“I’d let you talk me out of it, but then I can see the look on Ana’s face.”

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Understood, my friend. Be careful out there. Hey, before we lose you—we’ve started an effort to install a more robust comm on Black Level. It might take awhile, but feel free to check in now and then and see if you can raise us. The usual channel.”

“Will do,” Skyler said. Then he nodded at Ana.

She surprised him with a sudden, serious expression, and said the words.

“Magpie, out.”

Chapter 37

Darwin, Australia

13.JUL.2284

SAMANTHA STARED AT the slip of wrinkled yellow paper pinched between her fingers. She reread the handwritten order from Grillo in mild disbelief, and then looked up at the room of crews and pilots before her. Her gaze drifted to the far end of the hangar, the entrance, where a group of armed guards stood alert.

“I have new orders from Nightcliff,” she said. A hush fell over the gathered scavengers. Every seat was full. Some sat on the floor, or stood by the sidewalls. “Um. From now on, no more flights on Sundays. Not even spec missions.”

A hundred pairs of eyes all trying to determine if she meant it as a joke. Nightcliff hadn’t sent over any flight orders on Sundays in a long time, and the day had become everyone’s chance to go out and search on their own. The fact that Sunday had been Nightcliff’s day to be silent didn’t need explanation, and no one talked about it. Most of the scavengers called it “get shit done day” and took full advantage.

One day of freedom per week had been enough to keep the crews from grumbling too much. Now, though …

Woon stood perfectly still behind his improvised bar. He’d been wiping a mug with a stained cloth, and stopped. Even his expression was blank, as if waiting for a punch line.

“I’m serious,” Sam said. “ ‘No flights on Sundays,’ that’s what it says. Speculative missions included.”

“That’s bollocks,” a voice near her said. A stocky pilot named Cal. “We get in food and basics these days. None of the barter perks like from before, and now those assholes want to take away our spec jobs?”

“Just find something else to do,” Sam said. “It’s only Sundays, guys.”

Someone off to the side shouted out. “What the fuck are we supposed to do then?”

Sam grimaced. The note offered no advice on that point, but she had a pretty good idea of what Grillo expected, and a very good idea of what would happen to anyone who disobeyed him. “I think we’re supposed to use it as a day of reflection, or some shit—”

A grunt stood and grabbed his crotch. “Maybe we’re supposed to march up to Temple Sulam and say our ascend-ye-fucking-faithfuls.”

That got some laughs.

“Brilliant,” another added, a woman Sam couldn’t see. “Let’s confess our sins. Who wants to start?”

More laughter. Not good, Sam thought. They didn’t know Grillo, not like her. They had no real fear of him yet.

“To hell with that! Let’s get rotten!” someone else yelled. A cheer went up.

Half the room was out of their chairs and headed for the bar before she could whistle loud enough to get their attention. “Hang on, for fuck’s sake! I wasn’t done reading.”

Some returned to their chairs; others froze midstride. Sam waited until a few side conversations died out.

She cleared her throat. Her eyes darted to the armed guards by the door. They’d become so much scenery around the airport over the last year, but rarely did they gather in one place like this. If any of the other pilots had noticed, they weren’t showing it. That was likely to change in ten seconds.

“There’s to be no alcohol served on Sundays, from this point forward. Sorry, Woon.”

In the silence that followed, Sam could hear the old cuckoo clock ticking away from the wall behind Woon.

“In here,” someone asked, “or anywhere in Darwin?”

Sam shrugged. “Doesn’t say.”

“Can we drink from our own supplies?”

“Beats me,” Sam said. “I guess. It doesn’t say.”

“Go ask, then, lapdog!” a mechanic shouted. “Or maybe the blokes by the door can shed some light.”

In unison, the gathered crowd turned in their seats.

The guards at the door did a pretty good job of hiding whatever intimidation they felt under that collective gaze. One shifted on his feet. Another flexed her fingers on the grip of her weapon. Should it come to blows, the Nightcliff squad was armed but hopelessly outnumbered. It would be ugly. The crackdown that followed would be a bloodbath. She had to do something. Something more than just appearing to be Grillo’s goddamn lapdog. She’d heard the nickname whispered when people thought she wasn’t listening, or grumbled at her back after orders were dished. This was the first time someone had the balls to say it to her face. And who could blame him?

She looked around for Skadz, hoping he’d stick up for her. The crews fucking loved him, of course. Maybe she should abandon everyone for a year and see if it helped her standing.

At least, she thought, I could pretend to challenge Grillo on this.

“You know what,” she said, then paused. Most of the crowd refocused on her. She waited until she had their attention and wadded up the paper. “Fuck it, you’re right. I will go ask. Everyone relax. Get your maintenance done, or line up to tap Woon’s thor. Take a day off, if you want. Just stay on the ground until I’m back. Okay?”

She took the grumbles that followed as tacit agreement and headed for the door. The guards filed out with her, as if she were one of them, and she hated them for it. The word lapdog rang in her head so loud it might as well have been branded on her cheek.

“I’ll get Grillo on the comm for you,” one of the guards said.

“No,” Sam said. “I’ll visit him in person. Get the truck.”

“Truck’s in use. And you don’t tell us what to do.”

Sam balled her fists and turned around. The urge to throw a punch boiled just beneath her small reservoir of self-control. Keeping rage like that bottled inside had been almost alien to her in the past, but she’d screwed the cork on tight since that cursed foray into Lyons. Time, and snarky comments from assholes like this, were on the verge of letting some of her anger out, and she found that she liked it. On a whim she shouldered past them and marched toward the airport gate.

“Where are you going?” one asked.

“I’ll walk, fuck you very much.”

The squad argued behind her, and she felt glad they couldn’t see the smile that crept onto her lips. When she ducked under the airport gate, she glanced behind her. Two of the guards had apparently been assigned to follow her and were jogging to catch up.

She announced herself at Nightcliff’s gate and the side door swung open. They would have seen her approach across Ryland Square, of course, and since two of their own escorted her, no questions were asked.

Sam recalled Skyler’s story, of coming in through the old sewer with a little help from high explosives. Escape may have been a bitch, she thought, but if I ever need to break in, this is the way to do it.

Kelly’s face sprang to mind. If only the woman was still being held here and hadn’t foiled Sam’s bid to win her some freedom. She wondered if the hard woman was still in that hospital, and what the hell she had going on there that was so important that she’d take the robes, feign a change of heart.

The buzz of activity in Nightcliff’s yard stopped her cold. One of the men who’d shadowed her bumped into her and muttered an apology.

“Forget it,” Sam said. She started to ask them to explain the view in front of her, then thought better of it and forced herself to walk on.

In Nightcliff’s yard, hundreds of Darwin citizens sat on the ground in loose rows facing a wooden stage that had been built near the Elevator tower, just in front of the climber port. As she watched, the row of people closest to the stage stood in unison, at some command she hadn’t heard, and began to file up to the lectern at the middle of the platform.

Grillo stood there, flanked by men and women in white robes emblazoned with the Jacobite holy symbol on the chest. The emblem also graced a huge length of cloth behind Grillo. The white sheet had been mounted to a frame made from steel pipes. The cross had been painted in a red so bright it practically glowed, and the ladder that formed the vertical portion of the quasi-Christian symbol had its rungs drawn in black.

The slumlord, if he could still be called that, dressed as always in a neat gray business suit, was not facing the crowd. His attention instead fell on the line of Darwinites who filed up onto the stage. One by one they would kneel in front of Grillo, and he’d trace a few lines on their forehead. She could see his lips moving, but the words were far too quiet to reach her.

“Want to get in line?” one of the guards asked her.

The voice jarred her from a deep trance of morbid fascination, as if she’d been walking past the aftermath of a violent street brawl. “No,” she said. “Thanks. Not today.”

Her path meandered around the edge of the crowd. She recognized the mess hall and thought of her brief reign as Nightcliff’s boxing champ, and her equally brief fling with the guard Vaughn. The thought of asking about him crossed her mind, and then dissolved. She’d used him. He wouldn’t be very happy to hear from her.

Past the crowd and the makeshift pulpit, the far side of Nightcliff’s vast yard came into view. This side was crowded, too, but not with row after row of ragged citizens.

Sam saw clusters of uniformed soldiers. She knew at a glance they were recruits. The sloppy way they formed their marching lines, the lack of synchronicity in their steps. A shirt untucked here, a hat on backward there. All things that would have been overlooked under Blackfield, but not Grillo.

These fighters were Jacobite, of that she had no doubt. The red emblems stitched or drawn on their cobbled-together uniforms were an unnecessary reinforcement.

She counted at least ten squads, each forty strong by her guess. Four hundred holy warriors each in possession of one of the small, compact weapons Sam had helped recover from Malaysia.

Her escort took her to Grillo’s office and left her to sit there, staring at a new Jacobite painting on the wall behind his desk. This shit is well and truly out of hand, she was thinking as the door clicked open behind her.

“I give you the day off and you come here,” Grillo said from behind her. He walked around and eschewed his chair. Instead he simply leaned on the side of his desk and folded his arms. The confidence in his posture unnerved and deflated her. “I thought you might take the hint and enjoy some well-deserved rest. Which reminds me, I never had the chance to properly thank you for fetching Sister Haley’s original work. You’ve done us all a great service.”

She shrugged. “Enjoyable read, was it?”

“I’ve no idea. Authenticity was verified and now the tome sits in secure storage far below us.” He frowned, a sudden contemplative look crossing his face. “Someday, perhaps, things will settle down enough here that the manuscript can be displayed for all to see. In Temple Sulam, perhaps. But not now, not while there’s so much work to be done.”

Sam withered under his intense gaze and stared at her hands. A feeling of weakness, of the stupidity in coming here with a fire in her belly, coursed through her. “The thing is,” she said finally, “none of us want to rest. You never give us missions on Sundays, and that’s something the crews have come to rely on. It’s their one day to go out and scavenge for themselves. Find parts. Goods they can trade.”

“Contraband,” Grillo said, one eyebrow ever so slightly arched.

Samantha sighed. “A bit, probably. Nothing compared to the old days. Contraband wasn’t even in Blackfield’s vocabulary. Unless you were dumb enough to bring something in that might harm the Elevator, no one batted an eye. They got their cut and sent us on our merry way.”

“My people are not ‘on the take.’ ”

“Yeah, no, I know,” she said lamely. For a second she thought it best to get up and leave, agreeing to implement his orders simply to get out of his presence. But in a strange way she found a bit of strength in knowing that Grillo’s people generally behaved well not so much because of high moral caliber as from a strong desire to not be stabbed in the face. “How’s Kelly?” she asked, stalling.

“Sister Josephine is very well. A rising star, you might say. I’m sorry, but she seems uninterested in visiting with you again. Now get to the point, Samantha. I have a busy day ahead.”

“That is the point. My crews don’t have a busy day ahead,” she said. “And worse, you’re trying to tell them how to conduct themselves. No alcohol? You’ll have a riot on your hands.”

“Riots I can deal with,” he said. There was no emotion in his voice, and yet it had all the authority of a Neil Platz political tirade. “Still, perhaps you’re right; perhaps we can make some allowances for services rendered.”

“Okay … so booze is back on the menu?”

He flashed a sympathetic grin. “Consumed indoors, not at that rank fire hazard you call a tavern. As for speculative missions”—he paused and thought for a moment—“set up a lottery. Any crew that wants to fly puts in their name, and let as many as a quarter of them fly on any given Sunday. Tell them it’s less about their freedom and more about taxing Nightcliff’s skeleton crew on the holy day.”

She knew a final offer when she heard it and considered the allowances good enough for a day’s work. “Deal,” she said, and that was the end of it. Grillo ushered her from the room, simultaneously inviting a handful of Chinese gangster types in from the small lobby outside his office. He spoke to them in Cantonese with a flawless accent.