The Burning Skies

by David J. Williams

  The control room,” breathes Linehan. Only nothing human’s at the helm. Whoever was running the show before this thing got commandeered has been turned into sliced meat. It’s on autopilot now, with a very specific set of directives. The room’s shifting from side to side like a boat in an angry sea. The screens show carnage: bunkers getting burned, Praetorians getting laced, metal getting smashed.

  “So much for the outer perimeter,” says Spencer.

  “Shut up and burn it!” yells Linehan.

  They lower their arms, start firing. Screens shatter. They start spraying the computers behind the screens. The floor’s tilting—Spencer and Linehan are firing their thrusters, trying to stabilize themselves as the monster they’re in revs up to speeds well beyond its safety margins. The screens that still remain show it’s no longer making for the Hangar.

  “Going fucking haywire,” screams Linehan.

  And then the screens go blindingly white.

  Electromagnetic pulse washes across them, but only barely. The warheads weren’t designed to spray massive amounts of radiation everywhere. All they were designed to do was annihilate several klicks of target.

  “It’s gone,” says the Operative.

  They are too. They’ve left the room behind, and are now blasting through the gutted chambers of the ultrarich. They can see bodies everywhere. But it’s what they can’t see that’s worrying them …

  “Pursuit,” says Sarmax.

  “No shit,” says Lynx.

  Shots are streaking past them. Machinery’s surging after them: droids, dust, minidrones, the works. They’re turning on their afterburners. But this place is a maze. They can’t hit full thrust. They’re heavily outnumbered. Meaning they’d better do something fast.

  “Back to the cylinder,” yells Sarmax.

  “Fuck no,” screams Lynx. “Let’s hit the hull!”

  “Neither!” yells the Operative—and explains as they go.

  They’re setting off nukes!” yells Spencer.

  “Can you see where?”

  “The direction of the cylinder! Can’t tell beyond that!”

  Their sensors are overloaded, but their vehicle is still intact. Still running amok, it lurches across an uneven area of the hull—almost tips into a crevasse, but somehow finds the far side. The remnants of the screens show Praetorians and droids scattering, doing their utmost to give it a wide berth. It steams past the main fighting, starts to leave the Hangar behind.

  “Let’s get out of this fucking thing,” yells Spencer.

  “Why?” asks Linehan calmly.

  Spencer stares at him. They’re both clinging onto the walls. “Because we could tip over at any fucking moment!”

  “Which means that nothing sane’s getting near us!”

  “Because we’re going to fucking crash!”

  “It’s still a damn sight safer than that,” says Linehan, gesturing at a rear-facing screen. The ravaged Praetorian bunkers look like some pockmarked lunar landscape. Drones of all description are waging a full-on assault. Praetorian shakers and crawlers are emerging from hatches farther back in what looks to be some desperate counterattack. But it’s clear that the inner perimeter’s about to get overrun.

  “See what I mean?” says Linehan, turning back to Spencer. “Yeah? Well, what about that?”

  And gestures at the same screen. Linehan turns back toward it.

  “Shit,” he says.

  The Rain’s machinery is in hot pursuit of the Praetorians who just blew their ace card. Lasers and bullets streak out in search of targets that keep on making turns that leave them one step ahead of the hunters. Carson and his team are coming back into the domain of gravity. But they’re not letting that slow them.

  “We need some fucking margin,” mutters Sarmax.

  The Operative says nothing as he leads them down corridors that have seen more than their share of firefight already. Looks like a battle went down here between the Euro cops and their out-of-control droids. Looks like the cops got busted for keeps.

  “Nasty,” says Lynx.

  They shoot through housing levels where ceilings and floors have been carved out with what looks to be an industrial-strength laser. They surge through what might have been a park, come back into more housing levels. The drones are catching up.

  “Now!” yells the Operative.

  Their bomb racks start spewing out disruptor grenades while their helmets discharge smoke. They toss hi-ex over their shoulders for good measure, swivel their jets, turning and surging out into what’s left of a school. Explosions start going off behind them. They hit the ventilator shafts, start searing through them.

  “I think we lost ’em,” says Lynx.

  “Not for long,” says Sarmax.

  “All we need’s ten more seconds,” says the Operative.

  • • •

  The carnage on the screens has to be seen to be grasped. But the onslaught of machinery hasn’t reached the Hangar yet. At least not on the surface. It’s getting held up by the last stand of the inner perimeter. And back at the Hangar itself … “The fucking doors—”

  “They’re opening!”

  And something’s becoming evident on top of the shaking of the machine they’re riding. Something that’s reverberating through the vibration that’s all around.

  “Damn,” says Linehan, “they’re going for it.”

  They’re through into a tube about five meters wide. There are rails running through it. It looks familiar.

  “The Magnates’ private railway” says Lynx.

  “We’ve been here before,” says Sarmax.

  “Not this section.” The Operative hits his jets, blasts up the tunnel. It bends along a gentle curve. The curve grows sharper, and then dead-ends.

  “We should be going the other way,” says Lynx.

  “I don’t think so,” says the Operative. He touches the wall, applies pressure, works a manual release—watches as the wall swings back to reveal more rail.

  “Nifty,” says Sarmax.

  “And off every fucking map,” says the Operative. He hits the jets.

  “Let’s hope so,” says Lynx.

  They cannon down that tunnel. Five seconds, and they reach another dead end.

  “End of the line,” says the Operative.

  He turns to a fusebox, starts throwing switches in a sequence. A wall starts folding away. The men stare at what’s behind it.

  “Shit,” says Sarmax.

  “Now we’re talking,” says Lynx.

  They’re in a control room, but they’re controlling nothing. The off-the-leash war machine they’re riding is rolling away from all the fighting. All the men within it can do is check out the latest thing to hit their screens.

  “The Throne’s fucking launching!”

  “I realize that, dipshit!”

  It’s hard to miss. It’s fifty meters long, the last ship remaining to the man who’s desperate to avoid becoming the last president of the United States. It’s powering out upon jets of flame, rising above the Hangar and the fighting, lashing out with its gunnery in all directions.

  In the cockpit Haskell’s presiding over all of it. Grey of walls giving way to black of space; vast doors quivering as the blast of engine hits them; rockscape beginning to recede; Praetorians trying to buy the ship some margin…. Myriad images swirl through her head as she monitors the moments after main engine start. The hands of the pilots fly over the controls. Her two bodyguards are staring straight ahead, at the windows past which the Earth is reeling. The ship’s accelerating.

  And then shuddering as something smashes into it.

  • • •

  Move,” hisses the Operative.

  But Sarmax and Lynx are already leaping onto the ship that’s their ticket off this dump. It’s small. No larger than a jet-copter, it was intended by the Euro Magnates as an escape craft, though they probably never figured on a getaway under these circumstances. The wall beyond starts folding away to reveal the glimmering of
space. Sarmax and Lynx vault into the two pilot seats. The cockpit canopy hisses shut, though there’s neither time nor need to pressurize the ship. The Operative grabs onto straps at the back, shoves aside the spare Euro suits that take up most of the space remaining. Sarmax powers up the craft.

  He’s hit!” yells Linehan.

  By a KE hurler mounted by the Rain upon the cylinder: a laser aboard the president’s ship takes it out even as it fires, but the damage is already done. The ship’s gyros just got nailed, locking the craft into an arc that’s way too tight. It’s veering crazily back toward a point on the asteroid about half a klick from most of the fighting, coming in virtually on top of a certain wayward vehicle …

  “We’re gonna get tagged!” yells Spencer.

  “So don’t just stand there!” screams Linehan, who fires his thrusters and rockets along the rungs that lead through the hatchway in the control room’s ceiling.

  • • •

  Haskell’s just sitting there, visor down and suit sealed. Fear’s some sensation far away. She sees rock coming in toward the window, sees the lips of one of her bodyguards moving in silent prayer. She knows she’s the only one worth praying to. Her mind’s surging out through wires throughout the ship as she runs end-arounds, bulldozes a secondary route to prop up what’s left of the rudders. It wouldn’t mean a thing if the pilots weren’t so good. But the deep-spacer flight crew strapped in before her possess intuition of their own. Born of life-or-death moments way past Mars. Moments like this one now. Pilot and copilot and navigator: she gathers their minds into hers as the ship staggers toward the asteroid.

  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 the
m 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.”

  They’re hurtling out of the L3 vicinity, and everyone’s fingers are on the edge of the trigger. Every airlock’s booby-trapped. Haskell watches it all on her screens while her bodyguards watch her, eye the bridge’s only door.

  “Rearward hull breach,” says the pilot.

  “Confirmed,” says the navigator. “Combat,” says the voice of the Throne.

  The metal walls shudder as an explosion passes through them.

  We’re catching up,” says Lynx. “No way we couldn’t,” says the Operative. The ship they’re in is the fastest the Euro Magnates could configure. And the craft they’re chasing is wounded. They’re overhauling it quickly.

  “Suits,” says Sarmax. “On the rear of the hull.”

  “Blast ’em,” says Lynx.

  “Not so fast,” says the Operative.

  • • •

  A signal echoes in Spencer’s helmet. The codes check out. Spencer takes the call.

  “Yeah?”

  “Spencer,” says the voice of Carson. “You reading me?”

  “Jesus,” replies Spencer. “That Carson?”

  “You guys turn up in the strangest places.”

  “So do the Rain. They’ve boarded.”

  “Thought you’d say that.”

  The ship is caught in an agony of reverberations as explosions slam against bulkheads somewhere farther back. The speakers are a cacophony of voices and shots. It sounds like all hell’s breaking loose back there. Haskell’s bodyguards have their guns out, pointed at the cockpit door. One signals for her to huddle in the corner. She does. “Rear units no longer reporting,” says the copilot. “Cauterize,” says the Throne.

  Haskell obeys, sending out the signals. The ship shudders. And diminishes.

  Smooth move,” says Sarmax.

  “Ain’t gonna be enough,” says Lynx.

  Close enough to be visible in the windows: the rearmost sixth or so of the president’s ship has suddenly been jettisoned, along with the two men desperately clinging to it.