Mirrored Heavens ar-1

by David J. Williams

  Whirling, Marlowe confronts only air—and then instinct saves his life, for instead of drawing up dumbfounded, he keeps moving, diving as his adversary’s knife (replete with powered saw-edges to shear through even heavy armor) flies through the space where his head had been a moment before. Dive seamlessly switches to somersault, leaving him on the floor, firing backward over his head, riddling the man with bullets. The whole action has taken less than two seconds. Whoever he was, this man is now dead.

  His comrades, however, are clearly still alive. Marlowe can hear shouts drawing closer—the blaze-battling operation reclaiming this piece of the building. Marlowe leaps to his feet, turns his attention to rigging a hi-ex charge onto the missiles—and discovers that the situation is even worse than he’d thought. Not only are the missiles hypersonic, but so are the payloads: each nose cone contains ten tactical warheads, each one fixed to its own hypersonic motor and capable of acting as an autonomous missile anytime after firing. How many more such missiles might there be in this city, sitting inside a continental defense perimeter that encompasses three-fifths of the U.S. launch infrastructure, each base crouched within its own defenses—defenses that would be hard-pressed to withstand an assault with this kind of weapon from this kind of range…the implications keep on stacking up in Marlowe’s mind, and each is but one pulse in the staccato blast of signals that he’s sending out toward the jet-copters and zeppelins overhead, toward the satellites an instant beyond—but none of them can hear him: Marlowe’s signals are bouncing back upon him. The room’s walls must be lined with something—anything to prevent those outside from probing to discover its contents.

  Then two men race into the room. Marlowe scarcely looks up to shoot them down. His bomb-rack tosses more grenades through the doorway through which they’ve come. Then he sets the missile controls to manual, starts the ignition sequence. He starts racing forward, extends the fins on his armor. He sees the walls in front of him begin to slide away, just as he’d hoped they would. Fragments of cityscape glimmer through the heaped mountains of the chem-smoke. He hears thunder roar to life behind him—feels himself seized by his thrusters, hurled forward, out into the city.

  He watches the ’scraper falling away behind him, sees a sudden flash blossom behind him as his charge detonates. None of that explosion’s nuclear. The charge was set to destroy those warheads. But the blast must have touched off a Jaguar ammunition cache: because now the walls around the floor where he just was rupture, blast outward, tumble downward even as the whole building totters—and then collapses. It comes down like a house of cards, debris flying up in great chunks as it disappears into the murk below—and Marlowe refuses to think about the innocents he’s just killed, because there might have been still more missiles in that building, and what in God’s name does innocent mean down here anyway?—what did it ever mean?—so he’s just blasting on upward, searing right past other buildings, broadcasting the specs, the situation—everything—to anyone who’ll listen.

  This time everyone hears. But no one has time to do a thing about it.

  * * *

  Like rain falling in reverse: the Operative watches through widened eyes as thousands of missiles rise out of the gloom that swathes Belem-Macapa. The def-grids swing into action: satellites start raining countermeasures down upon those weapons—and upon the city beneath. The Operative winds his vision up and down the scale of magnification, takes in a blaze of lights, takes in the clouds of missiles climbing up the gravity well. Many are winking out of existence. Many are arcing back toward the Earth. Many just keep climbing. The Operative stares transfixed as they move toward him. He can’t see if they’re going to plunge down upon the planet or try to make it all the way to vacuum.

  But what he can see is that the city from which they launched is writhing under the def-grids’ barrage. If it was burning before, it’s positively incandescent now. The glow shining through the smoke is visible from space. The Operative can see it without amplification.

  Until a shutter slides across the window. The Operative tries to disconnect it. Nothing doing. He curses—and stops cursing as he feels the ship start to rumble. The attitudinal jets are firing. The Antares is turning on its axis. He braces himself for the burn that will send the ship hurtling toward the Moon and as far away from this mess as possible. He waits for it. But the seconds keep on ticking by.

  It’s all happening around Haskell. But not in the way she expected. Suddenly the Jaguar net’s diminished: nearly all the terminal nodes vanish. Information flows behind in their wakes—shows the trail of exhaust that’s splattering over the naked faces of the instruments that sit in the physical world, shows Haskell ghost-images of things fast receding, swimming out into the sky that can’t even begin to match the one she’s in. She stares.

  She gets it.

  Even as they almost get her. They spot her for real. She doesn’t know how. Maybe it was some random check. Maybe it was their sudden shift to full war footing. Maybe they’ve been stalking her the whole time. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the long, scaled tongue that suddenly flicks toward her from out of the inky depths. She dodges. It misses. She retracts. It comes after her. She takes evasive action, takes herself in among all that data, does her best to blend in. All she needs is a moment. But it needs far less than that to nail her. It sails in toward her. She sees it as it really is: a grinning cat-skull that’s nothing but jaws enclosing her. She scatters herself into pieces, confuses it for a moment. But not nearly long enough. It looms before her eyes. She meets its eyes.

  But suddenly it’s reeling. It flails. She flails with it. What else can she do? This net is under attack. It’s being pummeled. It’s cauterizing whole sections of itself in the name of survival. Whole portions of existence are getting sheared off. The links to all those cities disappear. They’re gone. The lines through which she’s racing are buckling. Yet all the while the scattered fragments of her body are converging upon the light. She sees it now: the square that denotes transition. The door to salvation. The way out. She sails toward it. And still that tongue follows her. It reaches for her heart. It winds about her leg. She dissolves that leg. She raises her arms. She shouts.

  And jacks out.

  Smoke is streaming in front of her eyes. Sparks are coming off the cluster of screens. The room’s shaking—just as she’s being shaken by Morat. He pulls the jacks straight off her. Pieces of her skin go with them. She blinks. She bleeds. She looks at him. He looks at her. Smoke pours between them.

  “We have to leave right now,” he says quietly.

  “No shit,” she says.

  That’s when soldiers on thrusters land amidst them, haul them out of the room without a ceiling, over the maze that’s not a maze, back out into the warehouse. Back out to the elevator. The room’s on fire. Smoke’s pouring down the catwalks. Noise is everywhere. The soldiers cluster around them.

  Morat turns to one. “Lieutenant—what’s the status outside?”

  “They’re attacking in strength all along the perimeter, sir.”

  “How close are they to this building?”

  “Sir, we think they’re inside, sir.”

  “You think so?”

  “We’ve lost contact with everybody beneath level forty.”

  Morat shoves Haskell forward, sending her stumbling toward the lieutenant.

  “Take the razor,” he says. “Save the razor. Take her up the shaft right now. Do it yourself. What’s left of your platoon can get in there and be the shields. I don’t care who gets hit. I don’t care who dies. Just save the fucking razor. Get her out of here. Assume this hedgehog’s getting overrun. Assume we’re fucked. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir,” replies the lieutenant. “What about you?”

  “Leave one squad with me. We’ll dismantle this equipment and follow you.”

  “Sir: if they’re inside the building, you won’t make it.”

  “Don’t tell me what I will or won’t make,” says Morat. “Just
go.”

  They’re going. And Haskell knows why he’s staying. To gather the equipment—or make sure it’s properly destroyed. So he won’t have to tell Matthew Sinclair that he let the Jaguars root through everything CICom knows about their net. The soldiers are blasting the elevator doors down, adding to the smoke inside the room. They don’t take Morat’s instructions literally, though. The lieutenant’s got the most guns. So he hands her to one of the sergeants. Soldiers scramble into the elevator, ignite their thrusters. Some go up the shaft, some go down. The elevator car’s well below them. They rain explosives down upon it, send it crashing down for good. The sergeant grabs Haskell with both arms—“Sorry about this, ma’am,” she says, and steps forward, leaps. Haskell feels the heat of the jets on her face. She’s being hauled upward. Floors whiz past. Cables streak by. All of it’s wreathed in flame and shadow. Haskell feels the distance between her and sky narrowing.

  Something slams against her. She hears an explosion. She hears a scream. She feels something wet hit her face. She feels her escort’s grip loosening. She tumbles from that dead grasp. She starts to fall down the shaft.

  Something grabs her. “Got ya”—and she’s pressed into his arms: “for fuck’s sake protect her head,” someone shouts, and someone else is screaming that the Jags are in the shaft, and she finds herself thinking it must have been a trap after all. But she’s just clinging on to this arm, on to both arms, and her face is pressed up against the side of the soldier’s visor, and through it she can see distorted eyes peering intently past her at what’s reflected in that same visor: the ceiling shooting down toward her like she’s in a needle and it’s the plunger—and then the soldiers open fire and blast it away and they all blast straight through onto the roof.

  Which is a shambles. As is everything beyond it. Buildings are burning, collapsing. Beams from heaven stab here and there, shimmer in the fog. The thunder of detonations rolls across the city. Belem-Macapa’s entered a new stage of its agony. The soldiers on the roof are firing in all directions. Haskell’s escorts shove her through a jet-copter’s open hatch. They’re screaming at the pilot to gun it. He needs no such urging: the ’copter rises. Haskell’s being strapped in by its gunner. She’s about to pull on her breath-mask: but now the doors slide shut and the craft switches over to its own recycled air as its motors switch into overdrive. She’s watching the rooftop fall away. Everything turns to cloud.

  Suddenly there’s another explosion, and way too close—the rumbling of the engines shreds away into a high-pitched whining. The ’copter staggers. For a moment, it continues on its course.

  But only for a moment.

  “What the fuck’s happening?” yells the gunner.

  “We’re going to crash,” the pilot says matter-of-factly.

  The gunner’s lost it. He’s screaming. But Haskell’s saying nothing. She’s just lying back as the craft plummets downward. The plummet’s not total. The pilot’s still got some kind of control. But only just. They churn through smog. Buildings whip by. She hears the gunner praying. She hears the pilot cursing. He’s working the controls with more than just his hands—twisting his whole body this way and that, as though he could pull the craft out of its descent through sheer muscle. But to no avail. They scream in above a rooftop, just miss a pylon. She catches a glimpse of water. She catches a glimpse of ships. She thinks she must be dreaming. She braces herself.

  They hit.

  Marlowe can’t do anything but keep moving. His camos are turned up to the full. He’s stealing through the city like a wraith. He’s staying indoors whenever he can—hurtling down corridors, rising up shafts. He leaves his thrusters offline whenever he’s outside. He doesn’t want to make himself any more of a target than he already is. All he wants to do is get out of here.

  Which is going to be tough. He’s glad his suit still has atmosphere despite the battering it’s taken. Because oxygen’s become a major factor. As has heat. The temperature’s at least twenty degrees warmer than when he made his entrance. It’s not hard to understand why. The flames off to the south are as tall as the buildings around which they lick. Their light brings a new kind of shadow to this dark. He’s intent on getting as far away from it as possible.

  Nor is he the only one with that idea. The mob’s afoot at every level of the town. They’re swarming over the skyways, doing their utmost to escape. Marlowe’s trying to take the road less traveled. He’s trying to avoid the stampede.

  Not to mention the fighting. Which is everywhere. Machines swarm like insects. The local militias are giving everything they’ve got. Before tonight, most of them would never have dared to take on the United States directly. Now they’ve got the inspiration. Or maybe just the insanity. And wherever the Americans aren’t in range, old scores are being settled. Local rivalries are being carried through to culmination. Artillery’s going to work from the rooftops, even as those rooftops get sheared off. Vehicles are exchanging fire with one another as they move along those bridges. Hi-ex is going off like it’s going out of style. The further out of control this gets the more Marlowe recalls being told how smooth it was all going to be. He can see the faces of his handlers all too clearly—those honeyed words, those knowing smiles. It’s all he can do to stop himself from smiling now.

  But he restrains himself.

  The Operative is having difficulty keeping himself in check. He’s cut off, with no way to tell what’s going on outside. There may still be trouble on the Elevator. There’s definitely still trouble going on below. He envisions all strategic reserves being rushed into the Latin cities: troops dropping down from orbit, buildings getting smashed, whole blocks laid to waste.

  But all that’s only retaliation. It can’t turn back the clock. Nor can it tell him what’s going on. Is there a connection between the mutiny on the Elevator and the missiles from the city? Could some of those missiles have been aimed at the Elevator? The Operative doesn’t know. Nor does he know the extent to which he’s already caught up in it. He’d love to just ride this one out. He’d be happy to just slip right on by. He doubts that’s going to happen.

  So now he’s thinking furiously. The Elevator. The Earth. This ship: in theory, crew of two. But in practice, God only knows how many they’ve got in that cockpit. And if they end up turning out to be hostile, that’s not the only place they might be. Adjacent to his feet are hatches leading to the cargo-modules. There’s a lot of volume that way. The Operative pictures all those chambers. He pictures all that cargo. He thinks of how easy it would be to hide in there….

  With an effort, he draws himself back from his own mind’s edge. There’s a reason they sent him. It may be the reason he’s in this right now. He can’t make any assumptions. Least of all about the nature of the mission. Missions have a way of changing. They also have a way of only revealing their true nature once they’ve started. Besides—if there really is any trouble on this ship, he knows what to do. He won’t even have to think. However many of them there are: he’ll make them wish they never heard the word airlock. In truth he’s starting to feel that way already. He’s starting to wonder why he’s waiting. After all, those bastards in the cockpit have cut him off, deprived him of his data. He’s in dire need of more. He can think of exactly one way to get it.

  Haskell becomes aware that something’s wrong. She’s cold. She’s wet. She doesn’t know where she is. All she knows is she’s tilting on her side. There’s a noise coming from somewhere. A voice.

  “Ma’am. Can you hear me, ma’am?”

  “I can,” she mumbles.

  “You’ve got to wake up.”

  “Why?”

  It all comes back in one awful rush. They’ve crashed. This is aftermath. She opens her eyes. She’s still strapped into the cabin of the jet-copter. It’s mostly dark. It’s leaning toward one side at a nasty angle. It’s half-filled with water. The gunner’s lying in that water, body contorted at unnatural angles. The upside-down face of the pilot is peering into her own. He’s leaning
down from the hatch that’s now become the ceiling.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re in the drink,” he says. “And you’ll be in your grave if you don’t take those straps off and climb up here. Can you do it?”

  “I don’t know,” she replies.

  “Try.”

  So she does. She undoes the straps. She hauls herself up them to where the man’s hands are waiting. She ignores those hands—instead grasps the edge of the hatch. Everything hurts. But it seems like it’s all still functional. She pulls herself up onto the top of the stricken jet-copter. She crouches there, takes in the river. The water’s lit up by the flames licking from buildings on either side of shore. A mirror image of those flames looms within the water, torn through with ships. Cranes tower over Haskell’s head. Tracers and lasers whip through the smog. It looks like a total free-for-all.

  “This isn’t good,” she says.

  “No,” he says. “It really isn’t.”

  “Is your gunner dead?”

  “He isn’t the only one.”

  She looks at him. He seems very young. He doesn’t seem scared. He crouches there with her.

  “You’re beautiful,” he murmurs.

  “We’re not going to die,” she replies.

  She pulls on her breath-mask. There’s a whining in the air close at hand. The pilot looks at her in surprise. His eyes cease to focus—he tumbles off the ’copter and into the water. Haskell throws herself back inside the craft as more bullets strike its hull. She hangs from the door’s edge, her feet dangling in the water that’s flooding the craft. She pulls her head up through the doorway.