The Golden Queen

Chapter 18 (part 1 of 3)

They roared over the highway, which was ominously devoid of traffic. Ten kilometers up the road, they came upon a magtruck that had exploded, throwing out the corpses of dead vanquishers, and two kilometers farther along, the whipped past a score of Jaggets lying dead by the roadside.

Primary Jagget held his commlink to his mouth, shouting orders in his personal battle language, a code that was thick with nasal tones and grunts.

Forty kilometers from the city, a wall of scintillating lights blossomed ahead to his right-portable shielding. Just beyond the shields, a curtain of flames and black smoke erupted.

Dronon fliers-swift, saucer-shaped craft-whipped through the air at Mach 15, dropping ordnance on some unseen front. The very ground shook and buckled under the force of the assault, and Veriasse hoped that the saucers wouldn't target them. Jagget screamed into his commlink, and a squadron of slower V-shaped fighters piloted by humans swerved from the north, perhaps forty strong. They would be no match for the dronon. They could only serve as a diversion.

Veriasse and the others continued north for five kilometers, heading toward the front until a vast pall of smoke hung over the little party. It was nearly dark as night, yet Veriasse did not turn on his airbike's headlights.

They had not gone far into the cloud when Primary Jagget shouted to them, "Our front is collapsing ahead. My men can't maintain it. Can we veer off the road?"

"Yes," Veriasse shouted. "There is a river to the right. We can follow it north."

Veriasse alone knew where the gate to Dronon lay. He wondered if he should tell the others its location. Two hundred years ago, he had ordered his men to build the gate. In trying to plant the destination markers at Dronon, he had lost three complete technical crews. Afterward, Semarritte had forbade him from trying to put more gates on Dronon, just as she had always forbade him from building a gate that would lead to her omni-mind. She said some risks were not worth taking. But unlike the gates of old, constructed in simpler times, this one was hidden. He had built it into the arch of a small bridge that spanned the river.

He pictured the location, sent the thought to his mantle, ordered it to transmit the knowledge to Gallen. Gallen suddenly turned, caught Veriasse's eye, then nodded.

Two kilometers farther, the black clouds of soot began to thin. Suddenly light flashed across the sky far behind them, brighter than the sun, followed by a second blinding flash nearby. The light continued to glow redly through the sooty sky.

"They're using atomics!" Jagget shouted, and Veriasse glanced back. Mushroom clouds were forming where the inn had been, and again at a point perhaps nine kilometers behind. "Open your speed up."

Veriasse's heart raced. They were still ten kilometers from the gate. The atomic bombs would raise a wall of dirty, swiftly moving air as the air superheated. The dust storm would rush away from the bomb site at over a hundred kilometers per hour-a speed impossible to match in such rough terrain. Yet if they did not beat that surging storm of radioactive dust, it would kill them all.

"Vanquishers ahead!" Jagget shouted. On the highway ahead, two kilometers away, a convoy topped a steep hill. Veriasse swerved from the road into a snow-filled ravine, and the others followed. The airbikes kicked up rooster tails of snow, millions of tiny motes that glittered like slivers of ruby, reflecting the atomic fires behind.

Veriasse began counting the seconds, listening for the blast, trying to discern exactly how far they were from the detonation site. Fifty seconds later, the air filled with a high-pitched shriek, indicating that the Jagget's shields had collapsed, followed by a deep booming.

The ground rumbled and rolled in waves. To the northeast, a volcano began to spit a sluggish flow of lava down its sides.

The airbikes raced over a rise, down a rock-strewn gully, then swept onto a river, skating over flattened stones and lead-gray water that reflected the winter sky and the towering mushroom clouds that filled the heavens behind them like elementals of flame.

Veriasse glanced at his speedometer. They were traveling at only seventy kilometers an hour-fast over such uneven terrain, but not fast enough. He opened his throttle. "Faster," he shouted.

The river was an old one, and canyon walls soon rose around them as they surged through a narrow gorge. Veriasse's speed hit a hundred and twenty. Everynne pulled ahead of him. She had her head low to combat wind resistance. She threw a trail of icy water in his face, and he only hoped that she could make it as she raced ahead.

Time and again she flirted with death, weaving through the rocky gorge, taking corners so fast that she was only a hair's breadth from destruction. For eight more minutes they raced, and whenever they reached a straight portion of the river, Veriasse would glance back, each time hoping anew that the others had negotiated the last turn. Maggie's bike was both slow and dangerously unstable with the bear on it. Jagget stayed at the far end of the train, bringing up the rear.

The gate to Dronon waited for them somewhere ahead at the end of a wide bend. Through his mantle, Jagget transmitted a message: "We have pursuers behind me." Veriasse glanced back, thinking the saucers would be shooting overhead. He saw no saucers-only a great black wall of dust rushing toward them, the frontal tide of the nuclear storm.

Veriasse rounded a corner. Ahead, the river stretched straight for a kilometer, its troubled waters winking in the sunlight. At the far end spanned a bridge, a simple monstrosity of gray plasteel arching over the river. Veriasse looked at it, and his heart fell. The gate was built into a bridge, but he could not remember ever having seen this one before. Was this the bridge? "Everynne," he shouted, "initiate your key."

Everynne reached into the pack behind her, fumbled for a moment, and slowed her bike as she grabbed the key.

Veriasse slowed, pulled beside her, glanced back. Gallen whizzed past them, followed by the bike with Maggie and Orick on it. Orick's eyes were wide in terror, and the bear's tongue lolled from his mouth.

Jagget held up the rear, and as he rounded the corner, he looked at Veriasse and Everynne in surprise, slowed his throttle at the mouth of the narrow bend. He whipped out his incendiary rifle with one hand, raised it in salute to Veriasse.

Everynne took the key firmly in hand, opened up her throttle, and Veriasse followed directly behind, drenched by plumes of freezing water.

Everynne thumbed the unlocking sequence. Ahead a silver light began to glow beneath the bridge. Behind them, Veriasse heard vanquishers whoop in delight as they rounded the corner. He glanced back.

Three vanquishers in aircars whipped down the river channel, negotiating the tight turn.

Primary Jagget fired his rifle, and pure white light shot down the river. A vanquisher burst into flame, and his burning car screamed toward Jagget.

Another vanquisher swerved to avoid the explosion, and his car erupted into a fireball as it smashed against the canyon walls. The last in line killed his throttle, and his car slowed and bogged down in the water.

Jagget did not have time to avoid the burning car that hurtled toward him. In less than a heartbeat, his body transformed into a swarm of butterflies that lifted above the collision.