Men wielding machetes leap into the boat.
Sarmax is off in his own little world. That suits Spencer fine. He’s not interested in dealing with that guy’s issues. All he’s interested in is what’s in his own mind.
Which is intricate beyond belief. Now that they’ve crossed the coast of Vietnam, more of the Eastern zone’s becoming visible. He’s got access to a lot more data than he had previously. Things that were blurry are becoming clear. Things that weren’t even visible are coming into sight. Most of those things have locks. But that doesn’t matter, because he’s starting to make inroads anyway. The files of Alek Jarvin float before him: onetime handler of CICom and fugitive for the last few days of his life. Spencer still hasn’t cracked them.
And he’s growing increasingly sure they contain something he needs. Something he’d better figure out quickly. His mind’s operating on multiple levels now. His thoughts are accelerating. He’s starting to feel like he’s tripping again. Faces dance on the edge of his zone-vision, but every time he looks, they’re gone. He feels like he’s become a ghost, like he’s been summoned from some world beyond to haunt this one for all its sins. His view into the cities of the East keeps on growing. He’s finally got the access he’s always wanted—he looks in upon those lives and streets and cities and knows himself for the voyeur he always was. He gets it now—sees that those lives were always more interesting than his own. That what’s inside a screen was always more compelling than whatever might appear within a window. By far. He’s come so far too—doesn’t want to stop now as his mind races toward the mountains, drops through shafts, darts in toward all the secret chambers that lie beneath.
Now she’s in a room without windows. Or doors. She’s sitting at a table. The U.S. president sits at the table’s other side. They look at each other. “Are you really Harrison?” she asks. “Does it matter?”
“I think it does.”
“Indeed,” he says. “Have you been granted an audience under the deepest of truth-serums or is this just Carson rummaging through your subconscious, using this face as a filter? I’m afraid I’m not in a position to give you absolute proof either way.”
“But we can talk anyway,” she says.
“I suppose we can.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Betray me.”
“I can’t betray anyone, Claire. By definition.”
“You really think it all revolves around you.”
“I’d be a fool to believe otherwise.”
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“I’m responsible for our nation’s future.”
“You think I stand in the way of that?”
“I think our partnership was unnatural, Claire.”
“Unnatural?”
“Temporary, then.”
“Ah.”
“The product of a common purpose. We had a common enemy. When that enemy was beaten, what was I to do?”
“Trust me.”
He laughs in a way that’s not unkind. “I’m not a normal human being, Claire.”
“You think I am?”
“I think you genuinely wished to help me.”
“Then why—”
“It wasn’t a case of what you wanted in the present moment. It was a case of what might happen next. Do you really think you’d have been happy carrying out my orders?”
“I could have given you advice—”
“And you really think I’d need it? I know what I’m doing, Claire. I’ve ruled this country for more than two decades. I led our people out of chaos. Out of cold war.”
“But now war’s right around the corner.”
“We’ll avert it yet.”
“And if we don’t? My battle-management capabilities—you’ll need me—”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. We’ll see where matters stands when Carson’s finished.”
“You fucking bastard,” she says. “You’re trying to turn me into a bunch of programs that you can copy. You want to own what’s in my head without having to deal with me.”
“You speak as though you were your own creator.”
“Jesus fucking Christ—”
“We built you. We paid for you. We’re not in a position to negotiate with you every time we want to take a step you might disagree with.”
“You mean like launching an all-out strike against the Eurasian Coalition?”
“You have to admit that if there was some way to just wipe out the East’s military at no risk to ourselves—just take them out and take their cities, let the population live beneath our guns—things would be a hell of a lot simpler.”
“But there’s no fucking way—”
“No,” he says. “There isn’t. War would be insane. That’s why I’ve done everything possible to preserve the peace. The only window of opportunity for striking the Coalition would have been if you’d been able to restart our zone without restarting the East’s. But since that wasn’t possible—”
She looks at him. She tries to stop herself from what she’s about to say. But she can’t.
“It was possible,” she whispers.
“And you didn’t tell us because you guessed I was contemplating a preemptive strike against the East?”
She says nothing. He shakes his head.
“You see what I mean? You’re too dangerous, Claire. Too many ideas of your own. Wouldn’t be long before you started wondering why the executive node was in my head instead of yours. Or wondering whether you could build a better one to supersede mine. You’re Rain, Claire. They wanted to rule the Earth-Moon system. Why should you be any different?”
“I never wanted to rule anything.”
“History is littered with leaders who said exactly that. Some of them even believed it.”
“You never did.”
“And I never said it.”
“You’re missing the point—”
“No,” he says. “You are. Because it doesn’t matter what you want. What matters is what you’re capable of.”
“Since you’re inside my fucking head, why don’t you tell me.”
“Anything,” he says. “You’re out of control. You’ve already gone beyond everything you were designed for. Why are you laughing?”
“Because that’s exactly what Sinclair said to me a few days back.”
“So why did you talk to him?”
“He—he was the closest thing to a father I ever had.” She’s surprised at how steady her voice sounds.
“Don’t you realize how black a mark it was against you when we found out?”
“You weren’t supposed to. It was a private matter.”
“My prisons aren’t some opportunity for therapy, Claire.”
“What will you do with him?”
“Execute him. Eventually. Once it becomes clear we’ve no further need for him. Once we can. Why are you crying? He would never have shed a tear over anybody.”
“I know,” she mumbles. “I know. He was cold and heartless. So are you. You all are. I’d sweep you all away if I could. I’d—”
“You see? You can’t hide anything from us.” He gets up, walks around to her side of the table. Looks down. “Not when we’re right here with you.”
“Fuck you,” she says.
“It’s a tragedy that you’ve so much power and so little idea of how to use it.”
“You’re the tragedy,” she says. “You’ll strangle yourself in your machinations yet.”
“You first,” he says.
And puts his hands around her neck, starts squeezing. She kicks against him. But his grip may as well be iron.
“It’s time,” he mutters.
She fights for air. There’s none. Everything goes black.
Claire,” a voice whispers.
But it’s an eternity before she can process it. She’s dwelling in some darkness far beyond all pain. She hears her own name dripping down across some sky some sound in a world where all that
lives is silent. She drifts in toward the voice.
“Claire,” it says. “Can you hear me?”
She can. But she’s not sure what she’s supposed to do, save to keep on forging toward it. But now she’s being buffeted by hurt that slams against her. She stumbles onward, upward, toward the light.
“Open your eyes,” the voice says.
She tries to. Fails. Tries again—manages to get one of them open. Through a blur she can see Carson’s face. She groans as headache engulfs her.
“That’s it,” he says.
She opens both her eyes. It’s agony. But she’s keeping them open all the same. She’s back in that room, still strapped to the chair. Carson’s floating in front of her. His legs are crossed.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
It’s a good question. She struggles to come up with an answer. Only to find she can’t.
“I found everything I needed to,” he says. “I’m done.”
“So am I,” she whispers.
“No,” he says. “You’ve just begun. Go back to sleep.”
She drifts away.
Drifting in toward the heart of SpaceCom power: the transport’s passed through four parking orbits, each one tighter than the one before. It’s now well within L2’s outer perimeter. Stars fall past the window. Ships are everywhere.
“Welcome home,” says Lynx.
“Looks like it did when I left it,” says Linehan.
“You’ve only been gone a couple weeks.”
But that was all it took to come full circle. L2 set him in motion. L2 has pulled him back into its maw. He seals his visor in place, grabs onto the wall as the ship fires motors, leaves its latest orbit.
“So what’s the first step?” he asks.
“We do some honest work,” says Lynx.
The ship’s turning. A webwork of metal scrolls past the window, so close that Linehan can see numbers and lettering painted upon it.
“Jesus,” he says. “We’re right up against it.”
“Try inside it.”
“What the hell?”
But as he stares through the window, he sees that Lynx isn’t kidding. The transport has entered the hollow of a much larger, half-built ship. It stretches all around them, like the bones of some vast animal. The rest of the L2 fleet flickers beyond it. Linehan whistles.
“One of the fucking colony ships,” he says.
Lynx laughs. “That’s a strange thing to call them.”
“That’s what they are.”
“That’s what they’re registered as.”
“That’s what they’re built for, man. Straight shot to Mars.”
“By way of Moscow,” says Lynx.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning look at those guns.”
Which don’t look small. They also don’t look like they’d be visible from beyond the construction.
“That’s why they’re building them in here,” continues Lynx. “Armaments to augment the L2 fleet, unreported to Zurich or anybody else. Soon as the shit hits the fan, they can blow the hatches and start laying down the law.”
“Don’t the Eurasians have some of these things, too?”
“Over at L4, yeah. Ours and theirs make for one more piece of glorious joint infrastructure in the wake of Zurich. The next great pioneering fleet. How much do you want to bet that the East is working to rig its behemoths with similar enhancements? Who knows, they might blow the top off Mons Olympus. But I’ll bet you the real target’s a damn sight closer.”
“I don’t take bets I can’t win.”
“Then you’ve come to the wrong place,” says Lynx. The ship’s speakers start barking orders. “Let’s go.”
“We’ve got everything we need?”
“We’ll pick it up as we go.”
Linehan shrugs. They open the interior hatch of the room they’re in, climb through into a corridor, pull themselves along it and into the transport ship’s spine. Right now there’s a lot of traffic. Supervisors are herding the workers out of their quarters, into the spine, and then out through where the nose has been peeled back. Lynx and Linehan head the other way. Crew members pass them. So do supervisors. But no one challenges them. They exit the spine, proceed through more hatches, exit the transport.
They’re moored against some of the more complete parts of megaship infrastructure. Two other transports are tethered alongside. Workers and supervisors are everywhere. One of the supervisors challenges them.
“Who the hell are you guys?” she asks.
“Engineers,” says Lynx. “Who the hell else would we be?”
Linehan doesn’t see the codes get transferred. But it must have occurred. Because the supervisor turns away—and he and Lynx keep on going, alight on the interior of the giant craft. Scarcely ten meters away is the nearest of the cannons: what’s clearly a medium-grade particle beam. Heavy lifting’s easy in the zero-G—workers are maneuvering the weapon into place by hand. Lynx and Linehan move past it.
“Those guys had better pick up the pace if they want to make a difference,” says Lynx.
“You seem so sure it’s gonna happen.”
“Lightning doesn’t strike twice, right? It was a fucking miracle we evaded Armageddon back when you were going head-to-head with the Jaguars. We’re not going to beat the bullet this time.”
“Even if we take out Szilard?”
“That’s all I want to do, Linehan. Take him out. After that, the whole of this can go to hell.”
They head into the enclosed portions of the colony ship’s interior. No one pays them the slightest attention. Lynx leads the way through a labyrinth of weightless corridors and half-installed machinery.
“Let me guess,” says Linehan. “Szilard’s somewhere in here with us.”
“Yeah right. Far as I can make out, he’s on the Montana.”
“He went back to the flagship?”
“Apparently.”
“And how exactly do you propose we get from here to there?”
“We won’t. Someone else will.”
“And we’ll be that someone.”
“And how.”
The jet-copter streaks in amidst snowcapped peaks. Valleys drop away at impossible angles. Slopes are like walls that are way too close. The craft is buffeted as it hits turbulence.
“Getting close,” says Sarmax.
“We’re pretty much there,” says Spencer.
“You’ve found what we’re looking for?”
“I’ve found where we’re going to look.”
Abruptly, the jet-copter slows perceptibly, banks. Spencer finds himself staring straight up toward some higher peaks. He sees something stretching between two of them. Something that’s clearly man made. The craft arcs up toward it, decelerating all the while. There’s a rumble as the landing gear lowers.
“We’re landing on that bridge?” asks Sarmax.
“Not exactly,” says Spencer.
Because he can see things that Sarmax can’t. Like what’s really going on. They’re not the only vehicle about to hit this bridge.
“A rendezvous,” says Sarmax.
“Roger that,” says Spencer.
The jet-copter soars above the level of the bridge just as a train emerges from one of the tunnels that the bridge connects. The train’s maglev. But it’s operating at almost a crawl—scarcely thirty klicks an hour. Freight cars fill the bridge, slowing all the while. The copter settles down toward them. Sandwiched between freight cars, an empty flatcar slides from the tunnel—the copter wafts in, touches down upon it. No sooner has it done so than the train speeds up. Mountain disappears as tunnel wall kicks in. The jet-copter’s engines die. Only stone’s visible outside the windows now.
But there’s a lot more than that going on inside Spencer’s mind, now that there aren’t a thousand tons of rock separating him from this train’s systems. Now he can see where this thing’s going. The train accelerates, racing ever deeper into the mountain. Spencer sees the rail it’s o
n as one smooth line of light. He becomes aware of more rails sprouting off from this one—and of still more rails sprouting off from those …
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he says.
“What’s the story?” says Sarmax.
“The story is this place ain’t small.”
The train’s slowing again, coming through into a gigantic railyard-cavern. Electric lights hang from a ceiling far overhead. Activity’s everywhere. The far side of the cavern lights up in the zone in Spencer’s mind. As do vast grids of light beyond that …
“We’re close,” he says. “We’re real close.”
“Are we trying to get to where this train’s going?”
“I have no idea where this train’s going.”
“Well, try hacking the drivers.”
“Already did. They don’t know either.”
“This place is that compartmentalized?”
“It’s not just one place. They’ve dug out half the goddamn mountain chain as far as I can tell.”
“What’s down here?”
A better question would be what isn’t. It’s almost like a series of cities. There’s that much activity. It stretches on for scores of klicks, all the way beneath Tibet and then some. Spencer can see why he had so much trouble getting a fix on it. Because the infrastructure he was getting a glimpse of beneath the Himalayas is actually above what they’ve now reached. And the way this place is organized, it’s as though the whole thing is …
“Counterforce,” he says.
“What?” Sarmax glances at him.
“This place is counterforce. It’s intended as reserve. We barely know about any of it. Which is the way they want it. They’ll commit it in the later stages of a war.”
“Which could be ten minutes after it kicks off.”
“Sure.” Spencer’s downloading more data into Sarmax’s head. “But the point is that even if the Eurasians strike first, I’ll bet they don’t strike with any of the shit that’s in here.”
Sarmax says nothing.
“How else would you explain it?” asks Spencer.
“I wouldn’t,” says Sarmax. “You’re right.”
“We need to get word of this back—”
“No we don’t.”
“What?”
“They already know it.”
“They do?”
The Burning Skies Page 28
