The Machinery of Light

PART IV ETERNITY’S ASHES

The caves and tunnels beneath the South Pole are even more tangled than the craters that surround them. Haskell lets her lights shine out ahead of her as she makes hairpin turns. She hasn’t detected any pursuit yet. But she’s under no illusions—it’s underway. If Szilard wants to be a player in the endgame, he’s going to have to get his hands on her brain. He’ll be mobilizing all forces in order to do so. She rockets ever deeper.

A trashed antechamber that contains the shredded remains of the android-bodyguard-secretary of a man who no longer needs any of those services. Maschler and Riley look up as Carson, Lynx, and Linehan storm into the room.

“What’s up?” asks Maschler.

“Everything,” says Lynx as he sweeps past. Maschler and Riley get the hint—charge after the other three as they rush out of the room, firing their suit-jets. Maschler keys the one-on-one with Linehan.

“Do you know where we’re going?” he asks.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” mutters Linehan.

This way,” yells Spencer, firing his jets and letting Jarvin and Sarmax trail after him while he hurls zone-decoys out in every direction. The Rain triad adjusts slightly; the wings spread out as they vector in on their quarry’s changing position. But Spencer’s relying more on speed than stealth. He and the other two blast toward the rearmost portions of the ship, flying through into one of the bomb storage chambers, moving away from the main elevator—

“Wrong way!” yells Sarmax.

“Wrong,” says Spencer.

Haskell drops through some of the active mining areas. She’s exposing herself, but it’s the most direct route. She’s fucking with the zone something fierce while she blasts through caverns filled with equipment. Miners stare agape as she burns past like a fever dream.

The five men careen out of the R&D areas and into the adjacent wing of the war-sat. It sports most of the ship’s weaponry.

“This isn’t the right way,” yells Riley. “The hangars are—”

“Go for it,” says the Operative. “You’ll win the record for most guns to ever target a shuttle at once.”

Though he knows it’s unlikely to be anywhere near that dramatic. The bulk of the American guns are staying silent—not exposing themselves as they wait for the Eurasian armada to draw closer. But that leaves a lot of weaponry still in the game, firing away at the largest force ever assembled by the hand of man. The writing’s on the wall. The Americans don’t stand a chance. But right now the Operative has more immediate issues. The five men reach a chamber at the far end of the weapons wing—a dead end.

Spencer opens fire—lets shots streak past the thousands of nukes and along the conveyor belts, taking out the hatches to which the belts lead. The doors spin aside and he leads the way into the backup bomb shafts. They’re not in use right now, but that could change at any moment. In which case it won’t be pretty: bombs are slung through the shafts at railgun velocities. The three men reach the far end. Another hatch bars the way. Beyond it’s vacuum. Not to mention nuclear explosions.

“You do not want to open that,” says Jarvin.

She’s leaving the upper-level mines behind, dropping through shafts that haven’t seen use in a long time. There are a number of active mines still beneath her, but she’s hoping to steer clear of them. The fewer witnesses she has, the better. Even if she butchered them all—reached in and fucked them via their zone-interfaces—the corpses would still be clues to her trail. And mass executions aren’t her style anyway.

But running zone is. And she’s never done it at this level before. Everything else has just been a precursor. Which makes it all the harder to take a route that will ultimately lead her beyond the reach of zone. She’s considered the other options. She could head for Agrippa or Congreve, infiltrate their mainframes, and try to wrest control of the U.S. forces from Szilard.

But even if she succeeded, it would still leave the Eurasians to deal with. And the East is nearly invulnerable to her hacks. They got burned so badly by the U.S. zone assault in the opening moments of the war that their remaining forces have switched off all wireless interface save a few point-to-point communications within the fleet. So even if Haskell was in control of everything America has left, she doubts it would matter. There’s only one thing that does. She plans on getting to it as fast as she can.

Here we are, says the Operative.

“Those are missiles,” says Maschler.

“You’re quick,” says Lynx.

“Climb on,” says the Operative.

Maschler and Riley look at each other, then look at the missiles racked along the wall, pointed at the ceiling. Each one’s several meters long. They’re standard space-to-spacers, with a range of several thousand kilometers. They’re intended to defend against incoming missiles and ships …

“This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of,” says Riley.

“Not as dumb as yours,” says Lynx.

“I didn’t propose anything!”

“Meaning your plan is just stay here and eat it.” Lynx meshes his mind with the Operative’s, assists him in stripping out the guidance controls on five of the missiles and reprogramming them with their own sequences. While they’re at it, they’re climbing onto those missiles, adjusting their suits’ magnetic clamps, and deploying their tethers for addded effect. It doesn’t take long.

“Everybody ready?” asks the Operative.

“Oh sure,” mutters Riley.

Now what?” says Sarmax.

“Now we burn a hole through to the next shaft,” says Spencer. “Get through to the maintenance shafts beyond that.”

“Right,” says Jarvin, “but there is no next shaft.”

“Yes there is,” says Spencer. He glances again at the zone—does a doubletake.

“Well?”

“There was ten seconds ago. On the zone—”

“And guess who’s been fucking with it,”

“Fuck,” says Spencer.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” says Jarvin.

All the more so as the Rain are now entering the bomb-bays they just left. There’s no escape. It’s just a question of whether the triad meets with any resistance worth the name. Spencer starts to scramble back up the shaft—

The U.S. zone is disappearing in the rear view. At least for now. Haskell passed the last conduits on this particular tunnel half a klick back. She’s losing herself amidst the moon, and silence reigns within her head once more. She’s calibrating all the maps; that wilderness of man-made tunnels and natural caves that make the area beneath the South Pole such an intricate honeycomb. Yet as the zone drops away from her mind, other things are coming into focus; now that her suit’s no longer locked, everything that Control stirred up within her is starting to crystallize. Her mind expands outward like a balloon inflating. It’s the strangest thing she’s ever felt—something she’d find impossible to explain. Her body’s no longer the receptacle, just the focal point for an expanded consciousness that she’s now bringing to bear upon the universe at large. She finds what she’s looking for almost immediately.

The Operative keys the sequence. The hatches through which they’ve come swing shut. Airlock procedures initiate. The wall’s sliding away …

“Oh fuck,” says Maschler—but they’re already being flung forward.

Twenty missiles total—and the five that count have had their accelerations adjusted to make the launch something less than lethal. But even with their suits cushioning the blow, it’s still a wild ride. The view’s making it even more so. They’re right in the thick of the L2 fleet. They just miss a frigate’s antennae, zip past another war-sat and between two dreadnaughts. Linehan watches lights whip by and wonders if he’s died yet. He feels like he must have long ago. One ship in particular’s rushing in toward him.

They’ve precisely calculated how much time they have before the fleet’s defenses react—or rather, the backup defenses, since they’re taking the precaution of hacking the main ones. Those defenses were designed for a lot of things, but being fired on from within the fleet wasn’t on any of the automatic sequences. That gives the men now maneuvering through vacuum a tiny margin. It’s still not enough to make it to their main objective. They’re settling for the next best thing—

“Brace for impact,” says Lynx.

They’re about as fucked as it’s possible to be. They’re heading back up the shaft purely to sell their lives dearly. They’ve got essentially zero chance against a full triad. And in a few more seconds, that triad’s about to pump this bomb-shaft full of grenades. Better to die meeting the enemy head on. Spencer adjusts his zone-shielding, takes in the Rain team’s zone-signature as it enters the room that he and Sarmax and Jarvin just left. He can see them all too clearly.

And then he hears a voice.

Spencer,” says Haskell.

“Jesus Christ,” says Spencer.

Though of course he’s not saying anything at all. It’s all telepathy—the reactivation of her previous link with Spencer, the one that Harrison configured to expedite the run on the Eurasian secret weapon and that got shorn when everything went awry. But that time she was on the zone. Apparently she’s come a long way in these last few hours. And she feels like she’s still picking up steam. She keeps on dropping through the shafts of the Moon while she springs from Spencer’s mind into the zone of the Righteous Fire-Dragon.

“Do exactly what I say,” she says.

Missile strike: an explosion rips through the hull of the colony ship Memphis. Metal tears away space—but it could have been a lot worse, since only one warhead detonated. Somebody went and tampered with the rest—and that same somebody’s now steering more missiles toward the just-created hole, dodging past the chunks of debris flying out it—

“The brakes,” hisses Lynx.

Five missiles do a 180-degree turn, use their engines as retrorockets as they decelerate through the new opening, powering down the whole while. The Operative gets a quick glimpse of a corridor streaking past. He figures he won’t feel much if the hi-ex aboard his missile ignites. He’s trying his best to make sure that doesn’t happen. An airlock door’s closing up ahead as the computers of the Memphis attempt to seal off this section of the ship. But the missiles slide through the doorway, skid along the walls, and slow to a stop—even as the five men fire their suit-jets.

The backup door to the bomb-chamber suddenly swings shut. Looks like they’re trapped in the shaft for real now—

“What the fuck?” says Jarvin.

“Back the other way,” yells Spencer.

“There’s no other way out of this—”

That’s when the trapdoor that leads to vacuum opens—

Deep within the Moon, working the gears of the Righteous Fire-Dragon as it puts L5 in the rearview … that’s easy. It’s dealing with the Rain that’s the problem. She sees them clearly on zone—even sees them for real now as she filters out the wavelengths on the bomb-bay’s camera-feeds to reveal them as they truly are: three figures in custom battlesuits, each one painted in a riot of different colors. She figures that’s their private joke. But the joke’s on them now—she cannons against them in zone, almost breaks through entirely. The razor and the razor-mech within that triad merge to fend her off, stopping their pursuit of Spencer’s team while they deal with a whole new enemy—

Something wrong here,” says Lynx.

“No shit,” says the Operative.

But as to what it is, he doesn’t know. There’s definitely something funky about this ship’s zone, though. Especially when it’s presenting to the rest of the L2 fleet as normal. Not that the L2 mainframes are looking too closely. All they care about right now is that the gunnery of the Memphis is working. But as for the crew—

“What the hell,” says the Operative.

“Doesn’t change a thing,” says Lynx.

Spencer hits his jets—feels the ship lurch as he hurtles back down that last shaft—Sarmax and Jarvin following him even though it’s plain suicide. Because out there is nothing but the ship’s bombs detonating—

But now there’s not even that—

Righteous Fire-Dragon’s acceleration slows ever so slightly as the bomb-feed halts and three men head out into space. She’s buying them time. It may be all she can give them. The Rain are resurging against her, forming a zone-shield that’s meeting her halfway, pressing back on her onslaught. She’s tempted to go for broke trying to finish them. But for all she knows, this is yet another of their traps. Nor can she rule out the possibility that there’s another triad in these tunnels with her. She has to play it safe, can’t overextend herself. Especially given what she’s now detecting—

What the hell’s going on?” says Linehan.

“Shut up,” says the Operative.

The five of them are streaking through one of the Memphis’s main conduits—part of the axis that runs from end to end. There are a lot of bodies. Dead SpaceCom personnel are floating everywhere. Nothing living. Nothing moving. But with his ayahuasca-soaked senses, Linehan’s somehow sensing something all around.

“This is fucked up,” says Maschler.

“This is the least of it,” says Lynx.

They’re right where they shouldn’t be—smack in the zone of maximum lethality. The surface of the pusher-plate stretches around them on all sides—a surface that could be shoved right up against the sun and still survive. The bombs that spit from the bays blast energy against it that sends the ship forward. But right now there aren’t any bombs. There’s just these three suits, making haste across a landscape no one’s ever seen under these conditions, clinging to it so as not to be left behind. The Eurasian fleet spreads out before them, churning in their wake. Another trapdoor on that pusher-plate opens—

—Like something sliding aside in her mind. There’s a new peril, close at hand. The SpaceCom dropships now plunging into the South Pole badlands are so real it’s as if she’s seeing them on camera-feeds. And she can’t even reach their zone—it may be switched off altogether. She sees them anyway, though, but that’s all she can do—other than increase her pace as she continues to duel with that Rain triad tens of thousands of kilometers away. They’re falling back now, deeper into the mega-ship, and she’s moving after them, springboarding off Spencer’s mind, increasing the pressure on theirs—

The Operative’s mind is racing. All this butchery just happened. It’s still fresh. The five men blast through what remains of it. Blood splatters against their visors. Most of the corpses have been torn from their suits, ripped apart.

“Those look like bite marks,” says Riley.

“One guess as to why,” says the Operative.

They head through the second trapdoor, back up a new shaft. Spencer feels like a herd of elephants are trampling on his grave. The Manilishi’s using his mind to battle the Rain, and it’s giving him one nasty headache. He’s struggling to focus. He’s half expecting more bombs to come flying down this new shaft at him. Instead, a hatch in the side of that shaft is opening—he leads the way through into a space that’s far wider—

She’s driving the Rain back on the ship’s zone while the SpaceCom forces close in on her for real beneath the Moon. She can see how they’re moving to cut her off. They’re coming in from all angles, ready to join forces just beneath her and catch her. She’s going to have to reckon against the possibility that she’s going to be cut off from Spencer, too, that the Rain are going to find a way to sever that connection. But right now they’re giving way before her—collapsing back into full defensive mode as she drives against them. She can see what their next move is going to be. That’s why she’s getting hers in first.

Someone hacked the whole place,” says the Operative as they emerge into the main axis of the Memphis. It’s empty. But they know all too well that shit is closing in—

“Cramping our style,” says Lynx.

The Operative nods. Then again, he wonders if it’s just one of those things. Shit happens. Particularly in war. Particularly in this one—

“Here we go,” says Linehan.

A space that’s as strange as it is large—and most of it’s taken up by the gigantic springs that the pusher-plate shoves up against. The three men use their suit-jets judiciously to maneuver between the vast hydraulic presses—which are cranking back into action again as the bombs begin to fall once more. With each detonation, the springs shudder with enough vibration to rip lesser metals apart. Spencer feels like his mind’s about to do the same. He feels Haskell reach out even farther—

She slices past the Rain to hit the microzone of the Righteous Fire-Dragon, slams through its cockpit, hits the inner enclave, and fucks it good. Network becomes maelstrom. As the zone of the megaship collapses, she rides it down in style, nailing the suits of the crew along with all the soldiers. Not enough to kill them, of course. Just enough to drive them really, really crazy.

There were ten thousand colonists aboard the Memphis. All of them woke up with some truly nasty programming. Some of them got taken out by SpaceCom marines. Still more got nailed when the marines blew the airlock. But ultimately numbers won out. There are several thousand left. And a large chunk of them are swarming in toward five men who have never seen anything quite like it. Soldiers less battle hardened might be undone by pure shock.

The five men start firing, accelerating toward the seething mass.

They’re seeing no one. It’s fine by them. They’re following the route Haskell’s given Spencer, moving past the swaying springs, crawling into the shafts that lead into the megaship’s hull—and hitting their jets again as they streak between the layers of armor. If oncoming shots smash through the outer layer at the wrong moment, they’re toast. It’s an acceptable risk. Especially given what’s going on inside the ship.

Total pandemonium. There are at least two thousand Chinese marines aboard. Half of them just went insane. And those who didn’t are finding that their suits just did. The galleries of the ship are filling up with flame and metal. But Haskell’s getting only the merest glimpse of it, basing herself in the wreckage of the AI that controlled the cockpit, triangulating from that shattered mind along with Spencer’s to continue to press the Rain triad while she dwells in this strange region that’s half-zone and half-telepathy. It’s as she figured. The triad has other things to think about besides tracking down prey. She’s planning on giving them a few more while she’s at it.

Utter carnage inside the Memphis. Half the colonists are still naked. They all look totally nuts. They’re attacking with berserker ferocity, using pieces of metal and piping and—

“Yeah,” says Maschler, “those are bones.”

“Someone spiked the alarm clock,” says Riley.

“Shut up and keep shooting,” hisses Linehan.

The Operative can see how nasty it must have been. The sleepers came awake in tandem with the dismemberment of the ship’s zone. He wonders whether they were rigged from the start, or whether this is some recent innovation.

“No wonder the fleet’s in lockdown,” says Lynx.

“Just one reason among many,” says the Operative.

They’re making haste inside the armor of one of the two largest ships ever built. Occasionally the shudder of the receding engines is joined by other vibrations—American shots smashing against the hull. If anything makes it through, they’ll be the first to know. Yet now that they’ve got a little margin, Spencer’s doing a little thinking.

“Manilishi,” he says.

“My name’s Claire,” says the voice.

“Where are you?”

“Right inside your head.”

“I mean really—”

“Does it matter?”

“Are the Rain still out there?”

“They’re too busy to worry about you for now.”

“And Sinclair?”

“What about him?”

“Is he up here too?”

“I doubt it.”

He was earlier, though. She’s sure of it. Sinclair was up at L5 back when she hacked into his cell a week earlier, and subsequently managed to get himself off that fleet. Maybe he used a teleporter to do so. Maybe he left by more prosaic means. And as to when—his mental presence on the lip of the South Pole was indeterminate. His mental presence during the interrogation with Montrose seemed to emanate from L5. The problem is, she’s not sure what Sinclair’s capable of. He may have wanted her to think he was still at L5 back then.

But there’s no way he could be there now—otherwise she would never have been able to put the Rain triad under such pressure. That triad’s going to ground now, camo on maximum as they vanish into the less trafficked areas of the ship. She’s wishing she could do the same within the Moon. Because the SpaceCom forces are still closing in on her. She can picture all those suits blasting through the shafts of Moon—can almost see the repurposed mining vehicles sliding into position. She wishes that her map wasn’t just confined to the main route she’s trying to take—that she had more data to go on. She can only tell the surrounding routes by the position of her pursuers. They’re accelerating now, and she’s accelerating with them, stretching her suit to the limits of its capacity. Stretching her mind too—

The key is to keep moving. And shooting—the five men are formed up in what’s essentially a mini-phalanx, the Operative and Lynx on the front, Maschler and Riley on the flanks, Linehan on rearguard. They’re gunning down the colonists in swathes—interlocking fields of fire that mow down everything before them. Yet the Operative somehow feels at one with the people he’s killing. He can’t blame them, really—even if whatever program’s in them was somehow factored out—if you dreamt of Mars and woke instead to Hell, you might just choose to contribute to it. But all that matters now is the section of the Memphis they’re closing on. They blow down more doors, head on through, the bloody horde swirling around them.

They’re picking up speed now, shooting the length of the ship as it hurtles in toward the Moon. They’re still alive. Still in the dark as well.

“What makes you so sure Sinclair’s not up here?”

“If he was, you’d be dead,” she says.

“Why are you helping us?” he asks.

“Because I can.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to.”

Though the truth of the matter is that she’s not exactly sure herself. Part of her thinks she should just be letting the Rain finish these guys off. Three less players to contend with. Only—Spencer’s no player. Not now that she can reach inside his mind at will. She could reduce him to a drooling meat-puppet if she wanted. But she doesn’t need to. She senses he’s different from the rest of them anyway—that he’s really just trying to keep his head above water. She gets all this because she’s right inside him—can see the way he’s been used and manipulated by those above him. She empathizes with him even as she’s busy doing the same thing herself—even as her SpaceCom pursuers start to draw the noose.

A couple of cluster bombs, and they’re storming through into the front section of the ship. The mob’s doing its best to keep pace with them, but as the terrain narrows, so do their numbers. It’s close quarters now, and the five men are firing at point-blank range, running electricity through their suits to zap any flesh that touches them. Yet some of that flesh is clinging to them anyway. The danger of a pile-on is growing. The Operative and Lynx haul open the doors to the bridge, then turn in the doorway and start firing past the men behind them.

Doing the lady’s bidding: they head through blast-doors, exit the hull’s interior, and start maneuvering through the innards of the ship. Explosions reach their ears, along with gunfire—

“What the hell did you do to this ship?” Spencer asks.

“Fucked it,” says Haskell.

“And where the hell are we going?”

She tells him. He doesn’t seem that surprised.

And that’s just as well. Because she’s got other shit to worry about. She’s now more than ten klicks beneath the lunar surface. The tendrils of the SpaceCom vanguards are about to touch. She’s trying to pass straight between them—a margin way too narrow for comfort.

The bridge of the Memphis is in shambles. Linehan gets busy sliding the doors shut on manual while Riley and Maschler fire through the narrowing opening. The Operative and Lynx are working the controls. The L2 fleet is panorama in the windows …

“What do you think?” says Lynx.

“Doable,” says the Operative.

Especially because they don’t need to get complete control of the ship. Just—

“Bingo,” says the Operative.

The engines of the Memphis fire.

So what’s she got to say?” asks Sarmax.

“Who?”

“Don’t play dumb with us,” says Jarvin. “It’s not like you’re coming up with all this yourself.”

“You guys have been talking,” says Spencer.

“And you’ve been too busy to join in.”

“It’s keeping us alive, isn’t it?”

“But now the Manilishi’s calling the shots?”

“Shit,” says Spencer—he’s staring out into an elevator shaft. It’s total chaos. Elevator cars have rammed each other, collapsed down the shaft. Suits are strafing each other while other suits rip unarmored bodies apart. Spencer counts at least ten different fire-fights. Sarmax whistles.

“I like it,” he says.

She’s feeling the same way, looking out through Spencer’s eyes as he gazes down the shaft and starts moving toward an auxiliary one that promises safer passage. Back on the Moon, she lets her mental tendrils drape over the minds of the oncoming SpaceCom soldiers, gets ready to apply the pressure.

The Memphis picks up steam. Ships start sliding in the window. One ship in particular is drawing closer.

There’s a pounding on the door.

“Faster,” says the Operative.

“We’re powering up as quick as we can,” says Lynx.

“They’re trying to break in,” says Riley.

“More than just trying,” says Linehan. “Shall we blow all hatches and feed them to the vacuum?”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” says the Operative.

“They’re about to come in useful,” says Lynx.

They’re heading to their destination the less-traveled way. Certainly the less fought over. They head up ladders—hauling aside bodies—moving through rooms that have already been charred black with explosions.

“At least this ship’s still flying,” says Sarmax.

“For now,” mutters Jarvin.

She monitors the situation with bated breath. If she’s wrong about all this, then the Rain are going to be on them any moment. Just as the SpaceCom forces are now on her—she slams her mind forward—

The superdreadnaught Harrison is right in the path of the Memphis. Its gunnery officers are targeting the oncoming ship, only to find that their guns have been hacked.

“Nice one,” says Lynx.

“Just getting started,” says the Operative.

The rest of the fleet’s having the same problem. The Harrison’s engines fire. It starts hauling away. But momentum’s a bitch sometimes. The Memphis is coming on like a juggernaut. The Harrison fills the window …

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” says the Operative.

They’re moving cautiously past twisted machinery and sprawled bodies, half expecting to get jumped by that Rain triad. But Spencer sees no sign of it. There’s no sign of the zone either. Save for a very faint glimmer dead ahead.

—almost like the light of the minds that she’s now slamming against. As the impact of her blows resounds within her skull, she feels spirits just shatter. Minds writhe, wink out like stars extinguished. She’s charging right in between the reeling SpaceCom vanguards now. She thinks she gets a glimpse of driverless machinery crashing against tunnel walls—

They blast down the doors and into the seething mob, fighting their way back the way they came. It’s as if every wayward colonist is waiting for them, seeking to overwhelm them. The Operative can see they’re about to get buried. Which might have its silver lining. Especially with the collision alarms sounding in the cockpit they’ve just left.

They head through into a room they recognize: the cockpit access chamber. It looked a little more stately back on the other megaship, though. Now it’s an utter fucking mess. Bodies are everywhere. But the combat’s finished here. They haul open the elevator doors, enter the access shaft—

And she jets through them and nothing’s touching her. The SpaceCom forces are reeling in disarray. She’s dropping deeper into Moon, and they can’t stop her. But her intuition’s screaming ever louder—

A terrible cracking noise as the Memphis slices into the Harrison. The walls start tearing away to reveal more walls—those of the Harrison itself. The Operative and his team fire their jets, blasting away from the colonists. The Memphis plows ever farther into the Harrison, bodies pouring into vacuum—

Through the shaft and into the cockpit of the Righteous Fire-Dragon. The three men move from room to room, looking for anything living. They can’t find anything worth the name.

“Now what?” says Sarmax.

“Now we make ourselves comfortable,” says Spencer.

She’s at full throttle, plunging headfirst, her jets adding to the speed of her descent down the shaft. She’s gotten past the SpaceCom forces. The nuke they’ve fired after her is a different story. It gets within half a klick before it detonates.

The Memphis has thoroughly embedded itself in the Harrison. And the ones who put it there are hitting the SpaceCom flagship in textbook fashion. The three mechs get out ahead, butchering everything in their path. The two razors trail in their wake, their minds leaping out ahead to fuck the defenses. The Harrison is plunging into chaos. The situation isn’t helped by the thousands of psychotic colonists pouring into the ship and attacking everything in sight. It’s total carnage. The Operative’s loving every moment. His zone-view shows Linehan cutting inside the bridge’s outer perimeter.

Something wrong?” asks Sarmax.

“I just lost Haskell,” says Spencer.

And he’s wondering how the hell they’re supposed to keep the Rain at bay now. They’re doing what they can. They’ve mined the elevator shaft and strewn it with sensors capable of detecting anything down to nano. They’ve found an escape shaft and mined that, too.

“There’s no other way in,” says Jarvin.

“Search this place again,” says Sarmax.

The nuke ignites apocalypse in her mind—fries her circuitry, leaves her with nothing but static. It’s not just her software that’s affected either—not just her view onto the zone. It’s also her access to the telepathy, the glimpses of other minds—all of it. It’s all gone, and she’s falling into herself as her body plunges ever farther—

God this is good,” says Lynx.

The Operative nods. He’s feeling it too. He’d almost forgotten how lethal Lynx and he are when they combine their minds like this. Subterfuge and stealth are one thing. Frontal assault’s another. There’s nothing like it. Especially when they’ve got three of the best mechs alive running point, smashing through all resistance, detonating barricades and—

“We’re in,” says Linehan.

They’re going through the cockpit again, searching every nook and cranny, pulling the covers off consoles, running scans, looking for false spaces and hollow walls. Spencer wanders into one of the adjacent rooms. There’s something about it he can’t quite place. It seems like a dead end.

But then he hears a voice.

In the absence of external stimuli the mind creates its own. Claire Haskell knows this. But that knowledge isn’t helping. The voices in her head are really coming out to play. Some are her own. Many aren’t. None are saying anything coherent. Most of them aren’t even speaking English. They’re babbling in languages she can’t even identify, and she’s trying not to listen. She wonders if they’ve been here all along—wonders if she’s going to die. Maybe she already has. The fact that she can see a staircase up ahead doesn’t clarify things in the slightest.

Check it out,” says Lynx.

The Operative says nothing—just follows Lynx as he strides onto the bridge of the Harrison, which is about as large as one would expect for the flagship of the L2 fleet. Stairs lead up to an enclosed inner bridge. The walls are alive with window-screens—dominated by the Moon, with the massed Eurasian fleets splayed out beyond. Several officers are dead on the floor. But most of the bridge’s crew are still alive—though they clearly aren’t expecting to stay that way. They’re staring at the three mechs who’ve just shot their colleagues who tried to resist. The Operative pats Linehan on the shoulder.

“Nice one,” he says.

Lyle Spencer,” says the voice.

Spencer whirls. It’s coming from one of the consoles. For a moment he thinks someone’s hiding in the damn thing. But then he gets with the program.

“How the fuck do you know my name?”

“Claire Haskell told me.”

She’s heading down those stairs. They look to be fairly recent in construction. Which might even be good news. It means she might be back on track. The vehicle that’s sitting at the bottom of the stairs is further indication.

The Operative scans the screens within his head. Everything’s checking out. The Harrison is in his hands. He and Lynx have already taken control of the flagship’s connections with the rest of the fleet, and have been broadcasting about how the rebel units from the Memphis are in custody and that the bridge is now secure. Linehan and Maschler and Riley are making it more so—sealing doors, getting emergency barricades up. The Operative and Lynx walk up the stairs to the inner bridge.

Spencer’s at a loss. He stares at the console from which the voice is being projected. “Haskell told you who I was?”

“For sure. Sarmax and Jarvin too—hi guys.” This last as the two men walk up behind Spencer.

“And who the fuck are you?” asks Sarmax.

“Was might be a better word.”

The vehicle’s a modified crawler—a long-range explorer, tailor-made for rough underground terrain, with short-use rockets to navigate the more vertical spaces. She opens up the vehicle’s door on manual, climbs in, and seals it. It feels good to get off her feet. It’s even better to be able to replenish her oxygen. She lets her suit drink its fill while she starts the crawler, then resumes the descent into lunar incognita.

The inner bridge of the SpaceCom flagship contains certain things. The rear admiral of the L2 fleet. Two flag officers. And—

“The codes,” says the Operative.

Rear Admiral Griffin looks up at him with an expression that’s one of near total disdain. “You expect me to give the executive codes for this fleet to a bandit?” he asks.

“I guess not,” says the Operative, and fires a shot into Griffin’s neck. The rear admiral pitches backward, starts dying noisily. The Operative looks at the flag officers.

“Your turn,” he says.

Look around you,” says the voice. “I was in charge of all of this. Until that she-demon turned my mind inside out—”

“You’re AI,” says Jarvin.

“State of the art,” says the voice. “Command node for both megaships. Until things went to hell. What’s it like in the rest of the ship?”

“Total shit,” says Sarmax.

“You mean you can’t see?” asks Spencer.

“She tore my eyeballs out. Made me her slave. And now I’m yours.”

“That’s what she said?”

“She did more than just say.”

That’s for sure. She’s hoping it works for them. Contingency plan in case she got cut off—she gave them their own heavyweight AI to play with, and maybe it’ll help them to keep the Rain at bay. She’s got far more immediate challenges now, like steering this crawler as fast as it’ll go down a passage that’s so steep it might be better termed a pit. She keeps having to swerve to avoid outcroppings, keeps having to apply retro-blasts from the crawler’s rockets. The voices in her head are getting ever louder. There’s an almost musical quality to their babbling. She’s almost starting to enjoy it. She takes that to be a sign of just how far gone she’s getting.

As one, the engines of the L2 fleet fire. All ships start moving in toward the Moon at speed.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it,” says the Operative.

He’s talking to the one remaining flag officer. The other officer lies on the floor, sprawled over his admiral, his eyes gouged out. It wasn’t a quick death. That was the point. The first officer coughed up the codes soon after that. The orders have gone out. The fleet’s falling into line, a vast V-shape whose forward point is the Harrison itself, the Memphis still rammed against its side: a strange compound ship swarming with feral colonists. The Harrison’s been turned at a slight angle to align its motors with the momentum of the Memphis’s own engines. And now a buzzer’s sounding on the Harrison’s inner bridge.

“What the hell’s that?” asks Lynx.

“That’s the hotline to President Szilard,” says the flag officer.

Lynx curses. “Tell him that Admiral Griffin’s had an accident and—”

The Operative shoots the flag officer in the head.

“Why not tell him ourselves,” he says.

So you’re going to do whatever we want,” says Spencer.

“That’s what that cunt rigged me with.” The AI’s voice is rueful. “Command-imprinting triggered by voice-recognition.”

“And I spoke to you first.”

“It’s keyed to all three of you.”

“So fuck you,” says Sarmax.

“Just figuring out where we stand,” says Spencer.

“And it’s about time,” says Jarvin. “Look, we need to get on what’s left of the zone with this thing and have a look.”

“Meaning we need to trust its story,” says Sarmax.

“Not sure we’ve got much of a choice,” mutters Jarvin.

She’s got none at all. She keeps on forging ever deeper—sometimes via the horsepower of her vehicle, sometimes via maglev freight elevators cut through the rock. She’s well below the domain of any of her maps now. She’s feeling her way by pure intuition—and she’s surprised that intuition’s still working, as every other one of her powers seem to have fallen silent. It’s as though some magnet’s drawing her deeper—as though she can’t help but make every correct turn. Almost like someone else has gotten control of her mind. She wonders if that’s exactly what’s happened.

The face of Jharek Szilard is appearing on the inner bridge’s screen. The Operative’s not about to let it get projected anywhere else. All transmissions are being routed through the Harrison. Szilard’s been cut off from communication with the rest of his fleet. That’s one reason among many why he’s looking so royally pissed. His expression gets even more priceless when he finds himself staring at—

“Well if it isn’t el presidente,” says the Operative.

“Who the hell are you?” asks Szilard.

Lynx starts laughing. The Operative’s trying hard not to crack up himself as he watches Szilard get ever angrier:

“And where the fuck’s the rear admiral?”

The Operative holds up Griffin’s severed head. It’s as though he’s thrown a switch. Szilard suddenly becomes quite calm.

“I see,” he says.

“More than can be said for him,” says Lynx.

“What are your demands?” says Szilard.

“Who said we had demands?” asks the Operative.

“I assumed that—”

“Assume nothing.”

“Are you Rain?”

“You don’t recognize me?” asks Lynx. “After all the fun we had back on the Montana?”

Szilard’s eyes narrow. “The originals.”

“No less.”

“And what do you want?”

“Funny you should ask,” says the Operative. “Given that you’re the asshole who stranded us up here.”

“Way I hear it, you were trying to kill me.”

“Not just trying. We’ll hit the Moon in a few hours and you’ll be dead an hour after that.”

“You jacked the whole fleet just to get back to the Moon?”

The Operative shrugs. “How else would we do it?”

“You guys are nuts.”

“Do I sound like I’m arguing?”

“You’re fucking nuts. The firepower on my farside installations will—”

“Don’t be so tiresome,” says the Operative. “You need our guns to try to stave off the Eurasians.”

“When you’re taking the fleet out of the fight?”

“Did I say that?” asks the Operative.

“C’mon man,” adds Lynx. “Don’t you know your own tactics? Formation delta-G, right?”

Szilard’s checking that against his own screens, but the Operative knows exactly what he’s going to see. L2’s planners devised more than a hundred battleplans. All that was needed was to pick the one that gets the flagship closest to the Moon. The Operative yawns, makes a show of stretching. Through the inner bridge’s semitranslucent walls he can see Linehan beating the crap out of some technician who presumably looked at him the wrong way. Maschler and Riley are looking on as though daring anyone else to try something. Szilard clears his throat.

“Interesting,” he says. “One of the less orthodox contingencies.”

“And not even totally crazy under the circumstances,” says Lynx.

“I don’t know about that—”

“I do,” says the Operative. “Get in behind the Moon using it as cover, picking up speed all the while, then slingshot the ships around the nearside in all directions to play havoc with the Eurasian fleet. We attack them. That’s the offer, Jharek. It’s either that or civil war right now—and then the Eurasians can cruise into the world’s biggest junkyard.”

“What about my flagship?”

“My flagship,” says the Operative.

He and Szilard stare at each other. “For now,” says Szilard.

“I’m shaking in my boots,” says the Operative.

“You should,” says Szilard. “When you get here, I’ll tear you fuckers limb from limb.”

“Can’t wait. How’s the Manilishi?”

Szilard doesn’t say anything. Save for a flicker in his eyes—

“Thanks,” says the Operative—switches the screen off.

They switch back on, plunge into zone—or at least what’s left of it. The AI rides shotgun, runs backup as the grids of the Righteous Fire-Dragon open up all around them—the central elevator shafts like some kind of multibarreled spine, the massive hive of corridors and chambers stretching out around it. The camera-feeds show carnage. Marines butchering each other, gunning down the crew, turning guns upon themselves, driving vehicles at full tilt, firing at everything that moves. When software hasn’t been used to hack the flesh directly, the flesh is simply being dragged along for the ride. Spencer catches glimpses of horrified faces behind visors while the armor they’re trapped within pursues relentless arcs of self-destruction. It’s total pandemonium. Haskell’s done her work well.

But there’s no sign of Rain.

“They’ve gone to ground,” says Spencer, his voice echoing through the cockpit.

“They’re out there somewhere,” says Sarmax.

“Probably still think we have Haskell,” adds Jarvin.

Spencer doesn’t reply. He’s just riding the zone farther out, looking beyond the ship. The Eurasian armada is spread out behind the Righteous Fire-Dragon, motoring in toward the Moon, drawing ever closer to its brethren fleet that’s launched from L4. The Moon’s caught between two onrushing vectors—and between them is a single ship, the Hammer of the Skies, rushing from the L5 fleet on a path that will intersect the one emanating from L4 about forty thousand klicks out from the Moon—

“Switching it up,” says Jarvin.

Spencer nods. Keeping the wings balanced—and as he looks further, he sees what might be the reason. His purview expands to take in the Moon itself: the L2 fleet is moving toward that rock. The final battle of this war will be the largest engagement to ever take place in space. He watches those lights drift ever closer.

Lights parade inside her, stretch out beyond her, and it’s all she can do to tell herself that it’s all just some kind of illusion. That this is what happens when one’s mind gets shorn from the leash, bathed by radioactive static and deprived of external stimuli. All she’s got are these endless walls streaming through the headlights of her crawler. But she’s starting to get glimmers of something else, too—some signal that’s far more real than these illusionary lights that keep on taunting her. She can’t tell if it’s deeper in the Moon or deeper in her mind. It occurs to her that maybe there’s no difference.

The minutes crawl by. The Moon looms ever larger, the hordes of Eurasian ships growing above the left and right horizons. The L2 fleet’s holding steady in formation. The Harrison’s holding steady under their thumb. Kill-crazy meat-puppets roam all corridors beyond the bridge’s blast-doors. Everything within is in total lockdown. The three mechs who comprise the muscle have got the situation handled.

Which leaves Lynx and the Operative to their own devices. They’ve been using their exalted position on the zone of the L2 fleet to ransack all the data they can find. But it turns out that Szilard had precious little left stashed up here—

“That’s the rest of it,” says the Lynx.

“Yep,” says the Operative.

“We’re going to have to wait till we get back to the Moon to figure out the—”

“We can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“Wait.”

This is getting tight,” says Jarvin.

His face is on one of the screens in the main room of the cockpit. Spencer’s is on the opposite. Both men are still in the zone, meshed with the AI, scanning for the Rain triad that’s somewhere in the bowels of the ship. Sarmax is sitting in a corner where he can see both screens. He stretches, looks at the screens that show the two fleets closing.

“One last chance to talk,” he says.

She’s moving within range of her ultimate destination.

The one her life has been building toward for all this time. And the thing that’s now materializing within her mind is as much a function of what lies in the depths of Moon as in the deepest recesses of herself. She can’t explain it. Can’t understand it. All she can do is stare at the face of the child appearing before her. It’s a face she recognizes.

It used to be her own.

Don’t bullshit me, Carson.”

“I’m not bullshitting you. We need to figure out the game plan now.”

“You really want to go there?”

“Not a matter of want. A matter of necessity.”

“Because you thought you could win this game on your own and now you’re waking up to the fact that—”

“I was wrong.”

“You sound scared.”

“I am scared.”

“Given what’s going down, you should be.”

“So let’s talk about the gameboard,” says the Operative.

Those fucking files,” says Jarvin.

Spencer starts to speak—stops. He gets that he’s in over his head—that he’s taken this as far as he can go on his own. He knows way too much—needs whatever pieces of the puzzle the others have. His mind’s been searching for a way out and the only one he can come up with is—

“Spit it out, man.” Sarmax seems to be sinking ever farther back into the corner—

“Not even sure how to say it,” Spencer says.

Haskell’s inside a child’s mind now. Cathedrals of sensory impression from another era rise around her.

The universe fractals in vast kaleidoscopic patterns. The child’s eyes open. Her own follow an instant later.

Time machines,” says Lynx. “That’s what you said back—”

“Yeah,” says the Operative.

“Still a bullshit artist till the last, huh?”

“I’m not bullshitting you.”

“You and I both know that’s only the start of it.”

The Autumn Rain hit-teams were just the tip of the iceberg,” says Spencer.

“We know that,” says Sarmax. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? Time was I ran the Autumn Rain hit-teams for Harri—”

“The Manilishi was what mattered,” says Jarvin.

“You need to know what she really is,” mutters Spencer.

The child’s billowing through her mind now—like she’s in some kind of tunnel, walls flowing ever faster past her. Haskell realizes tears are running down her cheeks. The Moon around her seems to shimmer. Wind chimes ring out—resolve themselves into her own voice. The one from all those years ago.

Only the start of it,” repeats Lynx.

“I realize that,” says the Operative. He pauses.

“It’s all about Haskell—”

“No,” says Lynx, “it’s fucking not.”

She’s just the key,” Spencer says.

“To everything,” adds Sarmax.

“About time you got involved,” says Jarvin.

I don’t want to talk to you,” she says.

“That doesn’t matter,” says the child.

“I can’t face this.”

“Do you remember that time you couldn’t speak?”

“When I was seven,” she says. “For six weeks.”

“I’m seven now,” says the girl.

Haskell stares. She remembers being seven—or what she thought at the time was seven, since accelerated genetics had resulted in twenty-four months of real memories layered in by five years of false ones. She recalls six weeks during which she was operated on nearly every day—it suddenly flashes back in her head like another nuke going off, and like some kind of trigger, the psychic vibrations of Sinclair’s mind start to pulsate around her, press in against her, show her where he really is. Exactly where she thought he’d be. Her destination—

The Room,” says Lynx. “That’s where all this is going. That’s where it’s been heading all along.”

The Operative nods slowly.

Sinclair created an ultimate sanctuary,” says Spencer.

“Containing the real ultimate weapon,” says Jarvin.

“And he’s gearing up to switch it on,” says Sarmax.

The child subsides toward the endless reaches in the back of her head. She can sense the outer perimeter now, as though it’s a faraway light glowing through endless mists. It’s still well below her. But there’s only one road she can follow. It doesn’t surprise her in the slightest when the last set of pursuers moves in behind her.

Sinclair’s going to feed Haskell into what he’s created,” says the Operative.

“Into it?” Lynx looks puzzled. “Now I’m not tracking—”

“Christ man! So he can feed off it!”

“What?”

“Don’t you fucking get it? He’s trying to become a god.”

Assembling computing power so vast no other term would be appropriate,” says Spencer. He stares at them both, wonders how to make them see. “It’s all about manipulating information. And the final part of Sinclair’s file is all equations. Nothing but fucking math.”

“Part of which is some kind of unified field theory,” says Jarvin.

“And how the hell would you know that?” says Sarmax.

“Jesus, man, what else could it be? Marry relativity to quantum mechanics, and you’d unlock the secrets of the universe. You could redefine the field of black-ops weaponry—”

“Along with science itself,” says Spencer. “These goddamn formulas have got symbols that whoever cooked them up had to invent along the way.” Spencer starts beaming it over.

“Fuck,” says Jarvin.

“I wonder who did cook them up?” says Sarmax suddenly.

“Try Sinclair’s pet AI,” says Spencer.

Control. That gutless phantom. The original sneak—sent by its master to wreak havoc upon the opposition—undermining InfoCom the whole time. And doing so much else—she can feel that thing’s mind out there somewhere, synthetic sidekick riding shotgun on the brain of Matthew Sinclair.

But her immediate problem is right behind her. It feels like a full-fledged triad, only a few klicks back. The Rain down on the Moon have played their hand at last. And she’s playing hers; she accelerates, starts taking these caves in hairpin turns, her position closing on the coordinates she has to make.

And you wanted to sit at his fucking side while he—”

“Never mind what I wanted,” says the Operative.

“You’ve got the maps.”

Lynx grins. “Damn straight,” he says.

“Damn.”

“You were figuring you’d just ditch me somewhere in the tunnels?”

“The thought maybe crossed my mind.”

“Well, think on it no more.”

“I get that,” says the Operative.

And he also gets the implications. If Lynx has kept up with him across the last few days—if he was able to decode that file that Sorenson kept in his mainframe, those charts of sublunar terrain forbidden like no other—then Lynx is good enough to be a factor in what’s about to take place when everyone hits the Moon. And the Operative’s desperate to find more talent to go up against Sinclair. The Operative eyes his own copy of those maps—the endless tunnels stacked beneath Congreve, the arrows that show the approach to the threshold of the Room. He glances at what he knows of the blueprints of the Room itself—looks back at Lynx.

“I know,” he whispers. “You can’t go back any farther than when you built it.”

Lynx nods. “A time machine isn’t a vehicle.”

It’s really more of a place,” says Spencer.

“The place,” says Jarvin.

“And what’s down there is about a lot more than just time.” Spencer’s onscreen image glances at Sarmax. “Right, Leo?”

Sarmax nods. “Sinclair seeded the Earth-Moon system with teleport devices,” he says. “Gateways to other such gateways.”

“And one device that was an entirely different kind of gate,” says Jarvin slowly.

“Which was what the Rain who rebelled against Sinclair got wind of,” says Sarmax.

“Along with Morat,” says Jarvin. “Jesus Christ. Everyone who mattered in CICom always knew he had an ace in the hole; they just didn’t know how out there it was. Or how out there he is.”

“To say nothing of her,” says Spencer.

But none of them ever had a clue as to what that really meant … to understand that memories aren’t in the past, that portents aren’t in the future. To realize that now is all there is. Even as her pursuers close in behind her, that single moment fills her—a single stone dropping through the shafts of eternity. Her mind’s something far more than mind now. Every cell in her body’s come awake. The outer perimeter of the Room is impending. She can see its lights dead ahead—a pale fraction of the lights that now blaze in every fiber of her being.

So how do you want to do this?” says Lynx.

“Hit that rock and get deeper,” says the Operative.

He beams over coordinates. “Via the farside—”

“Too bad there’s no teleporter—”

“You said that already.”

“Here we go,” says Lynx as he gestures at the window.

And Sinclair’s there already,” says Spencer. “At the Room—”

“Probably,” says Sarmax.

“Definitely,” mutters Jarvin. “Waiting for her.”

“Does she know something he doesn’t?” says Spencer.

“I think it’s the other way around.”

That’s when acceleration slams against them like some giant hand—

The Operative and Lynx can see it clearly on all their screens. At the vanguard of the Eurasian fleet, the megaships have shifted gears, accelerating at rates the rest of the ships can’t hope to match. But they’re bringing portions of that fleet with them—

“Bastards,” says Lynx.

“Tin-can alley,” says the Operative.

The megaships are towing order-of-magnitude more freight this time around. The systems of tethers stretching out to the side of their wakes is that much more complex. About ten percent of the Eurasian fleet is involved in the spearhead’s burn—one formation led by each megaship, two vectors driving in upon the Moon …

“This is going to be good,” says Lynx.

Spencer and Jarvin have to drop momentarily from zone to steady their bodies. They’re pressing themselves into corners adjacent to Sarmax, letting the G-forces shove against them as the ship throttles up.

“Who the fuck’s driving this thing?” says Spencer.

“We’ve lost our link to the engines,” says Jarvin. “That fucking triad that’s still out there—”

“Maybe not,” says Spencer. He’s mulling other possibilities, like the Eurasian leadership itself. After all the precautions they’ve taken, Spencer wouldn’t put it past them to have created one last backup option—equipping the motors of their megaships with stripped-down, primitive computers shorn from the rest of zone, on direct wireless links to their own bunkers. Just enough computer intelligence to take orders and pump bombs. Anything more than that’s inviting a little too much trouble. He forwards projected schematics to Jarvin.

“Yeah,” says Jarvin, “that’s an option, too. Praesidium could be pulling the strings.”

“And for all we know Sinclair’s pulling theirs,” says Sarmax.

Jarvin gestures at the consoles. “That’s why you need to have this AI crunch us some equations.”

“And decipher the last of Sinclair’s code,” says Sarmax.

“Let’s hope it’s a quick study,” says Spencer.

The orders flash out from the Harrison: maximum speed. The L2 fleet fires all afterburners and picks up steam as it closes on the farside. The ships are running at a velocity far below the two Eurasian squadrons now burning in toward the Moon’s nearside, but the Americans have to cover only a quarter of the distance. The Eurasians won’t just be trying to crush the American fleet—they’ll be trying to get as many shock-troops as possible onto the lunar surface. Prudence might dictate they take care of the first objective before they worry about the second. But the Operative has a feeling that they might try for both at once.

“Bad news,” says Linehan on the comlink.

“No one ever calls with good,” mutters Lynx.

The AI is going to town, crunching away on Sinclair’s last files while Spencer and Jarvin step back into the zone. Not that there’s much to see. All the action seems to be going on out in the real world. The Moon’s swelling in the screens. And through the flash of nuclear detonations from the megaships’ exhaust can be seen those scores of ships being towed, each one towing so many others, and virtually all of them are—

“Troopships,” says Sarmax.

“Invasion time,” mutters Jarvin.

The contest outside is approaching its climax. Same with the one down here. Sinclair’s somewhere below her. But he must have some kind of contingency for the overwhelming strength of the Eurasian fleet. Presumably that contingency involves the Rain triad that’s still on the Righteous Fire-Dragon. But as to how she’s going to deal with the Rain triad that’s right behind her—all she can do is run. She doesn’t dare try to stand against them with Sinclair and Control so near at hand. She hurtles forward, reaches a chamber she recognizes from her dreams. That narrow alcove in the corner—just tall enough for a man—or a woman. She steps within as suited figures blast into the room she’s left behind, codes flashing through her mind—

A M drive’s fucked,” says Linehan.

The secret weapon of the Harrison. Not to mention a good chunk of the reason the Operative and his crew fought their way onto this ship in the first place—excepting the now-destroyed Redeemer, the flagship is the only vessel employing the prototype antimatter drive. But it hasn’t been switched on yet. The Operative was saving that for one final burst of evasive action. He grimaces—

“What the fuck’s wrong with the thing?”

“It won’t prime,” says Linehan.

“Why not?”

“Who the fuck knows?”

“Did you fucking check?”

“What do you think we’re fucking doing out here?”

The Operative turns off the comlink.

“Colonists probably trashed it,” says Lynx.

“Or just snipped the connection.”

They look at each other. Lynx clears his throat. “Surely you’re not suggesting—”

“Sure I am,” says the Operative.

And suddenly the whole zone just staggers—

All around them, it’s as though the entire zone has suddenly turned to liquid—as though waves are pulsing through that liquid, making everything ripple around them. It’s like nothing Spencer’s ever experienced.

It lasts the merest fraction of a second. Space folds in around, gives way before her like cobwebs brushing across her face. Her eyes see nothing. But she feels everything rip through her as she teleports right through the outer perimeter’s membrane. It’s about what she expected—enough psychic overload to destroy an unprepared mind. Or just give it a brain hemorrhage. And maybe that’s what’s happening in her head.

But then it all subsides.

Seems to be normal now,” says Lynx.

“Nothing normal about that,” says the Operative.

They’re starting to run diagnostics, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Something just seemed to twist the whole zone sideways before letting it snap back into place like a gargantuan piece of elastic. And not just the zone either—

“I felt something in my mind as well,” says the Operative.

“Me too,” says Lynx.

They glance at each other.

“Fuck,” says the Operative.

“If Sinclair’s starting up the party—”

“All the more reason for you to get the fuck back there and get that damn drive working.”

“What the fuck makes you think I’m going to do it?”

“Because kickstarting busted engines on spaceships is something I’ve done once too often,” says the Operative. It’s not much of an answer, but at this point, he could give a rat’s ass if Lynx is satisfied. He only wonders if Lynx will choose to make this the moment—if he’ll decide to have it out right here. It’d be betting against the odds, given that the Operative’s the expert in physical combat, but he wouldn’t put it past him. He watches recognition of the inevitable coalesce on Lynx’s face—

“I’m taking Linehan with me.”

“Be my guest,” says the Operative.

Spencer and Jarvin are taking stock. The zone went crazy. The zone’s back to normal. But Spencer simultaneously felt something shifting in his mind, too. As brief as it was unmistakable, the implications scare him shitless. Something’s almost certainly going on downstairs. And something’s now surfacing within what’s left of the megaship’s zone. A signal being sent in the clear, because they’re the only ones left to hear it—

We need to talk.

She’s somewhere else now, looking out at a different room—and even as she rips circuitry from the walls to preclude anyone following, she’s checking the coordinates … no sign of zone, but she’s using what’s left of gravity to ascertain her position. She’s moved away from the Moon’s north-south axis, into the depths of the farside. The inner perimeter of the Room is right above her.

Along with Matthew Sinclair.

You’re shitting me,” says Linehan.

“You wish,” says Lynx.

Linehan’s in the door of the inner bridge. He looks about as pissed as the Operative expected. The idea of leaving the bridge during this madness clearly hadn’t even begun to occur to him. Because that would be—

“Total fucking insanity,” says Linehan.

“Probably worse than that,” says Lynx.

“And yet you’re up for it?”

“Piece of cake,” says Lynx.

“You’re higher than a motherfucker,” says Linehan.

“Aren’t we all,” says the Operative.

What the fuck is that?” asks Spencer.

“Probably a trap,” says Jarvin.

Though it’s hard to see how. Embedded on the surface of the signal is the frequency for a zone-channel. All they have to do is tune into it to enable conversation. There’s no need to inter-mesh minds. No reason to move outside their zone-enclave. In theory, no risk. But in practice—

“We’d have to be nuts to take that call,” says Spencer.

“If Sinclair’s revving up the Room, what do we have to lose?”

“The chance to see it happen.”

“We’re just talking about a little dialogue.”

“These days that’s the most dangerous thing.”

Jarvin shrugs, then switches them over to the zone-frequency. A face awaits them there.

The zone’s coming alive within her skull once more—not the American zone at all, but something that’s nonetheless the most robust microzone she’s ever seen. She marvels at all that clockwork—sensing as she does the machinery of Sinclair’s fortress crouching all around—stretching out for kilometers around her, metal burrowed through endless tunnels, intricate patterns all waiting for one thing. She moves down a passage, sees a door ahead, knows what it is even before it slides open. She’s expected all of it.

Save the voice.

They don’t waste time. They get moving, through the bridge’s emergency airlock and out onto the hull and—

“Don’t look up,” says Lynx.

But Linehan does, takes in the most demented sight he’s ever seen, far crazier than any drug-vision that’s ever assailed him: the two wings of the L2 fleet stretching away on both sides into what looks like forever, the Moon filling most of the sky beyond them. And past that rock are all too many stars—

“The Eurasian vanguard,” breathes Linehan.

“Let’s move,” says Lynx.

Broadcasting from somewhere on this ship: the face is that of a woman. Spencer recognizes it from the files. He wonders if that particular file is bullshit—wonders whether this face is, too. All the more so as he knows exactly where this is going—knows what the woman’s going to say even before she says it.

“I want to talk to Sarmax,” she says calmly.

It’s the voice of Jason Marlowe. Or whatever’s passing for it. It’s been so long. Its feel like it’s only been a moment. This moment now: it sounds inside her head, and she’s never heard anything louder. Even though she can’t understand a single word. Because it’s some language she’s never heard. Chills shoot up her spine while the elevator car she’s stepped within rushes through the rock.

They’re creeping along the hull of the superdreadnaught like two mountain climbers. They’ve got magnetic clamps turned up to maximum and have tethered themselves to each other for good measure. Linehan can only imagine what’s going on beneath his feet. He keeps expecting DE shots from the incoming Eurasian ships to sweep them off altogether. He doubts he’d feel a thing—his brain would be vaporized before it even processed the bad news. He tries not to look at the Moon as he and Lynx work their way around some gun-turrets. But it’s tough. It feels like that Moon’s a lodestone—like it’s pulling at him with a force way beyond mere gravity. The middle sections of the ship stretch out beyond them.

That’s a good one,” says Spencer.

“He’s the only one I’ll talk to,” says Indigo Velasquez.

Or at least, a face that looks like Indigo Velasquez. Spencer knows what this face does to Sarmax. He knows the Rain isn’t above trying the same trick twice. Spencer’s doing his best to think of what he’s looking at as a thing. He meets its eyes.

“You must think we’re stupid,” he says.

“He’s the only one I trust.”

“Didn’t he try to kill you?” asks Jarvin.

“His final lesson to me.”

“And you’re not getting near him. God only knows what voice-activation shit he’s been rigged with.”

“Maybe we did the same to you.”

“Try it, bitch.”

“We’re razors,” says Jarvin. “Sarmax isn’t. And you’ve had a lot more opportunity over the years to get your hooks into him.”

“After all,” says Spencer, “that’s why you fucked him.”

“You’ll pay for that.”

“About time you dropped the mask.”

Claire,” says Marlowe.

He’s speaking English now. Her past smolders through her. She knows there’s only one way to settle this. Only one way to respond.

“This isn’t you,” she says.

“So why do you use the second person?”

“What I’m talking to is not Jason.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

“You’re Matthew Sinclair.”

“I’m not.”

“Then you’re his tool. Even if you wear Marlowe’s flesh, you’re still—”

“You’re walking into a trap,” he replies.

Pause. “I know.”

“So if I’m Sinclair, why am I telling you that?”

“Because Sinclair’s trying to make me think you’re alive,” she says. “To fuck with my head the only way he can.”

“But you do that so well all by yourself,” says the voice.

They’re maneuvering through a wilderness of turrets and panels. Energies of every wavelength crackle past them as guns discharge at the closing Eurasian fleet. The Moon’s moving visibly closer with every moment as the American fleet keeps accelerating. But the Harrison’s going to need all the margin it can get. Whether the antimatter drive’s been taken apart by crazed colonists is anyone’s guess. And if the rest of the motors are threatened, then they’ve got even bigger problems. The two men move through onto the rear portions of the ship. The stern looms before them, the stars beyond that shimmering in the ship’s exhaust.

Our personal feelings no longer matter,” says the woman.

“And that’s why you so desperately need to talk to Sarmax?”

“This has gone out of control,” she says. “Sinclair’s on the verge of winning everything.”

“I thought your triad was loyal to him,” says Jarvin.

“No longer.”

“Bullshit.”

“He’ll consume us all.”

Jarvin laughs. “You just figured that out, huh?”

“We need to join forces.”

“Oh sure,” says Spencer.

“I’m serious.”

“You really think we can work together?”

“We’ve got to.”

“Wrong,” says Spencer, turning off the channel.

Somehow she finds the strength to switch him off.

Because there’s no way that voice can help her. If there really is a Marlowe clone inside the Room’s outer perimeter, then it belongs to Sinclair utterly. By definition. Though in truth she doubts whatever’s out there has anything to do with Marlowe in the first place. It’s just a voice that’s all too adept at mimicry. She steels herself, tells herself her time with Jason is past.

Unless she can somehow fuck with that past. She’s wondering if that might be possible. She’s thinking it’s the worst kind of temptation. The elevator streaks in toward the heart of everything.

A flash—one among many, but this one’s way too close.

One of the neighboring ships suddenly comes apart like a cheap toy as Eurasian long-range artillery strikes home, spilling unearthly shadows along the hull of the Harrison. Linehan feels even more exposed than he already is. He keeps expecting debris to start raining down around him, yet he keeps on following Lynx, who seems to know exactly where he’s going. The hull’s curve is sharpening. The engines are dead ahead.

Sarmax abruptly stirs and pulls himself out of the corner, then starts moving against the craft’s acceleration toward the cockpit door. The eyes of Jarvin and Spencer track him from the wall screens.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” asks Jarvin.

“Out,” says Sarmax.

They’re on the rear of the ship, clamped to a wall sloping down toward the inferno of the motors. Linehan feels like he’s looking at the very edge of existence—like it’s all surrounded by some bubble, and he’s finally reached it. The Moon’s no longer visible. But a hatch is—

“Blow it,” says Lynx.

Spencer stays where he is—in the zone, locking down the cockpit, keeping an eye on all the entryways. Jarvin’s dropped back out—back into his body. He moves after Sarmax, who barely glances at him.

“Don’t try to stop me,” he says.

“From doing what?” asks Jarvin.

“Like you need to ask.”

Can’t you hack it?” asks Linehan.

“Systems are fucked,” says Lynx.

“Sometimes the old-fashioned way’s best,” says Linehan. He opens up with his lasers and starts carving through the hatch.

Sarmax stops at the cockpit door, turns to face Jarvin.

“You really don’t want to fight me,” he says.

Spencer’s doing his best to hack the mech’s zone-connections. He figures Sarmax has managed to switch them off again, but it turns out they’re still on. Yet he can’t break through. Apparently there’s a new factor in the mix.

“She’s inside you,” he says slowly.

“Finally,” says Sarmax.

“You’ve gone insane,” says Jarvin.

“Fine.”

“You go out there and they’ll kill you.”

“You’re the one who’ll die if you don’t open that door.”

Spencer stares at the man. Being trapped in a confined space with an off-the-leash mech wasn’t exactly what he was planning. He can see only one way out of this.

“Let’s not be too hasty,” says Jarvin. “We can—”

“No we can’t,” says Spencer.

The cockpit door slides open.

Linehan tears aside what’s left of the hatch. They slide into the shaft that’s revealed, glad to put the exterior behind them. But as to what’s in here with them—

“Get ready to start killing,” says Lynx.

“They’re already dead,” mutters Linehan.

The door shuts behind Sarmax. Spencer watches on the camera-feeds as the mech makes his way down the shaft toward the exterior door, stepping around the charges and mines liberally strewn along its length. Jarvin cuts back on the zone.

“Let’s take him out,” he says.

“Are you nuts?” says Spencer.

“We’re nuts if we let him out of here.”

“The man’s a world-class mech. We can’t hack him. You really want to get in the ring with him?”

Jarvin says nothing.

“Besides,” adds Spencer, “even if we nailed him, he’d still take out half the fucking defenses while he was going down and then the Rain would be right up our asses.”

“So what the hell are you suggesting we do?”

Spenser shrugs. “Write him off.”

They roar out of the shaft and through an airlock, coming into the infested areas, letting shots streak out ahead of them. The colonists look almost happy to see them. Linehan figures they have reason to be, since he and Lynx are the only targets left. They’re approaching the engines—

“Antipersonnel weapons only,” says Lynx.

“That’ll make it that much tougher.”

“You know you love it.”

The far door to the cockpit access-shaft opens. Sarmax heads through, pulling himself along the walls as acceleration hauls against him. Lights flicker here and there, but it’s mostly dark. Quiet, too. Bodies are strewn about. Looks like the crew has finished killing one another off.

Or maybe the Rain has done it for them. Sarmax really doesn’t care. All that matters is that she’s back. That she appeared in his head and told him what to do if he wanted to see her again. His latent mental abilities have finally coalesced.

Or else he’s gone nuts. Or he’s been had. Because he sees no signs of her now. His mind’s empty. So are these corridors. He keeps on making his way through them.

They come through into the engine area, spraying flechette rounds in clouds around them. The colonists who have broken through to this area are trapped. It’s over quickly. Lynx and Linehan fire shots down the corridor through which they’ve come. They’re slamming the doors shut.

“Now what?” says Linehan.

“Now get on that fucking motor,” says Lynx.

The doors are shut once more. The defenses are back up.

It’s just the two of them now. Their bodies are in opposite corners of the room, their minds creeping amidst zone fragments, flitting from sensor to sensor, tracking Sarmax as he makes his way deeper into the depths of the structure. Until—

“What the fuck?” says Spencer.

“He just vanished,” says Jarvin.

“Into the jaws of Rain.”

Total silence save for the feedback in his own helmet. He’s no longer on the zone. There’s nothing for him there. Nothing in his mind now either. No sign of Indigo. At all. A nasty suspicion’s forming in his head. He’s the one who almost killed her back in the day. If she really is alive, then maybe he won’t be staying that way for too long. Maybe that’s the way it should be. He primes his weapons, gets ready for what he’s been waiting for all along.

Linehan opens more hatches and starts running wires into the microfission chambers while Lynx establishes a link back to the bridge. The Operative’s face appears on a screen.

“What’s the situation?”

“We’re here,” says Lynx. “It’s going to take awhile.”

“What’s going on?” asks the Operative.

“The comps are fucked. We have to program the thing by hand.”

“But it’s working?”

“We’ll find out.”

“Okay,” says the Operative. “Keep me posted and—fuck!”

“What your problem?” asks Lynx.

“This,” says the Operative—beams over data—

“Fuck me,” says Lynx.

And it’s all they can do to hang on. The megaships just changed gears yet again—heavier racks of nukes start slotting through them as they move to a whole new level of speed. If this goes on for much longer, all the humans aboard will be crushed by the G-forces. They’re starting to feel pretty squashed now. Spencer and Jarvin are pressed back in their respective corners. But at least they’re braced for it.

Sarmax gets knocked sprawling. He grabs at a doorway, misses—tumbles down a corridor that’s become a shaft—he’s firing his suit-jets, but not in time—walls come rushing up to meet him—

There’s a lurch as the Harrison throttles up still further and the L2 fleet reaches its uppermost speed. Any extra margin is a function of what Lynx can achieve with the AM drive. He’s running through the circuitry now—

“No pressure,” says Linehan.

“Fuck you,” mutters Lynx.

“Take a look at this,” says the Operative on the com.

But Lynx can spare only a glance at the data that the Operative’s forwarding onto the screen. The vanguards of the Eurasian fleet are kniving in along two distinct vectors—releasing their tethers, slinging scores of troopships toward the Moon. Looks like the two megaships themselves are going to converge on a point behind it. More specifically—

“They’re coming for us,” says the Operative.

“I get that,” says Lynx. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“No,” says the Operative, “they’re coming for us.”

We’re heading straight for them,” says Jarvin.

The AI confirms it. The override back at the motors has got them on a collision course with the U.S. fleet, not to mention the other megaship. And now the AI starts to reel off more numbers …

“Holy mother of God,” says Jarvin.

Waking up isn’t easy. Especially when it involves becoming aware of so much pain. Sarmax opens his eyes to find a metal surface pressed up against his visor. He’s pressed up against the rest of that metal, shoved against the edge of a doorway that acceleration has turned into the entrance of a rather deep pit. He’s trying to move. He can’t. His armor’s primary gyros are fucked. His secondaries aren’t reporting for duty. That’s when someone presses their helmet up against his.

Lights gleam along the walls: the elevator car’s moving along grooves cut into the side of a vast cavern. Machinery’s everywhere, crusting along the walls and ceiling like some out-of-control growth.

Yet Haskell knows it’s a mere fraction of the total sum of what’s enclosed within this part of the Moon. Most of it isn’t visible—just endless kilometers of piping running through tunnels too narrow for any but the most specialized of service droids. None of which matters as long as it works. And it’s all about to be put to the test. Her car drops through the cavern’s floor, slides to a halt. The door opens.

As the Eurasian megaships streak in from either side of the Moon, the American fleet opens up with all remaining guns. The rest of the Eurasian armada returns the favor. Both sides start taking serious damage. The Operative watches on the screens while ship after ship gets hit by DE fire—while simultaneously the KE gatlings throughout the U.S. fleet start churning metal out into vacuum at unholy rates, aiming along the vectors deemed most likely by the computers to intersect with the megaships, now rushing in upon each flank—

“How’s it looking up there?” asks Lynx.

“You don’t want to know.”

What kind of a flight plan is that?” asks Jarvin.

“It’s no flight plan,” says Spencer.

“You mean—”

“Yeah.”

The AI’s spitting out preliminary computations regarding the last section of the files that Sinclair possessed and Jarvin stole and Spencer almost cracked. The fact that Haskell augmented the AI is no small factor in the breakthrough it’s managed to make. The overall parameters on the remaining section of the file coalesce on zone. Row upon row of solved equations—

“Can we get this in English?” says Jarvin.

“Almost there,” says the AI.

“So are we,” says Spencer.

A withering barrage of KE hits the megaship.

Software uploads stream into Sarmax’s suit. Hands haul him up from his perch, drag him through a hatchway.

A voice echoes in his head.

“Christ, we’ve missed you,” it says.

Almost … there,” says Lynx.

He’d better be. And he’s got more than a few incentives to minimize the amount of time he spends near these microfission chambers. Radiation readings are going off the charts all around him as he runs zone. The Harrison keeps shuddering as it takes fire. Lynx can almost feel those battering rams in space streaking in toward him …

The AI will have it all figured out within the next thirty seconds. But they’re now hurtling in upon the left flank of the L2 fleet—which isn’t even trying for evasive action. Instruments show the nose of their megaship has been shot off. Doesn’t matter. The rest of it is still racing forward, like an ancient war-elephant about to hurl itself upon a phalanx that’s bracing desperately to receive it. The massed guns of the L2 fleet are a wall of flaring light.

“We’re not meant to survive this,” says Jarvin.

“You just figured that out?”

He’s dragged into some kind of confined space—opens his eyes to behold—

“Indigo,” he whispers.

“Hold on,” she replies.

The megaships spear through the L2 fleet, choosing courses that send them slotting in between the larger ships, smashing through the lesser ones. Total carnage ensues. Clouds of debris and flame show their paths as they rocket in toward the center, shedding pieces of their hulls the whole time. The Operative watches as they converge on the Harrison’s position. He knows better than to ask what the situation is back at the stern. On the outer bridge, Maschler and Riley are starting to look like they’d rather be somewhere else.

The computer keeps processing the last of the files as Spencer starts modularizing the cockpit, slamming all blast-doors in anticipation of imminent collision. So far the megaships coming in from both sides have avoided hitting any of the larger ships. But they’re clearly about to make an exception for the Harrison.

“Brace yourself,” says Spencer.

“Very funny,” says Jarvin.

Sarmax gets it now. He’s in some kind of dropship. So is she. Along with the triad’s two other members. He recognizes them, but they mean nothing to him. They’re manning the controls, powering up the craft, getting ready to launch. She’s holding his glove in hers.

She steps out of the elevator, into a chamber that contains a single mammoth door, reinforced and shimmering with energy. The gateway through the inner perimeter. She takes a deep breath—

Linehan watches the megaships fill all screens, then turns around as Lynx scrambles into view, slamming hatches shut behind him.

“Done,” says Lynx.

“Did you hear that?” asks Linehan.

“Believe it,” replies the Operative—

—as he fires the antimatter drive up. The Harrison suddenly lurches forward. Hammer of the Skies just misses the flagship, shoots behind it, smashes another dreadnaught dead amidships—the combined burning mass torpedoes like a meteor past the incoming Righteous Fire-Dragon—

—reaching out toward that door beyond which lies everything that matters—

Holy fuck!” yells Spencer.

“Here we go,” mutters Jarvin.

“Here’s the kicker,” says the AI.

Sarmax looks into the eyes of the woman he remembers all too well.

“You came back,” he says.

“I never left,” she replies.

—touches it—

Jesus Christ!” yells Linehan.

—and the Operative kills the antimatter, hits all retros—slowing the ship just enough to take it off the direct path of the Righteous Fire-Dragon. But it’s going to be close—

Too close.

“Hold on!” yells Spencer.

“You guys need to hear this,” says the AI.

“Fucking download it!” screams Jarvin.

The Righteous Fire-Dragon swipes the Harrison just aft of where the Memphis is still lodged in the flagship’s side.

The dropship is still attached to the wall of the hangar.

It’s being buffeted worse than any atmosphere.

Sarmax feels Velasquez’s hack-sequences continue to course through him, repairing his armor where they can, tending to the software in his mind—

—She’s putting all that’s going on overhead out of her mind—begins running the sequence to hack the door that leads through the inner perimeter. It’s not just a hack on zone either. It’s also her mind: her psionic abilities surge against the defenses—

The Harrison’s been sliced almost in two. Lynx and Linehan are clinging to the walls via magnetic clamps while the rear section of the flagship surges out of control. Wall starts to rip away ahead of them. Colonists stream out behind them like water playing from a fire hose.

What’s left of Righteous Fire-Dragon charges on into the thick of the American fleet, smashing ships while getting smashed itself. The Operative’s screaming at Maschler and Riley to get inside the inner bridge. They’re leaping to comply as the Moon seesaws crazily in the window—

—It’s a demolition derby in the middle of the L2 fleet, and the megaships are coming apart under repeated impacts. Spencer and Jarvin are thrown back and forth as their ship plows on past the fleet, arcing back toward the Moon, the outer layers starting to shred—

At least I saw you again,” says Sarmax.

“We’re not dead yet,” says Velasquez.

The walls of the hangar start to tear away.

The sequences she’s running keep on building, as does the psychic backwash. Factors keep on dwindling toward zero, canceling out all infinities. Untold reverberations wash through her, but she anticipates each one, slides her mind at the precise angle to avoid insanity—

We are so fucked,” mutters Linehan.

“At least go out in style,” snaps Lynx. He’s trying to hack the motor directly. What’s left of the combined mass of the Memphis and the Harrison is falling away. The farside of the Moon’s coming in toward them.

Maschler joins the Operative on the inner bridge.

The outer bridge personnel are panicking. Riley pulls himself into the inner bridge, slams the door behind him.

“Now what?” he yells.

“Hold the fuck on,” says the Operative.

It’s all they can do. They’re being shaken ever harder as the Righteous Fire-Dragon barrels its way through the far flank of the L2 fleet, ships scattering on both sides like schools of fish before a shark. Moon’s rushing in toward them.

The dropship detaches in one fluid motion, firing motors and falling away from the disintegrating hangar and out of the megaship. Hull starts to streak past them.

The ceiling is disintegrating. Along with the floor.

They’re back against the bulwark of the motor itself now, holding on with those magnetic clamps. And suddenly that engine is firing again. Linehan feels his whole life flash before him. Lynx is laughing like crazy as he feeds commands into the motors and they rocket past what’s left of the Harrison, catapulting straight in toward the Moon.

The outer bridge personnel are hurling themselves against the door to the inner bridge, trying to somehow find a way in. It’s not like they have a plan. They’re just intent on killing the ones who have killed them. But the three men inside pay no attention—instead, they’re watching the Harrison’s wayward antimatter drive streak past them, two suited figures clinging to it.

“What a way to go,” says Riley.

“We’re going the same way,” says the Operative as he finishes the sequence he’s been keying. Explosions suddenly detonate throughout the outer bridge.

We’ve lost the engines,” says Spencer.

Jarvin nods. He brings up the trajectory and looks at the dotted line that shows the extrapolation—an arc continuing around the lunar surface, impacting on the nearside at—

“Hmmm,” he says.

They’re getting the hell out of the way of the nukes. The megaship falls away in the distance. The ships of the L2 fleet pour by overhead. The dropship’s plunging toward the lunar surface.

And suddenly they’re upon her. The guardians of the Room. Not just silicon either. She can feel the texture of their minds; they’re almost like her, living flesh linked to silicon to create something greater. She pictures living brains trapped within walls, pictures them linked together, swarming in upon her head—

Two men like insects on the edge of eternity, clinging to machinery that’s roaring full tilt toward the ground. The L2 fleet blasts above them, formation after formation surging around toward the nearside to face the main weight of the Eurasian fleet. But the American deployment is less than flawless—gaps are everywhere in the ranks, testament to the damage the megaships wrought.

“They’re fucked,” says Lynx.

“And we’re not?”

The Moon rushes ever closer.

Admiral’s privilege,” says the Operative.

He’s not kidding. The inner bridge of the Harrison doubles as an escape ship. Riley and Maschler can only watch as he takes that ship through a series of evasive maneuvers. The L2 fleet tumbles away above them. The Moon falls in toward them. Riley laughs.

“No one’s going to be fooled by this,” he says.

“Szilard will fucking nail us,” mutters Maschler.

“I think he’s got other shit to worry about,” says the Operative, gesturing at the explosions dotting the approaching lunar surface.

The last cameras are getting taken out. But as they go, they show clear evidence that the lunar garrisons are in very deep trouble. A couple of domes on the boundary between farside and nearside just blew—outposts that are clearly under coordinated attack by the Eurasian commandos that the megaships have scattered like countless spores across the Moon. But those ships are paying the ultimate price for the havoc they’ve wreaked. Hammer of the Skies is disappearing from sight, disintegrating across the horizon, shredding into the mother of all meteor showers. And before they went offline, the engines of the Righteous Fire-Dragon got one last set of instructions.

“Projected impact on Copernicus,” says Jarvin.

Spencer whistles. “The lunar capital?”

“For a couple more minutes.”

The dropship careens downward. The ship’s stealthy, but that alone won’t be enough. Sarmax can only imagine what hacks this Rain triad is running on the American zone. He’s starting to think they might actually make it to the surface. He looks at Velasquez.

“Why’d you save me?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

She shoves her head deeper into the Room’s defenses, smashing ever further into those minds, each one a prick of sentience she’s snuffing out. She can’t help but wonder whether these brains were the real Rain originals—the things that never left the vats, that instead were assigned the mission of defending Sinclair’s ultimate stronghold. But she’s turning the flank on those defenses. She’s almost there. She feels it all twisting in around her.

They’re still pointed straight down, aiming at the very center of the farside. Ground-to-space lasers streak past them. Lynx throttles up the engine even further, opens up a comlink with what’s left of the Congreve defense grid, and starts running a particularly insidious hack.

They’re getting low now, maneuvering within ten thousand meters of the surface. Mountain ranges loom ahead of them, straddling the near and farsides.

“Where the fuck are we going?” says Riley.

“Familiar ground,” says the Operative.

They’re arcing down across the nearside, the domes of Copernicus approaching all too rapidly—and Spencer can only imagine the alarms that are going off within them. Not that anyone’s going to have time to react.

“Time to go,” says Spencer.

“Agreed,” says Jarvin.

The truth is we need you,” says Velasquez.

“Because of Sinclair,” replies Sarmax.

“Because otherwise we’re nothing but his prey.”

She’s in the home stretch now. Though she keeps wondering why Sinclair is making this so hard for her.

Especially when he needs her to finish what he’s set in motion. Maybe this is her final test. Maybe he’s trying to draw off some of her strength. If that’s the case, it’s not working. She’s only growing stronger. She moves onto the final sequence—

Let’s do this,” says Lynx. The two men detach themselves—fire judicious thrusts from their motors as the antimatter drive drops away. Lynx has convinced Congreve’s defenses that this fragment of the Harrison is about to try an emergency landing in the adjacent Korolev Crater. The two men plunge downward in their armor and watch the engine beneath them dwindle to a speck while Congreve’s dome grows larger by the second.

Mountains are streaking in toward them. The Operative’s working the controls, banking the escape craft beneath the highest peaks, letting it drop down toward the valleys. Maschler does a doubletake.

“Wait a second,” he says. “This is—”

“Shut up and hold on,” says the Operative.

Spencer and Jarvin crawl through a narrow shaft that’s nearly identical to the one they had used to enter the cockpit on the Hammer of the Skies. Spencer was tempted to rig the Eurasian AI with hi-ex, but he realizes that would stretch the word superfluous to whole new levels. He’s got the files that machine downloaded in the back of his head. He’s got no time to bother with them right now. They reach the last hatch, shove it aside, fling themselves out into the abyss.

How much do you know?” asks Sarmax.

“Enough,” she replies. “He’s been using us—”

“When did you figure it out?”

“After we realized we weren’t guarding Sinclair.”

“When did he leave?”

“Some point before the war started, I guess. Now he’s at the Room, I don’t see how the hell we can stop him in time.”

He stares at her. “We can fucking try,” he says.

Terrain starts to appear in the windows of the dropship.

Ciphers so next-level that only a brain like Haskell’s can hope to penetrate them. She’s tearing through them on overdrive—making them think that she’s the one who’s created them. Who’s now reversing them. She’s through. The locks click through her mind—

A million shades of black and grey, a million lights flaring all around—and the soundtrack to all of it is silence as Linehan takes in the sight. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He suddenly feels that all the fighting and shooting and killing that’s going on around him isn’t really happening—that existence has dwindled to this tiny space inside his helmet even as he looks at all those stars. It seems like there’s a pattern all around, like somehow it’s all meant to happen. He and Lynx are freefalling, tumbling downward, that engine-that’s-now-a-bomb a distant firefly far below. Any moment now Congreve’s defenses are going to come to their senses. But a few moments more and it’s going to be too late—

They swoop over one mountain, veer in toward another. A giant sinkhole stretches out before them, carved straight through adjacent hills and valleys. It doesn’t look natural. More like—

“Someone had some fun with blasting powder,” says Riley.

“Couple of nukes,” says the Operative.

“Autumn Rain?”

“Several days back.”

“And you were there, huh?”

“Hey,” says Maschler, “that looks like another ship.”

Judicious bursts of their suit-thrusters as they exit—and the Righteous Fire-Dragon is rushing past, dropping beneath them as they gain height. It seems to have given up spitting nukes. It won’t matter—it’s still going to turn Copernicus into a big pancake. The sky above Spencer’s head is alive with lights, the vanguards of the American fleet clearly visible as they vector out from behind the Moon to do battle with the onrushing Eurasian fleet. Spencer can see quite clearly that the Yanks haven’t a fucking prayer. The ships of the East make the sky immediately above the nearside look like the center of the galaxy. The Righteous Fire-Dragon is dwindling below them as it moves into the last stage of its final plunge—

They’ve seen us,” says the pilot.

Velasquez just nods. The ship rocks from side to side as its pilots keep the trajectory unpredictable, letting the craft drop lower all the while. Moon’s filling the window now. It looks as if they’re maneuvering amidst a mountain range. But Sarmax’s vantage point prevents him from seeing the whole picture.

Which doesn’t mean he can’t be kept in the loop.

“Your friend Carson,” says Velasquez.

“Where’s he going?”

“Right where we thought he would.”

She’s got everything right where she wants. She’s pressing her head against the surface of the door, feeling the vibrations rumble deep within. She envisions dominoes falling, endless chains of locks turning like gears, grinding in upon hinges that slowly start to swivel. She backs up, moving out of the way as the door to the Room starts to open.

The engine punches straight through the main dome of Congreve, red flaring out as a chunk of antimatter explodes into the city.

“Wow,” says Linehan.

“They were all fucked anyway,” says Lynx.

And then some. The two men drop through what’s left of the shattered dome, firing at everything in sight.

The Operative hits the afterburners, sending the craft on a barely controlled plummet into the sinkhole that sprawls across so much of Nansen Station. He rockets in toward the bottom. There’s no way they’re going to stop in time.

“What the fuck are you doing?” yells Maschler.

The Operative says nothing. But now all three men can see that what looks to be the deepest part is actually the beginning of a tunnel—

A kilometer of disintegrating megaship crashes through Copernicus’s dome, detonating as it goes. Enough of its fuel was intact to make it interesting. Thousands of nukes are going off, enveloping the lunar capital in sheets of energy, making the whole nearside shake. Radiation pummels the suits of the two men who are still several klicks above the city. They start playing evasive action with the debris that they’re descending into.

“We’ll need some new gear,” says Spencer.

“First things first,” says Jarvin.

They swoop down toward that smoking crater.

The ship lifts away from the sinkhole, pivots, drops in toward an adjacent valley.

“What the hell’s going on?” says Sarmax.

“Carson’s gone to ground,” replies Velasquez.

“And we’re not?”

“We’re going in another way. Are you ready to get back in the fight?”

Sarmax nods. Tunnel closes in around them.

The door’s as massive as it is reinforced. As it swings open, Haskell can hear the creaking of doors behind it doing the same thing. A whole succession of gates, and she’s cracked them all. She steps behind the first one, starts moving past the procession—starts to get intimations of the space that lies beyond—

The upper levels of Congreve are totaled. The lower levels are pure chaos. The fact that Lynx has hacked the inner enclaves of the city’s defenses is only adding to the insanity. He and Linehan charge into the city’s basements, shooting in all directions, heading downward as fast as possible.

“Ain’t gonna be enough,” says Linehan.

“Shut up and keep moving,” mutters Lynx.

That’s the key ingredient of the Operative’s plan. Maschler and Riley are holding on for dear life while he pilots the escape ship down a tunnel, dropping ever farther beneath Nansen Station, on the cusp of far and nearside. He and Lynx and Sarmax came down here once in search of the Rain, only to have the Rain blow their base right in their face. He maneuvers through a maze of passages, trying to guess which ones have collapsed and which ones haven’t.

“Do you know where you’re going?” demands Riley.

“Somewhere off the maps.”

“I thought the Praetorians searched this whole place.”

“Doesn’t mean they found the good bits.”

Copernicus is history. Radiation’s aftermath churns on their screens as they descend through what’s left and into the hole that the Righteous Fire-Dragon has bored into the city’s basements. The zone beneath the Moon starts to click into Spencer’s head. It’s not a pretty sight.

The dropship starts maneuvering through the tunnels beneath Nansen. SpaceCom marines are trying to stop it. They’re getting gunned down for their troubles—and hacked too. The software in their skulls is going haywire, shoving their brains over the edge. Velasquez hauls the dropship door open. Sarmax staggers to his feet, joins her there, and they start lacing targets while the ship accelerates.

The last of the doors swing toward her as she closes in on it. She feels all of existence pivot around her—feels time close in like a vise. She feels other minds out there, still trying to reach her even though she can see they’re far too late. But Sinclair and Control aren’t. They’re waiting for her inside. She steps past the final door—steps within—

Lynx and Linehan are shredding their way through Congreve’s basements. Lynx’s hack has the comps so fucked they don’t even know which way is up. Complete confusion reigns amidst the tunnels. All the more so as it looks like Eurasian forces have already deployed across the lunar surface. The garrison is deserting their posts, fleeing deeper beneath the surface. All too many are getting shot as they flee.

“Still too fucking slow,” Lynx mutters.

The Operative knows the feeling. This crazy operation’s going like clockwork, yet by the time he gets near the Room it’ll be way too late. He can fucking sense it, as certain as anything he’s ever known. But he’s come too far to just give up. So he keeps on forging his way forward, moving back up into the lower reaches of Nansen, letting his mind move out and run hacks that release the restraints on the thousands of convict-miners who work the mines—and who now swarm out and start overwhelming the stunned marines. Beyond, the Operative’s catching glimpses of the lunar zone, getting caved in now as the main weight of the Eurasian fleet bombards the Moon at close range. He can see he’s got to get deeper fast.

The war is lost. Jarvin and Spencer take stock while they don new armor and load up at a reserve ammo dump. Glimpses on the zone show Spencer that the American fleet is getting pulverized above the nearside—fighting heroically, but overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Spencer wonders whose retarded idea it was to charge straight toward the Eurasian fleet. Not that there’s going to be a court of inquiries this time. There’ll be nothing left of the United States within the hour. Eurasian artillery is slamming into what’s left of Copernicus at point-blank range. Spencer and Jarvin feel more than a little relieved now that they’ve got roof above their heads. They move out, getting ever deeper into the lunar capital’s subbasements.

They’re smashing their way through what’s left of Nansen, reducing everything in sight to rubble. The fact that all the convict-miners seem to have somehow slipped their leashes is only adding to the confusion. The dropship roars through several larger caves, Velasquez and Sarmax doing door-gunner duty as they spray fire everywhere. Velasquez puts her helmet up to Sarmax’s.

“I’m going to need your mind, too,” she says.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he says.

She tells him.

She’s in the Room now, and darkness is all around her. She’s afraid to use her lights. She’s seeing with her mind anyway, and so far that’s more than enough. As she steps forward, she can sense abyss on all sides—can sense structures all around her. She’s not surprised in the slightest when the floor beneath her shudders, starts moving, folding up around her to become another elevator car, sliding in toward the very core of Room.

They fight their way deeper, moving out of the Congreve subbasements and onto the threshold of the larger lunar infrastructure that stretches beneath the farside. Lynx struggles to focus on the zone, but he can’t make out much, save for the fact that combat is underway everywhere. It makes him wonder just how far the Eurasian commandos have penetrated. Linehan gets out in front, on point; they start moving downward at speed.

It’s good to be back. Even though somehow it’s like he never left—like he’s been hanging out near Congreve this whole time, still waiting for Lynx to hurry up and figure out a way to get into that city and up to the L2 fleet. Four days have passed since, and it seems like it’s been only four minutes. It seems like there are only four minutes to go. He can feel everything he’s ever been running from coming in to claim him. Ayahuasca’s edge is sharpening ever further, rising like a new sun bursting in his mind. He feels like he’s almost at the hub of the universe—like maybe it’s just below him. He can hardly wait to get there.

And suddenly a mind’s sliding straight into the Operative’s head. It’s one he recognizes. He’s been aware of it for many years now, just never in this way. But there’s a first time for everything. Even this.

“Leo.”

“The same.”

“You’ve learned some new tricks, huh?”

“Or just remembered some old ones,” says Sarmax.

“Bullshit. Who took you out of latency?”

“Indigo.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“She’s right here with me. With her triad—”

“In Nansen.”

“Sure,” says Sarmax.

“She’s calling the shots.”

“So what if she is? We need to team up.”

“Heard that one before,” says the Operative.

Spencer and Jarvin put ever more rock between them and the surface. The tunnels beneath Copernicus give them slightly more of a vantage point on zone. Enough to show that it’s crumbling everywhere. The bulk of Eurasian forces are still polishing off the American fleet. But more of the East’s shock-troops are hitting the Moon with every minute. Most of the initially vulnerable points are on the nearside. But as the Eurasian flanks envelop the farside, that’s starting to change.

“That’s where the real action’s at anyway,” says Jarvin.

“You think the Eurasians know that?” asks Spencer.

“I think they know the only thing that counts now is getting inside the Room.”

“So aren’t we a little too far from the main event?”

“That’s the idea,” says Jarvin.

He cut us off,” says Velasquez.

“So?”

“Didn’t think he could do that. Thought I was—”

“He’s a resourceful man.”

They come out into a cavern far larger than anything they’ve seen so far. Looks like explosions have torn it nearly apart—the floor and walls are mostly rubble. They ignite their jet-packs, start to move through in tight formation. They’ve just reached the other side when lights and sensors transfix them from much higher in the cavern.

In the flesh this time,” says the Operative.

“Fuck,” says Sarmax. The Operative’s standing on a ledge, flanked by Riley and Maschler. Everybody’s got their guns pointed at one another now.

“Easy,” says Velasquez.

“You sold me,” says the Operative. “We do need to team up.”

There’s a pause.

“On my terms,” he adds.

“Which are?”

The Operative keeps it brief.

Her body’s on a platform hurtling toward the inner confines of the Room. But her mind’s way ahead of her: it reaches the controls, switches them on. Software starts powering up. The lights go on. The sight practically drops her to her knees.

The tunnels beneath farside—the deepest levels of which lead directly to the Room. Though only those who have the whole picture know the correct routes. Thousands of klicks of passages sprawling out beneath the lunar farside, stretching down for hundreds of kilometers—most of it’s been signed off at various levels within Space Command across the decades. Some of it’s mining. Some of it’s R&D. Some of it was commissioned in secret by Harrison himself, dug out by his Praetorians. And some of it’s known only to—

“Autumn Rain,” says Lynx.

“An increasingly nebulous concept these days,” says Linehan.

But Lynx doesn’t reply. He’s just processing data—integrating the glimpses he’s got on the collapsing zone with the flickers of mind he can see out there. He has no idea why his mental abilities are getting better by the moment. It’s as if they’re being hauled toward ever greater heights regardless of his own feelings in the matter. He’s not about to argue.

“Well?” demands Linehan.

“Here’s the situation,” says Lynx.

Insider information: they’re burning away from Nansen along Rain tunnels that the Praetorians never found, heading for the edge of the main network of tunnels beneath the farside. The Operative and Maschler and Riley are in one chute; Sarmax and the Rain triad are in a parallel one. But the Operative has gone ahead and linked his mind with Sarmax and the triad all the same. It feels strange to have done so. But he knows it’s the only option that might see them through. Even though the Operative can see they’re going to need more margin—can see they’re going to have to consolidate still further.

Spencer no longer has any view of what’s happening on the surface. But it sounds like the entire Eurasian armada is coming down on top of them. Rumbling shakes the tunnels through which they’re streaking. Spencer listens on the zone as the American forces fall back, heading ever deeper.

Vast shapes hanging like monstrous chandeliers, intimations of impossibly intricate machinery: she gets a glimpse of the outer Room as she shoots through the metal skin of the inner one—even as it closes up behind her and the lights of the inner Room switch on—

All she can do is stare.

A kilometer across: the inner Room is a massive sphere from which a series of ramps and rails descend to a smaller sphere positioned at the very center. She’s heading down toward that hub now. She can feel Sinclair waiting for her there, too—his mind’s suddenly turning back on at point-blank range—

—hauling her in—

—like some gigantic magnet—

—and she suddenly gets how much he’s been concealing from her, how much stronger he is than she ever thought. He’s been luring her down here all this time. She was fucking crazy to come this far. And the only way to win is to do something even crazier. She came in the back door of the Room. She’s going to leave out the front.

Right now.

We’ve got to get down as fast as possible,” yells Lynx.

Linehan’s not worried. Everything’s converging.

He’s just flotsam on whitewater. They’ve commandeered cycles left behind by a decimated mechanized unit—are riding those bikes at speeds a long way past anything safe. They’re getting into the heart of the farside now, and as they descend along ramps and drop through shafts, Lynx is transmitting data into Linehan’s head, along with a running commentary.

“The lower we get, the worse the fighting gets,” he says. “Probably because Szilard’s no longer even trying to hold the Eurasians to the surface.”

“Are you kidding? There’s fighting all around us—”

“Don’t you get it, man? Our fleet’s getting wiped out. The garrisons are getting overwhelmed. They’ll keep fighting. But they’re going down before sheer numbers. They’re just there to buy time while Szilard—”

“You really think he’s down there?”

“No question. Along with his most elite marines.”

“Trying to break through to the Room.”

“And this is our chance to fucking break him.”

Streaking through one of the deepest of the deep-grid maglev tunnels is a two-car armored train, bristling with guns. The front car contains Velasquez, Sarmax, and the other two members of the Rain triad. The rear one contains Riley, Maschler, and the Operative—who’s in the rearmost chamber of that car, communicating with Velasquez and Sarmax as he drives.

“As bad as we thought,” he says.

“Would have to agree,” says Velasquez.

“The Eurasians have the surface,” says Sarmax.

That seems to be an understatement. The last camera-feeds showed a sky practically blotted out by troopships. The American zone is crumbling as the Chinese forces consolidate their hold on the ground.

“Check it out,” says the Operative, showing the projections. Several Eastern spearheads are lancing deeper from Congreve—moving far faster than the rest of the East’s legions—

“Commandos,” says Velasquez.

“Of course,” says Sarmax.

“Whoever’s running the Coalition gets it,” says the Operative. “The real war’s going to be fought on the threshold of the Room.”

“Or in the Room itself,” says Velasquez. “Sinclair might already have—”

“I’m stunned he hasn’t already,” says the Operative.

“Doesn’t change the plan,” says Sarmax.

The deep-grids beneath Copernicus just aren’t deep enough anymore. But they’re the fastest option available. Jarvin and Spencer have commandeered a maglev car, having left its crew as mangled flesh in the tunnel some klicks back. They’re heading west, blasting everything in their path. The tunnels are a chaos of fighting. A temporary turn of the tide seems to be going on within this sector—the farthest Eurasian troops are being forced back upstairs by Americans who have realized that they’re running out of room to retreat. The line of battle is swaying back and forth. Sometimes Jarvin and Spencer find themselves pretending to be SpaceCom. Sometimes they’re pretending they’re Chinese. It’s a game that can only have one end.

“We’re rumbled,” says Spencer.

“I see it,” says Jarvin.

The pursuit moves in after them.

She turns in one fluid motion, fires all thrusters. The walls of her elevator car fall away like glass and she’s already flying straight through them, suit-jets burning as she presses down with her mind with all her might—catches Sinclair by surprise, gets him in a temporary mental lock, as though she’s pinning a more powerful opponent’s arms against his sides. It won’t last. Maybe it doesn’t need to. She blasts past that hub, upward toward the ceiling.

They get deeper into farside. The upper areas seem to be a free-for-all. It makes the going easy for two men who know where they’re going. They switch from cycles to transport-trains, switch from that to elevators that plunge through shafts. They’re keeping clear of the main fighting. They’re in between most of it now anyway. Above them the Eurasian legions are consolidating their hold. Below them—

“Gotta be Szilard,” says Lynx.

“This time we do it right,” says Linehan.

The train roars back into tunnels known only to Autumn Rain. All the combat’s elsewhere. They’re taking advantage of that fact while they wait for the world to end. Sarmax can’t believe any of this is happening. Particularly not this—Indigo’s pressurized the rear chamber of this car, lifted up her visor. He’s done the same. They’ve got enough time for only one lingering kiss. It’s so much more than it used to be. It’s not just their bodies, now—it’s their minds as well. She’s still the only thing he ever loved. He’s telling her she’s won—that she can do whatever she want to him now. She’s not disagreeing.

Straight shot from the depths of Copernicus to the hollows beneath the Imbrium, and this train just keeps on eating up the klicks. Overhead’s the world’s weight in rock. And that tunnel suffers from the same thing you do.

Pressure.

“We need more throttle,” yells Spencer.

“We can’t go any faster,” says Jarvin. He fires the rear-guns, catches one of the pursuers dead amidships—it explodes against the wall. But the gunship behind it is still coming on. The soldiers of the East are flush with victory. And they’re nothing if not—

“Persistent,” Spencer comments.

He takes the ship through a series of maneuvers; shoots through some mining shafts and back out into the deep-grids. The Eurasian gunship streaks after them—moving past the hi-ex mines that Spencer just slung against the tunnel wall. The ensuing explosions bring the roof down on it.

“Bought us some time,” says Jarvin.

“Not much,” replies Spencer.

It’ll have to do. The ceiling of the inner Room is peeling away above her. She’s streaking in toward another elevator now—one among so many, this one part of a funicular ramp that she’s setting in motion, her mind working its controls as she leaps on and turns to face the receding hub of the inner Room, targeting her guns and mind on it, waiting for what she knows is about to emerge—

They’re cutting in behind the SpaceCom rearguard, stealing between the units that are struggling to throw up a defensive screen. Lynx has got the Com’s cookbook thoroughly cracked by now. Besides, that rearguard has made its deployments largely focused on the incoming Eurasians. Lynx and Linehan reach a network of more shafts and get within the area where the bulk of the president’s forces are moving. But even here, there’s still a lot of fighting going on. It doesn’t take them long to figure out why.

Lot of free agents,” says the Operative.

He’s got Maschler and Riley manning the guns while he works the zone. The train’s racing out toward the center of the farside now, gathering speed with every minute, dropping ever farther. Velasquez is integrating her zone-readouts with those of the Operative. It’s an exercise in extrapolation as the situation gets ever more chaotic. But the overall contours are unmistakable.

“Makes sense,” says Velasquez.

“You’re being sarcastic?”

“Not at all.”

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” demands Sarmax.

“Szilard’s stirring up the refugees,” says the Operative.

“Those who fled the new orders,” says Velasquez.

Sarmax nods. Praetorians who made themselves scarce when Montrose took over. InfoCom soldiers who got the hell out of there when Szilard fucked their boss till she turned blue. Escaped convicts. Fleeing civvies. And the last of SpaceCom’s marines. There’s nowhere else to go but—

“Deeper,” says Sarmax.

Everyone’s trying to get out of the way,” says Jarvin.

Spencer nods as their train keeps on hurtling through the warrens. He’s been picking up many of the same signals. The lunar underground is like a jungle that’s being overrun by army ants. All of the denizens are on the move. Everyone’s under pressure. Including all too many who thought they’d gotten out of the way for good …

“Choosing the wrong side can be a bitch,” says Jarvin.

“I guess you should know,” says Spencer.

“And you should thank your lucky stars for that.”

“You’d better put up or shut up. We need to find—”

“We’re almost on top of it.”

“And the Eurasians are almost on top of us.”

She knows it all too well. Sinclair’s going to be on her any moment. She can feel his mind breaking out beneath her. The thought of seeing his face in the flesh terrifies her—even more so than the structures of the outer Room that she’s being hauled past—all the structures that she couldn’t see for certain on the way in, and that are now flashing past her eyes: vast pillars-that-aren’t-pillars, some of them supporting impossibly gigantic terrariums suspended like massive pods, glowing green with the flora they contain, all of them wrapped in the endless labyrinthine piping that coils everywhere like the entrails of some giant beast. She can’t even see the inner Room below her now—she’s set the controls of the elevator for maximum speed and is streaking up the funicular far faster than she descended. The real zone of this place is coming alive all around her, a texture she’s never encountered. She wonders what its next move will be. She jury-rigs the controls of the elevator to push it beyond its safety margins, hurtling upward to where she begins to glimpse something that just might pass for ceiling.

Explosions rumbling through long kilometers of tunnel, distant noise of firing, endless shards of fragmented zone: Lynx continues to take stock. He’s got a better read on the SpaceCom forces now. The elite marines remaining to Szilard are bunched into two groups: rearguard and everyone else. The real question is where Szilard himself is. And farther down the fighting is intensifying—

“Not looking good,” says a voice.

“Who the hell’s this?” says Lynx.

That’d be me,” says the Operative.

“Fuck’s sake,” says Lynx.

“Whatever,” says the Operative. No zone now, all mental—and he’s holding the channel open with almost no effort. He’s surprised at just how adroit he’s getting. It was strange to go through life for so long without any of this—even stranger to go through the next stage with the ability in latent form, just aware of the presence of Lynx and Sarmax, but with neither nuance or range beyond that. He’s not even sure what’s propelling him to these new heights. Maybe it’s the influence of Velasquez. Maybe it’s simply the onset of the end-times. Because now he knows how insignificant his abilities are compared to the real masters of the game.

“We’re out of time,” he says.

“That’s why we’re on the line,” adds Velasquez.

“Who the hell’s that?” says Lynx.

“Your worst nightmare,” replies Sarmax.

That’s about how Spencer’s feeling. He and Jarvin are doubling back and forth through the nearside rail-networks, trying to triangulate on the place that Jarvin is so sure of yet just can’t seem to find. Judging by the shaking of this tunnel, the Eurasian machinery is only a few levels up now.

“Other way,” says Jarvin.

“Again?”

“This time I’m sure.”

“No kidding.”

But Spencer turns the vehicle anyway, heads down the new passage. Maglev gives way to rails—which give out after a few more klicks, leaving Spencer to power them onward by rockets. Lights flicker across the klicks. And finally—

“Dead end.”

“I don’t think so,” says Jarvin.

Spencer doesn’t either. Because there’s definitely some kind of machinery on the other side of this rock. Some kind of zone. But it’s not like anything he’s ever seen. And as to hacking it—

“Fuck!”

“What?” says Jarvin.

“That burns.”

“It takes a light touch”—and Spencer feels Jarvin’s mind brush by his, reach out onto the zone. A section of wall slides away. Spencer stares at the elevator car revealed—and then he claps slowly.

“Never doubted you,” he says.

Jarvin looks at him, shrugs. “Makes one of us.”

The ceiling of the outer Room hurtles toward her, the structures through which she’s been passing falling away like the tower tops of some vast, demented city. She has yet to see any sign of Sinclair coming after her. As far as she can tell, he’s still exactly where he was to begin with—back in the hub. She’s beginning to wonder if that’s a decoy. He could be somewhere in the ceiling itself, hiding within the psychic emanations of the membrane, waiting for her. She’s analyzing that membrane now—running her mind across it. She braces herself, runs the sequences on the trapdoors coming ever closer.

Okay,” says the Operative. “We’re all on the same line now.”

Or at least the ones who count. Velasquez is speaking for her triad. As far as the Operative knows, she’s speaking for Sarmax, too. That man seems happier than he’s been in years. It’s something that seems to amuse Lynx considerably, a few hundred klicks distant.

“Finally found your dream girl, huh? Too bad the world’s gonna end in a couple more minutes—”

“Go fuck yourself,” says Sarmax.

“Shut up,” says the Operative. “All of you shut up and listen. Our only hope of getting through this is by combining all our forces. And that starts with us getting on the same fucking page. And we’re in a combat situation, so here’s how it’s going to work: I’m going to make a series of statements, and if I say anything that any of you disagree with—or if you know something that puts that fact in a new light—then now’s the time to fucking say it. Okay?”

No one says anything.

“Okay,” he says. “Sinclair’s in the Room and he’s switching everything on.”

Static. The Operative watches on the zone as their positions close upon one another …

“He’s got Haskell in there with him,” he adds.

“We don’t know that for sure,” says Lynx.

The Operative laughs. “Don’t we? He’s fucking with the fabric of fucking reality. Which is shifting under our fucking feet.”

No one replies.

“So all this war, all this fighting—everything that ever mattered, everything that ever will—all of it is coming down to one thing: whether we can get into the Room before Sinclair finishes hitting buttons.”

“But why hasn’t he yet?” says Velasquez.

“A good question.”

“It’s the question,” she says.

“And we can’t wait for the answer—”

“Has it occurred to you that he’s waiting for us?” asks Sarmax.

“Yes,” says the Operative.

They mull that over

“But I can’t see why,” he adds. “Haskell’s the one who—”

“She may not even be alive,” says Sarmax. “He may have already processed her—”

“Doesn’t matter,” says the Operative. “All that matters is that it’s all converging. That’s why the East’s shock-troops are heading deeper as fast as they can deploy onto the lunar surface. That’s why Szilard is—”

“—at the bottom,” says Lynx.

A pause. “You sure about that?”

“His advance-guard’s reached the fucking labyrinth.”

Through the doors and membrane of the Room and that’s where she is, too. Sinclair’s fucking labyrinth. A maze of impossible deathtraps that guard the main entrance to the Room, nestled in between the two perimeters—waves of zone and psychic signals assail her brain, and she can barely tell where the walls are. It doesn’t matter, though, because she’s plowing ahead anyway, her suit-jets flaring as she dives between hyper-sharp filaments that spring out toward her, but she’s maneuvering on pure future now—a moment ahead of all of it as she dodges past the first of the traps, ascending away from the Room ever farther into the maze to end all mazes.

They’re plunging downward at unholy speeds, pressed up against the ceiling as they accelerate. Turns out this elevator’s state-of-the-art maglev. They’re rapidly closing the distance between them and Moon’s core …

“Does this bypass the front door?” says Spencer.

“I sure as shit hope so,” says Jarvin. “His labyrinth’s a killing zone. Nothing’s getting through there.”

Spencer gestures at the elevator. “So how do you know about this?”

Jarvin shrugs. “A file I cracked and never wrote down. Sinclair’s special entrance so he could bypass all the crap.”

“So we might run into him en route.”

“Sooner or later, we’re going to run into him. And when we do, we’re going to give him a little surprise.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I want you to promise me something, Spencer: if it doesn’t work—do not let me fall alive into his hands.”

“If what doesn’t work?”

“I was one of his handlers, Spencer. And no matter what I’ve been telling you, the truth is that I know way too much about what he’s trying to do.”

“More than this? More than the fucking download we just got from the AI? We’re talking about the ability to fuck with everything—”

“And even that’s nothing. He’ll show no mercy to me. So if it all goes wrong—I need you to promise me you’ll kill me before that happens.”

“I might kill you long before that happens.”

“Now we’re talking,” says Jarvin.

All their minds are linked now. They’re maneuvering in upon the center of the SpaceCom position—Lynx and Linehan streaking in from the rear, the Operative and Riley and Maschler about to hit the flank. Sarmax and the Rain triad are getting out in front of where they think Szilard is. The plan’s simplicity itself: take Szilard from every direction and take him out, take over his forces and use them as cannon fodder against the labyrinth and Room. Their firepower is a mere fraction of Szilard’s elite marines, but they’ve got the upper ground on zone. And their minds are now operating at a level that nothing within the SpaceCom ranks can touch. They can’t nail the minds of the Com troops. They’re not that good. But they can put them under pressure all the same …

And she can feel it—the emanations of those Rain minds like smoke wafting high above her, shimmering through the endless mist of labyrinth, spreading fear and confusion among the SpaceCom ranks. It’s as she expected. No single one of the players is strong enough to stay alive solo, but combined their minds comprise a factor. As opposed to the minds of those now stumbling into the farside of the labyrinth—the SpaceCom advance forces. She can feel their spirits winking out like lights being extinguished as they make it barely inside the labyrinth before being liquidated, and it’s all she can do to avoid the same fate herself; she twists and turns and pushes herself off walls and prays she won’t hit one of the thousand dead ends or any of the ten thousand traps—prays that she wasn’t seeing the faceless visage of Control looming before her. But God died a long time ago.

Pursuit,” says Jarvin, and his voice has gone all taut.

Spencer picks it up too. Several kilometers back.

Another maglev car.

“Who the fuck is that?” he mutters:

“Could be Sinclair himself,” says Jarvin. For the first time he’s starting to look less than calm …

“Or guardians of this shaft,” says Spencer. He and Jarvin are doing what they can to get in on the strange zone that constitutes this whole route, running their hacks to commandeer the car they’re in and keep the electricity running as they shoot down rails toward the depths of Moon. But that other car’s making good progress all the same. It’s several klicks back, and there’s something more than a little strange about its zone-signature … to the point where it’s almost like it’s not there …

“Oh fuck,” says Jarvin.

Lynx and Linehan sweep in between the units guarding Szilard’s inner position, heading straight toward it, exchanging fire, then drawing off—a feint that pulls a good chunk of Szilard’s flank with it. Tunnels are folding up around them as the marines give chase. Lynx and Linehan start to double around, back toward Szilard’s command post—

What the fuck are you doing?” yells the Operative.

“Going for it,” says Lynx.

The Operative can see he’s not kidding. The plan was for Lynx and Linehan to make the feint and then let the rest of them get in there. But Lynx has never been one for playing second fiddle. And the Operative figures maybe that’s just as well. If Szilard’s still got anything up his sleeve, then maybe Lynx can be the one to find out first. The Operative signals to Riley and Maschler to get out on the hull as he maneuvers their vehicle in on the heart of the Com defenses …

Still playing their fucking games,” says Velasquez.

“They can’t stop,” says Sarmax.

Apparently. The final twenty klicks, and it’s total chaos. Lynx and the Operative are veering around Szilard’s mobile strongpoint like wolves around a campfire. Half the Com forces are fighting one another as their minds go. But the inner enclave of Szilard’s handpicked marines are holding steady, defending their president, their ranks still unbroken. They’re continuing to forge their way down toward the labyrinth. Which the advance guard has already penetrated—

“And gotten annihilated,” says Velasquez.

“Takes a special kind of maniac to go in there.”

She’s threading through the web of passages and somehow it helps that she doesn’t even know which ones are in her mind and which ones are carved in rock. All she knows is that Control’s looming before her like a disembodied ghost.

“Turn back, Claire.”

“What do you think I’ve already done?”

“I think you’re being very foolish.”

“When I want your opinion, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Matthew thinks you’re being very foolish.”

“Which is why he’s coming after me.”

“And you’re not moving fast enough.”

“He’s afraid of me, isn’t he.”

“Try to have some perspective, Claire.”

“I’ll show you fucks a thing or two about perspective.”

“Will you really?” Control laughs, and the noise is hideous. “Szilard’s fed a thousand soldiers into this labyrinth already. None of them made it more than five seconds. We’ll see how much better you can do. Give the old man a run for his money—why not? All the better, in fact. We need a fighter. We bred a fighter. Someone who’ll resist to the end of existence and beyond.”

“Precisely,” she says—and hits his mind full force.

What’s the problem?” yells Spencer.

“It may be a decoy,” says Jarvin.

“Fuck.”

It’s hard to tell. Which is probably the point. It’s made all the tougher by the fact that they’ve got no option than to stay on these rails. Because it’s all linear. There’s nothing in here but this shaft. They plunge onward while the pursuit closes in above them and they start to face up to the fact that the real pursuers may be elsewhere—

“Keep your eye on what’s below us,” says Jarvin.

“My thoughts exactly,” mutters Spencer.

Lynx and Linehan impact onto the core of Szilard’s formation, slicing through it, blasting shit aside—bombs flung off to nail huge tractor-tanks trying to maneuver down rift-galleries … Lynx is splintering the zone in the faces of the Com marines as Linehan fires away. Bodies are flying.

“He’s moving,” says the Operative.

“I see it,” says Velasquez.

Szilard’s dwindling forces are still heading forward. The Operative takes a look at the fading zone sensors way overhead, looks at the camera-feeds on all those endless kilometers of upper levels, the lunar cities swarming with the ravaging Eurasian infantry, the slaughter now developing among the civilian populations—they are sparing no one, the Operative notes. He starts detecting wave anomalies radiating out from the Room—

—as the vanguard of Szilard’s bodyguards slams straight into Sarmax and Velasquez’s position, shape-charges eviscerating the marines as their second rank comes up. Sarmax can see Szilard’s retinue accelerating even further, abandoning most of the troops and dodging past his position—

“Suicide run now,” says Carson.

“Or he knows something we don’t,” says Lynx.

“I’m picking up something weird from the labyrinth,” says Sarmax.

It’s like all the ambience around her is really a liquid through which she’s swimming—like she’s still back in that tank in Montrose’s bunker beneath Korolev—like all of it was memory or the event horizon of the initial drug surge … she stares at Control, who wears way too many faces; she composes her own while she slices straight through him, crushing in on his cognition—“How’s it fucking feel,” she’s hissing—and she can sense he’s hurting, and writhing; his mind slithers out of her grasp, retreats in disarray while she powers past him and through the other side of membrane. She stumbles through the far side of the labyrinth, emerging in a cave. Marines stare at her, start falling to their knees.

Picking up something ahead,” says Jarvin.

“Fuck,” says Spencer.

Maybe it’s the thing they’ve been running from. Maybe it’s something new. It doesn’t matter. They’ve got no choice but to go straight through it. They accelerate, start ripping out the elevator floor, getting ready to open up on whatever materializes in the shaft below. They’re almost on it.

Lynx and Linehan start the final run, vectoring in on Szilard’s position at near point-blank range. The best that can be said about the marines’ resistance is that it’s heroic. Lynx’s mind flays the meat of cerebellum as he uses the zone like a whip and augments the guns of Linehan, who’s roaring down the tunnel and into a cavern, straight onto one of three Remoraz-class crawlers moving like mountain goats down the walls. One of the crawlers crashes into the other as Lynx destroys their software: both crawlers lose their grip, tumble exploding to the cavern floor. Linehan’s doing his best to get through the armor of the thing he’s hanging onto. Marines elsewhere in the cavern start firing at him—and then Carson and Maschler and Riley come in through a different entrance and start cleaning them up. Linehan’s tearing off the treads of the crawler, ripping out its rocket engines to strand it as a metal coffin. He sticks several shape-charges onto the side, jets away. Lynx enters the room as they detonate.

Get him,” says the Operative.

But Maschler and Riley are already on it—joining up with Linehan to apprehend any survivors, closing on the president’s presumed position. The Operative and Lynx alight on opposite walls of the cavern—supervising the salvage operation that’s going on below while they scan—

“Executive node intact,” says Lynx.

“Roger that,” says the Operative.

But he’s also picking up intensifying pulses from the direction of the labyrinth—from the direction of the Room—like a tsunami building—

“The old man’s going for it,” he says.

“Easy,” says Lynx. “We’ll take it as it comes.”

“Clear,” shouts Linehan. Lynx and the Operative vector down to the ledge on which the wrecked vehicle’s laying while their three mechs take up covering positions. In short order Lynx and the Operative stand above Jharek Szilard, whom they’ve propped up against the side of the crawler. Blood cakes the inside of his armor. He’s still alive, but only barely. Lynx laughs.

“Nice to see you again, Admiral.”

Szilard shrugs—winces. “Played it … best I could …”

“No disputing that,” says the Operative.

“But … didn’t have your minds …”

“You wouldn’t want our minds.”

“I’d have … given anything for them …”

“To dare to modify yourself like Sinclair,” says Lynx.

Szilard shakes his head. “So here’s everything I know,” he mutters, beaming over all key Com files.

“And the executive node?” asks Lynx.

Szilard flips the Operative a chip, who nods as he catches it—

“You realize this won’t save you?”

“Nothing can save me,” says Szilard. “Sinclair’s mind is swallowing us all—”

“You feel it too?”

“How could I not?”

The Operative nods—shoots Szilard through the head and slots the chip into an interface in one of his guns.

“How’s it feel to be president?” says Lynx.

Aman could ask for better circumstances,” says a woman’s voice. Sarmax and the Rain triad blast into the chamber, take up positions above the mechs, point their weapons—

“Sarmax gets to be the prez,” adds Velasquez.

“You really think it matters?” says Lynx.

“It’s our only chance of fending off whatever the fuck’s coming up from the Room,” says Sarmax. “We need to combine minds far more seamlessly than we’ve done so far. One of us is going to have to step up and be the focal node.”

“And you really think that should be you?” says Lynx.

“I don’t know what to think,” says Sarmax.

“But Indigo does,” says Carson. “Fuck, talk about upward mobility. We give this thing to you, and she’ll be running things.”

Velasquez shrugs. “I’ve got the strongest mind of anyone here.”

“Bullshit,” says Carson.

“I’m the last leader of the last real Rain triad.”

“And I sat at the right hand of Matthew Sinclair while we cooked you fucks up.”

“And you both never knew when to settle,” says Sarmax. He feels like existence itself is beating against his face. The force that’s surging in from the Room seems to be taking on an almost physical form, it’s that strong. Sarmax looks at Velasquez. “Kid, let him have the fucking node. We’ve got no time—”

“That’s for sure,” says Claire Haskell.

She steps into the cavern and she can see the effect she’s having on them—can see that at least some of them can see the auras she’s radiating. She can see that they get it—that what they thought were psychic shockwaves emanating from the Room was actually her approaching their position. She stares for a long moment around the cavern—the shattered vehicles, the corpse of Szilard, the suited figures awaiting her next move. Her mind leaps out from there to encompass all the Moon beyond that, flitting past the Eurasians sweeping in from every direction upon the disintegrating American perimeters to focus in upon one remote corner of the nearside where Spencer and Jarvin are arriving in a room that contains the equipment they’ve been seeking. Her mind drops directions into Spencer’s head even as she notices Linehan dropping to his knees.

Get the fuck up,” says the Operative.

Linehan gets up, backs away. His face looks ashen. The Operative wonders whether the ayahuasca has made him more or less able to accept everything that’s going on. He wonders what Haskell must be feeling right now—if it’s even Haskell they’re dealing with—

“So what’s this about you being president?” she asks.

“That’s what we were discussing,” says Velasquez.

“There’s nothing to be president of,” says Haskell evenly.

“Surely someone has to run the resistance,” says Lynx.

“That’d be me,” says Claire Haskell. The Operative can feel her reaching into his head, activating the executive node, sending out the orders—her mind racing out to all the fragments of the zone in the American forces now fighting across the lunar environs—

MY NAME IS MANILISHI. THE RUMORS OF MY EXISTENCE ARE TRUE. I LEAPT INTO SOUTH POLE WHILE ALL YOUR CAMERAS WATCHED AND ALL YOUR GUNS COULD DO NOTHING. I FOUGHT AT THE SIDE OF PRESIDENT HARRISON. I’M HERE TO RALLY ALL AMERICAN FORCES. I CALL UPON ALL WHO ARE STILL ALIVE TO COMBINE—THOSE WHO SERVED HARRISON, THOSE WHO SERVED MONTROSE OR SZILARD—TO REMEMBER THAT WE ARE STILL THE UNITED STATES. FIGHT THE EAST WITH EVERY MEANS AT YOUR DISPOSAL WHILE I TEAR THEM APART WITH MY MIND, WHICH GOD HIMSELF SENT TO LIGHT UP OUR DARKEST HOUR. FIGHT ON, FOR OUR CAUSE IS JUST. FIGHT ON, AND MAY THE HEAVENS FIGHT FOR US.

I thought you said there was nothing worth being president of,” says Lynx.

“There isn’t,” says Haskell.

They stare at her.

“It’s just a rearguard action,” she says. “Buy us some time to get back to the Room; keep the Eurasians from that door as long as possible.”

Velasquez looks confused. “Your mind can’t—”

“—stop the Eurasians in their tracks? I’m not that good.”

“Not yet,” says the Operative.

She shrugs. “I could probably drive the first hundred thousand of them nuts, but the odds have become overwhelming. We’re outnumbered by at least ten to one. And as the bulk of their fleet lands they’ll eventually just send in waves of robots shorn from zone.”

“No one has an angle on the Eurasians?” asks Sarmax.

“I assumed that someone was controlling them,” says Lynx.

“That someone being Sinclair?”

“Or one of the other Rain triads,” says Sarmax.

“The Eurasians no longer matter,” says Haskell.

What about us?” asks Linehan. He’s daring now to look at this woman who seems so familiar—realizes now he’s seen her before, but how he failed to see her for real he has no idea. Because now there are colors dripping off her, and some kind of energy glowing in her that’s a pale fraction of something that’s emanating from the rock below. Linehan realizes his mind’s come totally apart. And if it hasn’t, then he’s probably died and has reached the afterlife for real. He knows how afterlifes work, too—one false step and you’re fucked for all eternity. Only by following this woman can he hope to stay true. She’s giving orders now, and everyone’s scrambling to carry them out—powering up their jets, following her ever deeper into Moon—

Where the hell are we going?” asks the Operative.

“You really think I’m going to talk to you?” says Haskell.

He figured it was worth a try. They’re heading down a series of ramps, moving through ground that’s obviously already been prepared. Szilard’s advance guard deployed here during the last hour. Haskell herself came this way less than ten minutes ago. The remainder of the SpaceCom marines in this sector fan out on either side, letting their new mistress pass through, along with her entourage—

—she figures she’d better revel in her moment of power, because she’s about to go up against the ultimate foe. Why Sinclair didn’t confront her directly back in the Room, she doesn’t know. Perhaps he figured Control would be enough to stop her. Perhaps he doesn’t need her after all. She rounds a corner to see the shimmering transluscence of the membrane blocking the way ahead.

“Here’s how we’re going to do this,” she says—starts to give commands. And they’re doing exactly what she tells them—bunching together, getting in close. She can tell that goes against all their instincts—that the last thing any of them want is to be so near that their armor’s touching. But she needs to envelop them all with her mind’s shield. She’s giving last orders to the SpaceCom marines, telling them to defend to the end. She knows that ultimately the Eurasians will be able to reach this point anyway. But unless she screws up, they won’t be going any farther. And if she’s right about what’s about to happen, none of it will matter anyway. She synchronizes everyone on the zone that’s all her own and gives the orders to get moving into that membrane—

And they do. Fast. It’s all Linehan can do to keep up—all he can do to stay sane as apparitions loom before him and spirits gibber at him—hollow-eyed ghosts staring straight through the barrier that Haskell’s slung up around him, pressing against his head. It’s like those things are pounding against his skull, trying to break in—like all of reality’s boiling inside his head. When it boils away maybe he’ll see straight through to what’s been hidden from him all this time. He grits his teeth, follows this woman-who’s-no-woman as she keeps on driving forward—

What the fuck are we dealing with, Carson?”

Lynx’s voice sounds as on edge as the Operative has ever heard—the voice of a man grasping for something to hold on to and falling way too short. The Operative is almost tempted to just let Lynx stew. But he can’t be sure he won’t be going there himself any moment now. So he lets himself just describe.

“Sinclair’s got a psychic moat,” he says. “Something that no normal mind could pass.”

“Not too many abnormal ones either,” says Lynx.

Nor is the mind enough. Reflexes are at a premium as well. Maschler, Riley, Linehan, Lynx, the Operative, Velasquez, and the other two members of her triad—they’re all following the instructions that Haskell’s flashing to them, following her as she forges forward—

It’s a little easier because she’s been this way before. The only way to get in or out of the Room without using a teleporter—but the labyrinth’s geometry is unreliable. It shifts every time one passes through it, is never the same thing twice. She figures that’s fitting—she gets a glimpse of Sinclair as a minotaur lurking in the catacombs of eternity, of herself as Theseus threading the final maze toward him. She senses more emanations foaming in from the Room, senses something new—

And when we get there?” asks Sarmax.

“We do whatever she says,” says Velasquez.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“What makes you think I’m not telling you something?”

Long experience. He’s considering all the angles as the maelstrom of the labyrinth whirls around them; he’s realizing that she’s playing at something, and he’s not sure he can stand to know—not sure that Haskell doesn’t know already—

“Control yourself,” hisses Velasquez, “or she will.”

“Our minds—”

“Your mind is under my protection. And mine is the only one that this superbitch can’t penetrate.”

“This superbitch is the only thing that can stop Matthew Sinclair—”

“She’s playing right into his hands,” snarls Velasquez.

Nor is she under any illusions on that score. There’s no contingency she can adopt that might not be something that Sinclair’s counting upon. Every stratagem she deploys might merely be the inverse of one of his. Every action she takes might be one more step in his master plan. His progeny have operated with all too many plans—all too many scenarios … and maybe they’re all just part of the design of the one who set it all in motion. But now she’s on the point of returning to the Room with the most elite armed escort ever seen. The fact that she doesn’t know whom among that escort she can trust is something she intends to turn to her advantage. She’s going to stay one step ahead of Sinclair yet. She powers through the other side of the membrane—glances back as they come on through behind her, almost laughs at the looks on their faces.