frantic attack at the razor who’s crouched behind the bulwarks so close at hand.
He fails—ricochets off those barricades. And watches as the suits rip that door off its hinges. He catches a quick glimpse of himself sitting against the sink, eyes rolled back, jaw open—and then they seize him.
The zone vanishes. He’s staring up at visors staring down upon him. Weapons are thrust in his face.
“Don’t move,” says a voice.
It’s not like Spencer would dream of it. They slap a neural lock onto his spine. He’s paralyzed: they’re carrying him back toward their ship like some kind of trussed-up trophy. They move back on through to car number forty- one.
Which is where they stop. Something seems to be going on. One of them leaps forward, slides shut the door through which they came. They no longer seem to be bent on getting back to their ship. Instead they’re taking up defensive positions. They’re not talking. But they’re clearly communicating. They’re training their guns forward and backward, eyeing the exterior and interior doors alike. Spencer finds himself hurled down upon one of the now- empty seats. He watches as the door from car number forty opens.
And Linehan enters the room.
He’s not in armor. Those he faces are. That should be the end of it. But it’s not. And Spencer feels like he’s back in his dream—as Linehan leaps forward, ducking in under the suits’ fire, twisting his whole body through the air as he runs along the wall, right angles to the floor, his whip leaping out, licking onto one of those suits’ helmets. There’s a detonation. The suit topples to the floor, smoke trailing along a quarter-circle arc from what remains of its neck. Linehan continues his charge down the wall—switches to the ceiling as the suits continue to fire at him. His auto-pistol speaks—first left, then right, then left again, even as its wielder’s path blurs onto the other wall, even as that wielder lashes out with the whip again, lands a blow on another suit’s torso. There’s another detonation. Linehan leaps straight forward—knocking what’s left of that suit into the next, grappling with the next one, ripping its arm clean off, firing shots into mangled flesh. But as he does so, the remaining suit’s whirling toward Spencer, taking aim—and then the suit’s gun hand disintegrates as the whip hits home, dances from there to the suit’s head.
The car’s still. Linehan bends over Spencer, removes the neural lock, tosses it aside.
“I can walk from here,” mutters Spencer.
“We’re done with walking,” says Linehan.
He steers Spencer to the car’s open exterior door. Beyond is some kind of tube. Spencer follows Linehan down it.
And into the interior of the much smaller vehicle that’s running parallel with the train. There’s not much in that interior. It’s about six meters long and three meters wide, with a cockpit at each end. Each cockpit features controls and a slitted window.
“Sit down,” says Linehan. “Wire yourself in.”
“Is this one of their gunships?”
“Oh yes.”
“The Rain’s?”
“If it were, we’d never have made it in here. But we’ve got about ten seconds all the same. So how about we talk as we go?”
The door slides shut behind them. They strap in. They disconnect the ship from the train. Spencer jacks in. The controls spread before him. The rails stretch far beyond him.
He hits it.
S ea and space and aircraft: all have the same type of corridor. All boast new kinds of narrow: like bones bereft of marrow, like hollow when it’s hardly worthy of the word. Marlowe moves carefully through a labyrinth that’s far more complex than the layout of the plane above it. It’s far larger. It’s not lit either. Whoever’s in charge has turned off all the lights.
But Marlowe’s willing to bet they haven’t turned off the sensors. He’s felt nothing upon him yet, but—camo or no camo—he’s sure he’s being picked up all the same, particularly as the darkness is forcing him to use his own sensors. He sends them probing along a number of spectrums. Among them is the visible.
The walls and ceiling thus revealed are a combination of plastic and metal. The rooms that they enclose are largely empty. The ship those rooms comprise has seen better days. It was commissioned as a massive bomber —capable of launching a smaller one from its back and into space, and then swooping down upon the enemy anywhere on Earth. But that was twenty years ago. It still constitutes impressive technology. But from a military perspective, it’s obsolete. Smart hypersonic missiles have seen to that. Now the ship’s primarily given over to cargo runs. Usually it’s no longer even armed. Under normal circumstances it would be packed with freight. But for this mission it only had one piece of freight to haul.
And release. At least, that was the idea. But someone had other ideas. And Marlowe can’t wait to get face-to- face with that someone. But it seems like his body couldn’t be moving any slower. It’s like he’s pulling himself up a mountain—as the descent steepens, the floor is sloping ever more steeply beneath his feet. He’s being shoved toward that floor with a steadily increasing force. The shaking around him is intensifying, the ship rocking in the full throes of reentry. Marlowe keeps to the walls. He moves through the doors like anything could happen.
But the drone catches him by surprise anyway. It’s propelled by jets—gyros that flare suddenly as it rounds a corner and whips in toward his face. He fires his own jets—meets it in its headlong flight, smashes into it with one fist, sends it slamming into a wall. He lights it up with his guns, keeps going.
Straight into two more. One’s clinging to the wall—and suddenly springing in toward him. The other’s another gyro-platform. Wicked-looking barrels hang from beneath it. Marlowe dives toward the side, gets the first drone between him and the second. It riddles its comrade, starts to riddle him—but now he’s lashing out with rapid fire to perforate it.
But not before he’s been hit himself. He’s scarcely got time to assess the damage before he’s taking more of it from every side. They’re rushing him from all angles now. They’re even coming out of the walls: the vent covers are snapping off and machines are leaping from them. Marlowe retracts his thrusters and lets his guns roar. Flamers mounted on his back spray everywhere. His fists and boots dispatch drones of every description. He catches quick glimpses here and there of the things he’s fighting—his helmet cannonades into something that’s more teeth than body, his boot dropkicks a spiked orb into a wall—but mostly he’s just going on reflex. His vision’s a maelstrom of data and drones. He’s getting hit repeatedly. He’s giving out far worse than he’s getting.
And yet he’s being ground down steadily. There are simply too many of them. One of his flamers gets knocked out. Bullets are lodged all over his suit. The outer armor on his left side’s almost penetrated. His fists are worn dull from punching.
“Had enough?” says a voice.
Morat’s voice is being broadcast from one of the drones. Marlowe fires hi-ex into it. The drone detonates. But the others take up where it left off.
“You’re fighting something you can’t kill,” they say.
But Marlowe doesn’t answer. He just keeps battling his way through them—straining against the G-force, grabbing two drones, smashing them together, firing point-blank, letting his shots ricochet off walls and into targets. His movements speed up even as his armor corrodes—even as the pressures on his body continue to build as the ship surges through reentry. He’s in some kind of zone all his own now, one where the voices lapping up against his brain are just part of the scenery.
“You’re not
Marlowe doesn’t answer. Now he’s battling just to stay on his feet. The husks of shattered metal pile up around him. The frenzy of the drones’ attack is increasing. He uses his armor as a battering ram, charges into a wall, takes it down, charges away from the onslaught and on through into an adjacent room. It’s empty of drones.
For about a second.
“Because I’m going to make you
