Judas Unchained

Sunrise was drawing a gray hue across the eastern sky above the veldt. When Bradley looked out of the armored car’s narrow side window he could see the peaks of the Dessault Mountains away to the west, cold, sharp pinnacles jutting up amid the vanishing stars. He imagined the superstorm billowing around them to descend on the veldt like some apocalyptic force, scouring the land clear of all its new terrestrial life.

It wouldn’t happen for hours yet, if it did at all. They’d heard nothing from Samantha’s group since that last message yesterday about her being ready to surf. If she was keeping to schedule then the storm might be on time. They were still several hundred kilometers from the Institute, but making better time than they’d expected. So was the Starflyer convoy.

All of them had spent a long anguished night as the road rolled onward. Once they left the fringes of the rainforest behind the landscape reverted to featureless expanses of veldt with the occasional tree and bush poking up. It was as though their vision was locked in to some long loop of scenery that kept playing over and over. At night, with nothing to see outside of the headlight beams, the sense that they were making no progress at all was even worse.

After midnight they’d finally made contact with the Guardians who’d massed for the Final Raid. Watchers had been stationed along the last few hundred kilometers of Highway One to monitor the Starflyer’s movement. Their arrays and secure tight-beam links circumvented the wrecked nodes along the side of the road to put them back in contact with the main body of the Guardians, in itself a nice boost for morale among their little group as well as giving them a decent overview of the situation. When the reliable information started coming in they found they’d closed to within forty minutes of the Starflyer, but that still put it a hundred kilometers in front of them, and there were no more major bridges left to demolish. Highway One ran on across the veldt in an unbroken strip of concrete that was Roman in its brashness. At their current rate, they’d catch the alien just as it reached the Institute and before the storm hit. That was too close, Johansson knew. He was going to have to attack the Starflyer head-on. The warriors of the Final Raid would have their moment, sweeping down to block Highway One. The thought of how much blood would be spilled was chilling. The planet’s revenge would have been so much more effective. Isolation and exposure followed by death; but now that careful strategic plan was all but ruined. The fact that it was he who in the end had underestimated the Starflyer gave his situation its wretched poignancy. His one small grasp at salvation was the Paris team and Cat’s Claws; their armor might yet prove the winning hand.

“Picking up a short-wave signal,” Keely said from her seat at the back of the armored car. “Sounds like Paula Myo…” Her voice trailed off.

When Bradley looked around her face was ashen. “Put it through,” he told her gently. Interference generated by the sun as it rose in the east was now so bad it took nearly four minutes of the repeated message before they had a full version. There was silence in the armored car for some time as Paula’s voice cycled through its grim message again and again.

“Turn that fucker off,” Stig snarled. He was sitting in the back alongside Keely, where he was supposed to be resting after finally relinquishing the wheel to Olwen just before midnight. “He can’t be dead. She’s lying. I knew that bitch was trouble the moment I saw her.”

Bradley was still in shock from the news; otherwise he would have told Stig to calm down and keep quiet. That Adam might not survive had never occurred to him in the wildest worst-case scenario.

“After we kill the Starflyer I’m going to track her down and sort her lying mouth out once and for all.”

“Stig, pack it in,” Olwen said from the driver’s seat. Her attention hadn’t wavered from the road. She’d popped several beezees, but nowhere near as many as Stig. “We need to deal with this calmly and professionally.”

A communications icon flipped up into Bradley’s virtual vision. He opened it without thinking.

“This isn’t good,” Alic said. “The Starflyer agent is getting bolder.”

“But it’s not relevant,” Morton said. “I’m sorry, I know Adam was a big help to the Guardians, but their part is over. You said so yourself, the planet’s revenge team has finished setting up.”

Bradley frowned. Morton was right, and Paula would know that. She also knew that short-wave communications were completely open. Her message was still repeating, so she obviously considered it important. Why? “They must be doing something else,” he decided. “Paula’s many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. She’s telling us why this is so important. What’s at Stonewave?”

“Nothing right now,” Olwen said. “The travel companies mothballed it when the tourists stopped coming.”

“So what did it do?” he asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”