Judas Unchained

Out on the lush veldt, the remaining clan riders moved forward, spreading wide until the Starflyer convoy was completely encircled. The first armored car appeared on Highway One, rumbling forward until it reached the group of Charlemagnes standing on the road a kilometer behind the convoy. Olwen braked to a halt. “Finally!” she hissed.

The armored car’s thick door hinged up, and Bradley stepped out. Ten meters away, the door on the second armored car was already open. The Paris team and Cat’s Claws hurried out onto the sun-baked concrete and stretched elaborately. Scott McFoster handed the reins of his Charlemagne to one of his lieutenants and walked over. He threw his arms around Bradley. “Dreaming heavens, it is good to see you, sir.”

“You do the clans proud, Scott. There are more here than I expected.”

“Aye, and many more would be here with them. I had to be firm, else we would have had babes and elders riding with us.”

Bradley nodded slowly, thinking of Harvey’s corpse in one of the Mazda jeeps. He looked down the mild incline to the convoy. The growl of their engines was clean in the still, humid air. When he raised his eyes to the south, he could just see the saddle in the foothills that was the Institute valley.

“We’d best be quick. It will try to push through as soon as it can. Are there any signs of reinforcements?”

“No movement around the Institute. We’ve lost a couple of scouts, which is to be expected. But the rest are still in place. Besides, we’ll see anything approaching.”

“How many troops can it have left in there?”

“It’s not been easy to track movements along Highway One these last few months. But I’m confident there can’t be more than a couple of hundred humans left in the Institute.”

“That’s good. We have some zone killers on the armored cars, which should take out some of the convoy before we even start close-quarter fighting.”

“Can they puncture the truck’s force field?”

“I’d imagine not, but we’ll find out soon enough. We also brought some powerful dump-webs that’ll help break it down.”

“In that case, we’re ready.”

“All right then, I’ll suit up and join you.”

Just for a moment Scott hesitated. “Of course.”

“Don’t worry,” Bradley said softly. “I won’t get in the way. Besides, our friends here”—his gesture took in the Paris team and Cat’s Claws—“have agreed to escort me to the Starflyer itself.”

Scott took in the bulky armor with a professional glance. “I don’t suppose anybody would consider loaning me one of those fine suits for a couple of hours?”

There were several chuckles from the blank helmets.

Bradley turned to face the mountains that guarded the western skyline. The tall dazzling white peaks jabbed high into the clear sky. There was no sign of any cloud, not a breath of wind.

“We’ve heard nothing from Samantha,” Scott said, following his gaze. “That could mean it’s started.”

“Yes. Of course. Are there shelters nearby?”

“We’ve allocated some caves. I’ve got McSobels installing force fields in them now.”

“Let’s hope that’s good enough. No one really knows how powerful we can get—”

“Hey,” the Cat said. “We’ve got incoming. Very weird incoming.” Her gauntlet pointed into the western sky.

No DNA from Earth’s dinosaur epoch had ever been recovered despite some very creative science applied to the problem. This clearly hadn’t deterred the Barsoomians in their aspirational genetic experimentation. Bradley’s jaw opened in silent astonishment at the shapes that swam out of the lucent sapphire of Far Away’s sky. The creatures were clearly modeled on petrosaurs, with wings that were scaled membranes stretched over long tough bones. Sunlight shimmered in oil-rainbow patterns across the leathery tissue as the wings beat in long steady movements. Lizard ancestry was apparent in the body, though Bradley suspected a lot of sequences derived from crocodiles had been wound into the creature’s genome. Certainly the giant wedge head looked ferocious, and the four legs had lethal black talons.

As they approached, swooping lower toward the veldt, he could see the cloaked figures of Barsoomians sitting astride their thick necks. Some kind of saddle straps were wrapped around their pale oyster-gray hide. There must have been over thirty of them in the flock, all keeping a healthy distance from each other.

The first one came in low beside the road, its wings sweeping fast, then twisting around to pound at the air in giant downdrafts. It settled fast, its stumpy legs bowing into a crouch. A head that was three meters long, most of it jaws and teeth, swung around to align big protuberant eyes on Bradley. Wings that must have had a total span of fifteen meters fluttered once, and folded back with lazy neatness against the creature’s flanks. It bellowed out a high ululation that made Bradley clasp his hands over his ears. The cry was taken up by the rest of the flock as they plummeted down on the veldt as if they were descending on prey.

“Cool,” the Cat declared. “Hey you, Scott, I’d swap my armor for one of them.”