Mirrored Heavens

evidence to suggest he was looking for them.”

“To do what?”

“Who knows? Do business with them, maybe. Sell their whereabouts to us, maybe. Or to someone else.”

“Sounds like a very dangerous game.”

“No shit,” says Lynx. “Look where he ended up.”

“Much more likely that the Rain would find him than the other way around.”

“One would think,” says Lynx. “But again, that’s why I targeted him, Carson. The man was a nexus. A conduit. Even in death, a middleman. His organization—the whole web of companies he set in motion—is a machine that’s got a link into basically everything that’s going on up here.”

“And now we’re inside.”

“And outside. And all around. Everyone who so much as sniffs at you—I’ll dissect them without them even realizing it. Everyone whom Sarmax had a file on, I’ll get a hundred more. SpaceCom intelligence knows nothing about you. And even less about Sarmax. They haven’t a clue that he used to be one of us. They haven’t a clue what we’re about to pull.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“How do you think? I’m camped out in their fucking mainframes, remember? And get this, Carson—the whispers atop the SpaceCom rafters is that the farside of this rock harbors the Rain’s main stronghold.”

“Yeah? Based on what intel?”

“Well,” says Lynx, “that’s the big question, isn’t it?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“I mean I’m still finding out.”

“And is SpaceCom passing word of its suspicions back to the Throne?”

“Put it this way,” says Lynx. “I’m passing this back to the Throne. I’ll keep on doing that. But that’s my obligation. It doesn’t cut the other way. The Throne doesn’t tell me shit about who’s giving it what. It doesn’t have to.”

“Doesn’t it,” says the Operative. “I mean, you’d think it would be useful for us to know if the Com is withholding a piece of data like that. Because if they’re playing that kind of double game, then—”

“We’re assuming they’re playing that kind of double game,” snaps Lynx. “I mean, who the fuck isn’t these days? Wake up, Carson: there’s a reason I’m buried in these comps. The Rain could be the very treason within SpaceCom that we were sent up to find in the first place. It could have been that way from the start. It might have become it in the days since. And even if it hasn’t, we’re still going to need the Com’s files. Their eyes see so much up here. They may not even realize the significance of everything they process. But with one foot in their living guts and the other in the dead heart of Sarmax, we’ve got the inside track on Rain. And that trail leads out to Congreve Station.”

“In the center of the farside?”

“That’s the only Congreve I know of, Carson.”

“Where exactly?”

“Northwest district. Upscale residential area. Sarmax maintained an address there.”

“And you want me to set up shop there.”

“Got it in one, Carson. I want you to go there and set up shop. And do some digging in the Congreve speakeasies. Sarmax had more than a few contacts strewn through them.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“Oh, various characters,” says Lynx vaguely. “Various lowlifes. Congreve’s quite a place, Carson. It’s the largest city that never lays eyes on Earth. It’s the heart of SpaceCom power. The L2 fleet hovers in the sky above it like a demented sun. All of Congreve is dedicated to that fleet, Carson. That’s the whole reason the town exists. And you can be sure that’s one of the reasons the Rain are up here.”

“To blow that fleet?”

“You have to admit that in terms of spectacular targets, that would be a good one. Congreve was always going to be one of the possibilities for the next move of the physical vector of this mission. But the latest intel makes it essential. It gives us no choice but to send you there.”

“Fine,” says the Operative. “When do I leave?”

“As soon as we’re done here.”

“Transportation?”

“Take one of Sarmax’s shuttles.”

“And when I get there—you want me to just go to this house and knock on its door?”

“No need to even knock. You’re the new owner. No need to announce the old one’s untimely demise just yet. Besides, we need all the leverage we can get. Things are getting out of hand back on Earth. The Newfoundland Yards got wiped off the map. HK’s under embargo. The Rain jacked one of our spaceplanes and downed it there. Along with some key CICom agents.”

“How are we responding?”

“With the usual recriminations. The shit’s going down in the Inner Cabinet. Apparently Space and Info are at each other’s throats. Undoubtedly the Rain are in the mix somewhere. The Throne is threatened like never before. Our Throne, Carson. Our man. There’s war in heaven.”

“Heaven save us from war’s worst kind,” mutters the Operative.

“Don’t look to anybody to save us, Carson. Only we can do it now. Now go. You’ll be on the other side of sky in under two hours.”

“And our contact protocols?”

“The same as ever. Extreme judiciousness.”

“Got it.”

Lynx cuts out. The Operative stares at the blank wall. Turns to the blank expression of the man standing next to him.

“Well,” says Leo Sarmax.

“It’s complicated.”

 A s were the first hours in the city. The first hours past the point of no return—a fact only just now dawning on them. Threading their way through streets of silver and corridors of chrome, rubbing shoulders with the men and women of a hundred nations…into what strangeness had they stumbled? They didn’t know. They scarcely cared. All they knew is that they were on the run. And that they needed a base: some space to catch their breath. They needed a place.

They found it.

In a room. Same story as ever: find walls and a floor. A door you can close. And above all a ceiling. Anything to blot out the sky. Cheap-ass motel in Old Port Moresby district, no questions asked, no answers needed. Just naked light overhead while their bodies writhe naked in front of a wall-screen that pulsates static. They leave it like that. It seems fitting. It’s how they feel. It embodies what they feel tossed upon. So they make love while they let the static play around them.

Until a face appears within it.

It isn’t one they recognize. It’s a man. He’s got one eye. He wears a mustache. It looks absurd. Yet his expression’s anything but.

“Shit,” says Marlowe. He’s pulling himself off Haskell, vaulting onto the floor. Haskell turns the vid off.

But it remains lit. The face persists.

“Shit,” she says.

“The CI codes,” says the man. And the codes of CICom fill the screen, flit in and out of static, float in front of his face. Both Marlowe and Haskell recognize them. Friend-or-foe identifiers, changed every hour on the hour according to algorithms given to each agent at the start of every mission. Embedded with myriad fail-safes for an interloper to trigger. Doesn’t mean they can’t be fucked with.

But it’s a long way from easy.

“We should go,” says Haskell to Marlowe on the one-on-one.