Sarmax hits the gas. Hits it again. Nothing’s happening.
“What’s the problem?” says the Operative. “The problem is I can’t get this bitch started.”
“Keep trying,” says the Operative, and extends razorwire, starts getting in on the systems. Lynx is doing the same. Only to find that there’s some kind of lock on the ignition. Some kind of Euro code that’s still holding out. Something they’d better hack fast.
“We got company!” yells Sarmax.
Two trapdoors blasted aside, and Spencer and Linehan come out onto the siege-engine’s roof. The ship’s almost on them. It’s like some asteroid all its own now: blotting out the sky, engines flaring, nose lifting …
“It’s gonna miss!” yells Spencer.
“But we can’t!” screams Linehan, and fires all his thrusters on full-blast, streaking upward. And suddenly Spencer gets it, sees in a sudden flash what Linehan’s doing, sees why—and hits his own jets, sears in toward the metal that’s rushing past. A turret whirls toward them; he hits evasive action, knows himself for dead, watches as though in a dream as the turret disintegrates, the cylinder-based DE cannon that nailed it flaring on his screens as onrushing metal fills his visor …
“They’re crippling it deliberately!” screams Linehan.
They crash against the hull.
Screens and windows within a woman’s mind: the asteroid falls away even as the last of the exterior cameras show suited figures leaping onto the ship. More shots strike the ship as it hurtles past the asteroid, straight toward the cylinder—and then it somehow straightens, roaring parallel to it. The ship’s gunnery teams are exchanging fire with cannons on the cylinder. The ship’s cameras are getting taken out. The pilots are relying only on the cockpit window. The ship starts using the last of its batteries to fire missiles into the cylinder—into both cylinders. The batteries are going blind. The missiles are anything but. They crash home.
Minidrones streak into the Euro launch chamber, start opening fire. But the issues their target is having don’t extend to its guns. Sarmax starts unleashing the escape craft’s flechette cannons on full auto. Tens of thousands of pieces of metal start tearing the minidrones to pieces. What’s left of them retreat.
“They’ll be back,” says Sarmax.
“We’re through!” yells the Operative as he finds the key reverses the ship’s codes in a single stroke, locks them in under a new imprint. Sarmax ignites the motors. The ship lifts off from the floor, turns its nose toward the tunnel, fires a bracket of torpedoes.
What the hell do you mean?” yells Spencer. It’s not the best time for a conversation. They almost missed getting a foothold. They’re right at the back of the ship, where the hull narrows around the engines. Plasma pours past them. The asteroid’s dropping away; the surface of the cylinder whips by. The other cylinder’s coming into view as well. But Linehan seems to be intent on getting his point across anyway.
“I mean the Rain could have destroyed this ship! They didn’t! They were picking off the monitors! Taking out the guns! They were hitting us to wound! Hitting it to send us on this course!”
“They weren’t trying to crash us?”
“Acceptable fucking risk,” screams Linehan. “So they could fucking board it. Jesus Christ!”
He can’t point. All he can do is stare. At the Platform rocketing below. At shards of mirrors. At fragments of debris. At the blackened cylinder.
And at more suited figures rising from it.
The ship curves away from the Platform. The pilots are getting it back under control. They’re flooring it. The Platform’s being left behind. In Haskell’s mind a countdown’s closing on a zero that’s precisely calibrated. A voice sounds within her head.
“Situation,” says the Throne.
“Ship stabilized,” she replies. “Warheads away. They’re lodged in the cylinders. But we may have company.”
“Beyond the ones we picked up at the asteroid?”
“Don’t know.” Though she’s got a nasty hunch.
The torpedo blasts start ripping the tunnel apart. The roof of the station’s starting to collapse. But Sarmax is hitting the auxiliary jets, letting the ship swan sideways from the minihangar—and then firing the main thrusters. The cylinder starts to recede, along with its twin and the rest of the battered infrastructure that comprises the Europa Platform.
“Good fucking riddance,” says Lynx. Both cylinders suddenly shine as though suns have ignited within them.
Light’s blinding them. Their visors react instantly, going opaque. Linehan leans against Spencer, touches helmets. “You called that one,” mutters Spencer. “They had no choice,” replies Linehan. “But the Rain got aboard anyway.”
“Think they’d miss the endgame?”
• • •
Cockpit sensors pick up the gamma rays. The nukes that just ripped apart the cylinders and tore chunks off the one remaining asteroid were far more powerful than those that shredded the Helios. The Rain’s machinery just got annihilated. Along with every last Praetorian at the Hangar.
Haskell feels she’s about to join them. Because she can’t evade the truth. She can see all too clearly how the Rain have played this—that they prepared for the eventuality of the Helios getting nailed. That they were willing to risk crashing the presidential ship in order to get aboard it. The ones she saw leap on were the InfoCom operatives. Who could be Rain. Who could have been turned since, or replaced. But it seems unlikely. She checked them out already. And she’s got footage of their suicidal assault on the siege tower. She feels she’s seen them. Seen what they’re up to.
It’s what she can’t see that has her worried.
Scratch one Platform,” says Lynx.
“Those were our soldiers,” says the Operative. “Give respect.” As he says this, he glances at Sarmax, who’s gritting his teeth, gunning the ship, sending it streaking forward. “Easy,” says the Operative. “What?” asks Sarmax. “Focus on the now.”
“I’m there,” says Sarmax, gesturing at the screens. The blast’s fading from them, to reveal empty grids up ahead. And the president’s ship.
• • •
We gotta get forward,” says Linehan.
“I’m working on it,” replies Spencer.
They’re crawling along the side of the ship like mountaineers whose slope keeps shifting like it’s trying to throw them off. And while they’re moving forward they’re scanning as best they can. But all they can see is metal up ahead. As well as …
“Behind us,” says Linehan. “Stars—getting blocked.”
“By what?”
“Pursuit.”