The Machinery of Light

“You may yet avoid it,” says the Operative.

Sorenson looks at him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Wake them up, of course.”

Visors can be deceptive. Sometimes the screens that they project can face the other way. These three show Han Chinese faces. But on the inside it’s a different story …

“Special agent Zhou Tang,” says the man who’s not. “Here to interrogate the prisoner, at the express instruction of the Praesidium.”

IDs flow up and down the ladders of command. The word comes back. A sentry signals. The door opens—to reveal a second barricade. More sentries step forward.

You can’t be serious,” says Sorenson.

“I never joke,” says the Operative.

He and Lynx have already gotten busy siphoning off all the data—the schematics on this particular batch of would-be superwarriors; the records Sorenson’s kept of his long stealth burn through the glacial layers of the SpaceCom bureaucracy; the tantalizing fragments from all the years before that. He snatches at files with timestamps from the 2080s. Data fills him up till he feels like he could burst. He looks at Sorenson.

“So fire it up,” he says.

Sorenson starts warming up the brain-farm.

She’s coming in on Shackleton like a bomb now, and she still can’t break through to the larger zone beyond. It’s just not happening. She almost wonders if she’s been damaged irreparably by everything that’s gone down. But her mind feels anything but damaged. It feels like it’s burning out in all directions. She’s bringing new insight to the situation at hand. She’s now almost certain that machine was a teleporter—and only that. None of her readouts show a trace of tachyons. Meaning that figure wasn’t from the future. Whoever it was is from the present. Maybe even from somewhere else on the Moon. But within the zone itself, Haskell’s still confined to this tunnel, blocked off at both ends—and even that perspective’s shrinking as someone pulls the plug on the maglev. She wonders why they didn’t do it earlier—maybe they figured there’s no point, because now she’s switching to rockets—she barrels forward toward her destination—

Cryo-machines hum. Life-support systems chirp.

Flesh is waking up.

“How much longer?” says the Operative.

“Only a couple more minutes,” says Sorenson.

“And how soon will they be ready for combat?”

“Within the hour.”

“Might need to cut some corners,” says the Operative.

The guards of the second perimeter put them through the paces. Codes, backup codes, failsafes, voice recognition … but Spencer is sufficiently high up in the Eurasian zone that he’s got all the answers. Or at least he’s able to make like he does—he still can’t penetrate the Praesidium itself, but he can fool it into thinking he’s carrying out the orders. The second set of doors slide away—reveal the third and last dead ahead.

She’s heading into the outskirts of Shackleton, and she still can’t reach the zone. She can only assume that’s because there’s no direct link to it from this tunnel she’s in—a tunnel that’s suddenly starting to widen, joining up with other tunnels. Sarmax’s infrastructure is giving way to the infrastructure of the whole city. It spreads out before her.

Almost there,” says Lynx.

The Operative says nothing. He’s lost in the faces of the waking sleepers. They look so familiar. There’s one woman in particular that he feels like he’s seen before. Probably because the face isn’t dissimilar to Claire’s. He can only imagine where she is now. He wonders just how good this batch will be. Not quite up to the stuff of the originals, but maybe that’s just as well. He watches the seconds slide by, gets ready to start giving orders.

The codes are running. The sentries who guard the last door are waiting for the results. Spencer feels like he’s reached the threshold. Sarmax’s suit-monitors show his pulse accelerating to dangerous levels. Spencer wonders whether he’s going to give them all away. It’s just a few more meters to the man who tried to turn this whole game inside out—the man who may yet be running the whole thing. He feels that power’s within his grasp. He lets the zone-bubble he’s created slide in around them. The doors open—

Like slalom on acid: Haskell starts weaving her way into the tunnel-network around Shackleton. She’s dodging past other trains, stations, freight. Sirens are sounding. Klaxons are howling. Apparently the garrison is finally waking up. But she’s still detecting no zone presence.

And suddenly she gets it: they’ve switched it off altogether. Contingency planning—faced with the likes of her, they’ve gone to communicating purely by analog line and loudspeaker. But mobilizing under those kind of conditions is anything but easy. She’s eating up the klicks, rising through levels, closing on the heart of the city. Even as she feels something closing in on her …

We’re going to need to get them some weapons,” says Lynx.

“They’re the weapons,” says the Operative.

And equipping them will be the least of his problems. This war-sat contains enough shit to blow up a small asteroid anyway. Redundancy has its advantages. Same with these twenty men and women. They’ll be the firepower needed to initiate the next phase—the ticket back to the Moon. Sorenson’s files are going to be helpful, too. The Operative glances at the scientist and wonders if there might actually be some use in keeping him alive. The eyelids of some of the sleepers are starting to flicker.

A repurposed storage chamber: the walls look like they’ve been seriously reinforced. The center is dominated by a squat structure that stretches almost to the ceiling.

“Huh,” says Spencer.

It’s a box—a room all its own. It’s been custom built for a single purpose. A single door’s visible, along with a window next to it. The three men move forward as the hatches through which they’ve entered slide shut behind them.

She rockets through the basements of Shackleton. All the maglev is out, as is the rest of the electricity. It’s all a scorched-earth strategy to slow her down. The SpaceCom garrison is taking up positions. She can’t see it, but she can sense it—and the fact that nearly all of their defense sequences were prepped to deal with attacks from without makes it difficult to scramble to meet an incursion from within. Particularly since all Haskell’s really concerned about is getting out herself. She swerves back onto a set of passenger rails. Raw contingency hits her like a wave. A face starts boiling up inside her mind.

The Operative wills himself to remain calm. The last thing he wants is to sit here and wait while these things wake up. Particularly when everything around him is coming to a head. The Eurasians might start their final attack at any moment. The endgame could kick off anytime. The eyes of the sleeper nearest to him open.

Spencer looks in the window. Sitting cross-legged against the wall opposite them is Matthew Sinclair. Unsuited, his eyes closed. Four people are chained adjacent to him. They wear Praetorian colors. Three are very clearly dead. Blood’s dripping from their ears and noses.

The fifth looks fine. Her face isn’t one that Spencer recognizes. But it seems like Sarmax does. He’s obviously