The Mirrored Heavens (41 page)

“You know where that is?”

“All I know is that you’re hell on wheels in those fucking speakeasies, Carson.”

“Yeah? What did I turn up?”

But as Sarmax starts to reply, a single chime cuts through the room. The two men look at each other.

“What the fuck was that?” asks the Operative.

“That would be the front door,” replies Sarmax.

“You expecting anyone?”

“Given that you just came straight from a SpaceCom holding cell, maybe I should be.” Sarmax stabs buttons on his consoles. He turns switches. He frowns.

“There’s no one there.”

“What do you mean there’s no one there?”

“See for yourself.”

The Operative looks at the screens. They show other upper-tier residences. They show an empty street. They show an empty doorstep.

The door chime rings again.

“Jesus,” says Sarmax.

“
Someone’s
there,” says the Operative.

“Not necessarily. But we’re clearly being fucked with. Let’s check out the door.”

“That may be what they want us to do.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“Not anymore.”

Sarmax flips him a pistol. “Get down to the entry chamber. Open the door while I cover you with the house weapons.”

“The house weapons?”

“Gatling guns mounted in the ceilings.”

“You didn’t tell me about those.”

“I don’t recall you asking.”

“Why don’t we just open the door now and see what’s what?”

“Because,” says Sarmax, “if we’re dealing with someone who’s fucking with my system’s ability to pick up visual, then we might not see who we’ve just let in. You get to be my eyes and ears, Carson. Unless you’ve got a better plan. But if you don’t, I say you get the fuck down there and get that door open.”

“May as well,” says the Operative.

He turns, goes down the stairs with pistol in hand. He reaches the entry chamber just as the door chime rings a third time. There’s a whirring from the ceiling as a heavy gun unfolds from it, swivels toward the door.

“On the count of three,” says Sarmax.

“Fuck that,” says the Operative. He hits manual release. The door springs open. Stefan Lynx enters the room. The door slides shut behind him. He looks at the Operative. The Operative looks at him.

“Easy with the pistol, Carson.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Things have gone from bad to worse out there, Carson. Had to get out of Agrippa while I still could.”

“And you ran straight
here
?”

“I told you we needed to talk, didn’t I?”

“Sure, Lynx. What do you want to talk about?”

“I thought I might start with a question.”

“Shoot.”

“What did you do with Sarmax’s body?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m sick to death of resurrections.”

But even as he says this the door to the stairway opens. Sarmax enters the room. He carries what looks like a shotgun.

“Stefan,” he says. “Been a long time.”

“Leo,” replies Lynx. “Nice of you to join us.”

“Nice of you to send an assassin to nail your old boss.”

“Next time I’ll send a better one.”

“I don’t think there’s going to be a next time.”

“As tough as always. But you may as well put that thing away. It’s not going to solve anything.”

“It’s about to solve
something,
” says Sarmax.

“Gentlemen,” says the Operative, “you’re both thinking so short-term. We need to talk about something a little more important.”

“You mean like how you disobeyed a direct order?” asks Lynx.

The Operative shrugs. “It was a stupid order.”

“Said the man without the facts he’d need to make that judgment.”

“Alright, Stefan,” says Sarmax. “Why don’t you explain to us why him killing me was such a brilliant idea? We’re both fucking dying to know.”

“Simple: I thought there was far more chance of you throwing in your lot with the Rain than with us.”

“So it had nothing to do with the fact that back in the day I told them your methods were unsound? Or that you couldn’t keep your snout out of the drug trough?”

“Once I didn’t have to deal with you every day, forgiveness came easy.”

“But apparently not easily enough.”

“
My
forgiveness isn’t the issue.”

“Then whose is?”

“How about the fucking Throne’s? You went and fucking left, Leo. You ran out on us in our hour of need. Just when it looked like the East would prove the stronger.”

“I retired, Stefan. I didn’t run out on anybody.”

“You lost your head over a fucking woman.”

And Sarmax whips his weapon level—only to have it spin from his hands as the Operative fires in a blur of motion. The shotgun hits the wall, slides across the floor. The room’s silent once more.

“Now why’d you have to go and do a thing like that,” Sarmax says quietly.

“What Lynx means to say,” says the Operative, “is that Indigo Velasquez was as much a victim of the Rain as anyone who died on that Elevator. Isn’t that what you meant, Lynx?”

“Sure,” says Lynx. “That’s what I meant.”

“That’s what I thought. And while we’re on the subject, Lynx, wouldn’t you agree that a good way for Sarmax to recoup anything he might owe the Throne would be for him to hit the Rain and feed their bodies to the vacuum?”

“Sure. Of course I would. That’s why I’m here.”

“So why are you so intent on getting him to paint his wall with your organs?”

“He’s not painting his wall with anything, Carson. I’m just trying to help us all understand where we stand.”

“And where exactly would that be?”

“The attempt to screen me from the fact that you hadn’t offed him was well-done. Selling me a doppelganger house-node was brilliant. But I managed to hack the line you and he rigged while I was hacking everything else. After that, it was easy to figure out what was up.”

“Although by that point you no longer gave a shit.”

“That’s right,” says Lynx. “Irony of ironies—I no longer gave a shit. Once I’d tracked Leo for long enough to figure out that he really wasn’t taking orders from the Rain—the rest was academic. All that mattered was their location. At—”

“Nansen Station in the Rook Mountains,” says Sarmax. “Right on the edge of farside Eurasian territory.”

Lynx stares at him. “How the fuck did you figure that out?”

“Same way you did. The speakeasies.”

“But you didn’t—you
couldn’t
—have followed me through that data. Out to that fucking asteroid and back?”

“What asteroid?”

“Right. ‘What asteroid?’ So how the fuck did you crack the SpaceCom conspiracy?”

“I never did,” replies Sarmax.

“Then where the hell do you get off on naming Nansen Station?”

“I had about ten thousand other reasons.”

“Say what?”

“Ten thousand different pieces of equipment. All sorts of shit—capacitors, chemicals, lenses, screws, nails, fucking duct tape. I’ll download the entire list for you at some point when we’ve got time for a circle jerk. But the point isn’t any one of those items. It’s what it all spells in aggregation. About ten heavy laser cannons. Any one of which would be capable of lacing into our space-based hardware. Some entity is using about a hundred different front companies to ship in all the ingredients. And they couldn’t have picked a better place than Nansen, given what a fucking zoo it is right now. Crime gangs looking for control, dissident miners jonesing for revolution, low-rent combines after anything as long as it racks up profit—”

“And all of it orchestrated by the faction within U.S. Space Command that’s hell-bent on overthrowing the Throne and igniting war.”

“And I have to admit that’s news to me, Lynx.”

“Well, that makes one of us. The prime mover is Anton Matthias. Third-in-command of SpaceCom intelligence. He’s maintained Nansen as a black base for some time now. Which in itself is just standard procedure: co-opt local dissent by channeling it into particular locales within which elite garrisons can be covertly based and from which they can conduct clandestine sallies that nail the most dangerous players or turn them into double agents. Textbook counterinsurgency. But Matthias has been revving up those insurgents for some kind of major incident that he’s going to stage-manage and pin on Eurasian infiltration. All of which gets put in a whole new light by the presence of strategic weaponry that never got burdened with those troublesome little things called serial numbers.”

“Stop right there,” says Sarmax. “How the fuck did you finger the Com conspiracy through the fucking
speakeasies
?”

“That’s how they’ve been coordinating it. The lion’s share of their data is maintained well outside of the Com databases—on a certain rock that Carson is already well acquainted with. They thought by putting it there they could shove it beyond the reach of anyone rooting through the SpaceCom Dumpsters. Not to mention keep it out of the hands of any of their bosses who might be less than thrilled at the prospect of a showdown with the East breaking out on their watch. Same reason why they’ve been assembling weapons parts outside of the Com’s confines. I’m sure it all bears an uncanny resemblance to Coalition hardware anyway.”

“Yeah,” says the Operative, “but who’s going to believe it? The Praetorians will be all over Nansen once those weapons fire. It’ll become pretty clear pretty quick that the East has nothing to do with any of this.”

“You sure about that? You been keeping up with current events?” Lynx looks amused. “There won’t be time for any investigation worth the name before the final world war gets under way. HK is now in a state of total anarchy. Our raiding parties have clashed with those of the East at least three times in the city itself. Both sides have withdrawn all delegations from Zurich. Both fleets have put to sea. Launching sites all over Africa and South America are working around the clock to get hardware off the well’s floor. All it needs now is a single spark. Which Nansen is winding up to furnish. Those cannons could nail L2. They could nail Congreve. They could take potshots at Earth. It hardly matters.”

“So let me get this straight,” says the Operative. “You’ve both come to the same conclusion for different reasons.”

“Looks that way,” says Lynx. Sarmax nods.

“But I can’t help notice that in both of your play-by-play explanations
neither of you mentioned
Autumn fucking Rain
.”

Both men shrug.

“Doesn’t that bug either of you? Just a little?”

“Why should it?” says Lynx. “They’re clearly pulling the strings. Matthias may or may not know that. But like I just said: it doesn’t really matter.”

“What you’ve got to understand is that you don’t track the Rain, Carson.” Sarmax has picked up his shotgun, is checking it for damage. “You track their proxies. You infer their existence from the shadows they cast. I don’t know if they have an active presence beneath Nansen—but there’s undoubtedly an active conduit. All we need to do is get in there and find it.”

“That’s a bit of a leap,” mutters the Operative.

“At this stage of the game you either make them or you go under,” says Lynx. “Besides, we know
something
’s going on there. Something that we’ve got to stop. You got a better plan—feel free to name it. But I say we activate the old team for one more ride.”

“We already have,” says Sarmax. “It was the East when last we met. Now it’s the Rain.”

“And our own side,” says the Operative. “Do we have a plan of operations?”

“I’d like to propose one,” replies Lynx.

“Let’s hear it,” says Sarmax.

“Well,” says Lynx, “it’s like this.”

T
hey’re closing in on the center of the Flats, fighting their way through all manner of shit to get there. They’ve figured out how to get the edge on everything that moves. And whatever doesn’t no longer matters.

It’s tearing Haskell’s soul to pieces all the same. She doesn’t know how the Manilishi was programmed. She has no idea what was in its file. All she knows is that when AIs go rogue they often decide they’re a damn sight better than the flesh that created them. And when such AIs possess emotional circuits as well, things can get ugly fast.

Things in Seleucus have gotten about as ugly as they can get. The Manilishi has sealed the borders of the sector and turned the infrastructure against the inhabitants. It gained control of those inhabitants who possessed software in abundance, set them up as their neighbors’ executioners. And the rest of the city could give two shits.

“They’ve all got bigger fish to fry,” says Marlowe.

“What have we unleashed?” says Haskell.

They’re standing on the edge of a market arcade, looking down on more bodies. Some have been run over by out-of-control vehicles. Some have been shot. People lie locked together where they’ve fallen. Some have driven knives into their own hearts.

“I’d have done the same,” she says.

“I wouldn’t,” says Marlowe. “I’d have fought.”

“Against what?”

“Everything.”

“You wouldn’t have stood a chance, Jason. Your own software would have betrayed you. You’d have had no warning before your eyes melted or your chest blew out. That’s what would happen if I weren’t here to shield us.”

“I’d have fought,” he repeats.

They’re halfway though the arcade when more of the damned break cover. One household robot and two people too wired for their own good. One of the latter’s already wounded—she drags behind while the others race in, get shot down. Marlowe and Haskell turn their guns upon the woman.

“Stop,” screams Haskell.

“Save your breath,” says Marlowe.

He fires, smashing the woman off her feet. She falls on her back, legs kicking. They move past her thrashing flesh. They move out of the arcade and cross through more corridors. They shortcut through empty residences, walk past scenes where whole families have tortured each other to death. Haskell tries to tune it all out. She figures she’s more likely to live longer if she can.

“How much farther?” asks Marlowe.

“We’re almost there.”

They’ve come out onto an enclosed street at the end of which is the temple. The roof above it is the epitome of ornate. The gates on either side lie open. No bodies are in evidence now.