NINETEEN

FIRST OFFICER KRANZ watched the assault on the River People from the comfort of his office. He watched the first helicopter crash, then saw the second one suffer the same fate, but he also saw the sniper be obliterated. The remaining four helicopters reached the old resort unopposed. Provosts swarmed down lines, entering the resort through the shattered windows that overlooked the once-scenic waterfall and pool—now cesspool. With a twitch of his finger, he switched from helmet cam to helmet cam. He saw a handful of his soldiers fall to crossbows and booby traps, but not very many, and one by the one, the defenders were eliminated or arrested.

But there was no sign of Alania, no sign of Danyl—no sign of the two people the raid was intended to capture.

He watched a door be forced open, saw children and their mothers cowering wide-eyed in the chamber beyond. The Provosts rounded them up. They’d be questioned, of course, but he doubted any of them knew where Alania and Danyl had gone. The leaders, whoever they were, would not have shared that information with the people most likely to survive the assault.

Kranz’s fingers dug into the arms of his chair as the assault wound down. Damn it. Where the hell could they be?

The final “battle” of the raid took place in a stairwell leading up from the resort to the Rim, where there had once been a garden, now a nest of deadly robot Guardians. What the woman fleeing up those stairs thought she could accomplish at the Rim, Kranz would never know; she blew up herself and much of the staircase, the debris crushing three Provosts at the bottom of the shaft and effectively closing it off.

The River flowed underground from the waterfall’s pool, which had been artificially created with a dam when the resort was built. Could Alania and Danyl have fled along it somehow? It seemed unlikely—old records did not indicate any sort of traversable cavern down there, and the River remained underground for a kilometer before emerging through a spillway. But it would have to be checked out once divers could be brought in, equipped with sonar to penetrate the murk of the water.

Kranz frowned at the resort’s plans, summoned from the City’s database. It showed only two ways out of the Canyon. There was a main elevator shaft and accompanying staircase up to the Rim above the resort’s glass-walled lobby in the Canyon’s east wall, and there was a matching elevator shaft and staircase on the far side of the pool in the west wall. The elevator on the lobby side still worked, but while its mechanism was intact, there was no longer an exit up on the Rim; the once-grand main entrance to the resort had long since been demolished.

The elevator in the west wall had failed years ago, the Provosts had reported. Even its mechanism no longer remained atop the Rim. Now the woman they had pursued up the western stairs had blown herself up and brought the bottom half of them crashing down. Even if someone higher up had survived the blast and made it to the top, they would find themselves in what was once a pavilion offering resort guests pleasant dining in the Rim Garden but was now a Rim Guardian nest. Entering that would be suicide.

And yet, unless Alania and Danyl turned up cowering in one of the dozens of guest rooms in the old resort—which had not all been cleared, so that was still possible—the western staircase was the only route they could have taken, presumably ahead of the self-detonating woman. Which would at least explain why someone had been willing to destroy it so spectacularly, permanently . . . and fatally.

Kranz continued to watch the cleanup operation for some time. As door after door was kicked in and Alania and Danyl remained missing, he became increasingly convinced he was right. He touched a control on his desk, opening his direct link to Commander Havelin. He’d refrained from speaking to the Commander until that moment; micromanaging a battle from afar was hardly a recipe for tactical success, and it was a very good way to damage morale.

“Havelin here,” came the Commander’s voice in response to his signal.

“First Officer Kranz here, Commander,” Kranz said.

“Yes, sir?” Havelin’s voice sounded crisp, professional . . . and very slightly guarded.

“Excellent work,” Kranz said. Except for losing two helicopters within five minutes of each other to a bloody sniper, he thought, but there was time enough for that discussion later. For now, he wanted the Commander entirely on his side.

“Thank you, sir,” Commander Havelin said, and Kranz thought he sounded a little less guarded and a lot more relieved.

“I’ve been studying the plans of the resort,” Kranz said. “Since our quarry has not turned up anywhere within the complex, I think they must be in the western stairwell leading to the old Rim Garden.”

“As do I, sir,” Havelin said. “I have already had Rim Control deactivate the air defenses so I can send a helicopter up there, and I recalled a squad from the cleanup operation in the guest rooms. They’re resupplying as we speak and should be at the top within fifteen minutes. Rim Control is standing by to deactivate all other defenses once we’re ready to move in and enter the stairwell from the top.”

“Excellent,” Kranz said again. Perhaps he would not have to have the Commander stripped of his rank after all. He glanced at the chronometer on his desk: almost 1000. “I will be observing with interest. Carry on.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Havelin out.”

Kranz called up the camera feeds, selecting one that showed Provosts emerging onto the shelf of rock outside the now-shattered glass window of the resort lobby to be lifted one by one to the hovering helicopter. A thunderstorm had rolled over the Canyon. Rain sleeted down all around them.

If Alania and Danyl had made it to the Rim, they wouldn’t be able to get past the robot sentries. They were trapped. Just a few more minutes, and this whole ridiculous and costly charade would come to an end.

Kranz allowed himself one glance at the frightening array of yellow and red lights on the Captain’s medical monitor, which he now kept uncovered whenever he was in the office alone, and fought down the familiar surge of near panic that gripped him whenever he allowed himself to think too hard about the stakes involved in the search for Alania and Danyl. Then he went over to the bar that ran along one wall of his office, poured another cup of kaff, and returned to his desk. Sipping the hot, bittersweet liquid appreciatively, he settled in to watch what he desperately hoped would be the endgame of that search.

Danyl and Alania reached the top of the stairs with five minutes to spare. It gave them little time to rest. “You remember the plan?” he asked Alania, panting.

She gulped air, then nodded. “There’s a five-minute interval during which there are no robots in the hut beyond that door. We have that long to activate the safe passage to the nearest Rim gate. It will last for ten minutes, during which time the robots will not register our presence as long as we stay within the passage’s boundaries. Once that time is up, they’ll kill us on sight.”

“Right. Although I don’t understand why this ‘safe passage’ protocol even exists.”

“I do,” Alania said, and Danyl raised an eyebrow at her. “Normally techs carry transmitters that identify them as harmless to the robots,” she explained. “But if something went so seriously awry that the robots no longer accepted the transmitted security codes, you might need a safe way in and out of the nest. No doubt the protocol can be activated from the City as well.”

“You seem to know a lot about robots.”

She smiled briefly. “Misspent childhood. My guardian’s factory probably built these. He insisted I study robotics. Among other things.” Her smile faded. “I used to think he meant for me to take his place, since he had no children of his own. Then he handed me over to Kranz.”

“Another part of the puzzle,” Danyl said. “All right, expert. Why do we have only ten minutes to get out? Why can’t we just shut down the robots completely and take our time?”

“Because Prime didn’t tell us how,” Alania said. “He must have had a reason. Maybe it requires security codes he doesn’t have. Maybe it would raise alarms we don’t want to raise.” She looked over the side of the landing, back down the long, long shaft they had just climbed so laboriously. Danyl knew what she was thinking, because he was thinking it, too: Chrima’s grave. “The Provosts may have guessed where we’ve gone. Even if we get across the Rim, they may be waiting for us just beyond the Fence.”

“I know,” Danyl said. He pulled out the slugthrower, checked it over, and then holstered it again. Ten shots before he’d have to reload. If the Provosts were waiting . . .

They don’t want to kill us, he thought. They want to capture us. That gives us an edge.

But not much of one.

He checked his watch again. “One minute.” They were sitting side by side on the landing. He climbed to his feet, held out his hand to Alania. She took it. My sister, he thought with a sense of wonder. Probably, honesty compelled him to add, but in truth, he was certain of it. Her eyes, if nothing else, told the tale.

He felt ashamed of how he’d originally seen her as nothing more than another salvage prize, his ticket to the City. She was clearly far more valuable than he’d ever dreamed—as was he, apparently (and astonishingly)—but whatever her value to the First Officer, she was even more valuable to him.

He pulled her upright, then released her hand and took out the key Chrima had given him. He held it at the ready in front of the key-port in the lockplate to the right of the door. The green numerals on his watch flicked to 1000—and he thrust the rod into the waiting receptacle. The locking mechanism groaned and clanked, and then the door swung inward of its own accord.

What Danyl had been imagining as a utilitarian shed proved to be nothing of the sort. Extending twenty meters to both the left and the right, it boasted a fancy (though badly scarred) parquet floor, three more-or-less-intact (though dark) crystal chandeliers, and a high ceiling bearing a painted and peeling representation of clouds. There were pillars half buried in the walls, as though the pavilion had originally been open to the Rim Garden on all sides. Had guests dined and danced here once upon a time?

Danyl had never been to the Rim before, but he knew no gardens remained there now. Or anything else green and growing. The maps he had studied in the teaching machine showed that the Rim Defenses extended twenty kilometers to the north and south of the City, on both sides of the Canyon: hundred-meter-wide no-go zones of smooth concrete patrolled by the Guardian robots. Three-meter walls topped with razor wire and their own defense and surveillance systems enclosed the robot-defended strip on both the Canyon and Heartland sides: the one on the Heartland side was called “the Fence.” The defenses were broken only on the west side of the City, where the main gate and the warehouses and other structures surrounding it stood. Provosts guarded those, of course. The ladder and cargo crane associated with the Last Chance Market also stood within that gap.

Danyl had asked Erl about those defenses, which seemed like ludicrous overkill just to keep Middens-dwellers from escaping into the Heartland. Erl had replied they’d been there for more than two centuries because of a failed attempt to overthrow the Officers, led by rebels from the farm villages before they were as tightly controlled as they now were. “Like most things in the City, the Rim Defenses took on a life of their own,” he’d said. “Once something like that is created, it must continue. The Officers do not like change.”

The defenses might have served little practical purpose, but that did nothing to lessen the problems they posed for him and Alania. And if the instructions provided to them did not work, the best they could hope for was to be trapped in the shaft they had just so laboriously climbed, awaiting the eventual arrival of the Provosts.

At worst, of course, they would be laser pincushions.

Guess we’re about to find out.

A silvery cylinder about a meter in diameter punctured the ancient parquet floor at its center: the control station. Danyl looked both ways before stepping through the door, though the gesture was futile—if the robot sentries or some other automated defenses were active, they would react to his presence before he could even begin to register theirs.

But his head remained firmly on his shoulders, and no smoking holes appeared in his body. “So far, so good,” he said over his shoulder to Alania, who followed him as he strode to the control station. The top of the cylinder was a blank gray screen; he touched it, and it lit with a series of numbers, meaningless to Danyl, presumably showing the status of the Guardians stationed in the pavilion “nest.” In the center of the screen glowed eight icons, abstract shapes that again conveyed no information to Danyl. From his pants pocket, he pulled Prime’s instructions as recorded by Yvelle, and he held the piece of paper out to Alania. They’d both studied it carefully in case something happened to that sheet of paper, but now he wouldn’t have to rely on his memory.

“Rotating cube icon,” Alania read.

He located it, touched it. The display changed. The new one was labeled “Maintenance Options.”

“Green circle.”

Danyl touched it. A new window opened. “To grant Temporary Security Zone Access, enter security code,” he read out loud.

“842XRCI22133,” Alania read, and he carefully punched in the apparently random mixture of numbers and letters. The instructions warned that he’d only get one chance, and he held his breath until the screen blinked “Temporary Security Zone Access granted.”

The screen returned to the Maintenance Options screen, but now the green circle glowed red. Beside it, a countdown had already begun: 9:58. 9:57. 9:56.

“We should move,” Danyl said, but Alania was staring at the screen.

“There’s another red icon. That V-shape. Something else is turned off.”

Danyl frowned at it. “You’re right. Let’s see what it is.” He touched the icon.

A new window appeared. “Air defenses currently inactive. Reactivate air defenses?” Below that, the red V-shaped icon appeared again.

“Air defenses?” Danyl stared at the screen. “Inactive?” He suddenly realized what that had to mean. “They know we’re up here. They’re sending aircraft!”

“Well then,” Alania said, and she reached out and touched the V-shape.

The icon turned green. “Air defenses reactivated,” the screen read for a moment before it blinked back to the Maintenance Options screen.

The countdown continued. “9:24. 9:23. 9:22.”

“Now,” Alania said, “we really should move.”

Danyl nodded, though he felt a surge of admiration . . . mingled with maybe just a little irritation. Alania kept acting without asking his permission, or sometimes even his opinion. It offended his male ego just a little—hence the irritation—but the admiration outweighed that. In the Middens, he would have been the natural leader, but . . .

You’re not in the Middens anymore, he reminded himself. You’re both on the same footing up here. And if you get to the City, she’ll know more than you do.

Together they hurried across the parquet floor to a featureless door. Danyl slowed, wondering how to open it, but it opened on its own, revealing rain-spattered concrete. Overhead, lightning flashed, followed by the rumble of thunder.

Just as described on their instruction sheet, solid yellow lines marking the safe corridor ran straight from the shed to a wall fifty meters away: the Fence. Made of concrete topped with opalescent domes, which Danyl knew contained its cameras, sensors, and weapons, it was a forbidding sight. The outlined path crossed a two-meter-deep trench just inside the Fence via a metal bridge, rainwater pouring from it, which Danyl suspected only extruded when the safety corridor was activated. As they hurried toward the Fence, he looked both ways again and almost stumbled: six Rim Guardians watched them, three on either side of the corridor, black oval bodies on multidirectional wheels. Turreted weapons, both beamers and slugthrowers, tracked them as they moved.

He couldn’t see the countdown, but there had to be several minutes left before the safety corridor stopped being safe. Lots of time, he thought. Lots of time.

But even as he thought that, he heard the beat of a helicopter’s rotors rising out of the Canyon. He stopped and twisted around, as did Alania. The first time he’d seen a helicopter, when he was eight, he’d thought it the most wonderful thing ever. Even though he’d seen many aircars come and go from the City before that, there had been something about the beat of helicopter rotors that had truly seized his imagination. He’d dreamed of roaming the Heartland in one of the sleek black vehicles, exploring the rivers and lakes and farms and valleys, flying to the foothills of the Iron Ring itself, announcing his presence everywhere he went with that glorious pounding thunder.

He’d talked about it so much that Erl had sat him down and explained firmly that only Provosts used helicopters, so the only way he could ever ride in one would be to either be a Provost—and since he did not live in the City and thus could not enlist, that would never happen—or to be arrested by the Provosts, in which case he would have a very short flight to the helipad on Tenth Tier and never be heard from again.

After that, Danyl had decided that maybe helicopters weren’t so wonderful after all. The sight of this one confirmed that negative opinion.

“Run!” he shouted at Alania as the whirling rotors appeared above the roof of the pavilion. He needn’t have bothered; she dashed past him as the word left his mouth, splashing through the puddles created by the driving rain. He bolted after her, running between the yellow lines toward the metal bridge.

“Halt in the name of the Captain!” an amplified voice boomed, echoing weirdly off the Fence and across the pavement. “Provosts will—”

The voice cut off. The helicopter’s thunder swelled from merely loud to earsplitting. It sped forward, gaining altitude . . .

. . . but not fast enough to avoid the beamers of the security robots, all of whom fired at it simultaneously.

The ’copter came apart in midair in a spray of oil and fuel that instantly ignited, the fiery blast slamming into Danyl and Alania just as they reached the bridge, hurling them off of it and into the ditch. They splatted into thick, soft mud as heat and smoke and steam and shrapnel drove like a deadly hailstorm across the open space above them. A second later, the largest chunk of the helicopter—probably the crew compartment, though all Danyl saw for sure was black, twisted metal trailing flame and smoke—tore through the concrete of the Fence like paper. Danyl flung himself on top of Alania and pressed her down into the mud while hell exploded above them. Only the steep walls of the ditch saved them—that, and luck: a lump of twisted metal the size of Danyl’s torso thudded into the muck a hand’s breadth from his head.

Then, just like that, it was over, except for the stench of burning fuel and the hiss of rain falling on flaming wreckage.

Alania made a muffled noise, and Danyl rolled off her. She sat up, plastered with mud, and swiped a hand across her face to clear her eyes, nose, and mouth. “I guess the air defenses worked,” she said in a shaky voice.

“Yeah,” Danyl said. “Good call, turning them on. Well . . .” He looked pointedly at the half-buried chunk of steaming metal. “ . . . kind of.”

“We need to get out of here,” Alania said. “Now. This is our best chance to get away. Maybe our only chance.”

Danyl blinked at her. His ears still rang from the noise of the helicopter’s sudden demise, and his head felt stuffed with oily rags. “What?”

“Anyone watching will have seen the helicopter go down apparently right on top of us. With luck, they’ll think we’re dead. And all the sensors and cameras on the chunk of wall the helicopter just took out means we’re in a blind spot.”

Danyl felt his brain click back to life. “Right,” he said with sudden excitement. He scrambled to his feet. The edge of the trench was just above the top of his head. “Boost me up, then I’ll pull you up.”

Seconds later they dashed across the road beyond the broken Fence and threw themselves down into a wheat field, the tall stalks offering some cover while they stared back at the destruction wrought by the crashing helicopter. It had torn a fifteen-meter-wide gap in the Fence, now shrouded in smoke and steam. Flames still poured from the shattered hull, which had ripped a gouge in the wheat field some thirty meters from where they lay. Bits of metal—and of men, Danyl realized sickly—covered the wet road.

To their left, the City rose in the distance, dimmed by the rain. He had never seen it from any vantage point but underneath, where its vast mechanical underpinnings dominated everything and the Tiers above were all but invisible. Now he could see all the Tiers at once, and the City was revealed as a gigantic, elongated ovoid, flattened on the bottom, topped by a silver-gray dome, home of the mythical Captain. Danyl only spared it a glance before looking the other way, to the south, where a windbreak ran east-west along the edge of the field, a thick line of trees and brush running up and over a slight rise. “That way,” Danyl said. “Let’s get as far away from here as possible. Then we’ll worry about getting to Prime.”

Together, they ran through the rain for the shelter of the trees.