The Machinery of Light (76 page)

“Suicide run now,” says Carson.

“Or he knows something we don’t,” says Lynx.

“I’m picking up something weird from the labyrinth,” says Sarmax.

I
t’s like all the ambience around her is really a liquid through which she’s swimming—like she’s still back in that tank in Montrose’s bunker beneath Korolev—like all of it was memory or the event horizon of the initial drug surge … she stares at Control, who wears way too many faces; she composes
her own while she slices straight through him, crushing in on his cognition—“
How’s it fucking feel,”
she’s hissing—and she can sense he’s
hurting
, and writhing; his mind slithers out of her grasp, retreats in disarray while she powers past him and through the other side of membrane. She stumbles through the far side of the labyrinth, emerging in a cave. Marines stare at her, start falling to their knees.

P
icking up something ahead,” says Jarvin.

“Fuck,” says Spencer.

Maybe it’s the thing they’ve been running from. Maybe it’s something new. It doesn’t matter. They’ve got no choice but to go straight through it. They accelerate, start ripping out the elevator floor, getting ready to open up on whatever materializes in the shaft below. They’re almost on it.

L
ynx and Linehan start the final run, vectoring in on Szilard’s position at near point-blank range. The best that can be said about the marines’ resistance is that it’s heroic. Lynx’s mind flays the meat of cerebellum as he uses the zone like a whip and augments the guns of Linehan, who’s roaring down the tunnel and into a cavern, straight onto one of three Remoraz-class crawlers moving like mountain goats down the walls. One of the crawlers crashes into the other as Lynx destroys their software: both crawlers lose their grip, tumble exploding to the cavern floor. Linehan’s doing his best to get through the armor of the thing he’s hanging onto. Marines elsewhere in the cavern start firing at him—and then Carson and Maschler and Riley come in through a different entrance and start cleaning them up. Linehan’s tearing off the treads of the crawler, ripping out its rocket engines to strand it as a metal coffin. He sticks several
shape-charges onto the side, jets away. Lynx enters the room as they detonate.

G
et him,” says the Operative.

But Maschler and Riley are already on it—joining up with Linehan to apprehend any survivors, closing on the president’s presumed position. The Operative and Lynx alight on opposite walls of the cavern—supervising the salvage operation that’s going on below while they scan—

“Executive node intact,” says Lynx.

“Roger that,” says the Operative.

But he’s also picking up intensifying pulses from the direction of the labyrinth—from the direction of the Room—like a tsunami building—

“The old man’s going for it,” he says.

“Easy,” says Lynx. “We’ll take it as it comes.”

“Clear,” shouts Linehan. Lynx and the Operative vector down to the ledge on which the wrecked vehicle’s laying while their three mechs take up covering positions. In short order Lynx and the Operative stand above Jharek Szilard, whom they’ve propped up against the side of the crawler. Blood cakes the inside of his armor. He’s still alive, but only barely. Lynx laughs.

“Nice to see you again, Admiral.”

Szilard shrugs—winces. “Played it … best I could …”

“No disputing that,” says the Operative.

“But … didn’t have your
minds
…”

“You wouldn’t
want
our minds.”

“I’d have … given anything for them …”

“To dare to modify yourself like Sinclair,” says Lynx.

Szilard shakes his head. “So here’s everything I know,” he mutters, beaming over all key Com files.

“And the executive node?” asks Lynx.

Szilard flips the Operative a chip, who nods as he catches it—

“You realize this won’t save you?”

“Nothing can save me,” says Szilard. “Sinclair’s mind is swallowing us all—”

“You feel it too?”

“How could I not?”

The Operative nods—shoots Szilard through the head and slots the chip into an interface in one of his guns.

“How’s it feel to be president?” says Lynx.

A
man could ask for better circumstances,” says a woman’s voice. Sarmax and the Rain triad blast into the chamber, take up positions above the mechs, point their weapons—

“Sarmax gets to be the prez,” adds Velasquez.

“You really think it matters?” says Lynx.

“It’s our only chance of fending off whatever the fuck’s coming up from the Room,” says Sarmax. “We need to combine minds far more seamlessly than we’ve done so far. One of us is going to have to step up and be the focal node.”

“And you really think that should be
you?”
says Lynx.

“I don’t know what to think,” says Sarmax.

“But Indigo does,” says Carson. “Fuck, talk about upward mobility. We give this thing to you, and
she’ll
be running things.”

Velasquez shrugs. “I’ve got the strongest mind of anyone here.”

“Bullshit,” says Carson.

“I’m the last leader of the last
real
Rain triad.”

“And I sat at the right hand of Matthew Sinclair while we cooked you fucks up.”

“And you both never knew when to settle,” says Sarmax. He feels like existence itself is beating against his face. The force that’s
surging in from the Room seems to be taking on an almost physical form, it’s that strong. Sarmax looks at Velasquez. “Kid, let him have the fucking node. We’ve got no time—”

“That’s for sure,” says Claire Haskell.

S
he steps into the cavern and she can see the effect she’s having on them—can see that at least some of them can see the auras she’s radiating. She can see that they get it—that what they thought were psychic shockwaves emanating from the Room was actually her approaching their position. She stares for a long moment around the cavern—the shattered vehicles, the corpse of Szilard, the suited figures awaiting her next move. Her mind leaps out from there to encompass all the Moon beyond that, flitting past the Eurasians sweeping in from every direction upon the disintegrating American perimeters to focus in upon one remote corner of the nearside where Spencer and Jarvin are arriving in a room that contains the equipment they’ve been seeking. Her mind drops directions into Spencer’s head even as she notices Linehan dropping to his knees.

G
et the fuck up,” says the Operative.

Linehan gets up, backs away. His face looks ashen. The Operative wonders whether the ayahuasca has made him more or less able to accept everything that’s going on. He wonders what Haskell must be feeling right now—if it’s even Haskell they’re dealing with—

“So what’s this about you being president?” she asks.

“That’s what we were discussing,” says Velasquez.

“There’s nothing to be president of,” says Haskell evenly.

“Surely someone has to run the resistance,” says Lynx.

“That’d be me,” says Claire Haskell. The Operative can feel her
reaching into his head, activating the executive node, sending out the orders—her mind racing out to all the fragments of the zone in the American forces now fighting across the lunar environs—