Sam braced herself, half expecting to feel a lethal electric jolt.
Of course, it didn’t come.
The fence buckled with the impact of her vehicle, strands of wire snapping, but it didn’t quite give. The land yacht’s engines strained against the obdurate barrier, wheels spinning in the sand, failing to find traction.
A second land yacht hit the fence, then a third and a fourth, ten more. More wires were severed, pillars torn up from the sand. The fence collapsed. The last of the Millennial guards dived for cover.
The second fence was only a hundred metres behind the first. Sam’s vehicle had lost much of its momentum, but the same wasn’t true of the rest of the fleet. The land yachts hit the second fence, shredded it and surged forward in triumph.
There was nothing between the Guardians and their objective now. Nothing but three miles of desert sands. They were leaving the Millennial guards, stunned, behind them. Just a handful of them had recovered their wits enough to climb to their feet, to fire their weapons after their receding foes.
The other land yachts fell back, allowing Sam’s to retake the lead.
She shouted instructions to her Aboriginal driver. He stepped on the accelerator again. They approached the looming red shape of Ayers Rock, but veered off to follow the line of its broad southern face to its western tip. They had gained two miles on the Millennial guards, and were concealed from them by the rock.
It was time to put the next stage of their plan into operation.
The land yachts came to a halt. Their occupants disembarked. All but one.
Jonah was still meta-tranced in his seat. Sam sent him a pop-up message, then turned to their driver. ‘I need you to stay with him,’ she said. ‘If he hasn’t come back by the time the Millennials get here—’
The older Aborigine nodded. ‘I will protect him,’ he promised.
Sam looked around at the other land yachts. She counted seventeen, all told. They must have lost two more to the Millennials’ rocket launchers as they had rushed the outer fence. It could have been a lot worse.
The Guardians knew what to do. They had parked their vehicles facing Ayers Rock, and had begun to calibrate the catapults on their backs. Sam looked nervously at the catapult attached to her own vehicle.
Her driver produced a laser rangefinder. He sighted through it at the rock, calculating its distance away and height at this point. He clicked his tongue thoughtfully, as he knelt by the catapult and adjusted it according to his readings.
Sam didn’t dare speak, she didn’t want to risk distracting him.
The moment she had been dreading came at last. She pulled on her parachute harness. It wasn’t a full chute, but it would slow her descent a little.
The driver turned to her. ‘It is ready,’ he said.
Sam’s heart was pounding as she stepped up onto the back of the land yacht and lowered herself into the catapult seat. She was tilted backwards, so all she could see was the dark sky, freckled with more stars than she had ever seen before.
There were still more adjustments to make for Sam’s size and weight. As she waited, she heard the first catapults being sprung. Several human shapes soared through the air above her. From this angle, she couldn’t tell if her fellow Guardians had landed safely or not. She heard gunfire from atop Ayers Rock, which suggested that at least some of them had made it.
Then, her driver straightened up, told her to brace herself, and Sam’s throat dried. It was her turn.
Sam didn’t feel the moment she was shot up into the air. It happened too fast. Suddenly, she was flying. It felt like being in the Metasphere – only she was in her real-world form. And she appeared to have left her stomach on the ground.
Sam had to remind herself that this was the real world. She didn’t have her unicorn’s wings here, couldn’t use them to control her flight. She was at the mercy of such real-world forces as momentum and gravity.
She closed her eyes, bit her lip, remembered what she had been told. She had to suppress the natural urge to struggle, had to straighten her body, keep it limp.
Her chute operated automatically, just as the momentum given her by the catapult wore off and gravity seized hold of her. Her driver’s calculations had been near-flawless. Sam was still going to hit hard – but she had expected as much. That was why she had padded herself this morning.
She had the briefest of impressions of figures fighting on top of Uluru as she hurtled towards them.
Before she could think of anything else, Sam was rolling in red dust, so far and so fast that she thought she might just roll right off the far side of the rock.
She rolled, skidded, bumped to a halt, lying on her back, bruised, breathless.
But there was no time to indulge her aches and pains. She hardly felt them, anyway, over her jubilation at having made it up here intact. She pushed herself to her feet, decoupled her chute, drew her pistol.
And Sam raced to join the battle.
 *
The Millennials were taken by surprise.
The last thing they had expected was for their enemies to reach them so quickly. Only nine or ten of them were waiting on the vast, flat top of Ayers Rock – and their immediate brief, Sam imagined, had just been to keep an eye on events below.
Suddenly, there were Guardians hurtling towards the Millennials – and, within a few seconds, those Guardians were upon them, and had outnumbered them.
By the time Sam arrived, both sides were shooting at each other. There was little cover up here – just a raised hatchway leading down into the rock – so the air was thick with bullets. One whizzed by Sam’s left ear, close enough that she could feel the heat from its casing. She chalked her survival up to nothing more than luck.
The Guardians had the edge in numbers, but the Millennials were better armed. The Guardians had expected this, though. They closed with their foes, challenging them hand-to-hand, making full use of their knives and spears and sticks and whatever else they had been able to lay their hands on back in Woomera.
An older Millennial woman crouched behind the raised hatchway, her rifle readied, looking for a target in the ever-expanding scrum. Sam charged her, knocked her to the ground, and they rolled in the dust together.
The Millennial lost her weapon, and made the mistake of scrambling after it. Sam leapt on her from behind, got her in a chokehold. She held it until the Millennial’s face turned red, until she was on the verge of passing out.
Sam hadn’t intended to kill her. There was no need. However, her enemy stiffened in her grip as a bullet thudded into her chest. It had come from the gun of another Millennial: a stocky kid, who recoiled in horror and dropped his weapon as he realised he had just shot an ally. Evidently, he had been aiming at Sam.
A moment later, the kid disappeared beneath a seething mass of Guardians.
Numbers were winning the day. The last of the Millennials broke free from the melee and raced for the hatchway. He was cut down by a hail of bullets in mid- dive.
The Guardians had suffered just four fatalities – although a similar number again had broken their own bones in awkward landings.
‘Uluru!’ The shout came from the Aboriginal girl, Kala. She lifted her painted face to the night sky, and fired her pistol above her head in victory. Without waiting for Sam, she ordered her people onwards. They dropped through the entrance hatch, one by one, baying for more Millennial blood.
Sam clambered through the hatchway, her foot finding the first rung of a ladder beneath it. She dropped into a large, open space, which was littered with wooden packing crates – some sort of unloading area.
She saw a row of three lifts and could hear gears grinding, unoiled chains squealing. One of the lifts was active, doubtless bringing up Millennial reinforcements. She didn’t have to warn the others. Kala was already lining them up in ambush, at least the ones with guns. The lift doors parted to reveal six Millennials. Like their fellows above, they were taken aback at how far their foes had got.
They didn’t get off a single shot between them.
Kala leaned into the metal cage lift, hit the controls
and dodged out again as the doors slid shut. The lift shuddered, groaned and began its downwards journey with six dead passengers – an unmistakable message for whoever had sent them.
Kala let out her war cry again, and the other Aborigines joined in.
There was a stairwell in the corner and Kala led the way towards it, unstoppable now. Sam called after her, ‘Be careful, please!’ This war wasn’t won yet. She doubted, however, that the girl had even heard her.
The rest of the Guardians were dropping through the hatchway, hurrying past Sam, following their allies downstairs. Sam made for the lifts, intending to disable them so that no more Millennials could use them to get up here.
Then, suddenly, the unloading area began to fill with gas.
It hissed out of tiny nozzles in the walls around Sam, tinting the air green. As she drew breath, she felt the gas, stinging, in her throat. It clawed at her eyes, drawing out tears. She made for the ladder, but there were too many people in her way. They were coughing, crying out in panic, stampeding each other in their rush for fresh air.
More Guardians came up behind Sam, returning from the stairs, finding them impassable. But there was no sign of Kala, or her followers. They must have pressed on.
‘Get down!’ spluttered Sam. ‘On the floor. The gas is lighter than air!’
She threw herself onto her stomach, searched her coverall pockets for a handkerchief. She found one, pressed it over her nose and mouth, breathed through it. It helped, but not much. The stinging gas was in Sam’s lungs. She had swallowed a mouthful of it too. Her stomach was convulsing. Beside her, a sun-bronzed, blond-haired man with bandoliers slung over his rippling muscles was sick on the floor.
Behind Sam, an Aboriginal woman lost her grip on the exit ladder and fell.
In front of her, through a green haze, she could see the indicator lights of the three lifts. Two of them – the two not occupied by Millennial corpses – were rising.