The Burning Skies (39 page)

“The Throne’s fucking launching!”

“I realize that, dipshit!”

It’s hard to miss. It’s fifty meters long, the last ship remaining to the man who’s desperate to avoid becoming the last president of the United States. It’s powering out upon jets of flame, rising above the Hangar and the fighting, lashing out with its gunnery in all directions.

I
n the cockpit Haskell’s presiding over all of it. Grey of walls giving way to black of space; vast doors quivering as the blast of engine hits them; rockscape beginning to recede; Praetorians trying to buy the ship some margin…. Myriad images swirl through her head as she monitors the moments after main engine start. The hands of the pilots fly over the controls. Her two bodyguards are staring straight ahead, at the windows past which the Earth is reeling. The ship’s accelerating.

And then shuddering as something smashes into it.

• • •

M
ove,” hisses the Operative.

But Sarmax and Lynx are already leaping onto the ship that’s their ticket off this dump. It’s small. No larger than a jet-copter, it was intended by the Euro Magnates as an escape craft, though they probably never figured on a getaway under these circumstances. The wall beyond starts folding away to reveal the glimmering of space. Sarmax and Lynx vault into the two pilot seats. The cockpit canopy hisses shut, though there’s neither time nor need to pressurize the ship. The Operative grabs onto straps at the back, shoves aside the spare Euro suits that take up most of the space remaining. Sarmax powers up the craft.

H
e’s hit!” yells Linehan.

By a KE hurler mounted by the Rain upon the cylinder: a laser aboard the president’s ship takes it out even as it fires, but the damage is already done. The ship’s gyros just got nailed, locking the craft into an arc that’s way too tight. It’s veering crazily back toward a point on the asteroid about half a klick from most of the fighting, coming in virtually on top of a certain wayward vehicle …

“We’re gonna get tagged!” yells Spencer.

“So don’t just stand there!” screams Linehan, who fires his thrusters and rockets along the rungs that lead through the hatchway in the control room’s ceiling.

• • •

H
askell’s just sitting there, visor down and suit sealed. Fear’s some sensation far away. She sees rock coming in toward the window, sees the lips of one of her bodyguards moving in silent prayer. She knows she’s the only one worth praying
to
. Her mind’s surging out through wires throughout the ship as she runs end-arounds, bulldozes a secondary route to prop up what’s left of the rudders. It wouldn’t mean a thing if the pilots weren’t so good. But the deep-spacer flight crew strapped in before her possess intuition of their own. Born of life-or-death moments way past Mars. Moments like this one now. Pilot and copilot and navigator: she gathers their minds into hers as the ship staggers toward the asteroid.

S
armax hits the gas. Hits it again. Nothing’s happening.

“What’s the problem?” says the Operative. “The problem is I can’t get this bitch started.”

“Keep trying,” says the Operative, and extends razorwire, starts getting in on the systems. Lynx is doing the same. Only to find that there’s some kind of lock on the ignition. Some kind of Euro code that’s still holding out. Something they’d better hack fast.

“We got company!” yells Sarmax.

T
wo trapdoors blasted aside, and Spencer and Linehan come out onto the siege-engine’s roof. The ship’s almost on them. It’s like some asteroid all its own now: blotting out the sky, engines flaring, nose lifting …

“It’s gonna miss!” yells Spencer.

“But we can’t!” screams Linehan, and fires all his thrusters on full-blast, streaking upward. And suddenly Spencer gets it, sees in a sudden flash what Linehan’s doing, sees why—and hits his own jets, sears in toward the metal that’s rushing past. A turret whirls toward them; he hits evasive action, knows himself for dead, watches as though in a dream as the turret disintegrates, the cylinder-based DE cannon that nailed it flaring on his screens as onrushing metal fills his visor …

“They’re crippling it
deliberately!”
screams Linehan.

They crash against the hull.

S
creens and windows within a woman’s mind: the asteroid falls away even as the last of the exterior cameras show suited figures leaping onto the ship. More shots strike the ship as it hurtles past the asteroid, straight toward the cylinder—and then it somehow straightens, roaring parallel to it. The ship’s gunnery teams are exchanging fire with cannons on the cylinder. The ship’s cameras are getting taken out. The pilots are relying only on the cockpit window. The ship starts using the last of its batteries to fire missiles into the cylinder—into both cylinders. The batteries are going blind. The missiles are anything but. They crash home.

M
inidrones streak into the Euro launch chamber, start opening fire. But the issues their target is having don’t extend to its guns. Sarmax starts unleashing the escape craft’s flechette cannons on full auto. Tens of thousands of pieces of metal start tearing the minidrones to pieces. What’s left of them retreat.

“They’ll be back,” says Sarmax.

“We’re through!” yells the Operative as he finds the key reverses the ship’s codes in a single stroke, locks them in under a new imprint. Sarmax ignites the motors. The ship lifts off from the floor, turns its nose toward the tunnel, fires a bracket of torpedoes.

W
hat the hell do you mean?” yells Spencer. It’s not the best time for a conversation. They almost missed getting a foothold. They’re right at the back of the ship, where the hull narrows around the engines. Plasma pours past them. The asteroid’s dropping away; the surface of the cylinder whips by. The other cylinder’s coming into view as well. But Linehan seems to be intent on getting his point across anyway.