To find herself gazing at figures on the far shore. They’re sweeping her position with fire. They’re cramming themselves into ships that line the docks—ships that now float out into the water, start their motors. Shots smash in around Haskell. Shouts carry across the water. The words that shouting contains aren’t coherent. They don’t need to be. Haskell’s never heard such venom. She’s beaming out the emergency evac codes. She’s praying. She’s getting no response from either. She resolves to do the only logical thing before they get their hands on her. She takes out the pistol Morat gave her, checks it over. She starts counting off the final seconds.
Marlowe’s picking up steam. He’s out of the worst trouble spots. He’s got his thrusters going. He’s more than halfway through the city. He’s going straight on through till he gets out into country. It’s a simple plan. It doesn’t need to get complex. Nothing’s touching him. Nothing’s seeing him. He’s got it made.
It’s then he gets the call.
“Marlowe,” says the voice.
“Yeah.”
“We need you to take a little detour.”
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got an asset down near you.”
“So?”
“So we need it picked up.”
“This suit’s taken a beating. You’ve got no one else who can do it?”
“If we did, I wouldn’t be calling. We’re coming apart at the seams, Marlowe. We’ve got a grade-A disaster on our hands.”
“Which I’m almost clear of.”
“And you’ll get clear again. You’re hell on wheels, Marlowe. You’ve got to make all speed. Over and out.”
Even as the last words are reaching Marlowe’s ears, coordinates flare before him. They show city. They show river. They show the point where he needs to be. They show his own position—now rapidly changing direction.
Listen,” says the Operative.
The one word hangs in the chamber with him. His is the only voice that’s sounding. He’s the only one who definitely hears it. He doesn’t let that stop him.
“I know you’re watching. I know you’re listening. I’m not on your manifest. But here I am anyway.”
There’s no reply. The Operative regards the door to the cockpit. It’s heavy. It’s sealed. He unstraps himself. He floats away from the window and pulls himself toward that door.
“You were told to take me aboard and run me to the rock. You were told to ask no questions while you did it. Not like you need to. You know all that matters already.”
He reaches the door. He runs his hand along its edges. They’re absolutely airtight. In the event of hull breach, ships go modular. The Operative lets his fingers slide down its metal grooves. He smiles. He keeps on talking.
“You were hoping you weren’t going to get any closer to me. You were hoping not to breathe the air that I’m inhaling. So was I. No reason I’d want to make this complicated.”
He stops the movement of his fingers, pulls his hand away from the door. He holds on to the walls on either side. He turns his body slowly in the zero-G. He looks directly into one of the cameras. The smile broadens on his face.
“But now it’s very simple. You’re going to open this door or I’m going to open it for you. Might not be much of a door left by that point. Might not be much left of my patience. But it’s up to you. Long as you make up your minds right now. I’m going to count to three.”
He’s at two when the door slides open.
Marlowe’s one klick out. He’s got his thrusters flaming. He’s got his full fins extended. He’s burning in between the burning buildings. He cuts in above the river. He races just above its waters, rounds the bend beyond which his target lies. He opens fire.
The target’s in a downed ’copter floating in the middle of this channel of the Amazon. Hydrofoils are closing in upon it. But Marlowe’s not shooting at the ships. He’s taking aim at the cranes that tower above them with his micromissiles, letting explosives strike home at points precisely calibrated. He watches the cranes start to topple.
Most of the militia never see it coming. They’re smacked dead amidships by metal. They’re knocked in pieces beneath the water. Those who aren’t hit are taking hi-ex from Marlowe’s second barrage. Detonations roll along the river. Heavy guns on the shore open fire. But he’s accelerating in toward them, using the last of his micros to nail the buildings that loom above them. Debris buries the guns and all who man them.
Marlowe changes course once more, streaks in above tangled metal and shattered ships. He cuts in toward the craft that’s the cause of all the commotion. He alights upon it. Looks down.
Bullets smash into his helmet, bounce off. He leaps down to his assailant.
“I’m on your side,” he says. “I’m CICom.”
“Says who.”
“Says my codes,” he replies. He beams them to her.
Her contours show her for a woman. Her breath-mask prevents him from seeing her face. Which is fine by him. Faces are currency. No sense in giving them up for free. And yet there’s something about this woman that grips him immediately. Maybe it’s because she just tried to kill him. Maybe it’s because she’s still got that razorwire dangling from her head.
“Hold on to me,” he says.
She doesn’t want to. He can see that. But she does it anyway: steps toward him, embraces him, clasps her arms around his back, looks out over his left shoulder.
“I’m blocking your shoulder rack,” she says.
“I’m shutting it down,” he says. “Careful of the main motors.”
“This isn’t going to work,” she replies. “You’re going to be dodging left and right up there and you’re going to shake me off.”
“You’re right,” he says. “Get down.”
She does. A hatch opens on one of his arms. He starts pulling something out.
“A tether,” she says.
“Yeah,” he says. “But I figure this is a better use for it than going up a wall. Get back up here.”
She does, grabs the tether from him, starts lashing it about the two of them. He starts tying knots. A few loops and it’s done.
“Is that too tight?” he asks.
“Not for what we’re about to do,” she says. She reaches down, pulls out her boot knife, slices off the excess tether.
“You ready?”
“Can you see?”
“Absolutely,” he replies.
And reignites his suit’s engines.
Face impassive, the Operative pulls himself through the doorway and into the cockpit. Two men sit within its cramped confines. One wears a cap. The other doesn’t. On all sides are clustered all manner of instrument-banks. Narrow windows cut through those banks. Space flickers in those windows.
“So here he is,” says the man with the cap. Beneath his headpiece sits a pair of bushy eyebrows connected by a scar. The contours of his nose and cheekbones are angled in a way that makes his default expression a sardonic one.
“Yes,” says the Operative.
“The man himself,” says the hatless man, whose head is shaved clean like that of the Operative. This man’s older. He looks at the Operative like he’s gazing at a talking horse.
“I’m Riley,” he says. He gestures at his colleague. “He’s Maschler.”
“You’re the one I was speaking with,” says the Operative.
“That’s right,” says Riley.
“You’re the one who cut me off,” says the Operative.
“Started you up too,” says Riley. “Let’s not forget that.”
“We’re the ones who hauled you from the bottom of the well,” says Maschler. “We’re the ones who broke your surly bonds. Without us you’d still be eating dirt. Surely that counts for something?”
“Oh,” says the Operative, “it does.”
They look at him. They’re hanging on his every word. They don’t want him to see that. But to him it’s clear how on edge they are. He’s never felt more relaxed.
“I
t’s the reason I knocked,” he adds.
“Ah,” says Riley.
“And now you’re going to tell me what’s going on.”
“Who says we know?” says Maschler.
“You know a hell of lot more than I do.” The faintest edge is starting to creep into the Operative’s voice. “You’re in the cockpit of an Antares. You’re hauling a few hundred tons of cargo. Your communications are supposed to be continual throughout the initial ramp. You’ve got cameras pointed in every direction. You’ve cut me off from the outside world because you thought I might be involved with what’s going down. And I am. But only in the same way you are. So help me out here, gentlemen. Because it’s the only way I can help you.”
“You can’t help,” says Riley. “I wish you could.”
“What’s going on out there has nothing to do with us,” says Maschler.
“It does now,” replies the Operative softly.
“We just want to run our freight,” says Riley. “We never looked for trouble.”
“We should have shut off those cameras,” says Maschler.
“It’s okay,” says the Operative. His voice is soothing. “It’ll be okay.”
Maschler and Riley look at each other. “You tell him,” says Maschler.
“No you,” says Riley.
“You start,” says Maschler.
And Riley does.
* * *
The journey upriver. Once you start along that winding road you don’t stop. You just keep on rushing toward that distant source.
“You’ve set the water on fire.”
“Like I had a choice.”
He didn’t want to. But there was too much floating hardware chasing them. So Marlowe’s hit downstream with jets of flame. The fact that there’s more pollution than water in that river means it’s burning merrily. Now the only thing they have to outrace is fire. Smoke is wafting everywhere. The temperature’s starting to rise.
“How you feeling?”
“Warm.”
“But still breathing.”
“I’ll let you know when that starts to be an issue.”
Marlowe figures that will be soon. The tolerance of a breath-mask is far lower than a suit’s. The people out there must be dying in the thousands. And that’s just in this district. He doesn’t even want to think about the rest of it. The rising that the Jaguars had sought to bring about is finally underway. The city’s final demise has finally begun. The canopy of smoke is growing ever thicker. The topography’s getting ever more complex. The river keeps on forking—into channels that diverge, converge, intersect with one another. But Marlowe steers his way through them with the confidence of one who’s got nothing save the latest maps.
“Complicated,” says the razor.
“It’s Amazon,” he replies.
Roof closes in above this channel of the river. The smoke in here’s too dense for anyone lacking masks to breathe. But through that smoke they can see the combat all around them. Looks like this is the day of reckoning among the river-pirates. Shantytowns along the shore are in the throes of combustion. The combatants spare scarcely a shot for the ones now streaking past them and back into the open. Though open’s a relative concept. The smoke’s almost thicker than it was within that enclosure. The heat is overwhelming. Marlowe’s temperature readouts are climbing inexorably.
“We’re not going to make it,” he says.
“I know.”
Not that it’s not obvious now. The fires sweeping the buildings on both shores are merging, covering the river ahead. They’re blocking the way forward. There’s nothing but smoke and flame in front of them. Oxygen’s being sucked up to heaven, taking God knows how many souls with it.
“One choice,” he says.
“Right,” she replies.
They streak upward.
Somewhere in that sky two men regard a third. They’re not accustomed to having their cargo crash their party. They’re not down with the notion of taking orders from their freight. They’re used to being firmly in control.
They’re making a rapid adjustment all the same.
“We don’t know the whole story,” says Riley.
“We don’t know what the hell’s going on,” says Maschler.
“No one’s told us a goddamn thing. We’ve been cut off.”
“We only know what we can see.”
“That’s all I want,” says the Operative.
“The missiles.”
“Yes,” replies the Operative.
“They weren’t just from Belem-Macapa.”
“They came from all the Latin cities.”
“The damage is near total.”
“Damage where?” says the Operative.
“They wiped out Cabo Norte.”
“And three other major bases.”
“Must have been quite a sight,” says the Operative.
“But that was only half of them,” says Riley.
“The other half were pointed upward,” says Maschler.
“Pointed where?” asks the Operative.
Maschler and Riley look at one another. They look back at the Operative.
“Pointed where?” he demands.
“At the Elevator.”
“And did they hit?”
“Of course not.”
“They were climbing the whole way. They were sitting ducks.”
“But they were just the first wave.”
“The first wave,” repeats the Operative.
“Yes,” says Riley.
“And the second?”
“Was fired by the neutral satellites,” says Riley.
“Seventeen of them,” adds Maschler.
“All in close proximity to the Elevator.”
“They unleashed space-to-spacers.”
“At point-blank range.”
“But the def-grids rallied.”
“They turned those weapons into powder.”
“They did the same to the satellites.”
“Sure wish you guys had let me catch this live,” says the Operative.
“What else could we do?” says Maschler. “This way, we have no records of it. We never have to admit we saw it.”
“You and a hundred thousand other people,” laughs the Operative. “Earth-to-spacers try to nail the Elevator? Space-to-spacers rigged on neutral satellites try to finish the job? Are you kidding me? It’s not like this is going to be much of a fucking secret.”
But he knows he’s wrong even as he speaks the words. Secrets aren’t a function of who knows them. They’re a function of who doesn’t. The sky’s been classified for fifty years now. Civilians can neither write nor film what it contains. Those who wear uniforms have more leeway. But they know when to be discreet.
Especially when they’re seeing things they’ve never imagined seeing.
“Besides,” says Maschler, “we didn’t know what your role in all this was.”
“My role,” replies the Operative. One eyebrow arches.
“You could be a plant.”
“You could be a sleeper.”
“A sleeper for who,” says the Operative.
“For the Jaguars,” says Maschler.
“This is much bigger than the Jaguars,” objects Riley.
“This is the devil’s night,” says Maschler.
“Because of those missiles,” says the Operative.
“Never mind those missiles.”
“The missiles don’t matter.”
“Then what does?” says the Operative.
“This,” says Riley.
He hits a switch. The lights in the cockpit fade. The stars intensify. Riley gestures at the left-hand window—points toward a strand of luminescence strung among the stars.
“That’s the Elevator,” he says.
“Yeah,” says the Operative.
“Listen to me. She’s got forty main motors. One every hundred klicks. She’s firing them all on full-retro. She’s been doing that for the last five minutes. At
the rate she’s going, her lowest point is going to hit atmosphere in five more.”
Maschler’s hands play over the keyboards. One of the display screens lights up. A complicated pattern floats atop it. Green lights drift toward a larger strand of blue.
“That’s the space around this section of the Elevator,” he says. “At least a hundred ships are moving in from all directions. A lot of those ships are ours. But we think some of them belong to the East. It looks to be a coordinated operation.”
“Is this going on at other levels of the Elevator?” asks the Operative.
“Yes,” says Riley.
“And no one’s signaled to you what’s going on,” says the Operative.
“What the hell would they signal?” asks Riley.
“What else is there to say?” asks Maschler.
“The Elevator’s been jacked.”
“We’re forfeit.”
“But at least,” says the Operative, “you had the good sense to tell me all about it.”
They have the good sense to speed up as they climb. They roar out of smoke that’s drifting up from city-cellars. They roar into smoke that’s drifting down from the city’s middle layers. They race through patches of smog even thicker than that smoke.
“How are we doing?” the razor asks.
“I can’t tell.”
“Makes two of us.”
Wind tears against them. It’s all Marlowe can do to keep control. Particularly given how much damage his suit’s sustained. He adjusts his main jets, compensates with steering thrusts from his wrists and ankles, adjusts again.
“You strapped in okay?” he says.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I’m not.”
Buildings tower above them. They rise past more fires. They start to draw fire of their own. Lasers flare past. Bullets hum by. Marlowe starts to take evasive action.
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