Haskell’s coming to her senses. They don’t amount to much. Her head hurts. She’s on her back, restrained, in another train moving down another track. The only difference is that the heavily armed soldiers standing along the walls are American. An InfoCom colonel stands next to her.
“Awake at last,” he says. “Just in time to see the president—”
“—go fuck herself?”
“She’ll want you to be more articulate than that.”
“She can want all she likes.”
“I’d be careful about pissing her off.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“She’s in a pretty bad mood right now.”
“I can imagine.”
“You don’t need to imagine anything. We’ll be there in less than five minutes.”
She stares up at him. “What’s your part in all this anyway?”
“I’m a loyal servant of the president.”
“That’s a role that’s going out of fashion.”
He shrugs, turns away.
Carson,” says Riley.
“Been too long,” says Maschler.
“Indeed,” says the Operative. He’s trying not to look surprised. Trying to make it look like he knew this was going to happen—like he knew he was going to run smack into the men who ferried him off Earth all those days ago when that Elevator blew and set this all in motion. “You guys been staying out of trouble?”
“We’ve been staying off Earth,” says Maschler.
“And that’s fine by us,” adds Riley.
They look at one another.
“How soon do we leave?” asks the Operative.
“That’d be now,” says one of the soldiers.
The train’s slowing to a halt. Doors hiss open. Haskell’s guards steer her gurney onto a platform, through more doors and into an elevator. She feels her stomach lurch as she drops at speed through the shaft. She’s estimating she’s now a couple of klicks beneath the level of the train, which was nowhere near the surface to begin with.
The doors open. Haskell’s pushed out, down another corridor, up a ramp to a massive pair of blast doors. More InfoCom soldiers stand in front of them. Haskell’s escorts halt.
“Now what?” she says.
“Now we leave you,” says the colonel.
“You mean you don’t make the cut?”
“I follow orders,” he says in a tone that says maybe it’s time you started doing the same. But Haskell says nothing. The colonel gestures to his soldiers and leads them back down the corridor while the blast-door guards scan Haskell. They wear the uniforms of Montrose’s bodyguards.
“Can’t be too careful,” she says.
They ignore her, standing back as the doors swing open. Haskell watches as the space behind them becomes visible—
“Huh,” she says.
She’s looking down five more meters of corridor, at an even larger set of blast-doors. The bodyguards push her toward them, stop. As soon as the outer doors behind them close, the soldiers go to town, stripping Haskell down to her skin. Their eyes go wide as they see how that skin’s been marred—covered with half-healed scars of endless intricacy.
“Who did this?” asks one of them.
“That’d be me,” she says.
Back when she was trying to map out the vectors of Autumn Rain’s zone attacks. Now she’s got it all figured out. Though maybe it’s too late anyway. The soldiers get busy lacing her with IVs, transferring her to another gurney and rigging her in yet another suit of specialized armor. They position the suit so that now she’s upright.
“Thanks,” she says.
The inner doors slide open.
Congreve’s dropping away. The engines of the shuttle continue to throttle up. The Operative shakes his head.
“You’re InfoCom agents,” he says.
“Imagine that,” says Riley.
“Reporting directly to Montrose?”
Maschler laughs. “And all the time the man thought we were slumming it.”
“Because you do it so well,” says the Operative.
“Easy now,” says Riley. “It’s all just business, right?”
“Going to tell me where we’re going?” asks the Operative.
“L2.”
The Operative furrows his brow. “SpaceCom territory.”
“Sure,” says Riley.
“And if I try anything?”
“Try anything you like,” says Maschler. He smiles—arches one of those bushy eyebrows. “If this ship deviates in its course, it gets taken out.”
“Thought you might say that.”
“So you may as well make yourself comfortable,” says Riley.
The Operative’s got a little too much on his mind for that. He knows that Montrose is moving him as far away from the action as possible. L2’s the last place he wants to be right now. That is, other than in a ship that might blow to hell at any moment …
“Relax,” says Maschler. “If she were gonna do you, she would have just done it back at Congreve.”
“Besides,” says Riley, “you’re too important.”
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“You’ve got a new mission.”
“Which is?”
They don’t take their eyes off him, but both men are laughing in a way that makes it clear they’re both sharing the same joke. And now the Operative gets it too.
The American command center is a series of rooms that open into one another. Screens line the walls. Equipment’s everywhere. Haskell’s guards wheel her forward, maneuvering her down narrow aisles lined with consoles and seated technicians. No one pays her any attention. Apparently they’ve got other things on their mind. The atmosphere’s thick with tension. Haskell’s feeling the same way herself. She’s wheeled up a ramp and onto a raised area that presides over the lower levels beneath. More bodyguards eye her. Stephanie Montrose turns from a conversation she’s having with a member of her staff and regards Haskell with cold curiosity.
“So this is the famous Manilishi,” she says.
“And this is the woman who stole the presidency.”
“This isn’t about who’s president,” snaps Montrose. “It’s about our country.”
“What’s left of it.”
“Exactly. We’re losing this war.”
“And you’re the one who had to go and start it.”
You want me to bag Szilard,” says the Operative.
“Think of it as your greatest hit,” says Riley.
Lunar horizon’s dropping away from the window. The Operative exhales slowly, getting ready to move fast if he has to.
“So what happened to the real guys?” The asks.
“The real who?”
“The real Riley. The real Maschler.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play stupid with—”
“Relax,” says Riley. “They never knew what hit ’em.”
Maschler scoffs. “And why are you asking such silly questions?”
“Was that you back at the Elevator, or was that them?”
“Us. They’d already been taken care of.”
“You were riding shotgun on me that whole time.”
“We were watching you strut your stuff,” says Maschler.
“Did all the work for us and then some,” adds Riley.
“Fuck,” says the Operative.
“It’s all good,” says Maschler. “We hung around the Moon and did some odd jobs these last few days.”
“Prepping the ground for the chief whore?”
“Ain’t no need to get snippy,” says Riley.
“We just haul the mail,” says Maschler.
“Then you’d better start looking at the big picture. The East is coming to bash your skulls out.”
“We’ve got the high ground, Carson. Those barbarians are about to get blasted back down the well.”
“They’ve won unless you can switch the Manilishi on.”
“Well, see, that’s all on the boss. She’ll find a way.”