“Perhaps we could return to the matter at hand?”

She smiled at him now, finding confidence in the newfound clarity in her mind. “There’s really nothing else to say. Please, though, go easy on Pascal. Good pilots are hard to find.”

“That’s entirely up to him,” Grillo said. He studied her for a moment longer, then wheeled and went back to his truck. The entourage he’d brought followed suit. Pascal did not look at her as they stuffed him into the back of one of the vehicles. Within a minute the small fleet pulled away, scattering crews along the runway as they made their way to the gate.

She left the hangar after dinner, slipping down a ladder at the back. The rendezvous was still hours away, but she had a lot to do. Forcing herself to look casual, she waved at the guards posted outside and strolled down the runway looking for an aircraft recently returned from the Clear. Only one fit the bill. Sam approached the ragged scow, dubbed Radar Malfunction, and walked straight up the cargo ramp like she owned the thing. The captain, a brute of a man with all the character of the run-down ship itself, was mopping the deck, his back to her. His sweat-soaked undershirt clung to a disturbingly hairy torso thick with muscle and rounded by a healthy appetite for cider.

“Cervantes,” she said.

He stiffened, but didn’t turn. “Jesus. What now? We just got back for fuck’s sake.”

Sam looked past him. The forward crew compartment appeared to be empty. The door to the head was open a crack, so she doubted anyone was in there.

Cervantes put the mop into a scarred white bucket, oblivious to the dirty water that sloshed back onto the bare metal floor. He wiped his hands on a towel slung casually over his shoulder as he turned to face her. “If you want to borrow Nguyen, she’s down at Woon’s with everyone else, trying to drink away the stench.”

“Stench?”

He glared at her. “You can’t smell it?”

Sam sniffed the air. She caught a faint chemical odor, like sulfur.

Cervantes shrugged. “I guess the worst of it aired out, but they were stuck back here with the load for two hours. Even through our suits we could smell it. I don’t know what the hell Grillo needs all these chemicals for, but it’s nasty work, Sam. It’s a miracle no one yacked.”

Satisfied they were alone, Sam punched a button on the wall and waited for the hydraulic door to close and seal.

“The hell is this?” the man in front of her said.

“Too many Jakes about,” she said, allowing the slang for the sake of talking down to her audience. “I need a favor.”

“Shit. Just my luck. What is it?”

“Pretty simple. You go into the head, shut the door, and wait for five minutes.”

The squat man scratched at his shaggy beard and turned slowly toward the bathroom door, then back to her. “The hell are you on about?”

“Trust me, the less you know the better.”

“What’s in it for me?”

Sam narrowed her eyes. She felt the words of a threat trying to escape and steadied herself. “The choicest missions for an entire week.”

“A month.”

“Done.”

His eyebrows crept upward. Then he turned, walked into the small bathroom, and slid the door closed.

“Turn the fan on,” Sam said loud enough to ensure he heard. When the whir of the ventilation fan came on, she knelt and took her backpack off. From inside she produced a nylon duffel bag, spread it out, and opened it. Then she went to the lockers on the sidewalls of the cargo bay and threw the steel doors open wide.

Samantha spent a minute studying her choices. Cervantes and his crew were known for their crude approach to things, a reputation reflected in the equipment they stocked. None of his people were ex-military, and though the etiquette was to avoid asking people about their life before SUBS, Sam had heard interesting things about enough of the crew to know there were criminal pasts there. The pilot Nguyen, in particular, had apparently moved drugs between Darwin and Hanoi under the guise of a private executive flyer. A sour woman, but capable enough that Sam had sequestered her on a few of Grillo’s more ambitious actions.

Still, despite the lack of military-grade gear, they packed plenty of firepower. Four minutes later, Sam had her duffel filled with what she hoped would be enough to pull off what Skadz and Prumble had planned.

Finished, she went to the bathroom door and spoke loud enough for the occupant to hear. “I’m leaving now. I’m going to mumble some shit about borrowed tools when I go, and you’ll respond ‘no problem.’ Got that?”

“What are you taking?”

“Again, best if you don’t know. Suffice to say, I can’t use my own stuff on account of the Jakes.”

“My crew is going to be pissed.”

“They won’t be for the month that follows, believe me.”

“Goddammit, Sam. Please don’t take any of Nguyen’s stuff. She’ll flay me alive.”

Sam turned and went to the door.

At the bottom of the ramp, Sam stopped on the tarmac and set her bag of borrowed gear down. She inhaled deeply, and a sudden wellspring of memories came sharply to mind. Hundreds of missions flown. Twice as many nights spent on a stool at Woon’s trading stories of the Clear with whoever would listen. Stories of success and failure and death. Death dealt, more often than not. Years of her life spent cleaning, prepping, sleeping, and fucking away the time between the dangerous forays out into the wastes beyond Darwin. And all the camaraderie that came with it.

Then the last two years, in charge. Generally hated. Grillo’s handpicked girl, dishing out orders to former friends who’d lost almost everything under the Jacobite’s rule that made this dangerous, difficult life one worth living.

“Goodbye,” Samantha whispered, unsure if she was about to ruin their lives utterly, or make things right.

“Oy,” Skadz said. He hefted a small machine gun from the bag and turned it about in his hand. Tiny skull-and-crossbones symbols were etched into the side of the pistol-sized device. The magazine sticking out the bottom of the grip was longer than the gun itself. “What gang did you roll to get this kit?”

Sam glared at him. “Cervantes.”

“Ah,” Skadz said, the matter settled. “He always did have a flare for this kind of shit.”

“I couldn’t exactly unload the weapons locker at the hangar.”

“Easy, Sammy. It was a smart play. This’ll do fine. Besides, if all goes well none of it will get used.”

Prumble eyed the selection. “You’re sure about this, Sam? Maybe Pascal won’t talk. You could be back in bed before dawn if you returned now.”

She shook her head. “You weren’t there. Grillo knows something, and he’ll find out more tonight if he hasn’t already. No, it was time.”

“Once they realize you’re missing …”

“I left a note for Woon, saying I’d decided to follow in Skadz’s footsteps and explore the Outback for a while.”

The black man slapped a clip of ammunition into his gun. “Brilliant idea. It really clears your mind, if you smoke the right leaves.”

Sam tried to smile but found she could not.

“It’ll make you look guilty,” Prumble noted. “Persona non grata.”

“Yeah, but Woon and a few others will say they saw me go, carrying a heavy backpack with all my belongings, headed for Aura’s Edge. Even if Grillo thinks I left just to save my skin, he’ll still think I left.”

“Unless you’re seen tonight, or in the days that follow. Maybe you should remain here, Samantha.”

From a zippered pocket on her thigh she removed two items. A pair of scissors, and a packet of black hair dye.

“That won’t disguise your stature.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Prumble groaned before offering a grudging, defeated nod. Then he returned his focus to the weapons laid out on the table. He hesitated for a few seconds before settling on two simple pistols, the kind people would buy for basic home defense. He stuffed them in his leather duster along with a handful of spare clips. Lastly, the big man grabbed three antique hand grenades. He winked at Sam as these disappeared inside his coat pocket.

Once the two men had made their choices, she removed the sawed-off shotgun she’d picked out for herself and loaded it with slugs. The barrel had an attachment for holding ten extra rounds, which she filled as well. On a whim she grabbed the last two grenades, returning Prumble’s wink. She gave one to Skadz and hooked the other on a belt loop before pulling her shirt back over the gear.

“Right,” Skadz said when she zipped the duffel bag closed. “Here’s what I had in mind …”

Selby Systems Ltd. was a dull gray building four blocks south of Grillo’s stadium-turned-airfield. The four-story structure had a manufacturing floor on the bottom half and offices above, along with an assortment of chemical storage spheres at the southern end. The metal spheres, which varied in size from just a meter in diameter to almost ten, were all piped into the facility via a spaghetti maze of steel and plastic conduits. Scattered along these pipes were valves and welded junctions, some of which dripped fluid or vented gasses. A razor-wire fence surrounded the entire area.

Lights were on inside the building and throughout the supply apparatus. From the vantage point Skadz had found atop a nearby abandoned office complex, Sam could see Jacobite guards at every entrance. At least two patrols were covering the facility: one that circled the entire perimeter and another that focused solely on the spherical storage units.

Sam frowned. She’d heard from both Skadz and Jayateerth before him that the place was well guarded, but this seemed beyond paranoid. What, she wondered, was Grillo so worried about? A knot formed in her gut when a possible answer arose.

“Do you suppose he’s got the object here?” she asked.

Skadz held up a finger. He had a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes, and his mouth moved in a silent count of seconds passing. “A bit over three minutes for the main patrol to circuit,” he said. “What, Sam? No, Kip says the object is in Nightcliff.”

“Maybe Kip’s wrong.”

Skadz shook his head. Sweat gleaned on his dark skin. “I don’t think so.”

“So why so many guards here?”

“Protecting his assets,” Skadz said. “If what we heard is true, he’s got a bunch of space stations that have been moved around a lot recently, something they don’t normally do. This is the only place in Darwin, which is to say the only place left on the whole damn planet, that makes the fuel they need. If they’re not resupplied soon they might never be.”

“And now he’s got Jaya working here, too,” Prumble added. “A lot of eggs in one tidy basket.”

Tiny droplets of water began to pepper the roof around them. Sam felt the warmth as the light rain began to dapple the back of her neck. Far to the north the sky lit up with a scattershot of lightning flashes, a storm just over the horizon. If only it had been down here, Sam thought, we’d have some cover.

As if he’d heard her, Skadz opened the black briefcase he’d hauled along on their walk through the city. He hadn’t said where he’d acquired it, or explained the contents, but when Sam saw the telltale reflection of light off graphene fiber, she knew.

It only took Skadz thirty seconds to assemble the rifle.

“Jake would have liked to have that,” Sam said, admiring the high-end weapon. It looked brand-new.

“Not true,” Prumble replied. “I offered it to him, but when he declined I found a place to store it until he changed his mind. One of the few little prizes I hid around the city that was still unmolested.”

“Jake loved that big old stick he carried,” Skadz added with more than a little nostalgia. “I swear you stand that thing on its end and it’d be taller than you, Sammy.”

She grunted, realizing the truth in both their words. This gun, though much more modern, was barely half as long. Where Jake’s had a scope the size of a wine bottle, this one had a beer-can-sized sight. “I guess it’s time to decide who’s on sniper duty,” she said.

They all looked at one another, hoping someone else would volunteer.

“It should be you, Sammy,” Skadz said. “Grillo still thinks you’re the tea and biscuits. If one of us gets caught, you don’t know us. You can still carry on with this madness.”

She shook her head. “I’m a terrible shot. Prumble should do it. He’s slow and fat.”

Skadz winced.

Prumble threw a hand across his brow. “You wound me. I merely have delicate feet and a family of lemurs living in my coat.”

“Well, you two work it out,” Skadz said. “As a man of color I’m gifted with stealth and speed, among other advantages.”

Sam rolled her eyes, then stared at Prumble until he reluctantly picked up the sniper rifle and snapped the targeting legs into locked position. He began to position it on the edge of the roof.

“Let’s go, Sammy,” Skadz said.

She clapped Prumble on the shoulder and followed Skadz to the fire escape ladder they’d used to reach the roof. On the street below she took point, keeping to the shadows only when confident no surprises waited. A quarter-moon near the horizon provided plenty of dark places, but the terrain was unfamiliar and she knew a trip and fall would be just as disastrous as being spotted.

Ten meters from the fence she ducked behind a low planter wall. Weeds choked the narrow basin, providing ample cover. She moved in far enough to let Skadz take the place at the end of the wall, and watched him. He leaned out, his attention split between his wristwatch and the active factory.