The Machinery of Light (30 page)

With one exception.

T
he blast-door swings back. The Operative follows Sullivan through into a room that contains several suited marines lined up in front of a second blast-door. He’s being scanned once more, along with the cart that contains Haskell’s simulacrum. He can’t blame Szilard for all the precautions. He wonders if they’ll be enough. The first blast-door closes. The second opens. Sullivan gestures at the doorway.

“It’s all you,” he says.

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Through there. He’s waiting for you.”

“You guys aren’t coming with me?

“We’re not allowed to.”

“He doesn’t trust you?”

“He doesn’t trust anybody,” says Sullivan.

“Fair point,” says the Operative.

G
ot it,” says Lynx.

As he knew he would. Like crosshairs sliding together in his mind, it’s all coming into focus. He’s got Carson in his sights—Szilard, too. The SpaceCom defenses may as well not be there for all the trouble they’re causing him. He feels the Manilishi’s zone-presence slide in behind him, feels himself glide forward.

S
pencer’s mind meshes on the zone with Jarvin’s. He sees the problem immediately. The hull door they’re parked against is only meant to be opened from the other side. It’s rigged with several more failsafes than Jarvin was counting on. And the key to those failsafes is in the—

“Cockpit,” says Jarvin.

“Roger that,” says Spencer—but their minds are already racing along the wires on the other side of what was built to be the escape hatch for the ship’s pilots. Directed energy blasts over their position as the L5 gunners start up a new barrage. Another ten meters forward, and they’d be melted. If the megaship changes up its angle, that’s going to happen anyway. But Spencer’s giving scarcely a thought to that dilemma. He’s just running secondary razor to Jarvin’s primary, twisting in on the underbelly of the
cockpit, accessing the evacuation sequences without making them realize they’re being run, telling them to initiate escape procedures—

“Got it,” says Jarvin.

The hatch opens—

I
t’s like something just swung shut within her mind, as unmistakable as it is strange. Everything else is checking out. The overall pattern remains intact. But there’s one slight problem. It’s within the margin of error—except for the fact that she doesn’t make errors. Nor has Control seemed to notice it. She keeps an eye on the anomaly while she keeps on tightening the noose around Szilard’s position—watching on the cameras as Carson walks down a corridor, pushing a cart that contains a woman who looks a little too familiar—

A
nd it’s all the Operative can do to not look at her face. He knows that if he’s fucked, this woman’s doubly so. Even if it’s not Haskell, he’s falling for her anyway. He’s guessing that’s the point. He wonders what happened to the man he used to be, the man who never gave a fuck about anyone, the man for whom Haskell was just one more
assignment
. But that was back when he thought he was going to outlast them all. Now that he’s wised up it’s way too late. The corridor bends left, then right, becomes a ramp that steepens to the point where the Operative’s having to hit the brakes on the cart. Some kind of room is just ahead. It doesn’t seem to be small. The woman’s eyes open.

“Hello again,” she says.

L
ike a flock of birds alighting: Lynx feels something descend out of the zone and into his mind. It’s Haskell—not just on the zone, but full-on telepathy. He thought it couldn’t happen, but here she is anyway, and he hasn’t the foggiest idea how. And right now it doesn’t matter, as she syncs with him on both zone and mind. The final map of the inner enclave of Jharek Szilard clicks into his head. He fires his suit-jets.

“You sure about this?” asks Linehan, as he does the same.

“Prime your weapons,” snarls Lynx.

T
hey’re scrambling out of the crawler and into the shaft as fast as they can. Radiation’s still pouring over them all the same. Their suits are getting soaked. Their flesh is okay so far—they’ve got more immediate problems to contend with.

“Close this goddamn
hatch,”
snarls Sarmax.

“We’re working on it,” says Spencer.

They’re having to do some serious multitasking. Spencer and Jarvin are damping the sensors along the shaft while they simultaneously check out the approaches to the cockpit and—

“Get rid of it,” snarls Jarvin. Spencer’s already on it, hacking the controls of the crawler they’ve just left, releasing the brakes. The crawler slides past the opening, tumbles off into space. Hopefully it’ll just be written off as one more piece of metal knocked loose from the surface, annihilated in the bomb-blasts that keep flaring beyond the rear-shielding. It’s out of their hands now. The hatch swings shut. The cockpit schematics expand in Spencer’s head.

“About time,” says Jarvin.

S
he arrives at the core of the
Redeemer’s
inner enclave. She’s got all their numbers now. Except for that anomaly, which keeps on sprouting new tendrils, keeps on growing, encompassing her while she continues on with the mission. Nothing tangible seems to be affected. She’s still running smooth. She wonders if this is something that Control is doing to gain a more complete mastery of her—the formula through which Montrose unlocks her still further. Maybe she isn’t supposed to have noticed it. Maybe the fact that she has will give her some margin. But suddenly it’s as if she’s being drawn on a string, hauled across vacuum—

H
ere we are,” says the woman who wears the face of Claire Haskell.