The Burning Skies (13 page)

“Give me that wire.”

Huselid hands it to her. She looks at the metal, feels everything tilt around her—and then she shoves the wire into the side of her head. She steps inside the zone, and right before her in that endless grid is something that looks like an endless head and its eyes are like windows and its mouth is time itself and it’s the Throne upon the ramparts of the highest firewalls imaginable: the Throne itself blazing light down upon her and then she
      meets
          that
            light
and feels herself swept upward, rising above it, feeling it rise above her as she bears the Throne up on wings of intuition and lets the U.S. zone fold in around her. She sees the bulwark
of Montrose’s InfoCom flaring off to one side—notices the extent to which it and the Throne have opened to each other—notices, too, that all the strategic weaponry across all the Commands remains accounted for, even in those areas that are slightly darker to the Throne. Much of that terrain’s clustered within Space Command—but now that obscurity’s fading as she applies the pressure: shifts gears, turns wheels, sweeps her gaze across those grids. Nothing’s denied her now. The codes of the Throne slam shut her back doors, augment her own power, carry all before her. The map of the U.S. zone and all its secret corners blazes within her head. The L3 system shines before her. The president has set up the executive node within the Aerie (a crimson orb deep within that asteroid), and configured a portion of the Euro net as a temporary extension of the U.S. zone.

Only it’s no ordinary zone. It’s layered behind the firewalls of the Euro Magnates, mostly latent within the cylinder, but switched on in full defensive architecture within the Aerie—set up to mirror the Eurasian zone that’s been stretched across the farther cylinder and farther rock, looming largely opaque to Haskell, but she suspects that she could penetrate it if she tried. Particularly with the Throne riding shotgun for her. Or is she running shotgun for it? Because she remembers now. Her job. Find the Rain, and let the Praetorians pin them down with snipers while troops emerge from the asteroid and deploy from the disguised warships to finish them. And such forces will be backed up by strategic weaponry set up in layers beyond the Platform itself: the batteries of the warships, the gunnery platforms on the adjacent satellites, and on the periphery of the L3 vicinity, the directed energy projectors rigged upon the ten-kilometer-long Helios Station …

She switches on to the primary sequence, takes in the whole of the U.S. zone, sees all the routes where the Rain’s been gaining access—sees them as though she’s staring at her skin once more. It’s as she figured. It’s as they’ve done
before—the Rain have been using the legacy routes: paths from before there was a U.S. zone—back in the days of the global net—tunnels that lead through wires that used to be mainlines so many decades ago, before they fell to disuse and secret things began to prowl them.

Only this time they’ve gone deeper than anyone save she thought possible. She picks up the Rain’s scent at those doors, starts to follow the trails, out of the legacies, into the here and now, far out across Earth and Moon. Some of those paths lead along the directions of the Rain hit teams of four days ago.

Some don’t.

She attains critical mass—fast-forwards through the last three days in an instant. Everything crashes through her head: she sees the Rain and nothing stands between her and them. She sees every square meter of every scrap of territory the United States controls—as well as the locations of every hit team the Rain have within that territory. All of those hit teams look to be the standard triad model that the Rain uses. There are three of them.

All within this half of the Europa Platform.

One’s only a klick off, holed up in a safehouse on the outskirts of New London. New London’s easy. Anything can get in there. Getting past it and out into the rest of the cylinder is the problem.

But the second Rain triad has managed to do just that. It was using the back door within Haskell to move within her zone-wake. That back door’s now shut, but the triad’s still sidling forward, far more cautiously than before. And the odds of it being detected have been growing the closer it draws to the Aerie. Odds that approach near certainty when it reaches the South Pole.

But the third triad’s managed to beat those odds anyway. It’s managed to get inside the Aerie itself. By being in that asteroid all along. By guessing right. By not letting anybody see what Haskell’s now seeing: right after the failure of their
attempt to ignite war between the superpowers, the Rain placed various triads in various places across the Earth-Moon system in anticipation of the next move of the superpowers’ leaderships. There were only so many moves. Only so many places. And one triad hit the jackpot.

Though finding the president in a huge chunk of rock filled with Praetorians is a long way from easy. The triad’s still trying to pinpoint his exact location, a task that’s made all the more difficult due to that triad’s immobility, holed up in a chamber that’s literally walled off within those corridors. It’s waiting for the other hit teams to reach the asteroid. But in the wake of Haskell’s disappearance from the zone its members may be about to change up their tactics.

Though Haskell’s not about to let that happen. Because now she winds up and lets herself pour forth; she’s fire burning through the sky of zone—she swoops down upon them all, merging her wings with those of the Throne and screaming in like a bird of prey. She can’t miss.

But she does.

Because next instant they’re not there. All three Rain hit teams vanish from the zone.

As does the whole Aerie.

The asteroid’s still there in physical space. Her eyes take it in upon the cameras the fleet has trained upon it. But she’s lost zone-contact with everything in it.

Including the Throne.

S
uddenly there’s activity on the bridge around Spencer. The firewall around the Aerie just collapsed. There doesn’t seem to be any zone presence behind it either—though seismic readouts monitoring the surface show heavy combat has started within. “They’re sealing the drop-ships,” yells Linehan.

His voice is thick with static. But Spencer already knows exactly what the drop-ships are doing, along with the rest of the fleet. His mind’s a blur of motion as he works the zone in tandem with the prime razor. In the firmament beyond, he can see tactical command has been activated somewhere on the cylinder. He can’t see where, but he can see the result. The
Larissa V
engages its motors; nuclear-powered engines flare, sending the ship surging forward. Spencer feels himself pressed back in his seat. He watches the Platform roar in toward them—watches on virtual as hatches slide back from slots all along the ship and gun-barrels extend out into vacuum.

“What’s going on?” yells Linehan. He’s almost lost in static now.

“We’re attacking the fucking Platform! Get ready to get in there!”

The ship’s guns start firing.

T
he Operative turns toward the window as an explosion rocks the cylinder’s interior, several kilometers down the valley. Forest gets torn backward. Flames blast toward the inverted valleys overhead.

“Fuel-air bomb,” says Sarmax.

“Nasty,” says the Operative.

Not small either. The hole that’s now billowing smoke extends for several layers into the cylinder’s infrastructure. So far the cylinder’s atmosphere remains intact. But shots are ringing out. Sirens are going off. Lasers flash across the cylinder’s interior as micromissiles curl in toward their targets. Everybody visible on the streets and ramps and rooftops of the city is heading for doors leading inside. All too many are getting caught in the crossfire.

“This is more than just the Rain,” says Sarmax.

“Looks like they’ve managed to co-opt some of the Euro security forces,” replies the Operative, glancing at the Praetorians within this room. Several are watching the developing situation through the crosshairs of their heavy weapons. But most of them are watching the other window and the walls themselves. They have their assignments.

And now the whole cylinder’s rumbling as something massive smacks against it.

“What the fuck,” mutters Sarmax.

“The cylinder’s getting shelled from space.”

“By us?”

“Better hope so.”

P
lan B is now Plan A: cut off from the Throne, Haskell has switched to link up with Huselid, who’s coordinating the counterattack. The asteroid remains out of contact, and a pitched battle’s clearly going on within. All hell’s starting to break loose within the cylinder.

But inside Haskell’s head it’s calm—a peace such as she’s never known. Because there’s no more future. Future’s here. She’s riding the raw moment—and now that the Rain have made their move, she’s making hers, countering the sinkhole the Rain were seeking to trigger in the zone, halting the fraying of its edges, preventing them from extending the rot any farther as she takes over executive capacity within the U.S. zone. She’s holding steady. She feels the zone creak around her as she shores up its foundations according to parameters that precisely mirror the patterns etched upon her. She’s extending her support to the Eurasian zone as well, though nothing seems to have happened there so far. But she’s sure the Rain are over there, continuing their infiltration runs. Or just playing for time. Because if the Rain in the Aerie can kill the president, it can take the executive node—rip the software
from his skull and use it to wrest control of the entire zone from her.

But Huselid doesn’t seem worried. It’s almost as though he’s been expecting this. He’s unleashing a flurry of commands. Tactical battle readouts parade through her skull. The Rain hit teams in the cylinder are back online in combat mode, shielded against her onslaughts now, engaging with several Praetorian special-ops units—and those units are fully active in the zone, fully supported by the Hand and her. The ships outside are swooping in toward the Platform, opening fire, sending DE beams and KE shells streaking into the cylinder’s outermost layers to crash in and around the areas in which the Rain units are operating. And now the first of the dropships is deploying marines along the length of the cylinder, the majority of them near the middle where the fighting’s heaviest. Two of the ships coming in behind that first one are slated to deploy directly onto the surface of the Aerie. Haskell moves to shift some of the heavy vehicles situated in the levels beneath her closer to where the action’s going down.

But Huselid stops her. She sees his point. With the Throne cut off, this chamber has become the command post. And the forces protecting it are substantial—the Praetorians from the ships that docked earlier are massed along the outer perimeter, about a hundred meters out from where Haskell’s standing, while the Hand’s own shock troops form the inner perimeter, which starts about thirty meters from this room. Haskell can see that Huselid is anxious to maintain robust defenses around his makeshift citadel.

Particularly given the extent to which the security and household robots in the city have been hacked by the Rain. New London’s plunging into chaos. But the nearest Rain triad seems to have been trapped in a series of elevator shafts in the city’s basements. And the one just south of the cylinder’s equator has been pinned down in a construction area. The Rain have seized the bait. The hammer’s coming down upon
them. And whatever’s going on within the asteroid, the Rain team there will have its work cut out for it in making headway against the main force of the Praetorian Core.