The Machinery of Light (50 page)

“You wouldn’t believe me,” mutters Linehan.

T
his way,” yells Spencer, firing his jets and letting Jarvin and Sarmax trail after him while he hurls zone-decoys out in every direction. The Rain triad adjusts slightly; the wings spread out as they vector in on their quarry’s changing position. But Spencer’s relying more on speed than stealth. He and the other two blast toward the rearmost portions of the ship, flying through into one of the bomb storage chambers, moving away from the main elevator—

“Wrong way!” yells Sarmax.

“Wrong,” says Spencer.

H
askell drops through some of the active mining areas. She’s exposing herself, but it’s the most direct route. She’s fucking with the zone something fierce while she blasts through caverns filled with equipment. Miners stare agape as she burns past like a fever dream.

T
he five men careen out of the R&D areas and into the adjacent wing of the war-sat. It sports most of the ship’s weaponry.

“This isn’t the right way,” yells Riley. “The hangars are—”

“Go for it,” says the Operative. “You’ll win the record for most guns to ever target a shuttle at once.”

Though he knows it’s unlikely to be anywhere near that dramatic. The bulk of the American guns are staying silent—not exposing themselves as they wait for the Eurasian armada to draw
closer. But that leaves a lot of weaponry still in the game, firing away at the largest force ever assembled by the hand of man. The writing’s on the wall. The Americans don’t stand a chance. But right now the Operative has more immediate issues. The five men reach a chamber at the far end of the weapons wing—a dead end.

S
pencer opens fire—lets shots streak past the thousands of nukes and along the conveyor belts, taking out the hatches to which the belts lead. The doors spin aside and he leads the way into the backup bomb shafts. They’re not in use right now, but that could change at any moment. In which case it won’t be pretty: bombs are slung through the shafts at railgun velocities. The three men reach the far end. Another hatch bars the way. Beyond it’s vacuum. Not to mention nuclear explosions.

“You do
not
want to open that,” says Jarvin.

S
he’s leaving the upper-level mines behind, dropping through shafts that haven’t seen use in a long time. There are a number of active mines still beneath her, but she’s hoping to steer clear of them. The fewer witnesses she has, the better. Even if she butchered them all—reached in and fucked them via their zone-interfaces—the corpses would still be clues to her trail. And mass executions aren’t her style anyway.

But running zone is. And she’s never done it at this level before. Everything else has just been a precursor. Which makes it all the harder to take a route that will ultimately lead her beyond the reach of zone. She’s considered the other options. She could head for Agrippa or Congreve, infiltrate their mainframes, and try to wrest control of the U.S. forces from Szilard.

But even if she succeeded, it would still leave the Eurasians to deal with. And the East is nearly invulnerable to her hacks. They
got burned so badly by the U.S. zone assault in the opening moments of the war that their remaining forces have switched off all wireless interface save a few point-to-point communications within the fleet. So even if Haskell was in control of everything America has left, she doubts it would matter. There’s only one thing that does. She plans on getting to it as fast as she can.

H
ere we are, says the Operative.

“Those are missiles,” says Maschler.

“You’re quick,” says Lynx.

“Climb on,” says the Operative.

Maschler and Riley look at each other, then look at the missiles racked along the wall, pointed at the ceiling. Each one’s several meters long. They’re standard space-to-spacers, with a range of several thousand kilometers. They’re intended to defend against incoming missiles and ships …

“This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of,” says Riley.

“Not as dumb as yours,” says Lynx.

“I didn’t propose anything!”

“Meaning your plan is just
stay here and eat it
.” Lynx meshes his mind with the Operative’s, assists him in stripping out the guidance controls on five of the missiles and reprogramming them with their own sequences. While they’re at it, they’re climbing onto those missiles, adjusting their suits’ magnetic clamps, and deploying their tethers for addded effect. It doesn’t take long.

“Everybody ready?” asks the Operative.

“Oh sure,” mutters Riley.

N
ow what?” says Sarmax.

“Now we burn a hole through to the next shaft,” says Spencer. “Get through to the maintenance shafts beyond that.”

“Right,” says Jarvin, “but there
is
no next shaft.”

“Yes there is,” says Spencer. He glances again at the zone—does a doubletake.

“Well?”

“There was ten seconds ago. On the zone—”

“And guess who’s been fucking with it,”

“Fuck,”
says Spencer.

“You’re a fucking idiot,”
says Jarvin.

All the more so as the Rain are now entering the bomb-bays they just left. There’s no escape. It’s just a question of whether the triad meets with any resistance worth the name. Spencer starts to scramble back up the shaft—

T
he U.S. zone is disappearing in the rear view. At least for now. Haskell passed the last conduits on this particular tunnel half a klick back. She’s losing herself amidst the moon, and silence reigns within her head once more. She’s calibrating all the maps; that wilderness of man-made tunnels and natural caves that make the area beneath the South Pole such an intricate honeycomb. Yet as the zone drops away from her mind, other things are coming into focus; now that her suit’s no longer locked, everything that Control stirred up within her is starting to crystallize. Her mind expands outward like a balloon inflating. It’s the strangest thing she’s ever felt—something she’d find impossible to explain. Her body’s no longer the receptacle, just the focal point for an expanded consciousness that she’s now bringing to bear upon the universe at large. She finds what she’s looking for almost immediately.

T
he Operative keys the sequence. The hatches through which they’ve come swing shut. Airlock procedures initiate. The wall’s sliding away …