The Burning Skies (63 page)

But it’s not too late to salvage the mission. Linehan leaps forward, just as Szilard springs out from behind the console, dodges under Linehan’s gun, starts grappling with him. Staff officer versus wet ops veteran: it’s no contest. Linehan seizes Szilard, tosses him out toward the center of the room. Szilard mutters something.

“Finish him!” screams Lynx.

“Or you,” says Linehan—and turns, grabs Lynx, knocks the pistol out of his hands, hauls him bodily away from the mainframe. Lynx screams as the wires extruding from his skull snap. Linehan hurls him against the console.

And shrugs.

“I’m a conflicted man,” he says.

“Christ,” mutters Lynx. Blood dribbles from his mouth. He stares up at Linehan. “You’ve been rigged.”

“By us,” says Szilard.

“But InfoCom wiped all that—”

“You’ve made your last assumption,” says Szilard. “Soldier, kill this traitor.”

“Gladly,” says Linehan who whips up his pistol at Lynx, fires. The shot goes over Lynx’s head. Linehan fires again. The shot flashes past Lynx’s face. Linehan’s face is starting to twitch.

“I said fucking kill him!” screams Szilard.

But now Linehan’s convulsing. He’s pitching forward. Szilard’s standing open-mouthed behind him. Lynx starts running. He’s got no weapons. He’s got nowhere to go. He’s heading there as fast as he can.

T
hey’re getting the fuck out of that room at speed. They did their best to hide the body of the soldier who crashed their chat—pulled a panel aside, stuffed it in there. And that’s about all they’ve got time for. They’re climbing down ladder after ladder, descending through shafts, seeking out the depths of this place, since that’s where the heart of its zone activity seems to be. And Spencer’s riding toward it. Though without the Manilishi he doesn’t dare to try and hack the core. Not until he understands more about what’s going on.

Because it’s pretty clear
something’s
going on. There’s a lot
of activity under way—a lot of soldiers and technicians going about their business. Spencer and Sarmax are doing their best to look like part of the scenery hiding behind doors, concealing themselves within shadows, keeping equipment between them and the other men and women within this place.

But it looks as if they might have been detected anyway. Sirens start going off everywhere. Activity’s suddenly cranking up to a new level of intensity. Shouting echoes down the corridors. They crouch behind some stowed equipment and wait to be found. Soldiers race into the room.

And keep going. It looked like they weren’t searching for anything—just getting ordered into position. Spencer and Sarmax slink out, find more ladders, climb down. The ladders start to get shaken by a distant rumbling, like something’s starting up. Spencer’s got a feeling that something probably is.

T
he Operative leaves the interrogation quarters behind, fires his suit’s thrusters. The soldiers wearing Praetorian colors swarm in behind him. He lets the Manilishi’s hack carve out ahead of him. He’s got control of her as long as she remains within the suit. He has no intention of letting her outside it ever again.

He rounds a corner and starts firing. As do all those with him. Their targets’ suits are getting shredded. Walls start to buckle under the fusillade. Shots whip past the Operative’s head. But he’s got the advantage. The fact that his team’s maintaining zone integrity allows them to coordinate their shots with deadly precision. He blasts through the dying Praetorian defenders and smashes through into the ship’s forward areas.

But now the president responds. The executive node roars out to do battle, bulldozes straight into the Manilishi. Two
titanic forces strain against each other. The president has the resources of the whole zone to draw from. The Manilishi is the most powerful razor in existence. Penetrating the U.S. zone is no problem for her. She’s already inside it anyway. But assailing its very core is something else altogether.

Which is why the Operative’s not counting on her to finish the job. He’s planning on doing that the old-fashioned way. He surges forward, tearing his way through more Praetorian defenses. He’s not surprised to feel the ship accelerating, surging toward landfall and the president’s forces in the base at Congreve. But unless the forces within the ship can stop him, the Operative is going to reach the president before they hit the Moon. He’s picking up the pace, too—blasting his way through wall after wall, taking Praetorians by surprise for just the fraction of a second long enough to allow him to destroy them. He’s almost at the threshold of the bridge. He can feel the ship’s descent quicken toward plummet. He wonders how the hell they’re going to stop in time.

And then he realizes they’re not.

H
askell’s trying to brace herself but there’s nothing left to brace. She’s already strapped in. The soldiers around her are grabbing onto the walls. The ship’s coming in at lethal speeds. She can feel Carson somewhere in the back of her mind. Clarity’s bursting on her far too late. She understands that Carson knows that his real enemies are his fellow plotters—that he’s riding some deeper scheme.

But apparently he’s been too devious by half. Because the president’s so desperate to reach the Moon he’s going to crash them all. Haskell feels her stomach lurch as the craft accelerates still further—feels herself involuntarily gasp. She feels her whole life start to flash before her eyes—and it’s really her
own life this time. She understands it all. She gets it—sees her mind caught in the jaws of Carson’s trap, sees how he’s turned her against herself. How there’s no way out.

Not in this world anyway.

Howling heat and burning light … the universe opens up around her, rises in her like some voice she’s never heard, yet sounds exactly like her own. The minds of everyone she’s ever known and everyone she never will flare through her head, pour past her like some runaway torrent. And in that flood she can see it all: the grids of zone and the reins of power that end in the man who holds them within the bridge of a ship that’s a blip of light above the horizon that’s cutting across a million watching screens—and the woman who’s watching all of them knows it’ll be the last thing she’ll ever see. She’s finally free. Retrofire’s slamming through her. The ship’s firing its brakes. It’s way too late. They hit.

T
here’s an explosion. The doors burst open. Szilard’s marines hit the room. But Lynx is already gone, through the duct and into the shaft he used to enter the room. Shots streak after him but they’re way too late. He’s running on all fours like some kind of hunted animal. The mechanized guardians of the
Montana’s
crawlspaces swarm toward him—and scoot away as he uses what’s left of his crumbling zone position to talk them out of it. He keeps on moving past them.

He knows he’s reached the end of the line. He’s out of options. Save whatever’s available to him inside all this crawl-space. He’s got a feeling he’s going to know this place all too well before he dies. The maps gleam within his mind. In their stacked grids he catches glimpses of deeper patterns—how triumph turned so swiftly to debacle, how nasty what’s about to happen is going to be. He wonders if it’s already begun.

• • •

B
ut if it has, it’s news to them. Because down in the lower levels everything’s silent. It’s as if they’ve stumbled into the domain of ghosts.

“We’ve gone too low,” says Sarmax.

“I don’t think so,” says Spencer.

He’s starting to evolve a theory about what’s really going on within this place. He and Sarmax descend through several more levels, pass through several open hatches.

And arrive in a strange chamber. One where metallic conveyor belts drop from the ceiling, run along walls, pass through slits in the floor. Spherical objects are slotted within the belts. They look like metallic eggs. Sarmax walks over to them. He stares at the objects. He studies one of them in particular.

“Is this what I think it is?” he says.

“I think so,” says Spencer.

“Probably five-kiloton yield.”

“Probably.”

The room has two more exits: a hatch in the floor and one in the ceiling. Spencer does a local hack on the ceiling hatch. They climb a ladder and head on through.

“Hello,” says Spencer.

A room that looks to be filled with what must be thousands of those nukes, stacked from floor to ceiling, ready to slot onto the conveyor belts. Spencer breathes deeply.

“Weirder by the second,” he says.

“I’d say we’re getting close,” says Sarmax.

T
he presidential ship plows into the landing pad and then through the underground hangars stacked beneath, disintegrating as it goes. The base through which it’s now spearing comprises about twenty levels. The ship makes it through half of those before
momentum peters out. Stars are visible through the hole the ship’s just bored …