David Williams - Mirrored Heavens

“This elevator’s restricted to the brass.”

“I got a battlefield promotion,” says the Operative and suddenly pivots forward, plunging a knife into the man’s visor. All of the myriad tiny blades that comprise that knife are whirring at high velocity as they sear through visor, skull, helmet, and the elevator door behind. The man jerks as his blood streams down the Operative’s arm; the Operative’s arm jerks with him. He pulls the knife out, lets the suited figure flop onto the floor, drags the body into a nearby storeroom. He enters the elevator and the door shuts behind him.

As the elevator trundles downward, the Operative’s thinking furiously. He knows that Lynx and Sarmax have either entered the base by now or the entire mission’s blown. He has no idea how they were planning to gain entry. He’s not supposed to know. He’s the spearhead of the entire operation—with Sarmax acting both as handler and second mech and Lynx providing tactical coordination and on-the-spot zone coverage. To have razor, mech, and handler in physical proximity on the same run is highly unusual. But the team now hitting Nansen never had much patience for procedure. It’s been many years since they did the runs together. Yet somehow it seems like no time has passed at all.

The elevator stops. The doors open. The Operative emerges, moves down the corridor thus revealed, cycles through another airlock. He encounters more marines, but no one challenges him. He hears Lynx’s voice once more.

“Change up,” it says. “Alter route as follows.”

The Operative tries to envision Lynx’s calculations. The garrison of the Third Marines has set up three levels of defense. The Operative breached the outer perimeter when he landed. He snuck through the inner perimeter by way of Elevator H3. Now he’s down in the core of the operations. All that’s left to hit is the inner enclave. And Lynx is making last-second changes to better enable its penetration.

The Operative reaches another doorway. He looks out on a large cave that looks to be an offshoot of the cavern he glimpsed from the control room. Steps lead down from the door in which he’s standing to a floor where walkway crosses rails. The Operative heads down to the walkway, crosses toward a train that’s moving silently in toward him—but he stops as it picks up steam. He lets it rumble by, beholds scores of suited miners staring down at him. He stares up at their visored faces—watches as those faces give way to equipment and cargo and finally to nothing. Tail-lights flicker red as the train moves farther down that tunnel.

The Operative’s already moving—over rails that are still quivering with vibration and through a doorway cut into the far wall. He goes through another airlock. Scarcely has he come out its other side than lights begin to flash. A siren starts up. The voice of Stefan Lynx echoes in his helmet once again.

“We’re rumbled. Kill everything you see and don’t stop killing until we’ve won.”

The Operative hits his suit’s thrusters.

The inner sanctum of the Kanheri Temple of Great Peace is vacant save for an altar. The banners hung from the ceiling have been torn by the blast that’s just rocked the chamber.

“Where the fuck is it?” yells Marlowe. He’s got his guns out.

“I don’t fucking know,” screams Haskell. She opens up on the altar, destroys it in a barrage of explosive rounds. In the zone she catches a glimpse of some presence receding.

“It’s running,” she says.

“Then so are we.”

They start to race down the corridor. They leap bodies, sprint around corners. They charge through what’s left of the temple. Even now they don’t lose their formation. They’re on guard against the oldest gambit of them all—when the hunted doubles back on hunter. So Marlowe leads and Haskell covers him, covers the zone too. She can see nothing at all. But she knows full well that something’s there. Something that’s gone lights out and hell for leather. Something that couldn’t be that far ahead of them…

“We’re out of the temple now,” says Marlowe.

“Some kind of back entrance,” confirms Haskell.

One that’s sloping down. They’re dropping well below the level of the Seleucus Flats now.

“Are you sure this is the way it went?” asks Marlowe.

“It’s right ahead of us,” she says.

She can’t see it on the zone. But she knows it’s right there. She fires on long-range. Tracers streak past Marlowe, explode in the depths of the tunnel. The walls around them shake.

“Easy,” says Marlowe.

“Goddamn it,” mutters Haskell.

She keeps expecting to stumble upon its smoking wreckage, keeps waiting for it to leap from the very rock around them. But it’s not going out easy. She knows it’s got special powers. But as to how those manifest in tactical combat situations, she can only guess. She detects a heat signature farther down the tunnel. It’s moving away quickly.

“Thrusters,” says Haskell.

“Must be,” replies Marlowe.

They ignite their own, give chase. If they’re heading into a trap, they could be in a precarious position. But they’ve got no choice. They’re ready for anything. But nothing moves save the shadows cast by their own flames. The heat signature in front of them is very faint. As is the zone presence. They’re pursuing it as fast as they dare.

“Where the fuck are we?” says Marlowe.

“Well below the Flats now,” she replies.

Somewhere in the depths of the rest of city. And now that city’s all around her, writhing amidst the distortions of its zone: reports of what’s going on in Seleucus mixed in with plagues now loose in the central sectors shot through with fevered rants about Armageddon and impending war and how the last days are now upon us. She catches glimpses of nightclubs where the youth of HK dance themselves into an oblivion thrust upon them far too early. She sees mobs in full riot—watches as explosions blast across them, drop them in their tracks. She overloads herself on all those images. She keeps rushing deeper, keeps urging Marlowe forward.

Finally the route they’re traversing starts taking them beyond the city’s confines. The city’s sounds are starting to fade on all their screens. They’re approaching sea level and still they’ve seen no other way out of this tunnel.

“Some escape route,” says Marlowe.

“I’m not sure what I’d call this,” replies Haskell.

They’re accelerating. By Haskell’s reckoning they’re out beyond the coastline now. Ocean lies above them. They keep on questing forward, leaving the shore behind.

But they turn off their thrusters when a door comes into sight. They move carefully toward it. As Marlowe presses up against one side, Haskell covers him. Marlowe pivots, opens the door.

“Interesting,” he says.

They’re looking at a corridor that’s filled with equipment: ladders, metal pipes. As they move into the corridor, they notice that the door through which they’ve come is invisible from this side. They hear a rumbling somewhere up ahead.

“The geothermals,” says Haskell.

“Must be,” breathes Marlowe.

They creep into the infrastructure that harnesses the product of the friction of the fault lines off New Guinea. They’re proceeding very carefully now. Any heat would just get lost in the shuffle down here. What they’re looking for could be anywhere.

But Haskell picks it up on the zone all the same. It’s moving in toward the farside of the complex. If it had any sense, it would have severed all access with the zone altogether at some point during the pursuit. Unless it’s arrogant enough to believe it can’t be tracked. Or it’s sowing a false trail. Or…