The Burning Skies

“Which could be about to detonate.”

“Which is why I’m bailing,” says Linehan, and he hits his jets, swans away from what’s now a floating island. Spencer looks at him receding and lets go, follows him. Stars glimmer all around.

“What now?” he says.

“Now we give you a lift,” says the voice of the Operative.

The combat’s intensifying. More explosions. More shooting. More speakers falling silent. “They’re cutting through the perimeters,” says the voice of the Throne—tense, taut. “Can’t stop them.”

“Fall back,” says Haskell. “We’ll cauterize other sections.” Which is when her bodyguard is suddenly slammed against the wall. He pitches over even as the other bodyguard’s whirling and getting shot through the chest by a nasty-looking heavy pistol wielded by the ship’s navigator. The pilot and copilot are drawing weapons, too, vaulting from their chairs. Haskell hits the ship’s zone and is pushed back: someone’s activated a point-blank jammer. The conduit to which she’s connected has been switched off. The pilot yanks the razorwire from her head. “The Manilishi,” he says.

“Which one are you?” she asks.

“You forfeited the right to know.”

“You’re Iskander. Right?”

“Enough of this,” snaps the navigator. “We’re here for the Throne. Not her.”

“I’ll cooperate,” says Haskell.

The navigator sneers, kicks off a wall, reaches Haskell. Shoves his gun against her visor.

“Cooperate with this,” he says— starts to pull the trigger—just as the windows of the cockpit explode and shots start riddling the space within. The navigator crashes into Haskell, gun firing wildly as they both go over. Haskell grabs the hand that holds the gun, turns it toward its wielder, only to realize that there’s no resistance. She seizes the pistol, shoves the navigator’s body away from her. The bodies of the pilot and copilot are floating lifeless, suits shredded. The windows of the ship are gone. But in that space float more suited figures. They fire their jets, enter the cockpit. She recognizes them.

“Hi guys,” she says.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” says Carson to her and everybody else. “Claire, you’re going with Leo. Lynx and I are going to bail out Harrison. Linehan and Spencer: stay here and hold the cockpit.”

“Splitting up?” asks Haskell. “Is that a good idea?”

“We need to get you away from the Rain,” says Carson. “You can work this ship’s zone from the next ship over.”

“There’s not much of a zone left,” she says.

It’s true. In the moments after the Rain jacked her, they hacked the microzone aboard the ship. She’s reversing the hack now, but the damage has already been done. The ship’s defenders are no longer reachable. Carson pulls open the cockpit door and Lynx goes through with his guns at the ready. Carson turns, follows him. Linehan hovers in the doorway covering them. Spencer takes the ship’s controls while Sarmax gestures at Haskell. “Let’s go,” he says.

Through the cockpit doors and they’re off. The ship is large enough to make that complicated. There’s combat going on across both decks. The internal monitors are fucked. Everything’s being jammed. The Operative doesn’t know where the Throne is. He doesn’t know the exact location of the Rain. He’s only got one thing going for him.

“The Rain think they’ve got him caught between them.”

“They’ll be driving him toward the cockpit,” says Lynx.

The Operative has no intention of waiting for them to get there. He and Lynx charge through another doorway, through a chamber, through an engine room …

“How many fucking engine-rooms are there on this bitch?” asks Lynx.

“Nowhere near enough,” replies the Operative.

Haskell follows Sarmax up through the shattered windows and out onto the ship’s roof. The Euro interceptor sits atop it, tethered just aft of the cockpit. Its canopy is up. The back’s packed with weapons and extra spacesuits.

“We need all those?” says Haskell. “The Euros were into redundancy,” says Sarmax. “For all the good it did them.”

Sarmax nods, then starts the motors as Haskell straps herself in.

• • •

Linehan’s crouching at the side of the door, ready for whatever might come through it. Spencer’s at the controls. He’s watching as the Euro craft sails past the cockpit, engines glowing. It hurtles out ahead of the ship they’re in, swings off to the left. As soon as it’s out of range of small-arms fire, it matches speed. Sarmax’s voice echoes through the cockpit.

“We’ll hold here,” it says. “Maintain open comlink by laser. Give us the heads-up if you see anything.”

“You’ll be the first to know,” mutters Linehan.

The Operative can guess what’s happening. A Rain hit team on the warpath is virtually impossible to stop. Especially in a situation where an opponent can retreat in only one direction. The Praetorians outnumber the Rain by at least ten to one. But with the makeshift zone gone, they can’t coordinate with one another. They’ll be going down like ninepins. The Operative and Lynx crash through a wall, past more engine blocks, through another wall, through a weapons chamber from which all the weapons have been stripped. They crash through into the chamber where the Throne briefed his senior officers so recently. Two of them drift there now.

“Fuck,” says the Operative. He leans toward them while Lynx covers him. “Fuck. Both dead.”

One of the men he’s looking at opens his eyes. The Operative leaps backward, his arms up, guns at the ready.

“No,” says the man. He’s barely whispering. “Carson … save … save …”

“Where is he?”

“They … cut us off.”

“Murray. Where the fuck is he?”

“Engine block,” says Murray. “Third,” he adds—coughs. Chokes. Dies.

“Engine block number three,” says the Operative. “What the fuck’s he trying to do there?”

“Stay alive,” says the Operative—hits his jets.

Sarmax gazes at the screens. The president’s ship is down to three of its six segments. It’s hurtling toward the Earth. But by the time it gets there, this’ll be long over.

“How can two men succeed where a whole shipful of Praetorians couldn’t?” asks Haskell.

Sarmax looks at her. “I doubt they can.”

“In which case?”

“We nuke that ship and head for Earth.”

“To see if I can reconfigure our zone there?”

He nods. Something on the screens catches her eye. She gestures at it.

“Hello,” she says.