“I feel like a jog,” Russell said. “How about you?”

They shouted their agreement in perfect unison.

“Good. Once around the wall, I think,” Russell said. He turned left, toward the main gate, and began to run. Behind him he heard the satisfying sound of eighty feet landing in unison with his.

He kept the pace brisk, took a sharp turn just before the huge gate, climbed the stairwell there to the top of the wall. A route he did often, often with a random platoon trailing behind. They knew the drill.

The wall made a rough circle around the base of the Elevator, except when following the coastline, with a total circumference of just over five kilometers. It stood more than fifteen meters high, with steeply sloped sides, and only a fraction of it had guardrails to protect one from falling.

For most of it, including the entire stretch along the ocean, there was only flat, weathered concrete, slick with sea spray. One misstep would result in an unfortunate meeting with asphalt to the east or south, or craggy shallow rocks to the north or west.

Few actually fell. Hell, the last one even survived, if Russell remembered right. About as useful now as a horse with two legs, but he survived. A run in and of itself was a mind-numbing activity. Add a little risk, though, and you had something.

The group started to spread out by the time they reached the one-kilometer marker. Only a small portion of the guards could keep up with Russell, and by the end he knew that it would be him and perhaps one or two others.

Russell thought it was a good way to find candidates for his elite guard. And of course, the men knew that he would often reward those who finished next to him with a willing woman.

Good motivator, that.

And good for the woman, too, as far as Russell was concerned—practice makes perfect.

At the midpoint on the north wall, by the old jetty, he heard a voice calling for him. He assumed it was one of the guards behind him, pleading to slow the pace, and ignored it. But on a second call he realized the voice came from below. Russell looked down and left and saw someone waving both arms.

“What the hell do you want? I’m running!” he shouted at the dark figure.

“Gateway is on the comm; they say it’s urgent,” the man yelled back.

“Did you tell them I’m running?”

The man stammered.

“That was a joke,” Russell shouted. “Be right there.”

Russell took the call in his office.

“This is Blackfield,” he said into the microphone.

From the other end came a jostling sound. He heard muffled voices in the background.

“Russell, hello.”

Alex Warthen. He sounded tired.

“What can I do for you? There’s been no sign of that scavenger, Skyler what’s-his-name, if that’s why you’re calling.”

“There’s a situation developing up here, and I need your help.”

Russell grinned. One day, and already I’m indispensable. “You sound like shit.”

“Took a bullet,” Alex replied, “in the shoulder. Collarbone is all cracked to hell.”

“Shit,” Russell said, leaning forward. “You’ve got my attention. What happened?”

Alex recounted the story of the failed raid on Platz Station. “He was ready for us. With well-armed fighters. Luckily my sleeper agent aboard his station had the sense to act before Platz could divide my men. We would have failed completely without her help.”

“What’s Neil’s angle?”

Alex paused. “What do you mean?”

“Why,” Russell said with a sigh, “did he fight you? Couldn’t he have just turned your climbers around from the start? Avoided the whole thing in the first place?”

Another pause. He must not have considered that. Then Alex said, “I have to assume he wanted to cause casualties, not avoid them. One thing’s for sure: He’s got something worth killing for hidden in that station.”

Russell tried to work through the ramifications. He felt a headache coming on. “Where do I come in?”

“We need reinforcements, supplies. My men don’t have the numbers or the training for something like this.”

“You’re going to try again?”

“Hell yes,” Alex said. “Platz isn’t just a former councilman now; he’s a cold-blooded murderer. The stupid old sod has given me the excuse I need to shut him down, permanently.”

“Us,” Russell said. “Given us the excuse.”

“Right. Of course.”

Russell turned his chair to look out the dirty window at the Darwin skyline. Shadowed against the dawn light the buildings looked like so many tombstones.

Alex interrupted his train of thought. “Well?”

Russell crossed to his door and waved his assistant in. “I’ll have an anti-riot battalion on the way within the hour. Real hard-hitting bastards.” To his assistant he said, “Squads four and six, full gear, in the yard in thirty minutes. Go.”

The man nodded and ran for the stairs.

“With them will be air and water,” Russell said to Alex.

“Food, too, if you can. The farms are above Platz Station, so he effectively has a hold on them. I know there’s a shortage down there and all …”

“Har, har. No problem, enough to feed an army.”

“All right,” Alex said, “see you soon then. Doc is here, ordering me to rest. Which reminds me, I’m pretty useless with my shoulder like this. Captain Larsen, my second in command, will be acting on my behalf.”

“Any good?”

“I just met him, actually,” Alex admitted. “He’s been running security up at Hab-One.”

“He runs a major thing like that and you just met him?”

“Never needed to,” Alex said, “because he’s been doing the job so well.”

Russell understood this. His best people were the ones he could assign a task and then forget about. “I look forward to working with him. Blackfield, out.”

He switched off the connection and stared out at the horizon. Slums, as far as the eye could see. A million hungry mouths and diarrheic asses.

As soon as Platz was well and truly defeated, Blackfield would announce a new way of doing things down here. He would release the food and fire up the rest of the desalination plants.

The people would cheer his name. He could practically hear it carried on the rolling thunder.

The men aligned in an uneven grid. Russell walked up and down the rows, nudging them into line with swift strikes from his baton to the back of the calf. It didn’t take them long to realize he was serious.

Two hundred men in all. Many of them even carried the same gear, appropriated from the Australian army after the collapse. A few had weapons acquired on their own, and as a rule Russell never questioned how they came across such equipment. They just had to prove that it worked reliably, and that they had ammunition in sufficient quantity.

Russell stopped at the front of the assembly, his back to them. A light rain fell, just more than a mist. He looked up at the cord of the Elevator, which faded into the mist just a few hundred meters above.

His eyes turned to the busy dockworkers in front of the array of soldiers. Ten cargo climbers were being prepared for the journey. Per his instructions, each would carry the maximum load of eight containers: two water, two compressed air, two food, and two personnel.

A crane loomed overhead, waiting to lift the massive vehicles and swing them into position, where another crew would clamp them onto the cord itself. Billions of microscopic legs inside the climber’s central shaft would then grip the thin thread and begin to crawl upward.

Russell turned to face the men. They snapped to attention, more or less in unison.

He began his address. “I know you all enjoy our weekly jaunts into the square outside to quell the rioters.”

This drew some laughs, and more than a few whoops of agreement.

“And I know you’re all disappointed that you weren’t sent out to patrol Aura’s Edge and have some target practice against these supposed packs of ‘newsubs.’”

A mix of grumbles and assent this time. Everyone wondered about the rumors. Subs working in large packs, coming in from the Clear and rampaging through neighborhoods. Russell didn’t believe it, but he’d sent a few squads out to make a show of effort.

“Well, I have a different task for you lot. Something much more interesting.”

Silence, now. He had them hanging on every word.

“Playtime,” Russell said, raising his voice, “is over.” He paused for effect, enjoying the sight of two hundred grins being whisked away. The yard grew silent, save for the rain that dripped from the rooftops—and the busy climber crews.

He continued. “Today will be a turning point. The start of a new era, where we Darwinians no longer live off the table scraps of those who sit above us.” Now he had their undivided attention. “Yesterday a routine security inspection, led by my Orbital counterpart and friend Alex Warthen, was ambushed on Platz Station.”

A murmur ran through the troops. Russell held up a hand and waited for quiet.

“Neil Platz has fired the first volley in a conflict that I aim to end. Today.”

The men shouted in unison, a single whoop. Russell felt a twinge of pride, and fed off it.

“Commander Warthen took thirty of his best men into Platz Station, and they were repelled. The commander himself took a bullet.” Russell began to pace through the ranks, hands clasped behind his back. He’d seen the behavior in an old war movie, and liked it. “They retreated to Gateway,” he said, pointing upward, “just four hundred klicks that way.”

Russell stopped in front of one of the soldiers, a black man with bloodshot eyes. “Any idea what he did when he got there?”

“No, sir,” the man said.

Russell looked the soldier up and down and nodded with satisfaction. He turned back to the group at large. “He called me. And begged for help!”

They shouted again, louder this time.

“You see, they’ve got it pretty easy up there,” Russell said. “His men are soft. What Warthen needs right now is a bunch of skull-cracking, bad-ass sons of bitches who know how to keep squabblers in line!”

The last part of this was lost in the hollering of the men, now smacking their rifles with the palms of their hands.

“Are we going to hide here, in the safety of these walls?”

“No, sir!”

“Are we going to cower here, waiting for another shipment of rotting fruit?”

“No, sir!”

“No, sir, that’s right.” Russell returned to his position in front of them. “What we’re going to do is ride to the rescue.”

“Yes, sir!”

“What we’re going to do … is kick some Orbital ass.”

“Yes, sir!”

“And we’re not leaving,” Russell said, lowering his voice to draw them in, “until Neil fucking Platz pays for his cowardly ambush.”

They cheered again, loud enough to wake the whole of Nightcliff, and much of Darwin, Russell thought.

“And mark my words, Neil fucking Platz will never again dictate the affairs of Nightcliff. Of Darwin.”

The men roared.

Russell turned to face the climbers again, mostly to hide his broad smile.

This was going to be fun.

Chapter Thirty-one

Aura’s Edge, Darwin, Australia

9.FEB.2283

Three Nightcliff soldiers cowered in the dusty ground-floor storefront. The acrid smell of burnt gunpowder filled the hazy air, and spent shell casings littered the concrete floor.

One stood at the open doorway, leaning out to view the street beyond. He held his AK-47 in a white-knuckled grip, braced against his armpit. Sweat and blood dotted his face. Smoke still curled up from the tip of the gun’s barrel.

Abandoned cars clogged the street outside, many still occupied by the remains of those who had almost made it to Darwin, to the Aura’s safety, five years earlier. They’d made it as far as the shifting, rippling Aura only to die in the traffic jam, unwilling to leave the safety of their cars as subhumans swarmed the area. The no-man’s-land had been left to rot ever since.

Until tonight.

Ramesh looked down at his own feeble pistol. An antique, with his last four bullets in the clip.

“We’re cut off,” the third man said, from his crouched position by the large square hole in the wall that a shop window once filled. “We’ll never make it back to the barricade.”

“Shut up,” the man by the door said. His maroon helmet had a nasty dent in it from a newsub who’d swung a tire iron at him. “There’s more coming. I hear them.”

“We’re fucked,” said the one by the window.

Ramesh agreed, silently. Four of their squad mates lay in the street outside. Two others had run off, new additions to the enemies’ numbers. He ran a finger along the pistol and decided he’d save the last bullet for himself. Even if they survived another wave of these so-called newsubs, it wouldn’t matter. They’d been pinned down beyond the barricade too long. The Aura didn’t protect as well here, and he could already feel the headache coming on. The first symptom, everyone knew that.

Blackfield’s order: Clear Aura’s Edge of the newsubs. Quick sorties into the dark streets, find their nests, clear them, and get back. In reward, volunteers would be placed on the list for Orbital duty.

Not worth it. Not even close. Ramesh could hear their inhuman grunting in the street outside, close now.

“Our reinforcements should get here soon,” said the guard at the door. “We hold here. Got it?”