Glancing up, fighting the sun, Skyler followed the cord all the way to its vanishing point in the sky above. Two climbers lazed their way up.
“You okay, mate?” someone asked.
Skyler glanced down and saw a Nightcliff guard standing at the fence, the same fence both he and the subhuman woman had scaled on the way in.
The soldier stood barely taller than a boy of perhaps seventeen, tall enough for Skyler’s needs.
“Yeah,” he croaked. With a cough he cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m good.”
The boy scrunched his nose. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be in there.”
Skyler walked up to the fence. “Fled in here when the attack came, and I guess I knocked my head. Did I miss the action?”
The kid relaxed a bit. He carried only a baton for a weapon, and his uniform looked hobbled together. Camouflage pants, worn running shoes painted dark gray, and a short-sleeved black shirt. The only piece of his uniform that mattered, though, was the maroon helmet on his head. The name Nera had been stenciled on it.
Nera looked around at the landing yard and shrugged. “I missed it, too. I was on the east wall. What do you do here?”
“Fix stuff,” Skyler managed. “Sinks, toilets. Speaking of, I really need to take a piss.”
“There’s a head in my barracks that works. Follow me?”
“Lead on,” Skyler said.
The kid broke into a jog, heading west and south through the low buildings, and Skyler kept close behind him.
“Never seen you before,” Skyler said, trying to sound casual.
“I just joined up.”
“Really? Seem to know your way around.”
Nera took it as a compliment and relaxed a bit as they entered the barracks. “I learn pretty fast,” he said.
“Seems so.” The barracks were empty. “Not too busy here, eh?”
“Most everyone went up.”
“Why?”
The kid looked at him sideways. “Blackfield’s War,” he said.
A few days and already the conflict had a name. Skyler cringed.
Nera went on. “He’s really taking it to Platz, they say.”
“And you’re stuck here?”
“I just joined up,” he said again. “The vets get first crack, but I’m hoping I’ll get picked. Duty roster gets posted at six-n-six.”
“Ah.”
“Here’s the can,” Nera said. He stopped in front of a door near the back.
“I’ll just be a minute,” Skyler said.
He went inside and found it to be empty. Skyler checked each stall anyway, confirming it. There were three windows high on the wall above a row of poorly maintained sinks. They were all closed, and too small to shimmy through anyway.
He shouted and ran to the door, pushing it open with exaggerated panic.
The young man, who had been leaning against the wall, jerked upright.
“There’s …” Skyler pretended to catch his breath “There’s a man, in the stall. Dead … I think. God, I’m gonna be sick.”
The guard leaned in the door but made no move to enter. “Dead?”
“See for yourself,” Skyler said, panting.
The boy entered the bathroom as if it brimmed with waiting subhumans; his eyes never left the row of stalls. “Which one?” he asked, his voice breaking awkwardly.
“The last,” Skyler said. He moved into the bathroom behind the cautious guard and eased the door closed.
The poor boy, so fixated on the stall, never heard Skyler come up behind him. One swift blow to the back of the head and the kid collapsed.
Skyler couldn’t kill him. The boy seemed innocent enough, just trying to make a better life for himself. Even so, Skyler damn well couldn’t have him alerting anyone, either.
Moving quickly, Skyler swapped outfits with the unconscious kid. He kept his own shoes. Most important, he placed the maroon helmet of a Nightcliff soldier on his own head. It wore tight, but would do.
The fortress was nearly deserted. Other than the crew cleaning up the wrecked plane, Skyler spotted only a few guards. Most were on the wall, attempting to make the contingent appear status quo to outsiders, he assumed.
Skyler hoisted the unconscious kid over one shoulder and went out the back door of the barracks. Once outside he did his best to walk with confidence. Just another body being slogged through the fortress; surely not the first time, or the last.
It took a few minutes for Skyler to find the manhole cover he’d come in through. It took almost an hour of backbreaking, frustrating work to lower Nera down to the tunnel below and move him into the room where all tunnels converged.
The kid seemed pretty bright, so Skyler figured he could find a way out of the sewer when he woke. Hopefully that would be well after Skyler found his way onto a climber. A calculated risk, but he couldn’t think of anything else short of suffocating the poor boy.
He had until six, according to Nera, before the next list of names would be posted. Skyler figured he’d check the list, and if Nera wasn’t on it, he’d find someone who was and take their place. In the meantime, he decided to feign duty. He’d spent time in the military, and he knew that even when you had nothing to do, you had something to do.
Back at the barracks, Skyler grabbed a broom and swept the floor. The menial task cleared his mind, calmed him. He lost himself in it and almost missed the locked chest with ‘Nera’ scrawled on the side at the end of a row of bunks. Skyler found the key in a pocket of his borrowed uniform.
He brushed aside a sense of guilt. Rifling through someone else’s belongings never felt good, but it beat sweeping.
The objects inside reminded him of his own innocent notion of what would be important to bring to boot camp: playing cards, a few odd photos of friends snapped and printed—likely at great expense—in the main bazaar near the center of Darwin, and a worn pencil banded to some partially used graph paper.
Skyler took only a lighter and a half-full pack of foul-smelling cigarettes, leaving the rest as he found it.
Feeling more confident in his disguise, he decided to venture out and learn what he could about the situation in orbit.
He went to the wall. Along the top of that massive barricade he marched a slow patrol, nodding to other guards he passed. Eventually he came to the point that overlooked Ryland Square, just outside the southern gate, where the riots started last month. He traced the path the Melville had taken, coming in over the wall, belly full of spoils that would soon be seized.
An eternity had passed since that day. Part of him expected to see the Melville parked there, Angus in the cockpit taking that shocking sight in stride.
So odd to be up here, wearing the maroon helmet. He couldn’t dream such a bizarre reversal.
He walked to the edge of the wall and ventured a look over. A crowd had formed around the fortress gate. His heart rate shot up; he was afraid he would get called to quell another riot. Then he realized they were celebrating, not rioting. Amid the sea of people, he saw container after container of food lying along the base of the wall, open to the sea of greedy hands.
Blackfield had pacified the locals, it seemed. Some were chanting his name.
Skyler frowned at that. What a clever bastard.
At the lookout point above the southern gate, Skyler stopped and offered a cigarette to the soaked guards who stood there, as if presiding over the assembly.
“Look at all of ’em,” one guard said.
“Like pigs at the feeding trough,” said the other. He’d probably been one of them just days earlier.
Skyler tried to play along. “Nothing like a meal to bring people together, eh?”
“Shit,” said the second guard, popping the cigarette between his lips. “Won’t last, not unless the climbers start coming back this direction.”
“Nothing’s coming down?” Skyler asked.
The guard shot a sidelong glance at Skyler. “Only works one direction at a time, mate.”
“Oh yeah. Right.”
The second guard glanced up at the sky, squinting in the bright sun. “Still, the power’s finally stable again. That’ll speed things up.”
Skyler gave a slow nod and staggered away, his mind reeling.
Stable power. Had it bloody worked?
He thought back to the silo. Falling with the subhuman, into that … energy. And the deep, irregular hum that had pounded him on the way down. The sound had disappeared when he came back out.
The reason eluded him. He had done nothing to fix the damn thing. He’d made a sloppy mess of it, if anything. Given the alien device the most cursory of inspections, and left behind a subhuman like an offering.
No point in dwelling on it now, he decided. Whatever the cause, the power had stabilized, and that meant a quicker trip to orbit, which was all that mattered. Whether he could take credit or not, the conclusion lifted his spirits a little.
He followed the wall around to the eastern gate, which had long ago been sealed. No cheering crowds here, just the daily market set up in the shadow of the wall. Skyler himself had bought and sold goods here—surplus items from speculative missions outside the city, traded for necessities produced within. The market was near empty today, due to the bountiful containers lying open in Ryland Square.
Blackfield’s War. Skyler shook his head. The offer Neil Platz had made seemed nothing short of paranoid when Skyler heard it. Not anymore.
His stomach grumbled as his path along the wall reached the northern side, by the ocean. Time to find the mess hall, he thought. Food with a side of eavesdropping.
It proved easy enough to locate. Every guard not on duty congregated at the large building, once a warehouse by the look of it.
Skyler grabbed a tray of offered food—a variety of vegetables along with hummus and seedy crackers. The seating consisted of a series of benches, arranged in rows and spanning the gamut in terms of age and condition.
The usual cliques of such a place were nowhere to be seen. Skyler guessed this was because all the experienced soldiers had gone to orbit. Instead everyone sat together near the southern wall.
One man sat slightly apart from the rest of the crowd, and Skyler recognized him: the one who’d snuck him the memory chip full of Orbital requests. Prumble’s “man inside,” Kip.
Skyler took a chance and approached the man.
“Okay if I sit?”
Kip glanced up from his food, which he pushed around a tin plate with a fork. “God, don’t you blokes ever give up?”
“Thanks,” Skyler said, plopping his tray on the table and taking a spot on the bench. “My feet are killing me. Killing me! Patrolling the walls all morning.”
“Good for you,” the man said. He continued to push his meal around the dented metal plate, turning it to mush.
“What do you do here?”
He shot an annoyed glance at Skyler. Then he gathered himself and looked back at his plate. “The go-list is based on seniority, so you’re wasting your time. I can’t help you.”
“Go-list? I’m just making friendly—”
Kip’s fork stopped. “Right, right. I get put in charge of Orbital duty and suddenly everyone wants to be my chum. Bullocks.”
“I’m new here,” Skyler said.
“No shit.”
“Any news from up top?”
The man dropped his fork and focused on Skyler. “I’m not in the mood, if you don’t mind.”
Skyler spread his hands and took to eating his tasteless food. After a few bites in silence, he rolled the dice. “Prumble sends his regards.”
As Skyler hoped, Kip’s head snapped up. “You know him?”
With a casual nod, Skyler said, “I know you, too, as a matter of fact.”
Kip glanced around. The color had flushed from his face. “Who the hell are you?” he whispered.
Skyler pushed the plate of horrid food aside and stared at Kip.
“Ah, yes,” Kip said, nodding. “The immune. Skyler, was it? I’ll be damned.”
“Call for the guards and I’ll kill you before they get here,” Skyler said.
Kip sat frozen for a few seconds, then shrugged and went back to drawing hummus patterns. “What is it you want?”
Skyler smiled. “Simple. Add the name Nera to your go-list, and forget you ever saw me.”
“Or … what? You’ll rat me out to Blackfield? I’m nothing now. Not without Prumble. Without you, frankly. Just a cog in this damnable machine.”
“Look,” Skyler said, “I’ve lost everything, too. My ship, my crew, the business Prumble brought me from you. The whole chain is shattered, and we’re both screwed.” He lowered his voice, drawing Kip closer. “All I can tell you is I must get to orbit. My crew was captured there, and I have to find them. I owe them that.”
Kip’s fork froze. He didn’t look up.
“You’re not nothing, Kip,” Skyler added. “You’re the man who can get me to orbit.”
Kip fell silent. For a long time he stared at the crowd of Nightcliff guards who huddled in the corner of the mess hall. They were brash and boisterous. Making lewd jokes and laughing at one another.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Kip said. Then he stood and wandered from the room, his unfinished meal forgotten.
At four o’clock Skyler made his way to the cargo yard and asked where he was supposed to go for boarding. A worker gave him terse directions.
About twenty other guards, all trying to act like a ride to orbit was no big deal to them, mingled around the climber base station. Skyler stood at the edge of the pack, his maroon helmet worn low.
The chaotic situation in orbit, and the complex operation to move troops and supplies up the Elevator, made it easier than he could have hoped to blend in. In situations like that, details were missed. Things fell through the cracks.