The Machinery of Light (68 page)

“They’re fucked,” says Lynx.

“And we’re not?”

The Moon rushes ever closer.

A
dmiral’s privilege,” says the Operative.

He’s not kidding. The inner bridge of the
Harrison
doubles as an escape ship. Riley and Maschler can only watch as he takes that ship through a series of evasive maneuvers. The L2 fleet tumbles away above them. The Moon falls in toward them. Riley laughs.

“No
one’s
going to be fooled by this,” he says.

“Szilard will fucking nail us,” mutters Maschler.

“I think he’s got other shit to worry about,” says the Operative, gesturing at the explosions dotting the approaching lunar surface.

T
he last cameras are getting taken out. But as they go, they show clear evidence that the lunar garrisons are in very deep trouble. A couple of domes on the boundary between farside and nearside just blew—outposts that are clearly under coordinated attack by the Eurasian commandos that the megaships have scattered like countless spores across the Moon. But those ships are paying the ultimate price for the havoc they’ve wreaked.
Hammer of the Skies
is disappearing from sight, disintegrating across the horizon, shredding into the mother of all meteor
showers. And before they went offline, the engines of the
Righteous Fire-Dragon
got one last set of instructions.

“Projected impact on Copernicus,” says Jarvin.

Spencer whistles. “The lunar capital?”

“For a couple more minutes.”

T
he dropship careens downward. The ship’s stealthy, but that alone won’t be enough. Sarmax can only imagine what hacks this Rain triad is running on the American zone. He’s starting to think they might actually make it to the surface. He looks at Velasquez.

“Why’d you save me?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

S
he shoves her head deeper into the Room’s defenses, smashing ever further into those minds, each one a prick of sentience she’s snuffing out. She can’t help but wonder whether these brains were the real Rain originals—the things that never left the vats, that instead were assigned the mission of defending Sinclair’s ultimate stronghold. But she’s turning the flank on those defenses. She’s almost there. She feels it all twisting in around her.

T
hey’re still pointed straight down, aiming at the very center of the farside. Ground-to-space lasers streak past them. Lynx throttles up the engine even further, opens up a comlink with what’s left of the Congreve defense grid, and starts running a particularly insidious hack.

T
hey’re getting low now, maneuvering within ten thousand meters of the surface. Mountain ranges loom ahead of them, straddling the near and farsides.

“Where the fuck are we going?” says Riley.

“Familiar ground,” says the Operative.

T
hey’re arcing down across the nearside, the domes of Copernicus approaching all too rapidly—and Spencer can only imagine the alarms that are going off within them. Not that anyone’s going to have time to react.

“Time to go,” says Spencer.

“Agreed,” says Jarvin.

T
he truth is we need you,” says Velasquez.

“Because of Sinclair,” replies Sarmax.

“Because otherwise we’re nothing but his prey.”

S
he’s in the home stretch now. Though she keeps wondering why Sinclair is making this so hard for her.

Especially when he needs her to finish what he’s set in motion. Maybe this is her final test. Maybe he’s trying to draw off some of her strength. If that’s the case, it’s not working. She’s only growing stronger. She moves onto the final sequence—

L
et’s do this,” says Lynx. The two men detach themselves—fire judicious thrusts from their motors as the antimatter drive drops away. Lynx has convinced Congreve’s defenses that this fragment of the
Harrison
is about to try an emergency landing in the adjacent Korolev Crater. The two men plunge downward in their armor and watch the engine beneath them dwindle to a speck while Congreve’s dome grows larger by the second.

M
ountains are streaking in toward them. The Operative’s working the controls, banking the escape craft beneath the highest peaks, letting it drop down toward the valleys. Maschler does a doubletake.