Mirrored Heavens

pull your strings. Claire: when you first met Jason, he was just starting out. Now he’s one of our best mechs. You’re going to have to work to keep up with him. I think the two of you are going to like working together. But even if you don’t, you’re going to have to act like you do if you want to survive where you’re going.”

“And where are we going?”

“To stop the Rain, of course,” says Sinclair.

“And we really know nothing about them?” asks Haskell.

“Of course we know something about them,” says Sinclair. “We know that they got onto the biggest thing our species ever built and turned it into junk.”

“Right,” says Haskell. “Thanks.”

“You don’t understand,” says Sinclair. “They didn’t just destroy the Elevator. They got on it. They got into its core stations. And they didn’t want us to know they’d done that.”

“How do we know that?” asks Marlowe.

“Surely your minds are sharper than this. The Rain was clearly hoping to use proxies to do their work. And to destroy the Elevator at a distance rather than reveal to us just how thoroughly they’d penetrated its security. They gave the Jaguars hypersonics. Ground-to-grounders that knocked out almost ten percent of our equatorial launch architecture. And yet those were a mere diversion from the ground-to-spacers those Jaguars were firing simultaneously. They almost got the Elevator.”

“But they didn’t,” says Haskell.

“What makes you so sure the Jaguars and the Rain aren’t one and the same?” says Marlowe.

“Please,” says Sinclair. “The Jaguars are formidable. Both of you did well to face them. But don’t let your emotional involvement distract you from the fact that they’ve never manifested spacefaring capabilities. We don’t even think they have the expertise to build hypersonics on their own. So we’re pretty sure that someone gave them those weapons. Someone who also rigged seventeen neutral satellites with space-to-spacers. Think of it— someone infiltrated the ground-to-space supply networks of two of the Euro combines. Someone sent up rockets instead of spare parts. Someone configured robots to rig those rockets. Someone did all that right under our noses.”

“And it didn’t work,” says Haskell. “Which forced them to play their ace.”

“Indeed,” says Sinclair. “As hard as it was to rig the neutrals—as difficult a feat as that might seem—getting onto the Elevator was even harder. And getting fission devices into its control centers should have been impossible. Which is why they didn’t want us to see that they could do that.”

“What makes you say they themselves were on it?” asks Marlowe. “Maybe they just hacked it.”

“Right,” says Sinclair. “Now you’re asking the right questions. Let’s break down the events: 18:20 local time— the Jags unleash hell on heaven and earth; 18:22—rogue space-to-spacers rigged on the satellites of the Lvov and Wessex Combines bracket vacuum. But nothing touches our behemoth. The def-grids of its escorts take down everything that even comes close. Now. What happens then?”

“It blows up,” says Marlowe.

“Fourteen minutes later,” says Haskell.

“Without warning.”

“From the inside.”

“True enough,” says Sinclair. “True up to a point. That much you know. Now let me tell you what you don’t. The official record says that nothing happened on the Elevator before the blasts that finished it. But that’s not quite accurate. T-minus twenty minutes: we get a tip from some of the workers coming off shift that some of the workers who’ve just gone on shift aren’t really workers. We move in on one squad in particular. We start busting people. One of our ships gets taken out. We take out everyone in sight. T-minus sixteen minutes: the Jaguars open up. T-minus fourteen: the rigged neutrals follow suit. T-minus thirteen: the Bridge goes offline, along with its entire garrison. Offline as in not responding to anything whatsoever. T-minus twelve: all the Elevator’s engines fire in reverse on full throttle. The thing starts slowing down. Not gently either. Hundreds of construction workers start getting knocked into space. Pieces of construction start flying off too. SpaceCom marines scramble from nearby orbital platforms. The Elevator’s starting to drag atmosphere. Nadir Station’s starting to get warm. But structural integrity’s still intact. Zenith Station is still reporting in. They’re seeing nothing. They’re evacuating. Marines from east and west are closing in. A DE cannon rigged just aft of the Bridge opens up on them, gets some of them, gets itself blasted into powder. The marines get in there. They land. They enter the Bridge. And then—nothing but white light.”

There’s a pause. The screen flickers.

“No one told us that,” says Haskell.

“That wasn’t in the news,” says Marlowe.

“Of course it wasn’t,” says Sinclair. “It’s embarrassing.”

“They seized control of the Elevator before they destroyed it?” Haskell shakes her head. “How can we hide a thing like that?”

“We can’t,” says Sinclair. “It’s not like people don’t know. Just not everywhere. It was reported on neutral vid, sure. So now it’s more fuel to feed the rumors over here. I’m sure it’s the same in Moscow and Beijing….” His voice trails off.

“Why did they wait so long to detonate the Elevator once they had the Bridge?” says Marlowe.

“It’s simple,” says Sinclair. He pauses, glances again at something offscreen. “They were toying with us. That’s the only conclusion that kind of sequence points to. Once they knew that they had to reveal that they’d been able to get fission devices aboard, they postponed destruction as long as possible. Drawing more of our forces into the blast radius. Winding us up. Making us feel it.”

“They really got nukes in by infiltrating the work teams?”

“Call it one option among many. Look at it this way: the thing was four thousand klicks long. Three main docking stations—Zenith, Nadir, and the Bridge—and ten minor ones. Cargo shuttles coming in around the clock. Thousands of workers—far too many, in retrospect—with most of them from the joint-control area in the Imbrium. Plus more than a hundred dedicated wireless conduits. But in the end, there were only two ways on. Whether they employed physical mechanisms or simply deployed a particularly adroit hack, there were only two ways to go about it.”

“Us,” says Haskell.

“Or the East,” says Marlowe.

“Exactly,” says Sinclair, beaming suddenly as though at a favored pupil. “Exactly. They either infiltrated us, or they infiltrated the East. Which brings us back full circle. The president and the Eurasian leadership have agreed to establish a joint tribunal. Joint investigation, cooperation in the face of the common threat, all the right words. All the right phrases. But it’s all nonsense from the word go, and everyone in the know knows it. Neither superpower will open to the other. Each suspects the other. The president has told me—”

“You’ve spoken with him?” asks Haskell.

“Of course I haven’t spoken with him,” snaps Sinclair. “And don’t interrupt me. I don’t mind it when you’re in the trance. You can’t help yourself then. You can now. And try to keep your wits about you. Standard precautions preclude direct two-way dialogue with the Throne for all but a few of his Praetorians. What in God’s name would make you think we’d dilute such precautions now? Now: the Throne has informed me that he’s deeply concerned that the Coalition is either behind this, or else will use this as an excuse to reverse the detente that sits at the heart of all his policies. But he also worries that the Rain may be the device of some faction within our own midst. Worst case is that such a faction is itself the tool of Coalition hardliners bent on war. Absolute worst case is that they’ve penetrated the president’s own security network.”

“They might have penetrated the Praetorians?” asks Haskell.

“We can’t rule it out,” replies Sinclair.

“How are the other Commands taking all this?” says Marlowe.

“They’re afraid,” says Sinclair. “As they should be. As we all should be. All of us—we’ve let the Throne down. Heads are rolling right now. And they’re going to keep on rolling. There’s a glitch in the system, and no one knows