The Machinery of Light ar-3

by David J. Williams

  Right now.

  We’ve got to get down as fast as possible,” yells Lynx.

  Linehan’s not worried. Everything’s converging.

  He’s just flotsam on whitewater. They’ve commandeered cycles left behind by a decimated mechanized unit—are riding those bikes at speeds a long way past anything safe. They’re getting into the heart of the farside now, and as they descend along ramps and drop through shafts, Lynx is transmitting data into Linehan’s head, along with a running commentary.

  “The lower we get, the worse the fighting gets,” he says. “Probably because Szilard’s no longer even trying to hold the Eurasians to the surface.”

  “Are you kidding? There’s fighting all around us—”

  “Don’t you get it, man? Our fleet’s getting wiped out. The garrisons are getting overwhelmed. They’ll keep fighting. But they’re going down before sheer numbers. They’re just there to buy time while Szilard—”

  “You really think he’s down there?”

  “No question. Along with his most elite marines.”

  “Trying to break through to the Room.”

  “And this is our chance to fucking break him.”

  Streaking through one of the deepest of the deep-grid maglev tunnels is a two-car armored train, bristling with guns. The front car contains Velasquez, Sarmax, and the other two members of the Rain triad. The rear one contains Riley, Maschler, and the Operative—who’s in the rearmost chamber of that car, communicating with Velasquez and Sarmax as he drives.

  “As bad as we thought,” he says.

  “Would have to agree,” says Velasquez.

  “The Eurasians have the surface,” says Sarmax.

  That seems to be an understatement. The last camera-feeds showed a sky practically blotted out by troopships. The American zone is crumbling as the Chinese forces consolidate their hold on the ground.

  “Check it out,” says the Operative, showing the projections. Several Eastern spearheads are lancing deeper from Congreve—moving far faster than the rest of the East’s legions—

  “Commandos,” says Velasquez.

  “Of course,” says Sarmax.

  “Whoever’s running the Coalition gets it,” says the Operative. “The real war’s going to be fought on the threshold of the Room.”

  “Or in the Room itself,” says Velasquez. “Sinclair might already have—”

  “I’m stunned he hasn’t already,” says the Operative.

  “Doesn’t change the plan,” says Sarmax.

  The deep-grids beneath Copernicus just aren’t deep enough anymore. But they’re the fastest option available. Jarvin and Spencer have commandeered a maglev car, having left its crew as mangled flesh in the tunnel some klicks back. They’re heading west, blasting everything in their path. The tunnels are a chaos of fighting. A temporary turn of the tide seems to be going on within this sector—the farthest Eurasian troops are being forced back upstairs by Americans who have realized that they’re running out of room to retreat. The line of battle is swaying back and forth. Sometimes Jarvin and Spencer find themselves pretending to be SpaceCom. Sometimes they’re pretending they’re Chinese. It’s a game that can only have one end.

  “We’re rumbled,” says Spencer.

  “I see it,” says Jarvin.

  The pursuit moves in after them.

  She turns in one fluid motion, fires all thrusters. The walls of her elevator car fall away like glass and she’s already flying straight through them, suit-jets burning as she presses down with her mind with all her might—catches Sinclair by surprise, gets him in a temporary mental lock, as though she’s pinning a more powerful opponent’s arms against his sides. It won’t last. Maybe it doesn’t need to. She blasts past that hub, upward toward the ceiling.

  They get deeper into farside. The upper areas seem to be a free-for-all. It makes the going easy for two men who know where they’re going. They switch from cycles to transport-trains, switch from that to elevators that plunge through shafts. They’re keeping clear of the main fighting. They’re in between most of it now anyway. Above them the Eurasian legions are consolidating their hold. Below them—

  “Gotta be Szilard,” says Lynx.

  “This time we do it right,” says Linehan.

  The train roars back into tunnels known only to Autumn Rain. All the combat’s elsewhere. They’re taking advantage of that fact while they wait for the world to end. Sarmax can’t believe any of this is happening. Particularly not this—Indigo’s pressurized the rear chamber of this car, lifted up her visor. He’s done the same. They’ve got enough time for only one lingering kiss. It’s so much more than it used to be. It’s not just their bodies, now—it’s their minds as well. She’s still the only thing he ever loved. He’s telling her she’s won—that she can do whatever she want to him now. She’s not disagreeing.

  Straight shot from the depths of Copernicus to the hollows beneath the Imbrium, and this train just keeps on eating up the klicks. Overhead’s the world’s weight in rock. And that tunnel suffers from the same thing you do.

  Pressure.

  “We need more throttle,” yells Spencer.

  “We can’t go any faster,” says Jarvin. He fires the rear-guns, catches one of the pursuers dead amidships—it explodes against the wall. But the gunship behind it is still coming on. The soldiers of the East are flush with victory. And they’re nothing if not—

  “Persistent,” Spencer comments.

  He takes the ship through a series of maneuvers; shoots through some mining shafts and back out into the deep-grids. The Eurasian gunship streaks after them—moving past the hi-ex mines that Spencer just slung against the tunnel wall. The ensuing explosions bring the roof down on it.

  “Bought us some time,” says Jarvin.

  “Not much,” replies Spencer.

  It’ll have to do. The ceiling of the inner Room is peeling away above her. She’s streaking in toward another elevator now—one among so many, this one part of a funicular ramp that she’s setting in motion, her mind working its controls as she leaps on and turns to face the receding hub of the inner Room, targeting her guns and mind on it, waiting for what she knows is about to emerge—

  They’re cutting in behind the SpaceCom rearguard, stealing between the units that are struggling to throw up a defensive screen. Lynx has got the Com’s cookbook thoroughly cracked by now. Besides, that rearguard has made its deployments largely focused on the incoming Eurasians. Lynx and Linehan reach a network of more shafts and get within the area where the bulk of the president’s forces are moving. But even here, there’s still a lot of fighting going on. It doesn’t take them long to figure out why.

  Lot of free agents,” says the Operative.

  He’s got Maschler and Riley manning the guns while he works the zone. The train’s racing out toward the center of the farside now, gathering speed with every minute, dropping ever farther. Velasquez is integrating her zone-readouts with those of the Operative. It’s an exercise in extrapolation as the situation gets ever more chaotic. But the overall contours are unmistakable.

  “Makes sense,” says Velasquez.

  “You’re being sarcastic?”

  “Not at all.”

  “What the hell are you guys talking about?” demands Sarmax.

  “Szilard’s stirring up the refugees,” says the Operative.

  “Those who fled the new orders,” says Velasquez.

  Sarmax nods. Praetorians who made themselves scarce when Montrose took over. InfoCom soldiers who got the hell out of there when Szilard fucked their boss till she turned blue. Escaped convicts. Fleeing civvies. And the last of SpaceCom’s marines. There’s nowhere else to go but—

  “Deeper,” says Sarmax.

  Everyone’s trying to get out of the way,” says Jarvin.

  Spencer nods as their train keeps on hurtling through the warrens. He’s been picking up many of the same signals. The lunar underground is like a jungle that’s being overrun by army ants. All of
the denizens are on the move. Everyone’s under pressure. Including all too many who thought they’d gotten out of the way for good …

  “Choosing the wrong side can be a bitch,” says Jarvin.

  “I guess you should know,” says Spencer.

  “And you should thank your lucky stars for that.”

  “You’d better put up or shut up. We need to find—”

  “We’re almost on top of it.”

  “And the Eurasians are almost on top of us.”

  She knows it all too well. Sinclair’s going to be on her any moment. She can feel his mind breaking out beneath her. The thought of seeing his face in the flesh terrifies her—even more so than the structures of the outer Room that she’s being hauled past—all the structures that she couldn’t see for certain on the way in, and that are now flashing past her eyes: vast pillars-that-aren’t-pillars, some of them supporting impossibly gigantic terrariums suspended like massive pods, glowing green with the flora they contain, all of them wrapped in the endless labyrinthine piping that coils everywhere like the entrails of some giant beast. She can’t even see the inner Room below her now—she’s set the controls of the elevator for maximum speed and is streaking up the funicular far faster than she descended. The real zone of this place is coming alive all around her, a texture she’s never encountered. She wonders what its next move will be. She jury-rigs the controls of the elevator to push it beyond its safety margins, hurtling upward to where she begins to glimpse something that just might pass for ceiling.

  Explosions rumbling through long kilometers of tunnel, distant noise of firing, endless shards of fragmented zone: Lynx continues to take stock. He’s got a better read on the SpaceCom forces now. The elite marines remaining to Szilard are bunched into two groups: rearguard and everyone else. The real question is where Szilard himself is. And farther down the fighting is intensifying—

  “Not looking good,” says a voice.

  “Who the hell’s this?” says Lynx.

  That’d be me,” says the Operative.

  “Fuck’s sake,” says Lynx.

  “Whatever,” says the Operative. No zone now, all mental—and he’s holding the channel open with almost no effort. He’s surprised at just how adroit he’s getting. It was strange to go through life for so long without any of this—even stranger to go through the next stage with the ability in latent form, just aware of the presence of Lynx and Sarmax, but with neither nuance or range beyond that. He’s not even sure what’s propelling him to these new heights. Maybe it’s the influence of Velasquez. Maybe it’s simply the onset of the end-times. Because now he knows how insignificant his abilities are compared to the real masters of the game.

  “We’re out of time,” he says.

  “That’s why we’re on the line,” adds Velasquez.

  “Who the hell’s that?” says Lynx.

  “Your worst nightmare,” replies Sarmax.

  That’s about how Spencer’s feeling. He and Jarvin are doubling back and forth through the nearside rail-networks, trying to triangulate on the place that Jarvin is so sure of yet just can’t seem to find. Judging by the shaking of this tunnel, the Eurasian machinery is only a few levels up now.

  “Other way,” says Jarvin.

  “Again?”

  “This time I’m sure.”

  “No kidding.”

  But Spencer turns the vehicle anyway, heads down the new passage. Maglev gives way to rails—which give out after a few more klicks, leaving Spencer to power them onward by rockets. Lights flicker across the klicks. And finally—

  “Dead end.”

  “I don’t think so,” says Jarvin.

  Spencer doesn’t either. Because there’s definitely some kind of machinery on the other side of this rock. Some kind of zone. But it’s not like anything he’s ever seen. And as to hacking it—

  “Fuck!”

  “What?” says Jarvin.

  “That burns.”

  “It takes a light touch”—and Spencer feels Jarvin’s mind brush by his, reach out onto the zone. A section of wall slides away. Spencer stares at the elevator car revealed—and then he claps slowly.

  “Never doubted you,” he says.

  Jarvin looks at him, shrugs. “Makes one of us.”

  The ceiling of the outer Room hurtles toward her, the structures through which she’s been passing falling away like the tower tops of some vast, demented city. She has yet to see any sign of Sinclair coming after her. As far as she can tell, he’s still exactly where he was to begin with—back in the hub. She’s beginning to wonder if that’s a decoy. He could be somewhere in the ceiling itself, hiding within the psychic emanations of the membrane, waiting for her. She’s analyzing that membrane now—running her mind across it. She braces herself, runs the sequences on the trapdoors coming ever closer.

  Okay,” says the Operative. “We’re all on the same line now.”

  Or at least the ones who count. Velasquez is speaking for her triad. As far as the Operative knows, she’s speaking for Sarmax, too. That man seems happier than he’s been in years. It’s something that seems to amuse Lynx considerably, a few hundred klicks distant.

  “Finally found your dream girl, huh? Too bad the world’s gonna end in a couple more minutes—”

  “Go fuck yourself,” says Sarmax.

  “Shut up,” says the Operative. “All of you shut up and listen. Our only hope of getting through this is by combining all our forces. And that starts with us getting on the same fucking page. And we’re in a combat situation, so here’s how it’s going to work: I’m going to make a series of statements, and if I say anything that any of you disagree with—or if you know something that puts that fact in a new light—then now’s the time to fucking say it. Okay?”

  No one says anything.

  “Okay,” he says. “Sinclair’s in the Room and he’s switching everything on.”

  Static. The Operative watches on the zone as their positions close upon one another …

  “He’s got Haskell in there with him,” he adds.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” says Lynx.

  The Operative laughs. “Don’t we? He’s fucking with the fabric of fucking reality. Which is shifting under our fucking feet.”

  No one replies.

  “So all this war, all this fighting—everything that ever mattered, everything that ever will—all of it is coming down to one thing: whether we can get into the Room before Sinclair finishes hitting buttons.”

  “But why hasn’t he yet?” says Velasquez.

  “A good question.”

  “It’s the question,” she says.

  “And we can’t wait for the answer—”

  “Has it occurred to you that he’s waiting for us?” asks Sarmax.

  “Yes,” says the Operative.

  They mull that over

  “But I can’t see why,” he adds. “Haskell’s the one who—”

  “She may not even be alive,” says Sarmax. “He may have already processed her—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” says the Operative. “All that matters is that it’s all converging. That’s why the East’s shock-troops are heading deeper as fast as they can deploy onto the lunar surface. That’s why Szilard is—”

  “—at the bottom,” says Lynx.

  A pause. “You sure about that?”

  “His advance-guard’s reached the fucking labyrinth.”

  Through the doors and membrane of the Room and that’s where she is, too. Sinclair’s fucking labyrinth. A maze of impossible deathtraps that guard the main entrance to the Room, nestled in between the two perimeters—waves of zone and psychic signals assail her brain, and she can barely tell where the walls are. It doesn’t matter, though, because she’s plowing ahead anyway, her suit-jets flaring as she dives between hyper-sharp filaments that spring out toward her, but she’s maneuvering on pure future now—a moment ahead of all of it as she dodges past the first of the traps, ascending away from the Room ever farther into
the maze to end all mazes.

  They’re plunging downward at unholy speeds, pressed up against the ceiling as they accelerate. Turns out this elevator’s state-of-the-art maglev. They’re rapidly closing the distance between them and Moon’s core …

  “Does this bypass the front door?” says Spencer.

  “I sure as shit hope so,” says Jarvin. “His labyrinth’s a killing zone. Nothing’s getting through there.”

  Spencer gestures at the elevator. “So how do you know about this?”

  Jarvin shrugs. “A file I cracked and never wrote down. Sinclair’s special entrance so he could bypass all the crap.”

  “So we might run into him en route.”

  “Sooner or later, we’re going to run into him. And when we do, we’re going to give him a little surprise.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I want you to promise me something, Spencer: if it doesn’t work—do not let me fall alive into his hands.”

  “If what doesn’t work?”

  “I was one of his handlers, Spencer. And no matter what I’ve been telling you, the truth is that I know way too much about what he’s trying to do.”

  “More than this? More than the fucking download we just got from the AI? We’re talking about the ability to fuck with everything—”

  “And even that’s nothing. He’ll show no mercy to me. So if it all goes wrong—I need you to promise me you’ll kill me before that happens.”

  “I might kill you long before that happens.”

  “Now we’re talking,” says Jarvin.

  All their minds are linked now. They’re maneuvering in upon the center of the SpaceCom position—Lynx and Linehan streaking in from the rear, the Operative and Riley and Maschler about to hit the flank. Sarmax and the Rain triad are getting out in front of where they think Szilard is. The plan’s simplicity itself: take Szilard from every direction and take him out, take over his forces and use them as cannon fodder against the labyrinth and Room. Their firepower is a mere fraction of Szilard’s elite marines, but they’ve got the upper ground on zone. And their minds are now operating at a level that nothing within the SpaceCom ranks can touch. They can’t nail the minds of the Com troops. They’re not that good. But they can put them under pressure all the same …