The Burning Skies (40 page)

“I mean the Rain could have
destroyed
this ship! They didn’t! They were picking off the monitors! Taking out the guns! They were hitting us to wound! Hitting it to send us on this course!”

“They weren’t trying to crash us?”

“Acceptable fucking risk,” screams Linehan. “So they could fucking
board it
. Jesus Christ!”

He can’t point. All he can do is stare. At the Platform rocketing below. At shards of mirrors. At fragments of debris. At the blackened cylinder.

And at more suited figures rising from it.

T
he ship curves away from the Platform. The pilots are getting it back under control. They’re flooring it. The Platform’s being left behind. In Haskell’s mind a countdown’s closing on a zero that’s precisely calibrated. A voice sounds within her head.

“Situation,” says the Throne.

“Ship stabilized,” she replies. “Warheads away. They’re lodged in the cylinders. But we may have company.”

“Beyond the ones we picked up at the asteroid?”

“Don’t know.” Though she’s got a nasty hunch.

T
he torpedo blasts start ripping the tunnel apart. The roof of the station’s starting to collapse. But Sarmax is hitting the auxiliary jets, letting the ship swan sideways from the minihangar—and then firing the main thrusters. The cylinder starts to recede, along with its twin and the rest of the battered infrastructure that comprises the Europa Platform.

“Good fucking riddance,” says Lynx. Both cylinders suddenly shine as though suns have ignited within them.

L
ight’s blinding them. Their visors react instantly, going opaque. Linehan leans against Spencer, touches helmets. “You called that one,” mutters Spencer. “They had no choice,” replies Linehan. “But the Rain got aboard anyway.”

“Think they’d miss the endgame?”

• • •

C
ockpit sensors pick up the gamma rays. The nukes that just ripped apart the cylinders and tore chunks off the one remaining asteroid were far more powerful than those that shredded the Helios. The Rain’s machinery just got annihilated. Along with every last Praetorian at the Hangar.

Haskell feels she’s about to join them. Because she can’t evade the truth. She can see all too clearly how the Rain have played this—that they prepared for the eventuality of the Helios getting nailed. That they were willing to risk crashing the presidential ship in order to get aboard it. The ones she saw leap on were the InfoCom operatives. Who
could
be Rain. Who could have been turned since, or replaced. But it seems unlikely. She checked them out already. And she’s got footage of their suicidal assault on the siege tower. She feels she’s seen them. Seen what they’re up to.

It’s what she can’t see that has her worried.

S
cratch one Platform,” says Lynx.

“Those were our soldiers,” says the Operative. “Give respect.” As he says this, he glances at Sarmax, who’s gritting his teeth, gunning the ship, sending it streaking forward. “Easy,” says the Operative. “What?” asks Sarmax. “Focus on the now.”

“I’m there,” says Sarmax, gesturing at the screens. The blast’s fading from them, to reveal empty grids up ahead. And the president’s ship.

• • •

W
e gotta get forward,” says Linehan.

“I’m working on it,” replies Spencer.

They’re crawling along the side of the ship like mountaineers whose slope keeps shifting like it’s trying to throw them off. And while they’re moving forward they’re scanning as best they can. But all they can see is metal up ahead. As well as …

“Behind us,” says Linehan. “Stars—getting blocked.”

“By what?”

“Pursuit.”

T
hey’re hurtling out of the L3 vicinity, and everyone’s fingers are on the edge of the trigger. Every airlock’s booby-trapped. Haskell watches it all on her screens while her bodyguards watch her, eye the bridge’s only door.

“Rearward hull breach,” says the pilot.

“Confirmed,” says the navigator. “Combat,” says the voice of the Throne.

The metal walls shudder as an explosion passes through them.

W
e’re catching up,” says Lynx. “No way we couldn’t,” says the Operative. The ship they’re in is the fastest the Euro Magnates could configure. And the craft they’re chasing is wounded. They’re overhauling it quickly.

“Suits,” says Sarmax. “On the rear of the hull.”

“Blast ’em,” says Lynx.

“Not so fast,” says the Operative.

• • •

A
signal echoes in Spencer’s helmet. The codes check out. Spencer takes the call.

“Yeah?”

“Spencer,” says the voice of Carson. “You reading me?”

“Jesus,” replies Spencer. “That Carson?”

“You guys turn up in the strangest places.”

“So do the Rain. They’ve boarded.”

“Thought you’d say that.”

T
he ship is caught in an agony of reverberations as explosions slam against bulkheads somewhere farther back. The speakers are a cacophony of voices and shots. It sounds like all hell’s breaking loose back there. Haskell’s bodyguards have their guns out, pointed at the cockpit door. One signals for her to huddle in the corner. She does. “Rear units no longer reporting,” says the copilot. “Cauterize,” says the Throne.