away above him, and he expanded the suit’s force field out to fifty meters. His speed braked sharply from air resistance, and he pushed the perimeter out even farther, shaping it to a teardrop profile. Sensors showed him the cold rock less than two hundred meters below, and approaching fast. They also revealed nine other armor suits dropping around him.

Thank Christ for that.

Morton had thought—sort of—that he could rely on Rob and the Cat to jump, but the others were unknowns. It was kind of reassuring that they were as committed or as reckless as he was.

The base of the force field touched the rock, bowing back up like a sponge to absorb the impact, then folded neatly back around the suit.

“Did you have an encore in mind?” the Cat asked.

“Whatever it is, he’s doing it solo,” Rob said.

“Thanks, guys.”

“Everyone okay?” Alic asked.

He got a chorus of acknowledgments. They were all down intact. The armor that the four Guardians wore was almost as good as the navy-issue marque.

“Four kilometers that way,” Morton said as they gathered together. “And thirty-two minutes left until the wormhole closes. How do you want to handle this?” The original hasty plan back in the Carbon Goose while they were suiting up was to creep up on Port Evergreen and sniper any exposed Starflyer agent, then hopefully disable the vehicles it was using before they went through the wormhole.

“Go in stealthed,” Alic said. “Take out those vehicles before they know what’s happening. It has to be in one of them.”

“No way, darling,” the Cat said. “We’re working with a badass timescale here. They know we’re here, we know they know, so we go in hot and burn the bastards down.”

“Do it,” Morton said. Once again he just set off, using the suit electromuscle to sprint hard over the land.

“One day, Morty,” the Cat said on a secure link, “we’re going to have to sort out that little ego problem of yours.”

She was level with him, then slowly pulling ahead. Morton settled for staying five meters behind her, and kept pace.