The Burning Skies (64 page)

The Operative opens his eyes to find himself staring at those stars. He’s lying on his back. He’s lost contact with the zone. His armor’s taken a serious beating. But it’s still functional. He activates its backup comps, surges to his feet.

Wreckage is all around him. As are plenty of bodies. But not the one he’s most interested in. He can’t see Harrison anywhere. Worse, he’s lost contact with the Manilishi. He reactivates his links to zone, hoping it’ll have some answers.

It does. The Manilishi’s nowhere in sight. But the executive node is clearly visible, still intact, still moving, very close. The Operative fires his thrusters, blasts away from the wreckage and in between the gnarled remains of floors and ceilings. He quickly reaches the more intact areas of the base. He can’t see any Praetorians anywhere.

But he can see the president, right ahead of him. Crawling on his hands and knees, in a suit so fucked it’s a wonder it’s still pressurized. The Operative blasts toward him, just as more figures emerge from the far end of the corridor. The Operative hits his brakes, starts to engage his weapons. But then he stops.

And relaxes.

There are five of them. None are in Praetorian colors. They hit their thrusters, reach the president a fraction of a second before the Operative does. He looks at them. Four are men. One’s a woman. She steps forward. He salutes her.

“Ma’am,” he says.

“At ease,” she replies.

“Stephanie,” says a voice, weakly.

The Operative looks down. The president is looking up through a bloodied visor—looking past him, at Stephanie Montrose, the head of Information Command. Her bodyguards stand around her. She looks down.

“Andrew,” she says.

“Carson is—this man’s a traitor.”

Montrose laughs. “On my payroll,” she says.

Harrison stares at her with the expression of a man in whom understanding’s dawned way too late. “You too, Stephanie?”

“Kinda looks that way.”

“You were my fucking
successor.”

“Until now,” she says—nods to the Operative. Who places his boot on the president’s chest, fires a single shot through his visor. Looks at Montrose.

“Consider the torch passed,” he says.

The look on Montrose’s face is the look of someone who’s just received the software upload that comprises the executive node. The software that holds the reins of the U.S. zone. A transition that’s occurred automatically now that Harrison’s dead. Montrose turns to the Operative.

“The Manilishi,” she says.

“Missing,” he replies.

“You’re shitting me.”

“I wish I was.”

“She’s dead?”

“Or escaped.”

“I thought her suit prevented her from—”

“It might have been damaged in the crash.”

“Or shattered altogether. You’ve fucked up.”

“I know.”

“If she really has broken loose—”

“We’ll find her.”

“The tunnels beneath this base are endless.”

“We’ll find her.”

“They say the Rain themselves were down there before we burned them out—”

“I said we’ll find her.”

“Let that be your next task.”

“I’ll need soldiers.”

“You’ll have my best.”

Carson salutes, turns away. Montrose turns, too, gets rushed by her bodyguards down the corridors of the base. It used to belong to SpaceCom, before the Praetorians cleaned them out. But InfoCom assisted with that takeover, and it was child’s play to lay the seeds of yet another one. Now Montrose’s soldiers control this whole place.

And more besides. Montrose gets hustled into one of the underground trains that connects the various military bases scattered beneath Congreve. The train she’s in is heading out of Congreve, out beneath the crater perimeter, toward the walled plain of Korolev, dropping ever deeper beneath the surface the whole while. Its destination is the largest command center beneath the lunar farside.

But Montrose doesn’t need to get there to make the call she’s now making. Szilard’s face appears upon a screen within her head. The left side of his face looks like one big bruise.

“Stephanie,” he says.

“What’s the situation?”

“Harrison almost fucked me,” he replies.

“But he failed.”

“And I guess I have you to thank.”

“I guess you do. He’s dead.”

“Then we’ve won.”

“Except that the Manilishi may have broken loose.”

“Fuck,” he says. “Your man—”

“Did the best he could.”

“Then we need to wait until—”

“No waiting,” she says. “We’ll recapture that cunt within the hour or else we’ll dig her out of wreckage. Our forces are primed. We’re at total readiness. We’ll hit the East without
mercy and I swear to God they’ll never rise again. It’s now or never.”

“And our latest diplomatic overtures—”

“Are worth whatever we make them. There’s no reason to delay.”

“Twenty seconds prep?”

“But no prep that’ll tip our hand.”

“So give the order,” he says.

“With pleasure.”

S
omewhere else below the lunar surface, someone’s listening. Someone who feels like she should start fucking with the commands Montrose is giving. But she’s not. And she won’t. Partially because she’s got pursuit hot on her tail. But mostly because she can’t see any way around what’s about to happen. And because she’s sick of being played. She’s getting in this game for real now. She’s riding the moment that’s breaking like a wave throughout the U.S. bases. The moment they’ve all been waiting for. Her eyes roll back in her head as it begins …

With sirens sounding throughout the bases of Earth and Moon and space. Pilots and gunners are sprinting to their stations. Launch codes are flashing down the chains of command. Failsafes are releasing. As one, the directed energy weapons power up, ride astride current capable of lighting every city and then some. Hundreds of thousands of hypersonic missiles slot through the silos. The electromagnetic rails on the mass-drivers surge. The battle management nodes lock in.

The satellites take the range. The warheads prime.

The shutters on the zone close.

And then the sky—

TO BE CONCLUDED