The Machinery of Light ar-3

by David J. Williams

  The Earth shakes as they streak beneath it. It’s clearly only a matter of time before the tunnel collapses around them. They’re way too close to the surface. Presumably that’s why this train’s engineers are pouring on the speed, racing for the junctions that will get them to the one place they need to be.

  Deeper.

  The man eyes the car around him. Nobody is above the rank of colonel. The man’s only a major, but he’s got pull that goes a little beyond that. Yet right now he’s in the same boat as the rest of them—just Russian officers trying to make their luck go a little further, just soldiers all too glad they got assigned to this train and not the one behind it. There’s nothing back there now. The def-grids are crumbling. American hypersonic missiles are starting to smack into bases in the steppe above them. The train accelerates still further.

  Is something wrong?” says Sarmax.

  “I’m fine,” says Spencer.

  “No you’re not.”

  “No?”

  “You just felt something grab at your mind, right?”

  Spencer blinks. “You too, huh?”

  “How much did you feel?” asks Sarmax.

  “Just the hint of something.”

  “Could you see who?”

  “No idea.”

  Not that he has much experience with stuff this weird. He was hooked up to the Manilishi during the run-in, via some kind of telepathy that was enabled surgically and had something to do with his zone interfaces. He has no idea as to the exact procedure—has no idea as to what this is really all about. Which is why he’s getting so desperate for some answers.

  “You and Lynx and Carson,” he says.

  “What about us?” replies Sarmax.

  “You guys could only sense one another. You couldn’t read one anothers’ thoughts.”

  “Is that a statement or a question?”

  “Just answer it.”

  “Told you already: only ones who could do that were the real Rain. Not us pipsqueak prototypes. The three of us were just modified flesh, Spencer—just the goddamn precursors. The main team, they were the ones who had it all together.”

  “Except they didn’t,” says Spencer.

  “Not without the Manilishi, no.”

  “She was supposed to be the linchpin of the whole thing.”

  “She still is the linchpin.”

  “Even though the Rain are finished?”

  “You really think so?”

  “I thought Haskell wiped them all—”

  “All, nothing. Riddle me this, moron: if the Rain are finished, what the fuck was that yanking on our goddamn brains?”

  “I was assuming it was Haskell.”

  Sarmax looks at him strangely. “Could you tell if it was female?”

  “No,” says Spencer.

  “You couldn’t tell anything at all?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I’m trying to figure out who it was.”

  Spencer regards Sarmax curiously. “Right. I keep forgetting you knew them.”

  “Trained them, sure.” Sarmax shifts the subject. “Look, there’s more than meets the eye here. I was a wet-ops specialist of twenty years when they put me out for forty-eight hours and woke me up with the news that I was the new breed. I asked what the fuck that meant. They said, you’ll see. And they were right. You just act. You make all the right choices, and you know that the other members of the team are making theirs—you just know it. And when you strike, you don’t hesitate. And everybody hesitates. Even if they don’t know it. Even for a fraction of a second. But not when you’re Rain. You get the shot off quicker, and you never miss. You—”

  “Carson told me something—”

  “Carson told you something?”

  “On the way back to Earth. He said the Rain are more than just killers. They’re takeover artists.”

  “Sure. Would have thought that was obvious by now.”

  “He said it was an instinct for them.”

  “Sure. We were taught to seek heights. We sense heights.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Not sure I can explain. Call it intuition.”

  “Lot of it running around these days,” says Spencer.

  “If you’re talking about the Manilishi, you can forget it. She’s on a whole different level, man. She hacks the light fantastic so hard she’s forced them to invent whole new classifications of razor ability. I’ve got a feeling that if she’d ever been plugged into the rest of the Rain, we’d be dealing with a lot more than mind reading.” Sarmax pauses. “Where are you going with all this anyway?”

  “Trying to get a line on the handler’s file,” says Spencer.

  “The book.”

  “Yeah, the book.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Not with the part that counts.”

  The thing that’s been turning in Spencer’s head contains three. The first is the location of the base they’ve penetrated. The second is the nature of the Eurasian secret weapon they’re inside. Both of those have now been cracked. Neither holds a candle to the third part: the final section of the pages scrawled in languages the last American agent in Hong Kong invented for the sole purpose of better hiding the secrets that had driven him mad. Secrets he committed to the most archaic medium of them all, the only one that’s safe from zone … paper. A whole book’s worth, and now it’s been burned, but not before it was photographed and uploaded by the men who killed him—Spencer and Sarmax—who were even more desperate than the handler was, and who can’t afford to take the precautions he’d been taking. Spencer mulls it all over once again. He exhales slowly.

  “It’s definitely what we’re after,” he says.

  “Rain,” says Sarmax.

  “Yeah. I’ve been able to suss out the section headings, made some inroads on the rest of it. I’ve figured out its source.”

  “Its source?”

  “Its author.”

  “You mean the handler? Jarvin?”

  “I mean who he stole it from.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh. We’re talking about the key files, Leo. Precise records of the Autumn Rain experiments, right? Sinclair had to keep track of it somehow. And somehow his onetime handler went and got himself a copy.”

  “An alleged copy.”

  “Sure. May be a fake. But I doubt it.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I think it really did do something to his mind.”

  Sarmax starts to reply—and stops as a faint noise filters in from several rooms above … followed by an unmistakable creak as a hatch swings open. There’s the sound of boots coming down a ladder.

  “The access shafts,” says Spencer.

  “We need to make ourselves scarce.”

  Claire Haskell keeps on running, pursuit hot on her trail, and she’s ever more certain that Carson’s leading that pursuit—that Montrose hasn’t had him liquidated for failing to capture her. Or just liquidated on general principles: because Haskell knows damn well what Carson is doing working for Stephanie Montrose. She wonders if Montrose knows too—wonders if Montrose has used her possession of the executive node to build up some means to protect herself from the world’s most dangerous assassin.

  But mostly Haskell’s wondering about the door she’s about to reach. It leads to a shaft she’d really like to get to. One she’s pretty sure isn’t known to Montrose. She wonders if it’s known to Carson. It’s barely known to her—even with her maps, it’s not easy to find. That’s because it’s hidden in the bottom of an empty water pipe, looking like part of the wall within. She traces her hand along the frame—finds a switch and hits it.

  Nothing happens.

  The door’s not opening. She hits it again. Same result.

  She tries to hack the systems of the door, but she can’t even find a zone beyond it. She’s getting frantic now. Because she can feel the pursuit coming in behind her, moving in to cut her off.

  And suddenly
she gets it—a flash of insight or just some leering thought of his flung through rock for her reception: Carson knows about this door for sure—knows it’s a way to the really deep shafts—and that’s why she’s just managed to get herself trapped against it. He knows damn well that she can’t get through it. The codes she has are wrong. Or maybe they just got changed. Doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she can’t get through. And that the hunters are approaching along vectors that leave her with no way to get beyond them, back into the base’s larger sprawl. She turns away from the door—

  And looks longingly back. For one moment, it’s as though Jason Marlowe himself is on the other side. Her dead lover—she wants to get through that badly. She contemplates using explosives against the portal, but figures that this door was designed to withstand anything up to a nuke. So she tears herself away, turns around, and starts climbing up the side of pipe, back into a passageway, taking stock all the while of the noose that’s tightening around her.

  The Operative watches his readouts as they show the margin of error vanishing. It’s all over. Haskell’s officially fucked, regardless of which zone-signature she’s hiding behind. The probabilities are dwindling to the point where all her potential routes intersect with one of his formation’s flanks. And those flanks are sweeping together like jaws …

  He figured she’d take the route she did. It was predictable enough. He knows how Haskell thinks. After all, he was there when she started thinking. He intends to be there at the end too. Which can’t be far away. He hopes it will be quick. He lets the contours of the war that’s blazing overhead waft through him as he moves forward, bodyguards closing up behind him, following in the wake of his suit’s thrusters.

  Find the traitor.

  Find the fucking traitor and rip out his fucking heart. Tear his flesh to bits. Gobble his flesh right off the floor. Fucking eat him.

  Find the traitor.

  But other than that, there’s not much in the way of thought. There’s just a set of nerve-reflexes honed to professional levels and looking for a target. Because somewhere in this spaceship there’s a traitor. And loyal SpaceCom soldiers are looking for that traitor. Loyal soldiers just like—

  “Linehan.”

  Linehan looks around. But there’s no one there. Just more of this shaft that he’s been crawling through, more of the endless innards of the Montana. The sights of his suit’s guns triangulate on the walls up ahead, but they’re not picking up anything that even passes for a target …

  “Linehan.”

  It sounds like it’s right inside his skull. It sounds familiar—like someone Linehan used to know. Someone who knows more about Linehan than maybe even he himself does. Someone who’s become a trait—

  “Show yourself,” says Linehan.

  “Why?”

  “So I can kill you.”

  “I don’t think so,” says Stefan Lynx.

  “You’re marked for execution.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “You’ve betrayed Admiral Szilard.”

  “I didn’t betray anybody, jackass.”

  “You were—”

  “Trying to get control of his whole fleet.”

  “Because you’re Autumn Rain.”

  “The original, baby.”

  “You tried to use me to kill the admiral but your buddy Carson backstabbed you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Definitely. You’re a traitor.”

  “Whatever,” says Lynx. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That if you can keep me talking long enough your armor can trace me.”

  “So far it’s working.”

  “But here’s the thing you should be wondering: why the hell haven’t you informed the SpaceCom razor you’ve been paired with that you’ve been chatting with me?”

  “What?”

  “The SpaceCom razor. The guy who Szilard said go run point in the jungle for. Few score meters back in the shaft behind you, right? I’m sure that guy’s at least a captain. Must be some hotshot razor.”

  “He’s tracking you—”

  “And he hasn’t found me. So why the hell haven’t you told him that the traitor’s on the line?”

  “You’re … fucking with my zone-signal … my software—”

  “Sure I am. But tell me why you haven’t even tried to get him on the fucking line!”

  “I … don’t know. I—”

  “I’ll tell you why. Because you’re dickless. Because I’m the fucking Cheshire cat and I’ve sent you my smile to tell you to wake the fuck up. Szilard’s already sold you out.”

  “I—what are you talking about?”

  “Jesus Christ! Do you leave your brain at the door when you check into Hotel SpaceCom? Did Szilard take out your fucking batteries? Come on, man: the Lizard’s gonna purge you tonight.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Watch this.”

  Abruptly, the train starts slowing. Rocky walls outside the windows become visible as more than just something flickering by. The train keeps on braking, slows even further, hisses to a halt.

  But it’s clear all hell is still breaking loose outside. Vibrations keep on rocking through the floor. Apparently the Americans are pressing home their advantage. Everyone’s looking at one another—except the major who’s looking at nothing in particular, save for the readouts in his own head, affording him a vantage that’s more advantaged than anyone else in the car. He exhales slowly—stands up, straightens out his uniform, and starts heading toward the door to the next car.

  “The rats are leaving the ship,” says someone.

  “We’re supposed to stay here,” says someone else.

  “So stay,” says the major. The car door opens and he goes through as it slides shut behind him. He triggers override codes, locks it shut. He’s in a freight car now—he makes his way through the narrow passage between the metal crates. He moves into the next freight car, and then the next.

  Two more cars, and he’s arrived at a door that’s different than the ones he’s been through. It looks to be a great deal thicker. It’s still no match for his codes. It slides open, and he walks on through into the train’s cockpit. The driver and engineer whirl toward him, their expressions just short of priceless.

  Spencer and Sarmax get busy getting moving, through the trapdoor in the floor and down into the rooms beneath them. Those rooms are just as packed with nukes as the ones they left. They contain trapdoors that lead to shafts that lead to—

  “Fuck,” says Sarmax.

  “We really shouldn’t go in there,” says Spencer.

  “Not unless we’re feeling lucky.”

  Or just really stupid. The shafts below this point aren’t intended for humans. Just nukes, getting slotted through at high speed. Meaning that—

  “We’re trapped.”

  “Maybe,” says Spencer.

  “How many routes are there out of here?”

  Depends how you count. The zone’s still down, but Spencer got enough of a glimpse of this area before the lights went out to be able to map it out: a series of interlocking rooms, all of them packed with the fissile material that’s both cargo and fuel. Spencer’s trying to calibrate these rooms against the larger superstructure of the thing they’re in, trying to make some calculations that are really just educated guesses. He’s got no time for anything else.

  “This way,” he says, and starts moving through doors that lead to yet more of these rooms that are starting to drive him crazy. He wonders why the Eurasians didn’t just build one big storage chamber. He knows the answer 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 bu
nker. 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.