what in God’s name does
This time everyone hears. But no one has time to do a thing about it.
* * *
Like rain falling in reverse: the Operative watches through widened eyes as thousands of missiles rise out of the gloom that swathes Belem-Macapa. The def-grids swing into action: satellites start raining countermeasures down upon those weapons—and upon the city beneath. The Operative winds his vision up and down the scale of magnification, takes in a blaze of lights, takes in the clouds of missiles climbing up the gravity well. Many are winking out of existence. Many are arcing back toward the Earth. Many just keep climbing. The Operative stares transfixed as they move toward him. He can’t see if they’re going to plunge down upon the planet or try to make it all the way to vacuum.
But what he can see is that the city from which they launched is writhing under the def-grids’ barrage. If it was burning before, it’s positively incandescent now. The glow shining through the smoke is visible from space. The Operative can see it without amplification.
Until a shutter slides across the window. The Operative tries to disconnect it. Nothing doing. He curses—and stops cursing as he feels the ship start to rumble. The attitudinal jets are firing. The Antares is turning on its axis. He braces himself for the burn that will send the ship hurtling toward the Moon and as far away from this mess as possible. He waits for it. But the seconds keep on ticking by.
It’s all happening around Haskell. But not in the way she expected. Suddenly the Jaguar net’s diminished: nearly all the terminal nodes vanish. Information flows behind in their wakes—shows the trail of exhaust that’s splattering over the naked faces of the instruments that sit in the physical world, shows Haskell ghost-images of things fast receding, swimming out into the sky that can’t even begin to match the one she’s in. She stares.
She gets it.
Even as they almost get her. They spot her for real. She doesn’t know how. Maybe it was some random check. Maybe it was their sudden shift to full war footing. Maybe they’ve been stalking her the whole time. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the long, scaled tongue that suddenly flicks toward her from out of the inky depths. She dodges. It misses. She retracts. It comes after her. She takes evasive action, takes herself in among all that data, does her best to blend in. All she needs is a moment. But it needs far less than that to nail her. It sails in toward her. She sees it as it really is: a grinning cat-skull that’s nothing but jaws enclosing her. She scatters herself into pieces, confuses it for a moment. But not nearly long enough. It looms before her eyes. She meets its eyes.
But suddenly it’s reeling. It flails. She flails with it. What else can she do? This net is under attack. It’s being pummeled. It’s cauterizing whole sections of itself in the name of survival. Whole portions of existence are getting sheared off. The links to all those cities disappear. They’re gone. The lines through which she’s racing are buckling. Yet all the while the scattered fragments of her body are converging upon the light. She sees it now: the square that denotes transition. The door to salvation. The way out. She sails toward it. And still that tongue follows her. It reaches for her heart. It winds about her leg. She dissolves that leg. She raises her arms. She shouts.
And jacks out.
Smoke is streaming in front of her eyes. Sparks are coming off the cluster of screens. The room’s shaking— just as she’s being shaken by Morat. He pulls the jacks straight off her. Pieces of her skin go with them. She blinks. She bleeds. She looks at him. He looks at her. Smoke pours between them.
“We have to leave right now,” he says quietly.
“No shit,” she says.
That’s when soldiers on thrusters land amidst them, haul them out of the room without a ceiling, over the maze that’s not a maze, back out into the warehouse. Back out to the elevator. The room’s on fire. Smoke’s pouring down the catwalks. Noise is everywhere. The soldiers cluster around them.
Morat turns to one. “Lieutenant—what’s the status outside?”
“They’re attacking in strength all along the perimeter, sir.”
“How close are they to this building?”
“Sir, we think they’re inside, sir.”
“You
“We’ve lost contact with everybody beneath level forty.”
Morat shoves Haskell forward, sending her stumbling toward the lieutenant.
“Take the razor,” he says. “Save the razor. Take her up the shaft right now. Do it yourself. What’s left of your platoon can get in there and be the shields. I don’t care who gets hit. I don’t care who dies. Just
“Yes, sir,” replies the lieutenant. “What about you?”
“Leave one squad with me. We’ll dismantle this equipment and follow you.”
“Sir: if they’re inside the building, you won’t make it.”
“Don’t tell me what I will or won’t make,” says Morat. “Just go.”
They’re going. And Haskell knows why he’s staying. To gather the equipment—or make sure it’s properly destroyed. So he won’t have to tell Matthew Sinclair that he let the Jaguars root through everything CICom knows about their net. The soldiers are blasting the elevator doors down, adding to the smoke inside the room. They don’t take Morat’s instructions literally, though. The lieutenant’s got the most guns. So he hands her to one of the sergeants. Soldiers scramble into the elevator, ignite their thrusters. Some go up the shaft, some go down. The elevator car’s well below them. They rain explosives down upon it, send it crashing down for good. The sergeant grabs Haskell with both arms—“Sorry about this, ma’am,” she says, and steps forward, leaps. Haskell feels the heat of the jets on her face. She’s being hauled upward. Floors whiz past. Cables streak by. All of it’s wreathed in flame and shadow. Haskell feels the distance between her and sky narrowing.
Something slams against her. She hears an explosion. She hears a scream. She feels something wet hit her face. She feels her escort’s grip loosening. She tumbles from that dead grasp. She starts to fall down the shaft.
Something grabs her. “Got ya”—and she’s pressed into his arms: “for fuck’s sake protect her head,” someone shouts, and someone else is screaming that the Jags are in the shaft, and she finds herself thinking it must have been a trap after all. But she’s just clinging on to this arm, on to both arms, and her face is pressed up against the side of the soldier’s visor, and through it she can see distorted eyes peering intently past her at what’s reflected in that same visor: the ceiling shooting down toward her like she’s in a needle and it’s the plunger—and then the soldiers open fire and blast it away and they all blast straight through onto the roof.
Which is a shambles. As is everything beyond it. Buildings are burning, collapsing. Beams from heaven stab here and there, shimmer in the fog. The thunder of detonations rolls across the city. Belem-Macapa’s entered a new stage of its agony. The soldiers on the roof are firing in all directions. Haskell’s escorts shove her through a jet-copter’s open hatch. They’re screaming at the pilot to gun it. He needs no such urging: the ’copter rises. Haskell’s being strapped in by its gunner. She’s about to pull on her breath-mask: but now the doors slide shut and the craft switches over to its own recycled air as its motors switch into overdrive. She’s watching the rooftop fall away. Everything turns to cloud.
Suddenly there’s another explosion, and way too close—the rumbling of the engines shreds away into a high- pitched whining. The ’copter staggers. For a moment, it continues on its course.
But only for a moment.
“What the fuck’s happening?” yells the gunner.
“We’re going to crash,” the pilot says matter-of-factly.
The gunner’s lost it. He’s screaming. But Haskell’s saying nothing. She’s just lying back as the craft plummets
