The carnival trucks sped down the highway. Anything that looked like a troll was blasted away on sight. Emaciated men in prison uniforms crouched beside resistance fighters dressed as clowns and fairies. Weapons from the arms factory lay at their feet.
Central Elm Grove was within striking distance. The tall government buildings poked up on the horizon. There couldn't be a better time to strike. Senior guardians had arrived for the carnival procession. They would be captured and their pods seized. The next step was to cross the channel and storm the palace.
The end of the guardians' tyrannical rule was in sight. They would be put on trial before TV cameras. The trolls would be hunted down and the roads opened so that people could travel freely again.
Everyone except Liala was experiencing the same feeling of euphoria. She knew what the guardians did when they felt badly threatened. She could discuss it with Allain and Bryn but not with the lookalikes and definitely not now. To warn them would be very bad for moral.
A glint on the horizon confirmed her worse fears.
'Death Pod!'
A shudder ran through the truck.
Everyone knew what it was. They played war games on their computers. When all else failed you sent in a weapon of mass destruction.
They all began to speak at once.
'There ... just above the horizon.'
'It's coming from the south.'
'Yeah. It will be coming from the palace.'
'They'll know we've got the ray guns ...'
Liala squinted into the sun and saw a blue streak race across the sky towards them. It came in at an alarming speed and stopped abruptly above their heads. She knew what would happen next.
The chancellor compared death pods with a surgeon's knife. He said they removed malignant growths in society just as a surgeon removed malignant growths in a body. Death pods didn't dash in and hit out blindly. They were subject to strict rules to ensure that collateral damage was kept to a minimum.
Anyone who had played at being a guardian knew that checks and counter-checks had to be applied before you could give that final flick of your baton and wipe out a monsters' lair or sanitise an area controlled by terrorists. But this was not a game ... this was for real.
Panic set in.
All that mattered was to get as far from the target area as possible. Vehicles collided as they tried to pass one another. Others ran into their backs. Allain's truck was forced to stop and the convoy ground to a halt.
Liala returned her attention to the death pod. The silver disc was hovering overhead at an immense height. So far it hadn't fired a single shot. More than the usual time had elapsed for the necessary checks. Perhaps Crispin had ordered it in for their defence ... that seemed the most likely explanation.