The Machinery of Light (48 page)

L
ead’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.

S
armax 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.

E
xplosions 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—

L
inehan 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.

I
t’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.

A
nd 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.

T
he 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.”

T
hat 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.

S
he’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.

Y
ou 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.

F
ull triad,” confirms Spencer. “Closing.”