The Machinery of Light by David J. Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

her. Mongolian faces stare into her own. They pick her up, hustle her down the tunnel while more tremors shudder through the rock around them.
    T he Operative signals his team, gets them moving in new directions. They’re charging into a new set of tunnels, well beyond Congreve’s outskirts, dating from the end of the last century. The Operative can feel a whole sector of Congreve scrambling into action behind him. But he’s not waiting—just streaking forward into the areas where the sentinels have stopped reporting.
    And all the while he’s thinking furiously. About what the fuck
Eurasians
are doing in the most important American base on the entire farside. Assuming they even
are
Eurasians. Assuming that Montrose isn’t fucking with him. He’s been expecting her to try—just not this early. So he has to assume he’s dealing with the East—has to assume, too, that if they’ve managed to get in, it’s due to either treason or a first-rate infiltration squad. Or both—
    “Contact,” says a voice.
    It’s one of the mechs on point. Data floods the Operative’s skull as he coordinates the assault on the enemy that’s blocking the corridors up ahead. It’s basically an exercise in firepower: Montrose is feeding him reserves as fast as she can—and as fast as he can get them, they’re being fed into the fray that’s raging up ahead. Walls are getting torn up by hi-ex; suits spray one another at point-blank range. The Operative is giving up trying to keep his original force intact. He’s just using it as the centerpiece of a club to break through the resistance as quickly as possible. He’s succeeding—rocketing into the heart of the combat now, firing with all his suit’s guns, getting in hand-to-hand with a Eurasian commando, dispatching him and gunning down the ones behind him.
    Even though he knows he’s lost. This Eurasian raid is clearly over. What he’s facing is a rearguard, charged with buying the main force time while it retreats along tunnels that must have been dug awhile back. Tunnels that apparently link up with the U.S. deep-grid lines, hollowed out in preparation for this day. Meaning that presumably there are many others. The Operative’s guessing this particular operation’s based out of Tsiolkovskiy crater, theclosest Eurasian farside territory to Congreve. Though he can’t believe that place is still holding out.
    Unless …
    Even as he breaks through what’s left of the rearguard and hits his jets, the Operative’s working the hotline with Montrose’s HQ, accessing and downloading the latest data for this section of the farside front. Turns out Tsiolkovskiy’s the only place the East’s got that’s still intact on this side of rock. And there’s no sign of Eurasian forces attacking Congreve from any other direction. Meaning what could have been the war-winning move under other circumstances is just a last desperate gamble.
    Which is precisely what the Operative’s dreading. He knows all about rearguards—knows, too, all about the word
expendable
. He’s flooring his motors now, hoping to get past what he knows damn well is about to happen. He can practically feel the blasts start to rip the tunnel apart. It seems his whole life is going up in smoke before him …
    But he’s still breathing. Still moving—streaking out of the older tunnels and into newer ones. And as those all-too-recently hewn walls blur past him he starts to see something else. Something that’s inside him—surfacing right inside his fucking head, coming out of nowhere. It’s Haskell herself. Sounding as though she would rather say anything besides what she’s saying now:
    Help me
.
    The Eurasian charges start to detonate around him.
    T his place could go up any moment,” says Lynx.
    Linehan stares at him. “And Szilard really isn’t here?”
    “He left the
Montana
ten minutes ago.”
    “Going where?”
    “Great question.”
    “And why the hell would he blow up his own flagship in the middle