Alic jumped up into the dark wagon. Outside, there was a terrific boom as the weapons fired.
Edmund hit the outside door running. Behind him, the administration block’s network was crashing from the disruptor software he’d loaded in. The sensors couldn’t see him; but Tarlo would know for sure someone was inside the force field. Someone who was trying to sabotage the Starflyer’s return. It didn’t take a tactical genius to work out what the next stage had to be.
The building housing the force field generator was an elongated geodesic hall of pearl-gray composite. He could see it protruding over a warehouse on the other side of the parking lot. Once he was there, this nightmare would be over.
His parked Honda came to life as soon as he loaded in the drive orders. It accelerated hard, wheels spinning on the damp concrete, and headed out toward the main road. As a distraction it should gain him a few seconds—so the Paris tactical experts claimed. Edmund sprinted in the opposite direction; if he could just make it to the cover of the warehouse he should be okay.
The turbid gray sky above the parking lot flared brilliant white. A terrifyingly loud screech echoed around the inside of the force field. Edmund lost his footing and went sprawling painfully on the concrete. He gawped up at the force field, where scarlet lightning was now scrabbling furiously against it. The vivid streamers slithered up into the air to strike the bottom of the station force field.
White light blazed again, and the horrendous noise ripped across the Far Away section. This time he understood: someone was shooting at the force field with incredibly powerful weapons, trying to break through. He made himself get up. Blood was soaking into his shirt sleeve where he’d landed on his elbow. Wincing at the pain, and cowering as another energy blast struck the force field, he ran for the warehouse.
By the time he made it around the corner he was breathing heavily. The geodesic hall was only a hundred eighty meters away now. He dashed for it as fast as he could, ignoring the awesome burns of light overhead as they alternated between dazzling white and lurid crimson. The punishing noise trapped under the force field was just about constant. His ears were ringing badly.
He was short of breath and unsteady on his feet when he finally arrived at the door to the geodesic hall. It was open, which he didn’t expect. He took a quick glance inside. Nothing was moving. Edmund pulled down a ragged breath and went in.
The generator was a large cluster of metal and plastic shapes laid out along the floor, as big as a house. White and red light took turns to fluoresce the composite arching overhead. The stentorian roaring was muted inside. He identified the power injection points, and put his hand down to his holster.
“Shit!” The shock stabbed through him as his fingers closed on empty leather. There was no pistol; it must have dropped out when he fell. “Oh, fuck. Fuck!” He stared helplessly at the bulky generator. He had no idea where the control console was—that’s if there even was a control console. His head twisted from side to side, searching for something he could use to smash a section of casing. That would be as much use as screaming at it to switch off, he decided. There was nothing else for it; he’d have to go back for the ion pistol.
The interior of the hall flared with blue-white light. An ion pulse ripped through the air, and struck the generator casing. A dazzling purple discharge seethed down the dark metallic composite, partially obscured by a fountain of smoldering plastic droplets.
A second ion pulse hit a power injector, exactly where the Paris experts had told Edmund to aim. It was suddenly very quiet. The alternating red and white light outside had stopped.
Very slowly, Edmund Li turned around to face the person who was shooting, knowing what he’d see. Tarlo was standing to one side of the open door, his arm outstretched, holding an ion pistol.
“Why?” Edmund asked.
Tarlo simply smiled as he swung the pistol around to point at Edmund Li’s head. He fired again.
Adam was sweating inside his armor. He’d calculated the firepower of the atom lasers himself. It should have been enough to break the force field, especially with the dump-web stressing it. Instead he was watching the awesome energy blasts ricochet dangerously.
The force field vanished. “Dreaming heavens,” Adam grunted. “Your inside man did it.”
“What do you know,” Alic said. “Edmund came through.”
Adam moved the Ables ND47 forward cautiously. Radar scanned ahead, showing him the tracks were broken less than a kilometer in front of them. “We’re not going to get much farther in this,” he told the teams back in the wagons. The sensors showed him the phalanx of vehicles around the gateway that led to Half Way. He launched another zone killer. The triangular shape streaked away from its launcher on top of the engine, curving in a short ballistic arc. It detonated in a cascade of green scintillations that sank toward the ground in a display of perverse splendor. Harsh orange fireballs spoiled the beauty as the vehicles and their munitions exploded.
The train braked again, grinding over the last few meters of track before coming to a halt in front of the shallow blast crater that had destroyed the rails. “End of the line,” Adam said. He unlocked the wagons.
“I’m staying here,” Vic announced as Kieran gunned the armored car down the ramp.
There were eight of them crammed inside, Vic, Alic, Wilson, Anna, Bradley Johansson, Jamas, Ayub, and Kieran up in the driver’s seat. All of them wore armor suits of various marques, though externally there was little difference: stone black figures that outlined a rough human shape. Additional weapons packs distorted their basic humanity.
“I understand,” Bradley said
“No you don’t. He’s still here.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I can feel it. Getting in was too easy. Tarlo’s a smart bastard. He doesn’t play a straight game.”
“Then you should stay inside this armored car,” Bradley said. “It is extremely well protected.”
“No. I’ll find him out there. Hey, I’ll be covering your ass. He’ll have something planned for you.”
“My team has planned for most eventualities.”
Vic stood up. “But not all of them.”
“As you wish,” Bradley said.
The side door slid open. It was dim outside, the air layered with smoke from the ruined vehicles.
“You coming, Boss?” Vic asked.
“We know the Starflyer’s real,” Alic said. “It’s just on the other side of that gateway. That’s my priority. Jim, Matthew, if you want to go with Vic, that’s fine by me.”
“I’ll stick with you, Boss,” Jim said.
“Sorry, Vic,” Matthew said, “but this is bigger.”
“That’s okay.” The big man stooped to get through the door. “I want this for myself. And Gwyneth.”
“Good luck,” Alic said.
Adam climbed down the ladder on the side of the engine, thankful for the suit’s electromuscle. It was a long way to the ground, and he was getting tired after days of high-pressure preparation. Three armored cars were waiting beside the broken track for him, blunt olive-green ovals with a smooth skin of passive deflector panels riding on ten independent mesh-flex wheels. They were in a triangular formation around three Volvo trucks. The Volvos were based on the twenty-wheel GH chassis, developed for rough terrain on developing worlds. They’d been customized with a cruder version of deflector paneling than the armored cars, then beefed up with extensive electronic countermeasures, turning them into squat brutes a dull gray-blue in color. With their diesel tanks full they should have the range to dive from Armstrong City to the Dessault Mountains, where the components they were carrying were desperately needed for the planet’s revenge.
As Adam made his way over to the armored car taking point duty he saw Vic walking away, and shook his head in regret. They could have done with a genuine professional. Personal feelings were always bad news in combat situations.
The armored car’s side door slid open, and he climbed in. There was one seat left, opposite Paula Myo. Oh, crap.
“Do you want to drive, sir?” Rosamund asked.
“No, that’s okay. Just remember what I taught you.”
“If she does that, she’ll probably wind up in suspension, just like you’re going to,” Paula said.
“We’re not in that courtroom yet, Investigator. We both have to live through the next couple of days first, and personally I don’t give us particularly high odds.”
“You want us to kill her for you, sir?” Rosamund asked. She sounded very hostile.
“Oh, dreaming heavens, no. Let’s just all stay civilized, shall we? All of you, leave the Investigator and me to work out our own little problem by ourselves.”
“Okay. But you just have to say the word.” Rosamund fed power to the engines, and the armored car rolled forward.
“You should watch your mouth,” Adam told Paula. “Remember this is my home ground.”
“To the best of my knowledge you’ve never been to Far Away.”
“No, but these are my people.”
“I don’t think so. You’re a black market arms dealer who gave them some training. Do they know how many innocent people you slaughtered before Johansson sheltered you?”
“You two,” Bradley said, “knock it off. We have a different war to fight today.”
Adam bit back on his next comment. He was sure the Investigator was smiling inside her helmet. His virtual hands pulled sensor images from all the armored cars out of his mission display grid. They were heading across the last few hundred meters of ground in front of the small gateway. It shone a pallid coral-pink in front of them.
“It’s open,” Rosamund said.
“Pay attention to the weapons,” Adam told her. There were over twenty maser cannons covering the gateway, the first line of defense in any alien invasion. Ironic, Adam thought, ultimately they wound up facing the wrong way. The X-ray lasers on the armored cars began firing, targeting the cannon.
