Judas Unchained

Bradley could see the Anculan Valley from a long way off, an intrusive furrow running west to east across the veldt, emptying into the Oak Sea. Its vegetation was noticeably darker than the luxuriant jade of the rainforest, shading down to olive-green as if the gully was permanently in shadow. The river was fed by dozens of tributaries emerging from the Dessault range, giving it a lavish forceful flow that had cut deep into the landscape, creating a gully over two hundred meters wide and up to thirty deep with near-sheer sides. Dense bushes filled the base of the gully on either side of the water, their half-exposed root balls scrabbling for purchase on the glutinous mud. Water pumpkins had colonized the shallows, their brimstone-colored fruit bobbing about, ranging from buds no bigger than oranges up to the full-grown football-size globes with mushy wrinkled skin. Their wreath of slim black tendrils swished around them in the current as if eels were nesting in the stem. This close to the mountains the Anculan’s water was loaded with so much sediment it was the color of milky coffee.

Given the difficulty and expense of ferrying steel girders to Far Away, the most cost-effective method of bridging a gulf of this size was with a single span arch of concrete supporting the road above, which narrowed from its usual four lanes down to two.

The Guardian demolition team had made a good job of bringing it down. All that remained of the arch were thick broken tusks of concrete curving up from either side of the river. The central hundred-meter section of the road was gone, its remnants a cluster of submerged boulders creating a furious surge of white water.

Alic and Morton stood on the edge of the broken road, using their active sensors to scan the thick wall of the rainforest on the opposite side. There was no sign of hostiles hidden among the wall of vegetation. “Looks clear,” Alic reported.

Stig and the others stood on the lip of the gorge next to the road, looking down into the surging water twenty meters below. Bodies were snagged on the new boulders, three of them wearing the dark impact armor of the Institute troops, a couple in camouflage fatigues. They all had terrible wounds. A Charlemagne had been snagged by the bushes just below the river, its body starting to bloat. When Stig started to scan upstream, he saw more bodies jammed into the mud and vegetation.

“Pretty clear which way they went,” Bradley said. A swathe of open ground bordered the top of the gorge, where grass creepers and bushes formed a buffer between the rainforest and the precipice. Its moist soil had been torn up by the wheels of the Starflyer convoy.

“Commander Hogan, Morton, could your people take point along here please,” Bradley said. “We need to find where they forded the river.”

“Sure thing,” Alic said. He and Morton left the bridge.

Cat’s Claws and the Paris team began jogging along the track, with the armored cars and jeeps following. They drove along the top of the gorge for another two kilometers. In some places the walls rose up to forty meters high. Below them, scattered along the river, dead bodies lay in the mud with water flowing around and over them. After the first thirty, everyone stopped counting.

The Starflyer convoy had made its crossing two and a quarter kilometers upriver from the bridge. A dip in the gorge wall on both sides reduced the height to a little over ten meters. Explosives had been used to rip the bottom out of the dip and pulverize the remainder of the wall, creating a sloping heap that the vehicles could drive down. It was a crude ramp that was mirrored on the other side of the Anculan.

Three wrecked Cruisers were just visible in the middle of the river, with the water churning over them; two more were burnt out on the northern ramp. One had been caught by kinetic and ion fire on the other side, then bulldozed out of the way by a heavier vehicle. Big patches of vegetation were blackened and smoldering. Twenty dead Charlemagnes were lying among the sodden bushes; some still had their riders strapped into the saddle. There were more bodies in the edges of the rainforest.

Bradley gazed out on the battlefield and lowered his head in grief. “Dreaming heavens, please let this end swiftly.”

“One of them’s moving!” Morton called out. “Cover me, please.” He started down the rough slope, his boots slipping and sliding on the muddy shale. Rob and the Cat followed at a slower rate.

“Commander, can you get over to the other side, please,” Bradley said. “Make sure there are no surprises for us over there.”

“You got it,” Alic acknowledged.

The Paris team started down the ramp.

“Stig, we’ll go over as soon as they’ve given us the go-ahead.”

“Yes, sir.” Stig eyed the turbulent river. “Uh, our jeeps will get through that kind of current okay. I’m not sure about some of the trucks on a river this strong. We could rig up winches, perhaps.”

“No. We have to keep moving. Anything that can’t make it under its own power is left here.”