Although he never said it out loud, Adam hoped that was one battle that would never happen. The Institute itself would have heavy-duty weaponry to defend its valley. The loss of life would be dreadful. Now he was actually on Far Away, reviewing things on the ground, his confidence had taken an abrupt nosedive. The planet was so backward. He’d always thought his shipments were received by well-organized fighting units. In reality the clans were little advanced from Earth’s pre-Commonwealth guerrilla bands who waged war on oppressive governments from their mountain hideaway camps. The clans, bluntly, were turning out to be a serious disappointment.
His main hope now was that they would be on time delivering the components carried by the Volvos. If the planet’s revenge could be made to work, and wreck the Marie Celeste before the Starflyer reached it, they would have a breathing space. Bradley wouldn’t have to launch the Final Raid. Sheldon had promised to send a starship; it would have the weapons to exterminate the alien from orbit. A clean precise blast of energy would eradicate the problem once and for all.
So Adam Elvin, lapsed socialist activist, kept his own silent counsel as the Volvo drove on and on through the interminable grasslands, praying that the greatest capitalist the human race had ever produced would keep his word. If it wouldn’t have required so much explaining, he would have laughed out loud at the monstrous irony.
“Something up ahead,” Rosamund called out.
Adam broke his reverie to look at the radar display. There was a very broad shallow river a kilometer ahead. The radar return showed a horse on the far side, with someone standing beside it. Given their relative sizes, he thought it must be a child.
“That’s got to be someone from Samantha’s team,” Kieran said. “I bet it’s Judson McKratz.”
“What makes you say that?” Adam asked.
“I know him. They’ll want to confirm we’re genuine, and Judson knows this road better than anyone.”
“Good point.” Adam rubbed at his temples. It had been a long trip, and he hadn’t had much sleep since…probably the Carbon Goose. He was sure he had an hour on the flight. “Even so…force fields on, people.”
The river was wider than Adam realized from the radar. Grass hid it until they were only a couple of hundred meters from the bank. They dipped down a short incline, and he could finally see it was almost four hundred meters across. He whistled softly. Even with a depth that was never greater than half a meter, that was a lot of water. The gentle U-shape course it had carved for itself spoke of much higher levels rushing down from the mountains. On his map, the river stretched back to the Dessault range, where it was fed by dozens of tributaries worming their way out through the foothills.
“One at a time,” he ordered. “Ayub, stay here and get ready to give us covering fire.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rosamund inched their Volvo down onto the stony riverbed. Its suspension lowered the wheels below the chassis, and they moved forward in a series of lurches that rocked the cab about. Even in Far Away’s gravity, Adam had to strap himself in tight.
The rider standing beside the dark gray horse was an adult human male, wearing a long walnut-colored oilskin greatcoat and broad-rimmed hat that deflected the drizzle like a force field. As they drew near to the bank, Adam gawped in astonishment. The Guardians he’d met always talked about their Charlemagnes with a sense of pride; now he could see why. The beast was big and hellishly intimidating. He eyed its short metal-tipped horn, and vowed not to venture within twenty meters of the brute.
The Volvo wobbled up out of the river.
“That’s Judson all right,” Kieran said with a wide smile. He jumped down out of the cab to greet his old colleague. The two of them embraced warmly, and Kieran brought him over to the truck. Adam climbed out. The Charlemagne had tusks, he saw. It probably wasn’t a herbivore.
“Mr. Elvin,” Judson said. “Welcome. I have heard your name many times. Those who return from the Commonwealth speak well of you.”
“Thank you.” Adam waved the other truck over. “We’ve brought the remainder of the equipment you need.”
“In the nick of time again, eh?” Judson put his arm around Kieran’s shoulder, shaking him fondly.
“We’re here,” Kieran said. “Don’t complain.”
“Me?” He gave a deep rumbling laugh. “Seriously, you should be able to reach Samantha by nightfall. She’s waiting for you in Reithstone Valley, with additional transport ready to ferry the components out to the remaining stations. And after that! You are lucky I know the deepest caves in this region.” He pulled an array out of his coat pocket. “I’ll let them know you’re here.”
Adam’s array picked up a song being played on the short-wave frequency they’d been given. He suspected not many people would know it without an e-butler search of library files. Somebody here had a strange sense of humor. The sound of “Hey, Jude” washed across the eternal grasslands.
A few minutes later, his array found the salsa hit “Morgan” being played, drifting in and out of reception as the ionosphere undulated far above them. He remembered dancing to that in his own youth.
“That’s the acknowledgment,” Judson said.
“I’m curious,” Adam said. “What if it hadn’t been us?”
Judson gave him a broad smile. “ ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’ ”
Making contact with Judson had provided all of them with a definite morale boost. After the shock of discovering the sabotage, they needed to know they weren’t isolated. A state the grassland had emphasized for hour after hour.
The Volvos drove off down the buried road again, leaving Judson behind. For all the size and power of the Charlemagne, it couldn’t keep up with the trucks’ unceasing pace. The dark clouds began to break up in the late afternoon, allowing huge sunbeams to play down past their frayed edges, like searchlights strafing the grassland. As the beams slowly angled up toward the horizontal there was finally a break in the numbingly tedious landscape. Up ahead, the foothills of the Dessault range were beginning to rise above the glistening stalks of Anguilla grass.
An hour later they were driving up the foothills. The grass had finally fallen behind them, unable to rise far up the slopes where the air cooled quickly. Ordinary grass reasserted itself, along with trees and bushes. Their road became clear again, two lines of hard-packed stone winding up the banks and following the contour lines cut into valley walls. It wasn’t long before they were level with the first true mountains. On either side of them, sharp rocky peaks smeared with snow protruded into the ice-clear sapphire sky, casting huge shadows down into the valleys as the sun fell.
Twice, Adam saw riders on Charlemagnes high above the road, watching them as they crawled on toward Reithstone Valley. It was becoming difficult to receive radio transmissions amid the mountains. The last they heard of Highway One was a Guardian ambush team engaging a Cruiser patrol at the Kantrian bridge a couple of hours before the Starflyer reached it. After a couple more engagements with Institute troops Bradley had fallen back again and was now trailing the Starflyer by nearly four hours.
Twilight brought them into yet another high valley where the alpine grass was still struggling to establish itself. Trees and bushes were confined to thickets along the side of the fast-flowing stream that cut along the bottom. Kieran was spelling Rosamund behind the wheel. As they started to climb again, he turned the headlights on. Long beams of blue-tinged light exposed the shelf that was now their road. There was no compacted stone here; the soil was a hard grit bound together with tough short grass and ragged moss. Occasional rockfall mounds had been carved away by machines decades ago, but apart from that the track appeared to be natural. Adam wondered if it had originally been formed by the local equivalent of mountain goats in the millennia before the flare. It was a little too convenient to be completely geological. He was also slightly discomforted by how narrow it was in sections. The width fluctuated constantly. There were no crash barriers; and the slope below was steep getting on for vertical. Thankfully, it was getting harder to see the valley floor as the light shrank away out of the sky. Stars began to appear overhead.