The Plague Forge [ARC] (6 page)

“Greetings, Dee,” Prumble said. “Delightful to see you, too.”

Dee made a show of looking to either side of him. She took in Samantha and Skadz in turn, then smiled. “Perhaps they wish to partake, even if you don’t?”

“Another time, maybe,” Skadz offered. “Cheers, though.”

Prumble quickly added, “We’re on a schedule, I’m afraid.”

The corner of the woman’s mouth twitched. “You have the payment?”

“Of course,” Prumble said. He pulled a thin case from the inner breast pocket of his duster and held it out to her.

Dee plucked it like one might pull a grape from the vine. She smiled slightly as she opened the box, and her eyes gleamed as she took in the contents. Sam hadn’t thought to ask Prumble what this little venture had cost, but she guessed jewelry of some sort. Diamonds, or pearls, judging from the madam’s fashion sense. “This is glorious,” she breathed. “You’ve always known the key to my heart, Prumble.”

“It’s the keys to your comm I’m interested in.”

“All business tonight, is it? You used to at least make an effort at a little foreplay.” Dee shifted on cushions upon which she lay. Each movement made one roll of fat hide and another emerge from her silks. Sam fought to keep the revulsion from her face.

Prumble spread his hands in apology. “Sorry about that, Dee, but we have a link to make. Not my schedule. And with all these Jakes around …”

“Let’s not talk about them,” the woman said. “You know, Prumble, the only reason I’m entertaining this little bit of intrigue is because you said the bloody Jakes couldn’t know about it. If you can’t tell me who you’ll be talking to on the comm, can you at least tell me if the end result will be to get rid of these prudish bastards, hmm?”

Prumble only shrugged.

Perhaps he just didn’t want her to know something she might later relay, or perhaps he sensed a trap. Either option made Samantha’s trigger finger twitch. She shifted her weight slightly to her left foot, in case she needed to draw and turn on the guard behind her.

“Relax, dear,” Dee said, leveling a condescending gaze on Samantha. “These walls have no ears. I’m just starved for information in this cave. No one comes to visit anymore, to tell me stories or buy some pleasure. I used to count some Orbitals among my clientele, did you know that?”

Prumble cleared his throat. “Clock’s ticking, Dee.”

The big woman mad a theatrical sigh and shooed them with one fat, jeweled hand. “Blake, show them to the comm. Give them privacy for twenty minutes.”

One of the guards came forward. “Yes, madam. This way.”

The comm room had once been someone’s kitchen. Tiles had been chipped off the counters, leaving glue-smeared plywood underneath. A refrigerator still sat in the corner, though it had been turned to face the wall, all its guts ripped out through the back for spare parts.

On a rickety wooden table in the center of the room sat a serving platter dotted with lit candles, providing the only light. Next to that a dusty, antique comm waited for them. Cables snaked out the back, across the table, and over to the countertop before exiting through a boarded-up window. Sam guessed there’d be an aerial on the roof, well hidden, no doubt.

Comms were rare in Darwin. Before SUBS, most everyone carried a personal slate that relied on the global mesh for connectivity. That infrastructure vanished shortly after the city became
the City
. Looted equipment, failed power sources, and the hubs that ran the whole thing off in places like Sydney and Ho Chi Minh City. A comm, though, could make a direct connection with another comm. Private relays could be arranged. Corporations and governments used them to avoid the bottlenecks of a shared network. Rural homes and ocean vessels loved them for the range they provided. Criminals used them to keep away from prying eyes and ears.

Sam assumed this one had been stolen, probably during the chaos when the refugees started to pour into the city. There was writing on the side, Vietnamese, she thought, so it might have been brought there and bartered with. She wondered how many hours a man could have purchased in one of the rooms below for such a thing. Just one, most likely, ending with a knife in the back.

There were only two chairs at the table. Prumble moved one into the far corner, sat, and rotated the comm to face him. Skadz offered the other chair to Sam, but she waved him off and leaned against the counter instead. He mouthed “your loss” and sat next to Prumble.

While the big man waited for the comm to start up, he fished around inside his duster and produced a small pink box. He handed it over his shoulder toward Samantha without looking. “Set this on the counter there and switch it on, okay? Aim it at the door.”

“Sure,” Sam said. The pink device had the words
SLEEP
,
BABY
,
SLEEP
!
written on the side. “What is it?”

“Infant sleep aid.”

“I can read.”

“It generates soothing sounds,” Prumble said. “Like white noise, for example. A paranoid precaution.”

Samantha didn’t think it paranoid at all. They were about to make contact with the runaways, the first action they’d taken that Grillo would likely have them all killed for. If Dee had an untrustworthy bone in her body—and Sam guessed she had a lot of those—she’d record this supposedly discreet use of her precious comm. Once she realized the Jacobites would be very interested in the conversation, she’d either try to sell the information or keep it for bartering her way out of any trouble in the future. Given the nature of her business, such trouble was a virtual guarantee. Sam set the device on the counter and switched it on. Static came from the tiny speaker.

“Come stand behind us, Sam,” Prumble said. “Keep your voices low.”

Sam followed his command and moved around so she could see the screen. A ripple of excitement ran through her at the prospect of hearing Skyler’s voice again.

Prumble tapped in some codes from a piece of paper, and waited as the words
ESTABLISHING
LINK
flashed. Then the connection light went green.

“That’s Kip,” Prumble said, already tearing the slip of paper to shreds. A red circle came up around the green light. “He’s started encryption, good. Now for the relay link through Anchor.” He glanced at his watch, not trusting the time displayed on the comm’s screen.

Kip had said he could get them ten minutes on the powerful antenna in Nightcliff while shifts changed in the control room, and route the signal up through Anchor Station to achieve the required strength. Anything longer than that would arouse suspicion.

A relay icon appeared, and then Skyler’s voice came through, crystal clear. “Hello, are we on?”

“We are indeed!” Prumble said.

“Hello, Skyler,” Sam said. She felt the sting of tears welling in her eyes and laughed them away. “Nice to hear your stupid Dutch accent again.”

“Sam,” he said laughing, his voice thick with emotion. “Damn it’s good to hear your voices! I—oh, right. I’ve got some people here with me. Tania Sharma, Zane Platz, and Tim Jordan.”

Introductions were made all around. “We have a surprise guest with us, too,” Prumble said.

“Oy, Skyler,” Skadz said. “What’s the rumpus, mate?”

“My God. They let you back in the city?”

The grin on Skadz’s face almost touched his ears. “For now. And at least I stayed in Australia for a proper walkabout. You had to fuck off halfway around the world.”

“All right, ladies,” Prumble interjected. “Save the weepy reunion nonsense for another time. We have much to discuss. Skyler? Would you start?”

Sam listened with rapt attention as he recounted the last two years. How they’d fled aboard part of Anchor Station, and met up with Zane, who’d taken Hab-8, a facility supposedly still under construction. Skyler alluded to difficulties in getting the colony up and running, but didn’t elaborate. She knew from his tone that there must have been some major problems.

Then he spoke of what they’d learned about the Builders. They had a space elevator in Brazil, but with a much more limited aura. Instead, the aliens had provided a number of small towers that created pockets of aura and could be moved around. Sam’s mind immediately began to run through the possibilities that must have created. She forced the thoughts away when Skyler detailed how an errant explosion had somehow woken the towers and sent them off in four groups to various parts of the planet. He’d tracked one set to Ireland and found something incredible there.

When he described it, and how it made their space elevator vibrate when he removed it from where it lay, Sam spoke up.

“I found something similar,” she said. “In Darwin’s Old Downtown. When I picked it up it caused the space elevator to shudder for a moment, too.”

A new voice, barely a whisper, broke in. “Hi. Um, hello. Kip here. That’s happened again since. Just the other day.”

“That was us,” Skyler said, “both times. Found the one in Ireland, and another here in Brazil.”

“This is great news,” Tania Sharma said. “We knew there were five but only four groups of towers fled Belém. So Darwin was the fifth location, and you have it! That only leaves—”

“Hold on,” Sam said. “I picked it up, but I don’t have it. Grillo took it, and where it is now I have no idea. He never speaks of the thing.”

The comment earned a few seconds of silence. A sudden sense of guilt swept through Sam, for not mentioning it sooner, and for not doing anything to stop Grillo in the first place.

“Grillo,” Skyler said. “Yeah, we’ve heard about his rise, his alliance with the Jacobites. Um, Blackfield is with us over here. House arrest, and he’s been talking.”

Prumble cleared his throat. “In a few minutes this link will be cut. I suggest we make some plans.”

“Agreed,” Skadz said. “Let’s keep it simple, though, all right?”

Skyler and Tania explained what Kip had already alluded to before. A new Builder ship, massive in size, had arrived in orbit a few weeks earlier. Inside it was a room that had slots for each of these objects. Keys, Skyler called them, for the Key Ship. Two were still unaccounted for. Skyler would lead a team to find one, and Tania the other.

“Hold on,” Sam said. “What the hell are we dealing with here? What are these ‘keys,’ and why is an immune required to install them?”

“This is the Builders we’re talking about, Sammy,” Skadz said. “You’d have an easier time figuring out the bloody Jakes.”

“But—”

“He’s right,” Skyler said. “No one knows, Sam. Tania tried taking the last one over and nothing happened. One of us had to go along and help.”

“Well, are they some kind of weapon?”

“At this point we simply don’t know,” Tania said. “We don’t know what the point of the room is, why an immune must be present, or what will happen when all five objects are installed.” She let that sink in. “But we’ve all talked through the possibilities and decided that we can’t just ignore this. We can’t wait. I have … information implying that the next Builder event, in just under a year, will be the last, and there’s reason to believe we have even less time than that. Skyler, tell them about the dome in Ireland.”

Sam listened intently. Hearing the tale from anyone else she would have chuckled with disbelief.
An aura that fucks with time, yeah right
. From Skyler, though …

“If either of the remaining objects is within such a dome,” Skyler said, “we need to get to them now. Get them and get out as quickly as possible, or we may well be too late.”

“Exactly,” Tania added. “The nature of this room and the objects implies we are up against a timer now. We need to act immediately, not just wait around. The only sensible thing to do is gather these objects and install them as soon as possible.”

“Sensible might not be the right word,” an older man said. Zane Platz, Sam assumed. “Nevertheless …”

The implication of their words crashed down on Sam like a load of bricks. “You’re saying we need to get that thing back from Grillo, like yesterday. Move it up to that Key Ship somehow.”

Skyler cut in. “I think it might be easier to get it to Belém. We can haul it up from here.”

“Oh, sure. We’ll just nab it and pop over to Brazil. Easy as pie. We don’t even know where Grillo is keeping it. He might have destroyed it, for all we know. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Er,” Kip said, his voice a whisper. “I can help there. From what I hear the object is in Nightcliff. It had been in Lyons, but Grillo recently moved it here.”

“Any particular reason?” Skadz asked.

“No idea, but I can speculate.” When no one objected he went on. “Be aware that he knows there is more than one object, and of the large ship that arrived. A Sister Jennifer, I don’t know her, reported this. I was listening in. She made no mention of his room inside, however.

“Since then there’s been a, well, a schism of sorts, within the Jacobite ranks. A faction led by Sister Haley that now openly questions Grillo’s rise, his motives and conviction. I’m not sure how much her faction knows, but they know he found something. I suspect he feels Nightcliff is the easier place to defend, should his detractors become more aggressive.”

“Ah hell,” Skadz said. When Sam looked at him he frowned. “The bloke’s already worried someone’s after the thing. That’s going to make our task even more difficult.”

Prumble urged him to silence with a wave of his hand. “Perhaps, perhaps not. Kip, do you know where in the fortress the object is? Can you get us in? Provide a map?”

“Secure storage. I’ll do what I can, but the vault itself is beyond my capability.”

“Leave that to me,” Prumble said.

The rest of the plan came together so quickly that Samantha felt dizzy. It sounded too complicated to her, too many failure points. Exactly the type of thing she’d have called Skyler on had he proposed something similar for a scavenger job. And yet, given all the angles, and the distances involved, she saw no other solution.

“One minute left,” Kip said.

Prumble let out a long breath. “Let me recap so we’re all in agreement. Tania will be responsible for one of the missing keys, and Skyler the other. Skyler, once you’ve recovered yours you’ll fly here, landing just beyond the aura at the old raceway in Hidden Valley. If we’re ready, we’ll meet you there.”