The Mirrored Heavens (23 page)

“So let’s get the fuck out of here,” he says.

“Agreed,” she replies.

“Are we high enough to reach orbit?” he asks.

“Probably not,” she says. “But we can make it back to planet, no problem.”

“Let’s do it.”

She sends the signals. The upper ship’s engines fire. The whole ship shakes. But it doesn’t move. She ramps up the thrust. The shaking intensifies—to the point where the ship feels like it’s going to fall apart.

But it doesn’t fly. It’s going nowhere.

“It’s not separating,” says Haskell.

“The lower cockpit must control the separation clamps,” says Marlowe. “Turn off the motors.”

“We’ve got to get away,” she says. She increases the power still further.

“Hell’s not what I had in mind,” he yells. “Turn off the fucking motors!”

She turns them off. The lurching ceases. She stares at Marlowe.

“Fuck,” she says.

T
here’s a vehicle that floats above the polar badlands. But it can’t fly. It can’t hover. It has no rockets. It consists of fifteen cars strung together, slung beneath a thread of superhardened metal that stretches all the way from Shackleton to the farside bases at Schrodinger. Farside’s always been pretty far gone: but combine that with proximity to the southern antipodes, and you’re talking terrain so remote and rugged that this cable system is actually the most efficient means of transport. Building branch lines off the Congreve-Shackleton maglev just can’t justify the cost—and, unlike spacecraft, a cable car requires no reaction mass. Which endows it with a certain utility.

Especially to the man who’s attached to the second car’s underside. It’s been forty minutes since the Operative left Shackleton. Forty minutes of staring through his visor down into black. Forty minutes of passing through pylon after pylon. He’s got his camo cranked. His active sensors are all turned off. His passive sensors aren’t picking up a thing. The terrain parades upon his screens anyway: the latest survey data that Lynx could get his hands on—and yet (starting at minute ten) patches of grey are appearing here and there amidst the panoply of false color, denoting those areas where the data’s been deemed unreliable due to recent rockslides or caves whose reaches stubbornly persist in resisting the encroachment of the satellites that waft overhead. Beyond minute twenty, those gaps grow in both number and size. Mountains loom ever higher, their tops now extending far above the Operative. A buzzer sounds in his skull. He glances at one of the displays. His tongue flicks out to the back of a molar, depresses a tiny lever situated there. His suit begins to play out wire. He watches as the number and letterings and bolts above him shrink into illegibility, are framed by the outlines of the cable car itself, which in turn diminishes from rectangle to square to mere point, leaving him dangling at the end of an ever-lengthening cord. He descends out of the perimeter of the cars’ light, drifts down through the blackness. Now he can see stars again. Ground rises up to greet him.

His tongue flicks across teeth once more. The strand plays out at a faster rate. He releases the tether’s hold and floats downward, letting it trail out behind him. He bends his knees for the shock of landing, receives it. Like a long umbilical cord, the tether remains attached to a point between his shoulders—but the Operative sends a signal coursing up along its length, releasing it from its hold upon the cable car, allowing it to fall softly into the shadow in which he’s now immersed. He looks around. He can’t see a thing. Only stars and one or two faint peaks. Which is as it should be. On the screens within his mind, a focal point is starting to take shape. It’s not that far ahead: the unseen center of the unseen fortress that he’s about to storm. But he’s running out of time. In his head a clock’s ticking steadily toward the zero. He points his hands forward in the dark, lets rigid tendrils extend from his suit’s wrists, sweeps them like a blind man across the ground before him. He moves horizontal to the mountain’s slope, doubles back along his path as the need arises.

Eventually he sees lights, exactly where he thought they’d be: a few dollops of luminescence up ahead. He intensifies his pace, gets rocks between him and those lights, starts to circle out away from them. He climbs up through a thicket of jagged boulders. He’s breathing hard now. It’s heavy going. But it’s worth it. Because when he sees the lights again, he’s looking down. He clicks through his scopes, makes out structures amidst the shadows. Several square buildings, two domes (one large and central, the other much smaller), a landing pad and a tower, all set into the mountainside on a slope so steep it’s almost like they’re hanging from it. He takes it all in.

And keeps on climbing. Soon he’s clambering out over something that’s more sheer cliff face than anything else—though the claws that emerge from his suit’s gloves and boots ensure that he has no problem maintaining his course. He’s almost on the vertical.

He stops. The base complex is spread out below him. He feels like God himself looking down upon His creation. He looks out into the sky. He looks once more at the clock. He watches as it counts off those last few seconds.

Which is when he sees the thing he’s been racing all this time. It’s just blotted out the stars. Though only for a moment. But still: something’s somewhere out there between that mountain and this one. It’s right on time. For the last time, the Operative checks his systems. He gets ready to be seen. He takes still more steps to ensure he’s not.

The incoming shuttle turns on its landing lights. It’s much closer now—maybe a quarter of the distance to go. It descends toward the base—and as it does so, so does the Operative. He lowers himself on yet another tether—dangles down from the cliff’s edge toward the pad on which the shuttle is about to alight. But he’s miscalculated. The shuttle changes course slightly, accelerates unexpectedly, floats in early over the base’s escarpment, crosses in toward the path along which the Operative is descending. He’s left with no margin: he ceases his descent, hauls himself upward—and watches as the craft slides in right beneath his feet. For a moment, he can see his own silhouette reflected in the starlight playing upon its roof—and then it moves past him, dropping with sudden speed upon the pad. The Operative halts his ascent, lets himself unwind once more. Every instinct within him’s screaming caution, but he’s committed now. He’s got to reach that pad no later than the shuttle does. But it’s so close to the ground now that its engines are kicking up dust.

The Operative releases himself from the tether, starts to fall. But nowhere near fast enough. As he drops beneath the level of the main dome, the shuttle’s powering down. As he drops beneath the level of the smaller buildings, the landing platform’s starting its own descent—down a shaft that’s just like the one the Operative traversed at Agrippa when his own craft landed. Another platform starts to slide in over the top. He can see that he’s not going to make it.

So he hits it.

A quick burst from his suit’s thrusters, and suddenly he’s plunging—zipping straight in through the closing door and (even as he extinguishes his thrusters) through some six meters of shaft, then out into the hangar beneath. The shuttle’s just touching the floor. The Operative lands upon its roof. He’s still camouflaged. But he knows his flame had to have registered on every sensor. He’s been made—and he’s getting confirmation in the sudden intensification of electromagnetic activity all around him. The mechanics in the hangar are running for cover. A turret hung from the ceiling swivels toward him and starts firing even as a siren starts up. But the Operative’s already flicking his wrist, feeling that joint shoved hard as the micromissile ignites—and then he fires his thrusters, flying off that shuttle roof as the rocket streaks in toward its target. The turret detonates in a blinding flash. It takes what looks to be half the ceiling with it.

As the Operative blasts in toward the smoking wreck, the shuttle’s doors open. Figures stand there, begin firing. A hatch opens in the Operative’s left shoulder—a gun-rack rises from it, swings around behind him, opens up on autofire. The shuttle’s cockpit disintegrates. The walls get perforated. The figures are taken to bits. The firing ceases.

The Operative reaches the space where the turret was. The barrel of the gun’s still intact—albeit bent, twisted by the heat of the blast. It dangles from a heap of mangled machinery that’s still held in place within the gaping ceiling. A bomb-rack rises from the Operative’s right shoulder—tosses grenades toward the corners of the hangar to take care of anyone who shows up right after he leaves. Which is right now: the Operative leaps up into the ceiling, slides in past that machinery. The gun is automated—but according to the blueprints in his head, there’s a servicing shaft that leads out of it. He enters that shaft—which rumbles as his grenades detonate. He makes haste along the passage, trying to ignore the cameras and sensors strewn all along. On one level, he’s rendering himself a sitting duck. He’s in a narrow crawl space with only one other exit. But this is the route that will bring him most directly into the vicinity of the base’s inner enclave. He fires his thrusters, rockets down the corridor. He scarcely slows to shove himself off a corner. He opens up on the door that’s now in sight. It disintegrates. He blasts on through.

And into the main barracks. It’s full of men and women frantically donning their armor. A few are already suited. Their armor is lighter than the Operative’s, but they’re still formidable. Two of them are even now exiting the room through the door opposite. One is opening fire as the Operative emerges into the barracks—but he’s deploying countermeasures, creating (for just a brief moment) the illusion of a suit whose camouflage is stuttering on and off as it stumbles toward one of the room’s corners. Meanwhile, he’s leaping the other way, real camo still humming on all spectrums. At such close quarters, the shelf life of such subterfuge is measured in fractions of seconds.

Which is all the Operative is after. Flame blossoms from the nozzles atop his gloves, roars out to hit the walls and ceiling—and folds back upon itself to encompass virtually the entire room and dash itself against his visor. For a moment, all he sees in visible light is orange and red—and all he hears on the audio are the screams of the unarmored being burned alive. He ignites his thrusters again, blasts into the fire, vectors straight in toward the first of the power-suits. Its sensors are inferior to the Operative’s—but not so inferior that the man within doesn’t know the threat is proximate: he opens fire at point-blank range, lashing out with both bullets and lasers.

But the Operative isn’t there. He’s changed course, coming in from the side like a torpedo. His fists cannon straight into the man’s helmet. The visor crumples, as does the skull behind it. The Operative spreads his arms, flings bone and meat and metal aside, roars past bodies whose writhing has segued seamlessly into the contortions of burning paper. The remaining suits are retreating—but their flight stops as the Operative fires micromissiles into their backs. He fires his thrusters, shoots through the debris and out of the room. He blasts down more halls, turns down one more corridor. The door at that corridor’s other end is both massive and open. Suits from within are already opening fire as he rounds the corner. Lasers start to sear against the corridor’s walls. The Operative’s gun-rack starts spraying out flechettes. They take one of the suits out of commission. But their main purpose is to cover him against the lasers. He hurtles down the corridor, bouncing off the ceiling, the walls, the floor, back onto the ceiling—and then into the inner enclave.

The walls of the control room are lined with consoles. The crew manning them is divided between those who are trying to run at full speed through the other open doors and those who are opening up with their sidearms at the flaming, murky figure that is the Operative. A suit’s on either side of him: he hurls a hi-ex charge at point-blank range into the nearest one’s chest, kicks out with his feet to smash his boots against the other’s helmet. The charge is an exercise in overkill: the first suit’s torso detonates—for a brief moment, it seems as though its owner is struggling, absurdly, to remove his helmet, and then he pitches to the side and lies still. The second suit’s been knocked sprawling—and before the man can rise, the Operative bounces himself off the ceiling and onto his target’s back, shattering the suit outright and snapping the spine of the man within. Seeing this, the remainder of the control-room crew drop their weapons and start to run.

The Operative lets them.

“Going soft,” says a voice.

“Not at all,” says the Operative.

“Then what the fuck are you playing at?”

“Letting them get out of range of all this gear,” says the Operative. He flicks out with his wrists again, lets micromissiles sear down the corridors along which those men are fleeing, watches for just long enough to ensure that their flight comes to a halt. Then he turns back toward the room itself. As he does so, all the doors slide shut.

“So what’s the story?” he says.

“The story is these doors are mine,” says Lynx. “I’ve got this whole place in lockdown. So don’t just stand there.”

The Operative isn’t. He’s leaning over one of the consoles, stabbing buttons, stroking keys with surprisingly dexterous fingers. He’s keying in the commands that Lynx is feeding him—the commands that can only be entered manually. He’s doing the one thing Lynx can’t. Textbook procedure: the razor’s wreaked havoc with the base’s security and surveillance systems, allowing the mech to move untracked inside the perimeter and reach the inner enclave, where the house node itself is situated. Sometimes both razor and mech aren’t necessary. But this base is well-protected. The mech would be hard-pressed to go it alone. And as for the razor: switching off defenses is one thing, but gaining active control of an entire complex’s network to the point where one can access all data and run all systems—that’s something else altogether. Besides, by wiring his house-node so that accessing it requires manual protocols, Sarmax has placed that node beyond the reach of any mere razor attack.