Judas Unchained

Adam climbed down out of the cab and stretched elaborately, not enjoying the sounds his old body made after having been cramped up in a chair for a seven-hour stretch. It didn’t matter how adaptive the plyplastic cushioning was; his limbs were numbed and joints sore from inactivity. Outside the cab’s air-conditioning the heat was oppressive. He began sweating at once, and hurriedly put his wraparound shades on.

A ten-year-old girl in dungarees and a grubby Manchester United cap came out of the garage to fill the Volvos up from its single diesel pump.

“Quick as you can, please,” he told her, and flashed an Earth ten-dollar bill. She grinned brightly, showing a missing tooth, and hurried to the hose.

Everyone except Paula had clambered out of the cabs. The Guardians were giving the navy personnel mistrustful stares. Adam sighed, but he was too tired to play diplomat now. “I need to get some things,” he told the others, and nodded to the store opposite the garage. “Oscar, you’re with me. Kieran, you’re paired with the Investigator. The rest of you.” He shrugged. “We leave as soon as the tanks are full.”

“Do you need anything in particular?” Oscar asked as they crossed the dusty road.

“Some medical supplies for the Investigator. The diagnostic array keeps telling me to use drugs and biogenics we don’t have in the kit.”

Oscar looked at the ramshackle composite panel building with its weathered solar panel roof, and big heart-shaped emerald precipitator leaves flapping lazily from the eves. The windows were grimed up, and the air-conditioning unit a coverless box of rusty junk. “Are you sure they’ll have them here?”

“What they won’t have in here is any sabotaged supplies.”

“Christ, you really are paranoid.”

Oscar pushed the single door open. The dimly lit room inside was like someone’s living room, with threadbare rugs over the carbon plank floor and tall metal shelving racks instead of furniture. Half of the shelves were empty; the rest carried the usual merchandise essential for any small community, mostly domestic products, with food packets supplied by Armstrong City companies. A good stock of booze took up an entire rack.

“Can I help you boys?” an elderly woman asked. She was sitting in a rocking chair at the far end, knitting in the yellow glow of a polyphoto globe hanging from the rafters.

“I’m looking for first aid products,” Adam said.

“Some bandages and aspirin on the third shelf in from the door,” she told him. “Few other odds and ends. Mind you check the expiry dates, now. They’ve been around awhile.”

“Thanks.” Adam pulled Oscar along. “You heard Johansson’s answer last night.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, along with half of this world who’re listening in to the Highway One chase on their radios. Thank you for that. It went down particularly well with Rosamund, I thought. She certainly gave her guns a big polish afterward. You know it’s only going to be a matter of time before one of your street thugs decides the Guardians’ cause is best served by slitting our throats.”

“They’re not street thugs, I trained them.”

“The way Grayva trained us?”

Adam grunted dismissively, and rummaged through the section boldly labeled MEDICAL PROVISIONS. The shopkeeper hadn’t been joking about the lack of variety. “Don’t worry about my team, they’re well structured and disciplined.”

“Whatever you say, Adam.”

“So how do you explain Dudley’s claim that you deliberately ordered him to carry on through the Watchtower so he’d be left behind?” Adam was quite surprised by the involuntary spasm of anger on Oscar’s face when Dudley’s name was mentioned.

“That little shit!”

Both of them gave a guilty glance in the direction of the old woman.

“Sorry, Dudley just manages to rile me every time.”

“So?” Adam invited.

“It must have been the Starflyer agent. Whoever it was hacked into the Second Chance’s communications systems.”

“I figured that, too.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you yanking my plank?”

“I know it’s not you.” Adam grinned at Oscar’s astonishment, the thick skin on his cheeks crinkling stiffly.

“You do?”

“Let’s say that after our long association I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

Oscar rolled his eyes. “If this is the tradecraft you trained your kids in, we’re in deeper shit than I thought. But thanks, anyway.”

“Don’t mention it. Your innocence reduces my problem by one.”

“Yeah.” Oscar scratched at the back of his head. “And then there were three.”

“Two of whom were on the Second Chance; and Myo has been persecuting the Guardians since their inception.”

“It can’t be Wilson and Anna.”

“Is that emotion or logic talking to me?”

“Emotion, I guess. Hell! I’ve been part of their lives for years now, we virtually live in each other’s pockets. They’re friends. Real friends. If it is one of them, then they have truly run rings around me.”

“I told you before, you manage to cover up your earlier activities with a perfect shell of respectability. To be honest, I never quite expected you to have so much success in your current life.”