So what’s the story?” asks Linehan.
“The story is you get to stop watching the vid.”
“I mean what’s up with your hack?”
“I know what you meant. Now get in here.”
Linehan doesn’t move; he keeps on gazing at the city in the window while the ayahuasca keeps on crackling in his mind. It seems to have intensified now that he’s on the Moon. He feels so gone it’s almost as if the city’s gazing in at him: the heart of lunar farside, the translucent dome of downtown Congreve shimmering in the distance. The L2 fleet’s a blaze of lights in the sky beyond. The city beneath it has managed to slip through the events of the last several days. It’s been left unscathed.
So far.
“How are we getting in?”
“I’ll tell you as we go,” says Lynx. “Help me out with this.”
“With what?”
“In here, you moron!”
In the other room, Lynx is pulling material out of a rather large plastic container. Material that looks like—
“Those are suits,” says Linehan.
“No shit.”
“Just making sure we’re on the same page.”
“You’re really getting on my nerves,” says Lynx. He pulls the suit out farther, his new bionic hand hissing softly as he does so. He hands the edges to Linehan, starts pulling at the second suit.
“So where did you get these?” asks Linehan.
“Special delivery. They showed up while you were watching the vid.”
“I would have thought I’d have heard the door.”
“There was no knock.”
“I still would have noticed,” says Linehan.
“Alright, asshole, you win. They were here all along.”
“Where?”
“Behind that panel.” Lynx gestures at a panel in the wall. One that’s ever so slightly askew.
“How’d they get there?” asks Linehan.
“You ask way too many questions.”
“It’s how I stay alive.”
“But somehow you keep ending up on suicide missions.”
“That what this is?”
“Take a good look at those suits, Linehan.”
Linehan does. And then takes an even closer look.
“Wait a sec,” he says, “it’s not even—”
“But you’re wearing it all the same,” says Lynx.
The streets are a total mess. Everyone went to work this morning thinking it was just a normal day, only to realize it was anything but. Now they’re all trying to get home, or just trying to find a place to hide. Vehicles are jammed everywhere. Everyone’s honking. Everyone’s yelling.
“What do you think?” says Spencer on the one-on-one. “I think we need to get a little lower,” says Sarmax. They’re on a two-seater motorbike. They’re wearing civilian clothing. Sarmax is driving. Spencer’s just looking—at the data in his mind, at the chaos on the streets. Sarmax takes the bike up along the sidewalk, weaving through the crowd. People leap out of the way—he steers past them, and down a covered alley. The vaults of the city overhead vanish. They roar through the enclosure and out into more traffic. The city-center ziggurats glimmer in the distance. Eurasian flags fly atop some of them. American flags have been raised on others.
“Divide and conquer,” says Spencer on the one-on-one.
Sarmax says nothing. He’s lost in thought. Or maybe he’s just trying to avoid thinking. He’s been acting strange this whole time. When Spencer realized he was being paired with Sarmax he was grateful to be getting away from Linehan. But a day and a half with the new guy, and he’s feeling a little nostalgia for the old. Linehan may have been nuts, but at least he was hell-bent on avoiding hell. Whereas Sarmax has been running this mission like a man who’s tired of life, as though the one thing that mattered to him in that life is gone. Spencer doesn’t know what’s up with that. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to. He’s got enough on his hands dealing with what’s in his head anyway. And now a wireless signal reaches his brain.
“Ignition,” he says.
“Good,” replies Sarmax.
The only thing that gets Sarmax to talk is something that involves the mission. In this case the news that the thermite they rigged at the handler’s safe house has just ignited and is probably busy spreading to adjacent buildings. Nothing back at Jarvin’s place is going to be found intact. The only evidence of the mission that’s left is on this motorbike.
Which Sarmax is now sending down another alley. It slants downward, turns into a tunnel too narrow for larger vehicles. People jump out of the way as the motorbike roars past them, and then the bike pulls out into a larger concourse-cavern where buildings reach from floor to ceiling. The road here is much wider. Only it’s got even more traffic on it. The wrong type of traffic too …
“Shit,” says Spencer.
“Relax,” replies Sarmax.
And stops the bike. To do anything else would attract attention from the Eurasian convoy now steamrollering its way down the center of the road. The two men wait by the sidewalk with the other bikes and mopeds while the drivers of the vehicles trapped in the path of the juggernatus flee past them. The heavy Eurasian crawlers crunch the civilian traffic into so much wreckage. Spencer stares at the power-suited soldiers sitting atop those crawlers.
“The fucking East,” he says.
“Better stop thinking that way,” says Sarmax.
“Why’s that?”
“Because we’re here to look the part.”
Spencer’s been doing his best to make sure that’s the case—to make them into Russians who are part of this city’s vibrant émigré community—and who fortunately never did anything to get onto the list that the new bosses of this half of HK compiled in advance of their arrival. These two particular Russians have been living here for more than a decade.
Even though they arrived only yesterday. About five hours before Russian and Chinese soldiers showed up, in fact. Infiltration’s a lot easier if you arrive before a perimeter gets established. So now Sarmax fires up the motorbike again, takes the vehicle out of the cavern and through a long series of service tunnels. At one point they bump down stairs. Sarmax stops the motorbike just past the stairs and leaps off the back. Starts rigging things onto the wall.
“What’s that?” asks Spencer.
“Hi-ex.”
“To use on who?”
“Nobody.”
“What’s up with that?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Spencer obliges. Sarmax finishes what he’s doing and gets back on the bike. They keep going, wind along the passage, onto still wider streets, with buildings crowding up the walls along both sides. Cyrillic logos are everywhere. This is an area that’s nowhere near as crowded as some of the ones upstairs.
“I’m surprised it’s not bedlam,” says Spencer.
“It was,” says Sarmax, “when it got cleaned out.”
“Which was when?”
“This morning. This was one of the first places the ‘liberators’ hit. I’d estimate half the population got rounded up. Everyone who’s left is keeping a low profile.”
“Like us.”
“Just act natural,” says Sarmax. He turns the bike down a side street, hits the brakes, and slides off. He leans the bike against a wall and turns to Spencer.
“Let’s go,” he says. “Remember, only Russian from now on. I’ll do the talking.”
Spencer’s downloaded the requisite software. But Sarmax has known the language for years. Theoretically that puts them on the same level. But in practice, the edge goes to the man who’s actually run missions against the East before. He and Spencer walk farther down the side street past several storefronts. Nearly all are boarded up. The only one that isn’t has no signs. Noise can be heard from within, along with music and singing.
“Sounds like a whorehouse,” says Spencer.
“Because it is.”
A well-appointed one too. With a madam to gre
et them before they get much farther. She speaks to them in Russian.
“Do I know you gentlemen?”
“I hope not,” says Sarmax.
• • •
She hopes this isn’t what it looks like. Because it looks like the Throne’s stabbed her in the back. Like he’s got her imprisoned. And it doesn’t do anything for her peace of mind that the only other explanations she can think of are even worse. Perhaps the Rain got to the Throne after all. Perhaps they were waiting for him in his bunker. Perhaps they’ll be here any minute.
But the minutes keep on ticking past, and the only door to the room she’s in remains closed. No sound emanates from beyond it. All she’s got is the vibration that’s coming through the walls, the low humming of some engine. She wonders how long it’s been—wonders how long she’s been drifting in and out of consciousness.
Wonders whether she’s even awake right now.
The thought that she’s not continues to be the most optimistic scenario she can think of. But it’s not one she takes seriously. She thinks back to the Throne talking to her in the wake of her destruction of the Rain. Telling her he wasn’t sure they were all gone.
Or was that her saying that? That they needed to execute the original strategy: needed to combine with the Eurasians to sweep the globe and achieve certainty that the Rain were finished. But then Harrison said he was no longer sure that was the right strategy. That he wasn’t even sure the Eurasian executive node had been reconstituted yet. That he needed better data on what was going on in Moscow and Beijing before he renewed his overtures to the East. That he needed her help in obtaining that data.
And she said no.
She remembers now. She said no. And when he asked her why not, his voice wasn’t in the tone of a man whose life she’d saved. It was in the tone of a man who had never been denied. Who had learned nothing, as though the hours on the Europa Platform had happened to somebody else. She’d answered him—said she couldn’t play power games. He merely blinked, asked her what she meant. She tried to tell him, but she couldn’t explain.
Or maybe she can’t remember her own explanations. Because she’s having trouble piecing together what happened after that. Something about her begging him to finish what he started. Something about taking détente to the next level. But he’d just smiled—almost sadly, it seemed to her—just smiled and said that détente was a balancing act, that he was the only one who knew how to walk that line. That he couldn’t turn back the clock. That he wouldn’t want to. That he couldn’t rely solely on the advice of a computer …
She’d stared at him. She’d said, you mean me? He shook his head. Said—
But now she hears something. On the other side of the door. It’s unmistakable. It’s electronic locks sliding away.
“Who’s there?” she says.
There’s no reply. She hears manual dead bolts being slid from their grooves.
“Who’s fucking there?” she yells.
But there’s no reply.
The door opens—
You been here before?” asks Linehan on the one-on-one.
“What makes you say that?”
“You drive like a man who has.”
But Lynx just shrugs, keeps on maneuvering through the traffic on Congreve’s outskirts, toward the dome that’s rising in the distance. That traffic’s pretty light. It ought to be—it’s the middle of the graveyard shift. The sun is visible in the sky, but Congreve runs on Greenwich Mean Time. Totally arbitrary—but it has to run on something. And the sun’s cycles are of limited aid to those who dwell upon this rock.
“Like I said,” says Lynx, “you ask too many questions.”
“And you give nowhere near enough answers.”
“What exactly do you want to know?”
“I want to know about the fucking mission, Lynx.”
And why the fuck they’ve got no armor. All they’ve got is workers’ suits. They’re sitting in the cab of a truck loaded with ore. They got the ore from a train stopped in the rock fields outside of Congreve’s suburbs. Normally such a train wouldn’t unload until it reached its destination in central Congreve. But apparently there’s some problem with the rail downtown. Meaning that now lots of trucks are going where lots of trucks usually don’t go.
“I already told you about the mission, Linehan. We’re going to deliver this ore to Congreve’s citadel.”
“Ore that we’ve rigged with something.”
“We just picked it up. I’ve been driving the whole time since. How the hell could I have rigged it?”
“Maybe it was rigged already.”
“Linehan. We were two hundredth in line. There were at least two hundred trucks behind us. The moonscape back there looks like a fucking drive-in theater. How the hell would anyone know what chunk of ore was going to get dumped in the back?”
“You’re a razor, Lynx.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning stranger things have happened.”
Lynx laughs. “Surely it would have been easier for me to just rig the truck?”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because we haven’t been ordered to blow the heart of SpaceCom power in Congreve to kingdom come.”
“So you do know what our orders say.”
“What gave you the idea I didn’t?”
They’re at the city dome. They get scanned, waved through. They halt inside a massive airlock with two other trucks. The instruments show air and pressure manifesting all around them. The far door opens. They drive on through and into downtown.
“Let me put it this way” says Linehan. Possibilities swirl within his head, and he struggles to make sense of them. “What the orders say and what we’re expected to do may be two totally different things.”
“Where you going with this?”
“This could be a setup.”
“Sure,” says Lynx.
“You used the term suicide mission earlier.”
“That was just a figure of speech.”
“You sure about that?”
“I guess we’ll see.”
“How much do you know about me, Lynx?”
“I know you used to be SpaceCom.”
“And?”
“And I’m guessing that’s why someone thought you’d be useful in infiltrating your old gang.”
“Someone?”
“The Throne.”
“Who seems to be intent on mixing things up,” says Linehan.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning why aren’t you with the rest of your triad?”
“You missing your boyfriend?” asks Lynx.
“You’re missing the point. Your triad was hell on wheels. You guys were the fucking elite. And now you’ve all gone in different directions. Why would he break up a winning team?”
“It wasn’t exactly a winning team, Linehan.”
“It saved the Throne.”
“Who I don’t think wants to be reminded that he had to be dragged through two days of space like a diapered baby.”
“Oh,” says Linehan. “I get it. You’re happy to be away from those other guys.”
Lynx raises an eyebrow. Says nothing.
“You’re happy to be away from Sarmax and Carson because they never treated you as an equal and—”
“Shut up,” snaps Lynx.
“Why should I?”
“Because I’m in charge here, asshole!”
“And could your hard-on about that be any more obvious?”
“Go to hell,” says Lynx.
They’re coming into the center of the city now. Multiple road levels are stacked above theirs. Buildings tower above them. The dome’s sloping up toward its height. Stars shimmer through that translucence. Linehan feels it all pressing in upon him. He shakes his head.
“Look,” he says, “all I’m saying is that we saw the Throne in action. We got a sense of how that guy thinks. His paranoia puts ours into the goddamn sha
de. He’s separating everybody who might be a threat to him—throwing them off balance by sending them off in new directions.”
“Get a grip, man. He’s got bigger fish to fry than fretting over us.”
“Exactly,” says Linehan. “And now we’re one less thing he needs to worry about.”
“And you really think it’s a one-way trip.”
Linehan’s brow furrows. “So you really don’t know what our orders are.”
“Did I ever say I did?”
“About a minute ago. Yeah.”
“I may have given that impression. But I think I managed to avoid being explicit about it.”
“Why the hell are you playing these mind games with me?”
“Do I have to give you a reason?”
“Is it because that’s all anybody’s done to you?”
“Hardly” says Lynx. “Those pricks are gone. I’m free of them.”
“We’re about to try and sneak into the most heavily guarded fortress on the Moon’s far side without knowing the reason why.”
“I’m sure it’ll come to me,” says Lynx.
Once upon a time, there was a city on the edge of Asia. A city that didn’t like where the twenty-first century was headed. A city that could read the writing on the wall as China emerged from civil strife. A city that embarked upon the impossible and moved a thousand klicks to the east: Hong Kong became HK Geoplex, sprawled across the eastern half of New Guinea. By the early twenty-second century, that sprawl is the largest neutral metropolis on the planet.
Though it doesn’t feel so neutral anymore.
The soldiers now shoving their way into the brothel are behaving like a conquering army. Which is pretty much exactly what they are. They hit the Little Moscow district this morning, cleaned out the enemies of the state who thought they’d escaped that state, sent them to makeshift interrogation chambers, or just shot them on the spot. The lucky ones got sent back to Mother Russia for special treatment.
But that’s no concern of the soldiers now carousing in this brothel. Get their armor off and get enough vodka in them, and they almost feel like they’re on leave back home. But back there they can’t get their hands on women like these. These girls come from all over the world. They’ll do just about anything. And the soldiers now taking them don’t even have to pay. Better yet, they can make the girls pay. And some of them are doing just that.
The Burning Skies Page 24
