The Machinery of Light (57 page)

A
s one, the engines of the L2 fleet fire. All ships start moving in toward the Moon at speed.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it,” says the Operative.

He’s talking to the one remaining flag officer. The other officer lies on the floor, sprawled over his admiral, his eyes gouged out. It wasn’t a quick death. That was the point. The first officer coughed up the codes soon after that. The orders have gone out. The fleet’s falling into line, a vast V-shape whose forward point is the
Harrison
itself, the
Memphis
still rammed against its side: a strange compound ship swarming with feral colonists. The
Harrison
’s been turned at a slight angle to align its motors with the momentum of the
Memphis
’s own engines. And now a buzzer’s sounding on the
Harrison’s
inner bridge.

“What the hell’s that?” asks Lynx.

“That’s the hotline to President Szilard,” says the flag officer.

Lynx curses. “Tell him that Admiral Griffin’s had an accident and—”

The Operative shoots the flag officer in the head.

“Why not tell him ourselves,” he says.

S
o you’re going to do whatever we want,” says Spencer.

“That’s what that cunt rigged me with.” The AI’s voice is rueful. “Command-imprinting triggered by voice-recognition.”

“And I spoke to you first.”

“It’s keyed to all three of you.”

“So fuck you,” says Sarmax.

“Just figuring out where we stand,” says Spencer.

“And it’s about time,” says Jarvin. “Look, we need to get on what’s left of the zone with this thing and have a look.”

“Meaning we need to trust its story,” says Sarmax.

“Not sure we’ve got much of a choice,” mutters Jarvin.

S
he’s got none at all. She keeps on forging ever deeper—sometimes via the horsepower of her vehicle, sometimes via maglev freight elevators cut through the rock. She’s well below the domain of any of her maps now. She’s feeling her way by pure intuition—and she’s surprised that intuition’s still working, as every other one of her powers seem to have fallen silent. It’s as though some magnet’s drawing her deeper—as though she can’t help but make every correct turn. Almost like someone else has gotten control of her mind. She wonders if that’s exactly what’s happened.

T
he face of Jharek Szilard is appearing on the inner bridge’s screen. The Operative’s not about to let it get projected anywhere else. All transmissions are being routed through the
Harrison
. Szilard’s been cut off from communication with the rest of his fleet. That’s one reason among many why he’s looking so royally pissed. His expression gets even more priceless when he finds himself staring at—

“Well if it isn’t
el presidente,”
says the Operative.

“Who the hell are you?” asks Szilard.

Lynx starts laughing. The Operative’s trying hard not to crack up himself as he watches Szilard get ever angrier:

“And where the fuck’s the rear admiral?”

The Operative holds up Griffin’s severed head. It’s as though he’s thrown a switch. Szilard suddenly becomes quite calm.

“I see,” he says.

“More than can be said for him,” says Lynx.

“What are your demands?” says Szilard.

“Who said we had demands?” asks the Operative.

“I assumed that—”

“Assume nothing.”

“Are you Rain?”

“You don’t recognize me?” asks Lynx. “After all the fun we had back on the
Montana?”

Szilard’s eyes narrow. “The originals.”

“No less.”

“And what do you want?”

“Funny you should ask,” says the Operative. “Given that you’re the asshole who stranded us up here.”

“Way I hear it, you were trying to kill me.”

“Not just
trying
. We’ll hit the Moon in a few hours and you’ll be dead an hour after that.”

“You jacked the
whole fleet
just to get back to the Moon?”

The Operative shrugs. “How else would we do it?”

“You guys are nuts.”

“Do I sound like I’m arguing?”

“You’re fucking nuts. The firepower on my farside installations will—”

“Don’t be so tiresome,” says the Operative. “You need our guns to try to stave off the Eurasians.”

“When you’re taking the fleet out of the fight?”

“Did I say that?” asks the Operative.

“C’mon man,” adds Lynx. “Don’t you know your own tactics? Formation delta-G, right?”

Szilard’s checking that against his own screens, but the Operative knows exactly what he’s going to see. L2’s planners devised more than a hundred battleplans. All that was needed was to pick the one that gets the flagship closest to the Moon. The Operative yawns, makes a show of stretching. Through the inner bridge’s semitranslucent walls he can see Linehan beating the crap out of some technician who presumably looked at him the wrong way. Maschler and Riley are looking on as though daring anyone else to try something. Szilard clears his throat.

“Interesting,” he says. “One of the less orthodox contingencies.”

“And not even totally crazy under the circumstances,” says Lynx.

“I don’t know about that—”

“I do,” says the Operative. “Get in behind the Moon using it as cover, picking up speed all the while, then slingshot the ships around the nearside in all directions to play havoc with the Eurasian fleet.
We
attack
them
. That’s the offer, Jharek. It’s either that or civil war right now—and then the Eurasians can cruise into the world’s biggest junkyard.”

“What about my flagship?”

“My flagship,” says the Operative.

He and Szilard stare at each other. “For now,” says Szilard.

“I’m shaking in my boots,” says the Operative.

“You should,” says Szilard. “When you get here, I’ll tear you fuckers limb from limb.”

“Can’t wait. How’s the Manilishi?”

Szilard doesn’t say anything. Save for a flicker in his eyes—

“Thanks,” says the Operative—switches the screen off.

T
hey switch back on, plunge into zone—or at least what’s left of it. The AI rides shotgun, runs backup as the grids of the
Righteous Fire-Dragon
open up all around them—the central elevator shafts like some kind of multibarreled spine, the massive hive of corridors and chambers stretching out around it. The camera-feeds show carnage. Marines butchering each other, gunning down the crew, turning guns upon themselves, driving vehicles at full tilt, firing at everything that moves. When software hasn’t been used to hack the flesh directly, the flesh is simply being dragged along for the ride. Spencer catches glimpses of horrified faces behind visors while the armor they’re trapped within pursues relentless arcs of self-destruction. It’s total pandemonium. Haskell’s done her work well.

But there’s no sign of Rain.

“They’ve gone to ground,” says Spencer, his voice echoing through the cockpit.

“They’re out there somewhere,” says Sarmax.

“Probably still think we have Haskell,” adds Jarvin.

Spencer doesn’t reply. He’s just riding the zone farther out, looking beyond the ship. The Eurasian armada is spread out behind the
Righteous Fire-Dragon
, motoring in toward the Moon, drawing ever closer to its brethren fleet that’s launched from L4. The Moon’s caught between two onrushing vectors—and between them is a single ship, the
Hammer of the Skies
, rushing from the L5 fleet on a path that will intersect the one emanating from L4 about forty thousand klicks out from the Moon—

“Switching it up,” says Jarvin.

Spencer nods. Keeping the wings balanced—and as he looks further, he sees what might be the reason. His purview expands to take in the Moon itself: the L2 fleet is moving toward that rock. The final battle of this war will be the largest engagement to ever take place in space. He watches those lights drift ever closer.

L
ights parade inside her, stretch out beyond her, and it’s all she can do to tell herself that it’s all just some kind of illusion. That this is what happens when one’s mind gets shorn from the leash, bathed by radioactive static and deprived of external stimuli. All she’s got are these endless walls streaming through the headlights of her crawler. But she’s starting to get glimmers of something else, too—some signal that’s far more real than these illusionary lights that keep on taunting her. She can’t tell if it’s deeper in the Moon or deeper in her mind. It occurs to her that maybe there’s no difference.