“Can’t say I blame him.”
“It’s enough to make a man paranoid.”
“Isn’t that your natural state?”
“Paranoid about you.”
“You need to relax,” says Spencer.
“You need to tell me who you really are.”
“Get a grip on yourself.”
“Just answer the question.”
“I’m Lyle Spencer,” says Spencer as he readies his weapons. “Who are you?”
“Seb Linehan.”
“What the hell are you on, Linehan?”
“I’m high on life.”
“And a damn sight more than that.”
“So what if I am?”
“So what are you on?”
“Ayahuasca.”
“Getting dosed in South America wasn’t enough?”
“Same dose, Spencer.”
“What?”
“Same dose, Spencer.”
“You’re still—”
“Hallucinating. Yeah.”
“Three and a half days later?”
“Has it been that long?”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t even know which way is up anymore.”
“There is no up,” says Spencer. “Not out here.”
They’re deep into the valley now. They’re sticking to the forests whenever possible, though far too many of the trees have been ripped from the ground, along with all the leaves. It’s like the land of endless winter now. There’s no sign of life anywhere. No sign of movement either.
“Too dark to see if that shit’s still up there,” says Lynx.
“We’ll dodge it if it is,” says the Operative. “They’re not looking for us. They’re just busy getting into their assault positions around the Throne’s perimeter.”
“Fucking great,” says Lynx.
They move out of the woodlands and start along a riverbed. The water’s at one with the vacuum now. Sun glints above them as the cylinder rotates, gleams off the tens of thousands of bodies drifting along the axis as Sarmax starts up the one-on-one again.
“I’m telling you it was her,” he says.
“You’re saying Indigo Velasquez has risen from the dead?”
“I’m saying I didn’t finish the job.”
“Oh,” says the Operative softly.
“Oh. All that time, and all you can say is oh? I left her bleeding on the floor of a suborbital. I bailed out. Ship bit Pacific minutes later.”
“And her body was never recovered.”
“Nothing was,” says Sarmax. “Carson, it was her.”
“Easy,” says the Operative.
“Ten years gone,” says Sarmax. His voice is hollow. “Ten minutes I lay senseless in those tunnels. I drifted against a wall and the combat raged around me. I opened my eyes and couldn’t move and she was moving past me.”
“Faces can be imitated,” says the Operative. “Just ask the Throne.”
“It wasn’t just the face,” says Sarmax. “It was the way she looked at me. The way her eyes narrowed. She recognized me.”
“She was the perfect soldier. If she saw you, she would have killed you.”
“She was the love of my life.”
“Exactly.”
“Look—”
“No,” says the Operative, “you look. You suffered head trauma in that fucking slugfest, and before that you’d been cowering on the bottom of the Moon for a fucking decade trying desperately to think of anything but her.”
“I’m not going crazy!”
“Who said anything about crazy? You’ve just been under a lot of stress.”
“Shit, man—”
“What did your armor’s cam-feeds show?”
Sarmax hesitates.
“Have you even looked?” asks the Operative.
“They were junked. They showed fuck-all.”
“Can I make a suggestion?” says Lynx.
“What the hell are you doing on this line?” asks Sarmax.
“That’d be hacking it.”
• • •
So you’re still tripping,” says Spencer. “So what?”
“Would have thought you’d be a little more concerned.”
Spencer gestures at the view in the window. “It’s all relative,” he says.
“But after the Jaguars dosed us, InfoCom erased my systems and rebooted me. The Manilishi probably did the same.”
“So?”
“So how come I’m still tripping?”
“How the fuck am I supposed to answer that?”
“And why aren’t you still flying too?”
“Maybe the Jaguars gave you a heavier dose.”
“Fuck, Spencer, I saw the way your eyes looked back in that goddamn temple. The Jags were trying to interrogate us both, weren’t they? No reason they would have given you the lightweight version.”
“There’s every reason. You’re twice my size, Linehan. Maybe they were trying to account for it and fucked up. Maybe you’re just highly receptive. What’s your normal dosage on combat drugs?”
“I don’t take combat drugs.”
“You’re kidding me. I thought all mechs did.”
“My officers always said I was a natural born psycho.”
“No arguments there. Look, I take a lot of shit to let me run zone. Razors are used to altered states, that’s all we’re ever in. No wonder you’ve been having such a hard time.”
“It’s getting harder by the moment.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell InfoCom the ayahuasca was proving so persistent?”
“I figured your team wouldn’t be that happy.”
“We could have given you an antidote.”
“Assuming you let me live, sure.”
“One rogue factor gets past the conditioning, maybe there are others?”
“Exactly.”
“Not of the sort that would matter,” says Spencer. “The InfoCom reconditioning wasn’t aimed at any recreational drugs you might have taken—”
“Recreational?”
“Whatever. Point is it was aimed at your loyalties.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Because you no longer feel like fighting for the Throne?”
“Fuck, man, as long as I was fighting, I was loving it.”
“So what’s your problem?”
“There’s no combat.”
“And?”
“And the suspense is getting to me.”
“You never struck me as the type to get scared.”
“Precisely why I’m getting so freaked out.”
They’ve emerged from the riverbed, forged on into fields purged of all harvest. Dead valley stretches all around, with two more like it stretching far overhead … all three converging on the shattered city that dominates the northern end of this cylinder. Call that city capital of memory, because that’s all it holds now. And the men now approaching it have the same problem.
“I’m going to rip your head off,” says Sarmax.
“Not so fast,” says the Operative.
“He’s right,” says Lynx.
Of course he is. Combat inside the Remoraz would be insane. Sarmax would have to blow one of the vehicle’s hatches to even turn around to face Lynx. But Sarmax seems so angry right now the Operative’s not taking any chances.
“Anyone starts anything, I’ll take ’em out myself,” he says. “Lynx, you’ve got some explaining to do.”
“I’ve got some explaining to do?”
“So start talking,” growls Sarmax.
“What’s there to explain? Guess Carson’s not as good a razor as he thinks he is. I hacked his ass, and got my cock right up in it.”
“Or Carson let you do it,” says Sarmax.
“Why the hell would I do that?” asks the Operative.
“Maybe some misguided attempt to get us all on the same page.”
“Man,” says Lynx, “you do not want to tell him any secrets. Look, Leo
, sorry to hear that you’re having problems with your woman, but—”
“Watch it.”
“I am. I’m watching you lose it and I think you might be missing the point. You’re too wrapped up in it, man. You need to think about this from the only perspective that matters.”
“Which is?” asks Sarmax.
“Autumn Rain’s,” says the Operative.
Keep talking,” says Spencer. “About what?” asks Linehan.
“About what the hell is going on inside your head.”
“You are.”
“No kidding?”
“I can see straight through you and you’re hollow.”
“That’s what I called you once.”
“What?”
“That’s what I called you once,” repeats Spencer. “The original hollow man.”
“Maybe you were right.”
“I’m your handler, Linehan. I’m supposed to be right.”
“So tell me what the fuck you think is going on.”
“I think the basic core of your personality is probably disintegrating. Essentially what you are is just an empty shell held together by love of killing. Once you’re out on your own for long enough, you’ll start coming apart.”
“Is this some kind of reverse-psychology to shock some sense into me?”
“It’s just a theory about what your brain might be up to.”
“You really don’t think I’m being fucked with?”
“You were fucked with, Linehan. By InfoCom and before that by the Jags.”
“And before that by the Rain.”
“Maybe you should tell me more about that.”
Three men in a room that’s no room making passage through the land of the dead. Black landscape stretches away toward the unseen outskirts of the city at the heart of it all ….
“Don’t make me go there,” says Sarmax.
“You fucking have to,” says the Operative.
“Otherwise we can’t break this down,” says Lynx.
Sarmax nods. Going head to head with the Rain is going down memory lane—looking into the eyes of the ones he hasn’t seen for all these years. They never liked him, of course. Partially because he represented the power that brought them into existence. But mostly because they knew that one of them loved him—and for that the men and women who became the Rain could never forgive Leo Sarmax. So when they fled ahead of the Praetorian axe, the woman who called herself Indigo Velasquez had to make a choice. Her brothers and sisters won out over her lover. Her lover killed her for that. He’s had to live with himself ever since.
And that’s been getting tougher. He thought getting back in the game would be what he needed to get it all behind him. He should have known better; should have known which way this game was heading—that it would bring him to a place like this, stalking his own memories through a maze that hides far more than one mind ever could….
“Easy,” says the Operative.
“Goddamn you both,” says Sarmax. “She was real. Christ, I shouldn’t have—shouldn’t have—”
There’s a lurch. The screens show the craft’s starting to sidle up hills. Starlight filters in through some fissure far above them, bathes the land in a ghostly light. Past those hills the structures of New London stretch up toward an unseen summit. Sarmax exhales slowly.
It’s funny,” says Linehan. “Looking back on all of it. Coming up in SpaceCom you start to scorn everything that crawls below. Living and breathing it, right? Working for the cause. Night’s when they say it is, and day’s whenever the sun falls upon you.”
“You’re not making any sense, man.”
“Is that so bad?” Linehan’s smile is almost sad. “What I mean is that I’d never been to Earth before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I came to your door in Minneapolis when you were doing time for the Priam Combine. Before I walked the streets of Hong Kong in search of a group called Asgard’s Banner.”
Spencer stares. “That was the only time?”
“Yeah.”
“So how—”
“Did I stand it? How do you think? Had muscle grafts to deal with the pull of the planet. Had lung filters to deal with its stench. Had software to prep me for what it’d be like—but nothing could.”
“Nor could anything prepare you for Asgard’s Banner.”
“Though with a name that gay I should have known, huh? Autumn Rain took our codes, and maybe they took our souls too. But standing in that city, with the mountains of planet towering overhead—I think that fucked my head even more than the ayahuasca. I feel like all of it’s still playing out within me.”
“Same here,” says Spencer.
“Do you see shimmering out of the corner of your eye?”
“Sometimes. Probably not as strong as you.”
“Do you see cat-skulls when you sleep?”
“I never dream. I’m surprised you do.”
“I don’t.”
“Dream?” asks Spencer.
“See cat-skulls when I do.”
There’s a pause. The two men look at each other.
“I see them when I’m awake,” says Linehan.
“That’s a problem.”
“And the rest of this bullshit isn’t?”
Creeping through streets filled with fresh wreckage and dead flesh. Stealing past buildings that have collapsed in upon one another to crush whoever was taking refuge within. Took more than fifteen years to build this city and less than fifteen minutes for it to die. “Indigo always was a survivor,” says the Operative. “Of course she was,” replies Sarmax. “I trained her.”
“You trained all of us,” says Lynx. And we all trained the Rain,” says the Operative. “And that’s why we need to go back to first principles to beat them. They knew the three of us would be up here. And you’re the only one of us who let himself get emotional over one of them.”
“But you took up with—”
“Do I look like I’m letting it get to me?”
“The man’s ice cold,” says Lynx.
“Cold enough to realize that the odds of the Rain trying to fuck with you are pretty good,” says the Operative.
“Maybe,” says Sarmax.
“‘Seize all advantages’, that’s what we told them. Any of them could be wearing her face.”
“All of them could be wearing her face,” says Lynx.
“Or it could just be combat fever,” says the Operative. “You want to see her, and you do. It happens.”
“Shit,” says Sarmax.
He’s staring at bodies. Most of the population seems to have perished as the seals burst. Those who made it into suits and airlocks found their sanctuaries hacked. Those who took their suits offline were shot down by the servants of the Rain. Sarmax clears his throat, swallows.
“I know they could be fucking with me,” he says. “I know I could be fucking with myself. It isn’t helping.”
“This isn’t about trying to help,” says Lynx.
“This is about trying to get inside their heads,” says the Operative. “Inside their schemes. The Throne reckons three of their triads hit each cylinder. We think all three of the ones chasing the East got nailed when the Coalition’s leaders blew themselves to kingdom fuck. We think one of the three after us went down when the asteroid buttfucked the mountain.”
“Still leaves two full triads after us,” says Lynx.
“But they’ll be wishing it was more,” says Sarmax.
“This is coming down to the wire,” says the Operative. “They’re going to want every advantage they can get.”
“And if they can get to you, Leo,” says Lynx, “they’re halfway there.”
“You’re the last person I’d expect to say that,” says Sarmax.
Lynx shrugs. “I owe you a lot. Doesn’t seem much harm in admitting it.”
“And without your drugs you’d be perfect.”
“That’s what makes me perfect. How else could I get this city arou
nd my fucking brain?”
“Christ almighty. You’re high right now.”
“That’s how he does his best work,” says the Operative.
And who the hell can blame him? Not with Hades itself unfurling on the screens. Not with all these shattered roads to keep on reaching up to that wraparound summit so far overhead. But it’s what’s still moving that’s the problem now. It’s what’s close at hand.
“I see it,” says the Operative.
More important, their vehicle does. It gets low, gets crafty, slinks through alleys toward the activity that’s up ahead. Toward the new scene that’s getting built within the heart of the old ….
“Fuck,” says Lynx.
“Economy on war footing,” says the Operative.
He’s not kidding. Whole sections of buildings have been torn away. The chasm revealed stretches down through basements, through maintenance levels beneath, and into what was once the spaceport. The light that emanates up from that chasm isn’t visible from the rest of the cylinder. But it’s certainly visible to the ones peering beyond its edge. The walls are thick with machines of every size. Who seem to be busy slicing up everything in sight: floors, walls, spaceships, launch derricks, equipment. Not to mention …
“Yeah,” says Sarmax, “those are people all right.”
“The meat gets tossed,” says the Operative. “The implants get kept.”
“Not very efficient,” says Lynx.
“Doesn’t need to be,” says Sarmax.
• • •
Rumbling fills the room, dies away. Spencer and Linehan glance at each other, glance out the window. Nothing’s visible, save the Earth dropping back out of sight again. But something’s definitely happening out beyond the shoved-up horizon ….
“Kills you, this waiting,” says Spencer.
“Not much longer now,” replies Linehan.
“What the hell are they doing?”
“Getting ready to overwhelm the perimeters with their hardware.”
“Leaving open the question of where they themselves will strike.”
“Maybe they’ll come straight through our position.”
“Maybe they’re in our position already,” says Spencer.
Linehan stares at him. “I hope not.”
“Where exactly in Hong Kong did you meet the Rain?”
“Little Sydney district.”
“Where exactly?”
“Bar at the Hotel Rex. I ordered a coffee, and then handed them the keys to down the Phoenix Elevator.”
The Burning Skies Page 19
