“Unacceptable,” says a voice.
The man who’s calling the shots. Huselid’s taken up position in the cockpit. He’s scarcely a few meters from where she’s crouching with her bodyguards, just aft of the forward gunners, as far away from all the windows as possible. They’ve already argued about that. She felt she should be in another vehicle altogether—that putting them both together was too great a risk. He pointed out that if one of them got hit the other would be pretty much fucked anyway. And that they were too likely to lose contact with each other in the maelstrom now unfolding. Looking at what’s going on outside, she’s starting to think he’s probably right.
“We’ve got no choice but to accept it,” she says. “We’re taking fire from every direction.”
“I can see that!”
“Then you can also see there’s no way out of this save forward.”
“Which we’re going to lose the ability to do unless we make good our losses.”
“With reinforcements,” she says.
“Of course.”
“Can’t go fishing for those without taking a risk.”
He laughs. “What the hell would you call this?”
Movement close at hand. Spencer sees figures climbing up what’s left of the spaceship hull. They’ve clearly seen him and are making straight for him. All he’s got is a sidearm.
They’ve got a lot more than that. They’re Praetorian marines in full armor, their guns pointing right at him.
They’re almost on him. Spencer’s comlink buzzes. He activates the receiver. Uncoded transmission echoes in his head.
“Give us one good reason why we should let you live.”
“I suck a mean dick,” replies Spencer.
The suit jams a weapon right up against Spencer’s visor. “How’d you survive the crash?”
“You’re Autumn Rain,” says someone else.
Spencer laughs. “If I was, think that I’d be sitting around waiting for you assholes?”
The suit pauses for a moment. The others gesture. It looks like they’re arguing among themselves. Spencer can understand their dilemma. They don’t know what’s going on. Everything’s gone wrong. They need information. They suspect everybody who might have it. Spencer decides not to wait for them to make up their minds.
“Look,” he says, “I’m a razor from the ship’s bridge crew. The Rain brought down the zone and then hosed down the fleet with that DE megacannon outside—”
The marine cuts him off. “If you’re a razor, motherfucker, you’re definitely Rain. Only way you could be alive.”
“Tell him what happened to Petyr,” says another voice.
“I can guess,” says Spencer wearily.
“He’s a fucking vegetable. We left him laying in his own shit about half a klick back.”
“The Rain wiped him out.”
“They wiped all the razors out.”
“I wasn’t in the primary node,” says Spencer. “That’s how come they missed me. I was secondary razor—”
“Doesn’t mean shit to me, fuckface.”
“Enough of this.”
“Kill him and let’s go.”
“Where?” asks Spencer.
They glance at each other. They don’t have a great answer for that. And at that moment more vibrations shake the ship beneath them. The Praetorians are looking at what’s over Spencer’s shoulder. It’s clearly making an impression on them. He tries to take advantage of that fact.
“And by the way” he says, “the gang now approaching is going to face the same problem with you as you’ve got with me. If you start killing survivors from this crash out of hand, you’ll just be answering their question for them.”
“We should go,” says someone.
“Start running from our own side?” asks someone else. “That’s going to get old fast.”
“How do we know it’s our own fucking side?”
“Look at those things,” says someone. “Those are fucking earthshakers coming up that valley.”
“And a shitload of cycles on the flanks.”
“If that shit ain’t Praetorian, we’re fucked anyway.”
“Jesus Christ,” says someone else. Spencer sees flaring reflected in his visor. He turns to face what’s coming.
The Praetorian triad’s going full throttle, punching out ahead of the main formation. The bulk of the combat’s now behind them. Which isn’t to say they’ve left it in the dust altogether. Sarmax starts unleashing his pulse rifle at long range on some wayward drones. The three men roar at ground level up and over a hill. The crashed ship is just ahead of them, half protruding from the gash it tore through the cylinder’s side. There’s some kind of activity atop what’s left of it. The Operative starts broadcasting on what’s left of the Praetorian frequencies.
“This is for anyone who’s still in the fight. What’s coming up behind us is the Throne’s own Hand. We’re going to storm the Aerie and rip the Rain apart. Tune into the following frequency and stand by for new downloads. Anyone who doesn’t can die right here.”
“How do we know you’re not the Rain?” says someone. Sarmax fires his pulse rifle, takes off that someone’s head. The body topples.
“Any other questions?” yells the Operative as he hurtles in.
There aren’t. He knows these marines could just open up on him en masse. But he also knows they know they’re within range of the long-range guns atop the heavy vehicles. That they’re just going to have to roll the dice. The three men roar past the ship’s wreckage: the Operative to the left, Sarmax to the right, Lynx straight above. They keep on going, broadcasting that same message. The area of heaviest drop-ship deployment is just ahead of them.
But now the Operative feels something descend through his mind—something that suddenly drops in from above him in the jury-rigged zone, wraps him in its endless folds, commandeering his suit and his brain, propelling the latter out into the minds behind him and wiring over downloads. They’ve tuned into the frequency he stipulated. Ten Praetorian marines, one Praetorian officer, one Praetorian razor—
Not a Praetorian razor.
Something else. The Operative feels something click within his skull. He hears a voice. It’s Haskell, along with the Hand’s own codes.
“Carson,” she says. “Leave this one to me. Keep going. Keep gathering the lost under our banner.”
He acknowledges, and accelerates as Lynx and Sarmax keep pace.
• • •
Spencer watches the suits swoop past—watches as those suits are blotted out by a woman’s face that expands in from what seems to be some suddenly activated zone. The face curves about him, envelops him in endless eyes. And now a woman’s voice enfolds him within some endless hollow: