There’s a pause. The screen flickers.
“No one told us that,” says Haskell.
“That wasn’t in the news,” says Marlowe.
“Of course it wasn’t,” says Sinclair. “It’s embarrassing.”
“They seized control of the Elevator before they destroyed it?” Haskell shakes her head. “How can we hide a thing like that?”
“We can’t,” says Sinclair. “It’s not like people don’t know. Just not everywhere. It was reported on neutral vid, sure. So now it’s more fuel to feed the rumors over here. I’m sure it’s the same in Moscow and Beijing….” His voice trails off.
“Why did they wait so long to detonate the Elevator once they had the Bridge?” says Marlowe.
“It’s simple,” says Sinclair. He pauses, glances again at something offscreen. “They were toying with us. That’s the only conclusion that kind of sequence points to. Once they knew that they had to reveal that they’d been able to get fission devices aboard, they postponed destruction as long as possible. Drawing more of our forces into the blast radius. Winding us up. Making us feel it.”
“They really got nukes in by infiltrating the work teams?”
“Call it one option among many. Look at it this way: the thing was four thousand klicks long. Three main docking stations—Zenith, Nadir, and the Bridge—and ten minor ones. Cargo shuttles coming in around the clock. Thousands of workers—far too many, in retrospect—with most of them from the joint-control area in the Imbrium. Plus more than a hundred dedicated wireless conduits. But in the end, there were only two ways on. Whether they employed physical mechanisms or simply deployed a particularly adroit hack, there were only two ways to go about it.”
“Us,” says Haskell.
“Or the East,” says Marlowe.
“Exactly,” says Sinclair, beaming suddenly as though at a favored pupil. “Exactly. They either infiltrated us, or they infiltrated the East. Which brings us back full circle. The president and the Eurasian leadership have agreed to establish a joint tribunal. Joint investigation, cooperation in the face of the common threat, all the right words. All the right phrases. But it’s all nonsense from the word go, and everyone in the know knows it. Neither superpower will open to the other. Each suspects the other. The president has told me—”
“You’ve spoken with him?” asks Haskell.
“Of course I haven’t spoken with him,” snaps Sinclair. “And don’t interrupt me. I don’t mind it when you’re in the trance. You can’t help yourself then. You can now. And try to keep your wits about you. Standard precautions preclude direct two-way dialogue with the Throne for all but a few of his Praetorians. What in God’s name would make you think we’d dilute such precautions now? Now: the Throne has informed me that he’s deeply concerned that the Coalition is either behind this, or else will use this as an excuse to reverse the détente that sits at the heart of all his policies. But he also worries that the Rain may be the device of some faction within our own midst. Worst case is that such a faction is itself the tool of Coalition hardliners bent on war. Absolute worst case is that they’ve penetrated the president’s own security network.”
“They might have penetrated the Praetorians?” asks Haskell.
“We can’t rule it out,” replies Sinclair.
“How are the other Commands taking all this?” says Marlowe.
“They’re afraid,” says Sinclair. “As they should be. As we all should be. All of us—we’ve let the Throne down. Heads are rolling right now. And they’re going to keep on rolling. There’s a glitch in the system, and no one knows where it is. But everyone knows this: if the Rain got into the Elevator, there may be very little that’s beyond their reach.”
“Do we have evidence of them reaching?” says Haskell.
“I’m sure we do,” says Sinclair. “Probably right under our noses. We just haven’t recognized it yet. It’s not like we’re not trying. We’ve been tearing up the Latin cities street by street. At our request, the Euro Magnates have frozen the assets of the Lvov and Wessex Combines, and have allowed the joint tribunal to deploy investigators across the Earth-Moon system to audit the assets of those combines. I say ‘allowed,’ but we were only going to ask once. Though I can tell you right now that angle of inquiry isn’t going to reveal a thing. There’s only cutoff conduits and burnt-out trails down those routes. Whoever the Rain are, they’re not leaving clues that obvious. And as for the Elevator—well, there’s not much evidence left there, is there?”
Neither Marlowe nor Haskell replies.
“But, to your point,” continues Sinclair, “the biggest question isn’t what the Rain have done so far. It’s what they’re going to do next.”
“Sure,” says Haskell, “but what do we do next?”
“Hit the Moon. Stop them.”
“The Moon?”
“The equations stipulate a convergence of circumstantial evidence and current vulnerability,” says Sinclair. “We know they got inside the Imbrium mining contingents. That may or may not have been their main way in. But it’s one of the only things we have to go on. The main risk is that’s two days in transit when you won’t be fully leveraged. Jason won’t be able to do a run on anything, and Claire, your hacks will be at a disadvantage due to the distance to either Earth or Moon. But we have to take that risk. The Moon’s essential. Half our fleet is in its vicinity. If anything goes down there on the scale of the Elevator, we would be profoundly discomfited.”
“When do we leave?” asks Marlowe.
“As soon as I stop talking.”
“I mean, when do we leave the planet?” asks Marlowe.
“As soon as we can launch you,” says Sinclair.
“From where?”
“Houston. We’re prepping a booster even now. It’s ours—crewed by CICom personnel. But it flies the merchant marine colors. We’ll slot you right into the freight routes. You’ll go to ground in the lunar cities. You’ll rendezvous with other assets. And then you’ll start the hunt in earnest.”
“And the plan of operations?” asks Marlowe.
“What else do we know?” says Haskell.
But Sinclair just holds up one hand.
“All in good time, my children. All in good time. You’ll get the second phase of the briefing when you arrive at Houston. And the third when you reach the Moon itself. Staggered updates to ensure that we keep pace with events. All I can say right now is that we have to throw the dice. The tension between East and West is rising even as the hunt for Rain intensifies. All our agents are going into the field. All the training you’ve received, all the runs you’ve done—all of it’s just been preparation for these times. Trust each other. Trust no one else. Trust me when I say that Autumn Rain represents a threat without precedent. They will strike again. I guarantee it. Unless you stop them. Unless you hit the Moon and stop them.”
The screen goes blank.
As specialization became the order of the day—as seekers of truth drilled ever deeper into the unknown, creating ever more minute taxonomies of knowledge, branching out along ever more arcane classifications…inevitably, the most significant discoveries in science lay more and more in the blurring fault lines among disciplines. The mapping out of the subconscious can be considered just such a development. As can the attempt to manipulate it through the nervous system. Yet even by the early stages of the twenty-second century, the pincer movements converging across mental and physical realms had yet to link up completely.
Which means that it’s not entirely unsafe for the Operative to dream.
Which hardly makes it safe. So if the Operative dreams, he doesn’t know it—insofar as he has them, his nighttime reveries have been deliberately situated at the fringes of his cognition. Thus he lies sleeping after his arrival, in a room deep within Agrippa Station, on the Moon’s nearside equator. Only to suddenly come alert in a single instant:
Wake. Wake in a chamber. What chamber? This chamber. Darkness surrounds you, and walls surround
the darkness. Surround the instant. But cannot isolate the question: why have you woken? Why are you lunging forward? Reflex: the Operative’s thoughts trail his actions by a long chalk; he’s moving at a speed that belies the low gravity, pivoting out of the bed, careening into the man who’s entered his room, pinning him back against the wall panel with a heavy thud.
For a moment all is still.
The Operative is the first to speak: “Well?” His lips might be parting. His teeth definitely aren’t.
“Carson,” the man says, “it’s Lynx. Don’t you recognize me?”
“Christ.” The Operative releases his grip. He half-pivots, takes a step or three backward, and triggers a glow-light, though his eyes don’t really need it. Still: the man thus revealed wears a SpaceCom uniform. His skin’s ebony. His hair’s dyed silver. A thick pair of opticals perches on the bridge of an aquiline nose. The ears aren’t small. The mouth hung between them is grinning.
“It’s nice to see you too, Carson,” says Stefan Lynx.
Brain and muscles and reflexes keep open channels within the Operative. He stares at Lynx.
“How did you get through the door?”
“Who says I used the door?”
The Operative glances around with his peripheral vision. Notices that one panel of the wall is tilting ever so slightly askew.
“Shit.”
“Is right.”
“Christ, you’re taking a risk. Is this room wired for sound?”
“You bet,” replies Lynx, “and all the wires lead back to me.”
“So we can talk.”
“That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” says the Operative, “that’s what we’re doing. What do you want to talk about?”
“I want to talk about your trip, Carson. How was it?”
“You know damn well how it was,” says the Operative. “It was a little too eventful.”
“Eventful?” Lynx’s laugh sounds like a cat being strangled. “That’s one way of putting it. Another’s luckless. So much for standard transits. That was supposed to be the easy part. Your dice had better up their fortune quick if we’re going to get much further, Carson.”
“They already have,” says the Operative. “I got out of it, didn’t I?”
“Sure,” says Lynx. “You got out of it. Albeit not without a dip in your white blood cell count. I should imagine things got pretty tight in that metal tin. I hear you even called planetside.”
“Yeah,” says the Operative. “They were real helpful.”
“Of course they were,” says Lynx. “Your sarcasm notwithstanding. Sometimes the best form of help we can receive is to learn that we’re going to get none. But the little dustup you got dealt into at least let me dispense with my envy, Carson. You were supposed to travel in style. You were supposed to get the shortest route possible. Unlike mine. I had three layovers before I’d even got past the geo.”
“I presume that’s called covering your trail.”
“Yeah,” says Lynx, “it’s also called economics. But you’re special, Carson. Even with the complications, you got to hitch a fast ride.”
“So?”
“So someone down there likes you.”
“I doubt like has anything to do with it.”
“You’re damn right it doesn’t,” says Lynx. “You’re at Agrippa now. Deep in SpaceCom territory. So let’s get started.”
“With what?”
“With the mission, Carson.”
“Go on.”
“It’s changed.”
“How?”
“How would you guess?”
“Something to do with Autumn Rain?”
“Got it in one, Carson,” says Lynx. “Got it in one. The Elevator’s got this whole place buzzing.”
“Who the fuck are we dealing with, Lynx?”
“That,” says Lynx, “is the question that’s got me crawling Agrippa’s tunnels like a goddamn sewer rat.”
“You’re hacked into the SpaceCom systems?”
“I am,” says Lynx. “I’ve been doing my bit. Fair and square, Carson. Now it’s time to talk about you.”
“No,” says the Operative, “it’s time to talk about what you’ve found.”
“Same difference,” says Lynx. “Same difference. You wouldn’t believe what’s in Agrippa’s comps, Carson. I’ve been poring over it. It’s been pouring over me. It’s good. It’s fascinating. But it’s useless. So far.”
“No trace,” says the Operative.
“Not yet,” says Lynx. “But now that you’re here, we’re going to get on the board. We’re hunting big game now. We’re going to find these fuckers, Carson. And then we’re going to tear their fucking hearts out.”
“You think the Rain’s on the Moon?”
“We know they infiltrated the Imbrium miners on the Elevator. But here’s the thing, Carson: what you and I think doesn’t matter. What matters is what the Throne thinks. Last night I received word from the boys downstairs. Real-time, Carson. So they could vector us onto the new player.”
“And SpaceCom?”
“The original mission still stands. Turning the Com upside down and shaking out the change is still part of the objective. But we’re also going to leverage them in our search for Rain.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that one vector of this mission is finding out what Com intelligence knows. Finding out what they’re finding out. Finding out what they’re not.”
“And do we have an actual plan of operations?”
“We have an initial plan,” says Lynx.
“Which is?”
“Your getting moving.”
“Where to?”
“The south pole.”
“The where?”
“You heard me.”
“What the fuck is down there?”
“Sarmax.”
“Sarmax?”
“How’s your hearing, Carson? They told me that might be an issue after your adventures up the asshole of that rocket.”
“I fucking heard you. What the hell’s he doing at the south pole?”
“That’s where he retired.”
“Sarmax retired?”
“Come on, Carson. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that.”
“I knew he left active service. But no one retires altogether.”
“Not officially,” says Lynx. “But think about it, Carson. The reflexes only go so far. And the conditioning’s only useful through a certain threshold. Comes a point when knowing that you’ll have your own little beanpatch can work wonders for one’s motivation. Beanpatches, Carson. You live long enough, you might even get one yourself.”
“I doubt I’d want it.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d guess that retirement has a catch.”
“Namely?”
“Well,” says the Operative, “take Sarmax. I’m guessing that you’re about to tell me to go down there and kill him.”
Lynx laughs again. It’s even worse this time around. “Hardly, Carson. Hardly. You’ve got it all wrong. You’re going to go down there and break into his base of operations. You’re going to cut through his defenses. You’re going to ransack his files. You’re going to rape his comps. You’re going to find out everything he knows. And then you’re going to kill him.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s been careless.”
“Do we have evidence?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“That’s it?”
“Got a problem with that?”
“Maybe I do.”
“Because so far the boys downstairs have had no problem with you, Carson. They had no problem at all with you sitting in the sleep and mumbling on about how eager you were to get up here and rendezvous with me and do whatever the fuck I said. Of course, it never occurred to them that once you got upstairs you might start to get second thoughts about t
he whole thing.”
“I’m not getting second thoughts, Lynx. I’m just trying to understand this.”
“So let me clarify it. You off Sarmax and tell us what he was up to before he bit it.”
“And he’s hiding out down south?”
“He’s not exactly hiding.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he got more than just a beanpatch when he retired. Or rather, he may have gotten just the beans, but he’s parlayed them into a lot more. He runs a holding company that spans a number of enterprises. Most of them involving extraction of water from the south pole icefields.”
“Sounds profitable.”
“It is.”
“And where’s the man himself?”
“Shackleton. That’s where he’s got his HQ. It’s quite the fortress.”
“How do we crack it?”
“It’s complicated,” says Lynx.
“So?”
“Way too complicated to get into here,” says Lynx. “Time to go, Carson.” He beams data directly into the Operative’s skull. “It’ll download automatically on the train. Give you all the operational details. Every last one.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. We need to pick up the pace. I’ve maneuvered it so that the Com technician I’m passing you off as has been assigned to Shackleton. There’s a lev leaving in forty minutes. From equator to antipodes in one straight shot.”
Mirrored Heavens ar-1 Page 10
