“Catchy,” says Sarmax.
The last door swings open above them.
They rise through a series of ventilation shafts, coming out into one of the auxiliary hangars. It’s just been overrun by American forces. But Carson and Haskell are no longer trying to talk to them. They’re hacking them instead, splicing additional orders into the ones that the soldiers have just received, establishing the two of them as high-value assets that need to be removed from the premises immediately. The hangar doors open as an unmanned SpaceCom drop-pod descends into the chamber. Hatches on the pod slide back. The Operative shoves Haskell in, following right behind her. Engines roar as the hangar drops away, followed by all of Tsiolkovskiy base. Haskell gets a glimpse of American assault troops and ships pressing in upon it from every side. She feels the drop-pod accelerate. Moon streaks by below.
But she’s detecting something else above.
“The hinge of fate,” says Carson softly.
“Is that all?” she replies.
Snipping off the loose ends. It’s what Jharek Szilard is good at. It’s why he’s now second-in-command to the president herself. And why a lot of people aboard the surviving corvette are suddenly realizing they’ve just become something they never planned on being.
Expendable.
Lynx is doing all he can to salvage the situation. He knows the whole thing was a longshot to begin with. He knew all along that should the charges aboard the corvettes not go off, Szilard would have backup guns ready to take out those ships, along with announcements to the rest of the fleet about how the corvettes contained the Eurasian saboteurs who just blew the Montana. Lynx has managed to hack the wireless conduits on the hi-ex, not to mention fucking with the guns that the nearby dreadnaughts have trained on them. He thought he’d done it in such a way that everyone would think the orders were to let the corvettes land—that he could run interference on Szilard’s personal supervision. But now more guns are swinging onto the corvette. He’s giving contrary instructions; his mind races out into the L2 fleet—out in too many directions. He’s getting overextended. He can’t keep up. He knows he’s dead. The screens around him start to flare.
Pressurized armor offers only so much protection. Spencer’s getting knocked black and blue. Yet even with all the specs in his head, he’s having difficulty processing what he’s seeing on the screens. Hammer of the Skies is more than two klicks high, more than half a klick wide. It shits out one nuclear bomb every second, channeling that detonation against the massive pusher plate layered up against its foundation as the ship climbs a column of atomic fire out of the Himalayas. Nuclear contamination rains down beneath it. But when you’re fighting the war to end all wars the last thing you’re worried about is environmental impact statements.
“Holy shit,” says Spencer.
“For sure,” says Sarmax.
The screens show it plainly—that the thing they’re in is merely the pride of the massive fleet it’s leading. The Eurasian Coalition has committed its main reserves from bases hidden deep beneath the Earth. The scale of the force now entering the fray beggars description. The sky above western China is turning black with ships and flame. And now those ships open fire on everything above them.
It’s unmistakable. A new factor’s entered the equation. Something’s bringing long-range fire to bear upon the L2 fleet above them. And from the look of the emissions now lacerating the vacuum, those shots are coming all the way from—
“Earth,” says Haskell.
The shit going on overhead is invisible to the naked eye. But no one uses those anymore anyway—it’s all enhanced vision and extended wavelengths now. The sky is almost caked with fire. Shots slam against L2’s dreadnaughts even as they return the favor.
“The East is bouncing DE off our nearside mirrors,” says Haskell.
“Of course,” says Carson. She’s propped up next to him in the cockpit. He’s injected her with something that makes it tough to feel her flesh. Everything’s gone all fuzzy. But her mind’s working on overdrive all the same.
“We need to talk,” she says.
Lynx isn’t one to miss an opportunity—his mind shoulders the pilots aside, seizes key software nodes in the cockpit, and sets the controls to send the corvette skimming past the nearest dreadnaught and straight at the converted colony ship that’s just beyond it. Both those ships have other shit to worry about right now—like the fact that they’re being shelled from the other side of the Earth-Moon system. Disorder hits the L2 fleet as it struggles to react to the new threat. The corvette plunges in toward the colony ship, which fills the screens as the pilots struggle desperately to regain control. Lynx hasn’t the slightest intention of letting them do so.
Clearing ten thousand meters,” says Spencer.
“Roger that,” says Sarmax.
The coast of Asia is passing beneath them. The vid-feeds show the chaos that’s gripped the Chinese cities across the last hour. The American attack has punctured the Eastern def-grids in multiple places and left the population centers helpless.
“They’re still intact,” breathes Spencer.
“Exactly,” says Sarmax.
The logic’s plain enough. Why wipe out cities when you can tip them into anarchy instead? The electric grids are gone. The zone’s fucked. Spencer and Sarmax gaze on pure pandemonium in the streets of New Shanghai and all its brethren. The occasional DE blast from the American satellites overhead has only added to the madness.
“Not gonna distract the East that much,” says Spencer.
“But every little bit helps.”
Meaning that every military resource the Coalition had in its megacities has been totally preoccupied. Meaning there’s been that much more that the East’s command structure has had to worry about. But now the tide is turning. The fleet that’s just over a minute into its ascent is spreading out around all sides of the Hammer, all ships careful not to stray within the fiery clouds of the behemoth’s exhaust. Yet Spencer can see that he hasn’t been thinking big enough all the same …
“Fuck,” he says.
“Hello,” says Sarmax.
Off to the north: Hammer of the Skies has a twin. With its own fleet spread out around it. Combined, the carpet of Eurasian ships extends for several hundred klicks in all directions. An armada the likes of which the world has never seen—and Spencer can only imagine what it must look like from the American positions in low-orbit.
Blotting out the fucking planet,” she mutters.
“I see it,” he says.
The camera-feeds they’re hacking into go out. Haskell can’t tell whether they got destroyed or whether she’s just lost zone-contact with what’s going on closer to the Earth. There’s enough shit going down that the answer could be both. Though the lunar portion of it still seems to be holding up. Congreve sprawls on the horizon, drifting ever closer. It looks almost serene from up here.
Haskell’s mind is anything but. She turns toward Carson—is surprised to find she can move her neck far enough to do so. He glances at her while he works the craft’s controls.
“Don’t say it,” he says.
“How do you know what I’m about to say?”
“Because you never could fool me.”
“You’re saying you can read minds too?”
“I’m saying we have a connection.”
She almost smiles at that, shakes her head.
“Why did you join with Sinclair?”
“You asked me that already.”
“He’s going to eat you alive.”
“He’ll choke if he tries that.”