The Exodus Towers #2

“Yes, we heard from them. Two clowns named Greg and Marcus. They started out making polite requests for you to contact them; now they just joke around.”

Skyler leaned away and looked at her with skepticism.

“They’re so annoying,” Ana said, shaking her head. Then she made a face and spoke with a drawl out of some golden age sci-fi film. “ ‘Greetings people of Earth, we have come for your chocolate and your buxom women. We will negotiate only with Skyler Luiken’s penis.’ Stuff like that. I want to strangle them every time.”

Skyler couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Don’t you start,” Ana said with sincere force. “I’ll put you on the list, too, dammit. I had to listen to a month of that mierda thinking you might be gone forever.”

He reasserted his grip around her until the flash of temper melted away. “Sorry,” he said. “What did you tell them?”

“Nothing,” Ana replied. “Vanessa, Pablo, and I made a pact. If you were truly gone, we’d just live here and the colony could think we’d all vanished. We left it on for a while, in case anything interesting happened. After a while I stopped paying attention. I think Pablo still checks it now and then.”

Six weeks gone. Karl and Tania had probably assumed the worst by now, he thought, but he couldn’t begrudge the pact his crew had made.

The storm abated a few hours later, and Skyler helped Ana pack her gear before they set off for the farmhouse. She held his hand as they walked.

Pablo’s reaction to Skyler’s return was to prepare a dinner worthy of the event.

Wild hare roasted on a spit, with potatoes and carrots found in the nearby fields. Preservall bread dough scavenged in the depths of a looted grocery store a few kilometers away was flash-cooked in La Gaza Ladra’s tiny oven. The baguette that resulted tasted pretty good to Skyler. He soaked up the grease from his plate with a hunk of it while he recounted what had happened inside the dome.

“What did it feel like?” Vanessa asked when he’d finished. “Going through, I mean.” She’d traded her combat fatigues for a blue dress she’d likely found inside the farmhouse. The change in attire seemed to pull all the hardness from her face, her posture. For the first time since he’d met her, Skyler didn’t have to imagine how she’d looked before the world collapsed, before she’d been taken by Gabriel’s twisted cult.

“It felt like …” Skyler paused. He couldn’t find the right words. “It’s not fun, I can tell you that. In hindsight, I guess there was a point when part of my brain was inside and part outside, running at different speeds. Everything got out of synch, scrambled.”

Pablo dabbed the corners of his mouth with a cloth napkin. A surprising show of table etiquette from the rustic man. “What is this dome, really?”

“I’ve no idea,” Skyler said. “All I can tell you is, for whatever reason, time runs more slowly in there. There’s got to be something on top of that pinnacle, and my gut tells me we need to find out what it is before March arrives. That means I need to go back in there right away. Tomorrow, with climbing gear. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here awhile longer. Through winter maybe.”

“What?” Ana’s question silenced the room. “Tomorrow?”

He tried to take her hand and she snatched it back. “Ana, listen. There’s no time to waste—”

“I just got you back, and now you think you’re going to leave me alone again? For months?”

“There’s no other way.” He could hear the impotency in his words and tried feebly to say the rest with his eyes.

Ana glared at him. Defiant at first, then simply cold. “There is another way,” Ana said. “I’m coming with you.”

Vanessa nodded agreement. “Me, too.”

Skyler raised his hands in protest. “Look, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but you’re forgetting that the dome prevented anyone else from entering last time. Only one of us can go.”

“We can try,” Ana said emphatically. “There’s no harm in it.”

Pablo leaned his chair back on two legs and shook his head. “Skyler’s right,” he said. “But either way, I’m staying. Someone should. Guard the Magpie, keep in contact with the colony.”

“It could be months,” Skyler said.

The man shrugged. “Farm life suits me, not giant alien domes.…”

“Vanessa and I are coming with you, Skyler,” Ana said. She hadn’t stopped looking at him while Pablo spoke. “We can all try going in at the same time, and see what happens.”

Skyler started to protest, but the women’s combined gaze felt like having laser beams focused on his forehead, burning into his skull. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll try.”

After the others fell asleep, Skyler pulled a blanket around his shoulders and took the pilot’s seat in the Magpie.

He switched on the comm. The link parameters were still set from the transmissions Ana had listened to, and within a second the headset crackled to life and a voice came across, in midsentence.

“… until our demands are met, and Skyler Luiken is delivered to us—”

“In a pink dress.”

“Yes, in a pink dress with a little bow across the chest.”

“That’s a sash.”

“What?”

“A sash goes across the chest. A bow goes in your hair.”

“My svelte ass it does. Go look it up.”

“You go look it up, and look up ‘fashion sense’ while you’re at it. No one wears a sash.”

Skyler fought to hold in laughter. He decided to let them go on a bit longer.

A few seconds of silence passed.

“I wore a sash once, actually,” the first speaker said.

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Did it have words printed on it? Like, maybe, Princess of Anchor Station?”

“It had words, yes. Not those.”

“What then?”

“It said ‘Marcus is an insufferable prick.’ ”

Skyler cleared his throat. “Come in, Black Level. This is La Gaza Ladra.”

A commotion came through the headset. A drink spilled, someone cursed.

“Skyler, hello!” one of them finally said. “This is Marcus.”

“And Greg.”

“Greg’s here, too. Damn, it’s great to hear from you.”

Skyler smiled to himself. “Thanks. Do, uh, you broadcast like this twenty-four/seven?”

“Three hours every night,” Greg said. “I daresay it’s become performance art. Half of Black Level and most of Melville Station are probably listening. Hello, everyone.”

“I see,” Skyler said. “Well, sorry to drop in on your show, but maybe someone can go rouse Tania and switch this to a private channel? It’s urgent.”

“Sure thing,” Marcus said. “Give us a few minutes. Nice to hear from you; we’ve been … well, losing steam.”

A series of clicks followed. Five minutes passed and then Tania’s voice came through.

“My God, Skyler,” she said. “I … we’d almost given up hope.”

A familiar warmth coursed through him with the sound of her voice. Warmth he hadn’t expected, nor the sense of guilt that followed. He suppressed the urge to look over his shoulder, that he might find Ana standing there, as if he were cheating on her. The call could have been made with everyone present, but Skyler had deliberately snuck off after the others slept to make it. For no reason he could put his finger on, he’d decided to keep his tenuous friendship with Tania separate from his relationship with Ana.

“Are you there?” she asked.

“I’m here. Sorry. It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Yours, too,” she said, a note of genuine sadness in her voice. He heard her let out a long breath. “Where are you? Is everyone okay?”

“We’re fine. We’re in Ireland, and we’ve found one of the tower groups. I’m sending the coordinates.”

The link went quiet, and he knew she was struggling to find a way to ask the next question without it being an accusation.

“Let me explain before you say anything,” he said. “The towers surround a dome. A … blister on the earth. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s huge, Tania, and you’ll never believe this, but time works differently inside it.”

“You went in?”

“We did,” he said. He saw no reason to tell her that the rest of the crew had waited outside and ignored the comm for more than a month. “Ten minutes in there and when we came back out six weeks had passed.”

“Six,” she paused. “Skyler, no offense, but time manipulation is the stuff of fiction. What you’re talking about is impossible.”

“Well, it happened. I think,” he said, working it out as he spoke, “I think it’s like the aura. Except instead of putting SUBS into stasis it puts everything into stasis, or nearly so. The air in there, it’s humid and has a strange odor. I think there’s a chemical component.”

“That’s … Coming from anyone else I’d assume this was a joke. Skyler, you’re lucky the air was even breathable. It was suicidal to go in without precautions.”

“Chastise me another time. There’s more, Tania. Inside there’s a, sort of an earthen pinnacle. It’s tall and sheer. We had no climbing gear, so we’re going back inside tomorrow properly equipped.”

“Why? Let’s get an observation team up there, study it—”

“Because something must be up there, Tania, and if for some reason it’s important there’s not a second to lose. Compared to the hell that awaits us within that circle in Belém, this is a much safer crash site to explore. Our only battle here is against the clock.”

“I don’t like this, Skyler.”

“I figured you wouldn’t, but we’re going. I figure we have an hour to scale it, see what’s there, and come back out.”

“Why an hour?” she asked. Then, “Oh, I see. Of course.”

“We want to be back outside before the Builders return. If they do, I mean.”

“There’s news on that front,” Tania said. Her voice shifted, the tone of sadness and relief replaced by urgency, business. “We’ve spotted the next ship.”

“Already? Did we screw up the date?”

“No,” she said. “The date is accurate. March seventh, or thereabouts.”

“Then how …”

“The ship is massive, Skyler.”
Cappagh, Ireland

7.SEP.2284

AT THE EDGE of the murky purple dome, the strategy seemed comical.

Skyler’s breath fogged in the crisp morning air, and dark clouds overhead threatened another bout of rain. The two women stood on either side of him. They each held one of his hands, the idea being that if they were physically connected together, it might somehow trick the dome into allowing all three to pass through. Not a bad idea, in Skyler’s opinion, but it didn’t change the fact that they looked ridiculous.

Luckily only Pablo was there to see them attempt the entry.

“See you in a few months, Pablo,” Skyler said over his shoulder.

“Good luck,” the tall man said. “I’ll be at the farm, napping in a hammock.”

“Count of three?” Skyler said to the women. “If only one or two of us get in, turn around and come right back out.”

Ana nodded. Vanessa said, “Agreed.”

They each wore climbing harnesses and carried gear from the kits Vanessa had so wisely packed before they’d left Belém: climbing rope, crampons, a grappling hook, and even a frog-style ascender. “I grabbed them from that survival store,” she’d said. “I thought we might need to scale a building sometime. I never imagined anything like this.”

Though worried about the extra weight, Skyler and Ana also carried small hand axes made for hacking into ice, in case the earthen pillar proved to be more solid than it looked. Only Vanessa, who would spot their climb from the dome floor, carried a gun, on the off chance a subhuman came sniffing after them.

Skyler counted down, and on “three” they stepped forward in unison.

With the benefit of hindsight, he understood now at a basic level what the passage through the dome’s wall was doing to his mind. At some point during the transition, part of his mind worked at one time scale, and the rest at a much more accelerated pace. During that brief instant when the bubble enveloped and then closed around his body, every cell, every atom inside him would experience the shift at slightly different moments. That’s how he imagined it, anyway. The most impressive aspect to him was the simple fact that the shift didn’t tear his body to pieces.

He wondered during the moment of passage what would happen if they spent a year inside the dome. Ten years, even. Would they emerge to a future tens or hundreds of years later? A thousand? He wondered if the Builders could control the time scale within. Crank a dial, have tea inside, and emerge a million years later. The possibilities flittered through his brain like butterflies as he crossed over.

He felt a tug on his left arm and looked that way in a panic, expecting to see only air where Ana had been a second earlier.

She was inside, still next to him, but doubled over and heaving.

Vanessa still held his right hand. He could hear her drawing short, deep breaths. “We made it,” she said between gasps.

“Ana,” Skyler said, “are you okay?”

The young woman managed to nod and hold a hand up, begging for a few seconds to recover. After a moment she stood and offered him a wan smile.

“Really messes with you, doesn’t it?” Skyler asked.

“Even weirder,” Vanessa replied from over his shoulder, “is the thought that a few hours have already passed outside.”

“That is a good point,” Ana said. She shuddered and closed her eyes for a moment. When they opened, they were clear and bright. “No time to waste. Vámonos!”

Skyler gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and turned to face the pinnacle in the center of the domed area. Around them came a flash of sound, like ten thousand fingers tapping against glass.

“What was that?” Vanessa asked.

“I think that was a rainstorm,” Skyler said. “Soon you’ll notice the dome pulses, dark to light and back. I didn’t understand before, but it’s days passing outside.” Even as he said the words the entire space grew slightly dimmer. They all stood still for a minute, gathering their wits and watching the dome shift in brightness, down and up, down and up. “We’ve already been in here half a week. C’mon.”

He led the way toward the dome’s center. The ground curved ever upward, and he had to navigate his way around some of the deeper ravines formed where portions of the uplifted earth had collapsed. All the while the dome pulsed. Dark, then light. Dark, then light. Random phantom noises startled him every few steps. At one point a sound like machine-gun fire made him dive to the ground on instinct, made Vanessa yelp. Ana began to laugh. “Thunderstorm, I’ll bet,” she said.

Soon the ground became steep enough that Skyler had to lean forward and use his hands for support. The landscape consisted of hard-packed brown dirt and chunks of gray rock, dotted in places with clumps of emerald-green grass. He saw an earthworm wiggle within a centimeter-deep crevice. Above, a pair of magpies wheeled about and called to each other.

When the ground became too steep, Skyler called a halt and let his companions catch their breath. The air inside the dome carried the same ozone smell it had on his last trip. It felt slightly cooler, though, but still warm and humid compared to the cool, crisp morning they’d left outside.

“I’ll go first,” Skyler said, reiterating the plan they’d agreed to the night before. It had been seven or eight years since he’d scaled a rock, as part of his regular air force combat-readiness training. Rock climbing had been an elective option, and he’d enjoyed the challenge as much as the exercise. The training made him the most experienced of the three. Ana had some skill earned in a summer athletics program, while Vanessa had only tried climbing a few times in the controlled confines of a gym. “It’s a lot more fun in the sensory chamber,” she’d said with a shrug.

The spire’s mass seemed to be formed from the earth itself, as if some force had simply pinched the land here and tugged it straight upward. The material consisted of hard-packed dirt interwoven with decaying roots and other biomass. Strewn throughout were rocks, from scant pebbles to boulders as large as an automobile. Moss grew on everything, and he dreaded the idea of trying to get a solid handhold on the slick growth.

He walked around the circular base and mentally plotted a path to the top. Then, in the interest of time, with one hand he grabbed a root that jutted from the pillar, braced his foot on a thigh-high rock, and began the ascent.

Every five meters he stopped and secured his rope with a crampon. Cost being no concern, Vanessa had chosen the kits with the highest price tags. The devices weighed nearly nothing, so little in fact he found it hard to trust their strength. Skyler tested each link with a strong tug and found them utterly fixed to the surface of the spire.

At thirty meters he reached a large rocky outcropping and paused. Every muscle in his arms burned and his thighs felt like rubber. Below, Ana had begun to climb, following his path exactly. Vanessa waited on the ground below her, spotting her course and shouting advice on where to grab or push off. She stood between two of the pondlike holes in the ground, both deep red in color.

When Ana reached the rock where Skyler waited, she collapsed and splayed herself out against the wall, drawing deep breaths. He gave her a sip of water and kissed her lightly.

“Hey,” she said, her eyes closed, “keep going.”

For a second he thought she meant to kiss her again, more deeply. The situation, and her exhausted expression, said otherwise. He picked himself up and began to climb again.

Each handhold became a singular effort. The tips of his fingers, though gloved, felt raw and close to bleeding.

“November!” Vanessa shouted from the base.

Fifteen minutes had passed. Two months outside.

Skyler redoubled his effort. Soon the pillar became completely vertical, the rocks smaller and more spread out. His body shook from exertion, as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

A few minutes later he found himself faced with the final six-meter span. The portion that went beyond steep and into inverted territory. Standing with one foot on a small jut of rock, one arm looped through an exposed root, Skyler prepared his grappling hook.

He let out six meters of rope and began to swing it back and forth. Ana’s pace below almost brought her into a collision with the swaying hook, until he called out to her to halt. Skyler forced his strength into the arc of the grappler, over and over, until finally it almost came in contact with the lip of the pedestal at the top. On the next arc, Skyler put everything he had into the motion and raised his arm as high as he could at the last second. The hook disappeared over the top and he heard the faint sound of metal on stone.

Skyler took a deep breath and began to tug on the line. It pulled smoothly toward him, and he’d resigned himself to watching it fall back over the edge, but then the rope caught and pulled straight.

“Did it catch?” Ana called up.

“I think so,” he said to her. “Only one way to know.”

Skyler pulled as hard as he could and allowed himself to grin when the rope remained firmly in place. His arm still looped around the root, he cautiously slipped his foot off the rock he’d been perched on. He hung there, his hands in a white-knuckled grip on the grappling rope, his arm strained against the looped vine sticking out from the wall. “It’s good!” he called.

The root gave. It pulled out of the earthen wall and suddenly Skyler was dangling, three meters out from the pillar, spinning wildly.

A wave of dizziness and vertigo kept his hands around the rope in a death grip. His eyes were shut equally tight as he waited to see if the grapple would hold. When he opened his eyes, he found himself dangling three meters out from the wall, and six or seven below the pedestal edge at the top. He could see that the blue rope had carved into the dirt and stone making up the lip of the precipice. A few bits of dirt and gravel bounced off his face, punctuating the visual.

He looked back to the wall until he found Ana, staring at him with wide, terrified eyes. Then he glanced down and saw Vanessa standing almost directly below him, her hands clapped over her mouth. Hanging out in space like he was, to him the woman suddenly seemed impossibly far below.

“I’m okay,” he called out, loud enough for both of them to hear. “It’s holding.”

“December!” Vanessa shouted back.

Skyler looked up once more, steeled himself, and began to attach his ascender to the rope. The complicated process was frustrating while hanging free and took more than two precious minutes.

“Here goes,” he said to Ana, and then he stood in the foot loops and let the ascender handle glide up the rope. When it bit, he sat again and rocked himself in the next standing motion. With each cycle he gained a half meter, and with the third standing motion his muscle memory kicked in and the process became second nature.

At the lip Skyler rocked himself into a stand one last time, and on the apex he let one hand off the ascender and reached over the ledge to find something to grip. His fingers brushed an exposed rock and he clawed it, then pulled, grunting with the effort.

When he crested the edge, he found himself staring into the bright green eyes of a coiled, snarling subhuman perched on top of a Builder object roughly hourglass in shape. The being clutched the edge of the object with hands that were coated in black to the wrist, as if dipped in oil.

At the sight of Skyler the creature let go of the alien device.

The dome, and everything in it, began to rumble violently.

Far below Skyler, a woman screamed.
Platz Station

1.DEC.2284

ALEX WARTHEN CIRCLED the table. One hand cupped his chin, his index finger pressed against his lips. He’d said nothing for almost five minutes. He’d just circled, studying the 3-D model of Hab-8.

“Thoughts?” Russell asked. His shallow well of patience had run dry a minute ago, and he’d kept quiet this long only out of his renewed camaraderie with the man.

Since their chat aboard Gateway months ago, Alex had been invigorated, and had pulled in the mousey shrew Sofia Windon to help administrate the stations. The pair were doing a decent job. Better yet, whatever Alex had been saying to Grillo had finally worked. Jacobite cannon fodder were due to arrive within the hour.

“It’s a decent plan,” Alex said. “I’m worried the loss of life will be substantial, though.”

Who gives a bloody shit, Russell thought. They’ll be Grillo’s men. He’d neglected to share that detail with Alex, or anyone else. As far as they knew, Grillo’s men were going to fill in on station security duties while Russell headed off to battle. Russell couldn’t wait to give them their true orders, make them feel like they were doing the world a favor. “The Fist of God,” he’d decided to dub them, sure they wouldn’t get the innuendo, or if they did they’d be too embarrassed to say anything. “We’ll have surprise on our side,” Russell said. “I doubt, after all this time, that Tania and company are maintaining a ready squad to repel such an attack.”

“You know this for sure?” Alex asked.

“No,” Russell admitted. The informants he’d sent across had been frustratingly, unnervingly quiet. Gone native, maybe, or discovered. A mix of both. “But it makes sense.”

“I always plan for the things that don’t make sense,” Alex said. “Unless, of course, a bloodbath is what you want.”

“My men don’t mind getting their hands dirty.” Grillo’s men, I mean, but you don’t need to know that. Of course Russell would be there, too, and a few handpicked squad leaders from his own pool of mercenaries. They could hang back, though. Give orders. Let the blood flow and clean up the mess afterward, should it even go down like that.

Alex Warthen shrugged. “Seems okay to me, then. I’m sure we can get the rest of the council to buy off on the plan, too.”

The comment made Russell want to push his fingers into his ears and press until they punctured his brain. He hoped he kept his disgust hidden as Alex continued to study the projected model on the table. “I look forward to the vote,” Russell said, confident he’d imparted minimal sarcasm. Alex expected some, and Russell couldn’t disappoint him. That would have been a dead giveaway. “Perhaps we can call it via comm this afternoon? My people will be ready to go by dinner.”

“That soon?” Alex asked.

“Yes. If the geeks still on Anchor are right, the Builders will be back in March. Time is running out. I want that shit over there in our hands before the aliens try to rape us again.”

Alex, amazingly, nodded. “Okay.” He glanced at his slate. “I’ve got to get down to the port and board my climber. Heading up to Midway Station for a meeting with all the upper-station captains. I’ll set the vote for three P.M. if the climber has a comm.”

“Perfect,” Russell said.

“Nice plan, Blackfield. Good luck.”

“Walk you out?”

“I’m fine,” Alex said, and departed.

When the door clicked closed behind the security chief, Russell realized his “bloodbath” plan might have won approval simply because he’d be putting himself in harm’s way. Alex probably liked the odds that the council’s problem child wouldn’t return. “On the contrary, a*shole,” Russell said to the empty room, “I’ll have two Elevators, then, and Tania Sharma chained to my bedpost.”

Russell tapped the comm on his desk and selected the group contact he’d created, the one marked “the Dog Pound,” which would transmit his voice to the cabin of every grunt he commanded on Platz Station.

“Listen up, wags,” he said when the connection showed green. “I want each and every one of you in the central dock in twenty minutes. Full gear. Our comrades from the surface, the ones who took over your shitty jobs after you ascended, are coming up to take part in a joint combat operation.”

Russell gave a second for the words to settle in.

“I want to show them what a real bunch of hard-ass skullcracking motherf*ckers look like, let you guys boss them around a bit. We’ll take them to the gymnasium, where squads will be assigned.…” He rattled off a plan from the top of his head. He intended to change it all, anyway, so it didn’t matter much. The only part that mattered was getting Grillo’s holy warriors into the transport tubs and ushered off to Tania’s empire.

Finished, Russell clicked off and jogged to his quarters. Neil Platz’s old flat. The place looked like a high-end hotel penthouse, as large and polished as the old goat’s ego had been.

Just inside the wide double doors he began to undress, leaving a trail of clothing behind him as he wound through the apartments toward the opulent bathroom. A woman in his bed mumbled something as he passed. He couldn’t tell who it was, exactly, with just a creamy thigh and toned calf exposed. He only slowed slightly, enticed by the sight of flesh and enthused by his own state of nudity, but he knew time was running short. The woman would have to wait. He strode on, ignoring her mumbled invitation, and entered the bathroom.

Russell stood under the showerhead, alternating the water from scalding hot to ice cold every few minutes until he felt his mind begin to clear. He kept his eyes open despite the rivulets of water that poured down his face, and stared at an imagined point somewhere far beyond the marble wall of the shower.

Brazil. Brazil.

Twenty-five minutes later Russell floated in front of his assembled troops.

“All right, lads, thirty seconds!” he called out.

The lack of significant gravity in the cargo bay made it difficult to put on a suitable show of his military might. His soldiers had been training, though, for a long time, thanks to Grillo’s constant delays. Compared to that first time, when they’d entered Gateway like a school of drunken fish, they were as dexterous as gymnasts now. If they had anything to show off compared to Grillo’s altar boys, it was that.

Somehow they’d managed to form a line, or rather a ring, around the airlock doors where the Jacobites would exit. He felt a twang of pride. They’d borrowed or improvised magnetic-toed boots in order to keep themselves planted on the deck. The boots didn’t have that combat feel, though, and since each commando had to keep one toe pointed down at the floor, in a line together they looked a bit like a chain of Irish dancers. Russell fought to hold in a laugh at that thought and floated into place just in front of the line. An airlock door marked “1” loomed directly in front of him as the clock counted down.

“Take your time guiding them to the outer ring,” Russell said, his voice raised for everyone in the expansive bay to hear. “Let ’em flop around a bit, yeah?”

He saw grins behind him. The smiles turned to pure confidence as the timer reached zero. Russell turned to face the door and used a rubber loop on the floor to steady himself. Sometime he’d have to see about a pair of those magnetic-tipped boots.

A series of deep metallic clangs announced the arrival of the climber even before the chime indicated the countdown had ended.

Russell heard a brief hiss as the air inside the climber cars was matched to the pressure within the bay. A light on the airlock door went from red, to yellow, to green. Then it slid up.

He found himself looking down a half-dozen gun barrels.

Shit—

Gunfire cut off the thought. Russell did the only thing he could think to do, and pushed off the floor hard. He hurled toward the ceiling. A searing pain flared from his left calf, and he felt the warm wetness of blood begin to soak his pant leg there. Droplets of red were left in his wake as he vaulted upward.

The deafening chatter of indoor gunfire erupted from all around the bay.

Russell hit the ceiling hard and spun around. Flashes of yellow light pulsed from inside the climber cars. His soldiers were scrambling for cover, to ready their weapons—anything but remain in the line of fire. Already he could see some of his soldiers, the ones who’d been right in front of the doors, swaying from their planted toes like seaweed on the ocean floor.

His troops had been in full gear but had not readied their weapons. That would have been rude. Some had been quicker than others and were beginning to shoot back. A full half of his garrison turned, pushing for the exits. He wanted to scream at them for their cowardice.

A nearby rattling sound forced him to curl into a ball. Sparks flew from all around him as someone below tried to finish him off. The exit suddenly seemed like a damn good idea. Russell pushed toward one and the burning in his leg turned into nuclear fire. He screamed, pulled his handgun, and fired as he rotated around in an uncontrolled spiral. He managed to unload half a clip on the first spin, the other half on the second. Some of his bullets even went into the maw of the nearest climber car airlock.

Below him, battle raged. A rotating blur of gunfire, hand-to-hand combat, and death. Bodies floated all over the bay, some in perfect stillness, some careening around like mannequins with disjointed limbs. Marble-sized globes of blood drifted around the scene as if someone had fired up a macabre bubble machine.

Another spray of gunfire prattled against the ceiling above Russell. He heard the hiss as one round passed within centimeters of his ear, and he tucked into a ball again on pure instinct. His leg burned, each movement as if a knife twisted there. A serrated knife coated with rusty barbed wire heated until it glowed. The pain flooded his mind like an orgasm without the release of pleasure.

Still curled in a ball, Russell collided with something—someone—and then a floor. He opened his eyes and groaned. Soldiers hung on the walls around him, their hands pulling him away from the bay door.

“Seal it,” Russell hissed. “Seal that f*cking room.”

“We still have people in there,” someone said against a background of screams and gunshots.

“I still have people in there,” Russell corrected. “You have an order. F*cking do it.”

In answer the thick door began to close. Someone on the other side shouted, “Wait!” just before the metallic clang signaled the cargo bay had sealed.

“Vent the air,” Russell said. “No one better question that. Vent the air.”

“Sir?” someone said.

A question. Russell looked around but found his vision clouded with tears. He squinted.

“Sir,” the same voice went on, “comm says they came in through the passenger ports down on A. They’re taking prisoners.”

“Then seal that level, too,” he said. “Vent it.”

“There’s innocent—”

“Don’t start. No room for goddamn debate here. Vent the air. We can’t let these bastards gain any more ground.”

“Yes, sir.”

Russell heard a faint whoosh, and a creaking sound that lasted half a heartbeat. The air, sucked out of the cargo bay into space. A fire prevention technique.

The men and women in the room would be suffocating now. Russell wondered how many had made it into the three exits before the doors were closed, and if any of the survivors were on the enemy side.

The enemy. Grillo, you two-faced cunt, I will cut your heart out for this.

“Someone help me get to station ops,” he said. He felt lightheaded. Blood still seeped from his calf in little red spheres.

The operations room on Platz Station looked just like the other suites of cubicle offices that plagued the complex.

Russell entered on one leg, his arm over the shoulder of a guard who smelled like old socks.

“Report,” Russell said as he took a chair. Then he looked at the guard. “Find me a medic. And vodka.”

“Mr. Blackfield,” said the operations lead on duty, a pouty woman with classic Australian features and drawl. “Level A is at zero atmosphere, and the doors are sealed.”

“Good news,” he said. “Did they get farther than that?”

“Reports of sporadic fighting on B, but it seems to be under control now.”

Russell nodded. The woman seemed remarkably detached from the situation. Cool under fire; he liked that. Rational ideas and prudent tactics fought to gain attention in his mind, all eclipsed by the raw thirst for revenge. We have to go down to Darwin now, before he entrenches himself further. He toyed with the idea of rigging a climber to fall uncontrolled on Nightcliff. Fill the thing with fifty tons of old scrap metal and broken parts and it’ll take out the entire fortress. He filed the idea for the moment, knowing Grillo spent more than half his time out in Lyons, or at that bloody stadium.

“Hey,” he said to the woman. “Your name?”

“Jenny,” she said.

“Jenny. Can we do that thing, like Dr. Sharma did? Detach a farm platform?”

“I don’t see what that would—”

“Just answer, please.”

She grimaced, nodded. “All stations have a separation gap capability, so they can move away from the cord and reposition.”

“I love you, Jenny. Pick one and start the process. Someone find me a map of Darwin.”

Naked horror flashed across her face as she realized what he intended to do. She visibly gulped, studied her screens for a moment, then set to work.

A nurse came in, dropped a case of supplies on the floor next to Russell, and began to examine his leg. The man worked quickly, unconcerned if his probing caused pain, or perhaps hoping it would to know where the damage was. He used a pair of scissors to cut the pant leg away, revealing two red holes on either side of the calf muscle.

“Get me Alex Warthen on the comm,” Russell said.

Jenny turned to her screen and began to tap in commands. “Um,” she said. “Getting a lot of chatter here.”

Before Russell could speak, she turned to face him, one finger pressing a headset into her ear. “Reports coming in from the other stations. Anchor Station is overrun. Gateway is under heavy assault.”

The rage within Russell Blackfield transformed into a block of ice. He thought back to the day Grillo had offered warriors to aid in his assault on Tania’s colony. Months of excuses and delays. Then, suddenly, he had the men, plus the nerve to ask if Jacobite delegations could begin visits to Anchor. Pilgrimages to their holy site, he’d had the gall to say.

“Hab-Six is reporting casualties,” Jenny went on. “Hab-Five. Midway.”

“Enough,” Russell said. Grillo, you bloody snake. The nurse sprayed his wound with something that made his leg go cold and numb, then began to wrap gauze around his calf.

“Incoming climbers,” another station operator said. A young man with a nasal voice.

“They won’t get far,” Russell said. “The first wave are still docked.”

“From above and below,” he added.

Stupid, Russell thought. They’ll just clog the cord waiting for an opening. Unless … “Blockade,” Russell said aloud. “They’re going to pen us in here. Starve us until we give in.”

“I don’t think so. They’re not slowing.”

Everyone went silent. Russell knew they were looking at him. Climbers speeding toward the station meant one thing: total destruction. Plan f*cking B for the Jacobites and their holy slumlord.

“How long?” Russell asked.

The young man glanced at his display. “Sixteen minutes.”

“Okay,” Russell said. “New orders. How long … f*ck, doesn’t even matter how long … Detach Platz Station from the cord, right now.”

Jenny stared at him, her face a sudden mask. She blinked, as if hearing his command a second time and still not believing it. The other operators were still, too. Even the nurse froze his work at Russell’s order.

“Relax, we’re not going to go all kamikaze on Darwin. We’re going to survive.”

“Sir,” Jenny said, “it’ll take at least an hour to clear everyone from the slice bulkheads. Eight hours to have the station prepped for null gravity, minimum.”

Russell shot her a glare that cut off the argument. “How long does it take if you throw every goddamn safety reg out the window? If you wanted, say, to save all our lives.”

She swallowed, gave him a terrified nod, and began to enter the instructions. “I need your code to authorize it,” she said after a time.

“ ‘Sex machine.’ ”

Jenny looked at him, an eyebrow arched.

“Yes, my code is ‘sex machine.’ Keep staring at me like that, love, and I’ll prove it.”

Jenny glanced down at her screen and tapped in the code. Warning lights began to spin. Klaxons wailed.

From the hallway outside came the sound of emergency bulkhead doors closing. More noises came from under the floor, inside the walls and ceiling. Water pipes sealing themselves, Russell guessed.

“Warning,” a pre-recorded voice said over the station intercom. “This station is about to experience null gravity. Stow nonsecured objects immediately. All noncritical personnel …”

“Everybody better hang on to something,” Jenny said. “Killing spin in five, four, three …”

“You,” Russell said to nasal-boy. “Count off the minutes till those climbers get here.”

He nodded, his face white as a bedsheet. “Uh. Nine minutes.”

“Jenny?”

She’d finished her countdown. “We’ll clear the cord in … eight,” she said. As her words came out the sensation of gravity began to fade.

A mug on the desk next to Russell began to drift upward, as if he were levitating it with his mind. Scissors from the nurse’s first aid kit began to float out of their compartment, followed by a stack of bandages that splayed out like a deck of cards.

Across the room, random items began to rise toward the ceiling as if ascending to heaven. Then the station lurched. The walls creaked, and in the same instant there came a chorus of surprised gasps from those in the room, the hall outside. Russell gripped the arms of his chair. Though brief and gentle, the pulse of acceleration still sent every floating item hurling across the room. Flotsam smacked into people’s heads and rattled against the wall to Russell’s left. A framed picture on the wall shattered when someone’s forgotten headset smacked into it, shards of glass expanding into a cloud around the frame.

“Everyone cover yourselves,” Jenny said, sounding on the verge of tears. “Reverse thrust coming.”

Russell cringed. “Can you cancel that?”

“What? Don’t stop?”

The plan formed in Russell’s mind like a Darwin thunderstorm. He felt it before he could see it. “Cancel it. How much fuel do we have?”

Jenny glanced at her screen. She tapped a few icons. “Retro-burn canceled; station is adrift.”

“Good. How much fuel?”

“Very little. A typical station reposition, if there is such a thing, requires only six brief thrusts. Detach, stop. Reposition, stop. Attach, stop. Of course, I’ve only done this in simulation, but the reserves allow for maybe seven or eight reposition maneuvers.”

Russell tried to think of alternatives, knowing there were none. Grillo had pulled off an incredible coup, if the station reports were accurate. Alex Warthen conveniently left on the last climber before the attack. Russell was alone. He’d lost Darwin willingly, fooled himself into thinking he could get it back. He’d alienated himself from the Orbital Council with such success that Alex Warthen had needed to sit him down like a delinquent schoolboy, for which Russell rewarded him with a reinstatement of sorts.

All he needed to become the true reincarnation of Neil Platz was a bullet between his own eyes. His kingdom had shrunk to this tin can, one marvelous whore in his bedroom, and stubborn delusions of revenge against Tania Sharma.

“Russell?” Jenny asked. “What do we do? Where can we go?”

Vary the pattern.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” he said, and glanced at the girl.

She stared at him, a mixture of hope and fear in her wide eyes. Everyone stared at him.

“Save the fuel; we’re going to need it,” he said. “We go to Brazil. To the colony, and trust in the kindness and mercy of Tania Sharma and Zane Platz.”
Cappagh, Ireland

Date imprecise

THE DOME RATTLED as if the very planet below it had cracked open.

Fist-sized chunks of earth from the lip of the pinnacle broke away and fell. Skyler’s foot slipped in the ascender and he kicked hard to keep his toes within the loop.

Vanessa’s scream below turned into battle cry, followed by the rhythmic hammer of gunfire. Her weapon chattered in short bursts. Once, twice, then a third time, each a split second apart.

Ana screamed, her voice a mix of terror and warning.

There came another sound, a new thing that Skyler couldn’t comprehend. Below, a swarm of distinct thrumming objects could be heard, emitting an almost electrical hiss, each at its own frequency.

Skyler fought the urge to look down, because the creature in front of him held his gaze with an absolute promise of death in its bloodshot eyes. Tangled strands of greasy gray hair hung across the subhuman’s twisted face. Its nostrils flared. Its cracked and blistered lips were slightly parted, revealing a filthy mess of gritted teeth. Soiled clothing still clung to the creature’s muscle-corded body. Scrapes and scabs littered its arms.

Its hands and feet were in a perfect row across the front lip of the alien object upon which it perched. Twenty cracked and jagged nails, the middle portion coated black, in an uneven line like some kind of saw blade.

The creature grunted at him. Skyler saw white knuckles on those toes, and the black-covered fingers curled almost imperceptibly as they tightened against the alien object. He saw a slight coiling motion of the body and the lowering of hips, and he did the only thing he could think do to.

He ducked. The subhuman pounced.

Skyler’s chin hit the edge of the rocky pinnacle, sending a jolt of pain up through his jaw and into his skull. He tasted blood.

The creature aimed where Skyler’s eyes had been. Instead of colliding with Skyler full in the face, it found air and landed with just its knees on the pinnacle. Its abdomen slammed into the top of Skyler’s head and, for a split second, he thought it would go over and fall to a quick death. Instead, a hand somehow found Skyler’s chin and it clamped down like a vise. Black fingernails dug into his cheek, stinging as if electrically charged, as the weight of the creature went beyond the lip of the pinnacle. The legs went up and over. The other hand found Skyler’s shirt and gripped desperately as the subhuman’s entire body flipped around.

Skyler grunted with the sudden addition of weight. Just above his waist, the ascender’s tension lock gave a little squeak with the extra strain and the rope that ran through it slipped a few centimeters. He tugged the rope near the grapple on pure instinct, a mistake in hindsight. Both of their bodies now pulled on the grapple. The foot he had in the ascender buckled. He yanked his head viciously to the right in an effort to dislodge the fingers that still clawed at his cheek. Pain seared his flesh as the nails were wrenched away by the motion and the creature’s hand, now free, fumbled for new purchase as the subhuman swung from the hand that held a fistful of Skyler’s shirt. A heartbeat later the free hand clasped onto his leg behind the knee, twisting him awkwardly, one foot still clinging to the ascender for dear life.

The creature roared.

Skyler looked down, arms on fire as he struggled to hold the rope.

In that instant he saw something below that defied explanation. Something so far out of his experience that his mind practically refused to register it.

The red and blue surfaces that had filled the craters on the dome’s floor were rising up in amorphous blobs that were somehow solid and as ephemeral as mist simultaneously. Some, those of red hue, had already completely vacated their former holes in the ground and were tearing around the dome’s floor with astonishing speed. They flowed from one position to the next, surfaces stretched forward in almost smoky tendrils as if they were somehow incompatible with the atmosphere in the dome, and so they couldn’t simply move through the air but had to somehow filter through it. Their movements generated the quasi-electrical hum Skyler had heard, and when they came close to one another the noises built rapidly and then discharged as if they repelled one another.