The Machinery of Light

by David J. Williams

  “They’re trying to break in,” says Riley.

  “More than just trying,” says Linehan. “Shall we blow all hatches and feed them to the vacuum?”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind,” says the Operative.

  “They’re about to come in useful,” says Lynx.

  They’re heading to their destination the less-traveled way. Certainly the less fought over. They head up ladders—hauling aside bodies—moving through rooms that have already been charred black with explosions.

  “At least this ship’s still flying,” says Sarmax.

  “For now,” mutters Jarvin.

  She monitors the situation with bated breath. If she’s wrong about all this, then the Rain are going to be on them any moment. Just as the SpaceCom forces are now on her—she slams her mind forward—

  The superdreadnaught Harrison is right in the path of the Memphis. Its gunnery officers are targeting the oncoming ship, only to find that their guns have been hacked.

  “Nice one,” says Lynx.

  “Just getting started,” says the Operative.

  The rest of the fleet’s having the same problem. The Harrison’s engines fire. It starts hauling away. But momentum’s a bitch sometimes. The Memphis is coming on like a juggernaut. The Harrison fills the window …

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” says the Operative.

  They’re moving cautiously past twisted machinery and sprawled bodies, half expecting to get jumped by that Rain triad. But Spencer sees no sign of it. There’s no sign of the zone either. Save for a very faint glimmer dead ahead.

  —almost like the light of the minds that she’s now slamming against. As the impact of her blows resounds within her skull, she feels spirits just shatter. Minds writhe, wink out like stars extinguished. She’s charging right in between the reeling SpaceCom vanguards now. She thinks she gets a glimpse of driverless machinery crashing against tunnel walls—

  They blast down the doors and into the seething mob, fighting their way back the way they came. It’s as if every wayward colonist is waiting for them, seeking to overwhelm them. The Operative can see they’re about to get buried. Which might have its silver lining. Especially with the collision alarms sounding in the cockpit they’ve just left.

  They head through into a room they recognize: the cockpit access chamber. It looked a little more stately back on the other megaship, though. Now it’s an utter fucking mess. Bodies are everywhere. But the combat’s finished here. They haul open the elevator doors, enter the access shaft—

  And she jets through them and nothing’s touching her. The SpaceCom forces are reeling in disarray. She’s dropping deeper into Moon, and they can’t stop her. But her intuition’s screaming ever louder—

  A terrible cracking noise as the Memphis slices into the Harrison. The walls start tearing away to reveal more walls—those of the Harrison itself. The Operative and his team fire their jets, blasting away from the colonists. The Memphis plows ever farther into the Harrison, bodies pouring into vacuum—

  Through the shaft and into the cockpit of the Righteous Fire-Dragon. The three men move from room to room, looking for anything living. They can’t find anything worth the name.

  “Now what?” says Sarmax.

  “Now we make ourselves comfortable,” says Spencer.

  She’s at full throttle, plunging headfirst, her jets adding to the speed of her descent down the shaft. She’s gotten past the SpaceCom forces. The nuke they’ve fired after her is a different story. It gets within half a klick before it detonates.

  The Memphis has thoroughly embedded itself in the Harrison. And the ones who put it there are hitting the SpaceCom flagship in textbook fashion. The three mechs get out ahead, butchering everything in their path. The two razors trail in their wake, their minds leaping out ahead to fuck the defenses. The Harrison is plunging into chaos. The situation isn’t helped by the thousands of psychotic colonists pouring into the ship and attacking everything in sight. It’s total carnage. The Operative’s loving every moment. His zone-view shows Linehan cutting inside the bridge’s outer perimeter.

  Something wrong?” asks Sarmax.

  “I just lost Haskell,” says Spencer.

  And he’s wondering how the hell they’re supposed to keep the Rain at bay now. They’re doing what they can. They’ve mined the elevator shaft and strewn it with sensors capable of detecting anything down to nano. They’ve found an escape shaft and mined that, too.

  “There’s no other way in,” says Jarvin.

  “Search this place again,” says Sarmax.

  The nuke ignites apocalypse in her mind—fries her circuitry, leaves her with nothing but static. It’s not just her software that’s affected either—not just her view onto the zone. It’s also her access to the telepathy, the glimpses of other minds—all of it. It’s all gone, and she’s falling into herself as her body plunges ever farther—

  God this is good,” says Lynx.

  The Operative nods. He’s feeling it too. He’d almost forgotten how lethal Lynx and he are when they combine their minds like this. Subterfuge and stealth are one thing. Frontal assault’s another. There’s nothing like it. Especially when they’ve got three of the best mechs alive running point, smashing through all resistance, detonating barricades and—

  “We’re in,” says Linehan.

  They’re going through the cockpit again, searching every nook and cranny, pulling the covers off consoles, running scans, looking for false spaces and hollow walls. Spencer wanders into one of the adjacent rooms. There’s something about it he can’t quite place. It seems like a dead end.

  But then he hears a voice.

  In the absence of external stimuli the mind creates its own. Claire Haskell knows this. But that knowledge isn’t helping. The voices in her head are really coming out to play. Some are her own. Many aren’t. None are saying anything coherent. Most of them aren’t even speaking English. They’re babbling in languages she can’t even identify, and she’s trying not to listen. She wonders if they’ve been here all along—wonders if she’s going to die. Maybe she already has. The fact that she can see a staircase up ahead doesn’t clarify things in the slightest.

  Check it out,” says Lynx.

  The Operative says nothing—just follows Lynx as he strides onto the bridge of the Harrison, which is about as large as one would expect for the flagship of the L2 fleet. Stairs lead up to an enclosed inner bridge. The walls are alive with window-screens—dominated by the Moon, with the massed Eurasian fleets splayed out beyond. Several officers are dead on the floor. But most of the bridge’s crew are still alive—though they clearly aren’t expecting to stay that way. They’re staring at the three mechs who’ve just shot their colleagues who tried to resist. The Operative pats Linehan on the shoulder.

  “Nice one,” he says.

  Lyle Spencer,” says the voice.

  Spencer whirls. It’s coming from one of the consoles. For a moment he thinks someone’s hiding in the damn thing. But then he gets with the program.

  “How the fuck do you know my name?”

  “Claire Haskell told me.”

  She’s heading down those stairs. They look to be fairly recent in construction. Which might even be good news. It means she might be back on track. The vehicle that’s sitting at the bottom of the stairs is further indication.

  The Operative scans the screens within his head. Everything’s checking out. The Harrison is in his hands. He and Lynx have already taken control of the flagship’s connections with the rest of the fleet, and have been broadcasting about how the rebel units from the Memphis are in custody and that the bridge is now secure. Linehan and Maschler and Riley are making it more so—sealing doors, getting emergency barricades up. The Operative and Lynx walk up the stairs to the inner bridge.

  Spencer’s at a loss. He stares at the console from which the voice is being projected. “Haskell told you who I was?”

  “For sure. Sarmax and Jarvin too—hi guys.�
� This last as the two men walk up behind Spencer.

  “And who the fuck are you?” asks Sarmax.

  “Was might be a better word.”

  The vehicle’s a modified crawler—a long-range explorer, tailor-made for rough underground terrain, with short-use rockets to navigate the more vertical spaces. She opens up the vehicle’s door on manual, climbs in, and seals it. It feels good to get off her feet. It’s even better to be able to replenish her oxygen. She lets her suit drink its fill while she starts the crawler, then resumes the descent into lunar incognita.

  The inner bridge of the SpaceCom flagship contains certain things. The rear admiral of the L2 fleet. Two flag officers. And—

  “The codes,” says the Operative.

  Rear Admiral Griffin looks up at him with an expression that’s one of near total disdain. “You expect me to give the executive codes for this fleet to a bandit?” he asks.

  “I guess not,” says the Operative, and fires a shot into Griffin’s neck. The rear admiral pitches backward, starts dying noisily. The Operative looks at the flag officers.

  “Your turn,” he says.

  Look around you,” says the voice. “I was in charge of all of this. Until that she-demon turned my mind inside out—”

  “You’re AI,” says Jarvin.

  “State of the art,” says the voice. “Command node for both megaships. Until things went to hell. What’s it like in the rest of the ship?”

  “Total shit,” says Sarmax.

  “You mean you can’t see?” asks Spencer.

  “She tore my eyeballs out. Made me her slave. And now I’m yours.”

  “That’s what she said?”

  “She did more than just say.”

  That’s for sure. She’s hoping it works for them. Contingency plan in case she got cut off—she gave them their own heavyweight AI to play with, and maybe it’ll help them to keep the Rain at bay. She’s got far more immediate challenges now, like steering this crawler as fast as it’ll go down a passage that’s so steep it might be better termed a pit. She keeps having to swerve to avoid outcroppings, keeps having to apply retro-blasts from the crawler’s rockets. The voices in her head are getting ever louder. There’s an almost musical quality to their babbling. She’s almost starting to enjoy it. She takes that to be a sign of just how far gone she’s getting.

  As one, the engines of the L2 fleet fire. All ships start moving in toward the Moon at speed.

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it,” says the Operative.

  He’s talking to the one remaining flag officer. The other officer lies on the floor, sprawled over his admiral, his eyes gouged out. It wasn’t a quick death. That was the point. The first officer coughed up the codes soon after that. The orders have gone out. The fleet’s falling into line, a vast V-shape whose forward point is the Harrison itself, the Memphis still rammed against its side: a strange compound ship swarming with feral colonists. The Harrison’s been turned at a slight angle to align its motors with the momentum of the Memphis’s own engines. And now a buzzer’s sounding on the Harrison’s inner bridge.

  “What the hell’s that?” asks Lynx.

  “That’s the hotline to President Szilard,” says the flag officer.

  Lynx curses. “Tell him that Admiral Griffin’s had an accident and—”

  The Operative shoots the flag officer in the head.

  “Why not tell him ourselves,” he says.

  So you’re going to do whatever we want,” says Spencer.

  “That’s what that cunt rigged me with.” The AI’s voice is rueful. “Command-imprinting triggered by voice-recognition.”

  “And I spoke to you first.”

  “It’s keyed to all three of you.”

  “So fuck you,” says Sarmax.

  “Just figuring out where we stand,” says Spencer.

  “And it’s about time,” says Jarvin. “Look, we need to get on what’s left of the zone with this thing and have a look.”

  “Meaning we need to trust its story,” says Sarmax.

  “Not sure we’ve got much of a choice,” mutters Jarvin.

  She’s got none at all. She keeps on forging ever deeper—sometimes via the horsepower of her vehicle, sometimes via maglev freight elevators cut through the rock. She’s well below the domain of any of her maps now. She’s feeling her way by pure intuition—and she’s surprised that intuition’s still working, as every other one of her powers seem to have fallen silent. It’s as though some magnet’s drawing her deeper—as though she can’t help but make every correct turn. Almost like someone else has gotten control of her mind. She wonders if that’s exactly what’s happened.

  The face of Jharek Szilard is appearing on the inner bridge’s screen. The Operative’s not about to let it get projected anywhere else. All transmissions are being routed through the Harrison. Szilard’s been cut off from communication with the rest of his fleet. That’s one reason among many why he’s looking so royally pissed. His expression gets even more priceless when he finds himself staring at—

  “Well if it isn’t el presidente,” says the Operative.

  “Who the hell are you?” asks Szilard.

  Lynx starts laughing. The Operative’s trying hard not to crack up himself as he watches Szilard get ever angrier:

  “And where the fuck’s the rear admiral?”

  The Operative holds up Griffin’s severed head. It’s as though he’s thrown a switch. Szilard suddenly becomes quite calm.

  “I see,” he says.

  “More than can be said for him,” says Lynx.

  “What are your demands?” says Szilard.

  “Who said we had demands?” asks the Operative.

  “I assumed that—”

  “Assume nothing.”

  “Are you Rain?”

  “You don’t recognize me?” asks Lynx. “After all the fun we had back on the Montana?”

  Szilard’s eyes narrow. “The originals.”

  “No less.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “Funny you should ask,” says the Operative. “Given that you’re the asshole who stranded us up here.”

  “Way I hear it, you were trying to kill me.”

  “Not just trying. We’ll hit the Moon in a few hours and you’ll be dead an hour after that.”

  “You jacked the whole fleet just to get back to the Moon?”

  The Operative shrugs. “How else would we do it?”

  “You guys are nuts.”

  “Do I sound like I’m arguing?”

  “You’re fucking nuts. The firepower on my farside installations will—”

  “Don’t be so tiresome,” says the Operative. “You need our guns to try to stave off the Eurasians.”

  “When you’re taking the fleet out of the fight?”

  “Did I say that?” asks the Operative.

  “C’mon man,” adds Lynx. “Don’t you know your own tactics? Formation delta-G, right?”

  Szilard’s checking that against his own screens, but the Operative knows exactly what he’s going to see. L2’s planners devised more than a hundred battleplans. All that was needed was to pick the one that gets the flagship closest to the Moon. The Operative yawns, makes a show of stretching. Through the inner bridge’s semitranslucent walls he can see Linehan beating the crap out of some technician who presumably looked at him the wrong way. Maschler and Riley are looking on as though daring anyone else to try something. Szilard clears his throat.

  “Interesting,” he says. “One of the less orthodox contingencies.”

  “And not even totally crazy under the circumstances,” says Lynx.

  “I don’t know about that—”

  “I do,” says the Operative. “Get in behind the Moon using it as cover, picking up speed all the while, then slingshot the ships around the nearside in all directions to play havoc with the Eurasian fleet. We attack them. That’s the offer, Jharek. It’s either that or civil war right now—and then the Eurasians can cruise into
the world’s biggest junkyard.”

  “What about my flagship?”

  “My flagship,” says the Operative.

  He and Szilard stare at each other. “For now,” says Szilard.

  “I’m shaking in my boots,” says the Operative.

  “You should,” says Szilard. “When you get here, I’ll tear you fuckers limb from limb.”

  “Can’t wait. How’s the Manilishi?”

  Szilard doesn’t say anything. Save for a flicker in his eyes—

  “Thanks,” says the Operative—switches the screen off.

  They switch back on, plunge into zone—or at least what’s left of it. The AI rides shotgun, runs backup as the grids of the Righteous Fire-Dragon open up all around them—the central elevator shafts like some kind of multibarreled spine, the massive hive of corridors and chambers stretching out around it. The camera-feeds show carnage. Marines butchering each other, gunning down the crew, turning guns upon themselves, driving vehicles at full tilt, firing at everything that moves. When software hasn’t been used to hack the flesh directly, the flesh is simply being dragged along for the ride. Spencer catches glimpses of horrified faces behind visors while the armor they’re trapped within pursues relentless arcs of self-destruction. It’s total pandemonium. Haskell’s done her work well.

  But there’s no sign of Rain.

  “They’ve gone to ground,” says Spencer, his voice echoing through the cockpit.

  “They’re out there somewhere,” says Sarmax.

  “Probably still think we have Haskell,” adds Jarvin.

  Spencer doesn’t reply. He’s just riding the zone farther out, looking beyond the ship. The Eurasian armada is spread out behind the Righteous Fire-Dragon, motoring in toward the Moon, drawing ever closer to its brethren fleet that’s launched from L4. The Moon’s caught between two onrushing vectors—and between them is a single ship, the Hammer of the Skies, rushing from the L5 fleet on a path that will intersect the one emanating from L4 about forty thousand klicks out from the Moon—

  “Switching it up,” says Jarvin.

  Spencer nods. Keeping the wings balanced—and as he looks further, he sees what might be the reason. His purview expands to take in the Moon itself: the L2 fleet is moving toward that rock. The final battle of this war will be the largest engagement to ever take place in space. He watches those lights drift ever closer.