The Machinery of Light

by David J. Williams

  “We’re trapped.”

  “Maybe,” says Spencer.

  “How many routes are there out of here?”

  Depends how you count. The zone’s still down, but Spencer got enough of a glimpse of this area before the lights went out to be able to map it out: a series of interlocking rooms, all of them packed with the fissile material that’s both cargo and fuel. Spencer’s trying to calibrate these rooms against the larger superstructure of the thing they’re in, trying to make some calculations that are really just educated guesses. He’s got no time for anything else.

  “This way,” he says, and starts moving through doors that lead to yet more of these rooms that are starting to drive him crazy. He wonders why the Eurasians didn’t just build one big storage chamber. He knows the answer even as he thinks the question, that it’s a matter of contingencies. The nukes themselves are failsafed. But if one of the warheads went off in here anyway, no precaution would matter. Yet the hi-ex trigger mechanism that’s fastened to each warhead is a different story. If those started to detonate accidentally, they could do some serious chain-reaction damage unless they were contained. So each room is the equivalent of a bunker. And he and Sarmax have reached the one they’ve been making for.

  “This is it,” says Spencer.

  “This is what?”

  “Where we get off.”

  “What?”

  “Well, these nukes weren’t just carried down ladders.”

  “Ah,” says Sarmax.

  Because the truth is that these rooms don’t add up. Stack them up against one another, and there’s some empty space that runs through the center of them: space around which they’re all clustered.

  “The spine,” says Sarmax.

  “Now we just need to get in there,” says Spencer.

  “Easy enough,” says Sarmax, turning to the wall—

  Haskell’s thinking that the best way out of this one is to play it cool. She’s ghosting the passages, coasting past the sentinels, watching the back doors of her own mind. She knows that Carson has the keys to at least one of them. She’s hoping she’s got the keys to turn those keys against him. She heads up a ladder, through a doorway that opens without even knowing it’s been opened. She’s getting in behind the foremost of the InfoCom razors, letting them move ahead of her, running down one of her decoys. She’s tempted to go for Carson himself. But she decides not to press her luck. Particularly as maybe Carson’s luring her in toward him. She crawls on past …

  And fires her suit-jets. Now it’s a sprint. Her zone-bombs detonate behind her; two of the InfoCom razors go down writhing—her mind darts on through the gap they’ve left, and then her body follows. Power-suited mechs are firing in all directions, causing chaos. She feels Carson move to shore things up, but she’s not sticking around to see the results; she ducks into a freight-chute, hurtles upward. Moments later, she’s emerging—a quarter-klick farther away. She’s broken through Carson’s perimeter, doubling back toward Congreve.

  Only to find another InfoCom force bearing down on her.

  Too late, she sees the nature of the real trap. The luxury of numbers: Carson has had a second team of razors and mechs out there, sitting lights-out and waiting for just this kind of breakout. Even so, she’s faster than they thought. But now they’re hot on her heels. She blasts through storage chambers, moves past some of the directed-energy power generators. Wiring connects them to the guns spitting on the surface—and Haskell’s just stealing past them, through a maintenance shaft, dropping into the chamber she’s been headed toward.

  The train that stretches through the room sits on rails that are part of the deep-grids: the sublunar rail network that connects the U.S. farside bases and that extends all the way to the lunar nearside. But all Haskell wants to do now is stay ahead of the InfoCom forces that are scarcely half a klick back. She steps inside the train’s first car. There are seven others. All bear the moon-and-eagle SpaceCom standard. All look empty, but she’s not about to make any assumptions. Doors hiss shut behind her. She places herself against a seat as the train accelerates. Walls rush by, so fast they look like they’re buckling.

  She starts. They are buckling. She’s being hit by seismic tremors. The train’s coming off the rails. She’s applying the brakes, even though she knows that’s not going to matter—because somewhere behind her a mammoth explosion’s in the process of smashing the tunnel ceiling into the floor. She decouples the first car, fires its emergency rockets, runs them through sequences that her mind’s improvising against the fractal edge of raw moment. She’s crashing all the same. The cars behind hers disintegrate as she decelerates. Her own car’s ceiling folds away from her as she grinds toward a halt. Car walls tear away on either side of her.

  She looks around, tests her limbs, tests her mind. Her suit’s still intact. So is she. She leaps out, starts scanning.

  The tunnel’s definitely collapsed farther back. If the blast was on the surface, then it was nothing short of colossal. She wonders if the tide just turned against the United States. But the tunnel up ahead still looks clear.

  So she turns, hits her suit’s thrusters even as she intensifies her hack on the train’s line. Rail whips past her as she reaches out to the U.S. zone somewhere ahead of her. She can’t find it.

  And then she realizes why.

  Ineed full data,” snarls the Operative. “Triangulate, give me readings.”

  He’s managed to restore some order to his squad. The InfoCom mechs take up defensive positions as the surviving razors mesh, triangulate. Data foams back toward the Operative.

  “Fuck,” he says.

  There are way too many variables to determine the exact nature of the blast that just shook this area. But the Operative can figure out enough on his own. He no longer has a link to the surface—or even back to Congreve’s basements. Something nasty has almost certainly happened to the largest American farside base. Calculations race through his head. One of the razors comes on the line.

  “Sir, we’re narrowing down the blast. Epicenter at”—he rattles off coordinates.

  One of the screens that’s surging static suddenly coalesces. The face of Stephanie Montrose regards him. For the first time, it shows concern.

  “Carson. You’re still alive. Thank God—”

  “Looks like you’re doing okay yourself.”

  “We’ve got a Eurasian incursion into the Congreve vicinity.”

  “Where?”

  “Northwest sector ZJ-3.”

  “That’s right on top of me.”

  “That’s why I’m calling.”

  “How the hell did they get in? Their nearest base is—”

  “Apparently they’ve been doing some digging. In anticipation of war. Like the North Koreans used to do back in their DMZ before the entire peninsula—”

  “They might just have bagged the Manilishi.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” says Montrose.

  “Got any heavy equipment I can use?”

  “I’m scrambling everything now.”

  “Great.”

  “Get in there, Carson. This is your moment. Your time. Not just Mars. Everything beyond that.”

  “Over and out,” he says.

  His visor’s right up against his face, and on the other side of that plastic are the walls of the shafts of the SpaceCom flagship Montana. But it’s something even closer that’s at stake now. Right inside Linehan’s head, where another voice has just joined in.

  “Line of sight,” says that voice, and then Linehan sees it, at the intersection up ahead—the suit of the SpaceCom razor who’s got his mind on the leash around his neck. He’s informing Linehan that he’s now passing into the mech’s visual field. A standard protocol.

  But what’s not so standard are the shots that Linehan is getting off: two quick minibursts, one slicing through the razor’s wireless antennae, the other perforating his armor with heated rounds. Pieces of bone and suit fly.

  Just as
another suit leaps down next to Linehan. And through the visor he can see that face: silver hair and ebony skin and a mouth that just can’t stop laughing—

  “Hiya,” says Lynx.

  “You fucking bastard,” says Linehan.

  “Is that how you thank the man who’s reversed the conditioning Szilard skullfucked you with?”

  “That is,” says Linehan, gesticulating at the mess drifting farther down the corridor.

  “Nice work,” says Lynx.

  “So now I work for you?”

  “I wish I could do that kind of conditioning on the fly.” Lynx grins. “Actually now you’re working for you.”

  “Say what?”

  “Man’s been so long in the cage he can’t even recognize the light of freedom! Better get out there and grab it before—”

  “So I could just kill you right now?”

  “You could try,” says Lynx. “But I don’t think you want—”

  “I’m going to rip your suit apart.”

  “Do you realize how many times I’ve heard that?”

  “This’ll be the last,” says Linehan—grabs Lynx, shoves him against the wall even as Lynx keeps talking:

  “But don’t you want to hear what I was about to tell you about Szilard fucking you over?”

  Linehan pauses. Lynx laughs.

  “You forgot all about that, didn’t you?”

  “I—uh—how come?”

  “Because you were having too much fun killing that razor?” “You are controlling me.”

  “And it’d be a lot easier if you stopped fighting it. Look, man, Szilard’s got you marked. Think about it. Because even by today’s standards, your history’s pretty checkered.”

  Linehan lets go of Lynx. Confusion swirls through his head …

  “So let me see if I’ve got it straight,” continues Lynx. “You started out as SpaceCom and then got tracked by Autumn Rain and drenched in old-school drugs and turned by InfoCom, after which you got suborned to the president and then I took you over as part of the rump committee of Autumn Rain and brought you into a hit on Szilard in an attempt to take over the entire—”

  He stops. Linehan’s staring at him blankly.

  “Do you remember any of this?”

  “I—uh—some of it—but—”

  “But here’s the thing you’ve got to ask yourself: even if Szilard has found a temporary use for you while he’s busy winning World War Three, do you really think he plans to keep you around?”

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

  “Well, let me be the first to welcome you to it: he’s about to blow the whole Montana.”

  “This ship?”

  “No, the fucking state. Big Sky Country’s gonna get it good.” Lynx slaps Linehan’s visor. “Yeah, dumb-ass, this fucking ship!”

  “To get at me?”

  “Don’t be so full of yourself.”

  “But what about Szilard?” asks Linehan.

  “What about him?”

  “Isn’t he on this ship too?”

  “Only if you jump to conclusions.”

  Russian trains have names. This one’s called Mother Volga. Its cab is a tight fit under the best of circumstances. Which these most certainly aren’t.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” asks the engineer.

  “Giving the orders,” says the major, drawing a gun.

  “Works for us,” says the driver.

  They clearly aren’t looking for trouble. They’ve managed to find it anyway. They’re obviously going to do whatever he tells them. Some things might cause them to hesitate. But not enough to try anybody’s patience.

  “I need you to get us moving again.”

  “The line’s blocked up ahead,” says the driver.

  “Congestion,” says the engineer. “It’s sheer chaos. Everyone and their dog are trying to get the hell—”

  “They’ll clear the line,” says the man.

  “They will?”

  “When you transmit these codes.”

  Sarmax activates his suit’s laser and starts burning his way through the wall.

  “Are you nuts?” asks Spencer.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “They’ll be able to see we were here.”

  “If they end up in this room, sure.”

  “Look, Leo, there’s obviously a door here somewhere.”

  “Sure, but we don’t have time to find it.”

  “How about giving me a chance to look?”

  “How about getting the hell out of my way?”

  Sarmax intensifies the beam, lets metal liquefy as he traces an incandescent line along the wall. Spencer watches anxiously. He’s realized that the door out of here is actually the entire wall. If there’s a manual release, it’s on the other side anyway. Sarmax kicks in what’s left of the softened metal and peers through.

  “Bingo,” he says.

  Spencer takes a look.

  “Shit,” he says.

  They’re near the bottom of the elevator-shaft complex that runs up the spine. Below them’s only about fifty meters, but above them he can see what must be at least half a klick of shaft before it’s lost in darkness. Other shafts are dimly visible through gaps in the interior walls.

  “Our new bolthole,” says Sarmax. Spencer nods—and suddenly his mind reels as the ship’s zone comes to life—

  “Damn,” he says.

  Data pours across him, and he’s poring over it. And processing the implications—

  “What?” says Sarmax. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “The external doors,” says Spencer.

  All along the vast metal hull of this thing they’re in, all in one fell swoop in his mind—

  “Yeah?”

  “They just opened.”

  The tunnel up ahead is blocked by Eurasian commandos. She starts to hit the brakes, but it’s too late: they’re already firing a torrent of electromagnetic pulse straight at her. Her armor’s flaring out around her, crashing against the rails, skittering to a stop as she kicks and screams inside her shell. The Eurasians blast down the tunnel toward her. She wonders how the hell she’s going to get out of this—wonders for a moment if she should self-destruct. She ponders that for a moment too long—

  Because now they reach her. Mongolian faces stare into her own. They pick her up, hustle her down the tunnel while more tremors shudder through the rock around them.

  The Operative signals his team, gets them moving in new directions. They’re charging into a new set of tunnels, well beyond Congreve’s outskirts, dating from the end of the last century. The Operative can feel a whole sector of Congreve scrambling into action behind him. But he’s not waiting—just streaking forward into the areas where the sentinels have stopped reporting.

  And all the while he’s thinking furiously. About what the fuck Eurasians are doing in the most important American base on the entire farside. Assuming they even are Eurasians. Assuming that Montrose isn’t fucking with him. He’s been expecting her to try—just not this early. So he has to assume he’s dealing with the East—has to assume, too, that if they’ve managed to get in, it’s due to either treason or a first-rate infiltration squad. Or both—

  “Contact,” says a voice.

  It’s one of the mechs on point. Data floods the Operative’s skull as he coordinates the assault on the enemy that’s blocking the corridors up ahead. It’s basically an exercise in firepower: Montrose is feeding him reserves as fast as she can—and as fast as he can get them, they’re being fed into the fray that’s raging up ahead. Walls are getting torn up by hi-ex; suits spray one another at point-blank range. The Operative is giving up trying to keep his original force intact. He’s just using it as the centerpiece of a club to break through the resistance as quickly as possible. He’s succeeding—rocketing into the heart of the combat now, firing with all his suit’s guns, getting in hand-to-hand with a Eurasian commando, dispatching him and gunning down the ones behind h
im.

  Even though he knows he’s lost. This Eurasian raid is clearly over. What he’s facing is a rearguard, charged with buying the main force time while it retreats along tunnels that must have been dug awhile back. Tunnels that apparently link up with the U.S. deep-grid lines, hollowed out in preparation for this day. Meaning that presumably there are many others. The Operative’s guessing this particular operation’s based out of Tsiolkovskiy crater, the closest Eurasian farside territory to Congreve. Though he can’t believe that place is still holding out.

  Unless …

  Even as he breaks through what’s left of the rearguard and hits his jets, the Operative’s working the hotline with Montrose’s HQ, accessing and downloading the latest data for this section of the farside front. Turns out Tsiolkovskiy’s the only place the East’s got that’s still intact on this side of rock. And there’s no sign of Eurasian forces attacking Congreve from any other direction. Meaning what could have been the war-winning move under other circumstances is just a last desperate gamble.

  Which is precisely what the Operative’s dreading. He knows all about rearguards—knows, too, all about the word expendable. He’s flooring his motors now, hoping to get past what he knows damn well is about to happen. He can practically feel the blasts start to rip the tunnel apart. It seems his whole life is going up in smoke before him …

  But he’s still breathing. Still moving—streaking out of the older tunnels and into newer ones. And as those all-too-recently hewn walls blur past him he starts to see something else. Something that’s inside him—surfacing right inside his fucking head, coming out of nowhere. It’s Haskell herself. Sounding as though she would rather say anything besides what she’s saying now:

  Help me.

  The Eurasian charges start to detonate around him.

  This place could go up any moment,” says Lynx.

  Linehan stares at him. “And Szilard really isn’t here?”

  “He left the Montana ten minutes ago.”

  “Going where?”

  “Great question.”

  “And why the hell would he blow up his own flagship in the middle of the ultimate smackdown?”