The Machinery of Light (6 page)

“Fuck,” says Sarmax.

“We really shouldn’t go in there,” says Spencer.

“Not unless we’re feeling lucky.”

Or just really stupid. The shafts below this point aren’t intended for humans. Just nukes, getting slotted through at high speed. Meaning that—

“We’re trapped.”

“Maybe,” says Spencer.

“How many routes are there out of here?”

Depends how you count. The zone’s still down, but Spencer got enough of a glimpse of this area before the lights went out to be able to map it out: a series of interlocking rooms, all of them packed with the fissile material that’s both cargo and fuel. Spencer’s trying to calibrate these rooms against the larger superstructure of the thing they’re in, trying to make some calculations that are really just educated guesses. He’s got no time for anything else.

“This way,” he says, and starts moving through doors that lead to yet more of these rooms that are starting to drive him crazy. He wonders why the Eurasians didn’t just build one big storage chamber. He knows the answer even as he thinks the question, that it’s a matter of contingencies. The nukes themselves are failsafed. But if one of the warheads went off in here anyway, no precaution would matter. Yet the hi-ex trigger mechanism that’s fastened to each warhead is a different story. If those started to detonate accidentally, they could do some serious chain-reaction damage unless they were contained. So each room is the equivalent of a bunker. And he and Sarmax have reached the one they’ve been making for.

“This is it,” says Spencer.

“This is what?”

“Where we get off.”

“What?”

“Well, these nukes weren’t just carried down ladders.”

“Ah,” says Sarmax.

Because the truth is that these rooms don’t add up. Stack them up against one another, and there’s some empty space that runs through the center of them: space around which they’re all clustered.

“The
spine
,” says Sarmax.

“Now we just need to get in there,” says Spencer.

“Easy enough,” says Sarmax, turning to the wall—

H
askell’s thinking that the best way out of this one is to play it cool. She’s ghosting the passages, coasting past the sentinels, watching the back doors of her own mind. She knows that Carson has the keys to at least one of them. She’s hoping she’s got the keys to turn those keys against him. She heads up a ladder, through a doorway that opens without even knowing it’s been opened. She’s getting in behind the foremost of the InfoCom razors, letting them move ahead of her, running
down one of her decoys. She’s tempted to go for Carson himself. But she decides not to press her luck. Particularly as maybe Carson’s luring her in toward him. She crawls on past …

And fires her suit-jets. Now it’s a sprint. Her zone-bombs detonate behind her; two of the InfoCom razors go down writhing—her mind darts on through the gap they’ve left, and then her body follows. Power-suited mechs are firing in all directions, causing chaos. She feels Carson move to shore things up, but she’s not sticking around to see the results; she ducks into a freight-chute, hurtles upward. Moments later, she’s emerging—a quarter-klick farther away. She’s broken through Carson’s perimeter, doubling back toward Congreve.

Only to find another InfoCom force bearing down on her.

Too late, she sees the nature of the real trap. The luxury of numbers: Carson has had a second team of razors and mechs out there, sitting lights-out and waiting for just this kind of breakout. Even so, she’s faster than they thought. But now they’re hot on her heels. She blasts through storage chambers, moves past some of the directed-energy power generators. Wiring connects them to the guns spitting on the surface—and Haskell’s just stealing past them, through a maintenance shaft, dropping into the chamber she’s been headed toward.

The train that stretches through the room sits on rails that are part of the deep-grids: the sublunar rail network that connects the U.S. farside bases and that extends all the way to the lunar nearside. But all Haskell wants to do now is stay ahead of the InfoCom forces that are scarcely half a klick back. She steps inside the train’s first car. There are seven others. All bear the moon-and-eagle SpaceCom standard. All look empty, but she’s not about to make any assumptions. Doors hiss shut behind her. She places herself against a seat as the train accelerates. Walls rush by, so fast they look like they’re buckling.

She starts. They
are
buckling. She’s being hit by seismic tremors. The train’s coming off the rails. She’s applying the brakes, even though she knows that’s not going to matter—because somewhere
behind her a mammoth explosion’s in the process of smashing the tunnel ceiling into the floor. She decouples the first car, fires its emergency rockets, runs them through sequences that her mind’s improvising against the fractal edge of raw moment. She’s crashing all the same. The cars behind hers disintegrate as she decelerates. Her own car’s ceiling folds away from her as she grinds toward a halt. Car walls tear away on either side of her.

She looks around, tests her limbs, tests her mind. Her suit’s still intact. So is she. She leaps out, starts scanning.

The tunnel’s definitely collapsed farther back. If the blast was on the surface, then it was nothing short of colossal. She wonders if the tide just turned against the United States. But the tunnel up ahead still looks clear.

So she turns, hits her suit’s thrusters even as she intensifies her hack on the train’s line. Rail whips past her as she reaches out to the U.S. zone somewhere ahead of her. She can’t find it.

And then she realizes why.

I
need full data,” snarls the Operative. “Triangulate, give me readings.”

He’s managed to restore some order to his squad. The InfoCom mechs take up defensive positions as the surviving razors mesh, triangulate. Data foams back toward the Operative.

“Fuck,” he says.

There are way too many variables to determine the exact nature of the blast that just shook this area. But the Operative can figure out enough on his own. He no longer has a link to the surface—or even back to Congreve’s basements. Something nasty has almost certainly happened to the largest American farside base. Calculations race through his head. One of the razors comes on the line.

“Sir, we’re narrowing down the blast. Epicenter at”—he rattles off coordinates.

One of the screens that’s surging static suddenly coalesces. The face of Stephanie Montrose regards him. For the first time, it shows concern.

“Carson. You’re still alive. Thank God—”

“Looks like you’re doing okay yourself.”

“We’ve got a Eurasian incursion into the Congreve vicinity.”

“Where?”

“Northwest sector ZJ-3.”

“That’s right on top of me.”

“That’s why I’m calling.”

“How the hell did they get in? Their nearest base is—”

“Apparently they’ve been doing some digging. In anticipation of war. Like the North Koreans used to do back in their DMZ before the entire peninsula—”

“They might just have bagged the Manilishi.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” says Montrose.

“Got any heavy equipment I can use?”

“I’m scrambling everything now.”

“Great.”

“Get in there, Carson. This is your moment. Your time. Not just Mars. Everything beyond that.”

“Over and out,” he says.

H
is visor’s right up against his face, and on the other side of that plastic are the walls of the shafts of the SpaceCom flagship
Montana
. But it’s something even closer that’s at stake now. Right inside Linehan’s head, where another voice has just joined in.

“Line of sight,” says that voice, and then Linehan sees it, at the intersection up ahead—the suit of the SpaceCom razor who’s got his mind on the leash around his neck. He’s informing Linehan that he’s now passing into the mech’s visual field. A standard protocol.

But what’s not so standard are the shots that Linehan is getting
off: two quick minibursts, one slicing through the razor’s wireless antennae, the other perforating his armor with heated rounds. Pieces of bone and suit fly.

Just as another suit leaps down next to Linehan. And through the visor he can see that face: silver hair and ebony skin and a mouth that just can’t stop laughing—

“Hiya,” says Lynx.

“You fucking
bastard,”
says Linehan.

“Is that how you thank the man who’s reversed the conditioning Szilard skullfucked you with?”

“That
is,” says Linehan, gesticulating at the mess drifting farther down the corridor.

“Nice work,” says Lynx.

“So now I work for you?”

“I wish I could do that kind of conditioning on the fly.” Lynx grins. “Actually now you’re working for
you.”

“Say what?”

“Man’s been so long in the cage he can’t even recognize the light of freedom! Better get out there and grab it before—”

“So I could just kill you right now?”

“You could try,” says Lynx. “But I don’t think you want—”

“I’m going to rip your suit apart.”

“Do you realize how many times I’ve heard that?”

“This’ll be the last,” says Linehan—grabs Lynx, shoves him against the wall even as Lynx keeps talking:

“But don’t you want to hear what I was about to tell you about Szilard fucking you over?”

Linehan pauses. Lynx laughs.

“You forgot all about that, didn’t you?”

“I—uh—how come?”

“Because you were having too much fun killing that razor?” “You
are
controlling me.”

“And it’d be a lot easier if you stopped fighting it. Look, man, Szilard’s got you marked. Think about it. Because even by today’s standards, your history’s pretty checkered.”

Linehan lets go of Lynx. Confusion swirls through his head …

“So let me see if I’ve got it straight,” continues Lynx. “You started out as SpaceCom and then got tracked by Autumn Rain and drenched in old-school drugs and turned by InfoCom, after which you got suborned to the president and then I took you over as part of the rump committee of Autumn Rain and brought you into a hit on Szilard in an attempt to take over the entire—”

He stops. Linehan’s staring at him blankly.

“Do you remember
any
of this?”

“I—uh—some of it—but—”

“But here’s the thing you’ve got to ask yourself: even if Szilard has found a temporary use for you while he’s busy winning World War Three, do you really think he plans to keep you around?”

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

“Well, let me be the first to welcome you to it: he’s about to blow the whole
Montana.”

“This ship?”

“No, the fucking state. Big Sky Country’s gonna get it
good.”
Lynx slaps Linehan’s visor. “Yeah, dumb-ass, this fucking ship!”

“To get at
me?”

“Don’t be so full of yourself.”

“But what about Szilard?” asks Linehan.

“What about him?”

“Isn’t he on this ship too?”

“Only if you jump to conclusions.”

R
ussian trains have names. This one’s called
Mother Volga
. Its cab is a tight fit under the best of circumstances. Which these most certainly aren’t.