better plan. But if you don’t, I say you get the fuck down there and get that door open.”
“May as well,” says the Operative.
He turns, goes down the stairs with pistol in hand. He reaches the entry chamber just as the door chime rings a third time. There’s a whirring from the ceiling as a heavy gun unfolds from it, swivels toward the door.
“On the count of three,” says Sarmax.
“Fuck that,” says the Operative. He hits manual release. The door springs open.
Stefan Lynx enters the room. The door slides shut behind him. He looks at the Operative. The Operative looks at him.
“Easy with the pistol, Carson.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Things have gone from bad to worse out there, Carson. Had to get out of Agrippa while I still could.”
“And you ran straight
“I told you we needed to talk, didn’t I?”
“Sure, Lynx. What do you want to talk about?”
“I thought I might start with a question.”
“Shoot.”
“What did you do with Sarmax’s body?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m sick to death of resurrections.”
But even as he says this the door to the stairway opens. Sarmax enters the room. He carries what looks like a shotgun.
“Stefan,” he says. “Been a long time.”
“Leo,” replies Lynx. “Nice of you to join us.”
“Nice of you to send an assassin to nail your old boss.”
“Next time I’ll send a better one.”
“I don’t think there’s going to be a next time.”
“As tough as always. But you may as well put that thing away. It’s not going to solve anything.”
“It’s about to solve
“Gentlemen,” says the Operative, “you’re both thinking so short-term. We need to talk about something a little more important.”
“You mean like how you disobeyed a direct order?” asks Lynx.
The Operative shrugs. “It was a stupid order.”
“Said the man without the facts he’d need to make that judgment.”
“Alright, Stefan,” says Sarmax. “Why don’t you explain to us why him killing me was such a brilliant idea? We’re both fucking dying to know.”
“Simple: I thought there was far more chance of you throwing in your lot with the Rain than with us.”
“So it had nothing to do with the fact that back in the day I told them your methods were unsound? Or that you couldn’t keep your snout out of the drug trough?”
“Once I didn’t have to deal with you every day, forgiveness came easy.”
“But apparently not easily enough.”
“
“Then whose is?”
“How about the fucking Throne’s? You went and fucking left, Leo. You ran out on us in our hour of need. Just when it looked like the East would prove the stronger.”
“I retired, Stefan. I didn’t run out on anybody.”
“You lost your head over a fucking woman.”
And Sarmax whips his weapon level—only to have it spin from his hands as the Operative fires in a blur of motion. The shotgun hits the wall, slides across the floor. The room’s silent once more.
“Now why’d you have to go and do a thing like that,” Sarmax says quietly.
“What Lynx means to say,” says the Operative, “is that Indigo Velasquez was as much a victim of the Rain as anyone who died on that Elevator. Isn’t that what you meant, Lynx?”
“Sure,” says Lynx. “That’s what I meant.”
“That’s what I thought. And while we’re on the subject, Lynx, wouldn’t you agree that a good way for Sarmax to recoup anything he might owe the Throne would be for him to hit the Rain and feed their bodies to the vacuum?”
“Sure. Of course I would. That’s why I’m here.”
“So why are you so intent on getting him to paint his wall with your organs?”
“He’s not painting his wall with anything, Carson. I’m just trying to help us all understand where we stand.”
“And where exactly would that be?”
“The attempt to screen me from the fact that you hadn’t offed him was well-done. Selling me a doppelganger house-node was brilliant. But I managed to hack the line you and he rigged while I was hacking everything else. After that, it was easy to figure out what was up.”
“Although by that point you no longer gave a shit.”
“That’s right,” says Lynx. “Irony of ironies—I no longer gave a shit. Once I’d tracked Leo for long enough to figure out that he really wasn’t taking orders from the Rain—the rest was academic. All that mattered was their location. At—”
“Nansen Station in the Rook Mountains,” says Sarmax. “Right on the edge of farside Eurasian territory.”
Lynx stares at him. “How the fuck did you figure that out?”
“Same way you did. The speakeasies.”
“But you didn’t—you
“What asteroid?”
“Right. ‘What asteroid?’ So how the fuck did you crack the SpaceCom conspiracy?”
“I never did,” replies Sarmax.
“
“I had about ten thousand other reasons.”
“Say what?”
“Ten thousand different pieces of equipment. All sorts of shit—capacitors, chemicals, lenses, screws, nails, fucking duct tape. I’ll download the entire list for you at some point when we’ve got time for a circle jerk. But the point isn’t any one of those items. It’s what it all spells in aggregation. About ten heavy laser cannons. Any one of which would be capable of lacing into our space-based hardware. Some entity is using about a hundred different front companies to ship in all the ingredients. And they couldn’t have picked a better place than Nansen, given what a fucking zoo it is right now. Crime gangs looking for control, dissident miners jonesing for revolution, low- rent combines after anything as long as it racks up profit—”
“And all of it orchestrated by the faction within U.S. Space Command that’s hell-bent on overthrowing the Throne and igniting war.”
“And I have to admit that’s news to me, Lynx.”
“Well, that makes one of us. The prime mover is Anton Matthias. Third-in-command of SpaceCom intelligence. He’s maintained Nansen as a black base for some time now. Which in itself is just standard procedure: co-opt local dissent by channeling it into particular locales within which elite garrisons can be covertly based and from which they can conduct clandestine sallies that nail the most dangerous players or turn them into double agents. Textbook counterinsurgency. But Matthias has been revving up those insurgents for some kind of major incident that he’s going to stage-manage and pin on Eurasian infiltration. All of which gets put in a whole new light by the presence of strategic weaponry that never got burdened with those troublesome little things called serial numbers.”
“Stop right there,” says Sarmax. “How the fuck did you finger the Com conspiracy through the fucking
“That’s how they’ve been coordinating it. The lion’s share of their data is maintained well outside of the Com
