The Burning Skies (53 page)

“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.

D
rifting 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.”

T
he 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 on 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?”

“That the East has hidden reserves? Absolutely.”

“But they don’t know the extent of this.”

“If you send word back to the U.S. zone, you risk compromising our position.”

“It’s worth the risk.”

“Not if there’s something else in here we haven’t found.”

“Maybe this is what we’re looking for,” says Spencer.

“And maybe it’s not.”

“You know something, Leo.”

“I know a lot of things.”

“Including what was in the book you found at Jarvin’s safe house?”

Sarmax stares at him. Says nothing. Just smiles.

“So you
do
have it,” says Spencer softly.

“Of course I have it.”

“What’s it say?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t
know?”

“That’s why we’re having this conversation,” says Sarmax.

“But where the fuck did you hide it?”

“I didn’t. I burned it.”

“But not before you scanned it.”

“Can’t afford to be as risk-averse as Jarvin was.”

“Christ, Leo. Not filling me in is a risk in itself.”

“Not at all. If you were going to be of any help, you’d have been able to figure out the file’s existence from the rest of what you’ve got. Which apparently you’ve done.”

“Which was easy enough once I knew I was looking for what
wasn’t
there. Jarvin’s files are littered with coded references to an overall master file. One that was written down on
paper
. Making it impossible to hack.”

“He was the last CICom handler in HK. Every intelligence organization on the planet was hunting him. He had good reason to be paranoid.”

“Said the guy who killed him. So where was it?”

“Under his floor.”

“And how’d you know it was there?”

“I didn’t, Spencer. I just tore the place apart while you were ransacking his data.”

“You got a tip.”

“So what if I did?”

“You
were
going to let me know eventually, right?”

“Depended how frustrated I got with it.”

“How much progress have you made?”

“Nowhere near enough. All I can make out is the first section. It talks about the Eurasian secret weapon being an ultimate one, Spencer. It leads straight into several layers of cyphers. It’s—”

“Something you need to give me right now.”

And Sarmax does. Spencer stares as the data clicks through.