The Burning Skies

“And where the hell did he have this?”

“On a microfiche. He must have burned the original paper.”

“And you burned the microfiche.”

“And something’s getting ready to burn us. We’re not looking for a bunch of tunnels, Spencer. We’re looking for something specific. Something that’s down here. I should have given you this earlier. I admit it. But I need you to start figuring this thing out.”

“While I simultaneously hack this place.”

“You think you’re so good, now’s your chance to prove it. How much access have you managed to get to what else is going on within this labyrinth?”

“A lot.”

“But not enough.”

“It’s too cauterized.”

“Deliberately so,” says Sarmax. “We need to get deeper.”

“That’s where this train’s going.”

“So we ride it.”

He leans back. The train keeps on rushing into the root of the mountain.

This time she comes awake in a single instant. Carson’s still floating cross-legged before her. The ghost of a smile flickers on his face. “How do you feel?” he asks. “Like shit.”

“But better than you did previously?”

“That wouldn’t take much, you prick.”

“I apologize.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

“Indeed,” he replies. “I found the back doors.”

“Who put them there?”

“We’re still figuring that out. Maybe the Rain. Maybe Szilard. Maybe Sinclair. Maybe all of them.”

“Maybe none of them.”

“Who else would have done it?”

“You.”

He smiles. “You’re not making sense, Claire.”

“I’m making far too much sense, Carson. Since it wasn’t the back doors that you were after.”

“I never said they were our only motive.”

“So let’s talk about the most important one.”

“You have a hypothesis?”

“I’m on more solid ground than that.”

“Go on.”

“You were searching for a way to figure out how the Rain almost fucked the president at the Europa Platform.”

“We already know how they did that.”

“Do you?”

“Sure. They took out the zone by sabotaging the legacy world nets and—”

“No,” she says, “not enough. It wasn’t enough for them to do that. What really almost nailed us was that they were preventing him from transferring the executive node as well.”

“Precisely. Because they’d taken out the zone.”

“Don’t play the fool,” she says. “I know what happened. The Rain collapsed the zone, sure. But they also had a little something in reserve, in case the zone didn’t go down. In which case they knew they’d have to jam the executive node itself, to prevent it from being transferred to the Throne’s successor.”

“They did prevent it from being transferred. They were jamming the whole fucking Platform, Claire. Getting a signal off that place was virtually an exercise in impossibility—”

“That’s not the kind of jamming I’m talking about, and you know it. That kind of jamming wouldn’t have worked. The president could have just sent the code in a laser, and even if he hadn’t had the chance, the zone’s structured so that the successor’s software activates the backup executive node in the event of the destruction of the Throne’s—”

“Right, but—”

“But the Rain deployed a far more specialized hack in advance of their grand slam, didn’t they? One that undermined the executive node itself, and prevented it from being transferred to Montrose under any circumstances—”

“What makes you think she’s his successor?”

“I know she’s his successor, Carson. That was the price she exacted for InfoCom’s support of the Throne back when SpaceCom made its big move after the Elevator. In fact—”

“You’re assuming a lot.”

“I’m assuming nothing. I was practically in the Hand’s head—in the president’s head—all that time. And we both saw the node-freezing hack hit just before the zone collapsed. Once the zone went down it no longer mattered—but if the Rain’s universal ass fuck hadn’t worked, they had plan B already activated. As the Throne knows all too well. And he knows I know it too. I showed him how the Rain pulled the rug out from under the zones of East and West. But I never showed him how the exec node paralysis worked.”

“You told him you didn’t know.”

“And he didn’t believe me.”

“And he was right not to. Why did you withhold it from him?”

“I wanted some kind of counterlever if the Throne tried to turn on me.”

“Which is why he sent me here,” he says.

“But he didn’t have to send you very far.” He says nothing. Just looks at her and smiles. “So now we get to the heart of the matter,” she adds. “Was wondering when you would.”

Outside again: they’ve crossed the entirety of the colony ship and reached the docking facilities that occupy the space where the ship’s nose has yet to be built. Several small shuttles hang like bats around them. The doors of the nearest one are open. Lynx and Linehan enter.

The pilot within is sprawled in his chair. The expression behind his visor’s one of intense boredom. It doesn’t change as he regards them.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“We need to get to Redoubt G16,” says Lynx.

“What do you think this is, a fucking taxi service?”

“Pretty much,” says Linehan.

“My orders are to sit tight until—”

“You got new orders,” says Lynx. He beams code to the pilot, who grimaces in annoyance—and turns, starts up the engines.

“You guys ain’t even officers,” he mutters.

“No,” says Lynx, “we’re engineers. Who do what the officers tell us. So back the fuck off.”

“Relax pal,” says the pilot. “We’re all in this shit together.”

“You can say that again,” says Linehan.

He’s staring out the window at a wilderness of lights and shapes. Craft of every description are