Judas Unchained

Stig was desperate for some news. Anculan was where the clans were making their biggest effort to intercept the Starflyer on Highway One. If that didn’t slow it down, then the whole pursuit would be for nothing, and they’d have to depend on the planet’s revenge and the Final Raid. Not that he would ever criticize Bradley Johansson, but for plans that had been a hundred years in the making, their time frame was starting to look pretty shitty. Besides, the bombing run on 3F Plaza made this personal; he wanted to take down the Starflyer himself. The beezees was loose enough to second-track that thought.

Bradley bent over and gave his short-wave array a hard look. “That sounds like Samantha.”

Stig’s eyes never left the road. He’d isolated his inserts from any external communication to help his concentration. Up in front Jim Nwan’s truck was belching out a lot of exhaust fumes. The hard blue of the sky splashed strong waves along its elaborate chrome finish. He tried to lock down any repetitive pattern in the reflections. “What does she say?”

“They’re at the last manipulator station. I guess that means Adam got through with their equipment.”

“Good man, Adam, no traitor is going to derail him.”

“Hang on…” A grin flicked over his lips. “She keeps saying she’s ready to surf the next wave.” He switched the short-wave array to transmit. “Message acknowledged. Have a good day at the beach.” His reply was automatically repeated ten times.

Olwen dropped her arms onto the back of Bradley’s seat, her head resting in her hands, and grinning in satisfaction. “Tomorrow! Dreaming heavens, can you believe this. It’s going to happen tomorrow!”

“Not if I catch it first,” Stig grunted.

Olwen and Bradley shared a glance.

“So, Bradley, how do you feel about this?” Tiger Pansy asked. She was oblivious to the way Olwen’s mouth wrinkled with disapproval. “You’ve waited a long time for it to happen.”

“I’m not sure I feel anything,” Bradley said. “I just keep focused on the events happening around us. I know I set them all in motion but I don’t think I’d ever tried to visualize them for myself before. It’s quite something, like looking out on an avalanche as it thunders down a mountain and knowing you threw the first pebble.”

“It’s an avalanche that’ll bury that bastard Starflyer,” Olwen said. “We’ll see to it.”

“Thank you, my dear. It is your clans that have gifted me a great deal of strength over the decades. You have no idea what it is like to be surrounded by contempt and hatred and yet still have somebody believe in you.”

“Commonwealth’s going to owe us, huh?”

“They always have, they just never knew it. So do you know yet, dear Olwen, what you’re going to do afterward?”

“No. Never even thought about it. It’s still kind of hard to accept this is happening. I always expected it would be the next generation who helped the planet have its revenge, or the one after. Never mine.”

“Ah well, the day after tomorrow we will all have to sit down and think about what is to become of us. The clans will have to transform themselves. Into what, who knows.”

“If I’m still alive the day after tomorrow, I’ll be at the biggest party Far Away’s ever had.”

“Fair enough, my dear; we’ll wait until after the hangover before we make any important decisions.”

They saw the smoke from a few kilometers away. Thin smears of gray vapor wafted up into the hazy equatorial sky, the kind of smoke that only comes from embers.

Haville wasn’t a big town; it ran for a couple of kilometers beside the road before tailing off into orange groves. The Starflyer convoy had started a firestorm at one end and ripped it down the entire length. Shacks assembled from carbon panels had been reduced to piles of slag sprawling over their concrete foundations. Black horizontal scorch marks produced by lasers and masers were visible on all the surviving concrete block walls, running right across the gutted buildings. People were visible amid the debris, desolated and wandering around aimlessly, their shocked eyes following the Guardians’ convoy as they charged past. One large open yard had a line of corpses, wrapped up in cloth.

“They hit every node junction,” Keely reported. “It’s not like the net was armored or anything.”

“I don’t think they were that precise,” Bradley said as they reached the end of Haville. Trees along the edge of the orange grove were still burning. “This is a deliberate scorched earth operation to kill any long-range communications along the road.”

“Do you think they’ve done this to every town?” Olwen asked.

“Undoubtedly.”