The Machinery of Light (73 page)

T
hey get deeper into farside. The upper areas seem to be a free-for-all. It makes the going easy for two men who know where they’re going. They switch from cycles to transport-trains, switch from that to elevators that plunge through shafts. They’re keeping clear of the main fighting. They’re in between most of it now anyway. Above them the Eurasian legions are consolidating their hold. Below them—

“Gotta be Szilard,” says Lynx.

“This time we do it right,” says Linehan.

T
he train roars back into tunnels known only to Autumn Rain. All the combat’s elsewhere. They’re taking advantage of that fact while they wait for the world to end. Sarmax can’t believe any of this is happening. Particularly not this—Indigo’s pressurized the rear chamber of this car, lifted up her visor. He’s done the same. They’ve got enough time for only one lingering kiss. It’s so much more than it used to be. It’s not just their bodies, now—it’s their minds as well. She’s still the only thing he ever loved. He’s telling her she’s won—that she can do whatever she want to him now. She’s not disagreeing.

S
traight shot from the depths of Copernicus to the hollows beneath the Imbrium, and this train just keeps on eating up the klicks. Overhead’s the world’s weight in rock. And that tunnel suffers from the same thing you do.

Pressure.

“We need more throttle,” yells Spencer.

“We can’t go any faster,” says Jarvin. He fires the rear-guns, catches one of the pursuers dead amidships—it explodes against the wall. But the gunship behind it is still coming on. The soldiers of the East are flush with victory. And they’re nothing if not—

“Persistent,” Spencer comments.

He takes the ship through a series of maneuvers; shoots through some mining shafts and back out into the deep-grids. The Eurasian gunship streaks after them—moving past the hi-ex mines that Spencer just slung against the tunnel wall. The ensuing explosions bring the roof down on it.

“Bought us some time,” says Jarvin.

“Not much,” replies Spencer.

I
t’ll have to do. The ceiling of the inner Room is peeling away above her. She’s streaking in toward another elevator now—one among so many, this one part of a funicular ramp that she’s setting in motion, her mind working its controls as she leaps on and turns to face the receding hub of the inner Room, targeting her guns and mind on it, waiting for what she knows is about to emerge—

T
hey’re cutting in behind the SpaceCom rearguard, stealing between the units that are struggling to throw up a defensive screen. Lynx has got the Com’s cookbook thoroughly cracked by now. Besides, that rearguard has made its deployments largely focused on the incoming Eurasians. Lynx and Linehan reach a network of more shafts and get within the area where the bulk of the president’s forces are moving. But even here, there’s still a lot of fighting going on. It doesn’t take them long to figure out why.

L
ot of free agents,” says the Operative.

He’s got Maschler and Riley manning the guns while he works the zone. The train’s racing out toward the center of the farside now, gathering speed with every minute, dropping ever farther. Velasquez is integrating her zone-readouts with those of the Operative. It’s an exercise in extrapolation as the situation gets ever more chaotic. But the overall contours are unmistakable.

“Makes sense,” says Velasquez.

“You’re being sarcastic?”

“Not at all.”

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” demands Sarmax.

“Szilard’s stirring up the refugees,” says the Operative.

“Those who fled the new orders,” says Velasquez.

Sarmax nods. Praetorians who made themselves scarce when Montrose took over. InfoCom soldiers who got the hell out of there when Szilard fucked their boss till she turned blue. Escaped convicts. Fleeing civvies. And the last of SpaceCom’s marines. There’s nowhere else to go but—

“Deeper,” says Sarmax.

E
veryone’s trying to get out of the way,” says Jarvin.

Spencer nods as their train keeps on hurtling through the warrens. He’s been picking up many of the same signals. The lunar underground is like a jungle that’s being overrun by army ants. All of the denizens are on the move. Everyone’s under pressure. Including all too many who thought they’d gotten out of the way for good …

“Choosing the wrong side can be a bitch,” says Jarvin.

“I guess you should know,” says Spencer.

“And you should thank your lucky stars for that.”

“You’d better put up or shut up. We need to find—”

“We’re almost on top of it.”

“And the Eurasians are almost on top of
us.”

S
he knows it all too well. Sinclair’s going to be on her any moment. She can feel his mind breaking out beneath her. The thought of seeing his face in the flesh terrifies her—even more so than the structures of the outer Room that she’s being hauled past—all the structures that she couldn’t see for certain on the way in, and that are now flashing past her eyes: vast pillars-that-aren’t-pillars, some of them supporting impossibly gigantic terrariums suspended like massive pods, glowing green with the flora they contain, all of them wrapped in the endless labyrinthine piping that coils everywhere like the entrails of some giant beast. She can’t even see the inner Room below her now—she’s set the controls of the elevator for maximum speed and is streaking up the funicular far faster than she descended. The real zone of this place is coming alive all around her, a texture she’s never encountered. She wonders what its next move will be. She jury-rigs the controls of the elevator to push it beyond its safety margins, hurtling upward to where she begins to glimpse something that just might pass for ceiling.

E
xplosions rumbling through long kilometers of tunnel, distant noise of firing, endless shards of fragmented zone: Lynx continues to take stock. He’s got a better read on the SpaceCom forces now. The elite marines remaining to Szilard are bunched into two groups: rearguard and everyone else. The real question is where Szilard himself is. And farther down the fighting is intensifying—