The Machinery of Light

struggling to control himself.

“Steady,” says Spencer.

Sinclair’s eyes open.

She’s transfixed—can’t turn away. The old man’s surging into her head like some tide she can’t withstand. She’s not sure why she ever wanted to. Her mind collapses in upon itself like some kind of sinkhole, yet the deeper it goes the more acute her insight gets. Tunnel blasts past her while she maneuvers through the Com forces with near-perfect precision. They’re still hoping to trap her and take her alive—and she’s only got a few more seconds before they realize that’s just not going to be possible. But anything can happen in those seconds. Particularly inside the endless reaches of her head. The jaws of Sinclair open to receive her.

The Operative can’t take his eyes off that woman—the one who resembles Claire. It isn’t her, of course. It’s not even a clone. But he can barely look away. It’s like watching someone being born. He feels the eyes of the others upon him now—feels himself caught up in a vortex of his own making. He wonders what happened to the old Carson—the one who never made mistakes, who always forced others to pay for theirs. He wonders what his motives for all this really are. The woman’s mouth is forming soundless words.

Spencer’s trying to keep his mind focused. The eyes of Sinclair are like pits into which he’s tumbling. He’s fighting to pull himself away. He’s conscious of almost nothing else.

Except for Sarmax.

“Easy,” Spencer says again.

“Shit,” says Jarvin—but Sarmax is already igniting his las-knife, slashing through the seals on the cell door.

The SpaceCom forces are giving up on trying to capture her. They’re opening fire—but she’s firing first, unleashing a rack of torpedoes, then calibrating her own route to steer in amidst the blasts detonating throughout the labyrinth of Shackleton. And Sinclair’s riding her mind as she rides the tunnels—she shoots out through one of the larger caves—gets a quick glimpse of buildings all around—and then she’s back into the narrower passages as she closes in on the far side of the city. The very edge—she’s roaring in toward it as Sinclair forges in toward the center of her awareness. He seems to be looking for something. She’s terrified he’s about to find it. She pivots within herself—

Carson,” whispers the woman.

The Operative isn’t surprised. It’s as though he’s been here before. It’s as though all this is memory in reverse. He tries to speak—succeeds—

I’m here,” he says.

The roar of autofire suddenly fills the room.

As Sarmax practically rips the door from its hinges, Spencer realizes that the man has shut down the zone- conduits for his armor.

“Stop him,” yells Jarvin.

But Sarmax is already firing.

She’s wrestling with the old man for what’s left of her sanity—all the while racing out of the transport-tunnels and into corridors intended for personnel, rushing in through the last streets of the city toward the city-wall. She’s almost there. The SpaceCom forces are falling back before her, waiting for her to slow down—waiting for her to turn. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that she’s not going to. She fires her last rack of torpedoes.

Lead’s flying everywhere, along with thousands of flechette rounds. It’s all light stuff. It’s all bouncing off Lynx and the Operative as they whirl to face the shooter who’s standing in the doorway. Sorenson hits the deck, but the sleepers are getting diced. Flesh sprays the walls.

Sarmax opens up with his suit’s flamer, spraying liquid fire over all those within the room. Flame engulfs the chamber, surging back over him like some fiery tide.

Explosions half blind her, but Haskell’s firing the craft’s afterburners anyway, crashing through the SpaceCom barricades, blasting through the hole in the city-wall that her torpedoes just carved, shredding through the face of Matthew Sinclair as she shoots out into open space—

Linehan ceases firing. Smoke’s everywhere.

“Fuck you both,” he says.

“You’re dead,” says the Operative.

“And you’re fucking crazy!” yells Linehan. “Where the fuck do you get off on waking up minions who will try to turn you into fucking meat? You want to bring more Rain into the mix? You have fucking lost it, man, and you can—”

“He’s right,” says Lynx.

It’s inferno. It’s all Spencer can do to sever the smoke alarms and shut down the fire detection system—but he lets the sprinklers go into action, hurling water everywhere. Smoke belches in gouts from the cell-chamber. Jarvin grabs Sarmax—who seizes him in turn. But before either can strike the first blow—

“We’ve got bigger problems,” says Spencer.

And it doesn’t get any bigger than this. Shackleton is on the slopes of the South Pole basin—one of the largest impact craters in the solar system, more than ten klicks deep, a massive complex of sloping walls and cliffs and darkness. Haskell cuts the afterburners, damps the rockets, and lets the craft arc down like it’s a particle of light drawn into some black hole. She sees mountains towering above her—catches a glimpse of Malapert’s fiery peak presiding over all of it. But that view is nothing compared to the zone. Now that she’s gotten past sublunar Shackleton’s shut-down networks, she’s got access to wireless; it pours over her like a million waterfalls, giving her the leverage she needs to sweep away the last fragments of Sinclair as she plunges in toward nadir.

The Operative takes it all in—the shredded bodies, the acrid smoke, Sorenson huddled weeping in a corner.

Linehan pulls off his helmet.

“I’ll make it easy for you,” he sneers.

“Put that back on,” says Lynx—and on the one-on-one to Carson: “This is the part where you get a grip.”

“He killed them.”

“He did us a favor.”

“You really believe that.”

“Who knows what compulsions those things were saddled with?”

“By Sorenson? He’s nothing—”

“By Sinclair.”

That wasn’t her,” says Spencer. “Wasn’t him—”

“That’s why I killed them,” says Sarmax.

“That’s why you’re crazy.”

“Not at all,” says Sarmax. “That was one of Sinclair’s amplifiers—”

“We need to get out of here,” Jarvin says.