Read Online The Plague Forge [ARC] by Jason M. Hough - Free Book Online

heard the reinforced door clicked closed behind him.
    The armory had been set up in a storage room within the university that overlapped with the colony on the western side. A courtyard just outside served as the impound yard for the aura towers, and most of the rooms that fell within the subsequent protective aura were dormitory-style bedrooms, put to good use by the colony. This room, probably once for cleaning supplies, Tania guessed, was off an interior hall below a stairwell. Concrete walls kept it cool and dry, even at this time of year, and at some point a pair of metal plates had been welded to the door. A heavy lock had been installed, too, just in case. Tania thought it telling that Ana knew the combination and clearly knew the room like the back of her hand.
    “Laser sights,” Ana said without turning.
    “Ah.” Skyler offered Tania a bunch of bananas. He held one, half eaten, in his other hand. “Quite useful when shooting from the hip.”
    Ana turned finally. She waved off the bananas when Tania offered them. “I’m standing there trying to figure out where that stupid little dot is when I could just be shooting.”
    “Waste of ammo,” Skyler said over a mouthful of the fruit.
    Ana’s eyes flared. In answer she gestured to the wall of boxes behind her. Boxes of every size, shape, and style of bullet.
    Skyler took another bite, chewed. “All that matters is what’s in the clip.”
    “You want to sleep outside tonight, pendejo ?”
    Tania, stuck between the couple, with nowhere to go, turned her focus to peeling a banana. The girl’s tone, playful and flirtatious, nevertheless had a note of challenge to it. She might be Skyler’s lover, but she was also part of his crew. Tania didn’t consider herself an expert, but she’d seen enough of the old romance sensories to know mixing business and pleasure was rarely a good idea.
    Skyler just grinned, though, and looked to Tania. “The others are gathered in the Helios ’s crew cabin. It’s time to make our plan.”
    “Helios?” Tania and Ana asked simultaneously.
    “Vanessa’s name for the new aircraft. Something to do with her jujitsu.” He said the words over his shoulder as he departed. Deep down, he probably felt more uncomfortable than Tania, though he did a good job of hiding it.
    When his footsteps faded and the door clicked closed again, Tania turned back to the weapons. She picked up the SIG again, hefted it, and cracked a smile toward Ana. “I don’t really like laser sights, either.”
    The young woman chortled.
    A paper map lay splayed out on the crew compartment floor of the Helios , located just aft of the cockpit.
    Skyler had marked the location of the Ireland object with an hourglass shape drawn in pencil. Similar markings noted the crash sites in Belém and Darwin where objects had been recovered.
    Then he’d drawn lines out of Belém marking the two remaining paths taken by aura tower groups. At the extent to which they’d been explored, he’d expanded the lines into cones, indicating a best-guess search area for the ultimate whereabouts of the crash sites. One went north and west, toward the Gulf of Mexico and on up into North America.
    “This one,” Tim said, tracing a finger along the line Skyler had drawn east from Belém, “runs roughly toward where the mother ship is parked in orbit.”
    Skyler frowned. “Roughly?”
    Tim nodded and held out a hand for the pencil. Skyler handed it over, and the young man drew a box around a portion of the Sahara in northern Niger. “Right about here,” he said.
    The spot lay just below the cone Skyler had drawn. His guesswork on the spread of the cone had no evidence to back it up; it was really more optimism than anything else—something much wider would take months to explore even from the air. Still, the mark Tim made was close enough that it couldn’t be ignored. Perhaps the Builder’s mother ship had parked itself directly over one of the crash sites.
    “Interesting,”