The Mirrored Heavens (26 page)

Even as Marlowe’s speaking he’s rigging more charges within the two side airlocks. It takes him all of twenty seconds, throughout which the bedlam below continues. Her eyes blank, Haskell drifts in free-fall by the wall as she tries to shore up their defenses and find another opening in the hack. Marlowe finishes with the charges, starts suiting up. It’s slightly lighter armor than he wore in South America. He gets on everything except for his helmet. He attaches another rack of charges to his belt, starts to pull himself back toward the cockpit. Haskell keeps pace with him. And while they move they argue.

“You go out there and you’ll die,” she says.

“We’re dead if I don’t.”

They reach the cockpit. She positions herself in front of the trapdoor that leads to the escape hatch.

“I won’t let you go.”

“You have to.”

“If you go through that door, I’ll never see you again.”

“Never say that,” he says. Her eyes struggle to focus on his. She steadies herself against the control panels. But he’s already stepping inside the cockpit—getting down on the floor, looking back up at her.

“I don’t care what’s out on that hull,” he adds. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” she replies.

Marlowe steps inside the cockpit. He gets down on the floor, crawls beneath the instrument panels, finds the trapdoor. He opens it. He looks back up at Haskell.

“Go,” she says. She leans down, kisses him. “Come back.”

“I will,” he replies. He turns. Turns back again:

“But if I can’t.”

“But if you can’t.”

“We need some kind of insurance policy.”

“Meaning?”

He tells her. To his surprise, she agrees. She asks him to forgive her if it comes to that. He nods, pulls on his helmet, seals it. He crawls inside the chute. She pushes the door shut behind him. He wriggles down, reaches the bottom. He opens the interior door, finds himself back in the tiny chamber. The sensors and charges he rigged are still there. He adjusts the latter so they won’t detonate if he’s the one who comes back in through this door.

Then he signals up to Haskell. She works the overrides, evacs the air. He works the door’s manuals and pulls it open.

The surface before him is less than a meter away. But it’s not the surface of the ship he’s in. And the space between them is just that: space. Marlowe holds on to the edges of the doorway, activates his magnetic clamps, carefully protrudes his head.

And looks around.

Metal stretches out in all directions, curving away at various angles. He’s between the bottom of his ship and the roof of the one that holds his in thrall. Dark lines connect those surfaces at the point where curves begin: wires and struts. There aren’t many. Past them’s only black.

Marlowe edges out of the escape hatch. He begins to crawl toward the closest struts. He’s got his camo as high as it’ll go. He’s trying to minimize contact with the lower ship. He’s hoping that those who designed its exterior sensors were realists—that its sensors are optimized against objects approaching it over great distances and speeds rather than people crawling like insects on the hull. But he’s not sure. He’s planning on avoiding the open. He’s hoping to remain sandwiched between the ships if at all possible.

He reaches the nearest strut, looks past it and down at the massive sloping wing of the B-130. It’s partially retracted. Though it looks wholly unstable, it’s actually one of the toughest things on the ship—almost as tough as the struts themselves. Marlowe can see where they bent when his ship tried to break free. They’re warped here and there. They’re far from broken.

He means to change that. He moves along them, rigging minute amounts of hi-ex at key points. In short order he reaches the rear of the Janus, still well short of the rear of the B-130. Its tail splays out above him like some monstrous bird of prey. Bisecting the tail from left to right is a line of color through an otherwise-black sky: black shading off into dark blue shading off into violet. He stares for a moment at what remains of sunset. Then he turns and begins crawling across the area just aft of the Janus’s engines, reaches its other side. He takes out his largest charge and places it on the lower plane, just past the rearmost strut. He adjusts it so that its blast will slice straight downward. But no sooner has he done that than he feels the topography around him tilt. The forces on his body rise. He doesn’t have much time. He starts in on the next strut.

Movement catches his eye. Close at hand. A lens on his suit swivels. He stares. It’s one of the drones.

The ones he saw earlier were in rapid motion. This one isn’t. It’s sidling along the place where the B-130’s hull meets wing. It’s powered by what appear to be magnetized treads. It’s not making directly for him. He’s not even sure it’s seen him.

But now he sees another. It’s about the same size as the first, but of a wholly different shape. It’s like some kind of centipede—moving along on far too many legs, each one clinging to the ship’s side. Past it, Marlowe spots what may as well be its identical twin. Only this one’s on the wing. Beside it is another model altogether.

Marlowe carefully looks around. The situation’s as bad as he feared. The hull of the B-130 has come alive with these things. He spots at least a dozen more. There are several behind him too. They’re closing in upon one of the side airlocks. They don’t seem to have spotted him. They’re about to, though. He releases the safeties of his wrist-guns.

And the combat starts up.

Though it doesn’t involve Marlowe. Light streaks from several of the drones—lines of fire that just miss the B-130’s tail, but that strike things far beyond the ship. There’s an explosion. For a moment, Marlowe sees distant ships lit by the glare of that blast. And then another detonates with a flash that blots out those remaining.

But something’s returning fire. Something’s sweeping the B-130 with light that lights up Marlowe’s screens—something that knocks drones off the hull as though they’d never existed. Maybe the surviving ships. Maybe weapons deployed at longer range. Maybe both. Marlowe doesn’t care. All he cares about now is making it back. The black all around him is starting to dissipate. The metal’s starting to glow. He’s almost at the hatch once more. It’s still open. He’s three meters away. Now two. The B-130’s retros fire.

This is just the initial thrust. It’s not full blast—the ship has yet to turn around to engage its main engines. Even so, Marlowe’s flung forward. He grabs for the hatch, misses. He sails straight past the nose of the Janus—straight along the forward roof of the B-130, out toward the B-130’s own nose. He fires his suit’s thrusters on reverse. It’s like pissing in the wind. He’s almost shot past all metal. He grabs out with the desperation of the man who knows there’s nothing past the thing for which he’s reaching save planet. And somehow he finds purchase. His clamps connect—leave him clinging to the place where the B-130’s cockpit’s windows meld into its hull. There’s an indentation there. It’s not much. Combined with his own thruster’s blast, he might be able to hang on for a few more seconds. He can barely move. The retros are intensifying. He needs to do something quick.

“Claire,” he says.

Her voice comes back immediately.

“You’re alive,” she says.

“You holding out?”

“Just barely. You’re still out there?”

“And I can’t get back.” He watches as the struts fold in preparation for the return to atmosphere. There’s no space visible between the two craft anymore. It doesn’t matter: he sends the signal. Both ships shake. Force rolls against Marlowe. Somehow he keeps his hold.

“You blew the struts.”

“All that’s left are the fail-safes,” he replies. “They won’t resist blastoff. You’re going to have to leave without me.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You have to.”

“There’s no way.”

“There’s no time to argue. There’s nothing you can do for me now anyway.”

“Jason. Where the hell are you?”

“Look out the window,” he says.

She replies, but her voice is drowned by static. They’re hitting the main phase of reentry. Marlowe takes another charge from his belt, slaps it on the windows as far away from where he is as possible, edges back as far away from it as he can. Chances are that it won’t penetrate the hardened ship. And if it does, it might depressurize the whole thing. Which he’s willing to chalk up as an acceptable outcome at this point.

But then again: he’s on the window. Morat and his minions should be able to see him coming. They should be able to see exactly what he’s doing. And if they are, they can see the problem all too clearly. Which would leave them with exactly one option.

Get ready for him.

The charge detonates. The window vanishes. Marlowe falls inside. It’s as he suspected: they’ve depressurized already. At least this portion of the ship anyway. He rolls along the cockpit’s floor. Flame’s pouring in after him—and then it’s quenched as metal panels slide across where the windows were, slam into one another.

Marlowe grabs on to the wall. Deceleration presses against him. The space he’s in repressurizes. He looks around. The bodies of the pilots are still in their seats. They look just like their brethren upstairs. The lights of the instrument panels gleam. They look to be pretty much broken. Though even if they weren’t, Marlowe knows better than to try to work them. He knows better than to bother trying to contact Haskell. He knows there’s only one thing he
can
do. He flexes his wrists, primes his weapons. He hauls himself to the cockpit door. He blows the locks, slides the door open. And starts his journey into the interior.

T
he Operative stalks from the control room. Its doors slide shut behind him. He doesn’t know what that dome is. Beyond hinting that it’s some kind of R&D facility, the control room furnishes no information on it whatsoever. Even though it should. This place is clearly a lot more complex than he or Lynx had bargained for.

To the point where he starts to wonder whether Sarmax really
is
in that dome. Maybe the camera feeds are lying. Or maybe Sarmax managed to get out. He shouldn’t have. Within ten seconds of entering via the comlinks aboard the shuttle, Lynx had gained control of all the unmanned weapons rigged throughout the base, had set them to blast at anything that moved—the only exceptions being those along the Operative’s route. The dome itself is apparently bereft of such guns. The corridors that lead into it aren’t. Meaning that if anyone in that dome exits into one of those passages, they’re going to exit this life in a hurry.

Which doesn’t mean that Sarmax wouldn’t have his options. He might know a way to thwart the guns. Or maybe he’s gotten out by one of the exterior doors—though moving out over the surface is usually seen as a means of last resort. Keep as much as you can between you and the sky: that’s every runner’s rule. That’s every runner’s logic.

But logic isn’t what’s in the Operative’s head right now. Intuition is. And intuition says that Sarmax is waiting in his sanctuary for the interlopers who have penetrated his lair. The Operative has never been so at cross-purposes with himself. He’s done all the things Lynx asked him to do. He’s done the one thing that Lynx would never have asked for in a million years. He’s already made the move that’s about to transform the whole equation.

Now all he has to do is take the consequences.

The Operative reaches one of the dome’s many access chambers. He steps over the bodies of some guards. Looks like they got blasted by their own defenses. The Operative notes the telltale nozzles hanging from the room’s ceilings. He imagines Lynx looking down at him. He’s tempted to wave. He doesn’t.

Instead he moves toward the door that leads to the dome itself. He stands by the side of that door and raises one hand. The door slides open. He goes on through. The door shuts behind him. Leaving him immersed once more in night. A forest of night. He’s standing in what seems to be a grassy meadow. The branches of huge gnarled trees reach toward him like claws. Lichens climb up trunks. Some of them shine phosphorescent, casting sharply angled shadows onto the forest floor. Through small patches of clearing, stars are visible overhead, preternaturally bright and serene against the blackness. Floating above the highest treetops, grotesque in its surrealism, is the Moon. It can’t be the Moon—but there it is nonetheless, pockmarks of craters and smoke pall of mares smeared vivid across its surface. Three paths lead forward through the high grass. Each one tunnels into the woods, is swallowed by the blackness.

But before he’s gone another step, a timer in his head hits zero. That timer heralds the activation of the jammer he placed on the bottom of the overhang before he lowered himself on the tether into the base. As jammers go, it isn’t subtle. It doesn’t search out specific frequencies. It just bludgeons the entire spectrum. It caterwauls on short-range, hopefully dissipating before it goes too far but almost certainly creating enough interference to make Lynx lose his connection. Its activation is something the Operative has been expecting.

But what happens next he hasn’t.

An explosion rocks a distant part of the base. The whole dome’s shaking. The faux moon and stars overhead are flickering. They’re winking out. And coming back on. The Operative grimaces. Looks like the generators just got detonated. The backups have come on. A measure that must have been prearranged. Rig the generators with something that’s going to blow unless it gets a signal at intervals—a signal that won’t be forthcoming if a hostile razor has seized the comps, thereby ensuring that when the backups come on, any hostile razor will have lost his foothold: the Operative realizes that he’s not the only one with a plan for keeping Lynx out of the action. The lockdown’s probably still on. But Lynx has almost certainly been thrown out. The Operative’s on his own. It’s what he wanted. He fires his thrusters, blasts out over that sylvan cocoon. Halfway toward the dome’s center, forest becomes fungal garden—he swoops over it, crosses over into a moated island in the center that’s a patch of trees. He lands in a clearing at the island’s center, makes his way toward a gazebo at the center of the clearing. Standing under the gazebo’s roof is a figure in a combat suit that looks to be every bit as heavy as the one the Operative is wearing. He’s got his back to the Operative.