The Machinery of Light (52 page)

W
hat the hell’s going on?” says Linehan.

“Shut up,” says the Operative.

The five of them are streaking through one of the
Memphis’s
main conduits—part of the axis that runs from end to end. There are a lot of bodies. Dead SpaceCom personnel are floating everywhere. Nothing living. Nothing moving. But with his ayahuasca-soaked senses, Linehan’s somehow
sensing
something all around.

“This is fucked up,” says Maschler.

“This is the least of it,” says Lynx.

T
hey’re right where they shouldn’t be—smack in the zone of maximum lethality. The surface of the pusher-plate stretches around them on all sides—a surface that could be shoved right up against the sun and still survive. The bombs that spit from the bays blast energy against it that sends the ship forward. But right now there aren’t any bombs. There’s just these three suits, making haste across a landscape no one’s ever seen under these conditions, clinging to it so as not to be left behind. The Eurasian fleet spreads out before them, churning in their wake. Another trapdoor on that pusher-plate opens—

—L
ike something sliding aside in her mind. There’s a new peril, close at hand. The SpaceCom dropships now plunging into the South Pole badlands are so real it’s as if she’s seeing them on camera-feeds. And she can’t even reach their zone—it may be switched off altogether. She sees them anyway, though, but that’s all she can do—other than increase her pace as she continues to duel with that Rain triad tens of thousands of kilometers away. They’re falling back now, deeper into the mega-ship,
and she’s moving after them, springboarding off Spencer’s mind, increasing the pressure on theirs—

T
he Operative’s mind is racing. All this butchery just happened. It’s still fresh. The five men blast through what remains of it. Blood splatters against their visors. Most of the corpses have been torn from their suits, ripped apart.

“Those look like
bite marks,”
says Riley.

“One guess as to why,” says the Operative.

T
hey head through the second trapdoor, back up a new shaft. Spencer feels like a herd of elephants are trampling on his grave. The Manilishi’s using his mind to battle the Rain, and it’s giving him one nasty headache. He’s struggling to focus. He’s half expecting more bombs to come flying down this new shaft at him. Instead, a hatch in the side of that shaft is opening—he leads the way through into a space that’s far wider—

S
he’s driving the Rain back on the ship’s zone while the SpaceCom forces close in on her for real beneath the Moon. She can see how they’re moving to cut her off. They’re coming in from all angles, ready to join forces just beneath her and catch her. She’s going to have to reckon against the possibility that she’s going to be cut off from Spencer, too, that the Rain are going to find a way to sever that connection. But right now they’re giving way before her—collapsing back into full defensive mode as she drives against them. She can see what their next move is going to be. That’s why she’s getting hers in first.

S
omeone hacked the whole place,” says the Operative as they emerge into the main axis of the
Memphis
. It’s empty. But they know all too well that shit is closing in—

“Cramping our style,” says Lynx.

The Operative nods. Then again, he wonders if it’s just one of those things. Shit happens. Particularly in war. Particularly in this one—

“Here we go,” says Linehan.

A
space that’s as strange as it is large—and most of it’s taken up by the gigantic springs that the pusher-plate shoves up against. The three men use their suit-jets judiciously to maneuver between the vast hydraulic presses—which are cranking back into action again as the bombs begin to fall once more. With each detonation, the springs shudder with enough vibration to rip lesser metals apart. Spencer feels like his mind’s about to do the same. He feels Haskell reach out even farther—

S
he slices past the Rain to hit the microzone of the
Righteous Fire-Dragon
, slams through its cockpit, hits the inner enclave, and fucks it good. Network becomes maelstrom. As the zone of the megaship collapses, she rides it down in style, nailing the suits of the crew along with all the soldiers. Not enough to kill them, of course. Just enough to drive them really, really crazy.

T
here were ten thousand colonists aboard the
Memphis
. All of them woke up with some truly nasty programming. Some of them got taken out by SpaceCom marines. Still more got nailed when the marines blew the airlock. But ultimately numbers won out. There are several thousand left. And a large chunk of them are swarming in toward five men who have never seen anything quite like it. Soldiers less battle hardened might be undone by pure shock.