The Machinery of Light

is going to be. That’s why she’s getting hers in first.

Someone hacked the whole place,” says the Operative as they emerge into the main axis of the Memphis. It’s empty. But they know all too well that shit is closing in—

“Cramping our style,” says Lynx.

The Operative nods. Then again, he wonders if it’s just one of those things. Shit happens. Particularly in war. Particularly in this one—

“Here we go,” says Linehan.

A space that’s as strange as it is large—and most of it’s taken up by the gigantic springs that the pusher-plate shoves up against. The three men use their suit-jets judiciously to maneuver between the vast hydraulic presses —which are cranking back into action again as the bombs begin to fall once more. With each detonation, the springs shudder with enough vibration to rip lesser metals apart. Spencer feels like his mind’s about to do the same. He feels Haskell reach out even farther—

She slices past the Rain to hit the microzone of the Righteous Fire-Dragon, slams through its cockpit, hits the inner enclave, and fucks it good. Network becomes maelstrom. As the zone of the megaship collapses, she rides it down in style, nailing the suits of the crew along with all the soldiers. Not enough to kill them, of course. Just enough to drive them really, really crazy.

There were ten thousand colonists aboard the Memphis. All of them woke up with some truly nasty programming. Some of them got taken out by SpaceCom marines. Still more got nailed when the marines blew the airlock. But ultimately numbers won out. There are several thousand left. And a large chunk of them are swarming in toward five men who have never seen anything quite like it. Soldiers less battle hardened might be undone by pure shock.

The five men start firing, accelerating toward the seething mass.

They’re seeing no one. It’s fine by them. They’re following the route Haskell’s given Spencer, moving past the swaying springs, crawling into the shafts that lead into the megaship’s hull—and hitting their jets again as they streak between the layers of armor. If oncoming shots smash through the outer layer at the wrong moment, they’re toast. It’s an acceptable risk. Especially given what’s going on inside the ship.

Total pandemonium. There are at least two thousand Chinese marines aboard. Half of them just went insane. And those who didn’t are finding that their suits just did. The galleries of the ship are filling up with flame and metal. But Haskell’s getting only the merest glimpse of it, basing herself in the wreckage of the AI that controlled the cockpit, triangulating from that shattered mind along with Spencer’s to continue to press the Rain triad while she dwells in this strange region that’s half-zone and half-telepathy. It’s as she figured. The triad has other things to think about besides tracking down prey. She’s planning on giving them a few more while she’s at it.

Utter carnage inside the Memphis. Half the colonists are still naked. They all look totally nuts. They’re attacking with berserker ferocity, using pieces of metal and piping and—

“Yeah,” says Maschler, “those are bones.”

“Someone spiked the alarm clock,” says Riley.

“Shut up and keep shooting,” hisses Linehan.

The Operative can see how nasty it must have been. The sleepers came awake in tandem with the dismemberment of the ship’s zone. He wonders whether they were rigged from the start, or whether this is some recent innovation.

“No wonder the fleet’s in lockdown,” says Lynx.

“Just one reason among many,” says the Operative.

They’re making haste inside the armor of one of the two largest ships ever built. Occasionally the shudder of the receding engines is joined by other vibrations—American shots smashing against the hull. If anything makes it through, they’ll be the first to know. Yet now that they’ve got a little margin, Spencer’s doing a little thinking.

“Manilishi,” he says.

“My name’s Claire,” says the voice.

“Where are you?”

“Right inside your head.”

“I mean really—”

“Does it matter?”

“Are the Rain still out there?”

“They’re too busy to worry about you for now.”

“And Sinclair?”

“What about him?”

“Is he up here too?”

“I doubt it.”

He was earlier, though. She’s sure of it. Sinclair was up at L5 back when she hacked into his cell a week earlier, and subsequently managed to get himself off that fleet. Maybe he used a teleporter to do so. Maybe he left by more prosaic means. And as to when—his mental presence on the lip of the South Pole was indeterminate. His mental presence during the interrogation with Montrose seemed to emanate from L5. The problem is, she’s not sure what Sinclair’s capable of. He may have wanted her to think he was still at L5 back then.

But there’s no way he could be there now—otherwise she would never have been able to put the Rain triad under such pressure. That triad’s going to ground now, camo on maximum as they vanish into the less trafficked areas of the ship. She’s wishing she could do the same within the Moon. Because the SpaceCom forces are still closing in on her. She can picture all those suits blasting through the shafts of Moon—can almost see the repurposed mining vehicles sliding into position. She wishes that her map wasn’t just confined to the main route she’s trying to take—that she had more data to go on. She can only tell the surrounding routes by the position of her pursuers. They’re accelerating now, and she’s accelerating with them, stretching her suit to the limits of its capacity. Stretching her mind too—

The key is to keep moving. And shooting—the five men are formed up in what’s essentially a mini-phalanx, the Operative and Lynx on the front, Maschler and Riley on the flanks, Linehan on rearguard. They’re gunning down the colonists in swathes—interlocking fields of fire that mow down everything before them. Yet the Operative somehow feels at one with the people he’s killing. He can’t blame them, really—even if whatever program’s in them was somehow factored out—if you dreamt of Mars and woke instead to Hell, you might just choose to contribute to it. But all that matters now is the section of the Memphis they’re closing on. They blow down more doors, head on through, the bloody horde swirling around them.

They’re picking up speed now, shooting the length of the ship as it hurtles in toward the Moon. They’re still alive. Still in the dark as well.

“What makes you so sure Sinclair’s not up here?”

“If he was, you’d be dead,” she says.

“Why are you helping us?” he asks.

“Because I can.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to.”

Though the truth of the matter is that she’s not exactly sure herself. Part of her thinks she should just be