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.”
“Bradley,” Morton called. “He’s one of yours. Keeps asking for you.”
Bradley went down the ramp along one of the tire tracks, thinking the soil and shingle would be firmer there; even so his feet slipped several times on loose patches. Stig followed him a couple of paces behind, their biggest medical kit bag hanging off his shoulder.
Cat’s Claws were standing some way off the bottom of the ramp in the middle of the bushes. One of the Charlemagnes had fallen nearby, its bulk skidding for several meters through the undergrowth before it finally stopped. Just behind it, lying in the muddy wake of crushed vegetation, its rider had come to rest in a gouge that was slowly filling with water. His scarf was the emerald and copper check of the McFoster clan, though the proud colors were now hard to distinguish below all the blood that the cloth had soaked up. A very old-fashioned force field skeleton worn over his dark fatigues had burned through in several places. By far the worst of his wounds was a rent along the side of his torso, which was coated in bloody mud.
Bradley narrowed his eyes at the sight of the man’s thick ruddy skin with its subsurface lacework of broken veins. “Harvey? Harvey, is that you?”
“Dreaming heavens, it is you,” Harvey’s ruined voice croaked feebly. “They said you were here. I didn’t believe it, not really. I’m sorry. I knew in my heart you wouldn’t leave us to face that monster alone.”
Bradley dropped to his knees in the blood puddles beside the old warrior. “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to fight anymore.”
“One last battle, Bradley. That’s all. I grew so tired of training the youngsters, sending them out while I waited behind. I always needed one last battle for myself. And thank the dreaming heavens it was a glorious fight. Our ancestors are proud of us this day.”
“I’m proud of you, Harvey, I always have been. Now lie back, Stig’s got a medical kit, he’ll get you stable.”
“Bradley.” Harvey’s hand came up and gripped the front of Bradley’s shirt.
“Yes?”
“Bradley…you should see the other fella.” Breath rasped out of his mouth in the best laughter he could produce.
Bradley closed his hand over Harvey’s. “Don’t talk.”
Stig almost fell to the ground, staring aghast at his old combat instructor. “You’ll be all right, Harvey. I’ve got a medical kit that’s come direct from the Commonwealth. There’s healskin in it, and biogenics, the whole works.”
“Save it, lad,” Harvey whispered. “You’ll need it for real after the planet’s revenge.”
Stig bowed his head, tears running freely down his cheeks.
“Harvey?” Bradley asked. “How long ago did this happen? Can you remember?”
“I’ve got it for you,” Harvey said. “I watched when the monster’s truck went up the slope and noted the time. I knew you’d need it. The others, all kids, they never listen to me when I tell them what’s important.” He glanced at the ancient black chrome digital watch on his wrist. “Eighty-seven minutes, Bradley. That’s all it’s got on you now. I told you we put up a good fight.”
“You did. And we will finish the job now, I promise that.”
Harvey’s eyes closed. He let out a wheezing breath.
“Give him something for the pain,” Bradley told Stig. “Then get him into one of our jeeps.” He gently detached Harvey’s hand from his shirt, and looked at the scarlet mud stain it had left there as though trying to remember how it got there.
“Sir,” Stig said with an edgy voice. “We can’t move him. These injuries…”
“Harvey is going to the dreaming heavens, and nothing you carry in your bag will prevent that,” Bradley said. “We cannot wait here for that to happen, and I will not allow him to be left alone to die. Even if he only lasts a few minutes he will be with us, his comrades, as we chase our nemesis to its doom. Would you deny him that?”
Harvey laughed again, a weak burbling sound. His eyes were still closed. “You tell him, Bradley. Kids today, may the dreaming heavens preserve us from them.”
Stig nodded humbly, and opened the medical kit.
Bradley climbed to his feet. “Eighty-seven minutes,” he told Cat’s Claws. “We can catch it.”
Adam had considered the name wet desert to be a near perfect oxymoron, right up until the moment they started driving across it. Every day the storm that came in from the Hondu Ocean at dawn brought clouds that dumped between four and five centimeters of rain on the region before they finally blew out in the late morning. The wet desert was a wide shelf of land dropping steadily over hundreds of kilometers from the Aldrin Plains down to the shore of the ocean, a flat expanse that was made up from sand and shingle. Essentially it was the biggest beach in the known galaxy, although the last tide had gone out about a quarter of a million years ago. Geologists on early survey expeditions determined it used to be covered by the Hondu Ocean, which would have put the Grand Triad right on the coastline. It must have been quite something to see the lava from such enormous volcanoes pouring into the ocean.
When the rains fell on the wet desert they flowed across the saturated surface into hundreds of shallow, kilometers-wide channels that drained right back into the ocean. An hour after the clouds were banished into the east the ground was exposed again, the runoff was so quick. Noon equatorial sunlight shone down through empty skies, baking the waterlogged surface and producing a layer of warm viscous fog that clung to the ground for most of the rest of the day.
In the early days of the planet’s human settlement, the revitalization team spread some lichen spores about over the wet desert, then went away scratching their heads unsure what to do next. That was a hundred fifty years ago. They still hadn’t been back.
There was no sign of lichen from the cab of the lead Volvo. There was no sign of any life. No high-order organism could survive the strange cycle of water, heat, vapor, and scouring winds.
Adam himself was taking a turn at the wheel. It had been an exhausting trip, especially for the Guardians who’d shared the driving so the three navy people could rest before the flight. They’d only just made it past Mount Herculaneum in the small hours of the morning. After that they were halfway around the rocky base of Mount Zeus as the dawn broke and the winds rose, forcing them to park behind a rock outcrop and secure the Volvo cabs with carbicon ropes. Even then Adam had been frightened that the heavy vehicles would be blown away. Samantha was right, if they’d been caught at the base of Herculaneum in the full blast of the storm as it churned around the giant mountain’s flanks they would never have survived.
Once the winds subsided enough for them to walk around without being blown away, they’d untied the ropes and set off again. A couple of hours later they reached the northernmost boundary of Zeus’s base, and powered down onto the wet desert. Almost immediately they’d been engulfed by the fog.
The radar was on, sweeping ahead for obstacles or ravines. So far there hadn’t been any. Adam didn’t have the headlights on, there was no point. The sun fluoresced the fog to a uniform white glow surrounding the cab as it s
ped onward; visibility was rarely more than fifteen meters. Even so, he could push the speed up to a good hundred thirty kilometers an hour.
There was no problem with erosion on the wet desert; total saturation bestowed the sand with a fantastic degree of cohesion, locking every grain and grit particle into place like an epoxy. It provided a remarkably stable base to drive on, albeit one with very poor traction had they needed to brake sharply. The wide drainage channels were at most fifteen centimeters deep, allowing them to speed across unhindered. Huge fantails of spray unfolded from the Volvo’s wheels as if they were sprouting wings.
“I think we’re coming up on the town,” Adam announced. The radar was showing a protuberance rising out of the flat ground eight kilometers ahead of them, the first real interruption to the wet desert’s monotony.
Rosamund crowded over his shoulder, staring at the screen. “Yeah that’s got to be it. Coordinates match.”
Adam squinted, his retinal inserts on maximum resolution. Beyond the dreary sweep of the windshield wipers the radiant fog remained resolutely impenetrable. He checked the radar again. “Is that size right?” His foot instinctively eased off the accelerator.
“I guess so.” Rosamund sounded perturbed now.
Calling this region the wet desert should have warned Adam; Far Away’s inhabitants were a literal lot. The stone wave was a ridge of red sedimentary rock almost two kilometers long, and rising up to three hundred meters along its smooth crest. Erosion had eviscerated one side, sculpting a gigantic overhanging cavity that ran for two-thirds of the length and extending up to three hundred meters deep. Looking at it as they approached from the southern end, Adam saw it really did have the shape of a huge wave, frozen as it started to curve over. According to his files, geologists were still arguing if it had eroded before or after the ocean withdrew.
Stonewave’s buildings were laid out in the center of the giant overhang where the arching roof was at its highest, a hundred fifty meters to the crest. Although they varied in size they all followed the same simple oblong box design, standing on short stilts to keep them perfectly level. Their walls, floors, and roofs were made from identical blank carbon squares fixed to a sturdy frame. Tucked into the hollow of the wave they were protected from the worst of the elements; the rain never touched them, though the morning wind was still formidable as it eddied over the sheltering rock.
The little town existed only to support the hypergliders. Two of the buildings were fitted out as luxury hotels with fifteen beds each for the ultra-rich tourists who came here to test their luck and nerves in the morning storms. The tourist company staff shared three dormitory blocks; there was a diesel generator, a waste recycling plant, garages, and hangars.
Adam drove the cab up onto the rock floor and braked outside one of the hangars with a sign above the sliding doors that read GRAND TRIAD ADVENTURES. His e-butler had been trying to establish a link to the building management arrays with no result. When he scanned around with his retinal insets on infrared the geometric buildings were a uniform temperature.
“Looks like it’s deserted,” he said.
“The companies would have shut it down once the tourists stopped coming,” Rosamund said.
“Christ, I hope they left the hypergliders.”
“No reason not to.”
Adam went back to check on Paula. The Investigator was asleep on her little cot, knees drawn up toward her chest. Her forehead was slick with sweat and her breathing was now very shallow. Every now and then she would make a gulping sound as if she were drowning. Adam stared down at her in dismay. He simply didn’t know what to do about her. The sedatives had their limits, and none of the drugs or biogenics had made the slightest difference to her overall condition. He was scared to apply the diagnostic array for fear of what it would tell him.
“Stay here and watch her,” he told Rosamund.
She started to protest but he waved her down. “We don’t know this illness is for real,” Adam said, feeling a complete hypocrite. “And if she wakes up you must get her to drink. Force her if necessary.” In addition to all his other concerns was how long it’d been since she’d eaten anything. The medical kit did contain equipment for intravenous feeding, but he didn’t want to go down that route until he had no choice.
He left the cab quickly, shamed at his own relief to be leaving the problem behind. The other Volvo cab had parked just behind his. Wilson was already climbing down when Kieran turned the engine off. It was as if the sound had been sucked away. Between them the stone and fog did weird things to acoustics. Adam glanced up at the curving overhang feeling unnerved for no reason he could pin down.
“How’s Paula?” Wilson asked.
“No change,” Adam replied curtly. “Did you get your arrays modified to handle the comrelay function Samantha needs?”
“We think so, yes; the range is a problem. We took some of the Volvo’s modules apart and realigned them. The new unit should do the trick, but we only got one. I want to take the modules from your cab, and I’m hoping that the vehicles here should have similar electronics.”
“They ought to,” Jamas said. He’d climbed down from the cab along with Anna and Oscar. “The vehicles which the tourist companies use have to keep in contact over long distances. They’ve probably got better transmitters than the Volvos.”
“Okay, you and Kieran search around for them. We’ll need them to tow the hypergliders anyway. And be careful; we don’t know this place is deserted. The four of us will take the hangars.”
There was a small door on the side of the Grand Triad Adventures hangar. Adam had to shoot the lock out with a low-power ion pulse. It was so dark inside that even his retinal inserts were struggling to produce an image. He fumbled around and found the light switch. There must have been some kind of reserve power supply; long polyphoto strips came on, strangely yellow after the unending monochrome glow of the fog. Eight hypergliders rested on their transport cradles. They were in their primary configuration, a fat cigar shape with wings and tailplane buds retracted into flat triangles against the fuselage.
Oscar whistled in admiration. “Nice machinery.”
“You guys had better check them over,” Adam said. “This is your scene.”
“Sure,” Wilson said. “See if you can find the hangar’s arrays, please; we’ll need the maintenance records.”
“And their performance specs,” Anna added. Her extensive pattern of OCtattoos was emerging to gleam with a gold luster under the hangar lights. “This is one difficult trajectory we’re going to have to fly. The arc has got to terminate just right.”
“We’ll have to perform a standard overflight trajectory to begin with,” Wilson said. “Once you’re out of the twister you’ll be able to adapt the flight profile; kill the velocity and alter the angle to give a touchdown behind Aphrodite’s Seat. You can always lose speed, you won’t be able to gain it. It’ll be tricky, but one of us should manage to get close enough.”
Oscar shot Adam a fast accusing look.
“They must have some sort of summit landing capacity built in,” Anna was saying. “They can’t all hop over the top successfully.”
“If you haven’t got the velocity high enough you’re supposed to veer off and go around,” Wilson said. He found the manual release for the cockpit canopy on the first hyperglider, and twisted it. The transparent bubble hinged up smoothly. Wilson bent over the rim. “Here we go.”
Adam’s e-butler reported the hyperglider’s pilot array had just come on-line. He held Oscar’s gaze uncompromisingly for a moment, then ducked into the office at the back of the hangar. The air inside was musty after being sealed up for so long; every surface had a damp chill to it. Some of the metal items even had a slight coating of condensation.
The desktop array came on as soon as he touched the power stud. Even better, its programs and files didn’t have encrypted access. He started to pull up the general information.
“Adam,” Kieran called on an encrypted link,
“we’ve found the jeeps they use for towing the hypergliders over to Stakeout Canyon. Talk about wind resistant, they look like bubbles. I think they’ve got anchors, too.”
“Good. See if they’ve got a service log. We’ll take the two with the best record.”
“Will do. Uh, aren’t we taking three hypergliders?”
“I’ll talk to you guys about that in a minute.”
“Okay. They all need fueling up anyway. Jamas is going to track down the main diesel tank.”
Adam found a file containing the Grand Triad Adventures introduction to hypergliding, and gave his e-butler a list of the specific information he wanted extracted. “What about the drilling equipment they use to tether the gliders?” he asked Kieran.
“Not here. I’ll scout around when I’ve sorted out the jeeps.”
“Right.” A standard itinerary popped up into Adam’s virtual vision. “Damn, we’re going to have to be quick. They normally leave for Stakeout Canyon at noon. That gives the crews time to position the hypergliders in the evening and get clear while it’s still light.”
“We’ll manage it.”
Adam’s e-butler had pulled out several sections from the introduction now. He skimmed through them until he found the files on skill memory. The implant was done in a room off the side of the office. He opened the door and found what looked like the kind of waiting area you’d get in a modestly successful legal firm. The exception was the five comfortable leather couches arranged along the back wall, each with its own sophisticated array. A dark mold was starting to spread out of the edges of the slightly damp leather; the first living organism they’d seen since they arrived on the wet desert. He checked the power reserves on the arrays.
“I’ve found the skill memory implanters,” he told the others as he came back into the hangar.
Five of the hypergliders had been opened. Wilson was sitting in the cockpit of one, his hands resting on the console i-spots. Below and behind him the wing buds flexed as if something inside them wanted to be birthed.
“Well done,” Wilson said.