The Burning Skies

“It’s almost here,” says Haskell.

“What?” asks Carson.

He looks at her, and she knows she can’t explain. How could she? Everything’s turned around her. She was going south and now she’s been slung back north, back into the heart of the city. Sixth-sense pivots within her head; the maps upon her skin take on new meaning. All this time she thought she was looking out through the lens of intuition and all the while it was looking in at her. Everything was leading here. She tries to speak, muttering something about how the view’s not cheap.

“It wasn’t money that bought it for us,” says Carson. He floats near the door, closer now to Lynx than to Haskell. He nods in the direction of Sarmax—more one-on-one coordination, Haskell presumes. Sarmax makes a return gesture.

“Shouldn’t I get away from these windows?” she asks.

“They’re one-way,” says Carson.

“So now we wait for your masters?” asks Lynx.

“Yours too,” says Carson. “Have a seat.”

He shoves Lynx into one of the chairs that ring the outer level of the room. Lynx sits there, stares at what’s left of his wrist. Haskell feels his amputation as though it’s her own. She doesn’t know why. But he has the demeanor of someone who owned the universe only to lose it. She senses much history among these three men. History it seems the files only hint at.

“It embarrasses me for you to see us like this,” says Carson, as though he’s read her mind.

“Why?”

“We’ve seen better days.”

“It gets better than this?”

He laughs. She realizes that he doesn’t do that often. That he has no idea what to make of her. Then suddenly his head snaps to regard an instrument panel next to the door. He shouts down to Sarmax that they’ve got company. Sarmax hits his thrusters, vaults up to the outer platform.

“Approaching the door?” asks Carson.

“Yeah. Camera’s out, of course.”

“Who took it out?” asks Haskell.

“We did,” says Sarmax.

“We hope,” says Carson. “All we’ve got is heat and motion coming toward that door.”

But Haskell can sense far more than that. This room she’s never seen before is aglow in every vision. She can see all too clearly the logic that led to its selection: any team that bagged her or Rain would come here without any footprints on the zone, on an unmonitored route that’s not on any chart. This is the ideal point for rendezvous, with escape routes in both directions. The fleet’s outside. The interior’s covered by snipers. If whoever’s outside the door isn’t who they’re supposed to be …

“So which is it going to be?” she asks.

“For me, space was always the place.” He gestures. They fire their suits’ thrusters, move toward the window facing out into vacuum. Sarmax remains where he is, covering Lynx and the doorway. Carson tosses something onto that window, then pulls Haskell back from it.

“They’ve got the right access codes so far,” says Carson. He grasps one of her arms, turning her around so that both of them are facing the door. “I’ve placed a charge on the window. Explosive decompression will give us a good start in the vacuum. You’ll have to excuse me, but I don’t intend to let go of you.”

“It’s what you’re paid for,” she says.

The door starts to open.

• • •

The guns on this ship are tracking on something,” says Spencer. “Where?” says Linehan.

“Looks like they’re reorientating some of the KE gatlings onto the New London spaceport,” says Spencer. Right where the two Praetorian ships just landed—he stares at the surrounding topography, but it looks normal enough. Just more ships lining up for approach and pushing back from the Platform. He shifts his focus back to the far end—

“We might be about to see some shit,” says Linehan. “If the Throne’s starting to feed reinforcements into the cylinder from his Aerie—”

“He’s not,” says Spencer.

“You seem really sure of that.”

“C’mon, man. Those ships that just landed on the cylinder’s other end, at New London— they were the reinforcements. Along with the rest of us still out here. The Throne needs a better reason than that to open up a door in his citadel.”

“So then they took something inside the asteroid—”

“No way.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’m sure of nothing. But logic seems to preclude it.”

“Go on,” says Linehan.

“The operatives we were tracking in the cylinder went lights out. So did the target. Here’s my hypothesis: they got whatever they were chasing. They either captured it or they killed it. Now they need to do something with it.”

“If they killed it, what the fuck else can they do to it?”

“Inspect it. Dissect it. Use its codes to triangulate on the live ones. Rain corpses don’t come cheap.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“I’m just speculating here, Linehan. It’s all I can do. But I’m wondering whether that thing’s now driving the timing of the whole operation. We got put on alert when it got detected. And the tension’s still getting cranked. Hostiles are still out there.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“To the logical place one ends up if one assumes that this thing or its carcass can be used against the rest of the Rain. Whether or not it’s some Rain witch—whether or not that’s all bullshit—the point is that if it’s something the Throne needs—what happens then?”

“He brings it inside the Aerie—oh. No.”

“No,” says Spencer. “The Throne can’t bring it inside.”

“Because it could be trojan.”

“Yeah. Exactly. On the zone or physically—doesn’t matter. The whole point might be to use this to get to him.”

“Which puts him in a tight box.”

“Yeah,” says Spencer.

“Because he can’t go to it either.”

“No way. If he leaves that asteroid, he forfeits his whole fucking strategy.”

“So what does he do?” asks Linehan.

“Sends something in his place.”

“Got something in mind?”

“All depends on how important this asset they’ve bagged is.”

“And if it’s critically important—”

“—then the Throne has to send in something he trusts totally.”