Mirrored Heavens ar-1

by David J. Williams

  And somehow he finds purchase. His clamps connect—leave him clinging to the place where the B-130’s cockpit’s windows meld into its hull. There’s an indentation there. It’s not much. Combined with his own thruster’s blast, he might be able to hang on for a few more seconds. He can barely move. The retros are intensifying. He needs to do something quick.

  “Claire,” he says.

  Her voice comes back immediately.

  “You’re alive,” she says.

  “You holding out?”

  “Just barely. You’re still out there?”

  “And I can’t get back.” He watches as the struts fold in preparation for the return to atmosphere. There’s no space visible between the two craft anymore. It doesn’t matter: he sends the signal. Both ships shake. Force rolls against Marlowe. Somehow he keeps his hold.

  “You blew the struts.”

  “All that’s left are the fail-safes,” he replies. “They won’t resist blastoff. You’re going to have to leave without me.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You have to.”

  “There’s no way.”

  “There’s no time to argue. There’s nothing you can do for me now anyway.”

  “Jason. Where the hell are you?”

  “Look out the window,” he says.

  She replies, but her voice is drowned by static. They’re hitting the main phase of reentry. Marlowe takes another charge from his belt, slaps it on the windows as far away from where he is as possible, edges back as far away from it as he can. Chances are that it won’t penetrate the hardened ship. And if it does, it might depressurize the whole thing. Which he’s willing to chalk up as an acceptable outcome at this point.

  But then again: he’s on the window. Morat and his minions should be able to see him coming. They should be able to see exactly what he’s doing. And if they are, they can see the problem all too clearly. Which would leave them with exactly one option.

  Get ready for him.

  The charge detonates. The window vanishes. Marlowe falls inside. It’s as he suspected: they’ve depressurized already. At least this portion of the ship anyway. He rolls along the cockpit’s floor. Flame’s pouring in after him—and then it’s quenched as metal panels slide across where the windows were, slam into one another.

  Marlowe grabs on to the wall. Deceleration presses against him. The space he’s in repressurizes. He looks around. The bodies of the pilots are still in their seats. They look just like their brethren upstairs. The lights of the instrument panels gleam. They look to be pretty much broken. Though even if they weren’t, Marlowe knows better than to try to work them. He knows better than to bother trying to contact Haskell. He knows there’s only one thing he can do. He flexes his wrists, primes his weapons. He hauls himself to the cockpit door. He blows the locks, slides the door open.

  And starts his journey into the interior.

  The Operative stalks from the control room. Its doors slide shut behind him. He doesn’t know what that dome is. Beyond hinting that it’s some kind of R&D facility, the control room furnishes no information on it whatsoever. Even though it should. This place is clearly a lot more complex than he or Lynx had bargained for.

  To the point where he starts to wonder whether Sarmax really is in that dome. Maybe the camera feeds are lying. Or maybe Sarmax managed to get out. He shouldn’t have. Within ten seconds of entering via the comlinks aboard the shuttle, Lynx had gained control of all the unmanned weapons rigged throughout the base, had set them to blast at anything that moved—the only exceptions being those along the Operative’s route. The dome itself is apparently bereft of such guns. The corridors that lead into it aren’t. Meaning that if anyone in that dome exits into one of those passages, they’re going to exit this life in a hurry.

  Which doesn’t mean that Sarmax wouldn’t have his options. He might know a way to thwart the guns. Or maybe he’s gotten out by one of the exterior doors—though moving out over the surface is usually seen as a means of last resort. Keep as much as you can between you and the sky: that’s every runner’s rule. That’s every runner’s logic.

  But logic isn’t what’s in the Operative’s head right now. Intuition is. And intuition says that Sarmax is waiting in his sanctuary for the interlopers who have penetrated his lair. The Operative has never been so at cross-purposes with himself. He’s done all the things Lynx asked him to do. He’s done the one thing that Lynx would never have asked for in a million years. He’s already made the move that’s about to transform the whole equation.

  Now all he has to do is take the consequences.

  The Operative reaches one of the dome’s many access chambers. He steps over the bodies of some guards. Looks like they got blasted by their own defenses. The Operative notes the telltale nozzles hanging from the room’s ceilings. He imagines Lynx looking down at him. He’s tempted to wave. He doesn’t.

  Instead he moves toward the door that leads to the dome itself. He stands by the side of that door and raises one hand. The door slides open. He goes on through. The door shuts behind him.

  Leaving him immersed once more in night. A forest of night. He’s standing in what seems to be a grassy meadow. The branches of huge gnarled trees reach toward him like claws. Lichens climb up trunks. Some of them shine phosphorescent, casting sharply angled shadows onto the forest floor. Through small patches of clearing, stars are visible overhead, preternaturally bright and serene against the blackness. Floating above the highest treetops, grotesque in its surrealism, is the Moon. It can’t be the Moon—but there it is nonetheless, pockmarks of craters and smoke pall of mares smeared vivid across its surface. Three paths lead forward through the high grass. Each one tunnels into the woods, is swallowed by the blackness.

  But before he’s gone another step, a timer in his head hits zero. That timer heralds the activation of the jammer he placed on the bottom of the overhang before he lowered himself on the tether into the base. As jammers go, it isn’t subtle. It doesn’t search out specific frequencies. It just bludgeons the entire spectrum. It caterwauls on short-range, hopefully dissipating before it goes too far but almost certainly creating enough interference to make Lynx lose his connection. Its activation is something the Operative has been expecting.

  But what happens next he hasn’t.

  An explosion rocks a distant part of the base. The whole dome’s shaking. The faux moon and stars overhead are flickering. They’re winking out. And coming back on. The Operative grimaces. Looks like the generators just got detonated. The backups have come on. A measure that must have been prearranged. Rig the generators with something that’s going to blow unless it gets a signal at intervals—a signal that won’t be forthcoming if a hostile razor has seized the comps, thereby ensuring that when the backups come on, any hostile razor will have lost his foothold: the Operative realizes that he’s not the only one with a plan for keeping Lynx out of the action. The lockdown’s probably still on. But Lynx has almost certainly been thrown out. The Operative’s on his own. It’s what he wanted. He fires his thrusters, blasts out over that sylvan cocoon. Halfway toward the dome’s center, forest becomes fungal garden—he swoops over it, crosses over into a moated island in the center that’s a patch of trees. He lands in a clearing at the island’s center, makes his way toward a gazebo at the center of the clearing. Standing under the gazebo’s roof is a figure in a combat suit that looks to be every bit as heavy as the one the Operative is wearing. He’s got his back to the Operative.

  Who continues to close. The man remains motionless. The Operative primes his weapons. The man turns around, regards the Operative. Eyes meet through visors. Nothing happens.

  But then the Operative hears a voice.

  S traight shot from New York to London, and this train just keeps on eating up these klicks. It streaks supersonic through this hollow. Overhead’s the world’s weight in water. And that seabed suffers from the same thing you do.

  Pressure.

  Linehan clambers
back into the aisle. As he does so, the emergency lighting kicks in, bathes the car in a dim red glow. Linehan looks around. He starts shouting.

  “Okay, people. I want everyone on their feet. Hands behind your head. Let’s go. Let’s go.” They’re doing what he tells them. They’re standing up.

  “What’s going on?” says one of the nearer ones.

  “This,” says Linehan, and fires. The man’s head disintegrates in a burst of gore. Screams are stifled as his body flops. Spencer whirls toward Linehan, sends words skimming on the wireless connection.

  “What the fuck are you—”

  “Shut up,” says Linehan, cutting Spencer off. “Don’t take your eyes off them.” Then, aloud: “I’ve got a bullet for every fucking question, people. Curiosity’s a shortcut to the grave. As is not doing exactly what I tell you. Oh, what have we here.”

  A woman has thrown herself at the dead man’s body. She’s sobbing. Linehan lunges at her. She tries to get away, but he’s too quick. He pushes her up against the nearest seat, starts whispering in her ear. Her struggling intensifies. He pulls her back into the aisle, shoves her away from him. She stumbles toward the front of the car. Her cries fill the cabin.

  “Now listen to me,” yells Linehan. “On the count of three, I want everyone to my left to start moving through that door”—he gestures at the one that leads into the train’s rear—“and into the next car. And I want everyone to the right of me to proceed through the other one”—now he points at the door leading forward—“and then keep going. And head for the ends of this train. And don’t stop till you get there. And I strongly suggest that you strongly encourage everyone you meet along the way to do the same. On the count of one…two…you.”

  He’s pointing at a man a few meters toward the car’s rear. The man looks normal enough. He’s looking at Linehan with mouth agape.

  “Me,” he whispers.

  “Yeah,” says Linehan. He advances through the people between him and the man. No one tries anything. No one touches him. He reaches the man, throws him to the floor, tells the man he didn’t like the way he was looking at him. The man’s begging for mercy. Linehan kicks him, tells him that he doesn’t need to worry, that he’s not even worth the bullet. He then moves back to rejoin Spencer. His yelling starts up anew.

  “Three, people. Let’s go. Forward, backward. Move.”

  And people start to move. Spencer recognizes the look of stunned horror most of them are wearing. It’s the look of those who suddenly find themselves in the middle of the kind of events they’ve never encountered outside the safe confines of a screen. Those at the front and rear work the manual controls of the doors. Spencer and Linehan watch as they start to shuffle through into the next car.

  “Let’s pick up the pace a little,” says Linehan.

  He fires into the backs of two of the nearest rearward-bound passengers. He turns forward, repeats himself. People start to sprint. The screaming starts up again in earnest, spiking as those in the adjacent cars are engulfed in the onrush. As ever, terror’s infectious. But above the rising consternation echoes the voice of Linehan.

  “You’ve got ten seconds before I start coming after you,” he shrieks. “So you’d better haul ass.” He sounds like a madman. Spencer’s starting to realize that’s probably exactly what he is.

  “You’re fucking crazy,” he says.

  “Do you want to live or don’t you?” says Linehan evenly. “I just bought us a couple minutes.”

  “And just what the fuck are we going to do with those minutes?”

  But Linehan says nothing. He places his foot on one of the seats and hitches up a trouser leg. He runs his thumbs together down his shin. He digs deep. Something clicks. Part of his skin folds backward. His knee’s not the only hinge in his leg—and what’s within is mostly solid. And spongy. Linehan roots in there. Grasps something. Holds it up. Adjusts it.

  “How the hell did you get that through?” asks Spencer.

  “Because it’s the same density as the rest of me,” says Linehan. “Same visual readout too. I didn’t even need your Control’s help for this.”

  “Your whole leg’s robotic,” says Spencer.

  “Something like that,” says Linehan.

  “How much of the rest of you is?” asks Spencer.

  “Nowhere near enough to make me not care about my hide.” He pulls out more pieces. He finishes assembling the resultant rifle. He hands it to Spencer.

  “Have at it.”

  “What are you going to use?”

  “This,” says Linehan. He reaches into his leg again. He removes what seems to be an auto-pistol and what seems to be a—

  “Looks like a whip,” says Spencer.

  “It should,” says Linehan. He seals his leg, puts his foot back on the floor. He strides to the door at the front of the car and works its manuals. It opens. The two men move through into the next car. It’s empty, apart from several bodies strewn in the aisle. From the marks on them they’ve been trampled. The door on the far end of this one is open. Through that door can be seen another empty car—and in the car beyond that, the rearmost elements of the fleeing passengers. A keening wail echoes in their wake.

  “Looking good,” says Linehan.

  “Yeah,” says Spencer, “it’s looking great.”

  “Spare me your sarcasm,” says Linehan. He starts to move forward at a rapid clip. Spencer keeps pace with him. “Here’s an even better view.”

  Two images appear in Spencer’s head. They’re A/V feeds from right in the midst of the masses of fleeing passengers, looking out upon their backs. It’s like a rugby scrum gone haywire. Each car into which the panic spreads means there’s that many more people trying to get through the next door. With the inevitable result that there’s as much fighting going on as there is fleeing.

  “What the fuck,” says Spencer. Linehan grins.

  “Those two I pulled aside? The bitch whose husband I shot? The dickless wonder I singled out for special treatment? The one went toward the front and the other went toward the rear. But I planted cameras on both of them while I was telling them who was boss. I was giving us a little bit of transparency, Spencer.”

  “Into what?”

  “Into the ones we’re fighting. You said your Control said they were behind and in front of us?”

  “Right. Though he didn’t say why they didn’t just board at our car directly.”

  “Because then we would have known something was up,” says Linehan. “Right? If there’s a disturbance at the place of boarding and we’re not at that place, who are we to be any the wiser? The plan clearly was to have the plainclothes agents arrest us and hustle us to the waiting vehicles. Minimum of fuss, minimum of effort.”

  “And it backfired on them,” says Spencer.

  “Hardly,” says Linehan. “Far as I can see, their plan’s working fine. The plainclothes were expendable. That was the point. The heavies are undoubtedly the ones based from the vehicles. Who have us trapped between them.”

  “And where are they?”

  “Delayed a little bit by the human tide, I expect,” says Linehan. “But only a little bit. In fact—hello.”

  For now a new turbulence is engulfing the mass of people on the screen that’s showing what’s happening several cars behind them. People are stopping, being trampled by those on either side. People are diving into the seats on either side. The camera bearer almost goes down, gets shoved against a seat, manages to stay on his feet. The people in front of him are parting.

  To reveal two suited figures standing in the doorway up ahead.

  Each wears light powered armor. The armor looks to be U.S. military, but it features no insignia. Visors shimmer in the half-light.

  “Into the seats,” says a voice. “Clear the fucking aisles. Or you all die.”

  “They’re right behind us,” someone screams at him.

  “We know,” says the second suit.

  “But here’s what you don’t,” says Linehan.r />
  They can’t hear him. But everyone on the train hears what Linehan does next. If only for a moment: Spencer watches as he hits a button on his wrist—and the whole scene dissolves in static. Spencer hears a loud boom toward the train’s rear. The whole car shakes—a shaking that intensifies, becomes an agony of reverberations. The emergency lights go out altogether. Spencer grasps his rifle in one hand, grasps the back of the nearest seat in the other. It struggles in his grip like a living thing.

  “You’ve killed us all,” he says.

  “You’re awfully vocal for a corpse,” says Linehan.

  “You fucking mined that poor fuck.”

  “And here I was thinking he spontaneously combusted. Let’s hit it.”

  They’re rushing forward. They’re leaping bodies. They’re watching on their screens as the passengers somewhere in front of them keep on running for their lives. They’re carrying on their conversation all the while.

  “How come we’re still alive?” says Spencer.

  “Because we’re just too damn quick.”

  “I mean how come your bomb didn’t kill us?”

  “Because that’s the way they build these things,” says Linehan. “As modular as possible. Most explosives will do no more than depressurize a single train car. The engine blocks—the magnets—are designed to survive most blasts.”

  “And that’s what just happened.”

  “My bomb was a little more powerful than that,” says Linehan. “Probably knocked that whole rail into the ceiling. Not to mention causing one hell of a pileup behind the lucky car. We just got a hell of a lot shorter, Spencer.”

  “You’re a fucking maniac.”

  “As long as I live, I can live with that.”

  “You just murdered hundreds of people!”

  “But not the ones I’m trying to,” says Linehan.

  And now they’re catching up with the fleeing passengers in front of them. They’re trailing them at a distance of just under a car, watching as they keep on screaming.