And she can feel it—the emanations of those Rain minds like smoke wafting high above her, shimmering through the endless mist of labyrinth, spreading fear and confusion among the SpaceCom ranks. It’s as she expected. No single one of the players is strong enough to stay alive solo, but combined their minds comprise a factor. As opposed to the minds of those now stumbling into the farside of the labyrinth—the SpaceCom advance forces. She can feel their spirits winking out like lights being extinguished as they make it barely inside the labyrinth before being liquidated, and it’s all she can do to avoid the same fate herself; she twists and turns and pushes herself off walls and prays she won’t hit one of the thousand dead ends or any of the ten thousand traps—prays that she wasn’t seeing the faceless visage of Control looming before her. But God died a long time ago.
Pursuit,” says Jarvin, and his voice has gone all taut.
Spencer picks it up too. Several kilometers back.
Another maglev car.
“Who the fuck is that?” he mutters:
“Could be Sinclair himself,” says Jarvin. For the first time he’s starting to look less than calm …
“Or guardians of this shaft,” says Spencer. He and Jarvin are doing what they can to get in on the strange zone that constitutes this whole route, running their hacks to commandeer the car they’re in and keep the electricity running as they shoot down rails toward the depths of Moon. But that other car’s making good progress all the same. It’s several klicks back, and there’s something more than a little strange about its zone-signature … to the point where it’s almost like it’s not there …
“Oh fuck,” says Jarvin.
Lynx and Linehan sweep in between the units guarding Szilard’s inner position, heading straight toward it, exchanging fire, then drawing off—a feint that pulls a good chunk of Szilard’s flank with it. Tunnels are folding up around them as the marines give chase. Lynx and Linehan start to double around, back toward Szilard’s command post—
What the fuck are you doing?” yells the Operative.
“Going for it,” says Lynx.
The Operative can see he’s not kidding. The plan was for Lynx and Linehan to make the feint and then let the rest of them get in there. But Lynx has never been one for playing second fiddle. And the Operative figures maybe that’s just as well. If Szilard’s still got anything up his sleeve, then maybe Lynx can be the one to find out first. The Operative signals to Riley and Maschler to get out on the hull as he maneuvers their vehicle in on the heart of the Com defenses …
Still playing their fucking games,” says Velasquez.
“They can’t stop,” says Sarmax.
Apparently. The final twenty klicks, and it’s total chaos. Lynx and the Operative are veering around Szilard’s mobile strongpoint like wolves around a campfire. Half the Com forces are fighting one another as their minds go. But the inner enclave of Szilard’s handpicked marines are holding steady, defending their president, their ranks still unbroken. They’re continuing to forge their way down toward the labyrinth. Which the advance guard has already penetrated—
“And gotten annihilated,” says Velasquez.
“Takes a special kind of maniac to go in there.”
She’s threading through the web of passages and somehow it helps that she doesn’t even know which ones are in her mind and which ones are carved in rock. All she knows is that Control’s looming before her like a disembodied ghost.
“Turn back, Claire.”
“What do you think I’ve already done?”
“I think you’re being very foolish.”
“When I want your opinion, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Matthew thinks you’re being very foolish.”
“Which is why he’s coming after me.”
“And you’re not moving fast enough.”
“He’s afraid of me, isn’t he.”
“Try to have some perspective, Claire.”
“I’ll show you fucks a thing or two about perspective.”
“Will you really?” Control laughs, and the noise is hideous. “Szilard’s fed a thousand soldiers into this labyrinth already. None of them made it more than five seconds. We’ll see how much better you can do. Give the old man a run for his money—why not? All the better, in fact. We need a fighter. We bred a fighter. Someone who’ll resist to the end of existence and beyond.”
“Precisely,” she says—and hits his mind full force.
What’s the problem?” yells Spencer.
“It may be a decoy,” says Jarvin.
“Fuck.”
It’s hard to tell. Which is probably the point. It’s made all the tougher by the fact that they’ve got no option than to stay on these rails. Because it’s all linear. There’s nothing in here but this shaft. They plunge onward while the pursuit closes in above them and they start to face up to the fact that the real pursuers may be elsewhere—
“Keep your eye on what’s below us,” says Jarvin.
“My thoughts exactly,” mutters Spencer.
Lynx and Linehan impact onto the core of Szilard’s formation, slicing through it, blasting shit aside—bombs flung off to nail huge tractor-tanks trying to maneuver down rift-galleries … Lynx is splintering the zone in the faces of the Com marines as Linehan fires away. Bodies are flying.
“He’s moving,” says the Operative.
“I see it,” says Velasquez.
Szilard’s dwindling forces are still heading forward. The Operative takes a look at the fading zone sensors way overhead, looks at the camera-feeds on all those endless kilometers of upper levels, the lunar cities swarming with the ravaging Eurasian infantry, the slaughter now developing among the civilian populations—they are sparing no one, the Operative notes. He starts detecting wave anomalies radiating out from the Room—
—as the vanguard of Szilard’s bodyguards slams straight into Sarmax and Velasquez’s position, shape-charges eviscerating the marines as their second rank comes up. Sarmax can see Szilard’s retinue accelerating even further, abandoning most of the troops and dodging past his position—
“Suicide run now,” says Carson.
“Or he knows something we don’t,” says Lynx.
“I’m picking up something weird from the labyrinth,” says Sarmax.
It’s like all the ambience around her is really a liquid through which she’s swimming—like she’s still back in that tank in Montrose’s bunker beneath Korolev—like all of it was memory or the event horizon of the initial drug surge … she stares at Control, who wears way too many faces; she composes her own while she slices straight through him, crushing in on his cognition—“How’s it fucking feel,” she’s hissing—and she can sense he’s hurting, and writhing; his mind slithers out of her grasp, retreats in disarray while she powers past him and through the other side of membrane. She stumbles through the far side of the labyrinth, emerging in a cave. Marines stare at her, start falling to their knees.
Picking up something ahead,” says Jarvin.
“Fuck,” says Spencer.
Maybe it’s the thing they’ve been running from. Maybe it’s something new. It doesn’t matter. They’ve got no choice but to go straight through it. They accelerate, start ripping out the elevator floor, getting ready to open up on whatever materializes in the shaft below. They’re almost on it.
Lynx and Linehan start the final run, vectoring in on Szilard’s position at near point-blank range. The best that can be said about the marines’ resistance is that it’s heroic. Lynx’s mind flays the meat of cerebellum as he uses the zone like a whip and augments the guns of Linehan, who’s roaring down the tunnel and into a cavern, straight onto one of three Remoraz-class crawlers moving like mountain goats down the walls. One of the crawlers crashes into the other as Lynx destroys their software: both crawlers lose their grip, tumble exploding to the cavern floor. Linehan’s doing his best to get through the armor of the thing he’s hanging onto. Marines elsewhere in the cavern start firing
at him—and then Carson and Maschler and Riley come in through a different entrance and start cleaning them up. Linehan’s tearing off the treads of the crawler, ripping out its rocket engines to strand it as a metal coffin. He sticks several shape-charges onto the side, jets away. Lynx enters the room as they detonate.
Get him,” says the Operative.
But Maschler and Riley are already on it—joining up with Linehan to apprehend any survivors, closing on the president’s presumed position. The Operative and Lynx alight on opposite walls of the cavern—supervising the salvage operation that’s going on below while they scan—
“Executive node intact,” says Lynx.
“Roger that,” says the Operative.
But he’s also picking up intensifying pulses from the direction of the labyrinth—from the direction of the Room—like a tsunami building—
“The old man’s going for it,” he says.
“Easy,” says Lynx. “We’ll take it as it comes.”
“Clear,” shouts Linehan. Lynx and the Operative vector down to the ledge on which the wrecked vehicle’s laying while their three mechs take up covering positions. In short order Lynx and the Operative stand above Jharek Szilard, whom they’ve propped up against the side of the crawler. Blood cakes the inside of his armor. He’s still alive, but only barely. Lynx laughs.
“Nice to see you again, Admiral.”
Szilard shrugs—winces. “Played it … best I could …”
“No disputing that,” says the Operative.
“But … didn’t have your minds …”
“You wouldn’t want our minds.”
“I’d have … given anything for them …”
“To dare to modify yourself like Sinclair,” says Lynx.
Szilard shakes his head. “So here’s everything I know,” he mutters, beaming over all key Com files.
“And the executive node?” asks Lynx.
Szilard flips the Operative a chip, who nods as he catches it—
“You realize this won’t save you?”
“Nothing can save me,” says Szilard. “Sinclair’s mind is swallowing us all—”
“You feel it too?”
“How could I not?”
The Operative nods—shoots Szilard through the head and slots the chip into an interface in one of his guns.
“How’s it feel to be president?” says Lynx.
Aman could ask for better circumstances,” says a woman’s voice. Sarmax and the Rain triad blast into the chamber, take up positions above the mechs, point their weapons—
“Sarmax gets to be the prez,” adds Velasquez.
“You really think it matters?” says Lynx.
“It’s our only chance of fending off whatever the fuck’s coming up from the Room,” says Sarmax. “We need to combine minds far more seamlessly than we’ve done so far. One of us is going to have to step up and be the focal node.”
“And you really think that should be you?” says Lynx.
“I don’t know what to think,” says Sarmax.
“But Indigo does,” says Carson. “Fuck, talk about upward mobility. We give this thing to you, and she’ll be running things.”
Velasquez shrugs. “I’ve got the strongest mind of anyone here.”
“Bullshit,” says Carson.
“I’m the last leader of the last real Rain triad.”
“And I sat at the right hand of Matthew Sinclair while we cooked you fucks up.”
“And you both never knew when to settle,” says Sarmax. He feels like existence itself is beating against his face. The force that’s surging in from the Room seems to be taking on an almost physical form, it’s that strong. Sarmax looks at Velasquez. “Kid, let him have the fucking node. We’ve got no time—”
“That’s for sure,” says Claire Haskell.
She steps into the cavern and she can see the effect she’s having on them—can see that at least some of them can see the auras she’s radiating. She can see that they get it—that what they thought were psychic shockwaves emanating from the Room was actually her approaching their position. She stares for a long moment around the cavern—the shattered vehicles, the corpse of Szilard, the suited figures awaiting her next move. Her mind leaps out from there to encompass all the Moon beyond that, flitting past the Eurasians sweeping in from every direction upon the disintegrating American perimeters to focus in upon one remote corner of the nearside where Spencer and Jarvin are arriving in a room that contains the equipment they’ve been seeking. Her mind drops directions into Spencer’s head even as she notices Linehan dropping to his knees.
Get the fuck up,” says the Operative.
Linehan gets up, backs away. His face looks ashen. The Operative wonders whether the ayahuasca has made him more or less able to accept everything that’s going on. He wonders what Haskell must be feeling right now—if it’s even Haskell they’re dealing with—
“So what’s this about you being president?” she asks.
“That’s what we were discussing,” says Velasquez.
“There’s nothing to be president of,” says Haskell evenly.
“Surely someone has to run the resistance,” says Lynx.
“That’d be me,” says Claire Haskell. The Operative can feel her reaching into his head, activating the executive node, sending out the orders—her mind racing out to all the fragments of the zone in the American forces now fighting across the lunar environs—
MY NAME IS MANILISHI. THE RUMORS OF MY EXISTENCE ARE TRUE. I LEAPT INTO SOUTH POLE WHILE ALL YOUR CAMERAS WATCHED AND ALL YOUR GUNS COULD DO NOTHING. I FOUGHT AT THE SIDE OF PRESIDENT HARRISON. I’M HERE TO RALLY ALL AMERICAN FORCES. I CALL UPON ALL WHO ARE STILL ALIVE TO COMBINE—THOSE WHO SERVED HARRISON, THOSE WHO SERVED MONTROSE OR SZILARD—TO REMEMBER THAT WE ARE STILL THE UNITED STATES. FIGHT THE EAST WITH EVERY MEANS AT YOUR DISPOSAL WHILE I TEAR THEM APART WITH MY MIND, WHICH GOD HIMSELF SENT TO LIGHT UP OUR DARKEST HOUR. FIGHT ON, FOR OUR CAUSE IS JUST. FIGHT ON, AND MAY THE HEAVENS FIGHT FOR US.
I thought you said there was nothing worth being president of,” says Lynx.
“There isn’t,” says Haskell.
They stare at her.
“It’s just a rearguard action,” she says. “Buy us some time to get back to the Room; keep the Eurasians from that door as long as possible.”
Velasquez looks confused. “Your mind can’t—”
“—stop the Eurasians in their tracks? I’m not that good.”
“Not yet,” says the Operative.
She shrugs. “I could probably drive the first hundred thousand of them nuts, but the odds have become overwhelming. We’re outnumbered by at least ten to one. And as the bulk of their fleet lands they’ll eventually just send in waves of robots shorn from zone.”
“No one has an angle on the Eurasians?” asks Sarmax.
“I assumed that someone was controlling them,” says Lynx.
“That someone being Sinclair?”
“Or one of the other Rain triads,” says Sarmax.
“The Eurasians no longer matter,” says Haskell.
What about us?” asks Linehan. He’s daring now to look at this woman who seems so familiar—realizes now he’s seen her before, but how he failed to see her for real he has no idea. Because now there are colors dripping off her, and some kind of energy glowing in her that’s a pale fraction of something that’s emanating from the rock below. Linehan realizes his mind’s come totally apart. And if it hasn’t, then he’s probably died and has reached the afterlife for real. He knows how afterlifes work, too—one false step and you’re fucked for all eternity. Only by following this woman can he hope to stay true. She’s giving orders now, and everyone’s scrambling to carry them out—powering up their jets, following her ever deeper into Moon—
Where the hell are we going?” asks the Operative.
“You really think I’m going to talk to you?” says Haskell.
He figured it was worth a try. They’re heading down a series of ramps
, moving through ground that’s obviously already been prepared. Szilard’s advance guard deployed here during the last hour. Haskell herself came this way less than ten minutes ago. The remainder of the SpaceCom marines in this sector fan out on either side, letting their new mistress pass through, along with her entourage—
—she figures she’d better revel in her moment of power, because she’s about to go up against the ultimate foe. Why Sinclair didn’t confront her directly back in the Room, she doesn’t know. Perhaps he figured Control would be enough to stop her. Perhaps he doesn’t need her after all. She rounds a corner to see the shimmering transluscence of the membrane blocking the way ahead.
“Here’s how we’re going to do this,” she says—starts to give commands. And they’re doing exactly what she tells them—bunching together, getting in close. She can tell that goes against all their instincts—that the last thing any of them want is to be so near that their armor’s touching. But she needs to envelop them all with her mind’s shield. She’s giving last orders to the SpaceCom marines, telling them to defend to the end. She knows that ultimately the Eurasians will be able to reach this point anyway. But unless she screws up, they won’t be going any farther. And if she’s right about what’s about to happen, none of it will matter anyway. She synchronizes everyone on the zone that’s all her own and gives the orders to get moving into that membrane—
The Machinery of Light ar-3 Page 30
