Chapter 106 Hundred and six
"A mile-long jump?" I stared at Dax, my voice cracking over the roar of the idling convoy. "Dax, the laws of physics just filed a restraining order against you. Even if I could pull the sub-ether up from that river and solidify it, the structural integrity required to hold the weight of fifty heavy scav-crawlers and a thousand motorcycles is mathematically impossible."
"Then we don't do the math, Ghost," Dax said, stepping closer to the edge of the abyss. The purple light from the raging river a mile below reflected in his amber eyes. "We do the impossible. We've been doing it since the night we met."
Jax walked up beside us, taking a long drag from his cigar and blowing the smoke over the precipice. "I'm with the hacker on this one, King. My choppers weigh eight hundred pounds fully loaded. Those Paladin crawlers weigh thirty tons. You build a bridge out of magic, and it snaps in the middle? We lose the whole army."
"It won't snap," Leo said.
The teenager stepped through the crowd of hardened bikers and soldiers, followed by the five younger Code-Born. They looked exhausted from the overnight ride, but their eyes were clear.
Leo looked down into the massive, dark canyon. The volatile, radioactive purple sub-ether churning at the bottom was the raw, unrefined byproduct of the Origin-Code terraforming pulse.
"Mia taught us how to compile the code," Leo said, looking at me. "Back in the Citadel, we just pushed raw energy into a battery until it exploded. But if we weave it... if we give the energy a shape and a purpose... it can hold."
I looked at the kids, then at the ticking timer on my data-deck.
< 65 HOURS, 52 MINUTES. >
"Okay," I exhaled a sharp breath, dropping to my knees at the very edge of the cliff. I pulled my heavy interface cables from my rig. "But I can't just build a static bridge. The ambient Origin-Code in the kids isn't infinite. To span a mile, the bridge has to be dynamic. It will only exist directly under our tires. I have to build it right in front of the vanguard, and it will dissolve right behind the rear guard."
Captain Reyes’s eyes widened. "A moving bridge? If anyone stalls their engine, they fall into the void."
"Then nobody stalls," Dax commanded, turning to face the mile-long convoy. "Pass the word! Gear up, throttles pinned! Do not stop, do not brake! You follow my taillight, or you learn how to fly!"
The order rippled down the line. Engines roared in response, a deafening mechanical choir of defiance.
"Link up!" I yelled to the Code-Born.
Leo sat cross-legged on the asphalt beside me. Elara, Jax, Sam, Maya, and little Toby formed a circle around him, linking hands. Their sapphire veins ignited, glowing brilliantly against the dark morning air. Leo reached out and placed his glowing hands flat against the cracked screen of my data-deck.
I took the bare ends of my interface cables and plunged them directly into the dirt at the edge of the cliff.
"Tapping the river!" I shouted, closing my eyes and plunging my consciousness into the earth.
I didn't project energy outward; I cast a digital fishing line downward. I felt the Origin-Code from the kids surge through me, diving a mile deep into the canyon to touch the raging, volatile purple sub-ether at the bottom.
The moment the sapphire code touched the purple river, the canyon groaned.
"Pull it up!" I screamed, the bio-electrical strain instantly making my nose bleed.
From the bottom of the abyss, a massive waterspout of raw, purple energy erupted upward. It defied gravity, spiraling toward the top of the cliff. As it reached the edge, the sapphire Origin-Code from the kids slammed into it, acting as a digital freezing agent.
The chaotic purple energy instantly crystallized.
A ramp of solid, translucent, violet glass materialized right in front of Dax’s front tire, extending out fifty feet over the mile-deep drop.
"The bridge is live!" I gasped, my hands trembling on the dirt. "Go, Dax! Go!"
Dax didn't hesitate. He didn't test the ice. He dumped the clutch.
The Interceptor launched off the edge of the cliff, its heavy tires hitting the translucent bridge of hardened light. The energy hummed and vibrated under the weight of the iron, but it held.
"Revers! Paladins! Move out!" Jax bellowed, revving his massive chopper and launching onto the bridge right behind Tank, Sienna, and Reaper.
The massive convoy lurched forward.
I opened my eyes, staring at my deck. I was acting as the central processor, constantly weaving the bridge fifty feet ahead of Dax's leading tire, while simultaneously letting it dissolve fifty feet behind the last heavy transport rig.
It was an excruciating mental tightrope.
As the heavy, thirty-ton Paladin scav-crawlers hit the energy span, the violet light groaned, flickering dangerously.
"More power, Leo!" I gritted my teeth, feeling the strain trying to rip my consciousness apart. "The armor is too heavy!"
Leo screamed, the sapphire light in his veins blazing so brightly it was hard to look at him. The younger kids held on, tears streaming down their faces as they pushed everything they had into the circuit.
The bridge stabilized.
Out over the abyss, Dax was leading an army across a ribbon of light. Looking down through the translucent floor of the bridge, there was nothing but a mile-long drop into darkness. The vertigo was paralyzing, but the riders kept their eyes locked on the taillights in front of them.
"We're halfway!" Dax’s voice crackled over the comms, breathless but steady. "Keep weaving, Ghost! We can see the other side!"
"I'm slipping!" Sam, one of the younger Code-Born, cried out.
The circuit flickered.
Out on the bridge, the section directly beneath the Revers' heavy choppers suddenly turned from solid violet to a watery, unstable purple.
"Hold the line!" Jax roared as his rear tire sunk an inch into the energy, fishtailing wildly. He compensated with pure, brute-force throttle, dragging his heavy bike back onto the solid section.
"I've got you, Sam!" Leo grunted, pulling the younger boy's energy into his own, acting as a buffer.
The bridge solidified again.
"Three quarters!" Reyes called out from the gunner hatch of her crawler, her knuckles white as she gripped the turret ring.
My vision was beginning to tunnel. The physical toll of holding the sub-ether together was immense. I could feel the heat radiating from the interface cables buried in the dirt.
"Dax," I gasped into the comms, my voice barely a whisper. "I'm hitting the redline. I can't hold it much longer."
"You don't have to!" Dax yelled. "I'm touching down!"
Dax’s Interceptor hit the solid dirt on the far side of the Grand Fracture. The Iron Wolves followed, then Jax and the Revers, their tires kicking up actual mud instead of hard light.
"Keep moving! Clear the landing zone!" Tank bellowed, directing traffic as the heavy Paladin crawlers rumbled onto solid ground.
I watched the rear guard a rusted, heavily modified Board transport carrying the last of the refugees inch toward the far cliff.
"Almost there," I whispered, my muscles seizing.
The transport hit the dirt.
The moment its rear tires cleared the energy span, I severed the connection.
I ripped the cables from the dirt and collapsed onto my side, gasping for air as if I had been held underwater. Leo and the Code-Born fell backward, instantly falling into an exhausted, deep sleep on the asphalt, their sapphire veins dimming back to a faint, healthy pulse.
Behind us, the massive, mile-long bridge of violet light shattered. It didn't fall; it simply decompiled, raining harmless sparks of sub-ether back down into the raging river a mile below.
On the far side of the canyon, a massive, collective cheer went up from the allied army.
Dax stood on the far cliff, looking across the mile-wide gap at me. Even from that distance, I could see the fierce, unbroken pride in his stance. He keyed his comms.
"Ghost," Dax said, his voice soft, meant only for me. "I owe you a new set of cables. And a very long vacation."
"You owe me a world first, Pres," I managed to laugh, sitting up and wiping the blood from my nose. "Now, how the hell do I get across?"
Before Dax could answer, the roar of a massive engine echoed from my side of the cliff.
I turned around.
The massive, heavily armored Dreadnought-Crawler that Captain Reyes had originally stolen the one we thought was dead in the mud back in Sector 4 came rumbling out of the tree line. Its treads were repaired with scavenged Prime Forge parts, and it was hauling ass.
Driving the massive rig was my father, Chen Wei.
He slammed the brakes, the massive beast grinding to a halt right next to me. The heavy cargo door hissed open.
"Need a lift, kiddo?" my father yelled down, his lab coat covered in grease, a wide grin on his face. "The Red-Queen told me you guys were leaving without me. Figured you might need a mobile command center if you're going to crack an Ark."
I smiled, shaking my head in disbelief. I gathered up the sleeping Code-Born kids and hauled them into the back of the Crawler, dragging the Sovereign in behind them.
My father didn't need a bridge. He hit a massive, red override button on the Crawler’s dashboard. The heavy, scavenged Prime Forge repulsors on the undercarriage fired, lifting the massive tank into the air and hovering smoothly across the mile-wide gap to join the Vanguard.
As we touched down on the western side of the Grand Fracture, Dax rode up to the driver's side window.
"Glad you could make it, Chen," Dax grinned. "We're burning daylight."
He looked back at the massive convoy, then pointed dead west.
"Next stop: Neo-Angeles," Dax ordered. "Let's go ground a city."