The Mirrored Heavens (25 page)

“Where are they?”

“They’re three seats behind you. Keep looking at me, Spencer.”

“Linehan. Control also said they’ve brought vehicles alongside this one.”

“What kind of vehicles? Where in relation to this car?”

“Behind and in front.”

“Too bad there aren’t windows in this thing. Did Control tell you anything else?”

“That it was going to do a hack on the main line’s systems in exactly”—a momentary pause—“twenty-five seconds.”

“Anything
else
?”

“That we should take this train and take that border. That we should work together.”

“Goes without saying.”

“Any ideas?”

“I’ve got lots of ideas, Spencer. The problem’s time. At this point, I hate to wait even twenty seconds.”

“Now it’s eighteen.”

“Spencer. Got a question, and I need the truth. Do you have any weapons?”

“No.”

“Not a thing?” The one-to-one isn’t good with nuance. But Linehan’s surprise is coming through loud and clear anyway.

“How was I supposed to get them past customs?”

“I’m stunned Control didn’t set you up.”

“Control’s hacking isn’t foolproof. Which is probably why we’re in the fix we are. I take it you’re carrying?”

“Of course I am, Spencer. Concealing weapons is a lot easier than concealing identity.”

“The specs you gave Control showed none.”

“So I lied.”

“So this is what you were going to use on us at Cornwall?”

“This is what I’m gonna use on anybody who gets in my way. Right now those guys behind you are top of my list. How certain are you as to that thing’s timing?”

“Very.”

“Meaning three seconds,” says Linehan.

“Try two,” says Spencer.

“One,” replies Linehan.

But Spencer’s already gone: wireless entry into wireless data-ports, barriers collapsing all around—and suddenly he’s at home once more. It’s been so long. It’s been just a moment. That’s what the zone does: makes him remember that everything that occurs between those immersions is nothing but a dream that’s scarcely worth the effort. But this is a slice of zone he’s never seen before. It seems to be endless. It ends almost at his feet—the very edge of universe that he recognizes as border. He’s making haste upon that border in a chariot wrought from light.

But only for a moment. Suddenly lightning streams in from every direction: shatters that chariot, hurls him from the zone to find Linehan’s legs scissoring past him as the mech leaps from his seat, onto Spencer’s armrests—and from there onto the seat’s back, whereupon he proceeds to use the seat backs behind that one as stepping-stones in a sudden lightning run. He takes it in a low crouch, his head ducked just shy of the ceiling, his boots just missing people’s faces. There’s barely time for them to protest before he reaches the men he’s making for. His targets see him coming. They’re leaping to their feet. All the lights go off.

The train’s still at cruising velocity. Its momentum is affected not in the slightest. Most of the passengers have enough optical enhancements to be able to see each other. But the unexplained darkness is still unwelcome—all the more so given that all video and audio channels that the train’s routing to them just went out. The fact that the first thing that most people are seeing as they switch to infrared is three men fighting doesn’t help matters.

Linehan throws himself down onto the first man, pulls him into the aisle, putting the man between him and his colleague while he pulls a loop of plastic wire around the man’s neck. A moment ago, it was one strand on Linehan’s shorn hairline. Now it’s become one with his victim’s jugular. Blood gushes everywhere. The second man already has a pistol out—and Linehan hurls his comrade’s body at him, rushes in behind it, and dives at the floor as the man starts firing through that dead flesh. People are screaming now. But Linehan pays them no heed: he’s tackling his assailant at the knees, knocking him off his feet—and then jumping to his own, kicking the gun away, bringing his boot down on the man’s face—and diving after the weapon, grabbing it, whirling around, firing a single shot at the man who’s pulling himself upward again—but who now grunts and slides back to the floor.

“No one fucking move,” shouts Linehan.

People were starting to. But now they’re stopping. Linehan gestures at Spencer, who steps into the aisle. As he does so, Linehan tosses him the pistol.

“Cover them,” he says on the one-on-one.

Spencer does. Linehan grabs the first man he killed by his shirt. He grabs the man’s pistol, shoves it into his belt. He pulls the corpse up onto a seat, shoves it up against the wall—and then seizes it by the back of its neck, starts smashing its head against that wall. He keeps on smashing until the skull cracks, breaks open like an overripe melon. The contents of the brainpan spill everywhere. Linehan starts rooting through them.

“What the hell are you doing?” yells Spencer on the one-on-one. He’s backed against the opposite wall, is using it as a vantage point from which to cover the passengers. The height of the seats means that they can’t see what Linehan is doing. Which doesn’t mean they can’t hear it.

“Software,” snarls Linehan. “Take the software from the head, find out who they work for. Find out what their fucking
brand
is.”

“We already know what their goddamn brand is,” yells Spencer. “I told you already. They’re federals.”

“How long have you been in the States, Spencer? Huh? How fucking long?” Linehan’s fingers are covered with blood and brain matter. His fists close on chips. “
Federals
means nothing. Which
Command,
Spencer? That’s the real question. Which fucking
Command
?”

“Presumably whichever one you split from,” screams Spencer. “When you stole whatever they’d found out about Autumn Rain. You’ve sold out your own kind, Linehan. And now you’re going to die at their hand. Tell me I’m wrong, Linehan. Go on.
Tell me.
”

“Gonna tell you right now you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” hisses Linehan, and for one sentence he’s both broadcasting and speaking. People around him whimper. “My country’s in deadly peril. My run’s the highest service I can offer her. And the last thing I need is holier-than-thou shit thrust in my face by some
mercenary
. You reading me? My life’s the least of my concerns. But we’ve got to find a way to live anyway. We’ve got to work together, Spencer. Together. You reading me?”

“Sure,” says Spencer, “I’m reading you.”

“So tell me how your hack went.”

“I don’t have control. I’m not sure anybody does. My guess is that this train’s been stripped down to its basic locomotion and emergency fail-safes.”

“Monitors?”

“Almost certainly gone.”

“Christ, let’s hope so.”

“What do you suggest we do next?” says Spencer. And even as he does so he’s reaching down, kneeling on the floor, reaching inside the shattered head.

“You’re lucky I didn’t clean him out,” sneers Linehan.

“Answer my goddamn question,” says Spencer.

“I suggest you do exactly what I say,” says Linehan. “We’ve got feds in both directions, and God knows how close they are. But I’ve got a plan. You’re not going to like it. The sheep around us are going to like it even less. But I can guess what Control’s orders were, Spencer. Get me to London. No matter the cost. Got it?”

“So what’s the plan?” says Spencer.

“Start racking up cost,” says Linehan.

B
ail out,” Haskell says.

“We can’t,” Marlowe replies. “He’ll blow us to pieces. We need to wait for reentry.”

“But
he
won’t wait,” she says.

“Close the cockpit doors. Lock them.”

While she does that, he’s pulling himself down onto the floor of the cockpit, crawling beneath the instrument panels, finding the trapdoor that’s situated where floor meets sloping wall. He opens it—and finds himself looking down into the narrow chute that leads to the escape hatch. He descends within. He reaches the airlock at the bottom and hauls it open.

Now he’s in something that’s more of a closet than a chamber. Another airlock sits adjacent to him. He knows better than to try to open that one. He rigs that door with devices from his belt: sensors, mini-charges, more sensors. Then he pulls himself back through into the chute. He closes the interior airlock—rigs still more devices, clambers back up.

Haskell’s sitting there. She’s rigged wires from her head to the control panels. She wears a dazed expression on her face.

“I can’t raise anything on the zone beyond us,” she says.

“Do the cameras show anything in the cockpit-access corridor?”

“They show nothing on this ship. But I don’t trust them for shit.”

They train their guns on the cockpit door. They open it. The corridor beyond is empty.

“You cover the zone,” says Marlowe. “I’m heading to the cargo chamber.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“I thought razors couldn’t move and remain in the zone.”

“The best ones can.”

“Ah.”

But he figures it must be a tough balancing act. He notices that she’s letting wires trail out behind her as the two of them push themselves off walls and move down the corridor.

“Wires are safer,” she mutters. “I’ve shut down as much wireless as possible.”

“Can you access the zone beyond this plane?”

“No,” she replies. “We’re being jammed.”

The two of them pull themselves into the room where they waited out the takeoff. They open the doors that lead to the cargo bay. That cargo bay contains the three remaining ways into the ship. Two are airlocks, one on either side. But they’re not the main focus right now.

“The elevator,” she says.

“I know,” he replies, sailing through air toward the airlock door that dominates the center of the cargo chamber’s floor. Metal beams run up from its corners: the beams along which the elevator that connects the two ships is intended to slot. The elevator is there to expedite the loading of cargo into the upper ship. But it’s about to be repurposed for a different kind of freight. For even as Haskell and Marlowe pull open that airlock door, they feel a vibration that can only be the lower ship starting to extend its shaft into the upper. That shaft’s only supposed to be extended when the ship’s parked. But whatever’s activating it isn’t in the mood to quibble.

“Hurry
up,
” she says.

The door they’ve just opened gives way to a two-meter drop. At the bottom is the exterior airlock door. Ladders drop down the walls to it. Marlowe climbs in. He looks back up at her.

“Weapons,” he says. “And some of that pressure-friendly ammo.”

She pulls weapons from their racks along the cargo walls, hands them down to him one by one. He slots in ammo specifically designed for use in pressurized environments, starts to mount guns on the ladder’s upper rungs: everything from handhelds to heavy rifles. He sets them up so that they can swivel as needed. He configures them on automatic—rigs their sights and sensors so that they’ll fire as soon as they see anything that passes for a target. He links them so that they can be controlled remotely by Haskell through the cockpit node—positions them so that they’re all pointing down at the exterior door below. He climbs down more rungs, keeps setting up weapons. His feet are almost at the bottom of the shaft. The center of the door beneath him starts to glow.

“He’s burning his way through,” he says.

“Get back up here.”

But Marlowe quietly continues his preparations. He’s setting the weapons for interlocking fields of fire, concentrating them on the center of the lower door. The glowing looks positively molten now. He starts making his way back upward, checking weapons as he does so.

“Hurry,” says Haskell.

The guns around Marlowe whir, turn on their axes. Even the ones he didn’t point initially toward the expanding glow are now swiveling upon it.

“Move,”
screams Haskell.

The guns roar to life—Marlowe reaches in, snaps one off its rung, starts unleashing it on full auto: the recoil sends him sailing upward even as Haskell starts closing the interior airlock door. He wafts through. Just as something swarms through the space he’s left.

Drones. A fraction of a meter in length. Scores of them. The mounted weapons are firing on high precision, cutting great swathes into that seething mass. The initial wave is getting annihilated. But the second wave is coming in from behind. They rise on gyros. They climb the walls. They open fire. Shots whiz past Marlowe’s head. Guns start to get knocked off their mounts. The interior door slams shut.

“Holy
fuck,
” says Haskell.

“You got control?” asks Marlowe.

“I do.”

“Can we hold them?”

“I don’t know,” she says. She projects the view from the guns onto screens set along the walls of the cargo chamber. She projects the specs too: Marlowe can see how she’s running them through the cockpit circuitry, coordinating them to degrees that they’re not even capable of—rewiring the functionality in real time, letting their barrels turn, fire, hit shots coming at them, hit the drones that are doing the shooting. He notices that armor plates have been positioned some distance down the shaft so that she can’t touch the lower plane—notices, too, that the ammunition the drones themselves are using is the same as that of the guns he’s just configured: precisely calibrated not to penetrate the airlock around them—and, by implication, the hull. Morat seems to want to take them alive. He seems to have the resources to do it, too. Because the drones are responding to Haskell’s onslaught in coordinated fashion—forming up in new waves of attack. They’re upping their game. Rapidly.

“They’re pressing,” she says.

“Can you hold them?” he repeats.

“For now. Not for long.”

“We need to get the fuck out of here.”

“Sure,” she says. “How?”

“I get out on the hull and detonate the separation clamps.”

She stares at him. “You can’t do that.”

“Want to bet?”

“Those things are probably out there right now.”

“Which is the other reason why I need to get out there. Before they find another way in.”