Shattered Sky Read Free Page B

machine.”
    â€œIf you were a slot machine, I might get something back.”
    â€œNaah. Suckers’ game.”
    â€œNot with you around. Everyone knows how you shot down Las Vegas.”
    â€œTo hell with Las Vegas. The slot machines all come up triple sevens, and a million people think it’s something biblical.”
    â€œIs it?”
    â€œHow should I know? If the wheels had sixes instead of sevens, they would say I was the Antichrist.”
    â€œHaven’t you heard? You are.”
    â€œYeah, I’ve heard that one, too.”
    â€œW OULD YOU GIVE YOUR life for your country, Lieutenant Haas?” General Bussard had asked. “Would you give your soul?”
    The second question caught her off guard. But as always, she had answered unhesitatingly. “Without pause, sir.” Bussard had shown no reaction, but apparently she had shown the right level of commitment, because she had been chosen for posting to the elite staff of Project Lockdown. Now, however,months after the interview, she remained in the dark as to what exactly the project was. Even as a freshly minted Army Lieutenant she knew better than to ask too many questions. But even by Army standards the silence was deafening.
    â€œIt’s Area 51 all over again,” her sister Erica mused, as they sat saying good-byes at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. “Why would you ask to be assigned to the Hesperia plant?” Her sister nursed a Starbucks decaf latte. The drink was so like Erica, Maddy thought: all style and no bite. Like the way she drove her Porsche—always on cruise control. Maddy, on the other hand, liked her coffee no-nonsense black, and hot enough to cauterize a tonsillectomy.
    Maddy glanced around, brushing a hand through her dark hair, short enough to be military, but long enough to keep her as feminine as she cared to be. The airport coffee house had a full complement of harried travelers. Everyone was too absorbed in their own transit ennui to care about Maddy and Erica’s conversation. Still Maddy was careful not to raise her voice.
    â€œI didn’t ask,” she told Erica. “Assignments are handed out. We go where we’re told.”
    Erika snorted. “Oh, please! Spare me the party line. You can’t tell me a West Point cum laude doesn’t get courted by half the military—even the ones who don’t expect to get into your pants.”
    Maddy gulped her coffee, and relished its scalding sting. “It’s still a boys’ club.” But, of course, Erica was right. Even in spite of the boys’ club fraternity she did have quite a lot of options available to her. But rumors of an informational black hold in Hesperia, Michigan, had piqued her curiosity. Mystery was Maddy’s nemesis, and she had become obsessed with knowing what they were hiding, or building, or dismantlingin that dead power plant. Rumors had abounded in the halls of West Point—rumors that the Hesperia plant was housing some new Manhattan Project. After all, with the state of the world disintegrating at such an exponential rate over the past year, there was no telling where the next threat would come from. Some even believed the plant was the entryway into a series of subterranean tunnels built for an elite few to survive whatever dark age they were all spiraling toward.
    Maddy went up to the counter for a second cup, but was brusquely reminded that, along a thousand other things in the crumbling world economy, there was a shortage of coffee, and even Starbucks was rationing. She settled for some hot water with lemon, then, disgusted, dumped the whole thing into the trash before returning to her sister, who was craning her neck to catch sight of the departure boards, looking for a flight that might or might not actually happen. Her sister was headed to New York to some ex-boyfriend, who had decided that pigs had, indeed, flown and he was deeply ready for commitment.
    â€œAll