Insignia (50 page)

So who were the idiots flying before you?
she messaged.

Tom changed his strategy, too. If she’d let go of it, maybe he could try just bolting in quickly, grabbing it, and hoping to beat her down to Earth. He used the American satellite grid, trying to find the target satellite’s new position.
It’s a long story
.

Brace yourself for a tragic ending
.

Just as Tom found his position, space junk appeared on his thermal sensors. Medusa had twisted around and used the wake of her engine to hurl a mass of steel toward him. Tom’s heart jerked, but he didn’t dodge in time. The steel rocked the vessel he was steering, knocking him off course, then forcing Tom to bank downward to avoid her next improvised weapon of space debris. Medusa passed Tom’s ship, then slowed abruptly, trying to catch him in the fiery plume of her engine. Tom banked downward, letting her shoot far past him.

He tried to twist and evade her sensors, but she whipped around and cut back into his path. He looked at the data coming from the Indo-American satellite grid again, searching for space junk he could use as a weapon. He located the remains of an orbiting space telescope he could use to damage her. But when he tried to force her toward it using the wake of his own engine, she neatly evaded the trap by dropping toward the upper atmosphere, using gravity to propel her out of harm’s way, and Tom almost careened into it himself.

He was aware of his heart slamming in his body, shocked by the near miss. The Russo-Chinese satellite grid must’ve been more comprehensive than the Indo-American grid. Medusa seemed to know every floating piece of debris in the area, where to find it, where to steer him, where not to get maneuvered herself.

He felt his distant body, his teeth grinding in frustration, because he would kill right now for access to the Russo-Chinese satellites so he could see what she was seeing.

And it occurred to him that he could have it.

Maybe one cheat wasn’t so bad.

Tom headed farther from the old satellite they were chasing, then he took a chance. Wyatt’s virus was gone, but he concentrated on his neural processor, buzzing in his head, only half aware of how to do this. He sensed his processor’s connection to the internet, and then let his brain do the work for him. Those bolts of electricity joined with the signals of his brain, the signals of his neural processor. He snapped from his own flesh. Both the vessel he controlled and the body he owned grew distant and cold as he groped frantically through the internet toward that Russo-Chinese satellite subsystem he knew had to exist.

His consciousness jolted into an old, clunky satellite with primitive thermal sensors. He couldn’t see Medusa, couldn’t orient himself, so he jumped to the next one.

Then it happened.

His brain melded to the satellite, or tried to, and encountered another mind reaching for the same one. Another consciousness, another set of neural impulses free-floating in space, maneuvering outside the scope of a physical body.

Tom snapped back with shock into his vessel, and he stared with his vessel’s sensors toward Medusa’s vessel in space, shaken to the core of his being. He had a sense, an unsettling sense, that she was doing the exact same thing.

Medusa messaged him.
You’re like me
.

Tom couldn’t think for a full second, so stunned it was like his brain and his neural processor had gone totally silent. Then,
We’re the same
, he messaged her.

And it all made sense.

Medusa was extraordinary, because she
was
extraordinary. She accessed satellites. She could delve into the Indo-American systems just like the Russo-Chinese systems. She could enter machines the way he could. She could see ahead because she
could
see ahead where other Combatants could not. She could even interface with the ships around hers, the ones connected to the internet but not connected to her brain, because she was just like Tom. She had the same ability he did.

As though the realization galvanized her, Medusa bombarded him with an artillery of space debris, ignoring the satellite altogether—as though she’d realized Tom was more of a threat than she’d ever supposed. Tom evaded the trash—old satellites, chunks of rock—much more easily now, attuned to the same satellite system she was, using the same advantage she was using, the Russo-Chinese and Indo-American satellites relaying information straight into his neural processor.

Medusa suddenly decelerated, forcing him downward toward a hunk of granite orbiting the Earth. Tom steered so quickly to evade it, he sent his vessel hurtling in an uncontrollable circle. But his sensors picked up something else, then—the satellite. The very one they were out to collect, jolting straight into his electromagnetic sensor sight. He deployed his clamps and seized it as he rocketed past, dragging it down with him toward the vast blue sphere of the Earth.

Medusa charged after him as he descended into the atmosphere of the planet, heat shields lighting up on all sides of his vessel, around the satellite. Tom sped up his descent as much as he dared, knowing that if he went too fast, he’d burn up the satellite and his ship with it.

Medusa grew dangerous now, truly dangerous. Out for blood the same way Tom had been when she held the satellite. She hurtled toward him, and he knew now this would be a fight to avoid mutual destruction. She shot straight toward him, threatening him with a collision. Tom swung downward to avoid it, found himself accelerating too quickly, the heat sensors lighting up madly in his vessel. He decelerated but still plunged off course, trapped by gravity, well away from Washington, DC, and was torn down toward a chaotic mass of storm clouds.

Medusa retreated just as Tom’s vessel plunged into the eye of the storm. Black clouds enveloped him, lightning crashing around him. Turbulence pounded his vessel on all sides. He adjusted course, dodging the thunderheads, the flashing of lightning that would end this in an instant, and then tried to tap back into the Russo-Chinese satellite system to orient himself—

And found Medusa’s consciousness waiting there for his, inhabiting the satellites. She struck at him like lightning, ripping him out of the satellite systems and into the vast miasma of the internet. Chaos rocketed Tom as his brain zinged through the tangle of connections among billions of machines, Medusa dragging him down some unknown pathway.

New connections flashed through him. Tom jerked suddenly into the neural processor of Elliot Ramirez.

Tom could see the Rotunda through Elliot’s eyes, too, and feel his shock when Medusa planted a command into his brain from the inside. Elliot stopped pretending to control the ships and his body began twirling and dipping like he was ice-skating in the middle of the Rotunda. Across from him, Svetlana Moriakova gaped at his pirouettes, his leaps, then dissolved into laughter.

So Tom focused on Svetlana with Elliot’s eyes, her IP address scrolling across Elliot’s vision center. That sent him lurching into her processor, and he ordered her to open her lips to scream, “I’ll eat your souls! And bathe in your blood!” He felt her cheeks heating up and saw through her eyes the spectators glancing at one another, puzzled by the strange behavior of the two young people.

And then with a thought of his vessel, Tom snapped back into it. One last violent jolt, and his ship freed itself from the grip of the storm. He felt Medusa’s consciousness following him, grappling for control of his ship. He felt her mind trying to access the clamps, trying to get him to release the satellite—to drop it into the ocean, destroy it, before he could win.

A thought crawled into Tom’s brain. If Medusa could access Elliot’s neural processor, and he could access Svetlana’s, why couldn’t he access hers? He abandoned the fight for the clamps and made for her ship. Just as he interfaced with it, Medusa moved her consciousness to defend it.

But Tom didn’t access her ship. It was a feint.

He delved instead into the connection between her ship and some neural processor somewhere, Medusa’s processor transmitting from somewhere on Earth. He pursued it and found himself interfacing with a network based in Washington, DC, even. His consciousness interfaced with the network, brushing past the security measures of the Chinese embassy, and there he found himself in the surveillance subsystem, dancing between various rooms inside the embassy. Then he found a private one, with a girl hooked in with a neural wire into an interface port. He gazed through the security cameras, his human brain making sense of what the cameras were seeing.

At first glance, the girl in military fatigues was almost what he imagined—thick black hair in a braid, full lips, a small, delicate face. And then the camera shifted to take in the rest of her face and he finally knew why her call sign was Medusa.

A mythical female monster so hideous to behold men died if they looked on her face …

The rest of her face was mottled like the cratered surface of the moon, bulging up around one of the dark eyes. Fleshy patches covered one side of her skull where the black hair had been seared off, the scalp scarred over. She must’ve been in some terrible accident. Her lips and nose twisted down as though they’d melted into the rest of her face. Tom forgot all about the fight in one mind-numbing instant as he gazed upon the disfigured girl he’d grown so obsessed with.

Then it came to him.

He knew how to win.

Tom almost couldn’t do it. Almost. Because he was vicious, yes. But this was only a weapon because she liked him, and because she knew he liked her. He knew this was crossing some line he could never step back from again.

Another part of Tom’s brain, connected to his ship, knew it was hurtling toward DC. He knew even now he was losing control of it as Medusa fought to wrest it from him. He knew they were plummeting toward the ground, and either he would win this or she would, and he couldn’t lose. He’d be done for. Blackburn would destroy him.

He aimed straight for her heart.

I see why you’re called Medusa
.

He maneuvered the cameras toward her and let her feel him maneuvering the cameras, and in the Chinese Embassy the disfigured girl returned to her human body just long enough to snap open her eyes and look up toward the cameras. Naked horror blazed over her face.

And Tom knew he was the bad guy Marsh wanted him to be.

He could almost feel her scream through that other consciousness touching his, a blinding jolt of pure rage and humiliation tearing at his core. He swore her thoughts were screaming in his head.

You’ve ruined it! YOU’VE RUINED EVERYTHING!

Tom knew what she was going to do before her consciousness deserted his. There was no dodging it as she hurtled toward him in her suicidal, kamikaze attack—so he threw it all into fate’s hands and released his docking clamps, the momentum of his flight propelling the satellite forward toward the Smithsonian’s lawn just as Medusa’s vessel crashed into his.

The sensors fizzled into darkness.

Tom’s eyes snapped open and he yanked the wire out of his brain stem.

He was in the hidden room with Nigel’s unconscious body in front of the vast screen overlooking the Rotunda. The crowd was frozen, Elliot no longer fake ice-skating and Svetlana no longer screaming, everyone gaping at the rounded screen overhead, wondering if Tom had destroyed the satellite.

And then the screen flashed to the lawn of the Smithsonian, where the satellite lay smoking—but intact—near the smoldering remains of the two vessels. An American flag crossed with an Indian flag like two swords flashed across the screen, noting the winner.

Tom had done it. He’d won.

The Indo-American contingent roared to its feet, and Elliot gave a theatrical wave and a bow, basking in applause.

Tom’s head slumped back against the carpet. He lay there alone, thinking of the girl he’d humiliated. The girl whose secret he’d viewed against her will. She’d been the greatest warrior in the world, Achilles, and he’d driven his sword into her heel.

He couldn’t get Medusa’s dark, horrified eyes out of his mind.

W
ITHIN MINUTES
G
ENERAL
Marsh and Lieutenant Blackburn snapped the door open.

“Excellent job, Mr. Raines—” Marsh stopped, shock on his face as his watery eyes took in the scene: Tom lying on the floor near an overturned chair, Nigel crumpled against the wall, a neural wire strewn on the carpet. “What happened in here?”

“That guy’s your leak, General.” Tom nodded toward Nigel. He looked at the other surprised face, and his gut contracted with sheer hatred for Blackburn. “Maybe you should stick
him
in your census device and see for yourself! Oh, and he tried to destroy the Spire, too. Just FYI.”

Blackburn and Marsh exchanged a look.

“I didn’t get a message,” Blackburn noted, his eyes sliding down to Tom’s. “You were supposed to net-send me if there was trouble, Raines.”

“I didn’t have a chance,” Tom said defensively.

Blackburn locked the door, then he and Marsh began working in tandem. Marsh lifted the overturned chair and hoisted Tom up into it, then he pressed a finger to his earpiece and spoke quietly to a team, ordering them to clear the corridor. Blackburn knelt down to check Nigel’s pulse and then turned to Tom. Tom forced himself to hold still as Blackburn deactivated his immobility sequence. He couldn’t bring himself to thank him.