The Darwin Elevator

Chapter Twenty-nine

Platz Station

8.FEB.2283

The passenger climber ports on Platz Station featured standard earth gravity, a unique feature Neil had insisted upon during the station’s construction.

Eight S-shaped guide rails carried incoming climber cars away from the Elevator’s thread and off to reception ports on the outer rim of the station’s upper and lower rings. Individual rails could be retracted to allow some cars to remain fixed to the climber, allowing them to pass through the station entirely, or be unloaded at a more traditional dock in the central hub, where a lack of simulated gravity eased unloading of supplies.

Guests could exit their climber car with the dignity of walking on two feet, while workers and supplies could be brought to the center levels for easy distribution.

The apparatus had one drawback: complexity. A room full of equipment and twenty-four-hour monitoring by an actual person.

Neil stood behind the climber operator, a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length black hair and a strong Venezuelan accent.

They both stared at a schematic displayed on the large monitor on the room’s longest wall. All traffic on the Elevator could be tracked from here, but Neil’s focus was on a single climber that barreled toward the station from Gateway.

The climber’s manifest and layout were listed as “unavailable.” He’d never seen that before, not that it surprised him. Alex was coming to do his inspection, permission be damned.

“When can we get a visual?” Neil asked the woman. “I need to know which cars are personnel carriers.”

She studied the display for a long moment, then tapped a few commands into the panel at her fingertips. “Any minute now, Mr. Platz.”

“Neil,” he said. “Bring it up anyway. I’ll watch it come into view.”

She nodded slowly, then her fingers did a languid dance across the input panel. A frame appeared within the giant wall-sized display above, quickly filled with a high-resolution image of the Elevator cord. Earth loomed far below, mostly in shadow. Despite the excellent contrast of the cord against the dark planet below, the approaching climber was not yet visible.

“Shall I call you when it arrives?” the woman asked.

“Why?” he asked. “I’m here now.”

“It’s just … I’m due for my break.”

She’d been pensive since he’d come in the control room, and had hesitated at each request from him. Not the type of person who works well under scrutiny, Neil decided. His presence had that effect sometimes, but now was not the time for such nonsense. “Forget your damn break,” he said. “We have an unannounced climber speeding toward us. I need you here.”

She slumped in her chair.

“Would you rather be relieved?”

“No,” she muttered. “I—”

“There it is,” Neil said, pointing at the display. “Enlarge that.”

The woman hesitated, again.

“Enlarge it!”

“I need a glass of water,” she muttered, standing.

“Bloody hell,” Neil said. “Sit down. I’ll get your damn water. You get me a clear picture of that climber.”

He stomped to the door and threw it open. A few of his staff milled about outside, talking in hushed tones. They jumped when he stormed from the room.

Skittishness and tension. He had found it at every turn since returning from the council meeting. News of his resignation beat him to the station, of course, and no one knew what to make of it. Neil had isolated them, and many had family or friends aboard other stations.

He considered sending one of them for the drink, but stopped short. A brief walk might do some good. It wouldn’t do to be all frayed and overanxious when the climber arrived.

The common room was a quarter ring away, and Neil made a conscious effort to slow himself. He clasped his hands behind his back and strolled down the center of the burgundy carpet that spanned the entire ring.

Warthen was coming, of that Neil had no doubt. The man had to make good on his threat to search the station, or else lose whatever momentum he was trying to build with the council.

Neil ran through the scenarios in his mind, for the hundredth time. He’d already had the resident Gateway security contingent locked in the central cargo bay, ready to be sent away. He’d ordered all the reception rooms on the landward deck sealed, the door codes changed. When Alex’s climber arrived, Neil would have each personnel car separated and sent to different reception rooms. Split them up, confuse them. They would be expecting to arrive in the central cargo bay.

Once they were divided, Neil would address them. Take your comrades and go home, you’re no longer welcome here. Something to that effect. His privately trained fighters, stationed outside each reception room, were ready in case Alex Warthen decided not to listen. Neil hoped they could remain behind the curtain, but he would use them if he had to.

A solid plan, he thought, as such things go. By the time he returned to the control room with the silly cup of water, he felt relaxed.

Happy, even.



“Here’s your drink,” Neil said. He handed the red plastic cup to the woman, his eyes on the big monitor behind her.

The enlarged feed showed the approaching climber from a top-down view. A cylindrical center that housed the climbing mechanism, and eight spiderlike booms stretching out from it where cars could be attached.

Only four cars hung from the climber’s arms, all personnel-style. Perfect, Neil thought.

“When will it reach the splitter?” he asked.

The woman glanced across the various status readouts. She took a slow sip of the water as she studied them. “Three minutes,” she finally said.

“Route each car to the lower reception areas. I need to know which rooms they will arrive at.”

She turned in her seat, facing Neil but looking at the floor. “I’ll need a few minutes,” she said.

“We don’t have it. Are you feeling ill or something?”

“No.”

“Then what the bloody hell is your problem? This is urgent.”

Instead of responding, the woman turned back to the screens.

With one swift motion, she dashed the contents of her cup across the console.

Sparks flew, screens flickered and went dark. Pale blue smoke shot out from gaps, yanked upward by hungry air panels in the ceiling.

The woman ran.

She flew out the door and into the hall before Neil could comprehend what had happened. He simply stared at the screen where the image of the climber had been.

“Stop her!” he yelled. “Someone stop her!”

Neil went through the door, knocking over a bystander. He looked left and right, along the curved corridor, and saw nothing. The woman had disappeared, just like that.

“Which way did she go?” he demanded of the man he’d toppled. The staffer pointed to Neil’s left.

He started after her, ignoring the complaints from his old muscles. But after just a few steps, he stopped.

The shock of the betrayal had consumed his mind. Neil recognized this feeling and allowed the event to become just another facet in the larger scheme of things.

He considered the rapidly approaching climber. And then his teams of handpicked fighters stationed at the reception bays where no cars would arrive, thanks to the sabotage.

His men were in the wrong place, and precious seconds were passing.

Neil considered allowing Alex to board. Accommodate him, and even facilitate his search. After all, the man was unlikely to find anything that would help him. Kelly Adelaide was not aboard the station. Indeed she remained on Gateway, right under their snouts.

Neil kept no records of his meetings with her or of his other various secret projects. Hab-8 had a perfect cover story. Tania’s research was all off the record. Since he’d destroyed the Foreshadow files, there was nothing outwardly serious for Alex to find.

No, he thought. A stand must be made. If Neil allowed the search, Alex would take the opening and never leave. Security officers would be here for days, longer perhaps, and that would make things very difficult indeed.

The traitor would have to wait.

Turning, Neil raced to a nearby emergency alarm, flipped the protective lid up and away, and pulled the red handle down.

Instantly Klaxons began to wail. He did his best to ignore the earsplitting sound and rushed into a nearby room. He slammed the door shut and fished a handheld radio from his pocket.

“Zane, come in.”

“I’m here, brother,” the response came. “Any idea what the alarm—”

“Listen carefully,” Neil hissed. “Find our night operator for the climbers and get them on duty, now. The main terminal has been sabotaged. I can only hope there’s a backup.”

“Sabotage?” he mumbled. “What—”

“Make it happen, and now. I want the climber incoming from Gateway to be turned around before it even docks. We’ve got minutes. Less than that.”

“What of the alarm?”

“Get on the PA and tell everyone to remain in their quarters. I’ll explain later.”

“Okay,” Zane said.

Reversing the climber was a long shot, but it would put a quick end to the intrusion if done in time. Neil knew he still needed to be ready for the alternative. He tapped the screen on the radio, switching to a private preset.

“Climber controls have been compromised,” he said. “Get to central docking, on the double.”

His four commando leaders, newly trained, each responded “affirmative,” in sequence. Kelly had done her job well.



The cream-colored hallways of Platz Station blurred into a morass of doorways, bulkheads, and warm light as Neil jogged toward the central docking bay.

He’d started at a sprint, only to find his old legs unable to keep up the pace.

A betrayal of a different sort, he mused.

The thought of arriving at a confrontation with Alex out of breath and haggard gave Neil all the excuse he needed to ease up.

Zane’s voice came over the handheld. “Neil, the backup climber controls are at L-Four J-Two.”

A primary spoke junction on the very level Neil ran toward. It made sense, having the secondary controls near the cargo bay.

“Thanks,” Neil said. “What about the night shift operator?”

“He wasn’t in his room,” Zane said. “We’re still looking.”

With sudden certainty Neil knew they wouldn’t find the man, at least in any condition to operate the climbers. The saboteur had probably run straight to the poor bastard’s room after fleeing from Neil.

Smart.

“Keep at it,” Neil said. He decided to keep his deeper fears from Zane. Dealing with stressful situations wasn’t his brother’s strong suit.

Neil switched to the private frequency again. “Rally at L-Four J-Two,” he said.

“We’re here already,” one leader replied. He was shouting over a loud hiss.

“What’s that noise?” Neil asked.

“Steam!” the man replied. “They’re cutting through the damn airlock!”

Neil forced his legs to move faster. The very fact they they’d brought a water torch meant Alex had anticipated being locked out. There would be no simple stalemate.

“Dig in there,” Neil said. “I’m almost to you.”

He could only hope Alex hadn’t anticipated an armed resistance.

Team three joined up with Neil just before he reached level four. He let them take the lead and grunted back the fire in his thigh muscles as he ran to keep up.

He heard sporadic gunfire before the junction came into view.

Steam roiled in the air, pouring down from “above,” where the junction corridor led up to the central docking bay. Neil could only see a few meters into the cloud. The constant hiss from a cutting torch, high above them in the spoke, drowned out even the warning Klaxon.

“Report,” he said to the first commando they reached.

The woman was pressed against the wall, using a support truss for modest cover. “They’re through the airlock door. Surprised to see us, I’ll tell you that.”

“How many?”

“Twenty,” she said. “Thirty. Hard to say. We got off a few shots before they pinned us here. Brought some serious weaponry.”

Thirty men. Neil’s four teams had four members each. Almost two-to-one odds. “If they’re through the door, why are they still cutting?”

Someone lost in the steam ahead answered. “They’re working on a side door, halfway down the spoke.”

Another team arrived, their presence feeding Neil’s confidence. “Warthen’s going after the climber controls,” Neil said to all of them. “They mean to destroy our ability to leave the station, and we can’t let that happen.”

He saw nodding faces in the roiling steam.

“They’re sitting ducks in that tunnel,” someone said. “Smooth walls, weak gravity.”

The station’s rotation provided Earth-normal pull here at the outer rim, which decreased the farther one traveled up the spoke to the central bay. Neil hadn’t considered that this might make the enemy’s movements slow and awkward. A small advantage, but he’d take it.

“Concentrate fire,” Neil said. “Everyone together.”

“We can’t see anything in this steam,” the woman said.

“Fire blind,” Neil shot back. “It’s a narrow tunnel—you’re bound to hit something. One burst from each of you ought to show them we’re serious.”

“Each team take a corner,” one of the leaders said.

They fanned out and began to fade into the swirling vapor. Neil felt naked without some kind of weapon in hand, despite the fact that he’d only held a gun a few times in his life. Swallowing, he took a few tentative steps into the cloud, moving just fast enough to keep the back of the last commando in view.

“On three,” he heard someone say. “One … two …”

The shooting began. Muzzle flashes lit ghostly figures within the steam cloud, as all sixteen fighters leaned in and fired upward into the access shaft, like revolutionaries celebrating a coup.

Cries of surprise and pain came from above.

A body drifted down the vertical corridor, falling faster as the mock gravity took hold. It hit the ground with a thud, and two more followed seconds later.

One of them lost their gun in the fall. It skittered over the tiles and tumbled to a stop near Neil.

The tone of the cutting torch changed, then stopped.

“Get back!” Neil shouted just as the mists cleared.

Alex Warthen’s troops answered the attack with a relentless barrage. Bullets hammered against the floor of the hall for what felt like a minute. The special munitions gave off no sparks but left hundreds of small pockmarks in the floor.

Neil heard bullets ricochet in every direction, clattering across the tiles as they lost momentum.

He saw one of his men take a round in the calf. A splatter of blood like spilled paint on the floor. Two of his squad mates pulled him out of the line of fire, ignoring his anguished cries.

The dropped weapon lay near Neil. He reached for it, his fingers just brushing the black metal when more shots rang out from above. Warthen’s men had an opening and they were seizing it.

Neil yanked the weapon toward himself as he sulked away from the danger zone.

Somewhere above, mixed with the constant bark of firing weapons, he heard the sound of metal striking metal. Repeated, powerful blows, as if someone were taking a crowbar to a computer.

He realized that might not be far from the truth. They were in the climber room, smashing it to pieces.

Bullets fell from the vertical shaft like rain. And then, as suddenly as they’d started, the gunfire stopped.

Neil’s ad hoc commandos were shell-shocked. Two appeared to be wounded. He decided to take the initiative and stepped forward, into the open area below the spoke corridor.

He saw men climbing up, toward the cargo bay airlock at the top. Others waited there, looking down, guns at the ready. They were holding fire to let their comrades retreat from the control room.

Neil raised his gun and pulled the trigger. The snub rifle barked and spat. It slapped into his shoulder with vicious strength and almost vibrated out if his grip. His shots sprayed wildly up the side of the shaft, toward the top and across the men climbing. The arc crossed the men waiting at the top, forcing them to push away for cover. A slow and clumsy movement in zero-G, where they were.

The gun fell silent, out of ammo. Neil thought he might have hit one of them in the back before they were pulled out of the shaft.

But the damage was done. He could see hazy smoke spilling out of the backup climber control room, halfway up the shaft.

Warthen’s men, peering down from the cargo bay, recovered from Neil’s barrage and lifted their weapons. Neil stepped back, feeling suddenly calm. He let them shoot. Waited it out.

When the bullets stopped, he knew they’d retreated.

Minutes passed in silence. Neil’s men eventually organized again and risked the climb up to the cargo bay, but he waited in the hall. He knew they would find it empty.

By now Alex and his men would be zipping along the Elevator cord toward Gateway Station, just fifty kilometers below.

All things considered, Neil counted the skirmish a draw. Alex failed to get into the station proper and did not achieve his desired “inspection.” Plus he had no presence on Platz Station at all now, which meant Neil could move forward without those watchful eyes.

But the climber controls were gone. They would have to rely on other stations to guide their traffic in and out. Stations controlled by Warthen’s guards. A huge problem, by any estimation, but even as Neil helped drag bodies from the bullet-ridden hallway, backup plans formed in his mind.