The Burning Skies (6 page)

But he can’t stop himself from thinking about all the things that might lie behind those instructions. The margin of victory in the secret war is clearly coming down to zone. Autumn Rain’s ability to penetrate that zone is the reason the world was forced to the brink four days ago. It’s the reason the world remains on the very edge. How do you stop an infiltrator with the ability to turn defenses against those they would protect? How do you shield yourself against those who may already be inside your shield?

The Operative doesn’t know. But he’s guessing he’s caught up in somebody’s attempt to answer. And now suddenly more
pieces of the puzzle are bubbling up, rising into his mind like a submarine surfacing—recollections of what they told him when he was in the trance. The larger map of the place they’re in clicks on within his head. He gazes at the blueprints and feels his heart accelerate as he realizes what they’re caught up in. He signals to Sarmax that they’re turning as he opens a door.

The far wall of the room within is barely visible through a mass of conveyor belts. Freight containers are stacked along those belts—containers like the ones in which the two men woke. The Operative moves past Sarmax and leaps onto one of those pallets. Sarmax does the same. They start moving at speed along that belt, keeping their weapons at the ready.

“I give up,” says Sarmax. “Where the fuck
are
we?”

“In neutral territory.”

“In space.”

“Obviously. We’re in the Platform.”

“We’re inside the
Platform?
But that’s—”

“Insane? I think that’s the point.”

T
he bridge of the
Larissa V
isn’t small. Its crew attends to two levels of instrument-banks. A large window cuts above those banks, sharpens to a beak where the room protrudes farthest forward. And in that window …

“Spencer? You there?”

“Shut up.”

“You wouldn’t believe what’s going on down here.”

“Shut
up,”
replies Spencer, and disconnects. Looks like his integration with the bridge’s wireless node reactivated his link with Linehan. Which is a really bad idea right now, particularly since another voice is whispering in Spencer’s head, telling him to sync with the primary razor.

Which must make him the secondary razor. The one no one here has seen yet. The one who’s been shipped in special—part of the larger crew that’s been assigned to this ship, woken up in preparation for the start of active operations. Spencer takes his seat near the room’s rear, next to that primary razor. He reaches for the duplicate ship-jacks, leans back, and stares straight ahead as he slots those jacks in. He feels the razor watching him. He feels like the whole bridge-crew’s watching him—the captain and his executive officer on the second level, the gunnery officers on the room’s left side, the telemetry and navigational officers on the right. He wonders how much of what he’s feeling is paranoia and how much is real. He resolves not to let such questions show on his face. He gets busy running zone-routines, trying to act natural.

Which isn’t easy, given what’s in the window.

The largest space station ever built shimmers in the sun. The Europa Platform consists of two O’Neill cylinders and their attendant infrastructure. Both those cylinders are clearly visible, connected to each other at both poles, slowly rotating in opposite directions to maintain a stationary position vis-à-vis one another. Each is just over thirty klicks long.

The nearer cylinder’s about five klicks distant, taking up most of the view, one of its outlying mirrors glimmering alongside it. Part of one of the cylinder-windows can be seen just beyond that mirror, a slice of green shimmering within translucence, but most of the visible structure is grey shading into black—though on the zone it’s lit up in every color, shot through with data overlays. The cylinder-ends that are nearest to Spencer are designated
NORTH POLE
, and the walls that curve out from each point house the cities of New London and New Zurich, respectively, along with their accompanying spaceport-freight yards.

But it’s the opposite ends that really get Spencer’s attention. Beyond the point labeled south pole on each cylinder is a
massive sphere—each as wide as the cylinder against which they abut—mostly rock, but studded with a great deal of metal as well. From where Spencer’s situated they look like moons rising above some strange metal landscape. They’re habbed asteroids—and the zone within what have been labeled as aeries is dark, concealed behind the ramparts of the firewalls of the Euro Magnates. Five years ago the Treaty of Zurich confirmed L3—the most isolated of the libration points, the Earth directly between it and the Moon—as a neutral possession. The Euro Magnates have made good money from it. Ten million people make the Platform one of the largest off-planet settlements. But the Rain co-opted the neutrals on Earth. So why not here?

At least, that’s what Spencer is starting to wonder. He can see now that the specs of the ship he’s in are those of a European freighter. He can see, too, seven more such ships—also in close vicinity to the Platform, also manned by Praetorian crew, all decked out in neutral colors that allow them to blend in with the other freighters nearby.

Of which there’s no shortage. Another screen in Spencer’s mind shows the larger view around him. The Europa Platform is at the center of a grid. Ships are lined up for approach into its spaceyards for hundreds of kilometers out. Several mass-catchers are about fifty klicks away, receiving ore from asteroid-harvesting operations farther out. Processing stations float nearby, along with a number of mass-drivers. More than a hundred klicks off the “north” end of the Platform is Helios Station, several kilometers of solar panels clustered around microwave and laser projectors that beam power to the Europa Platform and the other structures. Spencer notes that Praetorian units have covertly taken custody of the Helios’s control center, along with that of the mass-drivers. He can see quite clearly that all such deployments are aimed at the Platform—that the heart of neutral activity is now under the watchful eye of the Praetorians.

He shifts his focus back to the Platform itself. He’s guessing that the ultimate aim of this operation is one of the areas on the Platform that’s opaque on his zone-view—the farther cylinder or the two asteroids. According to the blueprints, the farther cylinder’s pretty much like the nearer. So Spencer’s focusing on that nearer one now, staring at the zone compressed within it—the tens of thousands of cameras that show the bustling streets of New London, along with all the landscape that lies beyond.

Which suddenly
clicks
in his head.

“Confirm contact,” he says.

The merest splinter of a second has passed since Spencer’s jacked in. The prime razor nods, looks satisfied. Spencer has just ratified his sounding the alarm—has just confirmed that the signal coming from the first cylinder is, in fact, the real thing. But the satisfaction starts fading from that razor’s face as Spencer starts describing far more detailed coordinates than the prime razor had been able to obtain. Spencer displays the data on a screen, lets everybody see the light that’s now moving at speed away from the north pole of the nearer cylinder, away from the city of New London and out toward the cylinder’s southern end.

“We have a definite live target,” he says.

“Definite incursion,” says the primary razor.

“Track and report,” says the voice of the executive officer.

Spencer opens up another channel in his mind. “Linehan,” he says.

“About fucking time,” says Linehan. “What’s going on up there?”

“Jesus Christ,” says Spencer, “what isn’t?”

• • •

H
askell’s come through into the cylinder’s main interior. Valley is stretching out before her. Two more valleys are ceilings far overhead. The mirrors outside the cylinder’s windows are angled to give the impression of day dimming into twilight. Haskell’s mind is practically shoved around the corner of a million impending futures, flickering like ghost-static through her, superimposed against her parameters in the here and now. On the outside, she’s just a woman in a light vac-suit fresh off one of the off-Platform shifts. Just a normal worker heading home on one of the maglev trains.

Though she must be doing pretty well to have a residence in the countryside outside the city that’s now receding behind her: streets and rooftops curve across the entirety of the North Pole region, stacked upon one another like some kind of Navajo cliff-dwelling on steroids. New London’s quite a place. The only thing that’s in the same league is New Zurich, right next door. Not that Haskell has the slightest intention of going anywhere near it.

Nor does she need to. Because her next objective’s plainly visible in the distance. The South Pole mountains aren’t like those of the North. They’re unadorned by any city. Those few structures that cluster upon the peaks are security installations perfectly positioned to keep a watchful eye on the city opposite them.

Though Haskell knows full well that it’s behind those mountains that the real security starts. Particularly within the zone: the firewall of the asteroid that’s latched to the cylinder’s southern end is one of the steepest she’s ever seen. Even
she
can’t see within without alerting everybody in there. The only way to get a view is to get inside.

This is precisely what she intends to do, though she hasn’t yet decided how. She’s improvising. And now that she’s left New London behind she can see she’s moving toward the first
of the lockdown areas. It’s largely farmland strewn with lakes and forests. It looks idyllic, but it doesn’t fool Haskell in the slightest. It was declared off-limits to civilians about twenty-four hours ago. Something about a potential chemical leak—something that’s bullshit. Haskell can see the way it’s all been set up. She’s planning on giving the defenses something to chew on. She’s got her decoys out, wreaking havoc on the cylinder’s zone. Her train drops beneath the level of the valley-surface as tunnel walls close in around her.

C
losing fast,” says the Operative.

They’re past the freight-conduits and into an area that’s still under construction. Robots are working everywhere. None of them pay the slightest attention to the two men blasting past them. It’s as if they don’t even see them. The Operative beams the latest readouts into Sarmax’s head.

“It’s splintered into multiple signals coming in toward us. But they’re distorted, like they’re running interference on each other—”

“There may be only one signal.”

“Or maybe that’s what they want us to think.”

“So are we hunting it, or is it hunting us?”

“Looks like it might be both.”

Making this a tough call. The Operative knows there comes a time in every run when you make your break. When you change directions sharply and go flat-out. But the timing’s a little suspect on this one.

Or else whatever is causing this signal is just really good at guessing.

“Closest one is moving in fast,” he says. “On one of the core maglevs.”

“How can you tell it’s genuine?”