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.”
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 sped 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