The Exodus Towers

Against Tim’s protests, and her own better judgment, Tania allowed Platz Station to attach to the Elevator.

Within two hours a team of four guards, all volunteers, slid into the station’s main cargo bay and took Russell Blackfield into custody. He waited there for them, alone and unarmed as agreed. They reported that the cargo bay showed signs of combat. She had Russell brought down to Melville Station and placed in a cabin under watch. For the moment she thought it best not to meet with him directly.

Instead, Tania boarded a climber herself, along with more guards and her night shift operations team from Melville.

The main cargo bay at the heart of Platz Station indeed appeared to have been the scene of an intense battle. Globules of blood still drifted and pooled near the air vents and exit doors. A shell casing floated past her. Sweeping lines and speckled clusters of bullet impacts decorated the walls, floor, and ceiling. There were no bodies, though. Either the dead had been pushed out an airlock, or they’d been tucked away somewhere within.

A greeting party awaited her. No guards, per the instructions, and no one appeared to be armed. She ordered her people to search them anyway, if anything just to establish authority. Her recent combat and weapons training gave her a confidence she’d not expected, as if she held a secret that would forevermore give her a slight upper hand. No one complained, and no weapons were found. Tania thought she saw relief on their faces. She hoped so, at least. They’d been living under Russell Blackfield’s command, and though that had surely generated some bad seeds, Tania decided to make sure the rest saw her as a marked improvement in their lives.

“Who’s in charge?” Tania asked.

Most of the group turned to face one woman near the center. She seemed to remember herself, and raised a hand. “Jenny Abrath,” she said. “I guess it’s me.”

“Nice to meet you,” Tania said.

“The station is yours, Dr. Sharma.”

Goose bumps rose on Tania’s arms. “What’s your role here, Jenny?”

“I run the operations room,” she said. “I could take you there now, if you like.”

“Thanks,” Tania said, “but no. I want to speak with your doctors first. We have someone in critical condition who could use attention.”

The station crew she passed on the journey all had the same look on their faces. Confusion, bewilderment. Hope. Even, she thought, a little respect.

On the way to operations she spied the hallway that led to the apartments Neil Platz used to occupy, as well as the adjacent set where Zane had lived. “Hold on,” she said to Jenny. “I want to see something.”

Alone, Tania walked down the hall and let a flood of childhood memories fill her mind. She’d run down this hallway many times, intent to share some scholastic achievement or chess victory story with Neil when her own parents were away. Her parents were always away.

Tania opened the door to Neil’s apartment and took a few tentative steps inside. The living space appeared used. It made sense that Russell would claim the space, but still it surprised her for some reason. For all Russell’s banter against Neil, he sure seemed quick to stand in the man’s shoes.

The bedroom door was partly opened and Tania stepped in, not sure exactly what she hoped to find. Neil’s scent, or his clothing. Anything to give her a clear and bright memory of him again.

Instead she saw a mess. Clothing strewn about, a towel tossed carelessly on the floor. Two bottles of alcohol sat on the bedside table; a third lay on the ground. Russell, she thought. Of course he’d take this room for himself.

She retreated into the entrance hall and started back toward the rest of the group. Lush red carpet softened her footfalls.

Halfway back she spied the door to Zane’s suite of rooms. She paused there and pushed the door open, half-expecting to find another bedchamber for Russell Blackfield. But the room appeared to be left alone. Debris littered the floor. Pillows from the couch, a slate terminal, a bouquet of fake plastic roses. All, Tania thought, due to the hasty switch to zero-g, not from searchers or looters.

As she pulled the door closed an idea formed. A faint smile crept onto her face as she returned to Jenny and the others.

The infirmary bustled with doctors, nurses, and injured. Half the patients were in beds or on stretchers, wearing bandages with faint splotches of blood seeping through. Bullet wounds, she guessed. The rest of the patients all had minor injuries: bruises, lacerations, the odd broken bone. More evidence that the flight from Darwin had been in haste. A switch to zero-g without preparation would have filled the station with every item not stowed or bolted.

Tania asked to speak to the most senior doctor and pulled the woman aside. She introduced herself as Dr. Volk, and Tania shook her hand. The statuesque woman had elegant dark skin and tightly curled black hair showing a bit of gray at the roots.

“One of our people is in a coma,” Tania said to her, and explained the history.

The doctor nodded politely throughout and asked a few questions. “I’m not sure what we can do for him,” she said, “after so much time. Keep him comfortable, monitor him, and wait. It sounds like you’ve got the same equipment we do, more or less, but I’d be happy to compare notes with the doctor on your side.”

Tania thanked her and left her to tend to the wounded. She felt as if the doctor could be trusted, something about her manner gave all the right signals, but time would tell. For now, Tania decided she would put Dr. Brooks in charge here, and have Zane Platz transferred back to his old apartment on the station. Perhaps his own room, his own bed amid familiar smells and noises, would trigger something in his mind.

It can’t hurt.

She nodded to Jenny in a way that conveyed “let’s go,” and fell in with her as they moved through the station’s wide hallways toward operations.

Logistics and problem scenarios began to fill Tania’s thoughts. The station would have to be searched, weapons confiscated until the inhabitants could be interviewed. Russell’s small private army would need to be detained until they could figure out a way to integrate them. Perhaps a heartfelt speech from Russell would do the trick.

Despite the mountain of issues to deal with, her mind kept returning to Zane Platz. She envisioned him resting quietly in his own room, the ghost of his older brother at his side.

Time to come home, Zane.

Chapter 46

Cappagh, Ireland

Date imprecise

THE SAFETY LINE swung Skyler and his savage companion into the meat of the earthen spire. Somehow, through luck or subconscious movement, he managed to turn so that the subhuman took the brunt of the impact.

He grunted in unison with the creature, but with far less pain. The being cushioned the impact, went limp as its head was sandwiched between Skyler’s leg and the rock-strewn wall. Both of its hands released at once, and it fell away, tumbling down the column and rolling to a stop at its base, lifeless and contorted.

Skyler flailed for a moment. He inhaled a lungful of air and forced himself back from a panic mindset. He released his death grip on the rope, trusting the climbing gear to hold his weight. It did.

He righted himself against the spire’s sheer surface and found hand- and footholds with more expertise than he knew he had. Finally stable, he glanced down to assess the situation around him.

His eyes found Ana first, just a few meters away. She stared at him with wide eyes, her face drained of color, mouth agape.

“I’m okay,” he said to her.

She blinked in response.

Skyler glanced farther down, to the floor of the dome. Vanessa stood roughly where she’d been when the dome began to vibrate. She was reloading her gun and, as if sensing he was looking at her, glanced up and met his eyes. Her face showed determination and utter, complete confusion.

The red shapes flittered around her, moving between the clumps of rock and around the craters. They were closing in, as if working together like a pack of wolves.

One red shape, just a few meters from Vanessa, had stopped completely. Its edges were somehow stable, and Skyler thought it resembled a human body lying prone.

The vibration of the dome itself suddenly ramped up in intensity. Through his hands and feet, Skyler felt the earthen column shift, and he saw a crack form diagonally along its length.

“Go!” he roared at Ana. “It’s shaking apart!”

Above, the pedestal at the top cracked into a hundred pieces and shattered. Chunks of earth fell away, passing just centimeters from Skyler’s body. He didn’t even have time to cover his head or warn Ana to do so. All he could do was watch, dumbly, and hope he was far enough in under the lip to be protected.

With dreamlike slowness, the hourglass-shaped alien object tumbled past Skyler amid the rest of the fractured debris. He watched it fall to the tapered base of the spire and tumble away into the chaos below.

Then he saw Vanessa, still fumbling to reload, as one of the darting red forms suddenly changed angle and came right at her.

She didn’t have time to even raise her weapon as the shape slammed into her.

Vanessa cried out, enveloped in the red field.

It moved through her, and for the briefest of instants Skyler thought he saw another entity within, a humanoid loping on all fours.

And then the red amorphous stain moved past her, leaving nothing but empty air behind.

Chapter 47

Platz Station

20.JAN.2285

ZANE PLATZ OPENED his eyes after eight months in a coma, sat bolt upright, and laughed.

The laugh faded as he took in his surroundings. His old bed, his room on Platz Station. “It was a dream, then,” he said, and passed out again.

Tania had been in the middle of explaining what she’d had for breakfast. She spent an hour here, every morning, recounting the mundane details of the previous day’s activity to the comatose man. At first it had been difficult to talk to him, but the comfort of the normal room, and the privacy it afforded, gradually eroded her reluctance.

In all the time she’d been visiting him he’d never done more than breathed in and out. A flicker beneath the eyelids at best.

To see him sit up, to hear him speak, left her slack-jawed.

The man slumped back down into his unconscious state, as if nothing had happened.

“Zane?” she finally asked. “Zane?!”

Tania was half out of her chair, ready to run for the doctor, when Zane stirred. His eyes flickered, then opened. “Tania?” he called, not looking toward her, his voice impossibly hoarse.

“I’m here,” she said. She took his hand and gripped it. He still did not move.

“Can you turn the lights on, Tania dear?”

A knot in her gut twisted. “Excuse me, Zane? The lights?”

He blinked, hard. Then his head swiveled toward her. His eyes were open and unseeing. He looked vaguely past her. “I think I’m blind, dear girl. I must have fallen.”

“You’ve …” She paused. “I’ll go fetch the doctor. Don’t move.”

Hours later, after the doctors and nurses had come and gone many times, and Zane’s visitors stopped in to deliver well wishes, she found herself alone with him again.

Zane could not see. The doctor had said chances were good he’d never regain his vision, news Zane took in stride. He’d said something polite, even pleasant, that Tania had heard but not heard.

They sat in silence for some time. Earlier Tania had explained how he’d come to be back in his room on Platz Station, and she’d given him a high-level summary of everything that had happened during his long slumber.

“Russell is still confined to quarters on Melville,” she said. “He hasn’t complained once. Everything he’s asked for has been related to the safety and comfort of his crew.”

“He’s saying all the right things,” Zane said.

“Exactly.” Tania sighed. “At what point does he cross from saying them to meaning them?”

Zane stared in her direction through drooped eyelids, his eyes wandering in unsettling vagueness. “Who says he will? We gain nothing by believing him and letting him out into the colony. Can you imagine him among our people?”

“No, not really,” Tania admitted. “Still, it seems untenable to hold him in a single cabin for the rest of his life.”

“So … have a trial.”

“For what crime?” Tania stood and began to pace at the end of Zane’s bed. “A coup against Neil after Neil resigned from the council? For the death of Natalie? That was my fault, I’m afraid, and Natalie was arguably on his side anyway.” The words tasted like ash. Strangely enough, when she thought about everything that had happened, it was hard to find anything Russell had actually done wrong. A lot of bravado, and certainly some questionable morals, but in the end the man had been trying to put down an uprising and find the information that drove the traitors.

I just called myself a traitor, she realized. Why am I letting that pervert plant such seeds? She wondered for the hundredth time what Skyler would have done had he been the one to receive Russell. Shoot him on the spot, probably. That would have been a crime worth imprisonment, she thought, and hated herself for it.

“Offer him a job on one of the farm platforms, picking apples. Tell him if he lasts … I’m tired, Tania. Let’s talk about something else; this is making me agitated.”

She ran through all the mundane colony details, with him saying little. She knew she had his full attention, but so many months lying almost motionless had left him atrophied and easily exhausted.

“Keep talking,” he said after a period of awkward silence. “It helps to hear you. Hear anything, really.”

“I’ve run out of things to say,” she said. “I could read to you, maybe?”