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.

The subhuman still roared, and Skyler’s mind snapped back into focus. He saw bared teeth, head and neck coiled back, then snapping forward to bite at his thigh. Skyler reacted on pure instinct and thrust his knee up as the teeth bore down.

His knee met the creature’s jaw with a sickening crunch that Skyler felt as much as heard. The sub’s jawbone cracked. Its eyes rolled back in abject pain.

Only when Skyler’s hands suddenly slipped on the rope did he realize his mistake. The leg he’d thrust to block the attack had been the one in the ascender. Without a foothold, his already burning hands and arms had to support all of his combined weight. Weight he hadn’t the strength to bear.

Nor, it turned out, did the grappling hook. He heard it pull free and scrape across the pedestal before he registered the fact that he was falling.

Skyler cried out, held the rope out of sheer survival instinct, as they fell away from the spire toward the humming red forms below and the rattle of Vanessa’s weapon.

Chapter 45

Melville Station

4.DEC.2284

THE HULKING FORM of Platz Station appeared on proximity radar a day earlier, approaching in an orbit equal to what its altitude had been above Darwin.

All attempts at contact failed, though Tim never stopped trying. With a full day to prepare, Tania took the precaution to move all nonessential staff down to Belém, or up to Space-Ag 1. If the incoming station showed signs of altering course, turning itself into a giant battering ram, they’d have plenty of time to evacuate the remaining people.

A larger concern was if the goal was to ram the thin cord of the Elevator itself. The facility was too big and moving too slow to sever the cable like a knife, assuming such an action was even possible. But no one knew what would happen if it simply crashed into the alien cord. The mass of an entire space station pushing against the cable might fold it in half, pull it loose of its anchors, or send reverberations along the entire length that would wreak havoc on everything from Black Level down to the climber port in Belém.

Just in case, Tania had all stations on standing alert to detach and clear. Technically, none of them actually touched the cord. Attached was simply the term used when they were positioned with their center ring around the thread. Attaching or detaching required the retraction of special movable bulkheads aligned in a slice along one edge of the station. For most this meant that a gap five meters in width would be created, then closed again once the facility was centered on the Elevator.

Platz Station, like all others, could do this. A key design feature that allowed the stations to be manufactured and assembled in a central location, then moved into place as a whole. Even rearranged later.

Tania sat in front of a widescreen monitor and watched the facility grow ever larger. A half-consumed avocado lay on a dish beside her, along with a cup of water. She sipped the cool liquid and set it back down, her eyes never leaving the screen, even when she wiped sweat from her brow.

“You can hit the showers if you want,” Tim said behind her. “I’ll monitor this.”

Tania turned and smirked at him. She’d come straight from her sparring session, part of the training regimen Karl insisted she begin if she intended to make any more forays outside of Camp Exodus. Her instructor, one of Karl’s old “cleaning crew,” taught in the Krav Maga style and had no problem pushing her to the limit.

Tim shrank at her look. “Never mind,” he said. “No, really, you smell great.”

She turned back to the screen and tried to ignore him. Platz Station moved closer with every passing second. She wondered when their location had been discovered, and how. A spy? Some kind of tracking beacon? Both had always been a possibility, and precautions had been taken.

There were lights on in the few porthole windows she could see, and the station spun at its usual speed, which implied it wasn’t empty. There’d be no point in spinning up after detachment if it had been vacated. Black Level had been left in null gravity during its entire transit from Darwin to Belém, just to conserve fuel.

Why now? she wondered. The answer seemed obvious. Figuring out the Builders’ schedule didn’t take much imagination once one had three data points to chart. She thought of the massive ship that grew nearer every day. At six kilometers long, according to visual estimates, the scale simply defied belief. Speculation as to its purpose dominated every conversation from Belém to Black Level, with Greg and Marcus offering some particularly inventive, even hilarious, ideas on their nightly “Broadcast to Skyler.” The transmission-turned-show continued despite the successful contact months ago. They’d been inside the dome since, according to the immune Pablo. No sign of them, no way to know if they were okay.

The lights in Platz Station’s windows tugged at the corner of her mind. She toyed with the idea that Neil himself had stood at one of those portals. That the rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated, and he’d been hiding out in the bowels of that structure until the moment arrived when he could commandeer it.

Then a different scenario hit her, the one she’d expected since the moment she’d heard of the object’s approach. Blackfield is in there, she thought. And when the station arrives, climber cars full of soldiers are going to stream out in both directions until the Elevator is in his control. That wouldn’t be easy; Tania had seen to that. All the climber controls and dock codes had been changed long ago, just in case. No, the best Blackfield could hope to do is reach the ground, and even then his cars would be suspended well off the ground. The colony would give them ample reason to wish they’d never attempted such an assault.

A change occurred on the screen. Tania squinted and leaned forward, the haze of her daydream fading. “The spin is slowing,” she said.

“Hmm?” Tim asked from behind her, in his place at the comm.

“They’re drifting now. And—oh, there we go.” Plumes of gas erupted from hundreds of ventilation nozzles distributed evenly across one side of the rings. “Braking thrust.”

Tim loomed at her shoulder now, watching. “I guess it’s going to latch on to the cord.”

“Yup.”

“What if they packed it with bombs or something?”

A chill shot through Tania. Partly from the picture of that station turning into a small sun and vaporizing the cord, and partly from her lack of imagination for such scenarios.

The comm behind them chimed, an incoming transmission.

“It’s them,” Tim said. “You want to take it?”

She nodded to him and turned her chair around to face the terminal’s screen. “Record it? Thanks.” Tania settled herself, took a deep breath, and tapped the icon to answer the call.

Russell Blackfield’s face appeared before her. He looked pale, haggard.

“I never thought I’d say this,” he said, “but it’s good to see you, Tania.”

She looked at his face and kept repeating one word in her mind: liar. Yet for all her distaste for the man, he sounded sincere. “What is your purpose here, Russell? I must ask that you refrain from connecting to the Elevator, and back off to a distance of one hundred kilometers.”

“We can’t,” he said. “We left in a hurry; air is already scrubbed to the limit.”

Tania regarded him with what she hoped looked like cold disbelief. “Again, what are you doing here?”

Russell ran a hand over his face. Something drifted by the camera behind him. A wastebasket, she realized. Seconds later a person drifted into frame, grabbed the basket, and vanished off the other side of the screen. Tania could see other loose items floating around in the background, now that she knew to look for it. They did leave in a hurry. Or it’s a clever detail to sell the ruse.

“You know me a little,” Russell said. “So I think you’ll appreciate how hard this is for me to say. You’ll understand how dire the situation is.”

She swallowed hard, despite herself.

“Tania Sharma,” he said, “I humbly ask for asylum. Sanctuary, for myself and the crew of Platz Station. I … ask for mercy. Throw me in a cell if you must, I don’t care, just don’t tell us to turn around. We can’t go back now, any more than you can.”

Tim, in the corner of Tania’s field of view, shook his head vehemently. If Zane were up and about, he’d be doing the same, she knew. “What’s in it for us?” Tania asked.

She’d hoped the question would take Russell off guard. That’d he’d be surprised she’d do anything except agree based on humanitarian reasons. He took the question in stride, though.

“People. You keep asking for people. Well, here’s a few thousand, all skilled Orbitals. Plus this station, it’s yours. It’s the crown jewel of Neil’s empire, you know.”

“What else?”

Now he showed a flicker of desperation. A quick dart of his eyes to hers, searching some sign of her sincerity. “Um,” he said. “Well … there’s four climbers aboard and twenty or so cars, most of them rated for personnel transport. Soldiers. We lost some in departure, but there’s plenty still here. Weapons. Six medical doctors and as many nurses, plus a fully outfitted infirmary.”

“Any of our missing friends? Samantha Rinn or Kelly Adelaide, for example? Former council members?”

He shook his head. “We didn’t plan to leave. I haven’t seen your friends in a long time.”

Tania nodded slowly. The station was an incredible addition to the colony, she had no doubt. Everything sounded too good to be true, with the exception of Blackfield’s presence. She pondered the idea of sending him back and keeping the rest.

“Please,” Russell said. “At least provision us with air and water. Food. Our departure was, well, let’s say it was unplanned.”

“Something’s happened,” Tania said. “In Darwin. Something forced you to leave. What was it? Did the aura fail? Did you leave everyone else to die?”

Russell held up his hands. “Whoa, hold on. I’m the victim here, okay?”

Like hell you are.

He went on. “Our station was attacked. They were going to destroy it when their assault failed. We had no choice but to flee.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“Grillo,” he said. Noting her confusion, he added, “The fucking Jacobites. They run everything now. Darwin. Orbit. All of it. And once they find out there’s another Elevator here, there’s no telling what they’ll do.”

She fixed him with a gaze she hoped looked menacing. “They don’t know where we are? Where you went?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think so, but they have Alex Warthen. He might talk, if Grillo suspects he has information. I doubt it, though; he’s honorable to a fault.”

Tania’s mind raced. Most of it still screamed “trick.”

“By letting us stay,” Russell said, “you also earn my silence. I could get Nightcliff on the line right now and report our location.”

“Fine then,” Tania said, harsher than she’d intended. If there was a chance to capture Russell Blackfield, lock him up, and toss the key out an airlock, she had to take it. “Attach and await our instructions.”