started.”
“With what?”
“With the
“Go on.”
“It’s changed.”
“How?”
“How would you guess?”
“Something to do with Autumn Rain?”
“Got it in one, Carson,” says Lynx. “Got it in one. The Elevator’s got this whole place buzzing.”
“Who the fuck are we dealing with, Lynx?”
“That,” says Lynx, “is the question that’s got me crawling Agrippa’s tunnels like a goddamn sewer rat.”
“You’re hacked into the SpaceCom systems?”
“I am,” says Lynx. “I’ve been doing my bit. Fair and square, Carson. Now it’s time to talk about you.”
“No,” says the Operative, “it’s time to talk about what you’ve found.”
“Same difference,” says Lynx. “Same difference. You wouldn’t believe what’s in Agrippa’s comps, Carson. I’ve been poring over it. It’s been pouring over me. It’s good. It’s fascinating. But it’s useless. So far.”
“No trace,” says the Operative.
“Not yet,” says Lynx. “But now that you’re here, we’re going to get on the board. We’re hunting big game now. We’re going to find these fuckers, Carson. And then we’re going to tear their fucking hearts out.”
“You think the Rain’s on the Moon?”
“We know they infiltrated the Imbrium miners on the Elevator. But here’s the thing, Carson: what you and I think doesn’t matter. What matters is what the Throne thinks. Last night I received word from the boys downstairs. Real-time, Carson. So they could vector us onto the new player.”
“And SpaceCom?”
“The original mission still stands. Turning the Com upside down and shaking out the change is still part of the objective. But we’re also going to leverage them in our search for Rain.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that one vector of this mission is finding out what Com intelligence knows. Finding out what they’re finding out. Finding out what they’re not.”
“And do we have an actual plan of operations?”
“We have an
“Which is?”
“Your getting moving.”
“Where to?”
“The south pole.”
“The where?”
“You heard me.”
“What the fuck is down there?”
“Sarmax.”
“
“How’s your hearing, Carson? They told me that might be an issue after your adventures up the asshole of that rocket.”
“I fucking heard you. What the hell’s he doing at the south pole?”
“That’s where he retired.”
“Sarmax
“Come on, Carson. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that.”
“I knew he left active service. But no one retires altogether.”
“Not officially,” says Lynx. “But think about it, Carson. The reflexes only go so far. And the conditioning’s only useful through a certain threshold. Comes a point when knowing that you’ll have your own little beanpatch can work wonders for one’s motivation. Beanpatches, Carson. You live long enough, you might even get one yourself.”
“I doubt I’d want it.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d guess that retirement has a catch.”
“Namely?”
“Well,” says the Operative, “take Sarmax. I’m guessing that you’re about to tell me to go down there and kill him.”
Lynx laughs again. It’s even worse this time around. “Hardly, Carson. Hardly. You’ve got it all wrong. You’re going to go down there and break into his base of operations. You’re going to cut through his defenses. You’re going to ransack his files. You’re going to rape his comps. You’re going to find out everything he knows. And
“Why?”
“Because he’s been careless.”
“Do we have evidence?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“That’s it?”
“Got a problem with that?”
“Maybe I do.”
“Because so far the boys downstairs have had no problem with you, Carson. They had no problem at all with you sitting in the sleep and mumbling on about how eager you were to get up here and rendezvous with me and do whatever the fuck I said. Of course, it never occurred to them that once you got upstairs you might start to get second thoughts about the whole thing.”
“I’m not getting second thoughts, Lynx. I’m just trying to understand this.”
“So let me clarify it. You off Sarmax and tell us what he was up to before he bit it.”
“And he’s hiding out down south?”
“He’s not exactly hiding.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he got more than just a beanpatch when he retired. Or rather, he may have gotten just the beans, but he’s parlayed them into a lot more. He runs a holding company that spans a number of enterprises. Most of them involving extraction of water from the south pole icefields.”
“Sounds profitable.”
“It is.”
“And where’s the man himself?”
“Shackleton. That’s where he’s got his HQ. It’s quite the fortress.”
“How do we crack it?”
“It’s complicated,” says Lynx.
“So?”
“Way too complicated to get into here,” says Lynx. “Time to go, Carson.” He beams data directly into the Operative’s skull. “It’ll download automatically on the train. Give you all the operational details. Every last one.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. We need to pick up the pace. I’ve maneuvered it so that the Com technician I’m passing you off as has been assigned to Shackleton. There’s a lev leaving in forty minutes. From equator to antipodes in one straight shot.”
“And what about you, Lynx?”
“What about me?”
“What are you going to do while I’m out on the run?”
