churning off his armor, his own weapons flinging countermeasures back into the passage he just exited. But this new passage has its own defenses too. They open up on him. They flail against him at almost point-blank range. They carve deep into his armor, sending screens into static, comps into overload, fail-safes into action—and all the while the man who’s killing him keeps on telling him all about it.
“I think you can see where this is going to go,” says Sarmax. “Assuming your eyes haven’t melted yet. These are the last sounds you’ll ever hear, Carson. These are the final words your brain will ever process. Lynx never bargained on my real base being buried so far beneath the surface. He never counted on my sowing the black markets with false maps. All the inner enclaves of all my major residences, Carson: they’re all red herrings. The real ones are all off the charts. But that’s the way it always is with the truth. It’s always beyond the pale. Though it pales in comparison with the lies that surround it. Wouldn’t you agree, Carson?”
But the Operative’s not listening. He’s just flicking his wrists—letting grenades slot into his hands, flinging explosives in both his path and wake. It’s not an act of suicide. These grenades aren’t ordinary. Wavelengths of every size and hue rush over him. His sensors are being blotted out. He hits the dirt. He crawls on down that corridor while the lasers fire randomly. They’re blinded too. They’re trying to filter out the disrupters. They’re not succeeding.
Which gives the Operative some respite. Even as his mind’s frantically working to extrapolate what he knows against what he doesn’t. He takes a chance, shoots off down one of the adjacent passages, ignoring the guns that blast against him as he blasts downward through a suddenly larger space. Something strikes him in the back. He sees stars. He thinks he sees things below him—catches glimpses here and there: platforms hanging in the dark, vast ramps leaning through the gloom. He figures he’s already dead. He figures this is one demented Hades. He resolves to start the afterlife in style. He wafts in toward one platform in particular, throws his feet forward. He hits. He runs along that platform, then slows to a walk and finally stops.
This chamber is huge. It’s far larger than that dome. The floor’s not visible. The walls glisten with ice. Some of them are pretty much vertical. Others climb inward toward each other, as though the mountain that houses the cave has been turned inside out.
But what those walls contain is a maze of gantries and platforms and ramps. Electric lights hang here and there. Cranes tower overhead. The platform upon which the Operative has landed protrudes out over the edge of abyss. A single ramp connects it to the remainder of the structure.
And standing in the shadows atop that ramp is Leo Sarmax.
T he final stages of the race we call the border run. Take these curves too tight and you’ll fly off the rails and into hell. Take them too loose, and you’ll lose all speed differential. So now inside turns out, all colors are ripped asunder. Stars torpedo at you, lick away, and this ship keeps on shooting through this tunnel.
“We need more
“We can’t go any faster,” yells Spencer.
He engages the rear guns. The ship shudders as they discharge. Lasers and shells streak down the tunnel. The gunships giving pursuit absorb the former, dodge the latter—slide along a crossover onto parallel rails, let the rounds shoot past them.
“Can’t shake them,” mutters Linehan.
“Hold on,” says Spencer. He’s lashing out with newfound abandon at the razors a fraction of a second and several klicks behind him. They’re doing their best to get at him. But he’s co-opted the car. He can see it all so clearly—can see the way they configured the craft so that even if the zone
But suddenly the cars behind them are slowing down. Suddenly they’re disappearing in the rearview.
“So much for them,” says Spencer.
“What’d you do,” says Linehan.
“What does it look like I did? Maglev speed depends upon control.”
“Which they no longer have.”
“Exactly.”
“Crash them into each other,” says Linehan.
“I’d settle for slowing them down,” says Spencer.
“Don’t.”
“Too late.”
For now he can see that they’ve switched off their engines. They’ve stopped interfacing with the rails. They’ve abandoned the chase. They’re no longer a factor. Spencer grins.
And curses.
“What’s up?” says Linehan.
What’s up is that somewhere back down that tunnel something’s glowing. Something that’s getting steadily brighter.
“What the fuck.”
“They’re riding rockets,” says Spencer.
“We got anything similar?”
“We must.”
“So fire us up.”
“So no. We try that and we’ll just be dragging against the magnets.”
“So turn us off,” says Linehan. “Start us up.”
“Magnets are faster.”
“Then what the fuck you waiting for?”
The answer’s nothing. Spencer’s opening the throttle. He’s jury-rigging the ship far past the limits of its safety margins. It’s nothing but momentum now. The two men let vibration rise through them. They watch their pursuers fade again. Up ahead on the map Spencer can see the place where the tunnel starts blossoming—can see where the real warren kicks in. The tunnel steers just south of the Newfoundland Yards. Somewhere past that’s the place where the continental shelf ends and the real ocean takes over and the warrens drop several thousand meters. For a moment Spencer envisions looking at this route in retrospect and not in anticipation. For a moment, he imagines they’re already running beneath the real trenches of Atlantic. For just a second he sees them almost at the border….
But then his attention’s captured by yet another flaring in the rearview.
“What the fuck,” he says.
“That’s a missile,” says Linehan.
“I can see that.”
“Then you can also see it’s closing.”
“Eight klicks back,” says Spencer.
“Countermeasures.”
“I’m trying.”
And he is. He lets the rear guns engage. He lets lasers fly at the warhead. But it’s got countermeasures of its own. It’s taking evasive action. It’s eating light like no one’s ever fed it. It’s flinging out light of its own. The back of their ship is taking damage.
“It’s smart,” says Linehan. “It’s speeding up.”
“They’re falling back.”
The ships: they’re fading. They’re drawing off. They’re gone.
“We need more speed,” says Linehan.
“We go any faster and we lose control.”
“It’s either that or take a warhead up your ass. Take a look at that thing. Take a good look. Do you see what I’m seeing?”
There’s no way Spencer couldn’t. Linehan is projecting his extrapolation of the schematics of the missile
