Mirrored Heavens

else: it’s not like you and I don’t know exactly who we’re talking about.”

“Funny, that’s exactly what your bitch said to me before they snuffed her.”

And suddenly Sarmax’s lazy spiraling patterns cease. He swoops downward like a bird of prey, roaring in toward the Operative—and swerves aside at the last moment, hitting the slope a few meters up. He perches there, opens up with lasers on the ice to which his target’s clinging. At some point during this sequence of events, his voice becomes coherent enough for the Operative to understand it. Though Sarmax is doing nothing save cursing. He sounds like a demon who’s just been tossed from hell.

“That’s great,” says the Operative. The lasers whine scarcely centimeters from his visor. The ice is starting to get noticeably less solid. Water’s running across his suit. He digs his hands in deeper. “Priceless. You getting a tape of yourself?”

“You I can forgive,” screams Sarmax. “After I kill you, that is. Lynx I can’t. It must get him so hard to see you and me set on each other like dogs. I’ll tear that motherfucker limb from limb. Fucking razor—living vicariously through all of us and never doing fuck-all himself.”

“Actually he’s been quite busy,” says the Operative. “He’s been in the tunnels of Agrippa for several days. He’s gone walkabout in the SpaceCom comps. I’m sure the Com would love to get the heads-up. Though I’ll be damned if they’re going to hear it from you.”

And with that, he fires a tether straight at Sarmax, strikes him full in the chest with a magnetic clamp. Before Sarmax can shear the cord away, the Operative is pumping out voltage from what’s left of his power packs. For an undamaged suit, that wouldn’t be much of a problem.

For one as badly damaged as Sarmax’s, it’s a different story.

There’s a blinding flash. The Operative hears Sarmax curse. He relinquishes the tether, watches as Sarmax extends his body full off the ice, brings his hands forward with the well-practiced motion of someone starting his thrusters. But instead there’s another explosion and Sarmax tumbles onto the ice. He crashes into the Operative, knocks him from his weakened perch even as the two grapple. In this fashion they slide down the ice together.

They accelerate quickly. The infrastructure above them vanishes as though it’s being hauled upward on the back of a rocket. The darkness is near-total. It’s broken only by two things. One is the lights of both their suits. The other’s a red glow that’s starting to take shape beneath them. As that glow draws closer, the frenzied nature of their struggle intensifies.

“Do you recognize that light, Carson?” mutters Sarmax.

But the Operative says nothing. He’s intent on trying to somehow reverse the position of himself and Sarmax. He’s trying to shove Sarmax flush against the ice. He’s doing anything he can to put his opponent between him and whatever they’re about to run into.

“Carson,” says Sarmax. “Do you recognize that light?”

They’re almost down amidst the glow. It’s not just one glow, either. It’s several. They’re stretching out on all sides.

“Like moths to the candle,” says Sarmax. “We’ll burn together.”

The Operative’s doing his damnedest to forestall it. For now he manages to get his leg out from under Sarmax’s—manages to lever it against Sarmax’s side. He shoves Sarmax down onto the ice beside him. He smashes his fist against Sarmax’s head. Sarmax is giving as good as he’s getting, if not better. But now their slide’s starting to get less steep. They’re starting to slow.

Though only slightly.

“My furnaces,” says Sarmax. “We’ve reached rock bottom.”

And yet they’re still rushing downward. Now the Operative can see that the lights are really incandescent lines strung here and there, glowing through the dark. More infrastructure appears out of that gloom: more ramps, more chutes. More machinery.

“So simple,” says Sarmax. He sends a jet-powered glove at the Operative’s helmet—who pulls his head out of the way, grabs Sarmax’s arm, desperately tries to keep the jets off his visor. “This cavern must be one of the wonders of this world. It harbors the mother lode. We hammer off the ice. We shove it up against the wires. We pipe the water back to Shackleton. They ship it all the way to Congreve. We keep this rock running.”

“And it’ll keep on running long after you’re buried,” says the Operative.

They slide writhing to a halt on the cusp of another edge. Lights glow all around. Water’s dripping down everywhere.

“Long after we both are,” says Sarmax. He pulls himself free of the Operative’s grip, leaps to a standing position—and is immediately tripped by the Operative. The momentum of his fall carries them both over the new edge. They hurtle downward once more. Both their suits are pretty much wrecked beyond repair. Neither has any functioning weapons save his own fists and feet. Neither has any power. In this manner they set about bringing the struggle to a finish. Each pays particular attention to the areas of the other’s armor that appear to be most damaged. Each does his utmost to shield those areas on his own suit from his opponent. Each strives desperately to use the other as shielding from the next impact. Each strives desperately to gain the upper hand.

They run headlong into the base of the lowermost lamp. The blow knocks them apart. For a moment the Operative lies stunned. Red-orange glow looms above him. Now that he’s up close, the Operative can see it’s really more of a giant filament wire, curled in upon itself. Ramps jut up around it. Some of them contain ice. Water falls down in a steady trickle upon his face, pours away in narrow channels situated for that purpose. But now his view is blotted out by Sarmax—who’s bending over the Operative with a half smile.

“Carson. You always knew it would come to this.”

“I guess I always did.”

“Then why did you come here in the first place?”

“What choice did I have?”

“You know I wasn’t dealing with the Rain.”

“But she was,” says the Operative.

Sarmax turns. He pivots forward. He looks for a moment like he’s going to put his boot straight through the Operative’s visor. But at the last moment he steps aside.

“You didn’t have to say that,” he says.

“They didn’t have to kill her.”

“No,” says Sarmax. “But I did.”

The Operative’s got such a head start on the afterlife that he’s almost beyond surprise. But he’s speechless anyway. He stares as tears well in the eyes of the man who was once his mentor.

“As you said,” mutters Sarmax. “She was dealing with the Rain. Didn’t mean I didn’t love her. She was…she was my Indigo. She was my everything. But she was dead set to join them. She was dead set to have me go with her.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Maybe I should have. I’d still have been with her. But she wouldn’t have been with me. That’s the truth of the matter, Carson. I’d like to tell you I killed her because I was loyal. Because I was a Praetorian. Because I stood at the Throne’s right hand. But I’d be lying. I killed her because she loved the Rain more than she loved me. Time was I couldn’t imagine a world without her. Now I live it every day—this rock on the edge of existence, this mountain that might as well harbor all the souls of the ones who died that night.”

“Which is exactly why you can’t stay,” says the Operative softly.

“No,” says Sarmax. “And you can’t either. I can’t put you beneath this ground, Carson. I can’t add your name to the ones who went before us. And I admit it—I can’t stay out of it either. You’ve made me realize that. You come to me with this scheme for subverting the Rain and all of creation into the bargain. There’s no way I can look into your eyes and tell you I’m a party to it. But there’s no way I’m going to stop short of a chance to take care of the Rain once and for all. And after that we’ll see what the new world looks like.”

“So help me up,” says the Operative. “And let’s talk about the most immediate problem.”

“You mean the Rain?”

“I mean Lynx.”

They make their way back up into the upper reaches of that mountain.

 T hey’re slowing down. The tunnel’s leveling out. The