The Darwin Elevator (40 page)

Gunfire also erupted from behind a pile of debris in the road. Skyler couldn’t see well but guessed reinforcements had arrived to rescue the men below.

Subhumans were everywhere. Loping to and fro, dodging weapons they understood at some primal level, dancing toward their attackers.

Skyler looked left, toward the trash barrier that marked the outskirts of Darwin’s slums. Then he looked up and saw the tightly packed rooftops against the night sky.

Rooftops.

He raced back to the stairs and continued to climb, ignoring the searing pain in his ribs. He’d wrapped his chest in gauze two days earlier, but the dressing did little to help.

After six more flights he broke through a badly corroded metal door. Skyler skidded to a halt. Numerous holes marred the uneven surface, caused by erosion from pooled rainwater that could not find an open drain. He picked his way carefully across, to the Darwin-facing side of the building. In the sky above Nightcliff, he saw a strange sight. Fifteen climbers by his count, inching up the Elevator into the clouds. In all his life he’d never seen more than seven or eight at once, well spaced out. These were bunched together, less than a kilometer separating the first from the last.

Worry about it later,
Skyler thought. He looked at the adjacent building, hoping for a spot narrow enough to jump across, and saw something even better.

A crude bridge, constructed of old stepladders bound together, spanned the short distance between his rooftop and the next. Even without considering the height, the bridge looked terrifying.

However, it was a path, the only path, so Skyler took it.

He stepped over the edge of the rooftop and gingerly tested the ladder with one foot. It bounced under his weight. Skyler gulped and stepped back. The route suddenly seemed like folly.

Behind him the metal door creaked. Decision made. He moved in rapid, even steps out onto the bridge, rolling each footfall to minimize its springing effect. The ladder strained under his weight but held.

“Stop there!”

“Hell no!” Skyler shouted, halfway across. He could taste the other side.

A shot rang out. He heard the bullet whiz over his head.
A calculated miss?
He doubted these guards were that skilled.

Skyler paid no heed and leapt for the roof opposite. He landed feetfirst on a low wall that surrounded the edge. His momentum carried him over and onto the roof itself, just before another bullet buried itself in the low wall behind him. Skyler rolled to a stop, then rolled backward to get cover behind the waist-high lip.

Skyler heard the voice of the squad’s leader from the other roof, talking low but not low enough.

“Get him?”

The other sounded confident. “Think so, in the back.”

“Go check,” said the leader. “I’ll cover—”

Skyler popped up into a crouch and aimed his rifle at them, squeezing off a burst. He had precious few bullets remaining, even after finding two fresh clips during his nightmare trek home, but he needed to dissuade them. The leader deftly dodged to his right. Skyler’s bullets caught the other man square in the chest, sending him sprawling.

The leader lifted his gun over the lip of the opposite rooftop, firing blind. Skyler had seen this attempted many times, always with the same result: People overcompensated, firing low. No exception this time. He ignored the salvo and instead leaned over the small wall. He grasped the end of the ladder-bridge and shoved. It fell away easily, tumbling down into the darkness below. Skyler ducked back behind his shelter wall and listened to the satisfying crash as the ladder hit the ground.

He took a deep breath and then started crawling to the left, along the roof edge.

“We’ll find you!” the leader shouted from the other building.

When he reached the corner, Skyler moved into a crouch and turned toward where the other man had been. He jutted upward just enough to get a view of the other roof and found it to be empty.

Standing, he moved diagonally across the surface, heading for a doorway that led into the building below. He moved like a crab, keeping his weapon trained on the other roof. No sign of the Nightcliff thug. Perhaps he’d given up.

Doubtful, Skyler decided. He put himself in the other man’s shoes and guessed he was racing back down the stairwell now, intent on catching Skyler as he tried to exit this building.

Skyler moved to the western edge of the roof. The adjacent building was a full floor lower, but close. He backed up, got a running start, and jumped.

His feet took the initial impact, and he quickly tucked into a roll, putting his good shoulder forward.

Raw pain lanced across his rib cage. Skyler rolled to a stop and lay curled in a ball, drawing shallow breaths until the burning sensation faded. Every corner of his mind told him to stop, to rest.

Not yet
.

He used the same technique to traverse one more rooftop, and only then began to descend. The building appeared to have been used for migrant worker housing, back when such people flocked to Darwin for jobs creating the infrastructure that went into orbit. Room after room of bunk bed frames, in various condition. The mattresses had all been taken, along with the spring coils and anything else not bolted down.

Skyler kept to the main stairwell, moving as quickly as his fatigued legs and burning ribs would carry him. Minutes later he peered out a hole where the front door used to be.

A wide avenue fronted the building. Along the middle of it stood a mound of trash five meters high. Darwin’s edge.

On top of the debris barricade, about a hundred meters off to the right, a group of men stood and waited. For what, he couldn’t see. They were looking, Skyler guessed, down the street where the fight had occurred minutes earlier.

He left the shelter of the building and jogged away from them, keeping close to the buildings. When they were out of sight, Skyler crossed to the barricade and scaled it.

He peered over the top and saw the very edge of Darwin’s densely inhabited slums. A stark contrast to no-man’s-land, the streets on this side of the barricade teemed with people. Campfires illuminated them, erected in chaotic intervals along the middle of the street. One fire burned in a flipped-over refrigerator, and another in an old rowboat. Around each were crowds of people, huddled together. Some were cooking things over the flames. Rat, Skyler guessed. What else was there? He decided it was better not to know the answer to that.

So ingrained was their fear of SUBS that they all kept a safe distance from the barricade, and that was all that mattered right now. Skyler pulled himself over the top of it and crawled down the other side.

Home. I’m home
.

The storm came out of nowhere, and in less than ten minutes the city had gone from a balmy evening to a torrential downpour. The streets cleared somewhat, and that suited Skyler just fine.

He kept to himself, head down, gait purposeful but never hurried. Each breath he drew felt like a thorn twisting in his side. He hid his gun beneath his flight jacket, as best he could. No one in this part of Darwin could afford a weapon like his, much less hang on to it. Best not to advertise.

The old airport appeared like an oasis.

At the high chain-link fence that ran the perimeter of the airfield, he stopped and leaned against it. He waited, hoping a patrol would come by. Someone he’d know. All of the airport’s residents chipped in to patrol the fence.

Warm rain soaked his clothes. After ten minutes, it became clear that no patrol marched the circuit. Something was wrong.

He studied the row of hangars along the old runway. The flat pavement, no longer needed for rolling takeoff or landing, had long ago been put to use as a foundation for hangars. More than a hundred such structures spanned the length of the airstrip. Even in this storm, there should be activity.

Skyler gave up waiting for a patrol. Instead he set off walking, along the fence line, toward the airport’s main gate.

Well before reaching it he saw an armada of Nightcliff armored vehicles parked in sloppy fashion around the entrance. Blocking it. A handful of maroon-helmeted soldiers milled about. Most loitered in front of Woon’s tavern, the communal kitchen at the beginning of the runway. Skyler could just make out a few of his neighbors; they were having animated discussions with the soldiers.

Soldiers who held guns at the ready.

The sight crushed all hope of finding refuge here. Worse, his misfortune now affected the other crews.

He risked moving closer to get a view far enough down the runway to see his own hangar. Maybe the guards were here for some other reason. It was a false hope, and he knew it before even setting eyes on the door to his home. Still, the sight of it hit him like a hammer blow.

A steady stream of soldiers moved in and out of the hangar door, carrying whatever they could. He even saw two of them working together to move one of the bunks into the back of a truck.

Skyler turned and walked away from the fence, and headed back into the city. His mind raced. He needed a place to hole up, to think. To plan his infiltration of Nightcliff. And he needed resources.

He needed Prumble.

Chapter Thirty-two

Anchor Station

9.FEB.2283

Tania rubbed the sleep from her eyes and read the message again:

Speak to no one.

Go immediately to Room 32, Gray Level. Password: Antelope.

—N.P.

Neil, here? A chill ran down her spine; a million little bumps rose on her arms.

She pulled on a jumpsuit, her mind racing.

A thick air of tension gripped Anchor Station. After word came of the battle on Platz Station, security began to block access to the docking bays.

Orders, they said.

Rumors spread of the turmoil in the council. Some said Neil had resigned; others said Alex had. She’d even heard that Alex had thrown Neil in the brig for “treachery.”

And now, her first word from Neil. The cryptic nature did little to help her anxiety.

Stepping out of her room into the dark hallway, she considered waking Natalie. Whatever happened now, they were in this together, and Tania found she craved the comfort of a confidante.

Speak to no one
.

She heard the words, in Neil’s authoritative voice. Memories came with it, of sitting under an avocado tree, of watching ants devour a lone straggler fallen from the maze of branches. He’d spoken to her in that voice then, urged her to take on the project alone. She’d betrayed him then, but wouldn’t now.

Moving at a natural pace, Tania made her way to Gray Level. She rarely visited the section, but the layout mirrored the others. As she walked, she wondered if a guard might stop her. In the past few days, some of her staff had complained of being questioned when moving between levels.

Again, orders.

She considered contacting Alex Warthen directly, demanding an explanation, and the thought made her miss Neil even more. She always took such concerns to him and knew he would champion her causes in front of the council.

She reached room thirty-two unscathed. From the faded sign on the wall, it was a typical station conference room.

Trying the door, she found it locked. A swipe of her access card did nothing. On the manual keypad below the card slot, she tapped the numbers that spelled
Antelope
.

The lock disengaged with a subtle click, and she opened the door to a room full of people. Neil Platz was not among them.

“Come in and close the door,” a man at the table said. Tall and thin, gray hair in two tufts over each ear, and wearing square-rimmed glasses. He looked vaguely familiar.

She took one step inside and let the door click closed behind her. An oval-shaped table dominated the room. Chairs had surrounded it, but they had been pushed to the far wall.

Roughly twenty men and women stood at the table, studying maps of the station splayed out across the surface. As Tania entered, they all stopped and stared at her.

She thought she had seen a few of them around the station, but she couldn’t name a single one.

“What’s going on here?” she asked. “Who are you?”

“Karl Stromm,” the balding man answered.

“Do I know you?”

He shot her a friendly smile. “I served you breakfast this morning.”

The memory jumped to the front of her mind, clear as day. This man, in an apron, dishing out her imitation eggs. She looked over the rest of them, and the pieces fell into place. Low-level maintenance workers, cooks, cleaning crew.

People who went unnoticed.

“I take it that Neil did not brief you,” Karl said.

Tania shook her head.

He nodded, once. “Join us at the table. We need your help.”

“Help with what?” she asked, cautiously approaching the map-laden surface.

“Neil wants to stay a step ahead of the enemy.”

She felt her pulse quicken. “What do you mean?”

“Mutiny, Miss Sharma. Mutiny.”

Chapter Thirty-three

Darwin, Australia

9.FEB.2283

In the middle of the road, Skyler dropped to his knees and erupted into a bitter laugh.

The gate to Prumble’s garage lay in a broken pile of twisted iron. Debris littered the street in front of the building, a pair of rag-clad pickers filling burlap sacks with the choicer pieces. They scattered at the sound of Skyler’s laugh.

My ship destroyed, my friends killed or captured, my hangar looted, and now this?

Skyler glanced over his shoulder at the Elevator. It had never seemed farther away.

Numb, he forced himself onto unsteady feet. One foot in front of the other; repeat. He lumbered to the garage entrance and shuffled down the ramp. The smell of smoke overwhelmed his senses. He pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose.

At the bottom of the ramp Skyler flipped on the light attached to his gun barrel. The inner door leading to Prumble’s warehouse had been smashed away, along with most of the surrounding wall. Beyond lay charred, shattered shelves and overturned plastic bins, their sides partially melted.