The Exodus Towers (28 page)

6.MAY.2283

A
N HOUR LATER
, the inflatable raft slipped out from the boathouse and into the river’s current.

The two occupants sat side by side, facing the northern shore. One hunched over a hunting rifle, the other at the sniper’s shoulder, a pair of binoculars pressed to a hooded face.

Skyler and Ana watched the boat drift away. In the waning sun, the mannequins looked a bit silly to his eye. He could only hope that the craft would drift out from the shore far enough that the ruse would work. If it bought them ten seconds of confusion, he’d consider the effort worthwhile.

“It’s moving fast,” Ana noted, an urgency in her voice.

And she was right. The current picked up pace a few meters from the shore, and in no time the boat began to bounce along nearly twice as fast as the leaf Skyler had used as a test run. If the craft beat them to base camp, and the diversion worked, it would be wholly wasted.

Skyler ran. He swept aside vines and ducked under branches, tripped twice on roots. Ana, right on his heels, helped him up the first time, and toppled onto him the second. She giggled as they untangled themselves.

Soon the game trail turned north, and Skyler had no choice but to push into the dense foliage that stood between them and base camp. He shot alternating glances at the tiny raft, which drifted along thirty meters ahead of them, and the climber car that ambled down the Elevator cord straight ahead. The vehicle was only a few hundred meters from the
ground now and seemed to be racing the sun to the horizon. The sky blazed crimson, putting the climber in stark silhouette.

Skyler turned to Ana and raised a finger to his lips. A few steps later they came upon the stream that bordered the colony on its eastern edge. Skyler did not stop to look at the camp, tempting though it was to study the enemy’s positions. He turned sideways and jogged down the embankment, one hand trailing the sloped mud wall for balance. Ana stopped at the top, her eyes wide as she took in the tent city on the other side of the stream, but her senses returned soon enough and she bounded down the slope. Skyler waited at the bottom for her to break her momentum, lest she splash into the meter-deep rivulet and give their approach away.

At the bottom of the ditch, Skyler unslung his rifle and made sure it was loaded, half his attention on Ana as she did the same. In the dwindling light, her expression showed no fear. He even saw a hint of a smirk on the corners of her mouth. When she flashed him the a-okay, her eyes sparkled.

He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and impress on her the danger they were about to walk into. He wanted to tell her this all wasn’t some game. And he wanted to kiss her, he realized, a desire he quickly banished to the farthest corner of his mind.

Skyler shambled up the other side of the sloped ditch on his hands and knees, using his fists to keep dirt and debris from clumping on his palms and fingers. He crawled the last meter until his head just poked above the slope and the camp came into view.

The colonists all sat on the ground on the southern edge of camp, near the river. Skyler counted three armed guards circling them, weapons held at the ready. One of Gabriel’s APC’s was parked near the prisoners, its bright headlights trained on them. Most of the captives sat facing away from the blinding beams, which left their faces in shadow. Even from here, two hundred meters away, Skyler could tell they sat on their hands. He wondered if they were bound, but he thought it unlikely.

Behind the glow of the vehicle’s lights, he thought he could see the outline of one more guard, sitting atop the vehicle.

And beyond that, he saw the barricaded pen that housed the aura towers. The alien devices were crowded together. Too many of them, Skyler thought. Gabriel and his people must have gathered as many as they could, taken down Mercy Road and Water Road in an effort to give their prisoners nowhere to run.

At the center of the camp stood perhaps ten of the immunes, black-clad and armed. They arrayed themselves in a loose circle, centered on the base of the Elevator—the black alien disk that resembled a gear laid on its side. Portions of the intruders’ circle were obscured by the large tents and modified cargo containers that ringed the Elevator’s connection point.

Around the northern edge of the colony, the bulk of Gabriel’s vehicles were still parked in a wide half circle, only now they faced outward. Their headlights were off, and in the half-light of the setting sun Skyler couldn’t tell how many guards patrolled there. At least as many as in the circle around the Elevator, perhaps more. A handful of aura towers were interspersed between them, giving the border an odd similarity to a castle wall.

“Do you see Gabriel?” he whispered to Ana.

“Not yet,” came her reply. “Wait, there, near the—”

A shout went up. Skyler almost leapt out of his skin at the sudden noise.

The yell came from the southern edge of camp, near where the prisoners sat. He glanced there and motion in the river caught his eye. A raft.

The raft! He’d almost forgotten. The inflatable boat ambled along, fifty meters offshore. In the near darkness the ruse couldn’t look more perfect. Two shadows, and just the hint of a rifle poking out from one. A BB gun, in truth. Skyler smiled.

The guards near the prisoners shouted and pointed, and those near the center of camp yelled back. A few broke from the circle to run in that direction.

“Get ready,” Skyler said.

“Oh, no,” Ana whispered.

He was about to ask her what she meant when the rocket launched.

It came from the vehicle that stood sentry over the prisoners. Or, rather, from the guard who sat atop. A deep
WHUMP
preceded the launch, a sound Skyler knew well from the Purge. Then blinding light from the projectile’s tail put the entire camp in daylight for a scant second. A single second was all the time it took for the weapon to knife through the air, hissing as it flew, leaving a straight line of smoke in its wake.

The raft erupted in a fireball that roiled up into the sky, reflected in the water below. Bits of raft and debris rained down into the river and onto shore.

Then the shooting started.

Gunfire rattled from the southwest, toward the docks. Davi, Pablo, and Elias, too far away to see, had started their attack early.

Skyler glanced northwest. “C’mon, Wilson. Where are you?”

He saw nothing there, heard nothing. As with any battle plan, Skyler recognized the moment when it all went out the window. “Time to improvise,” he muttered, and came to a crouch. “Cover me.”

In answer Ana settled onto the slope, her rifle at the ready. Inside its grenade launcher were the last three rounds they had, and her role would require the use of each.

Skyler ran at a crouch to the nearest tent, aware that the camp now flirted with chaos, exactly as he’d hoped. Gabriel’s people were in disarray. Some held their circle near the camp’s center, some ran for the river, others for the docks where gunfire still raged.

When he reached the tent, Skyler went to a knee and glanced back, ready for Ana to unleash her first grenade.

She wasn’t there. He scanned the embankment in both directions and saw no sign of her.

“Shit, shit,” he muttered. Where the hell was she? He felt trapped, caught between the urge to go back and find her, and the desire to press on. He knew she wouldn’t have spooked
and retreated. More likely, she’d run headlong into the northern portion of the camp, the recklessness Davi had warned about on full display. Maybe it had been a mistake to ask her to sit on the periphery and attack from afar.

A horrific sound whipped Skyler’s attention around. The smash of metal and breaking glass, followed by a wrenching grind so loud it made his teeth hurt.

For a split second he thought the climber had fallen to the ground, and his heart skipped a beat at the idea of Tania inside, falling to her death. But when he glanced up he saw the vehicle above, still dawdling downward, now just thirty meters from the ground.

It would make landfall in less than a minute.

One of Ana’s grenades, then. Perhaps she’d stayed put, after all, and he’d just lost track of her. According to the plan she was to put her explosive rounds into three of the trucks that guarded the northern edge of camp, forcing Gabriel and his people to devote precious resources to defending that angle.

Somewhere west of him he heard screams of pain, and more shooting.

A guard ran past, just meters away, heading toward the river. He saw Skyler and tripped in surprise, fumbling a handgun into the dirt as he went down. Instinct took over and Skyler fired, twice, into the man’s torso. His position would be known now, so he ran.

From tent to cargo container to tent, Skyler weaved an erratic path that brought him closer to the center of camp. Fighting raged on the opposite side of camp, where Davi and the other two men were tasked with spearheading the attack.

People were shouting all around now.

Skyler ducked inside an empty tent and knelt to catch his breath. He would assume for now that Ana had simply moved to get a better angle for her part of the plan. That meant only Wilson and Vanessa were unaccounted for. Their task, to crash the captured enemy APC into a building a few hundred meters from camp, in hopes of drawing Gabriel’s people out to investigate, should have started the overall attack. Perhaps the inflatable raft’s arrival had preempted
that, and so one ruse had caused the other to go ignored.

He could only hope they were okay. The two were supposed to crash the vehicle, then retreat to a safe distance, avoiding combat unless absolutely necessary.

Another explosion rocked the ground beneath him, sent him to one hand. Ana.
Good work, girl
.

Outside the tent the air smelled of smoke. A chorus of angry voices could be heard from the south side of the camp where the prisoners were being held. He hoped they’d joined the fight, but he had no way to know just now.

The climber car loomed just ten meters from the ground now, and Skyler surged forward. If Gabriel and his closest lieutenants held the base, at best Tania would become a hostage, at worst a casualty. He couldn’t let either happen.

The vehicle slipped behind a cargo container and out of view. Skyler pumped his legs, throwing caution aside.

A third explosion tilted the ground beneath him.

He staggered, found his footing, and raced on. A woman in black combat gear appeared in front of him, her face hard and sly. He didn’t hesitate, firing at her in a wild yet effective burst. The woman dove aside, a bullet ripping through her leg. Her own salvo missed, a line of dirt eruptions in the ground between them.

Skyler fired again, intent to put her out of the fight for good. He saw the other attacker too late.

The butt of a rifle caught Skyler in the stomach. Air rushed from his lungs and he could do nothing but curl into a ball as the sounds of battle raged around him.

As he fought for breath he felt himself being dragged through the dirt. His mind screamed to fight, to escape from whoever pulled him through the muck, but his body refused to do anything but breathe. Everything else seemed to fall away.

Suddenly he saw Tania in front of him. She knelt on the alien surface at the Elevator’s base, the open hatch of the climber behind her. Tears lined her cheeks.

Skyler tried to reach for her, but his arms wouldn’t cooperate. They were being held, gripped so tight he could feel
his hands going numb. His legs lay in the dirt, but something or someone held his torso from the ground. The position bent his back in a growing agony. He glanced left and felt a lance of pain from his skull. Blood trickled into his eye, stung, and he blinked hard with little effect. He shut the eye and looked right instead. There he saw the boot and pant leg of one of Gabriel’s immunes, a carbon combat knife sheathed in leather strapped to the thigh. The man held Skyler by the armpit, his grip like a vise, and Skyler realized another most be holding his left arm. It occurred to him then that some time had passed. Ten seconds or a minute? An hour? He had no idea how long the crack to his skull had knocked him out, but there was still the sound of gunfire in the distance.

Someone knelt in front of Skyler, boots crunching the dirt beneath. He turned and saw Gabriel’s face, eye level with his. The man tilted his head, studying his captive. “Can you talk?” the immune asked.

Skyler spat in his face. He heard Tania gasp in shock.

The leader of the band of immunes made no effort to wipe the spittle away. He just frowned. “I’m not sure how I’ve wronged you, friend, but your actions are uncalled for. Call off your fighters, please, and we’ll sort this mess out.”

One eye closed tight, Skyler did his best to meet the man’s intense stare. “Sergeant Zagallo,” he said. He laughed at the confused expression on Gabriel’s face, a chuckle that came out more as a gravelly cough. “Go fuck yourself, monster.”

Realization dawned on Gabriel’s face. His frown deepened, and he rose to his feet. As Skyler watched, Gabriel stepped to one side, bringing Tania into view. There were others behind her, cramped inside the climber.

Gabriel raised a handgun and pointed it at Tania’s temple. She whimpered, her eyes closed now. “Call them off, or this one dies first.”

“No need,” someone said from outside the circle. Another group of guards arrived. One prodded Pablo forward, and the tall man stumbled into view. His hands were bound in front of him, and Skyler could see a trickle of blood running down his arm.
Elias? Davi?

“Is it over?” Gabriel asked.

The guard in charge of Pablo nodded. “More from the ranch were with him. They’re all dead.”

Ana
. Skyler felt a rage boil within him. He squirmed, only to incur tighter grips on both his arms. He tried to kick, and found his legs had been bound.

“Good, that’s … good,” Gabriel said, lowering his gun. He looked at someone behind Skyler. “You can silence him,” he said.

Skyler closed his eyes and waited for the bullet that would end his life. Instead he heard the telltale sound of duct tape being unrolled and torn. The strip came over his head and was pulled across his mouth, then smacked hard for good measure.