The Burning Skies

“Yes,” she says.

“Then?”

“I guess it was what I needed to hear.”

“But not what you wanted.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“Then let me help you,” he says. “What you want is to see things from the Throne’s perspective. You must realize how it looks if you converse with an enemy of the state. You can hardly blame the Throne for being slow to attribute your actions to some inner need of yours.”

“If I really was a traitor, why in God’s name would I have saved the Throne’s ass?”

The Operative doesn’t reply.

“Because that’s what’s really going on here, isn’t it? Why I’ve been chained up. Why he won’t face me. Why don’t you just admit it, Carson: Harrison can’t forgive me because I remind him of just how close to the edge he came.”

“The Throne’s above such petty rationales,” says the Operative.

This time she laughs. “What makes you so sure?”

“Because of what’s afoot outside this room. Within the next few hours all will be decided, Claire. The Throne has set in motion the final strike against his enemies.”

“So now we come to the real reason you’re here.”

“We do.”

“And are you my executioner?”

“Would you like that?”

“Just shut up and do me if that’s what you’re here for.”

“I’m just trying to remind you that you’re not beyond reproach. That you’ve got to understand the Throne’s fear that his enemies might use you against him.”

“How can they do that when I’m here—”

“In this room? Exactly. No one can touch you now. You’re off-limits. Offline.”

“So what’s the hell is going on?”

“We’re on the brink of war.”

“With the East?”

“Who else would be worth the fight?”

She laughs again. But only just. Shakes her head.

“Haven’t we been down this road before?”

“We haven’t. This isn’t like the last time, Claire. That was fleets being mobilized and threats being exchanged. That was out in the open. This isn’t. It’s behind the scenes. As far as the population is concerned, everything’s fine. But in reality—”

“How did things get so bad so quickly?”

“Because things were never good to begin with.”

“But the peace summit—”

“Got crashed by the Rain.”

“But we beat the Rain.”

“We being the U.S., sure. The Eurasians didn’t fare so well, did they? They lost key leaders. They’ve passed the torch in Moscow and Beijing, Claire. The hardliners are taking control. The moderates are on the verge of being purged. Those who wanted to join Harrison’s alliance have been utterly discredited.”

“Utterly?”

“Sufficiently. Enough to render anyone advocating detente suspect. After all, look where it got the East. Almost fucked by the Rain on the edge of the Earth-Moon system. Almost made into a slave-state overnight. The Coalition’s generals are gaining power by the minute. The war machine could slip the leash at any moment.”

“The Rain must be in the mix somewhere.”

“Must they?” The Operative laughs. “Do you really think we need the Rain to fuck up our world? We did it so well for so long before they hit the scene. Why should everything be so rosy now they’re gone?”

“The two sides aren’t even talking?”

“Oh, they’re talking all right. One more reason why the public’s in the dark. Officially everything’s going like clockwork. The neutrals are being dissected wholesale. The joint infrastructure keeps getting built. The committees in Zurich and Geneva keep on working. But higher up it’s a different story. The hot line’s off the hook. The president can’t get anyone to call him back. We don’t even know who’s in charge. If anyone’s in charge.”

“So let me find out, Carson. Let me jack in and recon the East and—”

“You told the Throne you wouldn’t do that.”

“Maybe now I would.”

“Relax, Claire. You’ve made your choice. Besides, we’re already on it.”

“You’re going to find out who’s running the place?”

“Sure, but that’s not the main focus. Not now. We’re assuming the worst at this point. It’s all we can do. What matters is their ability to win a war. We can’t leave anything to chance. So we’ve sent agents in search of the thing we most fear.”

She looks at him. “The thing we most fear?”

“Think about it, Claire.”

“What the hell are you—oh.”

“Exactly.”

“If you’re going to look at your opponent’s cards—”

“—what you’re interested in are the aces.”

“The secret weapons,” she says.

“More than one of them, perhaps. Maybe none at all. We don’t know. What we do know is that reports from our agents behind the Eastern wall—and Lord knows there’s precious few of them these days—all point to the Eurasians feeling like they’re in much better shape now than during the height of the crisis that followed the Elevator’s downing. Which could just be symptomatic of a shift in ideological currents. Or it could be the result of material factors.”

“And our evidence regarding the latter?”

“We’ve got a whole industry devoted to studying what we can glean about their black budgets. We’ve believed for a while that something big started its way down the R&D pipelines about a year before Zurich.”

“Which doesn’t mean that—”

“Two days ago one of our sources in Moscow got a hold of a fragment of a Praesidium memorandum waxing poetic about a breakthrough that would ensure victory in a showdown with the West. And in the wake of your restarting of the zone, we bought information from a rogue CICom handler in HK —”

“Who I met,” she says suddenly. “Alek Jarvin. Right?”

“Right.”

“What’s he up to?”

“Busy being dead. We eliminated him once we had the goods. Which we’re inclined to regard as genuine. Particularly with all the other signs pointing the same way. Jarvin had been doing a lot of digging, in some very specific directions. He believed there to be a black base beneath the Himalayas that’s been cauterized from the rest of the Eurasian zone to prevent net incursions from breaching it. A black base that’s only just been upgraded from R&D status to active operations. It’s too specific a lead to ignore. Spencer and Sarmax took out Jarvin and now they’re going to check this out and destroy whatever they can find without leaving evidence that points back to us.”