Mirrored Heavens ar-1

by David J. Williams

“You’re the one who told me to!”

  “And I’m the one who’s telling you to shove everything out there out of your fucking mind. And replace it with nothing but thinking about how you’re going to stay in here with the oxygen.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning take control.”

  And he’s right. Because now they’re rushing downward. Now the tunnel’s sloping as the Atlantic drops down from continental shelf. Spencer fights to master the current as the ship picks up speed.

  “Just keep us away from the walls,” says Linehan.

  “Like it matters,” mutters Spencer.

  Though he’s trying. And somehow succeeding even as that speed increases. The controls are like a live animal in his hands. He compensates, adjusts, guesses. He sees nothing now save water. He feels himself pressed down to depths he’s never dreamed of.

  The B-130 is no longer flying. It’s disintegrating. The back wall of the main cargo chamber is practically staved in. The floor’s crumpling. Morat and the drones are thrown toward the front wall. On the way they pass Marlowe, who’s fired what’s left of his thrusters as Haskell hit the detonator. He’s rocketing toward the shaft above. Shots dance around his feet as he roars upward. Wreckage of drones is everywhere. But past that wreckage he can see the opening airlock doors of the still-intact upper ship.

  Yet even as he tears toward them, he’s forced to change direction, bouncing off the walls as the vertical tube through which he’s moving slopes toward the horizontal while the stricken ship plunges downward. He’s yelling at Haskell to close the airlock doors. She’s not waiting—the doors are sliding shut as he rushes toward them. The space between him and them is a narrowing window. She’s set them going too fast: Marlowe accelerates as drones sear into the shaft after him; he rushes past the surviving gun installations, through the closing gap into the room beyond. The doors slam shut behind him as he extends his hands, shoves himself off the ceiling. His jets cut out. He drops toward the front of the upper ship’s cargo chamber, yells at Haskell to blast off.

  And she does.

  The motors ignite. The Janus leaps from the back of the stricken B-130. It hurtles downward, parallel to the other ship. Then it veers away. Marlowe’s shoved toward the room’s rear. He grabs on to the wall, holds on. He can’t see Haskell anywhere.

  “Where are you?” “In the cockpit,” she says.

  She’s strapped in, wired to the instruments. Her eyes are watching through the windows while her mind’s carving through the zone. She started laying into the drones as soon as the bomb went off—took advantage of their momentary confusion to get in amidst them, start slicing them apart. The only drones still extant now are on a rendezvous with ocean. Haskell withdraws her mind from theirs, peels the ship away from the intended destination. It’s scarcely ten klicks off. It’s city-covered mountains looming through the haze. She lets the ship bend back out over the ocean.

  But suddenly she’s pulled back wholly into zone. She’s under furious assault from something coming in from out of empty, from the broader zone around. It’s smashed through the firewall she’s configured around her ship and is powering in upon her, fighting her for the controls.

  Which means nobody’s in control at all.

  F ifteen meters behind her, Marlowe holds on as the ship writhes through the air. He’d been on the point of convincing himself that it was going to be a smooth ride to the nearest U.S. ships. But clearly it’s going to be nothing of the kind. The ship ascends at a sickening rate. It twists off to the side. It spirals back toward the ocean. It uses both jets and rockets. The latter are intended only for space. The former are intended only for landing planetside. But now both are firing almost at random. It’s all Marlowe can do to keep his head from hitting metal. He’s acutely aware that the craft is being subjected to near-lethal strains.

  But then it levels out. Marlowe doesn’t waste a moment: he leaps to the floor, grabs more weapons from the wall racks, sprints across the chamber—and through the door and down into the room where he and Haskell rode out the takeoff. He rushes into the cockpit-access corridor, reaches the cockpit. The door is open. He looks inside.

  To find Haskell lolling in her straps. He lunges to her side. She’s still breathing. He shakes her. She doesn’t respond. He shakes her harder. She opens her eyes. She smiles weakly.

  “You’re back.”

  “What happened.”

  “They threw me out of the zone,” she replies. “They almost killed me.”

  “The drones?”

  “Not them. Them.” She gestures at the window. Marlowe hadn’t even looked. He sees the towers of transplanted Hong Kong approaching once more. Mist and rocks wrap around their bases. Ocean sprawls beyond.

  “That’s where the Rain are,” she says. “That’s where they’re based. They’re hacking us at point-blank range. They’re too close for our own side to jam.”

  “Why didn’t they do this earlier?” says Marlowe.

  “Don’t you understand? We’re dealing with something that works through proxies.” She’s whispering now. “That set this creature Morat and all his creatures against us. That only gets involved when it has to. They have us, Jason.”

  “We’ve still got suit-jets,” he says. “We bail out.”

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Same reason we couldn’t earlier. The hack controls this ship’s weapons.”

  “You didn’t disable them?”

  “I didn’t have a chance,” she snaps. “We’d be like fish in a barrel. We’ll be shredded long before we get to sea.”

  “Then what are you saying we do? Just wait to be taken?”

  “No,” she says suddenly. “We cut the ground out from under it.”

  “How?”

  “We get out on the hull. We take down the comlink. We shear off all means via which it can ram its signal into us.”

  “Works for me,” he says.

  He crouches down once more upon the cockpit floor, bends once again to the trapdoor. He severs wires to deprive the thing that controls the ship of any chance of forestalling him. He works the manuals, opens the door and crawls in. He looks back up at her.

  “Go,” she says.

  But he says nothing—just starts down the chute. She pushes the door shut behind him. He wriggles all the way to the bottom—the airlock door that’s the miniature of the one back in the cargo bay. He disables its locks manually and opens it. He slides through into the tiny room within, pulls the door shut behind him, and disables the charges he placed there. He works more manual overrides and pulls the last door open.

  City’s crammed up against his face. Buildings at least a klick high are streaking by. Marlowe holds on as best he can—pushes his feet against the walls of the chamber, extends his hands to the opposite wall, lowers his head. He’s staring back along the ship’s undercarriage. Its wings are extended for the landing. Ships are scattered across the city sky beyond it. There seem to be several formations of them.

  But Marlowe’s main focus is on a certain panel just behind the rear wheel wells. He’s trying to get line of sight to it. He has to lean out farther. He’s practically hanging out of the forward escape hatch.

  Which is when the ship starts to writhe once more. Marlowe activates what’s left of the magnetic clamps in what’s left of his suit and sidles out upon the hull. He clings to it as it slopes and slants and turns. Each and every view now contains nothing save buildings. They’re totally enclosed by city. It roofs them in as they fly ever deeper into its depths. It constrains the extent to which the hack can send the ship on erratic courses. Which means Marlowe’s still holding on. And lining up that comlink once again…

  In the cockpit above: Haskell watches as the ship’s suddenly free once again. Controls cry out for someone to control them. The flight path starts to waver. The nearest buildings close in. But Haskell doesn’t panic. She’s scarcely strong enough to access zone, but she’s still slotting out the
wires, plugging herself back in once more—taking command as though there’d been no interruption whatsoever. She seamlessly pulls the ship back onto its flight path. She starts calling up the maps of HK. She starts looking for a way out.

  But suddenly she sees something on the screens. The ship’s cameras: she whirls around, starts firing with her pistol.

  Bullets catch Morat in the chest. He doesn’t break stride. His hands flash silver. Blades whip through the air. Haskell cries out as blood bursts from her wrists. She moans, drops the pistol, doubles over, lets endorphins surge through her on automatic response. The pain subsides. The bleeding doesn’t—and then the knives rip from her flesh, slice through the wires that connect her to the controls, carve back through the air toward Morat. He catches them, sheathes them in his skin, moves in toward her. He backhands her across the face, backhands her again—and then hurls her against the cockpit wall. She sprawls on the floor while he turns his attention to the controls.

  “Thus begins the next thousand years,” he says.

  And starts up the landing sequence—sets it on automatic, turns back to Haskell, reaches out, sprays foam onto her wrists to halt her bleeding.

  “There’s something I’d like to show you,” he says.

  He drags her to her feet and pulls her up against the controls. He shoves her up toward the window.

  “Our welcoming committee,” he says.

  She hears explosions sounding from somewhere close at hand. Glare from outside lights up the cockpit, catches missiles rising skyward. Sides of buildings slash by. Lasers sear past the window. HK’s all around.

  “You’ve rigged whole blocks,” she says.

  “We bought whole blocks,” he replies. “Front companies, derelict housing, epic bribery—so much for the first wave of pursuit. So much, too, for your man. As soon as we got a bead on him, we dropped him. He’s already gone.”

  “You don’t know that,” she says. “You’re lying.”

  “It’s you who’s lying,” he says. “To yourself. But you’ll get it eventually. Once we land, I’ll let you watch the replay. In fact, I’ll make you watch it. Repeatedly. Until you not only believe it, you start to like it.”

  “I’ll kill you,” she whispers.

  “Then you’d better act fast,” says Morat. “Look what we’re heading for.”

  She sees something in among the approaching buildings. She realizes that amidst all the roads and roofs and skyways, it’s possible to trace a straight line—one long slash that cuts across them. It’s well-done. Here it’s a bridge that connects two towers. There it’s a ramp that’s swiveling. It’s pedways from whom the people are now scattering. It’s reinforced struts now sliding into place. It’s something whose pieces were always there, whose lacks were long contemplated—and then compensated for by structures positioned on hinges upon which they would turn as one.

  Creating a runway.

  “Shit,” says Haskell.

  “The chosen ground,” says Morat.

  And suddenly looks down to see Jason Marlowe at his feet. The mech’s already firing—opening up with a pistol at point-blank range. Morat loses his grip on Haskell, sprawls backward: falls onto his back as Marlowe pulls himself up into the cockpit. He keeps his gun pointed at Morat while Haskell pulls backward on the stick. The ship swerves upward.

  But Morat’s already getting back on his feet. Smoke’s rising in wisps from where Marlowe’s shot part of his face away. But through that smoke his eyes still gleam.

  Nor has his smile wavered.

  “You again,” he says mildly.

  “Tenacious as ever,” says Marlowe.

  “Let’s see if you can say that with your lips ripped off.”

  “You’re not so tough without your drones.”

  “What the fuck do you think I am?”

  He moves forward almost casually. Marlowe fires, catches him in the chest and in the head again. But Morat’s ready this time. The shots don’t break his momentum. He cannons into Marlowe, strips the pistol from his hands, grabs him with his own hands, hurls him up against the ceiling.

  “Tenacious,” he says. “Don’t make me laugh.”

  Marlowe flops back down onto the floor. Morat aims a vicious kick at his head—easily strong enough to stave it in. But Marlowe somehow pulls himself out of range—keeps on rolling backward as Morat keeps on advancing—and then comes to his feet in a crouch, another pistol in one hand. He holds on to the wall as Haskell turns the ship sharply again. Morat falls back to the cockpit doorway. Marlowe fires a volley, hits his target with several shots. Morat looks at him.

  And blinks.

  “If you’ve got anything more powerful,” he says, “now’d be a good time to use it.”

  But Marlowe just starts firing again. Morat whips his hands forward, lets loose with both knives. One slices through the pistol. The other slices toward Marlowe’s head. But Marlowe ducks away—the knives hit the wall, hang there quivering until Marlowe hammers his fists against their hilts, destroying their gyros, driving them farther into solid. The blades vibrate. Their motors whine. But they’re stuck.

  “So quick,” says Morat. “So far from enough.”

  Still Marlowe says nothing. Just holds on to the wall with one hand, regards Morat the way a man does when he’s looking for a weakness he has yet to find. The twists and turns that the city’s geography is forcing Haskell to put the ship through are keeping both men close to the walls. She can’t tear her eyes away from what’s outside the window. The two men can’t tear their eyes away from each other. They sidle along the walls, Marlowe trying to increase the distance, Morat trying to close it.

  “Look at this state of affairs,” says Morat. “Look how close those buildings are. If I touch Claire, we’ll crash into them. But we’ll be back out from under this canopy in a few more seconds. At which point I’m going to take you both and take us back to that runway.”

  “There are more interceptors coming in with every minute,” mutters Haskell. “You can’t land, Morat. What the hell are you going to do when this thing comes to a stop?”

  “I’m not going to do a thing,” says Morat. “But the roof that we finally stop on is going to drop like a stone. It’s an elevator. It’ll plunge all the way to undercity.”

  “Where the Rain are waiting,” says Haskell.

  “Not for much longer,” he replies.

  The buildings above them give way to sky. They’re out of the central part of the city. Morat lunges in toward Marlowe. Marlowe backs up, fills his lungs, blows hard: and a dart sails from a tube slotted in the roof of his mouth. It strikes Morat’s head.

  Which disintegrates in a blast of shrapnel. Morat’s body flops backward. But there’s no blood within his neck. Only wires. Marlowe rushes forward, his own blade out. He plunges it toward Morat’s chest.

  Who promptly parries that blade. And sits up. And smashes his fist at Marlowe’s head. Marlowe ducks, slashes forward, just misses. Morat seizes him. The two men grapple as Haskell lets the ship rush upward among the buildings. Morat’s voice echoes from somewhere in his chest.

  “Turn this ship around,” he says.

  “What the fuck…are you,” mutters Marlowe. He’s finding Morat’s grip is still easily strong enough to crush him. He feels his own knife being twisted from his grasp.

  “The future,” replies Morat. Smoke’s still streaming from his neck. He gets control of the knife, smashes Marlowe back against the instrument panel—scarcely two meters to the left of where Haskell’s frantically taking the ship through another series of maneuvers, trying to prevent it from hitting HK’s towers in its headlong rush. “Nothing more. And it’s not my body that matters. It’s my mind. That’s what’s wriggled beyond the old man’s reach.”

  “Sinclair should have killed you,” says Haskell. Morat’s hand snakes out from where he’s grappling with Marlowe. She dodges to her right.

  “Should have killed me?” Morat laughs. “He did kill me. He destroyed my illusions. H
e created fertile ground for a new seed. Germinated by the events of the last decade. Brought to fruition by the Rain themselves.” He pushes the knife down while Marlowe strives desperately to hold the blade at bay.

  “You make them sound like God,” says Haskell. She lunges back in toward Morat—who blocks her blow with his right hand, holds her off from where he’s killing Marlowe with his left.

  “They’re far more than that,” says Morat. “God’s a parasite that preys on our brains. We’ll burn Him into ashes. We’ll replace all the gods that never existed. Henceforth humanity shall have no limits. Least of all its own humanity. And the last thing it’s going to miss is one less human.”

  He presses the blade down against Marlowe’s throat. But now they’re all knocked sprawling as something impacts the ship. The walls are becoming floor. The instrument panels are going crazy. Buildings are whipping past. As the ship drops in among them, Morat leaps to the pilot’s seat, seizing Haskell with one hand, working the controls with the other. But the controls aren’t responding.

  “We’ve been hit from the ground,” he says incredulously.

  “Your own team,” screams Haskell, struggling against Morat’s grip. Marlowe’s at the back of the cockpit. He’s fighting the forces of acceleration to try to get to them. The fact that such acceleration is practically random is making it difficult. “They’ve figured this ship ain’t landing. They’ve figured right. They’ve written you off, Morat. All this talk and all you are is just a pawn. You’re not worth the spit that’s in my mouth.”

  But Morat’s arm holds her like steel while the ship roars out of control. He hauls her against him. His knife hovers at her heart. His voice is as cold as she’s ever heard it. “It’s not like you have the strength to spit, bitch,” he snarls. “Way I see it, I’ve got five seconds to teach you manners. Not to mention reason.”

  “Reason,” breathes Haskell. “You don’t know what that fucking is!”

  She hits the manual release on the eject. Morat’s chair leaps through the open ceiling. His grip’s nearly strong enough to take her with him. But not quite: he catapults out of the opening, disappears without a sound. She grabs on to the now-useless instruments. The plane keeps plunging downward.