The Machinery of Light

by David J. Williams

  Except for Sarmax.

  “Easy,” Spencer says again.

  “Shit,” says Jarvin—but Sarmax is already igniting his las-knife, slashing through the seals on the cell door.

  The SpaceCom forces are giving up on trying to capture her. They’re opening fire—but she’s firing first, unleashing a rack of torpedoes, then calibrating her own route to steer in amidst the blasts detonating throughout the labyrinth of Shackleton. And Sinclair’s riding her mind as she rides the tunnels—she shoots out through one of the larger caves—gets a quick glimpse of buildings all around—and then she’s back into the narrower passages as she closes in on the far side of the city. The very edge—she’s roaring in toward it as Sinclair forges in toward the center of her awareness. He seems to be looking for something. She’s terrified he’s about to find it. She pivots within herself—

  Carson,” whispers the woman.

  The Operative isn’t surprised. It’s as though he’s been here before. It’s as though all this is memory in reverse. He tries to speak—succeeds—

  I’m here,” he says.

  The roar of autofire suddenly fills the room.

  As Sarmax practically rips the door from its hinges, Spencer realizes that the man has shut down the zone-conduits for his armor.

  “Stop him,” yells Jarvin.

  But Sarmax is already firing.

  She’s wrestling with the old man for what’s left of her sanity—all the while racing out of the transport-tunnels and into corridors intended for personnel, rushing in through the last streets of the city toward the city-wall. She’s almost there. The SpaceCom forces are falling back before her, waiting for her to slow down—waiting for her to turn. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that she’s not going to. She fires her last rack of torpedoes.

  Lead’s flying everywhere, along with thousands of fléchette rounds. It’s all light stuff. It’s all bouncing off Lynx and the Operative as they whirl to face the shooter who’s standing in the doorway. Sorenson hits the deck, but the sleepers are getting diced. Flesh sprays the walls.

  Sarmax opens up with his suit’s flamer, spraying liquid fire over all those within the room. Flame engulfs the chamber, surging back over him like some fiery tide.

  Explosions half blind her, but Haskell’s firing the craft’s afterburners anyway, crashing through the SpaceCom barricades, blasting through the hole in the city-wall that her torpedoes just carved, shredding through the face of Matthew Sinclair as she shoots out into open space—

  Linehan ceases firing. Smoke’s everywhere.

  “Fuck you both,” he says.

  “You’re dead,” says the Operative.

  “And you’re fucking crazy!” yells Linehan. “Where the fuck do you get off on waking up minions who will try to turn you into fucking meat? You want to bring more Rain into the mix? You have fucking lost it, man, and you can—”

  “He’s right,” says Lynx.

  It’s inferno. It’s all Spencer can do to sever the smoke alarms and shut down the fire detection system—but he lets the sprinklers go into action, hurling water everywhere. Smoke belches in gouts from the cell-chamber. Jarvin grabs Sarmax—who seizes him in turn. But before either can strike the first blow—

  “We’ve got bigger problems,” says Spencer.

  And it doesn’t get any bigger than this. Shackleton is on the slopes of the South Pole basin—one of the largest impact craters in the solar system, more than ten klicks deep, a massive complex of sloping walls and cliffs and darkness. Haskell cuts the afterburners, damps the rockets, and lets the craft arc down like it’s a particle of light drawn into some black hole. She sees mountains towering above her—catches a glimpse of Malapert’s fiery peak presiding over all of it. But that view is nothing compared to the zone. Now that she’s gotten past sublunar Shackleton’s shut-down networks, she’s got access to wireless; it pours over her like a million waterfalls, giving her the leverage she needs to sweep away the last fragments of Sinclair as she plunges in toward nadir.

  The Operative takes it all in—the shredded bodies, the acrid smoke, Sorenson huddled weeping in a corner.

  Linehan pulls off his helmet.

  “I’ll make it easy for you,” he sneers.

  “Put that back on,” says Lynx—and on the one-on-one to Carson: “This is the part where you get a grip.”

  “He killed them.”

  “He did us a favor.”

  “You really believe that.”

  “Who knows what compulsions those things were saddled with?”

  “By Sorenson? He’s nothing—”

  “By Sinclair.”

  That wasn’t her,” says Spencer. “Wasn’t him—”

  “That’s why I killed them,” says Sarmax.

  “That’s why you’re crazy.”

  “Not at all,” says Sarmax. “That was one of Sinclair’s amplifiers—”

  “We need to get out of here,” Jarvin says.

  She’s picking up speed now—just missing a rocky overhang—tumbling past walls of cliffs while her mind ascends through the lunar satellites and out into the American zone, paralyzing all weaponry that’s aimed at her. She’s like a thousand-eyed insect now, seeing everything, in every direction—the lunar defenses ready for anything, the L2 fleet standing by behind the Moon, the vast Eurasian armadas gathered at L4 and L5. She feels at one with all of it; adjusting her rockets, she drops in toward the very center of the South Pole’s maw.

  You don’t know that for sure,” says the Operative.

  “That’s the point,” says Lynx. “The man just delivered us from temptation—”

  “And how the fuck are we getting off this goddamn fleet now? Without that firepower—”

  “By making do with what we have.”

  “Meaning we have to let the motherfucker live.”

  Lynx nods. “But if you got to have an outlet—”

  “Thanks,” says the Operative—smashes an armored first through Sorenson’s skull.

  Full triad,” confirms Spencer. “Closing.”

  “What the hell’s going on?” says Sarmax.

  “This was a Rain trap,” says Jarvin, tossing a shape-charge against the entryway hatch.

  A whole world plunges past her. Mining installations sprout off from cliffs like limpet growths; bulldozers parked on the edge of nothing; ramps that lead down to nowhere. She’s dropping below the level of the sun, dropping into darkness, though the contours of the crater echo loud and clear within her head—she sees the view from the satellites overhead, triangulates along a grid as she keeps on falling …

  What’s left of Sorenson’s head slides down the wall, the rest of his body crumpling with it. The Operative looks at Linehan.

  “Should have been you,” he says.

  “So work on your aim.”

  The Operative opens his mouth to reply—and closes it again as sirens begin wailing at full volume.

  The hatch disappears in a sheet of flame—the three men charge through, firing while the microbombs they’d planted back at the second and first doors detonate. Sentries go flying. Those who aren’t are facing the wrong way anyway—the three men gun them down as they roar through, desperate to get out of the cul-de-sac and gain some maneuvering room in the face of an onrushing Rain triad.

  “Almost there,” says Spencer.

  The engines of the Eurasian fleet ignite.

  Like a myriad of fireflies: Haskell takes in the sprawling clusters of heat-signatures out at L5 and L4, as the Eurasian guns start laying down the mother of all bombardments. Suddenly DE is blanketing vacuum—intensifying even further as the American forces return fire. There’s so much energy out there that Haskell’s losing her wireless links with the U.S. zone. It’s like her fingers are getting pried away from some edge. But right now it doesn’t matter. She fires her vehicle’s retrorockets, powers into the caves within.

  Alarms are howling. Klaxons are wailing. Suddenly three men are feeling way too exposed.

&
nbsp; “They’ve found us,” says Linehan.

  “Worse,” says Lynx. “That’s the general fleet alert.”

  “The East is on its way,” says the Operative.

  A quick glance on the zone confirms it. And the American fleet behind the Moon is going into ultra-lockdown mode—

  “We need to get out of here,” says Linehan.

  “Thanks for the newsflash,” says the Operative. He opens up the one-on-one with Lynx.

  “Is this for real? Looks like they just—”

  “Sealed all ships,” says Lynx. “Yeah.”

  Meaning it’s no longer just a matter of nothing being allowed to leave this fleet. Now the same rule’s being applied to each individual ship. Total paranoia is in ascendancy. All intrafleet transport is at an end. Which means that—

  “We’re fucked,” says Lynx.

  “Not at all,” says the Operative.

  “We’re fucked,” repeats Lynx, “and it’s all thanks to you. This whole Sorenson bullshit was a bridge too far. We’d already gotten all we needed these last two days—”

  “We thought he might have a teleporter, remember?”

  “So what the fuck are we gonna do now?”

  “Show everybody why we’re the best in the business.”

  Righteous Fire-Dragon is accelerating at a disturbing rate, moving well out ahead of the rest of the fleet, taking heavy fire from the American lunar positions. But all of that is mere background to what’s front and center on Spencer’s screen: only a few corridors away, the Rain triad is less than fifty meters ahead, steaming straight at them, operating on some kind of zone that’s in a class of its own. Spencer’s only detecting it because he’s using Rain protocols. But as to staying competitive with its—

  “We can’t fight this,” says Jarvin.

  “We’re not going to,” says Spencer. He meshes his mind with Jarvin, gets his zone-shields up just in time to repel an incoming blow that would have fried the mind of any normal razor. As he does so, he lets the blueprints of this part of the ship whip through his head. Looking for—

  “Anything,” hisses Jarvin. “No time for perfection.”

  “Then you’re gonna love this,” snarls Spencer.

  PART IV

  ETERNITY’S ASHES

  The caves and tunnels beneath the South Pole are even more tangled than the craters that surround them. Haskell lets her lights shine out ahead of her as she makes hairpin turns. She hasn’t detected any pursuit yet. But she’s under no illusions—it’s underway. If Szilard wants to be a player in the endgame, he’s going to have to get his hands on her brain. He’ll be mobilizing all forces in order to do so. She rockets ever deeper.

  A trashed antechamber that contains the shredded remains of the android-bodyguard-secretary of a man who no longer needs any of those services. Maschler and Riley look up as Carson, Lynx, and Linehan storm into the room.

  “What’s up?” asks Maschler.

  “Everything,” says Lynx as he sweeps past. Maschler and Riley get the hint—charge after the other three as they rush out of the room, firing their suit-jets. Maschler keys the one-on-one with Linehan.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” he asks.

  “You wouldn’t believe me,” mutters Linehan.

  This way,” yells Spencer, firing his jets and letting Jarvin and Sarmax trail after him while he hurls zone-decoys out in every direction. The Rain triad adjusts slightly; the wings spread out as they vector in on their quarry’s changing position. But Spencer’s relying more on speed than stealth. He and the other two blast toward the rearmost portions of the ship, flying through into one of the bomb storage chambers, moving away from the main elevator—

  “Wrong way!” yells Sarmax.

  “Wrong,” says Spencer.

  Haskell drops through some of the active mining areas. She’s exposing herself, but it’s the most direct route. She’s fucking with the zone something fierce while she blasts through caverns filled with equipment. Miners stare agape as she burns past like a fever dream.

  The five men careen out of the R&D areas and into the adjacent wing of the war-sat. It sports most of the ship’s weaponry.

  “This isn’t the right way,” yells Riley. “The hangars are—”

  “Go for it,” says the Operative. “You’ll win the record for most guns to ever target a shuttle at once.”

  Though he knows it’s unlikely to be anywhere near that dramatic. The bulk of the American guns are staying silent—not exposing themselves as they wait for the Eurasian armada to draw closer. But that leaves a lot of weaponry still in the game, firing away at the largest force ever assembled by the hand of man. The writing’s on the wall. The Americans don’t stand a chance. But right now the Operative has more immediate issues. The five men reach a chamber at the far end of the weapons wing—a dead end.

  Spencer opens fire—lets shots streak past the thousands of nukes and along the conveyor belts, taking out the hatches to which the belts lead. The doors spin aside and he leads the way into the backup bomb shafts. They’re not in use right now, but that could change at any moment. In which case it won’t be pretty: bombs are slung through the shafts at railgun velocities. The three men reach the far end. Another hatch bars the way. Beyond it’s vacuum. Not to mention nuclear explosions.

  “You do not want to open that,” says Jarvin.

  She’s leaving the upper-level mines behind, dropping through shafts that haven’t seen use in a long time. There are a number of active mines still beneath her, but she’s hoping to steer clear of them. The fewer witnesses she has, the better. Even if she butchered them all—reached in and fucked them via their zone-interfaces—the corpses would still be clues to her trail. And mass executions aren’t her style anyway.

  But running zone is. And she’s never done it at this level before. Everything else has just been a precursor. Which makes it all the harder to take a route that will ultimately lead her beyond the reach of zone. She’s considered the other options. She could head for Agrippa or Congreve, infiltrate their mainframes, and try to wrest control of the U.S. forces from Szilard.

  But even if she succeeded, it would still leave the Eurasians to deal with. And the East is nearly invulnerable to her hacks. They got burned so badly by the U.S. zone assault in the opening moments of the war that their remaining forces have switched off all wireless interface save a few point-to-point communications within the fleet. So even if Haskell was in control of everything America has left, she doubts it would matter. There’s only one thing that does. She plans on getting to it as fast as she can.

  Here we are, says the Operative.

  “Those are missiles,” says Maschler.

  “You’re quick,” says Lynx.

  “Climb on,” says the Operative.

  Maschler and Riley look at each other, then look at the missiles racked along the wall, pointed at the ceiling. Each one’s several meters long. They’re standard space-to-spacers, with a range of several thousand kilometers. They’re intended to defend against incoming missiles and ships …

  “This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of,” says Riley.

  “Not as dumb as yours,” says Lynx.

  “I didn’t propose anything!”

  “Meaning your plan is just stay here and eat it.” Lynx meshes his mind with the Operative’s, assists him in stripping out the guidance controls on five of the missiles and reprogramming them with their own sequences. While they’re at it, they’re climbing onto those missiles, adjusting their suits’ magnetic clamps, and deploying their tethers for addded effect. It doesn’t take long.

  “Everybody ready?” asks the Operative.

  “Oh sure,” mutters Riley.

  Now what?” says Sarmax.

  “Now we burn a hole through to the next shaft,” says Spencer. “Get through to the maintenance shafts beyond that.”

  “Right,” says Jarvin, “but there is no next shaft.”

  “Yes there is,” says Spencer. He gla
nces again at the zone—does a doubletake.

  “Well?”

  “There was ten seconds ago. On the zone—”

  “And guess who’s been fucking with it,”

  “Fuck,” says Spencer.

  “You’re a fucking idiot,” says Jarvin.

  All the more so as the Rain are now entering the bomb-bays they just left. There’s no escape. It’s just a question of whether the triad meets with any resistance worth the name. Spencer starts to scramble back up the shaft—

  The U.S. zone is disappearing in the rear view. At least for now. Haskell passed the last conduits on this particular tunnel half a klick back. She’s losing herself amidst the moon, and silence reigns within her head once more. She’s calibrating all the maps; that wilderness of man-made tunnels and natural caves that make the area beneath the South Pole such an intricate honeycomb. Yet as the zone drops away from her mind, other things are coming into focus; now that her suit’s no longer locked, everything that Control stirred up within her is starting to crystallize. Her mind expands outward like a balloon inflating. It’s the strangest thing she’s ever felt—something she’d find impossible to explain. Her body’s no longer the receptacle, just the focal point for an expanded consciousness that she’s now bringing to bear upon the universe at large. She finds what she’s looking for almost immediately.

  The Operative keys the sequence. The hatches through which they’ve come swing shut. Airlock procedures initiate. The wall’s sliding away …

  “Oh fuck,” says Maschler—but they’re already being flung forward.

  Twenty missiles total—and the five that count have had their accelerations adjusted to make the launch something less than lethal. But even with their suits cushioning the blow, it’s still a wild ride. The view’s making it even more so. They’re right in the thick of the L2 fleet. They just miss a frigate’s antennae, zip past another war-sat and between two dreadnaughts. Linehan watches lights whip by and wonders if he’s died yet. He feels like he must have long ago. One ship in particular’s rushing in toward him.

  They’ve precisely calculated how much time they have before the fleet’s defenses react—or rather, the backup defenses, since they’re taking the precaution of hacking the main ones. Those defenses were designed for a lot of things, but being fired on from within the fleet wasn’t on any of the automatic sequences. That gives the men now maneuvering through vacuum a tiny margin. It’s still not enough to make it to their main objective. They’re settling for the next best thing—