The Burning Skies

PART IV GRAVITY AND RAPTURE

My fellow Americans.”

It’s four days later. The U.S. president is on the screen. Short-cropped grey hair above grey eyes. Mouth set in that familiar, reassuring way. Words that say everything his people need to hear.

And nothing that they don’t.

“It is with a heavy heart that I address you tonight. But also with fresh hope. The paralysis of the worldwide nets by the terrorists who called themselves Autumn Rain is over. We have defeated them. In attacking the Europa Platform, they hoped to expand their war of terror to neutral targets—targets that lacked the defenses necessary to withstand the Rain’s assault. It is my duty to inform you that the Europa Platform has been entirely destroyed, along with the cities of New London and New Zurich. The loss of life was catastrophic. May God help me to tell you the death toll is numbered in the millions.

“But in striking at L3, the Rain overreached themselves. In the aftermath of that terrible crime, we were able to trace the routes of their hit-teams back to the bases from which they struck. We were able to penetrate their lairs and eliminate them wholesale. We have ended the menace of Autumn Rain. Their leaders have been destroyed in the bunkers from which they were planning the world’s demise. Their strike forces have been cut down while still en route to their targets. This war is over.

“Our nation has borne the primary role in ending this threat, but we were not alone. Eurasian forces cooperated with ours in bringing the Rain to justice. The East’s data was invaluable in building up a full picture of the Rain’s location, making our triumph all the swifter. They are our partners, and they should be honored as such. Let the rumors that they were in any way connected to the Rain be laid to rest, along with all talk of a return to the dark nights of cold war. Those days are gone forever.

“Even as I speak, our diplomats are meeting with those of the East in Geneva. Not out of some misplaced fear that the pact of Zurich is on the verge of becoming a dead letter. Nor out of some futile need to seek remedial action to bolster a fragile peace. Mark my words: the peace of Zurich is as strong as it ever was. Even stronger, now that the Rain have vanished from the scene. But we shall not miss this opportunity to consolidate our friendship still further.

“And we cannot ignore the reality before us. The Rain hid behind the borders of neutral nations for a reason. They knew that trying to base themselves within either superpower was an impossibility. Knowing the neutrals’ military weakness, they used their territory, first as staging grounds and then as targets. Nor can we be tempted by the Rain’s destruction to deceive ourselves into thinking that future elements opposed to civilization and all it stands for will not follow the same strategy. The course before us is clear.

“We are thus coordinating with the Eurasian Coalition to extend our protection to the neutral territories. In doing so, we contemplate no violation of sovereignty. We shall not force ourselves upon any unaligned nation. However, we have every intention of offering aid to those neutrals who wish to secure themselves from future onslaughts like the one that engulfed the Europa Platform. It would be the epitome of injustice to deny intelligence data, military training, and advisers to countries that wish to protect their own citizens.

“Our initial efforts have focused on the Far East, where the Governing Council of HK Geoplex has already invited the superpowers to replace the local police and security units that were destroyed in the anarchy that the Rain unleashed. Rather than allow that city to continue to suffer, we have accepted the invitation. Our troops have taken up residence across one half of Hong Kong; the Coalition occupies the other. While this arrangement is merely a few hours old, we have already brought that great city a peace that its inhabitants had despaired of ever seeing.

“It is inevitable, of course, that there will be some in the neutral nations who disagree with our course of action. To them, we can only say that we hope to have the chance to prove ourselves worthy of your trust. But should anyone attempt in any way to harm our soldiers, we will treat them the same way we did the Rain. Let there be no mistake: if attacked, we will retaliate with a force that will ensure our blow will be the last.

“And to the American people, I say we are not about to underestimate the gravity of the course that we are now embarked upon. We must extend our shield across the world for the good of all. We must render sterile all ground from which the seeds of a future Rain might spring. And we must cement our partnership with the Coalition so that we may enjoy the fruits of a lasting peace.

“These last few days have witnessed the greatest trials faced by our nation since the signing of the Zurich treaty. We have paid a heavy price. But we have withstood adversity. Those voices who called for the unjust punishment of the Coalition have not been heeded. Those voices who said we could not defeat the Rain have fallen silent. As have the Rain themselves. We shall not hear from them again. May God be thanked for that. May God defend the United States—”

Linehan switches the vid off. The reflection on the empty screen shows Lynx standing in the doorway.

“Anything interesting?” he asks.

“The usual horseshit,” says Linehan. “Are we outta here?”

“Believe it.”

The room is lavishly furnished. Mahogany everywhere. The rugs are practically knee deep. Paintings hang along the walls. Set between two Flemish masters are several screens. The woman on the topmost one looks like someone caught between duty and fear:

“—that this is the latest shooting this morning. The victim, Shuryen Ma, was an outspoken critic of the Chinese leadership. We believe that his parents died in a camp in Burma in the 2080s and that he arrived in HK in 2095, but have yet to confirm this. According to our sources, Eurasian soldiers burst into his home without warning and shot him. Several witnesses were arrested.”

“How’s it looking?” asks Spencer. His voice echoes through the room from an adjacent one.

“So far, so good,” says Sarmax.

He’s sitting in the corner of the room behind a table. He spares scarcely a glance at the news. His attention’s almost totally monopolized by the camera feeds that show what’s going on in the rest of the city. His eyes dart among them as the broadcast continues.

“—and we must advise our viewers in the strongest possible terms not to attempt to cross from this part of the city into what’s now American territory. Again, we have confirmed reports that Eurasian soldiers have adopted a shoot-to-kill policy toward anyone trying to move between the sectors. And we have reports of mass arrests now under way in the American sector.”

“All depends on whose list you’re on,” Sarmax mutters to himself as he looks around the room. The body that’s sprawled on the rugs seems to have stopped bleeding.

“You done with this guy?” he yells.

“Not yet,” says Spencer as he emerges from the other room. His hands are covered with blood. So is his shirt. Razorwires hang from his head. Sarmax looks at him. Spencer shrugs.

“Turns out he’s got some kind of spinal backup,” he says—turns to the body, extends a laser scapel, scoops out the chip at the base of the spine.

“How much longer?” says Sarmax.

“How about telling me who I’m dissecting?”

Sarmax looks at him. Says nothing.

“Have it your way,” says Spencer, “but you’re slowing us down. The core data structures are a really weird hybrid. In fact—”

“A traitor,” says Sarmax.

“What?”

“The man was a traitor. Alek Jarvin. The main CICom handler in HK.”

“CICom? As in Counterintelligence Command—”

“Sure.”

“But the Throne had CICom annihilated when he locked up Sinclair.”

“All of CICom he could get his hands on, sure. Jarvin cut loose and hit the streets.”

“The streets? This is his fucking house.”

“No,” says Sarmax, “it’s his fucking safe house. From which he was building up as large a stockpile of data as possible in the hopes that he could stay alive for as long as possible. And maybe even win his way back into our good graces.”

“Guess that last one was a bit ambitious,” replies Spencer as he walks back into the room and shuts the door behind him. Sarmax shakes his head, turns his attention back to the screens where the action’s starting to pick up.

“—we’re getting reports now of shooting outside the studio.” The newscaster’s voice is edging toward panic now. Noises are coming from somewhere off-camera. “No, in the studio.” The woman’s standing up now. “I apologize but—”

Her body convulses, drops. She’s been hit by a taser. A suited Eurasian soldier steps in front of the camera, grabs the kicking woman by the legs, drags her off-screen. For a moment the camera’s focused on an empty chair.

And then a man enters, sits down where the woman was sitting. He looks like any normal newscaster.

“We apologize for the interruption,” he says. “We are pleased to resume normal service. The attacks against the Coalition’s liberating forces will continue to be dealt with severely. We are compiling a comprehensive list of all enemies of the people believed to be in residence in this city’s sector. There are substantial rewards for any information that leads to an arrest. Tune in to the following site for more information—”

Sarmax switches the screen off. “We’re out of time,” he yells.

“Five more minutes,” says Spencer.

“Try one.”

“I need more than that to make sure there’s nothing else in Jarvin’s files.”

“Bring ’em with us.”

• • •

She’s waking up again.

Or at least, she thinks she is. She thought she was awake awhile back too. But then fire flared against her. Lava fell across her. She was dreaming. She was glad of it.

But now she’s in a metal-walled room. Strapped into a chair, in what feels like zero-G. She’s wearing civilian clothing. She tries to move—and can’t. She tries to access the zone, only to find that she’s cut off. The room’s clearly been sealed to wireless access. She’s not going anywhere. Nor can she remember how she got here in the first place.

All she knows is that something’s very wrong. She tries to think back to something … anything … grasping to remember something that feels real. But it’s like reaching for land in a world of endless water. Nothing’s solid.

Except for the Rain.

She remembers now. After she and the Throne and his operatives reached Earth, she restarted the zone, and the Eurasian zone restarted with it.

That made him angry. She remembers the expression on his face as he lay there with his doctors attending to him. She told him it wasn’t her fault the two zones rebooted at the same time. It was just the way the Rain configured the whole thing, though she didn’t like the expression on the president’s face. It was one of missed opportunity. It was a question in her mind: who knows what he would have done had he been confronted with the temptation of an undefended East? She hates to even ask the question. But Harrison had to be content with settling with the Rain—and even before he could walk again, she was merging her mind with his once more in that strange congress, using the amplified executive node to finish the job they’d started together back at the Europa Platform.

Only this time the Rain had no counterplans ready. They were caught. They knew it. And there were so few of them left. A triad in Zurich, a triad in London, another in HK … she helped the Praetorians wipe them out. She wept while she was doing it. She knew all their names, remembered them all too well. But she didn’t trust her memories of them. And she’d already chosen sides.

Or so she thought. Now she’s a lot less certain. She stares at the room around her, tries to remember what she’s missing.

So what’s the story?” asks Linehan.

“The story is you get to stop watching the vid.”

“I mean what’s up with your hack?”

“I know what you meant. Now get in here.”

Linehan doesn’t move; he keeps on gazing at the city in the window while the ayahuasca keeps on crackling in his mind. It seems to have intensified now that he’s on the Moon. He feels so gone it’s almost as if the city’s gazing in at him: the heart of lunar farside, the translucent dome of downtown Congreve shimmering in the distance. The L2 fleet’s a blaze of lights in the sky beyond. The city beneath it has managed to slip through the events of the last several days. It’s been left unscathed.

So far.

“How are we getting in?”

“I’ll tell you as we go,” says Lynx. “Help me out with this.”

“With what?”

“In here, you moron!”

In the other room, Lynx is pulling material out of a rather large plastic container. Material that looks like—

“Those are suits,” says Linehan.

“No shit.”

“Just making sure we’re on the same page.”

“You’re really getting on my nerves,” says Lynx. He pulls the suit out farther, his new bionic hand hissing softly as he does so. He hands the edges to Linehan, starts pulling at the second suit.

“So where did you get these?” asks Linehan.

“Special delivery. They showed up while you were watching the vid.”

“I would have thought I’d have heard the door.”

“There was no knock.”

“I still would have noticed,” says Linehan.

“Alright, asshole, you win. They were here all along.”

“Where?”

“Behind that panel.” Lynx gestures at a panel in the wall. One that’s ever so slightly askew.

“How’d they get there?” asks Linehan.

“You ask way too many questions.”

“It’s how I stay alive.”

“But somehow you keep ending up on suicide missions.”

“That what this is?”

“Take a good look at those suits, Linehan.”

Linehan does. And then takes an even closer look.

“Wait a sec,” he says, “it’s not even—”

“But you’re wearing it all the same,” says Lynx.

The streets are a total mess. Everyone went to work this morning thinking it was just a normal day, only to realize it was anything but. Now they’re all trying to get home, or just trying to find a place to hide. Vehicles are jammed everywhere. Everyone’s honking. Everyone’s yelling.

“What do you think?” says Spencer on the one-on-one. “I think we need to get a little lower,” says Sarmax. They’re on a two-seater motorbike. They’re wearing civilian clothing. Sarmax is driving. Spencer’s just looking—at the data in his mind, at the chaos on the streets. Sarmax takes the bike up along the sidewalk, weaving through the crowd. People leap out of the way—he steers past them, and down a covered alley. The vaults of the city overhead vanish. They roar through the enclosure and out into more traffic. The city-center ziggurats glimmer in the distance. Eurasian flags fly atop some of them. American flags have been raised on others.

“Divide and conquer,” says Spencer on the one-on-one.

Sarmax says nothing. He’s lost in thought. Or maybe he’s just trying to avoid thinking. He’s been acting strange this whole time. When Spencer realized he was being paired with Sarmax he was grateful to be getting away from Linehan. But a day and a half with the new guy, and he’s feeling a little nostalgia for the old. Linehan may have been nuts, but at least he was hell-bent on avoiding hell. Whereas Sarmax has been running this mission like a man who’s tired of life, as though the one thing that mattered to him in that life is gone. Spencer doesn’t know what’s up with that. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to. He’s got enough on his hands dealing with what’s in his head anyway. And now a wireless signal reaches his brain.

“Ignition,” he says.

“Good,” replies Sarmax.

The only thing that gets Sarmax to talk is something that involves the mission. In this case the news that the thermite they rigged at the handler’s safe house has just ignited and is probably busy spreading to adjacent buildings. Nothing back at Jarvin’s place is going to be found intact. The only evidence of the mission that’s left is on this motorbike.

Which Sarmax is now sending down another alley. It slants downward, turns into a tunnel too narrow for larger vehicles. People jump out of the way as the motorbike roars past them, and then the bike pulls out into a larger concourse-cavern where buildings reach from floor to ceiling. The road here is much wider. Only it’s got even more traffic on it. The wrong type of traffic too …

“Shit,” says Spencer.

“Relax,” replies Sarmax.

And stops the bike. To do anything else would attract attention from the Eurasian convoy now steamrollering its way down the center of the road. The two men wait by the sidewalk with the other bikes and mopeds while the drivers of the vehicles trapped in the path of the juggernatus flee past them. The heavy Eurasian crawlers crunch the civilian traffic into so much wreckage. Spencer stares at the power-suited soldiers sitting atop those crawlers.

“The fucking East,” he says.

“Better stop thinking that way,” says Sarmax.

“Why’s that?”

“Because we’re here to look the part.”

Spencer’s been doing his best to make sure that’s the case—to make them into Russians who are part of this city’s vibrant émigré community—and who fortunately never did anything to get onto the list that the new bosses of this half of HK compiled in advance of their arrival. These two particular Russians have been living here for more than a decade.

Even though they arrived only yesterday. About five hours before Russian and Chinese soldiers showed up, in fact. Infiltration’s a lot easier if you arrive before a perimeter gets established. So now Sarmax fires up the motorbike again, takes the vehicle out of the cavern and through a long series of service tunnels. At one point they bump down stairs. Sarmax stops the motorbike just past the stairs and leaps off the back. Starts rigging things onto the wall.

“What’s that?” asks Spencer.

“Hi-ex.”

“To use on who?”

“Nobody.”

“What’s up with that?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Spencer obliges. Sarmax finishes what he’s doing and gets back on the bike. They keep going, wind along the passage, onto still wider streets, with buildings crowding up the walls along both sides. Cyrillic logos are everywhere. This is an area that’s nowhere near as crowded as some of the ones upstairs.

“I’m surprised it’s not bedlam,” says Spencer.

“It was,” says Sarmax, “when it got cleaned out.”

“Which was when?”

“This morning. This was one of the first places the ‘liberators’ hit. I’d estimate half the population got rounded up. Everyone who’s left is keeping a low profile.”

“Like us.”

“Just act natural,” says Sarmax. He turns the bike down a side street, hits the brakes, and slides off. He leans the bike against a wall and turns to Spencer.

“Let’s go,” he says. “Remember, only Russian from now on. I’ll do the talking.”

Spencer’s downloaded the requisite software. But Sarmax has known the language for years. Theoretically that puts them on the same level. But in practice, the edge goes to the man who’s actually run missions against the East before. He and Spencer walk farther down the side street past several storefronts. Nearly all are boarded up. The only one that isn’t has no signs. Noise can be heard from within, along with music and singing.

“Sounds like a whorehouse,” says Spencer.

“Because it is.”

A well-appointed one too. With a madam to greet them before they get much farther. She speaks to them in Russian.

“Do I know you gentlemen?”

“I hope not,” says Sarmax.

• • •

She hopes this isn’t what it looks like. Because it looks like the Throne’s stabbed her in the back. Like he’s got her imprisoned. And it doesn’t do anything for her peace of mind that the only other explanations she can think of are even worse. Perhaps the Rain got to the Throne after all. Perhaps they were waiting for him in his bunker. Perhaps they’ll be here any minute.

But the minutes keep on ticking past, and the only door to the room she’s in remains closed. No sound emanates from beyond it. All she’s got is the vibration that’s coming through the walls, the low humming of some engine. She wonders how long it’s been—wonders how long she’s been drifting in and out of consciousness.

Wonders whether she’s even awake right now.

The thought that she’s not continues to be the most optimistic scenario she can think of. But it’s not one she takes seriously. She thinks back to the Throne talking to her in the wake of her destruction of the Rain. Telling her he wasn’t sure they were all gone.

Or was that her saying that? That they needed to execute the original strategy: needed to combine with the Eurasians to sweep the globe and achieve certainty that the Rain were finished. But then Harrison said he was no longer sure that was the right strategy. That he wasn’t even sure the Eurasian executive node had been reconstituted yet. That he needed better data on what was going on in Moscow and Beijing before he renewed his overtures to the East. That he needed her help in obtaining that data.

And she said no.

She remembers now. She said no. And when he asked her why not, his voice wasn’t in the tone of a man whose life she’d saved. It was in the tone of a man who had never been denied. Who had learned nothing, as though the hours on the Europa Platform had happened to somebody else. She’d answered him—said she couldn’t play power games. He merely blinked, asked her what she meant. She tried to tell him, but she couldn’t explain.

Or maybe she can’t remember her own explanations. Because she’s having trouble piecing together what happened after that. Something about her begging him to finish what he started. Something about taking détente to the next level. But he’d just smiled—almost sadly, it seemed to her—just smiled and said that détente was a balancing act, that he was the only one who knew how to walk that line. That he couldn’t turn back the clock. That he wouldn’t want to. That he couldn’t rely solely on the advice of a computer …

She’d stared at him. She’d said, you mean me? He shook his head. Said—

But now she hears something. On the other side of the door. It’s unmistakable. It’s electronic locks sliding away.

“Who’s there?” she says.

There’s no reply. She hears manual dead bolts being slid from their grooves.

“Who’s fucking there?” she yells.

But there’s no reply.

The door opens—

You been here before?” asks Linehan on the one-on-one.

“What makes you say that?”

“You drive like a man who has.”

But Lynx just shrugs, keeps on maneuvering through the traffic on Congreve’s outskirts, toward the dome that’s rising in the distance. That traffic’s pretty light. It ought to be—it’s the middle of the graveyard shift. The sun is visible in the sky, but Congreve runs on Greenwich Mean Time. Totally arbitrary—but it has to run on something. And the sun’s cycles are of limited aid to those who dwell upon this rock.

“Like I said,” says Lynx, “you ask too many questions.”

“And you give nowhere near enough answers.”

“What exactly do you want to know?”

“I want to know about the fucking mission, Lynx.”

And why the fuck they’ve got no armor. All they’ve got is workers’ suits. They’re sitting in the cab of a truck loaded with ore. They got the ore from a train stopped in the rock fields outside of Congreve’s suburbs. Normally such a train wouldn’t unload until it reached its destination in central Congreve. But apparently there’s some problem with the rail downtown. Meaning that now lots of trucks are going where lots of trucks usually don’t go.

“I already told you about the mission, Linehan. We’re going to deliver this ore to Congreve’s citadel.”

“Ore that we’ve rigged with something.”

“We just picked it up. I’ve been driving the whole time since. How the hell could I have rigged it?”

“Maybe it was rigged already.”

“Linehan. We were two hundredth in line. There were at least two hundred trucks behind us. The moonscape back there looks like a fucking drive-in theater. How the hell would anyone know what chunk of ore was going to get dumped in the back?”

“You’re a razor, Lynx.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning stranger things have happened.”

Lynx laughs. “Surely it would have been easier for me to just rig the truck?”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because we haven’t been ordered to blow the heart of SpaceCom power in Congreve to kingdom come.”

“So you do know what our orders say.”

“What gave you the idea I didn’t?”

They’re at the city dome. They get scanned, waved through. They halt inside a massive airlock with two other trucks. The instruments show air and pressure manifesting all around them. The far door opens. They drive on through and into downtown.

“Let me put it this way” says Linehan. Possibilities swirl within his head, and he struggles to make sense of them. “What the orders say and what we’re expected to do may be two totally different things.”

“Where you going with this?”

“This could be a setup.”

“Sure,” says Lynx.

“You used the term suicide mission earlier.”

“That was just a figure of speech.”

“You sure about that?”

“I guess we’ll see.”

“How much do you know about me, Lynx?”

“I know you used to be SpaceCom.”

“And?”

“And I’m guessing that’s why someone thought you’d be useful in infiltrating your old gang.”

“Someone?”

“The Throne.”

“Who seems to be intent on mixing things up,” says Linehan.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning why aren’t you with the rest of your triad?”

“You missing your boyfriend?” asks Lynx.

“You’re missing the point. Your triad was hell on wheels. You guys were the fucking elite. And now you’ve all gone in different directions. Why would he break up a winning team?”

“It wasn’t exactly a winning team, Linehan.”

“It saved the Throne.”

“Who I don’t think wants to be reminded that he had to be dragged through two days of space like a diapered baby.”

“Oh,” says Linehan. “I get it. You’re happy to be away from those other guys.”

Lynx raises an eyebrow. Says nothing.

“You’re happy to be away from Sarmax and Carson because they never treated you as an equal and—”

“Shut up,” snaps Lynx.

“Why should I?”

“Because I’m in charge here, asshole!”

“And could your hard-on about that be any more obvious?”

“Go to hell,” says Lynx.

They’re coming into the center of the city now. Multiple road levels are stacked above theirs. Buildings tower above them. The dome’s sloping up toward its height. Stars shimmer through that translucence. Linehan feels it all pressing in upon him. He shakes his head.

“Look,” he says, “all I’m saying is that we saw the Throne in action. We got a sense of how that guy thinks. His paranoia puts ours into the goddamn shade. He’s separating everybody who might be a threat to him—throwing them off balance by sending them off in new directions.”

“Get a grip, man. He’s got bigger fish to fry than fretting over us.”

“Exactly,” says Linehan. “And now we’re one less thing he needs to worry about.”

“And you really think it’s a one-way trip.”

Linehan’s brow furrows. “So you really don’t know what our orders are.”

“Did I ever say I did?”

“About a minute ago. Yeah.”

“I may have given that impression. But I think I managed to avoid being explicit about it.”

“Why the hell are you playing these mind games with me?”

“Do I have to give you a reason?”

“Is it because that’s all anybody’s done to you?”

“Hardly” says Lynx. “Those pricks are gone. I’m free of them.”

“We’re about to try and sneak into the most heavily guarded fortress on the Moon’s far side without knowing the reason why.”

“I’m sure it’ll come to me,” says Lynx.

Once upon a time, there was a city on the edge of Asia. A city that didn’t like where the twenty-first century was headed. A city that could read the writing on the wall as China emerged from civil strife. A city that embarked upon the impossible and moved a thousand klicks to the east: Hong Kong became HK Geoplex, sprawled across the eastern half of New Guinea. By the early twenty-second century, that sprawl is the largest neutral metropolis on the planet.

Though it doesn’t feel so neutral anymore.

The soldiers now shoving their way into the brothel are behaving like a conquering army. Which is pretty much exactly what they are. They hit the Little Moscow district this morning, cleaned out the enemies of the state who thought they’d escaped that state, sent them to makeshift interrogation chambers, or just shot them on the spot. The lucky ones got sent back to Mother Russia for special treatment.

But that’s no concern of the soldiers now carousing in this brothel. Get their armor off and get enough vodka in them, and they almost feel like they’re on leave back home. But back there they can’t get their hands on women like these. These girls come from all over the world. They’ll do just about anything. And the soldiers now taking them don’t even have to pay. Better yet, they can make the girls pay. And some of them are doing just that.

There are two in particular who are really going to town. Two soldiers who are less interested in sex and more interested in simple violence. They’ve got some girls in a room all to themselves. They’re tossing them all over the place. The screams of the girls can’t be heard over the noise of the party that’s going on in all the adjacent rooms. And even if they could be, it’s not like anybody gives a shit. Not when the madam’s getting gang-raped and at least one girl’s been shot for resisting.

“Hey asshole,” says Sarmax.

The naked man turns round, his eyes widening as he sees the pistol and silencer protruding from under the bed—and then he pitches backward as a bullet crashes through his skull. The second Russian turns around casually from where he’s about to bring his fist down against the woman’s face—but even as he starts lunging toward his weapons, Spencer’s emerging from a closet and shooting him through the face. Both men lie there. Both girls start screaming.

“Shhhh,” says Sarmax, emerging from beneath the bed. The girls ignore him, keep on screaming. Sarmax fires quick shots into each of their heads. Bodies tumble while Spencer rounds on Sarmax.

“What the fuck is your problem?” he snarls.

Sarmax looks at him. “What’s yours?”

“I didn’t sign up for this.”

“You got signed up for it, asshole. And I’m not leaving any witnesses. Now how about you do what you’re here for?”

Spencer’s about to protest further, but the look in Sarmax’s eyes stops him. He kneels next to one of the Russians, stabs razorwire into his eye socket. The head wound his victim received was calibrated to avoid key circuitry. And now Spencer’s in that circuitry, dropping in amidst all the software, running the hacks he’s been preparing, siphoning off the codes and uploading them into his own head. His new ID clicks into place: he locks it in, turns to the second Russian, repeats the procedure. Only now he downloads the ID wirelessly to Sarmax—who accepts the codes and starts putting on one of the light armor suits that’s standing in the corner.

Spencer kneels on the floor and closes his eyes while he lets his mind waft out beyond the two nodes he’s just co-opted, out to where a broader zone awaits. It’s a zone he’s never seen before, save in the training modules through which his brain’s been prowling for almost two days now. Ever since they got their new orders from the Throne. Ever since they got sent to HK to do what Spencer’s doing now: making an incursion into the Eurasian zone.

And looking around.

At difference. Different colors, different lettering, different symbols—a whole new universe of net. Grids of light billow out all around him. Spencer sees the way those grids overlay against the prostrate HK zone. That net’s been commandeered at key points by Eurasian razors—and sliced down the middle too, cut off by what looks like an impenetrable wall, behind which the Americans are presumably up to pretty much the same thing the Eurasians are.

“Hurry it up,” says Sarmax.

Spencer’s working on it. He’s climbing up the ladder from the two Russians he’s just offed. Ascending a long stairway of codes: to the squad sergeant … the platoon lieutenant … the regimental colonel … the divisional general. Who’s at the level that Spencer wants. He reaches in, hacks into the staff plans that give him access to the troop deployments throughout the city.

“Time’s up,” says Sarmax.

Spencer jacks out, opens his eyes. All the bodies are gone, though patches of blood are still visible on the walls.

“Where did everybody go?”

“The closet,” says Sarmax.

“Not gonna help. This place looks like an abattoir.”

“I’ve also got this,” says Sarmax. He holds up another thermite bomb. Tosses it under the bed, turns back to Spencer: “By the way, question me again and it’ll be the last thing you ever do. Now get that armor on.”

“Jesus,” says Spencer, “relax.” He starts putting on his new armor. He’s almost finished when a blast shakes the room from somewhere close at hand. He looks back at Sarmax.

“That what you rigged back along that passage?”

“No, that was my bike.”

Another blast shakes the room. It seems to be much larger than the previous one. Much farther, too.

“That was the passage,” says Sarmax.

But it’s all the same to the soldiers in the rooms all around theirs. They’re getting the hell out of the brothel. They’re hitting the streets. Someone hammers on the door.

“I’m on it,” yells Sarmax in Russian. Turns back to Spencer. “Got some assignments for us?”

“I’m starting by having us ordered away from everybody who might know us.”

“And then?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Works for me,” says Sarmax.

They lower their visors and exit the room.

I figured it would be you,” she says. “Naturally,” replies the Operative.

He pulls himself into the room. He’s not wearing a suit. He closes the door behind him and she hears it lock. He smiles a smile that’s almost shy.

“I’m sorry about all this,” he says.

“What the hell’s going on?”

“It’s for your own protection.”

“Bullshit.”

“I wish it were.”

“I can protect myself just fine.”

“And therein lies your problem.”

She stares at him. He gazes back at her in a way that makes her realize he’s running some kind of scan. She feels the prickle of spectra upon her skin. He reaches around to the back of her chair, types in codes. The locks that bind her release. She floats free.

“Thank you,” she says.

“Has anybody been here?” he asks.

“Here being where?”

“This room.”

“Since when?”

“Since you got here.”

She looks at him incredulously. “You mean to say you don’t know?”

“Don’t you?”

“No,” she says. “I don’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“Oh you bastard,” she says. “You fucking bastard.”

“I’m not sure I follow, Claire.”

“Then follow this, asshole. I’ve been drugged. Someone got to me. Someone fucked with me. And I’m thinking that someone’s you.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re the one who’s standing there laughing.”

“Do I look like I’m laughing?”

“You look like you’re fucking with me.”

“I was following orders.”

“Whose orders?”

“Whose would you think?”

“I was thinking the Throne. But that was before …” Her voice trails off.

“Before what, Claire?”

“Before you started asking me whether anyone had been here before you.”

“Don’t you think the Throne would want to know that?” he asks.

“I would think the Throne would be aware of that already.”

“I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask,” he says.

“Well, the answer is, I’ve no idea.”

He looks around. He seems to be scanning the rest of the room now. He turns back toward her, frowns.

“In any case, you’re right. The Throne ordered you placed here.”

“Here being where?” she asks again.

“This ship. We’re eight hours out from moonfall.”

“We’re going to the Moon?”

“Why so surprised? You’ve been sent this way before.”

“But we never made it that time.”

“This time you will. We’re almost there. We left Earth a day and a half ago.”

“But why the hell are we going in the first place?”

“The same reason you’re confined within this room.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will in a moment.”

The city center rises to the very ceiling of the dome. Most of it is off-limits to anyone lacking the proper credentials. Lynx and Linehan are showing what they’ve got to one of the innermost checkpoints. Guards wave them through.

“That was easy,” says Linehan.

“That was just the warm-up,” says Lynx.

He’s nosing the truck up a ramp that’s about ten stories off the ground. Congreve sprawls below. Platforms and elevators are all around. They’re in the outer sectors of the city’s citadel. There’s a lot of construction going on. A nice chunk of dirty fission released right here would blow the whole thing clean to hell, taking them down with it. Something that Linehan’s all too aware of. He can virtually feel the blast ripping him apart already. He wonders if that’s what people mean by premonition.

“We’re getting into the thick of it,” he says.

“Don’t think I don’t know it,” replies Lynx.

They brake, dump the ore onto a conveyor belt, watch as the belt takes their cargo around a corner and out of sight. Ostensibly there’s no further purpose for them here. Another truck gets in behind them, starts honking.

“Let’s get out of here,” says Linehan.

“Maybe,” says Lynx.

He eases the truck along, starts heading down another ramp. Razorwire extrudes from his bionic fingers, slides into the instrument panel. The truck’s engines splutter. They’re still running, but only barely.

“Oh dear,” says Lynx.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that.”

“Doesn’t matter what you saw,” replies Lynx, and eases the truck down a smaller ramp. He stops the engine, gets out. A power-suited SpaceCom soldier on an adjacent platform fires his jets, blasts over to where Lynx is standing.

“What the hell’s going on?”

“Breakdown.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Don’t know.”

“Hold on,” says the suit—he steps off the platform, drops away. Linehan and Lynx watch him disappear.

“So we just wait here?” asks Linehan.

“No,” says Lynx. “We walk.”

“Sorry?”

“You heard me. Get out of the cab.”

Linehan hops out. Looks around.

“Isn’t he gonna be back any moment?”

“Probably. But we’ve got orders.”

“What?”

“Let’s go, asshole.”

They proceed to the side of the ramp and hop down to the one immediately below. It leads beneath a ceiling overhang, ends in a door. Linehan glances around.

“No,” says Lynx. “Just act like we belong here.”

Because according to the zone they do. Lynx reaches out to the panel adjacent to the door, keys in access codes. The door slides open. He and Linehan enter and the door shuts behind them. They’re standing in an elevator, which starts to rise.

“What about the truck?” asks Linehan.

“What about it?”

“We’re just leaving it there?”

“Does it look like it’d fit in here?”

“What’s the suit gonna think when he gets back to find us gone?”

“He’ll think whatever he’s told.”

“And what’s he being told?”

“That we got ordered to get the hell off the premises.”

“And the cameras at the exit? What are they gonna show?”

“Nothing. Hate to break it to you, Linehan, but we don’t exist anymore.”

“You mean we’ve exchanged one false set of pretenses for another.”

“Linehan, nothing the zone says is ever false.”

The elevator doors open. They walk out and find themselves in a different part of the base. This section looks pretty complete. They go through another door, find themselves in the midst of a lot of activity. Power-suited soldiers are everywhere. So are workers.

“Here we are,” says Lynx.

“We being who?”

“Workers who enjoy a lot more trust.”

Who never leave this base. Who have their quarters within its endless corridors. Whose loyalty is beyond question. Who are able to come and go into the most secure areas.

Which is what these two are doing now. Seems that some of the fuel lines up on one of the flight decks are low on pressure. They’ve been ordered to help out. They climb up a grilled staircase, get in another elevator—emerge from that into hangars within which sit shuttles getting a working over. A soldier steps in front of them.

“Sir,” says Lynx.

“Auxiliary hangar D,” says the soldier, gesturing at a doorway. “Get moving.”

“Sir,” says Lynx.

“That’s on the roof,” says Linehan on the one-on-one.

“What’s wrong? You afraid of heights?”

“No.”

They step through a door, look down a flight of stairs at a massive platform that extends out across the dome’s summit. Spaceships and smaller hangars are strewn across it. The curve of Moon is easily visible from up here. The L2 fleet hangs like a starfield in the sky above them.

“Cool,” says Linehan.

They walk down the staircase, start moving across the platform toward the farthest of the hangars. As they do, a vibration shakes the surface beneath them. Movement from the corner of their visors: one of the ships is ascending, its engines glowing white-hot. They keep going, enter the hangar.

Within that hangar is a single craft. A transport shuttle. One large enough that it’s being serviced at multiple levels.

Lynx and Linehan are standing on the highest one. They head over to the fuel lines, get busy. No one pays much attention.

“Funny” says Linehan, “these fuel lines look pretty good to me.”

“What do you know,” says Lynx. “You’re right.”

“So do we keep working?”

“Sure we keep working. On something else.”

“Got anything in mind?”

“I do,” says Lynx. He pats the side of the ship. “We need to get inside and join its crew.”

“To go where?”

“Only destination worth the name.”

They’re getting the hell out of Little Russia. The news that two soldiers have gone MIA reaches them about ten minutes after they split. Which is fine by them. They’ve turned over a whole new leaf by then: switching identities, switching regiments, and transferring from there to special assignments that will keep them as far away as possible from anyone they’re supposed to have served alongside.

“Nice one,” says Sarmax.

“There are times I impress myself,” says Spencer.

Times like now. He’s maneuvering through the Eurasian zone while he and Sarmax sit on the back of a crawler that’s busy running down anything in its way. The other members of the squad they’ve been assigned to are sitting all around them, making small talk, taking in the sights—and hanging on while the crawler roars after two others, climbing up roads toward the height of the Owen-Stanley Range. The city spreads out below them.

“This is Seleucus sector,” says Spencer.

“So what if it is?”

“I heard something really nasty happened here.”

“Nasty being what?”

“Some kind of AI demon.”

But whether it was as bad as what’s going on right now is open to question. Because at least that demon fucked off. Whereas the Eurasians seem unlikely to leave anytime soon. Spencer’s window on the Eastern zone indicates that a full five percent of the city’s population is slated for arrest. And another ten percent is scheduled for reeducation camps that will be so extensive that several districts are going to get bulldozed to build them. The populace is selling one another out as fast as they can. Partly to settle old scores. But mostly just to try to save themselves. Though it doesn’t seem to be working that well.

“They should rename this place Purge City” says Spencer.

“They may yet,” replies Sarmax.

One of the other soldiers chooses that moment to start up a conversation. He starts asking Spencer where he’s from. Spencer tells him Irkutsk. According to his files, that’s the truth.

It’s also bad news. Because it turns out this man’s from Irkutsk too. Before he can ask another question, Spencer asks him which neighborhood—thereby buying himself time to manipulate his own answer. One that’s on the other side of town from the one that the soldier’s mentioning.

But it turns out the soldier knows someone in that neighborhood anyway. He starts playing the name game with Spencer. Starts asking awkward questions.

“Let me handle this,” says Sarmax on the one-on-one.

“Sure,” says Spencer.

Sarmax leans over to give the soldier a little friendly advice. Tells him that the man he’s talking to served a little too long in Africa. That he had a violent disposition even before he was tortured by Ugandan rebels for twelve hours straight a few years back. That it’s impressive how together he is now that he’s been transferred out of there. How it’s a shame that the only thing that still sets him off is talking about the past.

The soldier takes the hint. He and Sarmax talk about other things. Sarmax has done enough missions behind the walls of the East to hold his end up. He knows what’s expected of him—knows how to stay on the right side of the line that separates casual bitching from treacherous muttering. He knows how to elicit information too; the kind that may not be readily accessible in the databanks. After a while Sarmax leans back and disengages, starts up the one-on-one once more.

“Apparently there were some pretty severe border riots earlier,” he says.

“Yeah?” asks Spencer.

“Yeah. Everyone was trying to get out. Trying to cross to the American sector. Turns out they ran into a crowd trying to get away from the Americans.”

“And let me guess—there was a massacre?”

“Of course there was a massacre. During the course of which East and West exchanged some shots.”

“Fatalities?”

“The East lost at least fifty”

“Is that what they’re claiming, or what this soldier’s been told?”

“This soldier saw it.”

“But it didn’t escalate.”

“Seems that cooler heads prevailed.”

“Meaning more senior.”

“Both sides have orders to keep the peace.”

“But the rank-and-file’s straining at the leash,” says Spencer.

“Yeah. These guys seem to think the day of reckoning is right around the corner.”

“Maybe they’re right.”

“Only one way to find out.”

The crawler rounds a corner. HK’s new border comes into sight. Barbed wire’s everywhere. Tops of buildings have been torn off, used to erect walls that block the roads. Soldiers on either side watch their counterparts warily. The crawlers roar parallel to the barricades.

They enter a complex that was obviously a school until very recently. Now it’s been turned into some kind of strong-point. The vehicles come to a halt in a courtyard. An officer barks orders; soldiers start to bring out captives in electrocuffs and eyeless helmets.

“You called it,” says Sarmax.

“Nice to know I haven’t lost my touch.”

He and Spencer watch from atop the crawler as the captives are shoved through a door in the vehicle’s side. Spencer runs through the dossiers in his head: arrested HK scientists, with a special destination. The engines start back up. The crawlers get moving again, away from the border and the checkpoints and back toward the center of the brave new city. He and Sarmax are on escort duty now, charged with carrying out the one rule of such assignments: stick close to what you’re trying to protect.

“We’ve got company,” says Sarmax.

“I noticed,” says Spencer.

There’s no way he could have missed it. The vehicles now swerving in behind theirs are accompanied by new developments on the grids of the Eastern zone. Developments that underscore all too clearly the tensions within it. Spencer extrapolates along those tensions—follows them as they branch out along the fault lines so cunningly concealed from low-grade razors. Fault lines that are all too obvious to him. Because, in reality, the Eastern zone isn’t just one zone.

It’s two.

“The fucking Chinks,” says someone.

“Stow it,” says the officer.

But the point’s been made. The sentiment’s been voiced. The vehicles behind this one are Chinese, as are the soldiers atop them. Spencer can’t see what those soldiers are saying to one another. For all he knows it’s something nasty about Russians.

Not that it really matters. The Eurasian alliance isn’t built on mutual love. It’s built upon a common foe. Standing up against the Americans will call for sacrifice. Thus the integration of the zones and the merging of the war machines. Thus a partnership that has endured for decades—a partnership whose watchword is joint ownership. And whose golden rule is keeping your ally apprised.

As far as anyone can tell.

“Makes sense,” says Spencer. “We’re riding shotgun on some big-time shit.”

“So now they are too,” says Sarmax.

That’s just the way it works round here. But it’s useful confirmation for Spencer as to the value of the cargo he’s snagged. Even though he was never really in doubt. The custom hacks furnished him by the Throne were just too good. If they’re going to get caught it’s unlikely to be here. It’ll be somewhere deeper.

“Here we go,” he says.

The crawlers are emerging from between buildings, rolling through a cleared area carved out of mountain slope. One of HK’s airports is up ahead. The civilian craft have been shunted aside. The vehicles of the new order are everywhere. Some are lifting off from runways. Some are landing. Some are disgorging equipment.

Some are waiting.

“That’s the one,” says Sarmax.

“Looks that way,” says Spencer.

“And we’ve got tickets?”

“Christ I hope so.”

They roll toward the waiting jet-copter.

• • •

Two people in a room bereft of windows. The man seems far too calm. The woman’s struggling to remain so.

“Is this about the Rain?” asks Haskell.

“The Rain are finished,” replies the Operative.

“We can’t be sure of that.”

“They’re finished,” he repeats.

“How do you know that?”

“You destroyed them.”

“I destroyed all the ones I could find. I need the president to link with the East to—”

“He can’t do that, Claire.”

“Why not?”

“Because the East can’t be trusted.”

“It’s not a matter of trust. I can monitor—”

“But who monitors you?”

She looks at him like she’s just been slapped. She starts to speak. Stops. Starts again.

“So it’s me the Throne fears.”

“Why else would you be his prisoner?”

“His prisoner? Or his property?”

“Do I look like a lawyer, Claire?”

“I’ve been naïve,” she mutters.

“There are worse crimes,” he replies.

“Such as?”

“Treason.”

“Is that what you’re accusing me of?”

“Technically, you’re already guilty of it.”

“For what?”

“Aiding and abetting the traitor Matthew Sinclair.”

“Jesus Christ,” she says. “I was a CICom agent. I was acting under his orders!”

“Are you still?”

“If you’re serious about that question, the last thing you deserve is a fucking answer.”

“What about what you did before it all started up at the Europa Platform?”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Isn’t it true that you spoke with Sinclair?”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’m not just saying it. I know it. You hacked into the L5 fortress. That alone could get you tossed out an airlock.”

“So go ahead and toss me.”

“I’d rather you told me why you made the call.”

“I wanted to talk to him.”

“And what did you discuss?”

“I needed to find out if he was guilty.”

“But you already knew he was.”

“Oh?”

“Why else would the Throne arrest him?”

She stares at him. He laughs. “That’s a joke,” he says.

“You’re really funny.”

“But Sinclair really was guilty.”

“But I had to put that question to him. I had to see how he’d respond.”

“And did he admit it?”

“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 détente 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.”

“That’s a one-way trip if ever there was one.”

“That’s how we intend it. Sarmax has a death wish anyway. And Spencer—”

“I thought Sarmax was your friend.”

“—has gotten out of so many no-win situations he can’t recognize his luck’s finally hit empty. The divvying up of HK is giving us the leverage we need. The Eurasians are seizing all key assets in their sector and pulling them out of the city with a particular emphasis on top scientists. Spencer and Sarmax have managed to pull escort duty on some physicists who are being sent to some sort of base beneath the Tibetan plateau where they’re going to be put to work. We don’t think that base is the one we’re looking for. But we’re pretty sure it’s not far off. The hope is that the two of them can take it from here.”

“And if they can’t?”

“Then we continue to live with uncertainty. War might be averted anyway. War might occur regardless. We don’t know. But we have to do everything we can to prevent the Eurasians from bringing disruptive technology to bear against us. And we have to keep the knowledge of such technology from our own hardliners. Who—”

“They still exist?”

“Of course they still exist. And they’re all the more dangerous now that the president’s lost the lion’s share of his Praetorians.”

“But the SpaceCom plot to trigger war between the superpowers—”

“Was destroyed before it could strike. But the puppet-masters escaped.”

“The puppet masters were Autumn Rain!”

The Operative grins mirthlessly. “As you’ll recollect, there were two sets of puppet masters. Autumn Rain was pulling everyone’s strings. But even at the time it seemed pretty clear that the SpaceCom general Matthias was reporting to someone else within Space Command. Someone we’ve been working to identify this whole time. And it turns out the Rain weren’t the only ones to crash the Europa Platform. SpaceCom sent a team in, too. With orders to waste the president.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“I never saw them.”

“You’re giving them too much credit, Claire. They went out early. The Rain got wind of them first and you know how the Rain feels about competition for the executive node. We found what was left of SpaceCom’s finest in a New London sewer. They weren’t a factor in what happened subsequently. But someone in SpaceCom is still trying to take down the Throne.”

“And we finally know who that someone is?”

“We do. The rot goes straight to the top.”

She mulls this over. “He dies tonight?”

“That’s the idea,” says the Operative.

“That won’t be simple.”

“Neither is our plan.”

• • •

Congreve drops away as moonscape expands out on all sides. Linehan checks out the view. It’s been a long time since he’s seen it. Yet somehow it’s been with him all along.

“How many you think we’re carrying?” he asks.

“Those holds are equipped for a hundred,” replies Lynx.

“There’s more than that in there.”

“I doubt we’re going to hear any complaints.”

The men and women on this ship have done their time in every mine from here to Imbrium and back. But they’ve all acquired enough clearance to get assigned to more sensitive tasks. Which doesn’t mean they’re unmonitored. There are cameras all over the cargo holds in which they’re sitting. Supervisors too—not that there’s much for them to do during the transit. As long as they’ve got access to the camera feeds from which they can monitor the rest of the ship, they’re free to just find a room.

And wait.

“What happened to the two we replaced?” asks Linehan.

“We didn’t replace anybody,” says Lynx. “There are just a few more supes on this ship than usual.”

“But nothing outside the norm.”

“Not according to the zone.”

On a large transport shuttle a lot can pass unnoticed. A lot can go unseen. Though the view outside shows everything a man could ask for. The curve of the Moon is getting ever more distinct. Stars are starting to fill the window. There’s a rumble as the ship’s main engines engage.

“How long’s the haul?” asks Linehan.

“A few hours. You may as well get some sleep.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Suit yourself, as long as you’re not planning on talking.”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“I’ve got a lot of shit to prep before we reach L2. How about you back off and leave me to it?”

“At least tell me whether we even know where in the fleet he is.”

“I’ll know more when we get there.”

“You can’t hack it from here?”

“Hardly. We’re sixty thousand klicks out. We’ve got to get a lot closer before I can start doing that.”

“So you think we’ve got a chance?”

Lynx sighs, stares out the window. “Sure we’ve got a chance,” he says.

“Of taking Szilard out.”

“Yeah.”

“But not of living through it,” says Linehan.

“Can’t have everything.”

“We’ve got a lot in common, don’t we?”

“How do you figure?” asks Lynx.

“We both keep getting set up by our bosses.”

“That’s the truest thing you’ve said so far.”

“Maybe I should quit while I’m ahead.”

“But you won’t—”

“I can’t. Don’t you resent Carson for making you do this?”

Lynx laughs. “You’ve got it wrong, man. I’m loving it. Chance to make history.”

“By stopping the head of SpaceCom from starting a war?”

“Nah. War’s inevitable. Everyone’s got too big a hard-on for it. Whether or not Szilard’s got something up his sleeve, someone’s going to light the fuse. All we can do is hope it doesn’t happen before we can make our mark.”

“This tin can—”

“Would be toast. If it kicked off right now, the Eurasian gunnery at L4 would send us tumbling back to Congreve. Assuming we weren’t vaporized right off the bat.”

“Cheerful, aren’t you?”

“Just realistic.” Lynx pulls his wall straps tighter. Leans back. Pulls wires from a wall panel. “But if you’ve got a god, you might want to settle up before we get there.”

“I’ll settle with God once I’ve settled with Szilard.”

“I’m starting to wonder if you know the difference,” says Lynx.

Runway falls away as the jet-copter’s engines flare. The craft banks steeply, curves out over the Owen-Stanley Range. New Guinea’s laid out before them.

“And we’re off,” says Spencer.

Sightless helmets staring: they’re sitting across from two of the captives. One of whose lips are moving silently as he mouths prayers.

“Hack this craft and find out everything you can,” says Sarmax.

“Already did,” says Spencer.

“What about Jarvin’s files?”

“I’m still working on it.”

“So hurry it up.”

He’s been too busy keeping their identities afloat to worry about the files he and Sarmax ransacked at the handler’s safe house. He’s starting to multitask as best he can. But so far the most valuable thing he’s gotten was in the jet-copter’s computers. And it’s not much. Just a route—and a destination, a hundred klicks southwest of Lhasa, in the Himalayas. Everything else is denied this craft’s pilots.

But Spencer’s working on the angles. The whole Eurasian zone seems to be turning in his head now. Over the last few minutes it’s been getting ever louder. Now it’s like a siren screaming through his mind. He’s never felt so wired. And yet the Eastern zone isn’t telling him too much about the basements and corridors on the maps he’s now accessing. He can see the blueprints. But he’s missing key data. He’s pretty sure that’s how it’s been designed. He won’t know for certain until they make landfall, which won’t be for several hours.

So he does what he can in the meantime—continues to make inroads on Jarvin’s files, and while he’s at it, double-checks the cargo the ship’s carrying. He focuses anew on the dossiers. Three of the physicists on board defected from the East awhile ago. Now they’re on their way back, to face some new employment conditions. Spencer scans their files, analyzes those of their colleagues—tries to read the tea leaves contained within, but doesn’t get very far.

“Can’t base anything on this,” he says.

“Lot of nuclear expertise,” says Sarmax.

“Means nothing.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re riding one of Christ knows how many cargoes. All going to the same general area. We just happen to be on the nuke bus.”

“Go on.”

“And no way were they gonna leave this kind of talent back in HK. They’ll grab them as a matter of course. Along with anyone with expertise in nanotech, directed energy, stealth—you name it, they’ll have it. Trying to deduce what we’re looking for from what they’re vacuuming out of HK is an exercise in futility.”

“You’re probably right,” says Sarmax.

“Of course I’m right. And it looks like most of the really sensitive stuff under those hills is cauterized from wireless, if not cut off altogether. We’re going to have to wait till we get a little closer to find out for sure.”

“Works for me,” says Sarmax—turns toward the window.

• • •

A clean sweep,” says Haskell. “Against enemies within and without.”

“That’s the idea.”

“The Throne’s making a mistake in keeping me out of this.”

“I don’t think so.”

“There’s too much at stake, Carson.”

“That’s why we can’t risk you being compromised.”

“You really think the Throne’s enemies might get to me?”

“Can you guarantee otherwise?”

“Why the hell would I have destroyed Autumn Rain if I was plotting against the Throne?”

“It’s a good point.”

“So the Throne shouldn’t be keeping me stowed away like this.” She’s disturbed to find how angry she’s getting. “He should be bringing me online.”

“Unless.”

“Unless what?”

The Operative just stares at her. She stares back.

“What are you getting at, Carson?”

“I’m hoping you can answer that question for me.”

“You think that someone might still have a back door to my mind.”

“Can you rule it out?”

She shakes her head.

“We know those doors exist, Claire. We used one on the Platform. So did the Rain. We’d thought they were all accounted for. But we have reason to believe that some of the original CICom data on you might have wound up in the hands of Szilard himself. Meaning that as a weapon you’d be worse than useless. You’d be turned against us by SpaceCom.”

“Not necessarily. It all depends—”

“On what sort of back doors we’re talking about. Exactly.”

“Where’s your evidence?

“Call it a hypothesis.”

“A pretty specific one. Why do you think Szilard—”

“Never mind what we think about the Lizard. What matters now is you.”

“I can find out,” she says.

“Find out what.”

“If there’s a back door.”

“Really?” He moves toward her.

“Given enough time,” she says. She draws away.

“We don’t have that time,” he says.

“What are you proposing?”

“I’m not proposing anything.”

She starts to lunge aside. But he’s already driving the needle into her flesh.

It’s as though she’s falling down some long tunnel where there’s no light and no darkness save what’s already in her head—swirling all around, solidifying into fragments of mirror that reflect everything she’s ever dreamed straight back into her eyes … blinding her, spinning her around to the point where it’s like the universe is nothing but rotation and she’s the only constant. But everywhere she looks it’s the same: the face of Carson and all he’s saying is labyrinth labyrinth labyrinth that’s all you are and all you’ll ever be—

It all snaps into focus.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“I’m operating,” he replies.

He’s not kidding. He’s got her strapped back into the chair, her blood filled with painkillers so she can’t feel a thing. She can see through only one eye. The other one’s dangling in the zero-G beside her nose. He’s plucked it out. The optic nerve is hanging there, along with tangles of circuitry that lead back inside her eye socket. He’s got his razorwire extended from one hand into the circuitry. But she sees something else, too: droplets of blood floating in front of her, and she suddenly realizes that—

“You’ve cut through my skull,” she says.

“Trepanation,” he replies. “Of a sort.”

Messing with her brain. She can’t see what he’s up to there. But she can feel it. Colors surge against her. Landscapes churn past her. Some moon’s hovering somewhere out in front of her. It starts to swell ever larger.

“Have you found the door?” she mutters.

“You’re the door,” he says. “You always were.”

“I never wanted that.”

“That never mattered.”

Everything goes black.

Prowling through corridors of dark. Climbing up stairways filled with light. Watching from behind the screens as the clock keeps on ticking and the ship keeps on moving away from the farside toward the only libration point invisible to Earth. The fleet that’s deployed there is the largest in existence. It’s the ultimate strategic reserve. If the war to end all wars begins it’ll lay waste to the Eurasian bases on the farside even as it duels with the L4 fortresses—even as its squadrons scramble left and right around the Moon to envelop the Eurasian nearside operations.

Or maybe not. Maybe it’ll just stay put. There are so many battle scenarios flitting through Stefan Lynx’s head, and none of them really matter: they’re just the projections from which he’s reverse-engineering the actual composition of the fleet and mapping out the vectors via which he’s going to penetrate to its heart. That fleet stacks up in Lynx’s mind like some vast web. The only thing that counts now is confronting the spider at its center. Whether or not Szilard is guilty is incidental—there’s a larger game afoot. The ultimate run’s under way. Lynx has never felt so high. Beneath him engines surge as the ship keeps on taking him ever higher.

She wakes again. She’s in a zeppelin. She’s been here before. She’s looking out a window at a burning city far below.

“Hello Claire,” says Jason Marlowe.

She whirls. He’s sitting cross-legged against the far wall. He’s smiling like he did right before she killed him.

“You’re dead,” she says.

“And you should know,” he replies.

“Why are you here?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that.”

“I’m being fucked with, Jason.”

“By who?”

“By Carson. He’s inside my head.”

“Was wondering why it’s feeling so crowded in here.”

“You’ve been here all along?”

“I wish you’d joined us, Claire.”

“I wish I had too.”

“We were Rain.”

“Maybe we still are.”

“No,” he says. “You killed us all.”

“There’s really no one left?”

He replies. But as he does so his voice is drowned in static. Even as his mouth blurs.

“What’d you say?” she asks.

He speaks again. The same thing happens.

“You’re being blocked,” she says.

“No,” he says, “you’re being blocked.”

“Try it again,” she says.

“I said you’re blocked, Claire.”

“Am I?”

“Why is it so hard for you to admit? Is it because you always thought I was the weak one?”

“You weren’t weak. I was just stupid.”

“It’s not too late to save the world.”

“I can’t even save myself.”

“Carson might do it for you,” he says.

“I doubt it.”

“You should have joined us.”

“You said that already.”

“Because it bears repeating.”

“If the Rain had won, it wouldn’t be any better.”

“Why not?” he asks.

“They didn’t even have a program, Jason. They had no idea what they were going to do once they’d taken over.”

“Yes they did. Take humanity to the next level.”

“What does that mean?” She points through the window at the sky. “Huh? Other than more fucking spaceships—what does that mean? They were divided among themselves. They couldn’t decide whether they should rule humanity as cattle or raise the race to some kind of posthuman status. They would have fought among themselves as soon as they took power.”

“Christ, Claire. They already were fighting among themselves. That was their genius. They were at war with one another the whole time. They stabbed their leader in the back—”

“You mean Sinclair?” She feels some kind of pressure building in her head.

“—and then they fell to bickering. They fell apart even as they had it all within their grasp.”

She feels like her skull’s about to explode.

“And I could say the same of you,” he adds.

The pain goes nova.

• • •

Clouds whip by. The islands of Indonesia flit past. Sarmax watches the world reel below, and it’s a ld that’s dead to him. His mind feels the same way. There’s no light left in it. His Indigo’s gone. He knows she must have died long ago. And even if she didn’t, she’s dead now that the Throne’s destroyed what’s left of the Rain. Yet somehow Sarmax feels like he killed her twice. He wishes he’d made sure of her the first time.

But nothing’s ever sure. And the dead have a way of refusing to stay that way. She’s still burning in his head.

It’s all he has. It’s fine by him. Asia creeps closer as he readies for one last run.

She’s in some room making love to Jason and it’s so long ago. She’s fifteen and so is he. She’s riding him for the first time and she’s wishing she could stay this way forever. He’s telling her he loves her. Telling her this really happened. She’s telling him she believes him—telling him that she wants to live with him forever in that long-gone country of the past. She feels as though she’s never getting out of here, that her mind’s a cage and she’s never even going to see the bars. And now she’s on top of Jason and her hair’s dangling across his face and he’s gasping and she’s crying and begging him not to grow any older and he’s moaning the future’s already here and then he shimmers and fades and vanishes and she’s weeping and telling him she’ll find him but all there is to find is the note under the pillow that says you know I know you lie.

• • •

Hatchet man with too much downtime. Man of action who’s unaccustomed to the undertow of his own mind: it’s hauling against him in ayahuasca rhythms as he watches the Moon dwindle and stares at the lights flickering off Lynx’s spaced-out face. Linehan knows he was never supposed to get this far. He should have been nailed once he’d helped bring down the Elevator. He was a loose end that should have been snipped. In a way he was. It’s almost like everything that’s happened since has been part of some fucked-up afterlife. As though the tunnel beneath the Atlantic was really the journey to the underworld.

And back. Because four days ago he made it through the temple of the Jaguars and out into a whole new world. And yet it’s ended up being a lot like the life from which he’d been spat. New bosses, old bosses—makes no difference in the end. The higher you get, the more dangerous you are to those you serve and the more lethal your missions become. Living on the edge—and Linehan has been there so long he wonders if he was ever anywhere else. It’s all he has, this crazy game where the rules change as fast as you can make them up. He’s had his mind blown these last few days. He never knew how good he was until he went rogue from SpaceCom—never dreamed he’d be capable of pulling it off with no cards to show and even fewer to play.

And now he has to go and do it one more time. He remembers the Throne’s briefing. The president said the Rain were gone, but that they’d so shaken up the world it was about to go over the cliff anyway. He looked at Linehan and said soldier, you’re a hero. He said, I need you on the moon. Linehan remembers saying sir, yes, sir. Remembers asking where was Spencer.

Which is when the Throne told him he’d be working with Lynx this time, that Spencer’s one hell of a razor, but that Lynx is even better. Linehan just shrugged. He liked Spencer. Loved him, even—loved to hate him, really—and he worries that with the guy gone maybe his luck’s run out at last.

Which would be a shame. Because coming back to L2 is coming back to where it all began. He trained there, came up through the ranks there. And it was the machinations of L2 that left him on Earth running for his life. Now he’s back to take the life of the man who once controlled his. The Throne said he can retire once that’s happened. Linehan has some vague notion of what such a life would be like: a life without someone to pursue, a life without someone to run from. He has some idea of just heading out to Mars—just rigging a hab halfway up some mountain and spending his days watching red sprawl below and universe cruise by overhead. He knows that’ll never happen. He knows what happens to those who live by the sword. He wants it no other way.

No way out: she’s running through the burning streets of Belem-Macapa and the burning Elevator’s plunging from the sky toward her. She can’t remember how she got here. She can’t remember what happens next. She thought it involved Jason. But Jason’s dead. And she’s about to join him. Because there’s no way out of this. The mob’s in full cry after her, screaming for her blood, screaming that they’ve found themselves a Yankee razor. It’s true. She’s American. She can’t help that. She can’t help what her people have done. She can’t give these people what they never had. She’s got only one thing left to give. She turns a corner.

And finds she’s reached the river. The Amazon stretches away on both sides, winding through the city. There’s so much smoke now that she can barely see the pier that stretches out into the midst of the river. She runs along the pier, reaches its end.

A boat’s sitting there. It’s small—pretty much a gondola. Carson stands in its rear. He’s leaning on an oar, gazing up at her.

“Which way?” he asks.

She leaps in, tells him any way will do. But he tells her she has to choose. Between upriver and downriver. Between jungle and sea. She stares at him. She can’t speak. The mob’s storming onto the pier behind her. Carson glances at them, smiles. Looks back at her.

“Choose quickly,” he says.

But she can’t. She can’t choose at all. Even as the mob closes upon her. Even as she realizes her mind’s not her own. It’s as though someone’s pulling her strings. As though someone’s about to cut her loose.

“Take her apart,” says Carson.

Men wielding machetes leap into the boat.

Sarmax is off in his own little world. That suits Spencer fine. He’s not interested in dealing with that guy’s issues. All he’s interested in is what’s in his own mind.

Which is intricate beyond belief. Now that they’ve crossed the coast of Vietnam, more of the Eastern zone’s becoming visible. He’s got access to a lot more data than he had previously. Things that were blurry are becoming clear. Things that weren’t even visible are coming into sight. Most of those things have locks. But that doesn’t matter, because he’s starting to make inroads anyway. The files of Alek Jarvin float before him: onetime handler of CICom and fugitive for the last few days of his life. Spencer still hasn’t cracked them.

And he’s growing increasingly sure they contain something he needs. Something he’d better figure out quickly. His mind’s operating on multiple levels now. His thoughts are accelerating. He’s starting to feel like he’s tripping again. Faces dance on the edge of his zone-vision, but every time he looks, they’re gone. He feels like he’s become a ghost, like he’s been summoned from some world beyond to haunt this one for all its sins. His view into the cities of the East keeps on growing. He’s finally got the access he’s always wanted—he looks in upon those lives and streets and cities and knows himself for the voyeur he always was. He gets it now—sees that those lives were always more interesting than his own. That what’s inside a screen was always more compelling than whatever might appear within a window. By far. He’s come so far too—doesn’t want to stop now as his mind races toward the mountains, drops through shafts, darts in toward all the secret chambers that lie beneath.

Now she’s in a room without windows. Or doors. She’s sitting at a table. The U.S. president sits at the table’s other side. They look at each other. “Are you really Harrison?” she asks. “Does it matter?”

“I think it does.”

“Indeed,” he says. “Have you been granted an audience under the deepest of truth-serums or is this just Carson rummaging through your subconscious, using this face as a filter? I’m afraid I’m not in a position to give you absolute proof either way.”

“But we can talk anyway,” she says.

“I suppose we can.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Betray me.”

“I can’t betray anyone, Claire. By definition.”

“You really think it all revolves around you.”

“I’d be a fool to believe otherwise.”

“I don’t understand,” she says.

“I’m responsible for our nation’s future.”

“You think I stand in the way of that?”

“I think our partnership was unnatural, Claire.”

“Unnatural?”

“Temporary, then.”

“Ah.”

“The product of a common purpose. We had a common enemy. When that enemy was beaten, what was I to do?”

“Trust me.”

He laughs in a way that’s not unkind. “I’m not a normal human being, Claire.”

“You think I am?”

“I think you genuinely wished to help me.”

“Then why—”

“It wasn’t a case of what you wanted in the present moment. It was a case of what might happen next. Do you really think you’d have been happy carrying out my orders?”

“I could have given you advice—”

“And you really think I’d need it? I know what I’m doing, Claire. I’ve ruled this country for more than two decades. I led our people out of chaos. Out of cold war.”

“But now war’s right around the corner.”

“We’ll avert it yet.”

“And if we don’t? My battle-management capabilities—you’ll need me—”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. We’ll see where matters stands when Carson’s finished.”

“You fucking bastard,” she says. “You’re trying to turn me into a bunch of programs that you can copy. You want to own what’s in my head without having to deal with me.”

“You speak as though you were your own creator.”

“Jesus fucking Christ—”

“We built you. We paid for you. We’re not in a position to negotiate with you every time we want to take a step you might disagree with.”

“You mean like launching an all-out strike against the Eurasian Coalition?”

“You have to admit that if there was some way to just wipe out the East’s military at no risk to ourselves—just take them out and take their cities, let the population live beneath our guns—things would be a hell of a lot simpler.”

“But there’s no fucking way—”

“No,” he says. “There isn’t. War would be insane. That’s why I’ve done everything possible to preserve the peace. The only window of opportunity for striking the Coalition would have been if you’d been able to restart our zone without restarting the East’s. But since that wasn’t possible—”

She looks at him. She tries to stop herself from what she’s about to say. But she can’t.

“It was possible,” she whispers.

“And you didn’t tell us because you guessed I was contemplating a preemptive strike against the East?”

She says nothing. He shakes his head.

“You see what I mean? You’re too dangerous, Claire. Too many ideas of your own. Wouldn’t be long before you started wondering why the executive node was in my head instead of yours. Or wondering whether you could build a better one to supersede mine. You’re Rain, Claire. They wanted to rule the Earth-Moon system. Why should you be any different?”

“I never wanted to rule anything.”

“History is littered with leaders who said exactly that. Some of them even believed it.”

“You never did.”

“And I never said it.”

“You’re missing the point—”

“No,” he says. “You are. Because it doesn’t matter what you want. What matters is what you’re capable of.”

“Since you’re inside my fucking head, why don’t you tell me.”

“Anything,” he says. “You’re out of control. You’ve already gone beyond everything you were designed for. Why are you laughing?”

“Because that’s exactly what Sinclair said to me a few days back.”

“So why did you talk to him?”

“He—he was the closest thing to a father I ever had.” She’s surprised at how steady her voice sounds.

“Don’t you realize how black a mark it was against you when we found out?”

“You weren’t supposed to. It was a private matter.”

“My prisons aren’t some opportunity for therapy, Claire.”

“What will you do with him?”

“Execute him. Eventually. Once it becomes clear we’ve no further need for him. Once we can. Why are you crying? He would never have shed a tear over anybody.”

“I know,” she mumbles. “I know. He was cold and heartless. So are you. You all are. I’d sweep you all away if I could. I’d—”

“You see? You can’t hide anything from us.” He gets up, walks around to her side of the table. Looks down. “Not when we’re right here with you.”

“Fuck you,” she says.

“It’s a tragedy that you’ve so much power and so little idea of how to use it.”

“You’re the tragedy,” she says. “You’ll strangle yourself in your machinations yet.”

“You first,” he says.

And puts his hands around her neck, starts squeezing. She kicks against him. But his grip may as well be iron.

“It’s time,” he mutters.

She fights for air. There’s none. Everything goes black.