The Burning Skies

capable of hacking anything outside itself. Zone that’s not designed to. It’s just a tactical battle mesh. One that’s supposed to be invisible—and it has been up until now. But now she sees that the Rain are going to do their utmost to prevent her from crossing to the asteroid. At least one of their triads is preparing to make a stand. Has it figured out a way to hold off the whole Praetorian force? Or is it just going to try to bloody the formation’s nose, before falling back into the asteroid, blowing the conduits as it goes? Now she’s got the chance to draw some blood herself. She’s sending out the orders almost before she’s thought of them.

How many?” yells Sarmax. “Manilishi thinks a full triad,” replies the operative.

“Same as us,” says Lynx.

Sarmax laughs. “They learned from the best.”

The Operative orders the marines forward. They surge in on their thrusters, scrambling up cliff faces and flitting over peaks. Ten seconds, and they’re out of sight. They swarm forward, steadily closing in on where the Manilishi believes the Rain to be.

“Nothing like a little cannon fodder,” says Lynx.

“What the fuck would you call us?” asks Sarmax.

He gestures on the collective heads-up at the main force behind them, now moving out of the valley at maximum speed. The Operative can appreciate that those who direct it are anxiously watching the results of the combat that’s about to take place. But what he can’t understand is why the Rain’s even making a stand here in the first place.

Sarmax’s voice is in his ear: “The party in the asteroid’s over.”

“Wrong,” replies the Operative. “It’s just begun.”

• • •

They’ve almost left the land of valley and window behind. The mountains fill the screens. Spencer and Linehan are right near the edge of the window. They’re not about to get any nearer to it. But even as Linehan eases the bike away from the window, something else becomes visible—out in space amidst the flashes of light, reflected off the edge of a wayward shard of mirror …

“Shit,” says Linehan.

“Just keep driving,” says Spencer.

It’s just a fraction of the whole thing. It’s all they can see. It’s all they really want to. It’s the asteroid itself: sun-scorched rock to put the faux mountains in the cylinder to shame. What’s now known as the Aerie was harnessed by the Euro Magnates, towed across the vacuum, tunneled through, and studded with engines. And at least a few of those motors must be firing right now, because judging from the view in the mirror, the whole rock is swinging steadily in toward the cylinder.

“That’s a trick of the eye,” says Linehan.

“I don’t think so,” replies Spencer.

What the fuck was that?” yells Sarmax.

“They’re blowing the fucking conduits!” screams Lynx. “Let’s take them,” says the Operative—and Lynx moves left while Sarmax goes right. The Operative fires his thrusters, steams up the center, steering toward the peaks in which the Rain lurks. He feels the Manilishi’s presence descending in over him. He hears explosions as the Rain triad opens up on the marines. Why the Rain are blowing the conduits when they’ve still got a presence in the cylinder is beyond him. But he no longer cares. His team’s going to turn this triad into mincemeat. After which they’ll leap to the Aerie and seize a bridgehead there. The Hand’s engineers will be able to get another bridge going. Death or glory—and it’s all going down in the next few seconds.

Until another message changes everything.

Get us the fuck out of here!” screams Spencer. But Linehan needs no urging. He swings the bike leftward, starts roaring away from what’s swelling in those mirror-shards like some impossible battering ram. And yet all that’s visible is just a tiny portion of what must be about to hit the southern mountains. “Inform the Hand!” yells Linehan. “Already did,” replies Spencer.

Reverse thrust,” screams the Operative. Same thing Haskell’s screaming at him. He’s pushing off the rock even as he feels that rock hum beneath him. He blasts backward, watches Lynx and Sarmax do the same. The mountains seem to be swaying like leaves in a breeze. The whole landscape’s undulating, and then ballooning outward in an awful slow motion. The peaks that conceal the Rain fold in like closing jaws. This whole end of the cylinder is imploding, collapsing in upon itself. The valleys that extend away from it are corrugating like so much cheap metal. Something’s shoving its way through the mountain—ripping slopes asunder as it bludgeons through. Something impossibly huge—God’s own wrecking ball—pieces of cylinder and mountain slicing into it, sliding off it. Its edges aren’t even visible. Debris’s flying in from all sides. The walls of the Platform are coming apart and show no sign of stopping. “Only one way to do this,” says Sarmax.

“You got that right,” says the Operative. They reverse direction once more, hurtle toward the on- rushing wall.

The orders flash out from Manilishi: take that fucking rock. The whole of the Praetorian wedge steams straight in even as the ground starts to buckle beneath it. The outlying riders hit their jets, race in through what’s starting to look like a full-scale asteroid field. “No choice,” screams Spencer.

None at all. He’s got no idea why someone’s fired whatever motors are left on the asteroid, set it to swing against the cylinder to which it’s linked. And right now it doesn’t matter. They can’t swerve any farther to the left lest they risk collision with the nearest bikes. They can’t turn around—the only bike to do that got taken out with a long shot from an earthshaker. Two more bikes were just smashed into oblivion by flying debris. Linehan’s taking the vehicle through evasive maneuvers that owe more to guesswork than to planning. He’s going way too fast for much else. Spencer can see mountain flapping in toward them like so much paper. Pushing in behind that mountain is what looks like the surface of some planet: craters and caves and gullies decked out with shorn-off pylons and ripped-up wire. It seems to Spencer that this world’s the one he’s been looking for the whole time. He’s been yanked all over the Earth-Moon system like a puppet on a chain—and yet all of it was really leading up to the thing that was built to be the sanctuary of the Euro Magnates. He watches a wire snap from a pylon, curve in like a monstrous whip toward them as Linehan steers past it, rockets into the nearest of the caves.

• • •

It’s rushing in toward them, a fissure in the rock, crisscrossed by platforms and sprouting the remains of torn-up bridges. The Operative dodges past those bridges, cuts between the platforms, blasts through to find a shaft that’s been cut into the bottom of the canyon. Sarmax and Lynx swing in behind him. Walls enclose them on all sides. Debris piles in to fill the opening behind them.

“Made it,” says Sarmax.

“Made what?” says Lynx.

They race deeper into the Aerie. The walls buckle around them, but don’t break. The rock shifts about them. The shaft becomes a corridor, the corridor a labyrinth. Sarmax activates the one-on- one.

“Carson, do we have a plan?”

“End this fucking war.”

“Got it.”

“The Throne had his best shock troops in here, right?” asks Sarmax.

“Half an hour ago, Leo. God only knows what’s left.”

“And the Rain?”