“I already have,” Carson replies.
The door starts to open. Light pours in from the void beyond.
The view from the shuttle window shows machines of every description. Their shadows practically blot out the stars. Their lights are like some mini-galaxy The shuttle’s heading toward where the lights clump thickest.
“Ever read Dante?” says Lynx.
He and Linehan are sitting behind a pilot who’s maneuvering their shuttle toward a medium-grade war-sat that’s part of L2’s inner defenses. It’s swelling steadily within the window.
“What?” asks Linehan.
“The
“Never heard of it.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the only way you can understand what we’re heading into.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The circles of hell, man. We’ve run the outer ones. Now we’ve got to beat the ones that really count.”
“And let me guess: Szilard’s the devil.”
“Except he’s not. He’s just a man. Which is why we’re going to nail him.”
“But we’re men too.”
Lynx just laughs. Because he knows that’s no longer true. Because the download that’s suddenly reaching him has made him far more than what he was a few seconds back. The Manilishi’s codes surge through his brain, right on time, right as Carson assured him they would. Close at hand, too—coming from the ship now closing in on the farside. Lynx’s mind writhes in the rush of power he’s never known. He feels himself building up to heights he’s never dreamed of. He’s got all the leverage he needs and then some.
So he makes his move, seamlessly reaching out into the mainframes of the shuttle’s destination, rigging them so they don’t even know they’ve been rigged. He steals right under the eyes of all the watching razors. He’s got them so beat it’s as if their eyes were his own. He’s almost frightened by how much better he’s suddenly gotten—suddenly realizes that all his razor prowess has been mere show beside the real master of the game. All those moments searching through the corridors of the Moon for keys and clues and fragments of some greater knowledge that’s finally rushing through him—he struggles to control the rush that sends his heart beating faster than it ever has before. He takes a deep breath.
“You okay in there?” says Linehan.
“Can you feel it?” mutters Lynx.
“Feel what?”
“Crosshairs.”
“What?”
“All those … crosshairs. Tens of thousands of them. The Eurasian lunar batteries. Their guns at L4.”
“Aimed at us?”
“And everything else that’s up here, Linehan.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The average DE cannon’s not firing, you think it’s just sitting there and you’d be wrong because it’s cycling through a thousand different targets a second, making itself unpredictable, right?” Lynx is talking so fast he’s pretty much babbling. “Keeping those who might try to hack it out of the mix. There’s no one war plan, man. There’s infinite plans. Infinite scenarios. In the time since you last spoke, hundreds of guns have flicked their sights on and off this fucking shuttle. The only weapons tracking us without interruption belong to our own side.”
“I’m not following.”
“Because you’re not listening. There’s a difference between war scenarios and in-fleet security, right? This crate we’re in is getting close to the SpaceCom flagship. It’s thus a threat of the first magnitude. Along with all the other craft that are doing the same thing at any given moment. Normal transport, right? But nothing’s normal up here. So they designate certain guns to do nothing but track stuff like us so that the lion’s share of the gunnery can worry about the East. Right?”
“Sure,” says Linehan. “Whatever you say.”
“That’s what I thought. Two particle-beam cannons, one microwave gatling, three high-energy lasers: they’ve got our number. At point-blank range.”
“Are you going somewhere with this?”
“Are you a fucking moron? They’re the back door to reach the ID configurations with which we’re getting inside L2’s inner perimeter. Got it? The guns that are tracking us can be hacked, and then it’s just dribble and shoot to figure out what their computers think we are, and then we get in there and change their mind so we can get clearance to get to the
The war-sat’s swelling through three-quarters of the window. Turrets jut out in every direction. The shuttle drops toward huge doors that are opening to receive it—floats into the landing bay, touches down. The pilot springs the hatch.
“Have a good ’un,” he says.
“Sure thing,” replies Linehan. He and Lynx get up, pull themselves out of the shuttle and into the landing bay—only to find themselves surrounded by SpaceCom marines who aren’t intimidated in the slightest by the officer insignia on the suits of the men they’ve got their weapons trained on.
“Sir,” says the squad’s sergeant, “we need to run a few checks.”
“We’re running late,” says Lynx.
“Orders, sir,” says the sergeant. “This way.” The marines escort Linehan and Lynx to an airlock. The sergeant and two marines step within, motion the two they’re escorting to join them. Doors close. Atmosphere pressurizes.
“Remove your helmets,” says the sergeant. Lynx and Linehan comply. “We need DNA swabs,” he adds.
“Since when?” asks Lynx.
“Since new regulations got handed down twelve hours back. Sir.” The last word seems like an afterthought.
But the DNA scan clearly isn’t. The marines take it from the inside of each man’s mouth. They also do a retina scan. Not to mention—
“Sir,” says the sergeant, “we need a voiceprint.”
“Don’t you already have that?” says Linehan.
“He means keyed to a lie detector as well,” says Lynx on the one-on-one. “Plus a covert brain scan.”
“Great.”
“Shut up.”
“Sir,” says the sergeant, “what’s your name?”
“Stefan Moseley” says Lynx.
“Position?”
“Major. Intelligence.”
“And your business on the
“Who is?”
“Rear Admiral Jansen.”
The questions continue, but there’s nothing that Lynx hasn’t expected. It’s all getting relayed to
