So he hits it.
A quick burst from his suit’s thrusters, and suddenly he’s plunging—zipping straight in through the closing door and (even as he extinguishes his thrusters) through some six meters of shaft, then out into the hangar beneath. The shuttle’s just touching the floor. The Operative lands upon its roof. He’s still camouflaged. But he knows his flame had to have registered on every sensor. He’s been made—and he’s getting confirmation in the sudden intensification of electromagnetic activity all around him. The mechanics in the hangar are running for cover. A turret hung from the ceiling swivels toward him and starts firing even as a siren starts up. But the Operative’s already flicking his wrist, feeling that joint shoved hard as the micromissile ignites—and then he fires his thrusters, flying off that shuttle roof as the rocket streaks in toward its target. The turret detonates in a blinding flash. It takes what looks to be half the ceiling with it.
As the Operative blasts in toward the smoking wreck, the shuttle’s doors open. Figures stand there, begin firing. A hatch opens in the Operative’s left shoulder—a gun-rack rises from it, swings around behind him, opens up on autofire. The shuttle’s cockpit disintegrates. The walls get perforated. The figures are taken to bits. The firing ceases.
The Operative reaches the space where the turret was. The barrel of the gun’s still intact—albeit bent, twisted by the heat of the blast. It dangles from a heap of mangled machinery that’s still held in place within the gaping ceiling. A bomb-rack rises from the Operative’s right shoulder—tosses grenades toward the corners of the hangar to take care of anyone who shows up right after he leaves. Which is right now: the Operative leaps up into the ceiling, slides in past that machinery. The gun is automated—but according to the blueprints in his head, there’s a servicing shaft that leads out of it. He enters that shaft—which rumbles as his grenades detonate. He makes haste along the passage, trying to ignore the cameras and sensors strewn all along. On one level, he’s rendering himself a sitting duck. He’s in a narrow crawl space with only one other exit. But this is the route that will bring him most directly into the vicinity of the base’s inner enclave. He fires his thrusters, rockets down the corridor. He scarcely slows to shove himself off a corner. He opens up on the door that’s now in sight. It disintegrates. He blasts on through.
And into the main barracks. It’s full of men and women frantically donning their armor. A few are already suited. Their armor is lighter than the Operative’s, but they’re still formidable. Two of them are even now exiting the room through the door opposite. One is opening fire as the Operative emerges into the barracks—but he’s deploying countermeasures, creating (for just a brief moment) the illusion of a suit whose camouflage is stuttering on and off as it stumbles toward one of the room’s corners. Meanwhile, he’s leaping the other way, real camo still humming on all spectrums. At such close quarters, the shelf life of such subterfuge is measured in fractions of seconds.
Which is all the Operative is after. Flame blossoms from the nozzles atop his gloves, roars out to hit the walls and ceiling—and folds back upon itself to encompass virtually the entire room and dash itself against his visor. For a moment, all he sees in visible light is orange and red—and all he hears on the audio are the screams of the unarmored being burned alive. He ignites his thrusters again, blasts into the fire, vectors straight in toward the first of the power-suits. Its sensors are inferior to the Operative’s—but not so inferior that the man within doesn’t know the threat is proximate: he opens fire at point-blank range, lashing out with both bullets and lasers.
But the Operative isn’t there. He’s changed course, coming in from the side like a torpedo. His fists cannon straight into the man’s helmet. The visor crumples, as does the skull behind it. The Operative spreads his arms, flings bone and meat and metal aside, roars past bodies whose writhing has segued seamlessly into the contortions of burning paper. The remaining suits are retreating—but their flight stops as the Operative fires micromissiles into their backs. He fires his thrusters, shoots through the debris and out of the room. He blasts down more halls, turns down one more corridor.
The door at that corridor’s other end is both massive and open. Suits from within are already opening fire as he rounds the corner. Lasers start to sear against the corridor’s walls. The Operative’s gun-rack starts spraying out flechettes. They take one of the suits out of commission. But their main purpose is to cover him against the lasers. He hurtles down the corridor, bouncing off the ceiling, the walls, the floor, back onto the ceiling—and then into the inner enclave.
The walls of the control room are lined with consoles. The crew manning them is divided between those who are trying to run at full speed through the other open doors and those who are opening up with their sidearms at the flaming, murky figure that is the Operative. A suit’s on either side of him: he hurls a hi-ex charge at point-blank range into the nearest one’s chest, kicks out with his feet to smash his boots against the other’s helmet. The charge is an exercise in overkill: the first suit’s torso detonates—for a brief moment, it seems as though its owner is struggling, absurdly, to remove his helmet, and then he pitches to the side and lies still. The second suit’s been knocked sprawling—and before the man can rise, the Operative bounces himself off the ceiling and onto his target’s back, shattering the suit outright and snapping the spine of the man within. Seeing this, the remainder of the control-room crew drop their weapons and start to run.
The Operative lets them.
“Going soft,” says a voice.
“Not at all,” says the Operative.
“Then what the fuck are you playing at?”
“Letting them get out of range of all this gear,” says the Operative. He flicks out with his wrists again, lets micromissiles sear down the corridors along which those men are fleeing, watches for just long enough to ensure that their flight comes to a halt. Then he turns back toward the room itself. As he does so, all the doors slide shut.
“So what’s the story?” he says.
“The story is these doors are mine,” says Lynx. “I’ve got this whole place in lockdown. So don’t just stand there.”
The Operative isn’t. He’s leaning over one of the consoles, stabbing buttons, stroking keys with surprisingly dexterous fingers. He’s keying in the commands that Lynx is feeding him—the commands that can only be entered manually. He’s doing the one thing Lynx can’t. Textbook procedure: the razor’s wreaked havoc with the base’s security and surveillance systems, allowing the mech to move untracked inside the perimeter and reach the inner enclave, where the house node itself is situated. Sometimes both razor and mech aren’t necessary. But this base is well-protected. The mech would be hard-pressed to go it alone. And as for the razor: switching off defenses is one thing, but gaining active control of an entire complex’s network to the point where one can access all data and run all systems—that’s something else altogether. Besides, by wiring his house-node so that accessing it requires manual protocols, Sarmax has placed that node beyond the reach of any mere razor attack.
Which is why the mech is here. And yet he couldn’t have reached the inner enclave without the razor. Who couldn’t gain control of the inner enclave without him. Thus the standard partnership. Thus the standard tension.
And sometimes it boils over.
“It’s not working,” says the Operative.
“What do you mean, it’s not working?”
“I mean it’s not working. I got access. But I can’t seem to do anything that matters with that access. Your fucking commands aren’t working.”
“Well, why the fuck not?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
“Get the base schematics on the screen.”
The Operative does. He keys in more commands. The master blueprints click into focus.
“Well,” he says.
“No difference between this and my blueprints,” says Lynx.
“What?”
“This base is exactly what it’s supposed to be.”
“What’d you think it might have been?”
“I don’t know, Carson. Jesus Christ, man, give me a moment here.”
“Tell me what you’re thinking, Lynx.”
“I was thinking there must be more to this base than meets the eye. More than my intel showed. Another inner enclave, maybe. Maybe this isn’t the real one.” The Operative’s never heard Lynx talk this fast. “But
