And armed to the teeth.

Skyler punched back inside the dome with a submachine gun in each hand.

The scene before him was almost exactly as he’d left it, fifteen minutes earlier. Half a second had passed inside.

He shot the leaping sub first. It hadn’t even landed yet from a jump that began fifteen minutes earlier. Surprise, asshole. The creature’s landing turned into a lifeless belly flop, centimeters from Ana’s side.

“Down!” he shouted to Vanessa.

She dropped flat.

Skyler opened fire with both weapons, spraying gunfire indiscriminately before him. The guns pounded back against his palms, sending shock waves of pain up his arms and into his back. He ignored it utterly, held the triggers down. Someone was shouting. Himself, he realized with unexpected glee.

Before him the subhumans fell like cut weeds.

He fired until both guns were spent. Shell casings tumbled in the dirt around him.

When the clips ran dry, Skyler dropped both weapons unceremoniously and whipped around the third from his back.

Only the giant subhuman still stood, standing amid the corpses of its pack. It flexed two mighty arms in a show of rage and howled at Skyler. Then it took a long step forward.

Skyler shook his head. “Enough. Is. Enough.”

He fired the grenade launcher and the subhuman’s head exploded in a shower of bone and blood.

It fell to its knees and collapsed forward in an earth-shaking thud. A sudden, satisfying silence followed.

Vanessa was standing behind him, he realized. “Pistols, at my belt. Take them.”

She drew both weapons and stepped to his side. “I had just enough time to think you’d abandoned us before you reappeared,” she said breathlessly.

“I felt a little underprepared, decided to change the odds.”

She somehow managed a smile. “You look more ridiculous than any of those sensory action heroes.”

“You’re one to talk,” he said. “Twenty years of jujitsu, eh?”

“And finally useful.”

“Well, stay sharp. We’re not done.”

Vanessa’s face tightened. She nodded with grim determination. “I’ll take Ana outside.”

“No,” Skyler said, too stern. At Vanessa’s surprised look he added, “Time’s racing forward out there. If her injury is as bad as I think, every second is going to count. Stay here with her while I finish this.”

“Let’s just get out of here; there’s nothing—”

“Not quite yet. All of this was to protect that damn object, and we’re bloody well leaving with it.”

Vanessa swallowed. “Okay.”

All that remained was details. Skyler found no more red-hued fields whooshing about the dome, only the purples—which he shot—and some blues that moved too slowly to bother with. He simply walked around them.

The dome continued to shake. At the center Skyler saw the earthen pillar crack, then collapse into a small avalanche of debris. When the dust settled, he saw the thing he’d expected to find from the beginning.

Half-buried in the collapsed pillar’s base was a Builder ship, nose down, the back half of it splayed open like a charred flower. Skyler gave it a once-over and decided to ignore it. The hourglass-shaped object that had been placed so deliberately upon the peak of the spire was the important part, he knew with instinctual certainty.

He found the object halfway out toward the dome’s edge, in a crater that had once presumably contained one of the chromatic time fields. In some delicious irony, the alien object had killed a subhuman when it fell into the depression. The creature lay just beside the thing, its head crushed.

“Get ready, Vanessa!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Coming to you!”

She hollered back in acknowledgment as Skyler lifted, pushed, and pulled the heavy object toward the edge of the dome where Vanessa and Ana waited. He half-hoped to see his young companion sitting up, alert, but she still lay exactly as she had.

“She’s got a lot of bruising on her lower back and abdomen,” Vanessa said grimly.

Skyler gave a single nod. “We’re going to have to move her.” He tried to sound strong, and thought he’d failed miserably.

Despite the reluctance in her eyes, Vanessa nodded.

“We’ll head straight back to Belém and get her to the doctors. How are we doing on time?”

She glanced at her watch as if she’d forgotten all about it. “February,” she said.

The weight of it all suddenly crashed in on Skyler like the collapse of the pillar he’d witnessed. The alien place, the violence, and poor Ana … He fought to get his ragged breaths under control. Vanessa placed a calming hand on the center of his back.

“C’mon,” he said. “We’re almost out of time.”

Chapter 49

Darwin, Australia

24.FEB.2285

THE INVITATION ARRIVED during the night.

Samantha woke to a soft rap at her door. Her head swam from the lingering effects of alcohol and a sudden powerful sensation of déjà vu. An attempt to tell whoever knocked to fuck off came out as a dry croak, and she fumbled about in the dark for her canteen. She found it, drank, and threw it at the door.

“Fuck off!” she said. No one had woken her in the middle of the night like this since Grillo’s blitz on the last holdout neighborhood in Darwin. She didn’t need another night like that. Not tonight, not ever.

“It’s Skadz, Sammy. Open up.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and sat up. Sweat-soaked sheets fell away from her, the result of a blisteringly hot night and her body’s attempt to discharge the liquor by any means available. She smelled her armpit and winced. “What the hell do you want?”

“I need you to come with me.”

She growled and stumbled to the door of her tiny room. She pulled the door open a crack and looked at her old friend. His eyes were like twin moons against his dark skin, and the dark hangar beyond. “Shouldn’t you be as wasted as me? God, I’ve never seen you drink like you did last night.”

It had been a celebration, of sorts. Grillo’s position as head of the Jacobite Church cemented, along with official admission of his rule over Darwin and the space elevator. The story went that Platz Station had suffered a full and sudden depressurization and loss of spin. All hands lost, the station scuttled due to damage during the event.

Blackfield, dead.

Sam suspected bullshit from the start but couldn’t bring herself to call Grillo out on it. What difference would it make? The man had played his cards and won, and now everyone knew.

The Nightcliff guards stationed at the airport had given everyone a respite from the alcohol ban, and even joined in the forced revelry. The four who shared the hangar with her were all still asleep at the card table below.

Things had gotten … a bit wild, even by Sam’s lofty standards. She had a vague recollection of diving naked from the catwalk onto a pile of couch cushions below, part of a game to see who could land the farthest from the raised walkway. The loser had to remove an item of clothing. It made sense at the time.

At least she hadn’t woken with one of the Nightcliff goons in her bed. Or worse, Skadz.

Sam’s head pounded. She felt like she’d been run over by a truck. Skadz, on the other hand, looked alert. Energized. It infuriated her.

“I was drinking water,” he said.

“Huh?”

“All night. Water. I tried to tell you to do the same but you had a head start.”

She laughed in his face. “Why would I want to drink water?” she asked, and took a sip from her canteen.

“Because we have a meeting to attend. Like I said, I tried to tell you.”

“A meeting? Where?”

“In the city.”

Samantha laughed again, and tapped her skull. “You go. I’m still wandering the fun house up here. Besides, I suspect you’re just going to try to convince me to bug out with you and leave the city behind.” He’d broached the idea a few times since Grillo took the city. Parts of it appealed to her, parts didn’t. Mostly, she found that if she ignored anything happening beyond the fence that surrounded the airport, things weren’t all bad. The missions were boring, sure, but it beat a life of hiking around and living off the land.

“That’s not it at all,” he said. “It’s about Skyler.”

They slipped out through a loose section of the fence on the airport’s north side, avoiding the still-guarded main gate.

Skadz ushered her along at a brisk walk. The pace, the fresh air, helped clear Samantha’s head enough that soon she didn’t need to lean on her friend. Her clothes still clung to her like a clumsy lover, damp with sweat and the hot sticky air of Darwin’s slums. She could smell herself and felt vaguely embarrassed at how disgusting she must be, but the worry vanished when Skadz led her into the thick press of the Maze.

The stench of the place hit her like a wall. Shit and piss, incense and hookah, fresh rain and stagnant murky puddles all blended together in the cauldron of a district. Whatever odor she brought to the mix would be a marked improvement.

“I’m gonna be sick,” she said just in time to release the meager contents of her stomach onto a brick wall. Skadz held her wet strands of blond hair out of her face, and stood watch while she retched a second time.

Even at this hour, people were wandering by. Not many, though; not like before. The bustle and energy of the Maze seemed gone, and not due to the time of night. The people Sam saw were huddled, dark shapes. Heads down and shoulders slumped, their gaze never wavering from the ground in front of them.

Skadz matched their hunkered, depressed posture and guided her through the twisted mess of alleys. Twice she smacked her forehead on low pipes before she got the hint and bent over.

Three Vietnamese men in soiled clothes came from a doorway and said something to Skadz. A threat of some sort, too quick for Sam to follow. Skadz didn’t break stride. A gun appeared in his hand in response, and they retreated back into the shadow.

“That kinda shit hardly ever happens here anymore,” he muttered a few sharp turns later. “The Jakes have this place locked down.”

“Don’t call them the Jakes,” Sam said. She’d heard the slang and chastised Skadz twice already for using it. To Sam it tarnished the memory of her sniper, her friend. The term might be widespread and unstoppable, but that didn’t mean she had to hear it from friends.

“Hell. Sorry,” Skadz said.

After another dizzying set of turns they stumbled into a wide merger of alleys. Wide by the Maze’s standards. Sam recognized it. The café, Clarke’s, where Prumble had paid them for the Japan mission, stood at one corner, dark and uninviting.

Skadz walked up to the door and rapped it twice. Seconds later they heard a steel gate behind the door retract. Then the latch made a series of clicks and the door swung open. He said something in a language Sam didn’t know, and the old woman within responded in kind with a motherly tone. She ushered the two of them in and pointed at a stairwell half-hidden behind an ornate drape that hung from the wall next to her shop counter.

Skadz went through and Samantha followed him. The stairwell was pitch-black, the narrow steps precarious. At the top a candle lit the hallway. Wood floors creaked under their feet as Skadz strolled calmly to a door. He entered without knocking.

Inside, two men sat on a faded Afghan carpet. One was gaunt, with stringy gray hair and a thin face that seemed stretched across the skull below. He looked vaguely familiar.

The other man was Prumble.

Her hug turned into something of a tackle. Prumble laughed as they fell back against the wall, his girth just enough to save him from toppling over under her affectionate assault.

“Sammy, Sammy,” he said, and clapped her on the back.

She released him and put her hands on her hips. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Right here,” he said. “Lying low, gone to ground. The shadow, the snake.”

A giggle escaped her lips. “Stealth has never been your strong suit.”

“I have a strong suit?”

“You tell me.”

Prumble looked up at the ceiling. “Hmm. I have a purple suit with yellow pinstripes. That’s pretty strong.”

“Seriously, where have you been? You couldn’t say hello?”

“Here,” he said, the mirth not entirely gone from his pudgy face. “I became an investor in this scraper’s rooftop garden, and in the café below. Honestly I haven’t left in almost two years, Sam. Haven’t spoken to anyone until these two sought me out. I’m still a wanted man, though that particular attribute seems to be waning.”

The thin, sickly man next to him shuffled slightly.

“Who’s this?” Sam asked.

“Meet Kip Osmak,” Prumble said. “Communications officer in Nightcliff Control, former assistant to Russell Blackfield, and longtime supplier of Orbital wish lists to myself.”

“Hello,” the man said.

Sam looked him up and down, reassessing her opinion. “Nightcliff comm, huh? Must be interesting work.”

“I hear many things,” Kip said, as if this was a curse. “Interesting things.”

“Which brings us,” Skadz said, “to the reason for this little reunion. Tell her what you told us, Kip.”

Before the slight man could speak, the old woman from downstairs came in with a fresh pot of Darjeeling tea and a plate of pasty white buns dappled with spice. She placed them in the center of the small room and left without a word.

“Many thanks, Renuka,” Prumble said as the door clicked closed. “Sit, everyone.”