Read Online The Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams - Free Book Online Page A

“Lieutenant—what’s the status outside?”
    “They’re attacking in strength all along the perimeter, sir.”
    “How close are they to this building?”
    “Sir, we think they’re inside, sir.”
    “You think so?”
    “We’ve lost contact with everybody beneath level forty.”
    Morat shoves Haskell forward, sending her stumbling toward the lieutenant.
    “Take the razor,” he says. “Save the razor. Take her up the shaft right now. Do it yourself. What’s left of your platoon can get in there and be the shields. I don’t care who gets hit. I don’t care who dies. Just save the fucking razor . Get her out of here. Assume this hedgehog’s getting overrun. Assume we’re fucked. Do you understand me? ”
    “Yes, sir,” replies the lieutenant. “What about you?”
    “Leave one squad with me. We’ll dismantle this equipment and follow you.”
    “Sir: if they’re inside the building, you won’t make it.”
    “Don’t tell me what I will or won’t make,” says Morat. “Just go.”
    They’re going. And Haskell knows why he’s staying. To gather the equipment—or make sure it’s properly destroyed. So he won’t have to tell Matthew Sinclair that he let the Jaguars root through everything CICom knows about their net. The soldiers are blasting the elevator doors down, adding to the smoke inside the room. They don’t take Morat’s instructions literally, though. The lieutenant’s got the most guns. So he hands her to one of the sergeants. Soldiers scramble into the elevator, ignite their thrusters. Some go up the shaft, some go down. The elevator car’s well below them. They rain explosives down upon it, send it crashing down for good. The sergeant grabs Haskell with both arms—“Sorry about this, ma’am,” she says, and steps forward, leaps. Haskell feels the heat of the jets on her face. She’s being hauled upward. Floors whiz past. Cables streak by. All of it’s wreathed in flame and shadow. Haskell feels the distance between her and sky narrowing. Something slams against her. She hears an explosion. She hears a scream. She feels something wet hit her face. She feels her escort’s grip loosening. She tumbles from that dead grasp. She starts to fall down the shaft.
    Something grabs her. “Got ya”—and she’s pressed into his arms: “for fuck’s sake protect her head,”
    someone shouts, and someone else is screaming that the Jags are in the shaft, and she finds herself thinking it must have been a trap after all. But she’s just clinging on to this arm, on to both arms, and her face is pressed up against the side of the soldier’s visor, and through it she can see distorted eyes peering intently past her at what’s reflected in that same visor: the ceiling shooting down toward her like she’s in a needle and it’s the plunger—and then the soldiers open fire and blast it away and they all blast straight through onto the roof.
    Which is a shambles. As is everything beyond it. Buildings are burning, collapsing. Beams from heaven stab here and there, shimmer in the fog. The thunder of detonations rolls across the city. Belem-Macapa’s entered a new stage of its agony. The soldiers on the roof are firing in all directions. Haskell’s escorts shove her through a jet-copter’s open hatch. They’re screaming at the pilot to gun it. He needs no such urging: the ’copter rises. Haskell’s being strapped in by its gunner. She’s about to pull on her breath-mask: but now the doors slide shut and the craft switches over to its own recycled air as its motors switch into overdrive. She’s watching the rooftop fall away. Everything turns to cloud. Suddenly there’s another explosion, and way too close—the rumbling of the engines shreds away into a high-pitched whining. The ’copter staggers. For a moment, it continues on its course. But only for a moment.
    “What the fuck’s happening?” yells the gunner.
    “We’re going to crash,” the pilot says matter-of-factly.
    The