The smile that crept across his face tore her confidence to shreds. “Many will leave, yes. The ones I allow. My flock, ready to rebuild the world anew.” He leaned in close. “They think I’m God’s chosen one, you see. Lunacy, yes? But then sometimes I think, maybe not. Maybe they are right about me. Maybe I was chosen for what these so-called Builders intend. A reset. A resettlement. A chance to build a new society that can actually make proper use of the gifts they have given us.”
She wanted to spit in his face. She wanted to exact her revenge right there and now. Instead she sat still and let her rage return to a simmer. Her lower lip trembled uncontrollably.
“I know it my heart, Sam, in my heart, that whatever is waiting to be unlocked inside that ship is the key to this metamorphosis they wish us to undertake. And you’re going to unlock the door for me.” He shrugged. “Well, you or Skadz. One of you will cooperate, given enough proper motivation. I don’t care much who. Neither you nor he is the tool I would have chosen, but who am I to judge the wisdom of our benefactors, hmm? That’s all right, though. All that will matter is what the history books say, and it will be me wielding that pen, won’t it?”
He leaned away, sensing she must be at the breaking point. Good, Sam thought. Harbor some fear. I promise it’s justified. “Right, then,” he called out to the room. “Places, everyone.”
A flurry of activity followed. Gravity faded, something that Sam noted didn’t seem to bother Grillo or his men very much. They knew in advance, of course, but they moved about with practiced ease. He’d been planning this for some time, she realized. How much did he really know?
Station crew and Grillo’s guards alike cleared space around the central hub of the room where, on a normal day, climbers would dock inside a sealed central shaft and then await umbilicals to link them to the cargo bay. Sam watched with mild fascination as a barrier rose from the floor, creating an extra buffer area between the docking shaft and the bay proper. Two people wearing spacesuits drifted into the bay and entered a door on this new wall.
More chatter followed between Grillo and others, and then lights around that same door flipped from green to red. Sam felt it a safe guess that the two suited people were going outside. The purpose eluded her. Hightower lingered nearby, waiting for some order that had yet to be given, fighting to keep himself planted on the floor next to her with varying degrees of success. Given his behavior earlier, she couldn’t understand why he didn’t just grab on to her for an anchor point. He’d been happy to grab whatever pleased him when she’d been immobile an hour ago, but not now. Either the presence of so many other people had tempered his behavior, or Grillo had said something about it. Believer or not, the Jacobite leader did have a code he lived by.
A tech drifted across the room to Grillo and spoke quietly with him. The leader listened, nodded. They were pointing as they conferred, toward the ceiling. Then Grillo turned and addressed the room again. “Another shift in gravity, I’m afraid. Remember your training, and we’ll all be fine. The floor will be there”—he pointed upward—“in a few moments.”
Sam glanced up. Floor and ceiling mattered little in zero-g, but she imagined that a reversal of the most recent state would mess with even the most experienced crew.
Three Jacobites drifted into the room, each carrying a section of ladder. They took positions by the far wall and secured the parts with little metal handles on the wall that could be twisted to act as bracing.
Hightower used a pair of wire-cutters to release her from the handhold to which she’d been tied. Why Grillo needed three extra ladders brought in, when there was probably a kilometer’s worth of rungs embedded in every surface of the room, she had no idea. The way the three men who’d carried the devices waited around, she suspected the answer would present itself soon enough.
For a brief second she thought she could have pushed off with both legs and propelled herself rapidly across the room, but there were too many guards hovering around. Besides, her aim would have to be perfect. She’d wait for gravity, she decided, and play the defeated-hostage role as best she could. Hightower moved her to the exact same position on the room’s “ceiling” and secured her with a fresh set of ties.
Wire-cutters, right front pants pocket. Toxin gun, holstered under left arm. Brain, missing, presumed dead.
Gravity returned, first gentle as a bedsheet, then a blanket. Sam closed her eyes as the ceiling became the floor over the course of thirty seconds. The transition was easier for her, tied down as she was. Around her she could hear Grillo and his men settle to their new “down” and then flounder as they rose to stand from whatever pose they’d found themselves in. When she let her eyelids lift, a sense of normalcy had returned.
“Get her ready,” Grillo said to Hightower. “Her suit should be here any minute.”
“Suit?” Sam asked.
Grillo ignored her. He turned back to confer with the technician. The pair now stood at a terminal screen mounted on the wall of the inner barricade.
The binds holding her down were cut once again. Sam immediately began to flex her fingers and massage her wrists as best she could, rubbing away the soreness generated by the tight cuffs.
Hightower knelt down and cut the strap at her ankles. The deed done, he made a show of returning the wire-cutters to his pocket and then stared at her as if waiting for some kind of thanks. Sam said nothing. Instead she bounced on her heels to force blood back into her feet. Something felt wrong about her body, a lethargy that had not been there on the ground. An aftereffect of the toxin dart, perhaps. Or her muscles had gone slack in the absence of gravity. Whatever the case, she felt like she’d put on ten kilos since arriving. She wanted to shadow-box, to better understand her current capability.
“Want to spar?” she asked Hightower.
“What?”
“I need to hit something. Friendly match?”
“Shut the hell up. No talking.”
He’d unholstered his weapon after cutting her free, and hefted it in her general direction now. But Sam watched his face, not the gun, and written plain as day in his eyes, in the slight snarl of his mouth, was the truth. He wouldn’t use it. He’d been ordered not to. Sam added this to her growing list of chinks in Grillo’s armor.
She glanced at the former slumlord. He and the tech were smiling, broadly. After a minute of conversation Grillo turned in her direction and snapped his fingers at Hightower. “Time to go,” he said.
“What about the suit?” Hightower asked, his voice loud in the enclosed bay.
“We won’t need it. It seems they’ve rolled out the welcome mat. Bring her. You’re coming, too.”
The guard nodded and moved in behind Sam. He gave her a push by the elbow.
“Looks like your star is rising,” Sam said.
“Shut up.”
“The sky’s the limit, Bonaparte. You’ll reach heights I’m sure you’ve only dreamed of.”
“I mean it, bitch. No talking.”
The airlock door on the inner barrier hissed as pressure equalized. Grillo turned to the men who carried in the spare ladders and motioned. They came forward and followed him inside. A minute or so passed in near-total silence. Sam took the time to scan the room, hoping for some sign of Skadz or Vaughn and finding none.
Eventually the ladder carriers filed back out. Grillo emerged last, smiling. “Bring the holy relic,” he said to someone behind her. “Time to make yourself useful, Samantha. Come and see what the Creator has delivered us.”
She thought of refusing, of making a show. Maybe she could say something that called his piety into question, but words had never been her gift. No, she’d just make a fool out of herself and bring death or worse upon one of her companions. This gave her one idea, though. A small one, stupid, perhaps. “I want to see my friends first. Make sure they are okay.”
He’d been one step through the portal already, and paused. His shoulders heaved visibly with a sigh. “Really, Sam? Now? I give you the chance to set foot inside an alien craft and all you can think to do is resort to petty delaying tactics.”
“I’ve seen your sermons; that’s alien enough for me.”
He frowned, like a father displeased with his snot-nosed toddler’s behavior. “You should know me well enough by now to avoid goading me, Samantha. Especially with a pathetic line like that. I won’t allow you under my skin, not today. This is far more important than a little wounded pride.”
Not you, no. But Hightower …
“And more to the point,” he went on, brightening, “you should know me well enough to trust my integrity. Your friends are fine, and will remain so as long as you are cooperative. Which, I might add, you’re dangerously close to not being.”
In all this he’d never turned to look at her. When she didn’t reply, he took her silence as the answer he needed and stepped through. Sam filed in behind him, at gunpoint now, she realized. An entire squad of armed guards brought up the rear. Fifteen, maybe as many as twenty, she couldn’t be sure. She wondered if they were Grillo’s men, or like Weck had come from Alex Warthen’s staff. Then she wondered if it mattered.
Beyond the door, a white umbilical tube had been stretched out to where a climber, her climber, had arrived earlier. The climber was gone, and the tube extended all the way into the central hub where the Darwin Elevator’s cord had been before the station was moved. The tube turned here and went up. Sam could see the bottom rungs of one of those ladders hanging down.
The men who’d installed the climbing gear were waiting at the upward bend of the tube. Sam glanced behind, past Hightower, and the other guards filing in behind them, all carrying compact machine guns rather than the toxin-dart weapon that Hightower held to her back.
Grillo reached the ladder and wasted no time in climbing it. His speed and dexterity always came as a surprise no matter how many times Sam saw him move, and this instance was no exception. The slumlord messiah clambered up the rungs two at a time. Two of the ladder bearers followed him up with similar enthusiasm.
Alex Warthen went next, and then Larsen, moving with the same nimble quickness.
By contrast, Sam suffered through one awkward half step at a time. Hightower neglected to cut her wrist bindings, leaving her no choice but to climb by her elbows. The ladder rose ten or fifteen meters, attached via metal clips to the skeleton of the umbilical. The tube itself fanned out near the top, ending at a ceiling of material unlike anything she’d ever seen before. Sam knew instantly it was alien in origin. The hull of the vessel Skyler had described, no doubt. Inset within the visible portion was a section with different coloration, hexagonal in shape. Next to each edge was a symbol, one immediately recognizable as a match for the object they’d stolen from Nightcliff’s vault.
Grillo and his two henchmen stood on a small round platform that had been bolted to the ladder a few meters below the alien hull. They were all watching her, and waiting.
Sam continued to climb. Elbow, elbow, foot, foot. Repeat.
Nearer the top, sweating and breathing hard, she began to feel like herself again. The exertion had brought some life back to her limbs.
With four rungs left she paused and contemplated—
“If you’re thinking about suicide,” Grillo said, “I’d advise against it. A fall from here might only break a few bones and we’d just haul you right back up again.”
Sam finished the climb, wheezing by the time Grillo and one of his goons hauled her on to the temporary platform at the top. “I wasn’t thinking that,” she said between breaths. “I was just getting used to the change in gravity.”
“Noticed that, did you? I’m impressed. Yes, the ship is rotating at just the right speed to provide us a familiar gravity, it seems, but since we were parked just beyond that …”
“We were heavier. I get it. Can we just get this over with?”
His lips pressed into a thin line, remarkably similar to a smile. “That’s the spirit,” he said. Then he glanced upward.
Sam followed his gaze. She’d been so focused on the climb she hadn’t bothered to glance at the hexagon patch. It was gone. Or, at least, it had moved out of view, revealing a dark interior space that extended off in two directions diagonal to her point of view.
The cube symbol on the hull glowed with a fine white light. Sam swallowed and stole a glance at Grillo, who, with a boost from Larsen, was pulling himself up into the alien vessel. Without realizing it, she’d just opened the damn door for him.
Tim sat in the cold silence and watched events unfold, waiting for his chance to do something and wondering if he would have the nerve to take it.
Three things had happened after Midway Station arrived.
First, most perplexingly, he’d seen the reemergence of the hexagon door. No longer nestled on the bottom of the giant craft within the maze of elevator cords, the patch of hull had somehow moved to the Key Ship’s side. He had to assume this also meant the interior layout had changed, and he wondered if that was what kept Tania from leaving.
He should have moved then, and thought he would have if he’d had an immune aboard to open the hatch. He waited instead, hoping he’d see the portal open from within, a hope dashed by the second event.
Midway Station, in a maneuver he couldn’t help but admire, suddenly appeared, drifting in perfect synchronization with the Key Ship. The single-ring space station had parked itself directly on top of the hexagon door and matched the rotation of the Builders vessel flawlessly.
He’d wanted to scream then. To warn Tania that her exiting would only open the door for the enemy.