The Machinery of Light

shredding into the mother of all meteor showers. And before they went offline, the engines of the Righteous Fire-Dragon got one last set of instructions.

“Projected impact on Copernicus,” says Jarvin.

Spencer whistles. “The lunar capital?”

“For a couple more minutes.”

The dropship careens downward. The ship’s stealthy, but that alone won’t be enough. Sarmax can only imagine what hacks this Rain triad is running on the American zone. He’s starting to think they might actually make it to the surface. He looks at Velasquez.

“Why’d you save me?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

She shoves her head deeper into the Room’s defenses, smashing ever further into those minds, each one a prick of sentience she’s snuffing out. She can’t help but wonder whether these brains were the real Rain originals—the things that never left the vats, that instead were assigned the mission of defending Sinclair’s ultimate stronghold. But she’s turning the flank on those defenses. She’s almost there. She feels it all twisting in around her.

They’re still pointed straight down, aiming at the very center of the farside. Ground-to-space lasers streak past them. Lynx throttles up the engine even further, opens up a comlink with what’s left of the Congreve defense grid, and starts running a particularly insidious hack.

They’re getting low now, maneuvering within ten thousand meters of the surface. Mountain ranges loom ahead of them, straddling the near and farsides.

“Where the fuck are we going?” says Riley.

“Familiar ground,” says the Operative.

They’re arcing down across the nearside, the domes of Copernicus approaching all too rapidly—and Spencer can only imagine the alarms that are going off within them. Not that anyone’s going to have time to react.

“Time to go,” says Spencer.

“Agreed,” says Jarvin.

The truth is we need you,” says Velasquez.

“Because of Sinclair,” replies Sarmax.

“Because otherwise we’re nothing but his prey.”

She’s in the home stretch now. Though she keeps wondering why Sinclair is making this so hard for her.

Especially when he needs her to finish what he’s set in motion. Maybe this is her final test. Maybe he’s trying to draw off some of her strength. If that’s the case, it’s not working. She’s only growing stronger. She moves onto the final sequence—

Let’s do this,” says Lynx. The two men detach themselves—fire judicious thrusts from their motors as the antimatter drive drops away. Lynx has convinced Congreve’s defenses that this fragment of the Harrison is about to try an emergency landing in the adjacent Korolev Crater. The two men plunge downward in their armor and watch the engine beneath them dwindle to a speck while Congreve’s dome grows larger by the second.

Mountains are streaking in toward them. The Operative’s working the controls, banking the escape craft beneath the highest peaks, letting it drop down toward the valleys. Maschler does a doubletake.

“Wait a second,” he says. “This is—”

“Shut up and hold on,” says the Operative.

Spencer and Jarvin crawl through a narrow shaft that’s nearly identical to the one they had used to enter the cockpit on the Hammer of the Skies. Spencer was tempted to rig the Eurasian AI with hi-ex, but he realizes that would stretch the word superfluous to whole new levels. He’s got the files that machine downloaded in the back of his head. He’s got no time to bother with them right now. They reach the last hatch, shove it aside, fling themselves out into the abyss.

How much do you know?” asks Sarmax.

“Enough,” she replies. “He’s been using us—”

“When did you figure it out?”

“After we realized we weren’t guarding Sinclair.”

“When did he leave?”

“Some point before the war started, I guess. Now he’s at the Room, I don’t see how the hell we can stop him in time.”

He stares at her. “We can fucking try,” he says.

Terrain starts to appear in the windows of the dropship.

Ciphers so next-level that only a brain like Haskell’s can hope to penetrate them. She’s tearing through them on overdrive—making them think that she’s the one who’s created them. Who’s now reversing them. She’s through. The locks click through her mind—

A million shades of black and grey, a million lights flaring all around—and the soundtrack to all of it is silence as Linehan takes in the sight. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He suddenly feels that all the fighting and shooting and killing that’s going on around him isn’t really happening—that existence has dwindled to this tiny space inside his helmet even as he looks at all those stars. It seems like there’s a pattern all around, like somehow it’s all meant to happen. He and Lynx are freefalling, tumbling downward, that engine-that’s-now-a-bomb a distant firefly far below. Any moment now Congreve’s defenses are going to come to their senses. But a few moments more and it’s going to be too late—

They swoop over one mountain, veer in toward another. A giant sinkhole stretches out before them, carved straight through adjacent hills and valleys. It doesn’t look natural. More like—

“Someone had some fun with blasting powder,” says Riley.

“Couple of nukes,” says the Operative.

“Autumn Rain?”

“Several days back.”

“And you were there, huh?”

“Hey,” says Maschler, “that looks like another ship.”

Judicious bursts of their suit-thrusters as they exit—and the Righteous Fire-Dragon is rushing past, dropping beneath them as they gain height. It seems to have given up spitting nukes. It won’t matter—it’s still going to turn Copernicus into a big pancake. The sky above Spencer’s head is alive with lights, the vanguards of the American fleet clearly visible as they vector out from behind the Moon to do battle with the onrushing Eurasian fleet. Spencer can see quite clearly that the Yanks haven’t a fucking prayer. The ships of the East make the sky immediately above the nearside look like the center of the galaxy. The Righteous Fire-Dragon is dwindling below them as it moves into the last stage of its final plunge—

They’ve seen us,” says the pilot.

Velasquez just nods. The ship rocks from side to side as its pilots keep the trajectory unpredictable, letting the