The Exodus Towers (58 page)

“Running lights off,” Sam said as they cleared the airport. “Keep as low as you’re comfortable with.”

“If you say so,” he said.

The fires were behind them, and Sam didn’t want to delay for a peek. There’d be time enough for that later.

Darwin passed below in silence. The dark slums of the Maze stretched out to Aura’s Edge, and a bit beyond into the no-man’s-land that ringed the city. Pascal followed a curved path that kept them just inside the aura, until the stadium came into view. The other aircraft stretched out ahead of them like birds of prey sneaking up on a target. One by one
they flipped on their landing lights and descended into the bowl of the arena.

Ocean Cloud
cleared the lip last, and Sam sucked in her breath at the sight on the field below. The other aircraft were spread out, and surrounded by Jacobites. The faithful were arrayed like regiments of soldiers, and already she could see them boarding the other aircraft.

A space cleared at one end, and Pascal headed toward it without being told. There was nowhere else to put down. Sam glanced west before the aircraft dropped below the top edge of the stadium’s ring. Between here and the coast lay thousands of dark buildings, dappled by the occasional pool of LED or candlelight. She couldn’t see the fires Skadz spoke of, but their glow on the cloud layer remained.

Brighter now, she thought.

Thirty Jacobite loyalists piled into
Ocean
’s cargo bay. Men and women alike, lightly armed and stony-faced. Many, she saw, carried coils of rope across their chests like bandoliers.

Grillo came last. He wore a business suit as usual, but to Samantha’s surprise it was white, not pin-striped gray. Even the shirt and tie were brilliant white, as if never worn before.

“No time to waste,” he said to her. “Have your pilot take the lead. Follow the aura around south to the Gardens.”

“What’s the mission?”

“I’ll explain in the air.”

She returned to her spot in the cockpit’s doorway and relayed the orders to Pascal. He reacted with calm efficiency, and soon they were over the slums again, heading back the way they came. He acknowledged responses from the other planes as they fell in line behind.

In the back, Grillo moved among the seated warriors. Somehow he managed to keep an air of composure despite the tilting, abrupt movements of the aircraft. His hand would dart to a nylon loop on the wall, or to someone’s shoulder, for support, but beyond that he acted as if they weren’t moving at all. As she watched, he went to each fighter, men and women alike. He would press his fingers against the center of their foreheads and whisper something.
They’d respond with a silent word, and then he would move to the next.

He’s gone mental
, she thought. The tattered shreds of her theory that it was all an act, for the benefit of their alliance, completely dissolved. They were a cult and he was a personality; a match made in heaven.

Sam almost laughed aloud at the wordplay. If anyone saw her brief smile, she didn’t notice it over their general contempt for an outsider.

His rounds finished, Grillo finally came to stand in front of her. He grasped a handhold on the wall without even looking for it, as if he’d flown aboard
Ocean Cloud
a hundred times. With his free hand, he reached inside his coat and pulled a slip of paper from the breast pocket. “Give this to your pilot.”

The brittle paper had a drawing on it. Sam couldn’t resist, and looked it over. Grillo, or someone under him, had scratched out in pencil a map of a Darwin neighborhood, just north of the Gardens and west of the Narrows. A number of buildings were marked with letters, ranging from A to J.

“Tell him to pick one of the lettered buildings,” Grillo added. “And assign other buildings to the remaining aircraft.”

“I can hear you,” Pascal said from the cockpit. “The paper, Sam?”

She handed it forward and turned back to Grillo. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve reached the tipping point. The last holdouts have banded together, attacked our patrols. They don’t want to join in the effort to make Darwin a prosperous, peaceful place.”

Maybe they’ve seen your true freak show nature like I have
.

He’d raised his voice, and though he still looked at her she knew he spoke to the Jacobite soldiers behind him.

“For the ladder’s sake,” he went on, “by dawn this city will be united in singular purpose. Darwin could have been humanity’s deathbed, but now … 
now
, through our work, it will be the seed from which a new world will one day grow.”

Bat. Shit. Insane
. It was all Sam could think as she looked into the man’s glistening eyes. This was no act. Whatever
doubts she had, they melted away as she stared into that fervent gaze.

Grillo tilted his head slightly, as if sensing her thoughts. “Once we’ve solved our basic problems, Samantha, we can turn our attentions to things like the disease, and resistance to it. God willing, people like you may hold the key to our ultimate success, and we’re glad to have you with us.”

A chill rippled down Sam’s spine. The aircraft banked sharply, the motion providing a convenient moment for her to gather her senses as Grillo steadied himself. When the craft leveled again, Samantha managed to meet his eyes. “Great,” she said with a half smile. “Um. Go, team.”

“That’s the spirit,” he said. “Let’s get ready, everyone. The landing zone might be a bit … hot.”

Pascal’s chosen target building loomed ahead. Twenty stories of concrete grid, with some portions still covered by decorative tile made to look like sandstone. Most of that superfluous surface had been hacked away long ago, along with the windows. A random patchwork filled the spaces where windows once existed. Plastic sheets, tarps of every color, quilts, and even a few ornate Afghan carpets. At least half the window frames had extensions bolted on the outside, extending the living space out on jury-rigged balconies made from every imaginable material. Samantha saw tents on some, but most were covered with buckets to collect rainwater, or potted plants.

The roof was hidden under a dense garden.

A typical Darwin tombstone, in other words. A vertical enclave, with the powerful living at the top.

Only two or three window holes were lit. The flicker of candlelight, or the soft blue-white glow of an LED lantern.

Ocean Cloud
approached her target from the south. The fires Skadz had so anxiously pointed out earlier were all north of them, a few blocks away at least. The buildings in this area were so quiet Sam wondered if they’d been abandoned in the face of the attack.

More likely, she thought, their targets represented the enemy’s fallback position. A sandwich attack. She leaned forward,
squeezing her head into the space between Pascal’s seat and the curved glass of the canopy. To the right of their craft, she saw the dark shapes of four other scavenger vehicles as they closed in on other target buildings. Pascal spoke quiet commands into his headset, too soft for her to hear, but the synchronicity of the other planes told the story. If they’d planned the operation for days she doubted they could have achieved any more coordination.

Sam leaned back and turned toward the crowded rear compartment. “Thirty seconds,” she said. “What’s the plan? Torch and run?”

“Their fighters will be to the north,” Grillo said. “Where our ground assault started. Our aim here is to take and hold these buildings, then move on to others as we can. You will take off immediately and return to the stadium for another run, until our faithful have been delivered to all the buildings on the map.”

“Copy that,” she said, feeling suddenly a thousand kilometers away.
This is war
, she thought.
And by morning, Grillo will own all of Darwin
.

All of it that mattered anyway.

They had made three more trips by the time the sun crested the eastern horizon in a thin red line.

The third trip proved unnecessary, though. Other than a few sporadic gunfights, the war appeared to be over, and for once in her life Samantha did not mind being left out of the action. The dead and wounded loaded into
Ocean Cloud
’s bay for the return flight were proof enough that the operation had been a sloppy, fierce affair. Cries of anguish and muffled grunts of raw pain filled the otherwise quiet cabin as Pascal guided the craft back to Grillo’s stadium.

Back in the safety of that concrete bowl, the mood was quite different. Sam sat with Pascal in the open cabin door, their legs hanging over the side. Pascal had brought a zippered bag full of small overripe apples and shared one with her. He ate in silence, which suited Sam just fine.

Across the field Jacobite soldiers celebrated in groups of ten or twenty. Even in the old stands, where shacks and small
tents covered every flat space, the fighters mingled with others, laughing and talking in animated fashion. Battle stories, she knew. The favorite pastime of the newly bloodied.

At least as many groups were huddled in prayer. They knelt in circles, as few as four in number. One such group consisted of at least fifty men and women, and Sam recognized a certain air about them. The hard looks on their faces, the crowd of supporters around them. These were the leaders, she thought, or perhaps the elite fighters. Grillo stood in the center of their ring, speaking quietly with his hands outstretched in piety.

Eventually Grillo made his way back to the aircraft. Pascal saw him coming. “I’ll be in the cockpit,” he said as he rose from their perch. “Let me know if we’re clear to leave.”

“Okay,” Sam said.

Grillo strode up, a hair slower than he usually walked. He wiped his face with a clean white handkerchief, folded it, and returned it to his breast pocket before speaking. “Thank you for your help tonight,” he said.

Sam shrugged. “I hardly did anything.”

“You’ve held up your end of the bargain, Samantha. I may have been too harsh with you before, and I’m sorry if Sister Jo no longer wishes to join you at the airport.”

“She can make her own decisions,” Sam said. She hoped Kelly wanted her to stay away.
Listen to the ghost
.

“Quite.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “Her choice could have eroded your loyalty, however, and I just wanted you to know that I’m grateful you’ve remained on our little team.”

“Not so little anymore,” Sam said, casting a glance around the busy arena. Anything to get the focus off herself.

A flash of pride crossed his face. “I’m going to make a small speech soon, and lead a prayer. Would you stay? Stand at my side?”

“At your side? Are you fucking kidding me—I’m sorry. It’s late, I … at your side? Surely there are others who deserve that kind of honor.”

“None more than you. And, truth be told, it might help your … status.”

“No offense, Grillo, but prayer really isn’t my thing. Besides, I’m exhausted, and our planes need to be recharged and, um … cleaned.”

He sighed, his mouth curling in an almost imperceptible frown. “Suit yourself,” he said.

“Um. What’s wrong with my status, anyway? You mean because I’m a—”

“Immune?”

“I was going to say heathen.”

“Ah.” Grillo took a step to one side and gestured toward the space elevator. The thread was invisible in the hazy morning, but a few climber cars marked it. “We don’t care much if one believes in the ladder or not; the proof is right there. It’s just a matter of seeing it … differently.”

Sam pretended to study the length of the alien cable for a moment. “Why’d you think I was going to say ‘immune’?” she asked.

He shifted. A brief expression of discomfort passed across his face. She’d seen it once before, and enjoyed it just as much this time. “We don’t know what to make of your unique attribute. Some, like me, think you may be the key to our salvation. Others, many, think the opposite.”

“Is that why you keep me so close?”

“Partly. You are useful, obviously.” He regarded the hull of
Ocean Cloud
. “And if I coddled you, or kept you from harm’s way, I would incur not only your wrath but that of the faction skeptical of your nature. If I let you go, or ignored you, I’d go against my own instincts, and the faction that looks at you with awe.”

In an instant she went from feeling like a prisoner to feeling like some cherished possession. A tiny voice in Samantha’s head, one she usually scoffed at, told her to tread with care. Grillo was all but admitting that she had a lot more power, a lot more leverage, than she’d previously known. “I’m not the only immune,” she said.

“I’m afraid all of your old crew are gone now, Samantha. There may be others like you, people who live happily in Darwin without any knowledge of the trait. Unfortunately there’s no known test.”

He doesn’t know about Skadz, then
. She hadn’t thought to keep his immunity secret before. Certainly everyone at the airport knew he’d returned. That no one had mentioned his condition in the presence of Grillo’s overseers was sheer luck, though, and she resolved to put the word out that the topic should be avoided.

“You might be thinking right now,” Grillo went on, “that some pendulum of favor has swung to your side. It’s true. You’ve proven yourself to me, Samantha. Despite confiding with Sister Josephine against my explicit instructions, you’ve continued to follow my orders without hesitation.”

Sam spoke before her fear of him could stop the words. “They have a word for what you did; it’s called entrapment. Anyway, I keep hoping
Kelly
will change her mind.”

“She may. Who can say? In the meantime, consider yourself a part of this … this …” He couldn’t seem to find the right word for the scene around them. He waved a hand at it. Hundreds of Jacobites, many still in combat gear, many more moving about. And beyond, Darwin’s skyline.

Grillo’s skyline, she corrected herself.

Then she glanced up, following the invisible thread of the Elevator marked by three climber cars below the cloud layer, all the way to the zenith. Somewhere up there were a series of space stations, and Russell Blackfield with all his grunt mercenaries. She wondered what he thought of the transformation Darwin had experienced since he’d left, or if he was even aware.