The Burning Skies Read online

  “Who said it came as a surprise? Deal with something like the Rain and you never know quite where you stand.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “I admit it—I thought I could control them. I thought they saw me as a father figure. I didn’t realize that there was only one thing I had that they wanted.”

  “Me.”

  “The Manilishi herself.” He pauses. “How’s that working for you these days?”

  “I’m still trying to figure out just what the fuck I am.”

  “The culmination of the Autumn Rain experiment.”

  “I know that. But what does that—”

  “Mean?” He waves a hand languidly. “Autumn Rain was to be backed on its combat runs by a unique type of razor capable of running zone in a whole new way.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Intuition lets you fly, child.”

  “But how the hell did you engineer—”

  “A great question.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “We designed something in which every cell computes—molecular computing taken to a new level. We foresaw there’d be synergies we didn’t plan for. We eventually realized we were dealing with a violation of locality that allows the subject—”

  “Don’t subject me. I broke beyond those labels.”

  “—to evade the penalties that a razor pays when hacking a remote target. You don’t have the split-second disadvantage that any normal razor has during off-planet hacking. Your reaction times outpace the stimuli your brain receives and nobody knows why. No wonder you’re running rings around L5’s razors.”

  “I’ll do the same to the Rain.”

  “Claire, you’re not invincible.”

  “Without me, neither are the Rain.”

  “They’ll have the advantage.”

  “Once it became clear they’d had turned against you, why did you send me to the Moon?”

  “I wanted to get you someplace safe.”

  “Safe?”

  “Relatively speaking.”

  “The Moon wasn’t even vaguely safe. The Rain were up there. To say nothing of the SpaceCom cabal that the Rain was using to try to ignite war.”

  “Once you were on the scene and activated as Manilishi, none of that would have meant much. The Rain’s primary force was on Earth, preparing to hit the superpowers’ leadership. They had one team on the Moon beneath Nansen Station pulling the strings of the SpaceCom conspiracy, and another preparing to hit Szilard on L2. You would have cleaned up the Moon pretty quick.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Besides, you have to be awake to all contingencies. If war with the Eurasians breaks out, the Moon is going to look all the better. It’s the high ground of the Earth-Moon system.”

  “Except the libration points. Except this fortress.”

  “Technically that’s true. But I’m willing to bet that the Moon can sustain a damn sight more damage than this place.”

  “But why didn’t you activate me as Manilishi before I left for the Moon? Why wait till I got there?”

  “Because activating you meant restoring your true memories.”

  “My true memories?” Her voice is taut.

  “Once they were restored, your loyalty would have been a wild card without the proper precautions. As the Rain found out the hard way. What’s wrong?”

  Tears are running down her face. “You know what’s wrong, you sick fuck. How can I tell what my real memories are?”

  “Because that’s what we linked your activation to.”

  “Fuck you and your sophistry! How do I know they’re real?”

  “How do you know anything’s real? Claire, you need to get past the past. You’re beyond the range of ordinary definition now. What happened to you back then doesn’t matter. All that matters is what happens now.”

  She takes a deep breath. “What happens now is you keep talking.”

  “About what?”

  “About how I can beat them.”

  “You’ll have to find your own way through on that.”

  “You don’t care who wins?”

  “All I care about is perfecting my role as voyeur.”

  “But you’re blind in here.”

  “I see the crisis of the age in you, Claire. I can see what’s going on out there all too well. I know the capabilities of the respective players better than anyone else. All the scenarios that might have gone down after that spaceplane, after the Praetorian agents arrested me at Cheyenne and began the purge of CICom, all the ways in which the game might have played out across these last four days—it has been four days, hasn’t it?”

  She nods.

  “I should imagine that things happened very quickly once they downed your plane, didn’t they?”

  She nods.

  “So … the Rain is clearly still a factor, or you wouldn’t be so desperate to talk about them. But they haven’t won. Otherwise they’d be opening that door, laughing at me.”

  She nods.

  “This base has yet to see major combat—I think I would be aware of that much at least. So the third world war that the Rain were trying to bring about didn’t happen. They did try to bring it about, didn’t they?”

  “They tried. But—”

  “So inevitable, given the way they think. They set it up so beautifully with the downing of the Elevator. Each superpower would naturally suspect the other side—and those on its own side. The escalation toward war, the increasing tension, the lockdowns—all of it allowing the Rain to move in toward the Throne and the East’s leaders. Again the paradox, no? Security specialists think they’re creating multiple levels of access, while they’re really building labyrinths within which minotaurs can hide. The less you see of the deeper recesses of whatever bunker you’re guarding, the less likely you are to know what’s really going on in there.”

  “And the Rain—”

  “Their commandos would have torn their way through the president’s outer defenses like a scalpel. But without your support, it doesn’t surprise me that they failed. Particularly in the president’s bunker, where they would have met the Praetorian Core, the best soldiers the world has ever known. Until the Rain, of course. But the president always chooses redoubts within which he can bring numbers to bear and within which he can evade pursuers. Something the Rain didn’t know. Something I did. Without my help—without yours—it would have been touch and go. My guess is the Rain hit teams went down on the very threshold of their targets. They would have hoped to try again, during the war itself. But what I don’t understand is how war was averted.”

  “Because of me. And because forces loyal to the president broke up the attacks of the Rain’s proxies.”

  “Ah yes,” says Sinclair. “The proxy strategy. How high up did the rot go within SpaceCom?”

  “I don’t know. Very close to the top. Maybe all the way.”

  “Was Szilard killed by the Rain? Or implicated by the Throne?”

  “Neither.”

  “Neither?” Sinclair’s face creases. “The Rain did storm his flagship, didn’t they?”

  “They did. He was on a different ship.”

  “Selling them a counterfeit—not easy. They wouldn’t have missed him if they’d had another team up there in reserve. Well, congratulations to Jharek. He’s not known as the Lizard for nothing. So he wasn’t placed under arrest by the Throne for all of SpaceCom’s indiscretions?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not yet?”

  “Even if the Praetorians don’t find concrete evidence of Szilard’s specific involvement—even if it was just one of SpaceCom’s factions—it seems to me the Throne would be well advised to just execute the head of SpaceCom to be on the safe side.”

  “Andrew prefers to keep his enemies close at hand, Claire. That’s one of the keys to his success. Yet now he’s maneuvering between the Rain’s remaining hit teams and the continual pressure from his own hardliners to attack the Eurasians. Not to mention the possibility that
the East may go ahead and strike anyway. His only stalwart supporters are Stephanie Montrose and the rest of InfoCom. True?”

  “True. But then again, he thought you were loyal too.”

  “Stephanie’s all data and no imagination. She’s reliable. But even with her help the Throne remains very much embattled.”

  “I agree.”

  “How much of the Rain is left?”

  “I think they’re at about half strength.”

  “Probably more than that, if you consider that they almost certainly held back their best triads. Their strategic reserve. They’ll be deep into their next move by now. Are you deep into yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gazing upon your face again is such a joy, Claire. But this is the first time you’ve ever truly seen me. Am I a disappointment?”

  “No,” she whispers. “No, you’re not.”

  “The initial attacks on the Throne will have told the Rain all they need to know about how he thinks and moves. The other players in the Inner Cabinet will be like dogs when the leader of the pack is wounded. The Throne’s options are narrowing.”

  “They are.”

  “What he’s facing is the Rain equipped with the knowledge they need to win, while he has no safe ground to fall back on within the U.S. zone.”

  “Leaving him with only one real option.”

  “I agree.” Sinclair pauses. “And yet, what an option. Will he rise to it?”

  “He’s already set it in motion,” she replies.

  Sinclair nods his head. “Ah, Andrew. Do you know—he may yet prevail. Odd how so powerful a man remains so daring tactically. Despite all his limitations, he remains in my estimation the greatest figure of our time. If you’d ever met him, Claire, you’d understand that.”

  “I may yet.”

  “Meet him?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Will you join him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should join me.”

  “You’d enslave humanity to things that aren’t human.”

  “You’re not human, Claire.”

  “More so than you.”

  “You still don’t understand what you’ve become. Nor do you understand what you’re taking on. Autumn Rain has no single razor as good as you. But they are far more skilled at taking down prey. They’ll maneuver you into a position where you can’t bring the full range of your powers to bear. They’ll turn your own designs back upon your face.”

  “Let them try.”

  “Then let it happen,” says Sinclair. “Let the Throne play his last card. Let the last of the Rain strike for the center one last time. How I wish I could witness the clash that’s about to occur. To hear the very rafters of heaven shake—if you survive with your mind intact, you would do an old man a very great favor in returning to tell me all that transpired.”

  “I’ll never see you again,” she says.

  “If only you could see that far into the future.”

  “Good-bye, Matthew.”

  “Good-bye, Claire”—but the screen’s already gone blank.

  • • •

  Blankness suddenly gone—and the Operative’s waking up to find himself laying inside his suit. He’s staring past his visor at a ceiling that’s half a meter from his face. He’s in some enclosed space. He doesn’t know where.

  He knows why he’s awake, though. He can thank his armor for that—can see it’s on a prearranged sequence. It’s coming to life around him now—a suit that looks to be better than anything he’s ever worn—powering up per whatever instructions it’s got, letting parameters stack up within his skull. Those parameters tell him all about his armor. They tell him nothing about his mission. Save that it’s begun.

  Which is why he’s sitting up—why he’s pushing up against the ceiling, which is really a lid. It swings open, and even as it does so, the Operative’s leaping out of his coffinlike container, vaulting to the floor of the larger room he’s in, looking around.

  Not that there’s much to see. Just more containers. And three doors, one of which now slides open. The Operative keeps an eye on the revealed passage while he preps his weapons and scans the containers. The readout says industrial plastics. But the Operative’s got a funny feeling that’s what a scan of his own container would have said. He walks to one of the other containers and extends an arm—igniting a laser, he slices through in nothing flat. All he gets for his trouble is some melted plastic.

  And the knowledge that he’s just wasted five seconds. Because something in his head is telling him not to worry about these containers. That same feeling is telling him to go through the doorway. The Operative knows better than to doubt it. Posthypnotic memory triggers are unmistakable. He exits the room and walks down the corridor, eyeing every meter of those walls and ceiling. The door at the end of the corridor looks just like the one he just passed through. He waits a moment, wondering if this door is about to open too.

  Sure enough, it slides aside. The Operative finds himself staring straight down the barrel of what looks to be a heavy-duty pulse rifle—a model he hadn’t even realized was in production yet—held by another figure in powered armor. The Operative sees his own image in the visor. He looks past the reflection to behold a face he knows.

  And then he hears that voice.

  Take a man. Take his world. Turn it upside down. Tell him he’s the very thing he’s fighting. Give him memories you’ve manufactured. Let your enemies dose him with drugs that open doors within him. Let the edges of the zone drip like liquid through him. Let him see his own mind melting on every screen. Let him know time as some blasted fiction.

  Then bid him open his eyes.

  But all Lyle Spencer can see is blur, and all he can feel is cold. He seems to be floating against the straps that hold him down. He’s in zero-G; he hears murmuring around him, along with the thrumming of remote engines. And a voice cutting through all of it.

  “Sir. Can you hear me, sir?”

  “Yes,” replies Spencer.

  “Move your right foot.”

  Spencer does so—even as he gets it. He was in storage. He’s opening his eyes. The walls are lined with cryo-pods like the one he’s in. Most of them are open. Those who can are getting out, pulling on uniforms. Those who can’t are waiting, gathering their strength. Technicians are drifting around the room, facilitating the awakenings. The face of one such technician looks into Spencer’s own.

  “Sir,” she says, “how do you feel?”

  “Like shit.”

  “We need to test your reflexes, sir.”

  “Go for it,” he says.

  She offers him clothing and a wire at one end of which is a zone-jack. There’s something weird about her uniform. He struggles to clear his mind, reaches for the jack she’s handing him, glances back at her.

  “Where are we?”

  She stares at him with an anxious expression. “You don’t know?”

  And suddenly he does know. And wishes he didn’t. Her uniform’s Praetorian. So is the one she’s offering him. He has no idea what he’s doing here. But he knows damn well what these soldiers will do with him if they wake up to the fact that he’s woken up among them.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Sir,” she asks, “what’s the name of this ship?”

  “The Larissa V,” he replies.

  He has no idea where that came from. But apparently it’s the right answer. He takes the jack, slots it into the back of his neck. Zone expands all around him. It contains many things, one of them being the face of Seb Linehan, Spencer’s erstwhile partner. A man who should be dead. He doesn’t look it. Though he looks like he wishes Spencer was.

  Claire Haskell sits within a container aboard some ship, and darkness sits within her. The conversation with Matthew Sinclair has left her feeling sick. She thought she would have left the wreckage of her past life behind her by now, but it’s only growing ever more insistent—Jason’s face in the throes of passion, Jason’s face as
she killed him, his body contorted on the SeaMech’s floor—all of it keeps replaying in her mind, and she wishes she could undo all of it.

  Her own weakness appalls her, but she can’t deny that she’d sell out the whole world just to put the clock back four days. She’d throw in her lot with the Rain just to keep Jason alive.

  But now he’s dead. And she’s thankful, because it means the key to her heart’s been thrown away forever. No one can hurt her anymore. No one can second-guess her while she takes stock of the whole game—the superpowers as they shore up their defenses, the endless gates of both those zones, those endless eyes scanning endlessly for Rain.

  And for her. She can’t see the Rain, though. She hasn’t seen them since their defeat four days ago—in the minutes after that defeat, she got a read on them receding into zone like a leviathan fading beneath the waves: just a quick glimpse of scales and teeth, and then it was gone. She saw enough to realize just how much of a threat they still were. It worries her that she hasn’t seen them since. It worries her even more that they might have seen her. That they might have found some way inside her, and she might not even know it. Even if she is Manilishi, that doesn’t mean she can’t lose.

  So she takes what precautions she can. If the Rain retain some secret thing inside her—some secret key to her, in spite of all her precautions—they might see what’s in her brain’s software. They might see what’s in her mind.

  But they won’t see what’s on her own skin—what she’s drawn upon it. Across the hours, in the oily darkness of the holds of spaceships, surrounded by the clank of machinery, she’s pricked maps upon that skin, scarred that skin, painted it all in her own blood: all her calculations, all her strategy, whole swathes of blueprint of zone upon her limbs and chest—both zones, and the neutral ones, too—endless geometries of virtual architecture, endless coordinates in no-space. Insight’s a myriad bloody slashes all across her. Knowledge is no longer fleeting now that it’s etched upon her.

  She studies endless patterns, looking for what all the others may have missed. Twenty-four hours since thwarting the war, and a nagging disquiet is stealing through her. Forty-eight hours, and that disquiet has become a fear unlike any she’s ever known.