“Which may not matter if this disruption extends all the way to the border!”
“You don’t need to have a zone to seal a border.” And with that Spencer veers the ship down a southward fork.
Linehan shakes his head. “You’re dead,” he says.
“By all means,” says Spencer. “Off me and add me to the trail of bodies you’ve left strewn in your wake. It won’t change a thing about all the heat in front of us. Nor will it save you when you run smack into fire.”
“We’ve already hit that fire,” says Linehan. “Are you fucking blind? We’re carving through it. We’re on the cusp of London, man. How can you deny it?”
“As wishful thinking,” says Spencer. “As embarrassing. The thought that we could slip on through the zone’s border membrane: events have rendered it a fantasy. We could have done it in that train. We could have even done it in this. But, like you said—every alarm and then some has been raised. The nuke didn’t kill us, Linehan. We’re alive. How about we face the consequences?”
“How about we shape the consequences, Spencer? How about we do something besides running home with our tails between our legs?”
“I want to go home more badly than you could know. But you forget my home’s in front of me. And your home, that’s nowhere. You’re rootless, Linehan. Your soul’s even more mechanical than your flesh.”
“So what’s your point?”
“This: I don’t see you ripping me away from the controls and ripping me in pieces. I don’t see you ripping through the tunnels and making hell for London. I don’t see you doing much except for sitting there and sneering. In fact, I don’t see you doing anything save admitting that I’m absolutely right.”
“And if we don’t go for the border—”
“It’s no if.”
“And if we don’t go for the border, where the fuck are we going to go?”
Spencer tells him.
PART III
INVERSION
Midnight at the Moon’s south pole. Always midnight down here. Always these voices in your head when you’ve been on the run too long. Always these voices that help you stay out in that cold for even longer.
Especially when they don’t know the whole story.
“Carson. You’ve done it.”
“Done what.”
“Killed him.”
The voice of Stefan Lynx is flush with triumph. The Operative just feels tired.
“Tell me you have more to tell me than that.”
“Confirmation is always good news, Carson. Was it hard?”
“Hard enough. What do his files say?”
“I mean was it hard to pull the trigger?”
“Not especially. What do the files say?”
“Would you do it all over again?”
“What do the fucking files say, Lynx?”
“That Leo Sarmax was one tricky customer.”
“I could have told you that.”
“You could have guessed that. What you just uploaded confirms it. There doesn’t seem to have been any game up here he didn’t have himself dealt into.”
“That’s great, Lynx. Was he dealing with the Rain?”
“There’s no evidence of that,” says Lynx. “Not yet anyway. But I have found a lot of evidence to suggest he was looking for them.”
“To do what?”
“Who knows? Do business with them, maybe. Sell their whereabouts to us, maybe. Or to someone else.”
“Sounds like a very dangerous game.”
“No shit,” says Lynx. “Look where he ended up.”
“Much more likely that the Rain would find him than the other way around.”
“One would think,” says Lynx. “But again, that’s why I targeted him, Carson. The man was a nexus. A conduit. Even in death, a middleman. His organization—the whole web of companies he set in motion—is a machine that’s got a link into basically everything that’s going on up here.”
“And now we’re inside.”
“And outside. And all around. Everyone who so much as sniffs at you—I’ll dissect them without them even realizing it. Everyone whom Sarmax had a file on, I’ll get a hundred more. SpaceCom intelligence knows nothing about you. And even less about Sarmax. They haven’t a clue that he used to be one of us. They haven’t a clue what we’re about to pull.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“How do you think? I’m camped out in their fucking mainframes, remember? And get this, Carson—the whispers atop the SpaceCom rafters is that the farside of this rock harbors the Rain’s main stronghold.”
“Yeah? Based on what intel?”
“Well,” says Lynx, “that’s the big question, isn’t it?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I mean I’m still finding out.”
“And is SpaceCom passing word of its suspicions back to the Throne?”
“Put it this way,” says Lynx. “I’m passing this back to the Throne. I’ll keep on doing that. But that’s my obligation. It doesn’t cut the other way. The Throne doesn’t tell me shit about who’s giving it what. It doesn’t have to.”
“Doesn’t it,” says the Operative. “I mean, you’d think it would be useful for us to know if the Com is withholding a piece of data like that. Because if they’re playing that kind of double game, then—”
“We’re assuming they’re playing that kind of double game,” snaps Lynx. “I mean, who the fuck isn’t these days? Wake up, Carson: there’s a reason I’m buried in these comps. The Rain could be the very treason within SpaceCom that we were sent up to find in the first place. It could have been that way from the start. It might have become it in the days since. And even if it hasn’t, we’re still going to need the Com’s files. Their eyes see so much up here. They may not even realize the significance of everything they process. But with one foot in their living guts and the other in the dead heart of Sarmax, we’ve got the inside track on Rain. And that trail leads out to Congreve Station.”
“In the center of the farside?”
“That’s the only Congreve I know of, Carson.”
“Where exactly?”
“Northwest district. Upscale residential area. Sarmax maintained an address there.”
“And you want me to set up shop there.”
“Got it in one, Carson. I want you to go there and set up shop. And do some digging in the Congreve speakeasies. Sarmax had more than a few contacts strewn through them.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Oh, various characters,” says Lynx vaguely. “Various lowlifes. Congreve’s quite a place, Carson. It’s the largest city that never lays eyes on Earth. It’s the heart of SpaceCom power. The L2 fleet hovers in the sky above it like a demented sun. All of Congreve is dedicated to that fleet, Carson. That’s the whole reason the town exists. And you can be sure that’s one of the reasons the Rain are up here.”
“To blow that fleet?”
“You have to admit that in terms of spectacular targets, that would be a good one. Congreve was always going to be one of the possibilities for the next move of the physical vector of this mission. But the latest intel makes it essential. It gives us no choice but to send you there.”
“Fine,” says the Operative. “When do I leave?”
“As soon as we’re done here.”
“Transportation?”