David Williams - Mirrored Heavens

“You’ve set the water on fire.”

“Like I had a choice.”

He didn’t want to. But there was too much floating hardware chasing them. So Marlowe’s hit downstream with jets of flame. The fact that there’s more pollution than water in that river means it’s burning merrily. Now the only thing they have to outrace is fire. Smoke is wafting everywhere. The temperature’s starting to rise.

“How you feeling?”

“Warm.”

“But still breathing.”

“I’ll let you know when that starts to be an issue.”

Marlowe figures that will be soon. The tolerance of a breath-mask is far lower than a suit’s. The people out there must be dying in the thousands. And that’s just in this district. He doesn’t even want to think about the rest of it. The rising that the Jaguars had sought to bring about is finally underway. The city’s final demise has finally begun. The canopy of smoke is growing ever thicker. The topography’s getting ever more complex. The river keeps on forking—into channels that diverge, converge, intersect with one another. But Marlowe steers his way through them with the confidence of one who’s got nothing save the latest maps.

“Complicated,” says the razor.

“It’s Amazon,” he replies.

Roof closes in above this channel of the river. The smoke in here’s too dense for anyone lacking masks to breathe. But through that smoke they can see the combat all around them. Looks like this is the day of reckoning among the river-pirates. Shantytowns along the shore are in the throes of combustion. The combatants spare scarcely a shot for the ones now streaking past them and back into the open. Though open’s a relative concept. The smoke’s almost thicker than it was within that enclosure. The heat is overwhelming. Marlowe’s temperature readouts are climbing inexorably.

“We’re not going to make it,” he says.

“I know.”

Not that it’s not obvious now. The fires sweeping the buildings on both shores are merging, covering the river ahead. They’re blocking the way forward. There’s nothing but smoke and flame in front of them. Oxygen’s being sucked up to heaven, taking God knows how many souls with it.

“One choice,” he says.

“Right,” she replies.

They streak upward.

Somewhere in that sky two men regard a third. They’re not accustomed to having their cargo crash their party. They’re not down with the notion of taking orders from their freight. They’re used to being firmly in control.

They’re making a rapid adjustment all the same.

“We don’t know the whole story,” says Riley.

“We don’t know what the hell’s going on,” says Maschler.

“No one’s told us a goddamn thing. We’ve been cut off.”

“We only know what we can see.”

“That’s all I want,” says the Operative.

“The missiles.”

“Yes,” replies the Operative.

“They weren’t just from Belem-Macapa.”

“They came from all the Latin cities.”

“The damage is near total.”

“Damage where?” says the Operative.

“They wiped out Cabo Norte.”

“And three other major bases.”

“Must have been quite a sight,” says the Operative.

“But that was only half of them,” says Riley.

“The other half were pointed upward,” says Maschler.

“Pointed where?” asks the Operative.

Maschler and Riley look at one another. They look back at the Operative.

“Pointed where ?” he demands.

“At the Elevator.”

“And did they hit?”

“Of course not.”

“They were climbing the whole way. They were sitting ducks.”

“But they were just the first wave.”

“The first wave,” repeats the Operative.

“Yes,” says Riley.

“And the second?”

“Was fired by the neutral satellites,” says Riley.

“Seventeen of them,” adds Maschler.

“All in close proximity to the Elevator.”

“They unleashed space-to-spacers.”

“At point-blank range.”

“But the def-grids rallied.”

“They turned those weapons into powder.”

“They did the same to the satellites.”

“Sure wish you guys had let me catch this live,” says the Operative.

“What else could we do?” says Maschler. “This way, we have no records of it. We never have to admit we saw it.”

“You and a hundred thousand other people,” laughs the Operative. “Earth-to-spacers try to nail the Elevator? Space-to-spacers rigged on neutral satellites try to finish the job? Are you kidding me? It’s not like this is going to be much of a fucking secret.”

But he knows he’s wrong even as he speaks the words. Secrets aren’t a function of who knows them. They’re a function of who doesn’t. The sky’s been classified for fifty years now. Civilians can neither write nor film what it contains. Those who wear uniforms have more leeway. But they know when to be discreet.

Especially when they’re seeing things they’ve never imagined seeing.

“Besides,” says Maschler, “we didn’t know what your role in all this was.”

“My role,” replies the Operative. One eyebrow arches.

“You could be a plant.”

“You could be a sleeper.”

“A sleeper for who,” says the Operative.

“For the Jaguars,” says Maschler.

“This is much bigger than the Jaguars,” objects Riley.

“This is the devil’s night,” says Maschler.

“Because of those missiles,” says the Operative.

“Never mind those missiles.”

“The missiles don’t matter.”

“Then what does?” says the Operative.

“This,” says Riley.

He hits a switch. The lights in the cockpit fade. The stars intensify. Riley gestures at the left-hand window—points toward a strand of luminescence strung among the stars.

“That’s the Elevator,” he says.

“Yeah,” says the Operative.

“Listen to me. She’s got forty main motors. One every hundred klicks. She’s firing them all on full-retro. She’s been doing that for the last five minutes. At the rate she’s going, her lowest point is going to hit atmosphere in five more.”

Maschler’s hands play over the keyboards. One of the display screens lights up. A complicated pattern floats atop it. Green lights drift toward a larger strand of blue.

“That’s the space around this section of the Elevator,” he says. “At least a hundred ships are moving in from all directions. A lot of those ships are ours. But we think some of them belong to the East. It looks to be a coordinated operation.”

“Is this going on at other levels of the Elevator?” asks the Operative.

“Yes,” says Riley.

“And no one’s signaled to you what’s going on,” says the Operative.

“What the hell would they signal?” asks Riley.

“What else is there to say?” asks Maschler.

“The Elevator’s been jacked.”

“We’re forfeit.”

“But at least,” says the Operative, “you had the good sense to tell me all about it.”

They have the good sense to speed up as they climb. They roar out of smoke that’s drifting up from city-cellars. They roar into smoke that’s drifting down from the city’s middle layers. They race through patches of smog even thicker than that smoke.

“How are we doing?” the razor asks.

“I can’t tell.”

“Makes two of us.”

Wind tears against them. It’s all Marlowe can do to keep control. Particularly given how much damage his suit’s sustained. He adjusts his main jets, compensates with steering thrusts from his wrists and ankles, adjusts again.