“Ain’t getting it here either. You guys ready to get back in it?”
“Open this goddamn door,” says the Operative.
The door slides open to reveal a gigantic chamber. Spencer watches Carson and Sarmax move through the doorway, apparently deep in some conversation. Lynx shoves his way after them. Linehan follows him with his eyes, before turning toward Spencer and grinning mockingly.
“After you,” he says.
Spencer steps out onto a catwalk that stretches away in both directions. The Hangar is as big as it gets. It’s a hub of activity too. Praetorians are everywhere: crawling over the jagged ceiling like ants, moving along catwalks higher up and lower down, tending to the ships positioned along the gridded floor. Spencer can see three smaller gunships and one ship that’s much larger—the same model as the freighter he was riding back when it all began. Soldiers stand upon it, float around it.
“Only one they got left,” says Linehan on the one-on-one.
“The Throne’s getaway vehicle.”
“Too bad he ain’t around to use it.”
“They’ll just have to get a new Throne, huh.”
“Or work out what they did with the old one,” replies Linehan.
They exchange glances.
“Funny,” says Spencer. “Been thinking along the same lines myself.”
We move,” says the Operative, and fires his motors, letting the others trail him toward the ceiling. One of the hatches in the overhead opens. “You going to tell them now or later?” asks Sarmax on the one-on- one.
“Tell them what.”
“Carson. Everyone in this place thinks the Throne’s still alive. If the punks we got with us start ranting on about how he’s dead, then—”
“Then what?”
“Bad for morale.”
“No one’s going to rant about anything, Leo. Not if they value their hides.”
They shoot through the hatch and along a chute into a smaller cave carved adjacent to a portion of the Hangar’s ceiling. Vaultlike doors close behind them. The walls are covered with cables. Heavy guns are mounted in multiple places along the floor. Each gun is tended by a full complement of Praetorians and pointed at a tunnel mouth on the ceiling. The Operative heads toward one of the tunnels, and the others follow him.
“But surely you owe them the truth?” asks Sarmax.
“Namely?”
“What really happened to the Throne.”
“You saw it for yourself.”
“Did I?”
The Operative laughs. “What are you trying to say?”
“That you can’t fool me.”
“Did I ever claim I could?”
The five men roar out into a larger space—a full quarter the size of the hangar that all these defenses protect. The machinery that packed this place has been dismantled to allow for wider fields of fire. Heavy guns are lined along the near walls. The blast-doors on the far wall are at least ten meters a side. Praetorians cling to the walls, point their guns toward the doors.
“I sat at his feet once, Carson. I thought up half the tricks he knows. I’m not fooled by them. And you know what? I’ll bet you the Rain weren’t either.”
“Let’s pray they were for long enough.”
“How long is that?”
They swoop across the room, swerve past the blast-door gate, perch upon the wall nearby. That gate’s starting to shake. Dust floats up around it. Distant vibrations roll in from somewhere beyond it.
“Until a few minutes ago.”
“But now they’re going to hit this Hangar like they’ve never hit anything before,” says Sarmax.
“I think they’ve got their sights set on something else first.”
More Praetorians hurry into the room, heading out of the tunnels or moving in toward the leftmost of the gates. The rumbling outside is intensifying, resolving into blasts that are drawing ever nearer. Or getting steadily more powerful.
Or both.
“The Manilishi,” says Sarmax.
“And the Hand,” says the Operative.
“You mean the Throne.”
Another vibration churns the room. It’s coming from the direction of the Hangar. A whole section of the wall is sliding away; one of the gunships is emerging from the space revealed, turrets extended, Praetorians holding onto its sides. The ship adjusts for Coriolis spin, swans in slowly toward the gate opposite it, which is already opening.
“And he expects you to do your utmost,” says the Operative.
She couldn’t ask for anything else. They’re well into the mining areas that ring the Hangar. They’re almost there. But she can feel the Rain closing in from both flanks now. She glances at the man beside her.
“The cat’s out of the bag,” she says.
“Of course it is,” he replies.
“And Huselid?”
“A role I play.”
A necessary fiction for the man who’s really Andrew Harrison. She wants to ask him who the unknown soldier was. That man in the Window, giving orders in the Throne’s name: Did he even know the game he was in on? Was he an actor, or just a puppet? It doesn’t matter now. The point is he played his part. Now the ones he died for have to do the same.
“They’re pressing,” she says.
“Might have thought that chip would have led them on more of a wild-goose chase,” he says.
“Not if the Rain’s razors activated it immediately.”
Which they almost certainly did—tried to run the whole U.S. zone through the fragment they’d pulled from a shattered skull … only to find it wasn’t capable of switching on a washing machine. That, as complex as it looked, it was really just a maze of dead-ends whose only functionality was pretending to be something it wasn’t, creating a zone-node that looked like all the wires led back to it. Even she was fooled at first. Back on the other side of the cylinder—back to what seems like years ago—she’d thought she was gazing at the executive node, and in reality all she was doing was dealing with its reflection, while the vessel of the real one stood beside her.
Just like he’s doing now.
“How much strength is left at the Hangar?” she asks.
“We’re about to find out,” says the president.
Spencer watches as the gunship fires its motors, moves through the opening blast-doors. As it passes beneath, Carson floats onto it. Spencer and the rest follow him, alight on the hull, crouching just behind the forward turret. Walls slide past. Praetorians swarm after them. Carson’s words sound in Spencer’s
