The Burning Skies (18 page)

“One-way ticket to Ragnarok,” he says. “Sit back. Enjoy.” Lights flash outside the window. Something crashes against the shaker’s left side, bounces off with a dull clang. Spencer’s audio feed howls as one of the turrets farther back discharges on full auto. A rumbling rolls through his bones as the earth-shaker’s gears shift.

“Protected my Throne against the East for years,” mutters the pilot. “Now we fight to save him from demons.”

“You mean the Rain,” says Spencer.

“I mean the false Christ,” says the pilot. Lights streak past the window. Off to the right there’s an explosion that lights up torn terrain and shattered mirrors. Several other shakers are visible in the near distance. Those that are flying are keeping low. One’s on fire—still surging forward all the same. “God’s own messenger leads us through the gates of hell tonight. She’s Joan of Arc. She’s beautiful. I saw her face, you know.”

“So did I.”

“So rejoice.”

Spencer’s not so sure about that. But the pilot keeps on talking, keeps going on and on about the hinge of the cosmos and the fate of the universe and the final judgment. Spencer suspects that he’d be carrying on just as eloquently even if he didn’t have an audience. He realizes this man’s mind is
processing a situation he can’t understand as best he can. But Spencer knows he wasn’t picked up by this craft to get up to speed on its pilot’s metaphysics. So he cuts in as tactfully as he can manage:

“So what’d she want you to do with me?”

“She?”

“Uh, Joan of Arc.”

The man curses under his breath, swings his body leftward in his chair. The shaker swerves crazily sideways. Something big slides past the window: massive piles of debris that look to be all that’s left of some maglev train that piled up along the valley floor. The shaker roars past, fires jets, gains height. Ground drops away. Tracer rounds curve overhead. The man laughs.

“She told me to take you to limbo’s driver.”

A grid appears on a screen above him. It shows the Praetorian formation—a wide blue arrowhead slicing forward. A light situated almost at that arrowhead’s point—“That’s where we started,” says the pilot—has almost totally traced a line over to its right. And now that line’s drifting out ahead of the right flank, into the ranks of the forward skirmishers.

“That’s where we rendezvous,” the pilot adds.

“With what?” asks Spencer.

Something flies past the window. It looks like a motorbike, only it’s more fins than wheels. Spencer gets a quick glimpse of a figure hunched on its back—and then the vehicle loops backward, just missing the shaker, disappearing behind it.

“Jesus,” says Spencer.

“No,” says the pilot. “Just one of His servants.” He gestures at a screen that shows a ramp opening in the rear of the shaker—the jet-cycle suddenly materializes out of the darkness beyond and cuts its engines, slamming down onto the floor within. The ramp starts lifting back into place.

“Get down there,” says the pilot.

But Spencer’s already on his way, ducking down, heading through the rearward hatch, moving through a narrow passageway, stepping beneath more hatches that lead to turrets in the ceiling, stepping past Praetorians firing the left- and right-facing heavy guns—and then down a ladder into the cramped cargo bay.

The marine bending over his jet-cycle straightens up, turns around. He’s so close Spencer can recognize his face.

“I’m
baaaaaack,”
says Linehan.

“Fuck’s sake,” says Spencer.

The pilot’s face appears upon a screen: “Hurry it up and get out there!”

“Shut it, Gramps,” says Linehan. “We’re outta here.”

Spencer looks toward the screen: “Thanks for the lift,” he says.

“Go with God,” replies the pilot.

“We’ll let you know if we see Him.”

H
askell’s still looking for what she’s missing. Because there must be something. There always is. The screens show that she’s now lost a quarter of her forces. And that it’s unlikely there are that many more wayward Praetorians still out there. She’s managed to reassimilate a couple hundred. But most of the rest have been killed. By one another, by the drones, by the Rain …

No. Probably not by the Rain. Same as it always is: they’re using proxies to do their work, wearing down their enemy, waiting for their moment. Which could be here anytime. Because the Praetorian formation is approaching the cylinder’s equator and Haskell still doesn’t have the slightest idea of what’s going on at their ultimate destination: the South Pole mountains and the Aerie that lies beyond them. Anything could be taking place within the corridors of that
asteroid. The fighting might be over. The Praetorians within might have been crushed completely.

But somehow Haskell doubts it. The force she’s got out here is a fraction of the force the Aerie contained. Meaning that whatever the Rain have deployed within the asteroid is probably even nastier than it is out here. And as intense as the resistance she’s encountering, she feels that she’s starting to get the better of it. Her attention’s riveted on those distant southern mountains. Drawing ever closer for a second time. Only this time she won’t be denied.

T
ake a listen to that,” says the Operative. “Christ almighty,” says Lynx, as the feed gets patched in.

“They’re getting taken apart,” says Sarmax.

The frequency’s being used by Eurasian soldiers in the opposite cylinder. Even on the border of valley and window, the sight of that cylinder remains obscured by the mirror hung outside. But the transmission’s wafting in anyway, carrying the sounds of Russian and Chinese. Which is the only thing that’s even halfway coherent about it. Because really it’s just screaming. And cursing. And orders cut off by other orders that in turn get drowned out by somebody shrieking about traitors—becoming ever more hysterical until it all gives way to an earsplitting crunch. Followed by silence.

But only for a moment.

“I think we’ve heard enough,” says Sarmax.

“They’re getting creamed in there,” says Lynx.

“They can’t restore even the semblance of a zone,” says the Operative. “They’re broadcasting in the fucking
clear.”

“That’s how bad we’d be getting it if the Hand didn’t have Haskell,” says Sarmax.

“And how bad the Throne might be getting it in the asteroid.”

Which is why they’ve been speeding up. Why they can feel the left flank pressing up behind them. They’re accelerating to stay out ahead of it. Along with the marines the Operative’s retained under his own command. Two squads in all. Bringing the total under him to almost forty men and women, blasting their way forward, following the Operative, doing whatever he tells them.

Which right now is
heads up
.

Not that anyone really needs the warning. The mirror on their left lights up with such brightness it’s like a sun’s thrusting through it. Translucence shimmers, starts to liquefy.

“Ah
shit!”
yells Lynx.

“The Helios!” screams Sarmax.

“Trying to bust through,” mutters the Operative.

Not just trying. The Helios intensifies the fusillade, sears straight through the mirror, starts firing directly against the plastic window behind it. The one that connects this valley to the next one. That plastic’s superhardened. It’s ballooning inward all the same.

S
pencer sees what’s happening on the external cameras: shards of window dripping, disintegrating as microwaves start burning in above them, streaking across the cylinder, smashing against the far wall. What’s left of the air starts exiting the cylinder posthaste. The fires that have been blazing overhead start to get snuffed out—even as raw microwaves lacerate the drifting debris and dead flesh that’s strewn along the zero-G axis, smash into the valley adjacent to the one they’re in—nailing a few Praetorians outriders—but striking well afield of the main force …

“It can’t reach us,” he yells. “It ain’t got the angle!”

“You’re not thinking!” screams Linehan.

But clearly someone is. Both men are hurled against the wall as the shaker veers sideways, drops downward. The cameras show that the onrushing Praetorian formation’s no longer moving forward—disorder’s hitting it as those suits and vehicles up in the air start plunging back toward the ground. Those already on the ground start finding a way beneath it. They’re looking like animals trying to hit their burrows. They’re looking pretty desperate. And suddenly Spencer gets it.

“Christ,” he says,
“rotation.”

“Bingo,” snarls Linehan.

T
hree men plunge toward the valley floor. The Praetorians they’ve brought back into the fold are swarming after them. No one’s got the slightest intention of hanging around to see the Helios light them up with enough wattage to make their corpses glow for weeks. The Operative leads the way through one of the holes smashed in the valley surface by one of the fuel-air bombs from earlier. They streak into tunnels.

And find themselves in combat with still more drones. But the three men are used to close-quarter tunnel showdowns. Sarmax is in the center, his pulse-rifle on near-continuous spray, almost to the point of overheating. Lynx and the Operative have their miniguns blazing. Euro mining robots get in behind them, but are nailed by the marines bringing up the rear—and now the marines fan out on either side, start maneuvering through rooms and corridors, blasting down the walls, getting deeper, wondering all the while just how deep they need to go.

• • •

H
askell watches on the screens as her shaker makes a beeline for the surface. Calculations flash through her head. She’d figured the Helios would be too preoccupied bombarding the northern city-spaceports to bother trying to penetrate the cylinders. But maybe whoever’s squeezing the trigger has gotten word of the size of the relief force that’s rolling in toward the asteroid. Haskell doesn’t know. All she’s thinking about now is just the situation: the cylinder rotates every two minutes; each of its three windows is directly opposite a valley—which makes for about twenty seconds during which the Helios will have line of sight onto the valley along which the bulk of the Praetorian force is moving. And now more ground-to-air shots from guns on the ground are rising up toward the Praetorian spearhead. Haskell feels her stomach lurch toward her throat as the shaker climbs, takes evasive action, dodges those shots.