The Machinery of Light

even as he thinks the question, that it’s a matter of contingencies. The nukes themselves are failsafed. But if one of the warheads went off in here anyway, no precaution would matter. Yet the hi-ex trigger mechanism that’s fastened to each warhead is a different story. If those started to detonate accidentally, they could do some serious chain-reaction damage unless they were contained. So each room is the equivalent of a bunker. And he and Sarmax have reached the one they’ve been making for.

“This is it,” says Spencer.

“This is what?”

“Where we get off.”

“What?”

“Well, these nukes weren’t just carried down ladders.”

“Ah,” says Sarmax.

Because the truth is that these rooms don’t add up. Stack them up against one another, and there’s some empty space that runs through the center of them: space around which they’re all clustered.

“The spine,” says Sarmax.

“Now we just need to get in there,” says Spencer.

“Easy enough,” says Sarmax, turning to the wall—

Haskell’s thinking that the best way out of this one is to play it cool. She’s ghosting the passages, coasting past the sentinels, watching the back doors of her own mind. She knows that Carson has the keys to at least one of them. She’s hoping she’s got the keys to turn those keys against him. She heads up a ladder, through a doorway that opens without even knowing it’s been opened. She’s getting in behind the foremost of the InfoCom razors, letting them move ahead of her, running down one of her decoys. She’s tempted to go for Carson himself. But she decides not to press her luck. Particularly as maybe Carson’s luring her in toward him. She crawls on past …

And fires her suit-jets. Now it’s a sprint. Her zone-bombs detonate behind her; two of the InfoCom razors go down writhing—her mind darts on through the gap they’ve left, and then her body follows. Power-suited mechs are firing in all directions, causing chaos. She feels Carson move to shore things up, but she’s not sticking around to see the results; she ducks into a freight-chute, hurtles upward. Moments later, she’s emerging—a quarter-klick farther away. She’s broken through Carson’s perimeter, doubling back toward Congreve.

Only to find another InfoCom force bearing down on her.

Too late, she sees the nature of the real trap. The luxury of numbers: Carson has had a second team of razors and mechs out there, sitting lights-out and waiting for just this kind of breakout. Even so, she’s faster than they thought. But now they’re hot on her heels. She blasts through storage chambers, moves past some of the directed-energy power generators. Wiring connects them to the guns spitting on the surface—and Haskell’s just stealing past them, through a maintenance shaft, dropping into the chamber she’s been headed toward.

The train that stretches through the room sits on rails that are part of the deep-grids: the sublunar rail network that connects the U.S. farside bases and that extends all the way to the lunar nearside. But all Haskell wants to do now is stay ahead of the InfoCom forces that are scarcely half a klick back. She steps inside the train’s first car. There are seven others. All bear the moon-and-eagle SpaceCom standard. All look empty, but she’s not about to make any assumptions. Doors hiss shut behind her. She places herself against a seat as the train accelerates. Walls rush by, so fast they look like they’re buckling.

She starts. They are buckling. She’s being hit by seismic tremors. The train’s coming off the rails. She’s applying the brakes, even though she knows that’s not going to matter—because somewhere behind her a mammoth explosion’s in the process of smashing the tunnel ceiling into the floor. She decouples the first car, fires its emergency rockets, runs them through sequences that her mind’s improvising against the fractal edge of raw moment. She’s crashing all the same. The cars behind hers disintegrate as she decelerates. Her own car’s ceiling folds away from her as she grinds toward a halt. Car walls tear away on either side of her.

She looks around, tests her limbs, tests her mind. Her suit’s still intact. So is she. She leaps out, starts scanning.

The tunnel’s definitely collapsed farther back. If the blast was on the surface, then it was nothing short of colossal. She wonders if the tide just turned against the United States. But the tunnel up ahead still looks clear.

So she turns, hits her suit’s thrusters even as she intensifies her hack on the train’s line. Rail whips past her as she reaches out to the U.S. zone somewhere ahead of her. She can’t find it.

And then she realizes why.

Ineed full data,” snarls the Operative. “Triangulate, give me readings.”

He’s managed to restore some order to his squad. The InfoCom mechs take up defensive positions as the surviving razors mesh, triangulate. Data foams back toward the Operative.

“Fuck,” he says.

There are way too many variables to determine the exact nature of the blast that just shook this area. But the Operative can figure out enough on his own. He no longer has a link to the surface—or even back to Congreve’s basements. Something nasty has almost certainly happened to the largest American farside base. Calculations race through his head. One of the razors comes on the line.

“Sir, we’re narrowing down the blast. Epicenter at”—he rattles off coordinates.

One of the screens that’s surging static suddenly coalesces. The face of Stephanie Montrose regards him. For the first time, it shows concern.

“Carson. You’re still alive. Thank God—”

“Looks like you’re doing okay yourself.”

“We’ve got a Eurasian incursion into the Congreve vicinity.”

“Where?”

“Northwest sector ZJ-3.”

“That’s right on top of me.”

“That’s why I’m calling.”

“How the hell did they get in? Their nearest base is—”

“Apparently they’ve been doing some digging. In anticipation of war. Like the North Koreans used to do back in their DMZ before the entire peninsula—”

“They might just have bagged the Manilishi.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” says Montrose.

“Got any heavy equipment I can use?”

“I’m scrambling everything now.”

“Great.”

“Get in there, Carson. This is your moment. Your time. Not just Mars. Everything beyond that.”

“Over and out,” he says.

His visor’s right up against his face, and on the other side of that plastic are the walls of the shafts of the SpaceCom flagship Montana. But it’s something even closer that’s at stake now. Right inside Linehan’s head, where another voice has just joined in.

“Line of sight,” says that voice, and then Linehan sees it, at the intersection up ahead—the suit of the SpaceCom razor who’s got his mind on the leash around his neck. He’s informing Linehan that he’s now passing into the mech’s visual field. A standard protocol.

But what’s not so standard are the shots that Linehan is getting off: two quick minibursts, one slicing through the razor’s wireless antennae, the other perforating his armor with heated rounds. Pieces of bone and suit fly.

Just as another suit leaps down next to Linehan. And through the visor he can see that face: silver hair and ebony skin and a mouth that just can’t stop laughing—

“Hiya,” says Lynx.

“You fucking bastard,” says Linehan.

“Is that how you thank the man who’s reversed the conditioning Szilard skullfucked you with?”