The Machinery of Light (4 page)

“Understood.”

“Report in as soon as possible.”

The Operative cuts off the comlink. He looks at the three bodyguards that Montrose has assigned to be in his presence at all times. Their visors stare back at him impassively. He knows they’ve been assigned to kill him under certain conditions. He’d love to know precisely which ones. He lets screens snap on within him that show him the next two klicks of underground chambers—show him, too, the cloud of probabilities that denote the best guess as to Haskell’s position, now slashing out past the left flank of the trackers. The InfoCom razors recalibrate. The mechs move onto the outer boundary of Haskell’s position.

M
ontrose’s eyes flick away from the screen, return to flitting through a hundred others. Battle readouts parade in rapid-fire fashion before her, but they’re just the summaries of summaries. The war room around her is processing more information per second than the entire twentieth century produced. Most of the actual targeting is being handled by computers; at a tactical level, the situation’s moving far too quickly for humans to get involved, though razors are continually optimizing the targeting sequences and making overrides as necessary to the prioritization algorithms. But most of the human involvement is occurring at more strategic levels, some of it at the most strategic level of all—and now a new light’s flashing. Montrose’s aide-de-camp coughs discreetly as he steps up behind her.

“Admiral Szilard,” he whispers.

“Put him through,” says Montrose as she wipes the annoyed
expression from her face. The face of the SpaceCom commander appears on a screen before her, looking nothing if not sardonic.

“Stephanie,” he says.

For a moment she’s tempted to insist he call her
Madam President
. But she’s come too far in life to get tripped up by formalities. Particularly when the man she’s facing is one of the few factors she doesn’t have full control of in a situation that’s otherwise going her way.

“Jharek,” she says smoothly. “What’s the situation?”

“Funny,” he says, “that’s why I was calling you.”

She knows they don’t need such preliminaries. But somehow they’re still playing this game. Same one they’ve been playing since they were both pretending to be loyal servants of Andrew Harrison. Same indirectness as always, born of dealing through back-channels and intermediaries. Didn’t stop her and Szilard from mapping this whole thing out—from figuring out that the only way to deal with the president was to combine their strength and take him from both directions: lure him into concentrating on SpaceCom, lull him into thinking InfoCom was something he could trust. Or rather, use—and in reality Montrose was the one using him. She seduced the president, and she did it in more ways than one. Because Stephanie Montrose isn’t wired like most people are. She thinks at angles to everybody. That’s how she climbed to the top of Information Command by the age of thirty-eight. Now she’s forty-nine, one of the youngest presidents in American history, and she thinks she might just have found a way to rule forever. She stares at the head of Space Command—the man they call the Lizard—looks into his eyes and smiles her most winning smile.

“We’re winning,” she says.

“I noticed,” he replies.

There’s no way he couldn’t have. Not with the fattest wireless pipeline ever configured linking her base with his flagship. Behind Szilard she can see the bridge of the
Montana
—an HQ that looks to be every bit as extensive as her own. She takes in the screens that are visible, isn’t surprised to see that the SpaceCom camera that’s
capturing the feed is systematically blurring the images of the readouts. She knows full well that what she’s got with Szilard is an uneasy partnership. She wonders for how long it’s going to be sustainable. She’s knows a lot of that depends on what they’re talking about now.

“The Manilishi,” he says.

“Ah,” she says.

“Do you have her?”

“Didn’t I tell you I’d call you when I did?”

“I figured it couldn’t hurt to know the exact status.”

“We’re working on it.”

“Where is she?”

“We’ve got her cornered in the Congreve sub-basements.”

“I heard she’s gotten a little farther than that.”

Which isn’t what she wants to hear. Szilard shouldn’t have access to that kind of data. Then again, he’s had years to put his agents all over Congreve and everything beneath it. The farside may be the only thing that’s out of the direct line of sight of the largest Eurasian guns, but it’s also SpaceCom territory. And Congreve is even more so. That’s why she’s several hundred kilometers away, in a bunker whose construction she supervised covertly for years and which has only just been switched on. Nobody save InfoCom personnel are getting anywhere near her. Still, she can’t help but feel that Szilard is way too close right now.

“She’ll be in custody shortly,” she says.

“And then?”

“We’ve already discussed that.”

“And I’ve been thinking some more about it.”

“Think all you like. She remains with me.”

“You’ve already got the executive node.”

“Because I’m president.”

“And I need to remain admiral of the fleet.”

“You can do that without the Manilishi.”

“Sure, but—”

“What are you proposing, Jharek?”

“Joint control.”

“Out of the question.”

“Or bring her up to the
Montana.”

“The
where?”

“You heard me. My flagship.”

“You must be joking.”

“I have trouble doing that,” says Szilard. “Look, the farside’s not safe.”

“It’s as safe as anything we’ve got.”

“The East is
right there
, Stephanie. They’re still holding out at Tsiolkovskiy crater—”

“Not exactly next door, Jharek”—her voice raised enough that nearby analysts dart covert looks her way. “And how is taking her to the
Montana
in any way consonant with joint control?”

“Doesn’t have to be the
Montana,”
he says evenly.

“Doesn’t have to be anywhere in the L2 fleet,” she says. “Haskell’s a bona fide superweapon. Why the hell would we put her on a spaceship while combat’s underway?”

“You think my position up here is exposed?”

She doesn’t answer. She knows what’s really going on here. They’re winning so quickly that Szilard has already started trying to define the postwar order. Meaning she might just have to start moving up her plans. Szilard clears his throat.

“Let me try to put you at ease,” he says. “SpaceCom’s built on the reversal of appearance. What might look like vulnerable tin cans are actually the high ground. There couldn’t be a more secure place to keep Haskell—”

“So why not L5?”

“Pardon?”

“We both know L2’s yours. L5’s a little more
even
. Once the war is over, we can move her there.”

“To where Sinclair’s in custody? I’m not sure putting her anywhere near her former boss is—”

“Interrogating them together may be the best way to crack them both.”

“He may not be crackable. Harrison failed to—”

“So he failed,” she says. “No reason we have to.”

“So you’ll move Haskell?”

“How about you let me catch her first?”

O
n the outside trying to get in: and just out of reach—Lynx can see the main data conduit that’s been set up between the InfoCom and SpaceCom leadership—can see it, but can’t get in. Which is too bad, because if he could crack the inner enclave, he might be able to figure a way out of this fucking place. He’s still stuck in the shafts of the
Montana
. He’s been crawling through Szilard’s flagship in the wake of his disastrous attempt on Szilard’s life, running low-grade hacks to keep the local wildlife in check, but unable to get much of a vantage point beyond that … until he got a break, stumbling upon a nest of wires that turns out to be the backup lines for some of the systems on the bridge. He’s been in those wires for the last five minutes, using them to finally broaden his scope beyond this slice of the
Montana
. The Earth-Moon system is in chaos. He’s relishing the sight.

The fact that SpaceCom marines are closing in on his position is a different story. He’s got a glimpse into the views maintained by the
Montana’s
garrison—can see they’ve blocked off all the entrances to the shaft-complex he’s in and set up checkpoints, all facing toward him. A move that makes no sense unless it’s accompanied by another. Even though he can’t see it, he knows it beyond a shadow of a doubt: the hunters have entered this section of the shafts. He can practically feel the hands reaching out for his neck.

But he stays where he is, uploading for the next thirty seconds, siphoning as much information from the comps as he can. He figures he’s going to need it—figures you never know what might come in useful, knows he’ll have only a few minutes to find a way to put it to use. He feels data fill him, rise up within him until he’s
brimming with practically nothing else. He gets ready to start running.

T
he Earth shakes as they streak beneath it. It’s clearly only a matter of time before the tunnel collapses around them. They’re way too close to the surface. Presumably that’s why this train’s engineers are pouring on the speed, racing for the junctions that will get them to the one place they need to be.

Deeper.

The man eyes the car around him. Nobody is above the rank of colonel. The man’s only a major, but he’s got pull that goes a little beyond that. Yet right now he’s in the same boat as the rest of them—just Russian officers trying to make their luck go a little further, just soldiers all too glad they got assigned to this train and not the one behind it. There’s nothing back there now. The def-grids are crumbling. American hypersonic missiles are starting to smack into bases in the steppe above them. The train accelerates still further.

I
s something wrong?” says Sarmax.

“I’m fine,” says Spencer.

“No you’re not.”

“No?”

“You just felt something grab at your mind, right?”

Spencer blinks. “You too, huh?”

“How much did you feel?” asks Sarmax.

“Just the hint of something.”

“Could you see who?”

“No idea.”

Not that he has much experience with stuff this weird. He was hooked up to the Manilishi during the run-in, via some kind of
telepathy that was enabled surgically and had something to do with his zone interfaces. He has no idea as to the exact procedure—has no idea as to what this is really all about. Which is why he’s getting so desperate for some answers.

“You and Lynx and Carson,” he says.

“What about us?” replies Sarmax.

“You guys could only
sense
one another. You couldn’t read one anothers’ thoughts.”

“Is that a statement or a question?”

“Just answer it.”

“Told you already: only ones who could do that were the
real
Rain. Not us pipsqueak prototypes. The three of us were just modified flesh, Spencer—just the goddamn
precursors
. The main team, they were the ones who had it all together.”

“Except they didn’t,” says Spencer.

“Not without the Manilishi, no.”

“She was supposed to be the linchpin of the whole thing.”

“She still
is
the linchpin.”

“Even though the Rain are finished?”

“You really think so?”

“I thought Haskell wiped them all—”

“All,
nothing
. Riddle me this, moron: if the Rain are finished, what the fuck was that yanking on our goddamn brains?”

“I was assuming it was Haskell.”

Sarmax looks at him strangely. “Could you tell if it was female?”

“No,” says Spencer.

“You couldn’t tell anything at all?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m trying to figure out who it was.”

Spencer regards Sarmax curiously. “Right. I keep forgetting you
knew
them.”

“Trained them, sure.” Sarmax shifts the subject. “Look, there’s more than meets the eye here. I was a wet-ops specialist of twenty years when they put me out for forty-eight hours and woke me up
with the news that I was the new breed. I asked what the fuck that meant. They said, you’ll see. And they were right. You just
act
. You make all the right choices, and you know that the other members of the team are making theirs—you just
know
it. And when you strike, you don’t hesitate. And
everybody
hesitates. Even if they don’t know it. Even for a fraction of a second. But not when you’re Rain. You get the shot off quicker, and you never miss. You—”