David Williams - The Machinery of Light

Too late, she sees the nature of the real trap. The luxury of numbers: Carson has had a second team of razors and mechs out there, sitting lights-out and waiting for just this kind of breakout. Even so, she’s faster than they thought. But now they’re hot on her heels. She blasts through storage chambers, moves past some of the directed-energy power generators. Wiring connects them to the guns spitting on the surface—and Haskell’s just stealing past them, through a maintenance shaft, dropping into the chamber she’s been headed toward.

The train that stretches through the room sits on rails that are part of the deep-grids: the sublunar rail network that connects the U.S. farside bases and that extends all the way to the lunar nearside. But all Haskell wants to do now is stay ahead of the InfoCom forces that are scarcely half a klick back. She steps inside the train’s first car. There are seven others. All bear the moon-and-eagle SpaceCom standard. All look empty, but she’s not about to make any assumptions. Doors hiss shut behind her. She places herself against a seat as the train accelerates. Walls rush by, so fast they look like they’re buckling.

She starts. They are buckling. She’s being hit by seismic tremors. The train’s coming off the rails. She’s applying the brakes, even though she knows that’s not going to matter—because somewhere behind her a mammoth explosion’s in the process of smashing the tunnel ceiling into the floor. She decouples the first car, fires its emergency rockets, runs them through sequences that her mind’s improvising against the fractal edge of raw moment. She’s crashing all the same. The cars behind hers disintegrate as she decelerates. Her own car’s ceiling folds away from her as she grinds toward a halt. Car walls tear away on either side of her.

She looks around, tests her limbs, tests her mind. Her suit’s still intact. So is she. She leaps out, starts scanning.

The tunnel’s definitely collapsed farther back. If the blast was on the surface, then it was nothing short of colossal. She wonders if the tide just turned against the United States. But the tunnel up ahead still looks clear.

So she turns, hits her suit’s thrusters even as she intensifies her hack on the train’s line. Rail whips past her as she reaches out to the U.S. zone somewhere ahead of her. She can’t find it.

And then she realizes why.

Ineed full data,” snarls the Operative. “Triangulate, give me readings.”

He’s managed to restore some order to his squad. The InfoCom mechs take up defensive positions as the surviving razors mesh, triangulate. Data foams back toward the Operative.

“Fuck,” he says.

There are way too many variables to determine the exact nature of the blast that just shook this area. But the Operative can figure out enough on his own. He no longer has a link to the surface—or even back to Congreve’s basements. Something nasty has almost certainly happened to the largest American farside base. Calculations race through his head. One of the razors comes on the line.

“Sir, we’re narrowing down the blast. Epicenter at”—he rattles off coordinates.

One of the screens that’s surging static suddenly coalesces. The face of Stephanie Montrose regards him. For the first time, it shows concern.

“Carson. You’re still alive. Thank God—”

“Looks like you’re doing okay yourself.”

“We’ve got a Eurasian incursion into the Congreve vicinity.”

“Where?”

“Northwest sector ZJ-3.”

“That’s right on top of me.”

“That’s why I’m calling.”

“How the hell did they get in? Their nearest base is—”

“Apparently they’ve been doing some digging. In anticipation of war. Like the North Koreans used to do back in their DMZ before the entire peninsula—”

“They might just have bagged the Manilishi.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” says Montrose.

“Got any heavy equipment I can use?”

“I’m scrambling everything now.”

“Great.”

“Get in there, Carson. This is your moment. Your time. Not just Mars. Everything beyond that.”

“Over and out,” he says.

His visor’s right up against his face, and on the other side of that plastic are the walls of the shafts of the SpaceCom flagship Montana . But it’s something even closer that’s at stake now. Right inside Linehan’s head, where another voice has just joined in.

“Line of sight,” says that voice, and then Linehan sees it, at the intersection up ahead—the suit of the SpaceCom razor who’s got his mind on the leash around his neck. He’s informing Linehan that he’s now passing into the mech’s visual field. A standard protocol.

But what’s not so standard are the shots that Linehan is getting off: two quick minibursts, one slicing through the razor’s wireless antennae, the other perforating his armor with heated rounds. Pieces of bone and suit fly.

Just as another suit leaps down next to Linehan. And through the visor he can see that face: silver hair and ebony skin and a mouth that just can’t stop laughing—

“Hiya,” says Lynx.

“You fucking bastard,” says Linehan.

“Is that how you thank the man who’s reversed the conditioning Szilard skullfucked you with?”

“That is,” says Linehan, gesticulating at the mess drifting farther down the corridor.

“Nice work,” says Lynx.

“So now I work for you?”

“I wish I could do that kind of conditioning on the fly.” Lynx grins. “Actually now you’re working for you.”

“Say what?”

“Man’s been so long in the cage he can’t even recognize the light of freedom! Better get out there and grab it before—”

“So I could just kill you right now?”

“You could try,” says Lynx. “But I don’t think you want—”

“I’m going to rip your suit apart.”

“Do you realize how many times I’ve heard that?”

“This’ll be the last,” says Linehan—grabs Lynx, shoves him against the wall even as Lynx keeps talking:

“But don’t you want to hear what I was about to tell you about Szilard fucking you over?”

Linehan pauses. Lynx laughs.

“You forgot all about that, didn’t you?”

“I—uh—how come?”

“Because you were having too much fun killing that razor?” “You are controlling me.”

“And it’d be a lot easier if you stopped fighting it. Look, man, Szilard’s got you marked. Think about it. Because even by today’s standards, your history’s pretty checkered.”

Linehan lets go of Lynx. Confusion swirls through his head …

“So let me see if I’ve got it straight,” continues Lynx. “You started out as SpaceCom and then got tracked by Autumn Rain and drenched in old-school drugs and turned by InfoCom, after which you got suborned to the president and then I took you over as part of the rump committee of Autumn Rain and brought you into a hit on Szilard in an attempt to take over the entire—”

He stops. Linehan’s staring at him blankly.

“Do you remember any of this?”

“I—uh—some of it—but—”

“But here’s the thing you’ve got to ask yourself: even if Szilard has found a temporary use for you while he’s busy winning World War Three, do you really think he plans to keep you around?”

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

“Well, let me be the first to welcome you to it: he’s about to blow the whole Montana.”