Chapter 105 Hundred and five
The sound of the open road used to be a lonely thing. Not anymore.
When the Iron Wolves rode out of Coldwater, we didn't just leave tracks; we carved a metallic, roaring river through the heart of the terraformed wasteland.
Thousands of headlights pierced the dense, bioluminescent canopy of the crystal-leafed jungle. At the head of the colossal convoy rode Dax and I, flanked by Tank, Reaper, and Sienna. Behind us was a chaotic, thundering mechanical serpent: Jax and his Revers on their spiked, heavy choppers; repurposed Board transport rigs driven by refugees; and the surviving Paladins riding atop heavily armored, treaded scav-crawlers, their white-and-gold armor stark against the rusted iron.
I glanced down at the cracked screen of my data-deck, mounted to the Sovereign's handlebars.
< DESTINATION: NEO-ANGELES. DISTANCE: 2,984 MILES. TIME TO MANTLE DETONATION: 71 HOURS, 14 MINUTES. >
"The math is brutal, Pres!" I yelled into my comms, the wind trying to rip the words from my helmet. "To cover three thousand miles in three days, we have to average forty-two miles an hour without ever touching the brakes. But factoring in the terrain and the mud, we need to hold eighty just to build a buffer!"
"Then we hold eighty!" Dax’s voice barked back over the encrypted channel. He was tucked low over his Interceptor, leaning into a sharp curve around a massive, glowing root system. "No pit stops! If a rig breaks down, the crew transfers to another vehicle, and we leave the scrap! We do not stop moving!"
"You hear that, boys?" Jax’s deep, gravelly voice chuckled over the open frequency. "The King says keep the throttle pinned! Blood on the asphalt!"
The Revers roared their approval, the sound of fifty open-piped choppers deafening the alien calls of the jungle wildlife.
But the jungle wasn't just going to let an army roll through its pristine, mutated ecosystem unchallenged.
"Movement on the right flank!" Captain Reyes called out. She was standing in the gunner’s hatch of a heavy scav-crawler right behind the motorcycle vanguard, her plasma rifle coated in the residual, glowing Origin-Code from the Neon Rain.
I looked into my right mirror.
Pacing the convoy through the dense, glowing blue brush were massive shadows. Origin-Beasts. But these weren't the rhino-sized wolves we had fought when we rescued the Code-Born. These were something worse.
They looked like prehistoric big cats, but their bodies were entirely composed of jagged, shifting crystalline muscle that refracted the ambient blue light of the forest. They were incredibly fast, their multi-jointed legs eating up the uneven terrain without breaking a sweat.
"Crystal-Stalkers!" Reaper identified them, shifting his sniper rifle to his left shoulder while steering his bike with one hand. "They're drawn to the kinetic vibration of the convoy! They're hunting the heavy rigs in the middle of the pack!"
"Do not break formation!" Dax ordered. "Reyes! Jax! Keep them off the transports!"
The Stalkers lunged.
Three of the massive crystal beasts leaped from the glowing underbrush, aiming directly for a flatbed rig carrying a dozen terrified refugees and the Code-Born kids.
Captain Reyes didn't hesitate. She rotated her crawler's heavy mounted turret and opened fire. The phased plasma bolts streaked across the dark, slamming into the lead Stalker mid-air. The Origin-Code ripped through the beast's crystalline armor, shattering it into a shower of harmless, glowing dust that washed over the windshield of the flatbed.
But the other two beasts landed heavily on the side of the rig, their massive claws sinking into the durasteel plating. The transport swerved violently, the driver fighting to keep the heavy tires in the mud.
"Get off my rig!" Jax bellowed.
The massive Revers President didn't shoot. He matched speed with the swerving transport, riding his chopper dangerously close to the massive tires. With a feral roar, Jax stood up on his foot pegs, drew his humming, blue-phased gear-axe, and swung it in a brutal upward arc.
The phase-blade cleanly severed the front legs of the Stalker clinging to the cab. The beast shrieked, falling backward under the heavy rear treads of Captain Reyes's crawler, ending the threat instantly.
"Good hit, mercenary!" the Paladin Commander yelled from the roof of the adjacent rig, laying down covering fire with his own phased rifle.
"Don't get used to it, corporate!" Jax hollered back, flashing a bloody grin.
For the next four hours, it was a high-speed, rolling war. The convoy tore through the bioluminescent jungle, fighting off waves of mutated predators. The Iron Wolves took the point, the Revers and Paladins held the flanks, and the Code-Born kids in the center used their localized Origin-Code to constantly recharge the dead plasma batteries of the gunners.
We were a perfectly synchronized, highly lethal machine.
But as the sun began to rise, painting the sky above the glowing canopy in shades of pale violet and orange, the dense jungle abruptly ended.
Dax and I crested a steep, muddy ridge, leading the vanguard out of the tree line.
"Hit the brakes!" Dax roared into the comms, slamming both boots down on the asphalt and drifting his Interceptor sideways to a screeching halt.
I locked my brakes, the Sovereign skidding to a stop just inches from the edge.
Behind us, the massive convoy initiated a cascading, chaotic emergency stop. Heavy rigs locked their treads, choppers swerved, and Paladins braced themselves as a mile-long chain of vehicles ground to a halt in a cloud of dust and blue ash.
I looked down, my heart hammering against my ribs.
We hadn't hit a wall. We had run out of earth.
Stretching out in front of us, blocking the path to the west, was a massive, catastrophic scar in the planet's surface. The Origin-Code terraforming pulse hadn't just grown trees; it had violently reshaped the tectonic plates.
It was a canyon, easily a mile wide and so deep the bottom was swallowed in darkness. And flowing through the center of the abyss wasn't water it was a raging, turbulent river of raw, volatile sub-ether energy, glowing with a blinding, radioactive purple light.
"The Grand Fracture," I whispered, staring at my mapping telemetry. "This wasn't here in the old world. The terraforming split the continent."
Tank pulled his trike up beside us, letting out a low whistle. "Well, Prez. Unless you know how to make three thousand tons of iron and durasteel fly, our road trip just hit a dead end."
Dax dismounted, walking to the very edge of the precipice. He looked down at the raging purple energy river, then across the mile-wide gap to the other side.
< TIME TO DETONATION: 66 HOURS, 10 MINUTES. > My deck pulsed with a merciless red warning.
"There's no bridge," Reyes said, jumping down from her crawler and jogging up to the edge. "And we can't go around. The Fracture spans the entire western fault line. Going north or south adds a thousand miles to the route. We'll never reach Neo-Angeles in time."
Jax walked up, chewing on a fresh cigar. He looked at the impossible gap, then at Dax. "So, what's the play, King? We grow wings?"
Dax didn't look defeated. He looked at the massive, sparking river of sub-ether energy far below us. Then, he turned and looked at me, a dangerous, calculating light in his eyes.
"Ghost," Dax said, his voice deadly serious. "The Red-Queen’s Phase-Shield was made of sub-ether, right? And you used the Origin-Code to turn it into a solid blade that cut a tank in half."
"Yes," I answered cautiously, seeing the terrifying gears turning in his head. "But I had the Citadel's mainframe to anchor the code."
Dax pointed down at the mile-wide river of raw, raging energy.
"I don't need you to cut a tank," Dax said, a fierce, reckless grin spreading across his face. "I need you and the kids to reach into that river, freeze the sub-ether, and build me a mile-long ramp. We aren't going around. We're jumping it."