The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (263 page)

They saw the smoke from a few kilometers away. Thin smears of gray vapor wafted up into the hazy equatorial sky, the kind of smoke that only comes from embers.

Haville wasn’t a big town; it ran for a couple of kilometers beside the road before tailing off into orange groves. The Starflyer convoy had started a firestorm at one end and ripped it down the entire length. Shacks assembled from carbon panels had been reduced to piles of slag sprawling over their concrete foundations. Black horizontal scorch marks produced by lasers and masers were visible on all the surviving concrete block walls, running right across the gutted buildings. People were visible amid the debris, desolated and wandering around aimlessly, their shocked eyes following the Guardians’ convoy as they charged past. One large open yard had a line of corpses, wrapped up in cloth.

“They hit every node junction,” Keely reported. “It’s not like the net was armored or anything.”

“I don’t think they were that precise,” Bradley said as they reached the end of Haville. Trees along the edge of the orange grove were still burning. “This is a deliberate scorched earth operation to kill any long-range communications along the road.”

“Do you think they’ve done this to every town?” Olwen asked.

“Undoubtedly.”

Nothing else moved along Highway One now. South of Rob Lacey’s great avenue of redwoods the land rose steadily to be capped by low hills whose valleys interlocked in gentle curves. Bradley could remember traveling along a newly laid Highway One when this tableland had been barren territory. Today, nearly two centuries later, the rolling slopes were carpeted by rich emerald vegetation of shaggy grass and small verdant trees. Midday sun turned the crown of the sapphire sky to a white blaze-patch too bright to look at directly. Visibility was perfect. Looking over Stig’s shoulder through the thick glass of the armored car’s windshield he could see the mud-gray strip of enzyme-bonded concrete wind onward through the meandering vales for kilometers in front of them. There was nowhere for a Cruiser patrol to hide. Stig and the other drivers were piling on the speed.

Since Haville, they’d passed through four more small towns that the Starflyer had razed to the ground, ending with Zeefield, the southernmost settlement along Highway One. Word had obviously spread southward in time. The last three had been deserted; they’d seen no distraught victims nor lines of corpses amid the smoldering ruins. Wherever the residents had fled to, they were staying quiet. Keely had been unable to raise anyone on the local bands.

Right across the rolling tablelands, the fiber-optic cable that linked the Institute to Armstrong City supported a series of nodes to provide communications to anyone using the road. They were spaced five kilometers apart, protected from the elements inside meter-wide domes that sprouted from the ground beside the road like composite mushrooms. Every one had been masered, the high-density carbon turning to a slate-gray sludge surrounded by singed grass.

“I came up here for my first act against the Starflyer,” Stig said as Highway One began to dip down into one of the deeper vales toward the end of the tablelands. “We were always cutting the cable up here. It was easy.”

“Now they’re using that isolation against us,” Bradley said. “Though attacking every single node speaks of deep insecurity. A couple of simple cuts would be sufficient.”

“Why bother?” Olwen asked. “It knows we’re using short wave; it can’t block our critical communications.”

“In some respects it is remarkably unimaginative,” Bradley said. “If destroying the road net has caused us inconvenience before, it simply continues to perform the disruption.”

“That sounds more like an array program than a sentient creature.”

“In some respects its neurological functions are strikingly similar to those of a processor. What tactics it possesses it either determines by trial and error, or absorbs from other more intuitive sources. A fast-flowing situation like this chase will be difficult for it. There is no time for it to work through options to see which is the most effective.”

“You mean it gets its ideas from humans?”

“Yes, a lot of the time; though the longer they are under its control, the more their ability to think in an original or inventive fashion is reduced.”

“No wonder it wants to get rid of us. It can’t compete.”

“Not on our terms, no. But nonetheless it has brought us to the brink of destruction. Don’t underestimate it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bradley was moved by the level of determination in her voice. Returning to Far Away after so long he’d even been slightly disturbed by the unquestioning respect he kindled among the clans. It was almost as if the Commonwealth authorities were right to brand him a cult leader.

Highway One began its long descent out of the tablelands, tracking around the steeper gorges, then bending in great switchback loops down the final escarpment to deliver them onto the sweltering veldt. This was where Far Away’s first true rainforest was busy establishing itself, sweeping out from Mount StOmer at the northwestern corner of the Dessault Mountains away to the southern shoreline of the Oak Sea. The grasses had come first, seeded by the blimpbots, refreshing the soil before the trees and vines were introduced over a fifty-year period. The central core of rainforest was now thriving and expanding without any further human encouragement.

Bradley could see the Anculan Valley from a long way off, an intrusive furrow running west to east across the veldt, emptying into the Oak Sea. Its vegetation was noticeably darker than the luxuriant jade of the rainforest, shading down to olive-green as if the gully was permanently in shadow. The river was fed by dozens of tributaries emerging from the Dessault range, giving it a lavish forceful flow that had cut deep into the landscape, creating a gully over two hundred meters wide and up to thirty deep with near-sheer sides. Dense bushes filled the base of the gully on either side of the water, their half-exposed root balls scrabbling for purchase on the glutinous mud. Water pumpkins had colonized the shallows, their brimstone-colored fruit bobbing about, ranging from buds no bigger than oranges up to the full-grown football-size globes with mushy wrinkled skin. Their wreath of slim black tendrils swished around them in the current as if eels were nesting in the stem. This close to the mountains the Anculan’s water was loaded with so much sediment it was the color of milky coffee.

Given the difficulty and expense of ferrying steel girders to Far Away, the most cost-effective method of bridging a gulf of this size was with a single span arch of concrete supporting the road above, which narrowed from its usual four lanes down to two.

The Guardian demolition team had made a good job of bringing it down. All that remained of the arch were thick broken tusks of concrete curving up from either side of the river. The central hundred-meter section of the road was gone, its remnants a cluster of submerged boulders creating a furious surge of white water.

Alic and Morton stood on the edge of the broken road, using their active sensors to scan the thick wall of the rainforest on the opposite side. There was no sign of hostiles hidden among the wall of vegetation. “Looks clear,” Alic reported.

Stig and the others stood on the lip of the gorge next to the road, looking down into the surging water twenty meters below. Bodies were snagged on the new boulders, three of them wearing the dark impact armor of the Institute troops, a couple in camouflage fatigues. They all had terrible wounds. A Charlemagne had been snagged by the bushes just below the river, its body starting to bloat. When Stig started to scan upstream, he saw more bodies jammed into the mud and vegetation.

“Pretty clear which way they went,” Bradley said. A swathe of open ground bordered the top of the gorge, where grass creepers and bushes formed a buffer between the rainforest and the precipice. Its moist soil had been torn up by the wheels of the Starflyer convoy.

“Commander Hogan, Morton, could your people take point along here please,” Bradley said. “We need to find where they forded the river.”

“Sure thing,” Alic said. He and Morton left the bridge.

Cat’s Claws and the Paris team began jogging along the track, with the armored cars and jeeps following. They drove along the top of the gorge for another two kilometers. In some places the walls rose up to forty meters high. Below them, scattered along the river, dead bodies lay in the mud with water flowing around and over them. After the first thirty, everyone stopped counting.

The Starflyer convoy had made its crossing two and a quarter kilometers upriver from the bridge. A dip in the gorge wall on both sides reduced the height to a little over ten meters. Explosives had been used to rip the bottom out of the dip and pulverize the remainder of the wall, creating a sloping heap that the vehicles could drive down. It was a crude ramp that was mirrored on the other side of the Anculan.

Three wrecked Cruisers were just visible in the middle of the river, with the water churning over them; two more were burnt out on the northern ramp. One had been caught by kinetic and ion fire on the other side, then bulldozed out of the way by a heavier vehicle. Big patches of vegetation were blackened and smoldering. Twenty dead Charlemagnes were lying among the sodden bushes; some still had their riders strapped into the saddle. There were more bodies in the edges of the rainforest.

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.”