It had taken the best part of seven hours, looking through a scuffed, misted visor in the light of four paraffin lamps. Her back ached, her fingers were numb, her head was full of the coding from obsolete programs. She clambered slowly to her feet, hating the sound her joints made as she moved. It was like being an old woman.
“Run the connection verifier,” she told Valentine, the convoy’s technical chief.
“Got it,” he shouted from outside.
Samantha picked up the handheld arrays lying on the crumbling enzyme-bonded concrete floor, and closed the wicks on the paraffin lamps one by one. She was confident enough that the power connections would work. This was the ninth manipulator station they’d set up in five weeks, making her quite an expert on the old niling d-sinks.
“We got power flow,” Valentine called.
Samantha went to the open door, stretching elaborately to work the knots out of her too-stiff muscles. The sun was just rising over the foothills, revealing Trevathan Gulf, the huge valley that stretched out below her. They were on the northwestern corner of the Dessault range, only four hundred kilometers from Mount Herculaneum. Every day, she thought she could see the crest of the gigantic volcano rising through the shimmering air when she looked to the south, a gray splinter hovering tantalizingly along the horizon. Other people in the convoy said she was imagining things. Aphrodite’s Seat ought to be visible from their altitude, possibly the glacier ring as well. Today her eyes were just too tired to peer through the thin air.
Bright sunlight washed along Trevathan Gulf, sparking off the multitude of tributary streams that wound their way through forests of deciduous trees that had colonized the valley floor. The Gulf was a geological fault pushing out from the Grand Triad to split the Dessault range like a highway bulldozed by fallen angels. Its softly meandering course ran over seven hundred kilometers from the base of Mount Zeus in the west to the scrubland border of the High Desert in the east. Eighteen big rivers, and hundreds of smaller streams, drained out of it through the valleys of the sundered northernmost mountains to spill across the Aldrin Plains. Winding rivers carried the water across the grasslands to the North Sea. It was an irrigation system that supported nearly a quarter of the farms on the planet.
Translucent cottontuft clouds scudded low over the treetops, precursors to the heavy storm residue that would arrive later that morning after it had raged around the Grand Triad. Once the dark cumulus was overhead, it would rain for at least three hours. Given the Gulf’s altitude, the water was always cold, sometimes threaded with sleet. The caravan had endured the chilly, rainy climate for weeks now as they helped set up for the planet’s revenge.
“Good job,” Harvey said in his rasping voice. He was standing just outside the shelter, dressed in the same mustard-yellow protective suit that everyone in the caravan wore.
“Same old job,” she replied.
“Yes, but done well. And that is vital.”
“Are we going to start the test?”
“Aye.”
They walked away from the shelter with its thick cladding of ivy. When the hole had been drilled for the solid state heat exchange cable and the shelter erected around the niling d-sink, this had been a broad swathe of open land on the northern side of the Gulf, with just a few saplings struggling for life on the stony foothills. Now with the rain nurturing the grass, lichens, and mosses spread by the revitalization team, the trees had thrived. There was no clear ground anymore, the forest had spread out from the floor of Trevathan Gulf to rise up toward the peaks in a wavy line broken by gullies and ridges. Genemodified pines were in a majority up here on the slopes, though vigorous sycamores were always challenging them for space, and equally prolific species like white poplars and maples fell away in proportion to the altitude above the valley floor. The shelter was now surrounded by bushy weeping pines twenty meters high that crowded aggressively around spindly horn-beams and birch trees. A variety of ivy that had leaves so dark they were nearly black plagued everything; carpeting the sandy ground and swaddling the trunks of every tree. The shelter had been completely swamped by the thick creeper. It had taken them an hour to find and clear the doorway again.
Even without the ivy, the forest provided excellent cover for the shelter, and all its cousins, along the Trevathan Gulf, but reaching it was difficult. The caravan could drive across the foothills above the forest line, plowing through the streams and following the contours around sharp folds; but pushing through the trees was a specialist business. The Guardians Samantha was working with had stolen a JCB trailblazer from one of the tour companies that provided hyperglider flights over the Grand Triad. Its big forward roller-scythe of harmonic blades was the only way of chewing through the forest to reach the shelter. Once they’d reached it, the big machine had circled around in a spiral, clearing ground to set up the station equipment. Samantha knew it was the only way, but she couldn’t help thinking that from the air the trailblazer’s path must look like a giant arrow cutting through the trees, pinpointing their stations. It was a good job there weren’t many aircraft on Far Away.
The equipment they’d set up sat on the springy mat of wood chips spewed out by the trailblazer. It had taken three trucks to carry the crates that they’d unpacked. In two days, the components had been assembled into a ungainly five-sided pyramid of black metal, standing seven meters high. Dew was already collecting in the crevices and ridges as the sun rose high enough to shine on the bulky machine.
Samantha and Harvey walked around its base, toward the road that the trailblazer had carved. Two McSobel technicians were fussing over an open panel, which revealed a matrix of red and amber lights. Valentine was standing behind them. “Any minute now,” he said.
The convoy’s vehicles were parked in a line back down the broken path, out of range from the hazardous em pulses given off by the niling d-sink. When she was three hundred meters from the shelter, Samantha took her helmet off and took a deep breath of cool, moist, unfiltered air. The scent of pine was thick in the air as she trod on the shattered splinters of bark and mashed needles.
“I’d like you to handle the last two stations,” Harvey wheezed.
“Why? Where are you going?”
He pulled off his helmet. Sunlight shone on the thick translucent bands of skin that crisscrossed his cheeks and neck, giving his ruined face a milky texture. “A message came in last night while you were busy. The clans are putting together raiding parties in case the Starflyer gets through the gateway at 3F Plaza. They’ll be spread along Highway One.”
“You can’t,” she said automatically, then sucked in her lower lip. “Sorry.”
“It’s only surface damage,” he said cheerfully. “I can still ride, and I can certainly still shoot—better than any of these lads who call themselves warriors these days. Besides, there’s a rumor the Barsoomians will join us. Now who could resist that?”
“No one, I suppose,” she said with a sigh. Trying to argue him out of it would be useless, she knew.
“Now don’t you go worrying about me. What you’re doing is the truly important thing.”
“Sure. What about Valentine?”
“He’s a good techhead, but we need someone who can drive this on. That’s you.”
“Thanks, but you know we can’t complete all the stations. We don’t have the equipment.”
“Have a little faith in Bradley Johansson, he’ll get the last components to us in time. Meanwhile, you can assemble the systems we do have, ready for the final installation.”
“I heard that we can only build another four functioning stations.”