Stig checked his timer again: seven minutes. The entire operation was fucked; totally, thoroughly, fucked. They hadn’t stopped the Starflyer. They’d killed hundreds of innocent people and wrecked a good portion of Armstrong City. And now, they couldn’t even help their comrades through the wormhole. He couldn’t bear the idea of telling Harvey that the vital equipment to complete the planet’s revenge would never be coming, that Johansson was left high and dry on Half Way, and that he was responsible for it all. Facing the ambush Cruisers single-handed would be preferable.
He realized his clenched fists had risen up of their own accord, a response to the complete futility he felt. “I’ll stay,” he said, and consciously forced his hands down again. “This is my fault. I’ll put a team together and take out the Institute ambush before the wormhole opens again. Everyone else can resume their harassment duty down Highway One.”
“No you don’t,” Olwen said. “Listen to me, and listen hard, you’re not falling back into the self-pity routine. We can’t afford that luxury. Even if we do manage to knock out the ambush, the wormhole won’t open again for another fifteen hours. The Starflyer will have an unbeatable lead by then. We’ve lost the equipment Adam’s bringing. Forget about it, Stig. If it comes through in fifteen hours, it won’t make the slightest difference, it’ll be too late. We have to take off after the Starflyer with every weapon we’ve got and run that motherfucker into the ground. We have to do that now. And you know it.”
“Yeah,” he said brokenly. “I know.”
A hundred meters from the rock shoreline, the Carbon Goose extended its undercarriage. Wilson throttled back the turbines and let the giant plane slide forward sedately through the water until its nose wheels touched the gently sloping granite shelf. They rose up out of the icy sea with that slow undulation unique to taxiing planes the galaxy over.
Flames were flickering among the debris that used to be Port Evergreen. Wilson had to steer sharply to starboard to avoid the shattered remnants of another Carbon Goose. He could see some of the armor suits moving about across the land, still checking to see if any of the Starflyer’s agents were operational. The wormhole generator building looked intact, which he took as a good sign. Adam and Paula had been working something out in the main deck. They’d sounded confident when he spoke to them just before touchdown. It wasn’t a combination he would normally put a lot of faith in, but right now he was willing to accept help from any direction.
He and Anna began powering down the flight systems, then went down to join everyone in the main deck. Morton and Alic had come back in, their suits bristling with frost. Even Tiger Pansy had come up from the main cargo deck to witness the conference. Wilson wondered just how much of their worry and nerves she was soaking up for Qatux. It wouldn’t be a difficult task; the upper deck was thick with them.
Johansson himself poured some coffee for Alic and Morton. They couldn’t sit down: the seats were too small to take their armor.
“We can go through when we want,” Adam said. “We pick our moment and ram through with the armored cars. They probably won’t even have their weapons switched on right now. The element of surprise is completely on our side.”
Morton flashed him a very skeptical look. “Go on.”
“The stormrider flies a twenty-hour ellipse through and around the Lagrange point. It spends five hours powering the wormhole while the plasma current pushes it in toward the neutron star, then fifteen hours gliding back into that original position. Right now it’s starting its return flight. All we have to do is take control of its guidance system and thrusters, and shove it back into the thick of the plasma current. It can generate enough power for us to open the wormhole.”
“But it probably won’t be able to fly back to the Lagrange point again,” Bradley said. “This will be a one-time attempt. We’ll be closing the door on Far Away until a replacement power source can be built here.”
“Given what’s happened on Boongate I hardly think that’s a consideration for us,” Adam said. “We must focus on our one opportunity to get to Far Away. This is it.”
“Good idea,” Wilson said. “Let’s do it.”
“Wait one,” Morton said. “Even if you can hack the guidance system, we still have to face the weapons on the other side. I don’t buy this bullshit about switching them off until the start of the next cycle. For a start, if they’ve got one eye open they’ll see the wormhole open up again. They’re going to know we’ll be busting our balls to find a way to open it. All they have to do is link the guns to a simple sensor. Anybody sticks their head out through the pressure curtain and zap. My suit array identified what those trucks were loaded with, you know: neutron-injected atom laser. Are you sure your armored cars can take that kind of punishment? From one shot, maybe, maybe two, I’ll even believe you if you say five. But we don’t know what the fuck else is waiting for us on the other side. They can hit us with twenty-five atom lasers simultaneously. They can even nuke us; if we open the wormhole what’s to stop them flinging a fusion bomb through at us? Sentiment? Come on, get real here. It’s over.”
“If that’s what you believe, then you’re free to take the Carbon Goose back to Shackleton,” Bradley said. “You’ll be safe over the ocean when we open the wormhole no matter what happens. But I am going back through.”
“All the Guardians are,” Adam said.
“It’s suicide!”
“It might be suicide. And that gram of doubt is all the hope we need.”
“You have a beautiful desperation about you, Bradley Johansson,” Qatux said over the general band. “It can be as powerful as base emotions in someone as compelled as you. I did not realize this before.”
Wilson couldn’t help giving Tiger Pansy a disapproving look. Childish, he knew, none of this was down to her. The woman was chewing her gum, looking almost blithely unaware of what was being discussed around her. He wondered about that; just how naïve could a porn star be?
“That sums up most of the people in this passenger deck quite neatly,” Bradley said with a forced smile.
“May I inquire why you do not move the other end of the wormhole to a location on Far Away that does not have your enemies waiting outside?”
Tiger Pansy’s expression changed to one of mild surprise. She rose from her seat, looking as though she was being prodded along by someone unsavory.
Bradley gave her a discomforted stare as she came to stand in front of him, regarding his face with intense curiosity.
“The gateway,” Bradley said hesitantly. “Er, helps anchor the end of a wormhole. It’s very, uh, difficult to hold the end open and steady, especially given the distance involved here. The processing power to alter the wormhole coordinate is simply not available at Port Evergreen.”
Tiger Pansy’s heavily mascaraed eyes blinked uncertainly; she reached up and touched her fingertips to the side of Bradley’s face, as if she was consoling a lover. The sight of the action made Wilson feel queasy; there was something disturbingly parasitic about it. Bradley didn’t flinch.
“I can perform the computations for you,” Qatux said.