“Are you sure about that?” Alic asked.
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
“But…Oscar Monroe was a senior manager in CST. He’s a navy captain. He couldn’t be involved in Abadan.”
“People change,” Bradley said. “What did you do in all your earlier lives, Commander?”
“This is my second, and I’ve been part of the legal profession in both. Look…I can possibly ignore what I heard, but Myo can’t.”
“I know. Presumably that’s why Adam never told her. He was protecting Oscar to the end.” He peered out of the slit window again, the Dessault Mountains were clearer now, the sky above them shifting to a dark lavender. The tallest of them, StOmer, stood high above the others, its conical snowcap already glowing a musky white as it guarded the northeastern extremity of the range. Its shape was familiar enough, even though he hadn’t seen it in decades. The sight of it triggered a reluctant acknowledgment he couldn’t put off his decision any longer. His virtual hand pulled up the icon for Scott McFoster, who was commanding the Final Raid.
“Yes, sir,” Scott responded instantly.
They rode down out of the foothill forests, over a thousand Charlemagnes each carrying a clan warrior. There was no need for concealment, they wanted the Starflyer to know they were there, so they sang as they trotted out across the veldt, a slow marching song that rumbled on ahead of them amid the dust their hooves kicked up. Such scouts the Starflyer had positioned along the road babbled frantically into their communications links and raced back to the safety of the Institute valley twenty-four kilometers away, chased by clan outriders.
Six hundred riders formed up a crescent shape with Highway One at their center where it reached the bottom of a shallow fold in the land. They blew up the small bridge across the stream, and parties of McSobels trotted down the road scattering mines on the concrete and across the land on either side. Mortar launchers and missile racks were dug in on the higher ground overlooking the road. The remainder of the warriors divided into groups of two hundred and withdrew from the road, loitering a couple of kilometers to the north.
There they all waited as the sun rose to transform the sky into its daily sapphire brilliance. The heat built around them, pressing the air into silence.
In the placid silence of midmorning, the Starflyer convoy hove into view. Thirty armored Land Rover Cruisers were interspaced by several larger trucks, three buses, and a couple of small fuel tankers. A squad of ten big BMW bikes growled along out in front, ridden by armor-suited figures. The big MANN truck was positioned two-thirds of the way down the line of vehicles, its force field rippling the air around the buffed-aluminum capsule.
The bikes slowed as they crested the top of the fold and saw the Guardians blocking the way ahead. Their heavy engines grumbled loudly as they approached at walking pace down the long slope. The rest of the convoy followed them cautiously down. A kilometer from the rubble of the little bridge, the whole convoy came to a halt.
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.