The Machinery of Light

roars through several larger caves, Velasquez and Sarmax doing door-gunner duty as they spray fire everywhere. Velasquez puts her helmet up to Sarmax’s.

“I’m going to need your mind, too,” she says.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he says.

She tells him.

She’s in the Room now, and darkness is all around her. She’s afraid to use her lights. She’s seeing with her mind anyway, and so far that’s more than enough. As she steps forward, she can sense abyss on all sides—can sense structures all around her. She’s not surprised in the slightest when the floor beneath her shudders, starts moving, folding up around her to become another elevator car, sliding in toward the very core of Room.

They fight their way deeper, moving out of the Congreve subbasements and onto the threshold of the larger lunar infrastructure that stretches beneath the farside. Lynx struggles to focus on the zone, but he can’t make out much, save for the fact that combat is underway everywhere. It makes him wonder just how far the Eurasian commandos have penetrated. Linehan gets out in front, on point; they start moving downward at speed.

It’s good to be back. Even though somehow it’s like he never left—like he’s been hanging out near Congreve this whole time, still waiting for Lynx to hurry up and figure out a way to get into that city and up to the L2 fleet. Four days have passed since, and it seems like it’s been only four minutes. It seems like there are only four minutes to go. He can feel everything he’s ever been running from coming in to claim him. Ayahuasca’s edge is sharpening ever further, rising like a new sun bursting in his mind. He feels like he’s almost at the hub of the universe—like maybe it’s just below him. He can hardly wait to get there.

And suddenly a mind’s sliding straight into the Operative’s head. It’s one he recognizes. He’s been aware of it for many years now, just never in this way. But there’s a first time for everything. Even this.

“Leo.”

“The same.”

“You’ve learned some new tricks, huh?”

“Or just remembered some old ones,” says Sarmax.

“Bullshit. Who took you out of latency?”

“Indigo.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“She’s right here with me. With her triad—”

“In Nansen.”

“Sure,” says Sarmax.

“She’s calling the shots.”

“So what if she is? We need to team up.”

“Heard that one before,” says the Operative.

Spencer and Jarvin put ever more rock between them and the surface. The tunnels beneath Copernicus give them slightly more of a vantage point on zone. Enough to show that it’s crumbling everywhere. The bulk of Eurasian forces are still polishing off the American fleet. But more of the East’s shock-troops are hitting the Moon with every minute. Most of the initially vulnerable points are on the nearside. But as the Eurasian flanks envelop the farside, that’s starting to change.

“That’s where the real action’s at anyway,” says Jarvin.

“You think the Eurasians know that?” asks Spencer.

“I think they know the only thing that counts now is getting inside the Room.”

“So aren’t we a little too far from the main event?”

“That’s the idea,” says Jarvin.

He cut us off,” says Velasquez.

“So?”

“Didn’t think he could do that. Thought I was—”

“He’s a resourceful man.”

They come out into a cavern far larger than anything they’ve seen so far. Looks like explosions have torn it nearly apart—the floor and walls are mostly rubble. They ignite their jet-packs, start to move through in tight formation. They’ve just reached the other side when lights and sensors transfix them from much higher in the cavern.

In the flesh this time,” says the Operative.

“Fuck,” says Sarmax. The Operative’s standing on a ledge, flanked by Riley and Maschler. Everybody’s got their guns pointed at one another now.

“Easy,” says Velasquez.

“You sold me,” says the Operative. “We do need to team up.”

There’s a pause.

“On my terms,” he adds.

“Which are?”

The Operative keeps it brief.

Her body’s on a platform hurtling toward the inner confines of the Room. But her mind’s way ahead of her: it reaches the controls, switches them on. Software starts powering up. The lights go on. The sight practically drops her to her knees.

The tunnels beneath farside—the deepest levels of which lead directly to the Room. Though only those who have the whole picture know the correct routes. Thousands of klicks of passages sprawling out beneath the lunar farside, stretching down for hundreds of kilometers—most of it’s been signed off at various levels within Space Command across the decades. Some of it’s mining. Some of it’s R&D. Some of it was commissioned in secret by Harrison himself, dug out by his Praetorians. And some of it’s known only to—

“Autumn Rain,” says Lynx.

“An increasingly nebulous concept these days,” says Linehan.

But Lynx doesn’t reply. He’s just processing data—integrating the glimpses he’s got on the collapsing zone with the flickers of mind he can see out there. He has no idea why his mental abilities are getting better by the moment. It’s as if they’re being hauled toward ever greater heights regardless of his own feelings in the matter. He’s not about to argue.

“Well?” demands Linehan.

“Here’s the situation,” says Lynx.

Insider information: they’re burning away from Nansen along Rain tunnels that the Praetorians never found, heading for the edge of the main network of tunnels beneath the farside. The Operative and Maschler and Riley are in one chute; Sarmax and the Rain triad are in a parallel one. But the Operative has gone ahead and linked his mind with Sarmax and the triad all the same. It feels strange to have done so. But he knows it’s the only option that might see them through. Even though the Operative can see they’re going to need more margin—can see they’re going to have to consolidate still further.

Spencer no longer has any view of what’s happening on the surface. But it sounds like the entire Eurasian armada is coming down on top of them. Rumbling shakes the tunnels through which they’re streaking. Spencer listens on the zone as the American forces fall back, heading ever deeper.

Vast shapes hanging like monstrous chandeliers, intimations of impossibly intricate machinery: she gets a