The Machinery of Light (26 page)

“Earth to Linehan: we already did.”

Yet for now they’re staying put. They’ve been marking time for a few minutes now. Linehan’s starting to get antsy. All the more so as he gets that Lynx has taken him in tow for muscle—and that the razor must be badly in need of that muscle to try to leverage
him
.

Or else there’s another angle to all this.

“You’ve been using me,” says Linehan.

“Of course I’ve been using you.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“C’mon, Linehan. You’re the mech—”

“Who used to work for SpaceCom.”

“Who got rigged with a compulsion by them,” says Lynx.

“Which you reverse-engineered.”

“Which is why I showed myself to you back on the
Montana
. Right. But—”

“But I’m also your back door into the SpaceCom mainframes,” says Linehan.

Lynx grins. “One among many.”

T
he megaship’s continuing to accelerate, but now its route has straightened out. Soldiers are pulling themselves off the wall, taking up positions again around the elevator-bank. Spencer steadies himself while Jarvin moves back toward the elevator-banks.

“We can’t let you up there,” says the Chinese sergeant.

“We already had this conversation,” says Jarvin. “Out of my—”

“Sir,” says the Russian sergeant,
“we can’t let you up there,”
Guns are out now.

“I already gave you my clearance.”

“Sir, they just revoked it.”

S
o now I’m your slave,” says Haskell.

“You’re alive. You’re not in pain. Count your blessings.”

Haskell studies Montrose from several angles. The president looks as if she’s been under a lot of stress. Though now she seems to be perking up a little.

“You’re the most powerful instrument in creation.”

“Instrument,”
repeats Haskell.

“And someone has to wield you.”

“I had myself in mind.”

Montrose throws her head back and laughs—loud enough to make the visors of her nearest bodyguards turn. “Like you have the maturity for
that.”

“Fuck you—”

“You see? ‘Fuck this’ and ‘fuck that’—you keep on ranting and all the while all you are is a mind so close to the edge of sanity that you’re only fit to be the tool of the ones who really run the show. Jesus, Claire. I expected better from you.”

“Would you rather I wasn’t strapped to this table taking orders from you?”

“I’d rather you were a little nicer about it. Seeing as how we’re going to have to get used to each other.”

“And how we’ve got work to do,” says Control.

She feels that leash brush up against her throat.

T
he Operative’s climbing back into the main cargo bay. Maschler and Riley are both following him this time. Both men have their guns out now. The Operative’s head hurts too much for him to even think about trying anything. He winces.

“Not to worry,” says Riley.

“We’ll dose you with some ’dorphs before we set you loose,” says Maschler—snorts with laughter. But the Operative says nothing—just grabs a ladder, starts climbing back into the cockpit. He knows exactly what he’s going to see in its windows. He hears the proximity alert starting up.

B
ang on schedule,” says Lynx.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Linehan’s thinking Lynx’s smile is starting to look ever more demented. But the razor just laughs.

“You didn’t think we were going to do this alone, did you?”

“The way you keep talking, I don’t know what to think.”

“All good assassinations are done from all sides.”

“Whatever you say, Lynx.”

“JFK, for example. They—”

“Who?”

“Kennedy.”

“You mean the spaceport?”

“I mean the president.”

“Never heard of him.”

“That’s because you’ve got no education. Grassy knoll, book depository, Secret Service, open season: they got the bastard from every direction.”

“Good for them.”

“For us, you mean. We’re going to do the same to Szilard.”

“With me as expendable?”

“We’re
all
expendable, Linehan. But if we manage to pull this off, we might yet get out of here in one piece.”

“After which we go where?”

“First things first.”

F
ine,” says Jarvin—turns, fires suit-jets to steady himself as he exits the foyer. The other two men follow him.

“So what the hell do we do now?” asks Spencer.

“Figure out another way in,” says Jarvin.

“How the fuck can they deny codes from the Praesidium?”

“Because someone in the cockpit told them to.”

“God only knows who’s in charge there now,” says Sarmax.

“Could be the Rain themselves,” says Jarvin.

“Was wondering that myself,” says Spencer. “Or they could just be taking no chances.”

“Whoever it is,” says Sarmax, “they certainly don’t want any competition.”

Jarvin laughs. “Now that we’re about to hit L5, who would?”

A
s I anticipated,” says Control.

Haskell can hardly fault that machine for sounding so conceited. Especially now that she’s his humble servant—she’s been slotted in, given access to the full range of his battle-management calculations. Apparently he’s been predicting this move for some hours now—had anticipated that the megaships’ drive on the Moon was a feint, that their real target was L5. There’s decidedly less hardware there than at the Moon, meaning that the megaships have a far better chance of taking the libration point by themselves than they would have of destroying all of the American lunar forces—

“If they take L5, the Moon will be next,” says Montrose.

“Of course,” says Control, “but they’ll need to bring up the rest of their fleet from the Earth orbits. That’ll give us some breathing room.”

But Haskell is barely listening. She’s too busy getting cranked up to new heights. She doesn’t want to go there, but she’s being rushed toward them by Control’s implacable grip. She feels herself opening out toward the universe. Other minds glimmer here and there: Carson in the shuttle that’s almost docked; another mind deeper within Szilard’s flagship. Still other minds seem to be present at L5, but they’re more opaque—as though they’re being shielded. She can guess by what. Even if she can’t
see
it anymore, she can still feel that monstrous presence lurking out there, practically screaming at her intuition. The heart of L5: and she wonders how Matthew Sinclair plans to deal with millions of tons of Eurasian steel—wonders, too, who’s really in control of that steel
now. She feels herself surging ever higher. The parameters for the run on Szilard click in around her, incandescent matrices flaring out toward infinity. She takes the whole thing in—draws back from what’s being asked of her …

“Begin,” says Montrose.

N
ot bad,” says the Operative.

“That’s all you can say?” asks Maschler.

“Nothing rattles our Carson,” says Riley.

The Operative shrugs. He’s in this way too deep to waste time gawking at the sight in the windows, impressive though it may be: the
Redeemer
spans almost half a klick, gunnery flaring all along its length. Beyond them the Operative can see a swathe of ships, a blaze of fire—and yet all of it a mere fraction of the fleet that lies beyond.