“Well,” says Sarmax, “now you don’t even have to wait.”
“I’ve already waited far too long,” says the Operative.
“We both have, Carson. We both know it. Look at us. We’re practically old men. You’ve been around for half a century. I’ve been on the loose for even longer. Not for us are the ways of the new breed. Not for us the zeal of the latest contenders. Turn your back on this whole thing, man. Turn your back on that crazy plan. You know that’s what you want. An alliance between us was where this was always going. We’ll put all our energy into pushing it outward. We’ll shove the frontier out to where time mills dust into forever. You and I, Carson. This is where it all begins.”
“And ends,” says the Operative.
He steps backward into space. Sarmax whips his arms up, lets flame erupt from his wrists. Fire shoots through the space where the Operative just stood—but he falls below the level of the platform, tumbles down amidst a webwork of support beams. He starts his jets, roars into a new maze. Lasers streak down from on high as Sarmax dashes to the edge.
“Keep running and you might actually win,” he sneers.
“Exactly,” says the Operative.
He fires his last micromissiles. They explode amidst the beams. The edifice above him starts to sway. Sarmax leaps from it, blasts upward. The Operative emerges from the other side, rockets over more ramps, opens up on Sarmax. The two men roar parallel to one another as they exchange fire.
Until Sarmax scores a direct hit on the Operative’s thrusters.
There’s an explosion. The Operative feels heat across his back. He feels like his spine just got severed. He fires the auxiliary jets on his wrists and ankles at full blast. They give him a tiny amount of leverage. Tiny—and nowhere near enough. He hurtles past more ramps, somehow dodges a crane. He veers beneath all that infrastructure, closes in on the sloping wall of the chamber. Rocks rush toward him. He feels something smash against his arm. He hits the ice and starts to slide. He extends claws on hands and feet. They shear inward. His arm is almost ripped from its socket as his visor slams up against the ice.
The Operative retracts one hand, lets himself dangle outward. He takes in the situation. His shoulder racks are wrecked. He’s on a slope some thirty degrees in incline. He twists around to face that nightmare structure. He can see now how it’s built out over these slopes of ice. How it’s intended to allow drills to be shoved up against the surface. He can see the drills themselves, slung low along some of the platforms.
But he can also see Sarmax. A suit of armor far more together than his own, circling some twenty meters overhead.
“Carson. Didn’t I always tell you engines are more important than weapons?” The soaring flight pattern proclaims nothing save triumph. But the voice is almost sad.
“Fuck you,” says the Operative.
“On the contrary.”
“I may yet surprise you.”
“I don’t think anything that happens in what remains of your life is going to be the least bit surprising,” says Sarmax. He swoops downward, fires a salvo five meters to the Operative’s left. Then another, five meters to the Operative’s right. “Though it’s funny it should come down to this, isn’t it? All those times and all those runs and it all ends up with you stuck to a wall like an insect. And all I need to do to make it official is grind my boot.”
“So get it over with,” says the Operative.
“Not before you tell me where Lynx is holed up.”
“Why the fuck should you want to know that?”
“So I can nail him too, Carson. Was that fuel sustaining your mind as well? I have to take him out lest they send more mechs for me.”
“They probably will anyway.”
“Nothing wrong with buying myself a little time. Where is he, Carson?”
“Surely you can pull the answer from my skull after you finish with me.”
“But it’d be so much easier if you told me.”
“You mean if I told the Rain, Sarmax.”
But Sarmax only laughs. “I’m not the Rain, Carson. I already said that. Besides, it’s not like the Rain’s a fucking secret to anyone who’s really in the know. No matter what they’re telling everyone else: it’s not like you and I don’t know exactly who we’re talking about.”
“Funny, that’s exactly what your bitch said to me before they snuffed her.”
And suddenly Sarmax’s lazy spiraling patterns cease. He swoops downward like a bird of prey, roaring in toward the Operative—and swerves aside at the last moment, hitting the slope a few meters up. He perches there, opens up with lasers on the ice to which his target’s clinging. At some point during this sequence of events, his voice becomes coherent enough for the Operative to understand it. Though Sarmax is doing nothing save cursing. He sounds like a demon who’s just been tossed from hell.
“That’s great,” says the Operative. The lasers whine scarcely centimeters from his visor. The ice is starting to get noticeably less solid. Water’s running across his suit. He digs his hands in deeper. “Priceless. You getting a tape of yourself?”
“You I can forgive,” screams Sarmax. “After I kill you, that is. Lynx I can’t. It must get him so hard to see you and me set on each other like dogs. I’ll tear that motherfucker limb from limb. Fucking razor—living vicariously through all of us and never doing fuck-all himself.”
“Actually he’s been quite busy,” says the Operative. “He’s been in the tunnels of Agrippa for several days. He’s gone walkabout in the SpaceCom comps. I’m sure the Com would love to get the heads-up. Though I’ll be damned if they’re going to hear it from you.”
And with that, he fires a tether straight at Sarmax, strikes him full in the chest with a magnetic clamp. Before Sarmax can shear the cord away, the Operative is pumping out voltage from what’s left of his power packs. For an undamaged suit, that wouldn’t be much of a problem.
For one as badly damaged as Sarmax’s, it’s a different story.
There’s a blinding flash. The Operative hears Sarmax curse. He relinquishes the tether, watches as Sarmax extends his body full off the ice, brings his hands forward with the well-practiced motion of someone starting his thrusters. But instead there’s another explosion and Sarmax tumbles onto the ice. He crashes into the Operative, knocks him from his weakened perch even as the two grapple. In this fashion they slide down the ice together.
They accelerate quickly. The infrastructure above them vanishes as though it’s being hauled upward on the back of a rocket. The darkness is near-total. It’s broken only by two things. One is the lights of both their suits. The other’s a red glow that’s starting to take shape beneath them. As that glow draws closer, the frenzied nature of their struggle intensifies.
“Do you recognize that light, Carson?” mutters Sarmax.
But the Operative says nothing. He’s intent on trying to somehow reverse the position of himself and Sarmax. He’s trying to shove Sarmax flush against the ice. He’s doing anything he can to put his opponent between him and whatever they’re about to run into.
“Carson,” says Sarmax. “Do you recognize that light?”
They’re almost down amidst the glow. It’s not just one glow, either. It’s several. They’re stretching out on all sides.
“Like moths to the candle,” says Sarmax. “We’ll burn together.”
The Operative’s doing his damnedest to forestall it. For now he manages to get his leg out from under Sarmax’s—manages to lever it against Sarmax’s side. He shoves Sarmax down onto the ice beside him. He smashes his fist against Sarmax’s head. Sarmax is giving as good as he’s getting, if not better. But now their slide’s starting to get less steep. They’re starting to slow.