David Williams - The Burning Skies

And leaps feet-first into the Montana’s control center.

They’re dangling on a tether that’s feeling ever more precarious, descending toward a sheer wall of metal that drops down into eternity. Their camo is put to the ultimate test as they close in on the structure’s summit. Neither man says anything. They’re preserving absolute radio silence.

Though Spencer can sense the Manilishi in his head anyway, echoing through his software. He still has no idea how the fuck she’s doing it. And he’s got other things to think about anyway. Because the curve of the dome wall’s stretching in toward him. They’re close enough to make out lettering painted upon it. Cyrillic and Mandarin, telling the ones who read it absolutely nothing other than where the doors are. There aren’t that many. They’re so airtight they’re almost impossible to spot. Spencer’s praying he is too. Most of the activity he can see is confined to the labyrinth of catwalks that obscure the foundation of this gigantic building. But there are eyes and sensors everywhere. Spencer’s pretty confident about the ones out here. He’s far less certain about whatever lies inside. He’s managed to get a tentative grip on the zone within—managed to pry his fingers through a crack in the defenses. But only barely. He can’t make out what’s going on. He’s figuring he’s going to get busted at any moment. He’s figuring he needs help.

And suddenly he’s got it. From the Manilishi. She’s showing him what he needs to see—exactly what pressure to apply as he alights on the surface of the structure, right at the point where the dome starts to really slope toward the vertical. He activates his magnetic clamps, starts crawling down the metal like an insect toward the nearest door. Sarmax is right behind him. And the Manilishi’s right beside him, encroaching through the circuitry of the door, toward the comps that crouch within. The door is barely discernible, but it seems real enough. As is the hack he’s now running on the pneumatic equipment on its other side. He’s streaking through endless wires, forestalling fail-safes, fending off countless counter-commands from deeper within the building. He’s ignoring the commands without them even knowing it. He’s sending in his own instructions.

The door slides open.

Spencer slides in. Sarmax follows. The door shuts behind them.

“ Weirder by the second,” says Spencer.

They’re standing in a chamber. Each wall contains another door. One of them is open. Sarmax starts toward it, just as it slides shut and a panel in the wall beside it swivels aside. A wicked-looking barrel protrudes from within. It’s aimed directly at Sarmax’s visor. Sarmax leaps to one side. The gun tracks him.

“ Fuck,” he says.

“ It’s okay,” says Spencer. “I got control.”

“ So tell it to point somewhere else.”

“ Tell me what the fuck’s going on and I just might.”

Two people in a room that’s no room. The woman’s sitting. The man’s starting to look more than just a little tense. “Don’t you control Spencer?” he asks. “You tell me.”

“ I thought—”

“ You thought wrong. Someone got to him.”

“ You don’t know what I was about to say.”

“ Oh yes I do.”

“ How’s that?”

“ I’m reading minds now, aren’t I?”

And even as she speaks, the room fades out. To be replaced by the room she started in. She’s back in that chair, strapped in again. Only now she’s encased within a suit, staring at Carson through a sealed visor. He’s dressed in battle harness. The room’s shaking as the engines of the president’s ship fire. The forces of acceleration are pressing against the walls.

“ All you’ve got is all I want you to see,” says Carson.

“ We’re landing,” she says.

“ We’ve started our final approach into Congreve.”

“ And you’re going to kill the president.”

“ And I’d want to do that why?”

She says nothing. She’s too busy testing the barriers around her. What she’s wearing is no normal suit. It’s more like a cage whose bars are wires that extend into her nerve endings. She can see how it’s been done—can see how this thing has been rigged to give whoever’s running it every advantage. It’s like it’s a well and whoever’s wearing it is at the very bottom …

“ Because you’ve gotten what you came for,” she says.

“ How to hack the Throne himself to forestall the transfer of the executive node. And now you’re going to take him out and take it for yourself.”

“ Actually I had in mind giving it to someone.”

“ Who’s that?”

“ You.”

She stares at him. “Why would you want to do that?”

“ Because I’m still in love with you.”

She laughs. “That is so much bullshit.”

“ You say that without even hesitating.”

“ You don’t even know the meaning of the fucking word —”

“ I tried to warn you, Claire.” He shrugs. “Tried to tell you just how beyond the range of ordinary definition you are. Transhuman in a way that the rest of us can barely fathom . Think: your intuition, what does that really mean?”

“ Ability to compute in advance of stimuli,” she says, almost automatically.

“ And how the fuck could that be taking place?”

“ Retrocasuality” she says. “That’s the only way.”

“ Signals from the future.”

“ I’ve felt them.”

“ I’m sure you have.”

“ God help me, Carson.”

“ If you think you can reach Him, let me know.”

“ Only thing I can reach out there is Lynx and Spencer. And Lynx is on the zone only—”

“ And what about the Rain?”

“ I think they’re inside that building beneath Eurasia.”

“ And they’ve turned Spencer?”

But that’s not true. She suddenly remembers what she’s done, remembers what she’s apparently just communicated by some kind of telepathy to Spencer, telepathy that interfaces with both flesh and zone: she’s told him to keep that gun pointed at Sarmax and stand by for further orders. Because the Rain aren’t in that Eurasian structure after all. And the person who tampered with Spencer was—

“ Me,” she says. “I turned Spencer. Just now.”

Carson smiles softly. “So now you see.”

She does. All those nights with Carson all that time ago, energy going through her body and across her mind and out into the universe beyond her. She suddenly gets where Carson’s been coming from all these years. He looks like a man. He’s really something more. The leader of the last Rain triad looks at her and she meets his gaze and doesn’t turn away.