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.

Chapter 43

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, asshole,” 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 motherfuckers 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.

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