Mirrored Heavens

“I can’t raise anything on the zone beyond us,” she says.

“Do the cameras show anything in the cockpit-access corridor?”

“They show nothing on this ship. But I don’t trust them for shit.”

They train their guns on the cockpit door. They open it. The corridor beyond is empty.

“You cover the zone,” says Marlowe. “I’m heading to the cargo chamber.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“I thought razors couldn’t move and remain in the zone.”

“The best ones can.”

“Ah.”

But he figures it must be a tough balancing act. He notices that she’s letting wires trail out behind her as the two of them push themselves off walls and move down the corridor.

“Wires are safer,” she mutters. “I’ve shut down as much wireless as possible.”

“Can you access the zone beyond this plane?”

“No,” she replies. “We’re being jammed.”

The two of them pull themselves into the room where they waited out the takeoff. They open the doors that lead to the cargo bay. That cargo bay contains the three remaining ways into the ship. Two are airlocks, one on either side. But they’re not the main focus right now.

“The elevator,” she says.

“I know,” he replies, sailing through air toward the airlock door that dominates the center of the cargo chamber’s floor. Metal beams run up from its corners: the beams along which the elevator that connects the two ships is intended to slot. The elevator is there to expedite the loading of cargo into the upper ship. But it’s about to be repurposed for a different kind of freight. For even as Haskell and Marlowe pull open that airlock door, they feel a vibration that can only be the lower ship starting to extend its shaft into the upper. That shaft’s only supposed to be extended when the ship’s parked.

But whatever’s activating it isn’t in the mood to quibble.

“Hurry up,” she says.

The door they’ve just opened gives way to a two-meter drop. At the bottom is the exterior airlock door. Ladders drop down the walls to it. Marlowe climbs in. He looks back up at her.

“Weapons,” he says. “And some of that pressure-friendly ammo.”

She pulls weapons from their racks along the cargo walls, hands them down to him one by one. He slots in ammo specifically designed for use in pressurized environments, starts to mount guns on the ladder’s upper rungs: everything from handhelds to heavy rifles. He sets them up so that they can swivel as needed. He configures them on automatic—rigs their sights and sensors so that they’ll fire as soon as they see anything that passes for a target. He links them so that they can be controlled remotely by Haskell through the cockpit node—positions them so that they’re all pointing down at the exterior door below. He climbs down more rungs, keeps setting up weapons. His feet are almost at the bottom of the shaft.

The center of the door beneath him starts to glow.

“He’s burning his way through,” he says.

“Get back up here.”

But Marlowe quietly continues his preparations. He’s setting the weapons for interlocking fields of fire, concentrating them on the center of the lower door. The glowing looks positively molten now. He starts making his way back upward, checking weapons as he does so.

“Hurry,” says Haskell.

The guns around Marlowe whir, turn on their axes. Even the ones he didn’t point initially toward the expanding glow are now swiveling upon it.

“Move,” screams Haskell.

The guns roar to life—Marlowe reaches in, snaps one off its rung, starts unleashing it on full auto: the recoil sends him sailing upward even as Haskell starts closing the interior airlock door. He wafts through.

Just as something swarms through the space he’s left.

Drones. A fraction of a meter in length. Scores of them. The mounted weapons are firing on high precision, cutting great swathes into that seething mass. The initial wave is getting annihilated. But the second wave is coming in from behind. They rise on gyros. They climb the walls. They open fire. Shots whiz past Marlowe’s head. Guns start to get knocked off their mounts.

The interior door slams shut.

“Holy fuck,” says Haskell.

“You got control?” asks Marlowe.

“I do.”

“Can we hold them?”

“I don’t know,” she says. She projects the view from the guns onto screens set along the walls of the cargo chamber. She projects the specs too: Marlowe can see how she’s running them through the cockpit circuitry, coordinating them to degrees that they’re not even capable of—rewiring the functionality in real time, letting their barrels turn, fire, hit shots coming at them, hit the drones that are doing the shooting. He notices that armor plates have been positioned some distance down the shaft so that she can’t touch the lower plane—notices, too, that the ammunition the drones themselves are using is the same as that of the guns he’s just configured: precisely calibrated not to penetrate the airlock around them—and, by implication, the hull. Morat seems to want to take them alive.

He seems to have the resources to do it, too. Because the drones are responding to Haskell’s onslaught in coordinated fashion—forming up in new waves of attack. They’re upping their game.

Rapidly.

“They’re pressing,” she says.

“Can you hold them?” he repeats.

“For now. Not for long.”

“We need to get the fuck out of here.”

“Sure,” she says. “How?”

“I get out on the hull and detonate the separation clamps.”

She stares at him. “You can’t do that.”

“Want to bet?”

“Those things are probably out there right now.”

“Which is the other reason why I need to get out there. Before they find another way in.”

Even as Marlowe’s speaking he’s rigging more charges within the two side airlocks. It takes him all of twenty seconds, throughout which the bedlam below continues. Her eyes blank, Haskell drifts in free-fall by the wall as she tries to shore up their defenses and find another opening in the hack.

Marlowe finishes with the charges, starts suiting up. It’s slightly lighter armor than he wore in South America. He gets on everything except for his helmet. He attaches another rack of charges to his belt, starts to pull himself back toward the cockpit. Haskell keeps pace with him. And while they move they argue.

“You go out there and you’ll die,” she says.

“We’re dead if I don’t.”

They reach the cockpit. She positions herself in front of the trapdoor that leads to the escape hatch.

“I won’t let you go.”

“You have to.”

“If you go through that door, I’ll never see you again.”

“Never say that,” he says. Her eyes struggle to focus on his. She steadies herself against the control panels. But he’s already stepping inside the cockpit—getting down on the floor, looking back up at her.

“I don’t care what’s out on that hull,” he adds. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” she replies.

Marlowe steps inside the cockpit. He gets down on the floor, crawls beneath the instrument panels, finds the trapdoor. He opens it. He looks back up at Haskell.

“Go,” she says. She leans down, kisses him. “Come back.”

“I will,” he replies. He turns. Turns back again: