The Machinery of Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

longingly back. For one moment, it’s as though Jason Marlowe himself is on the other side. Her dead lover—she wants to get through that badly. She contemplates using explosives against the portal, but figures that this door was designed to withstandanything up to a nuke. So she tears herself away, turns around, and starts climbing up the side of pipe, back into a passageway, taking stock all the while of the noose that’s tightening around her.
    T he Operative watches his readouts as they show the margin of error vanishing. It’s all over. Haskell’s officially fucked, regardless of which zone-signature she’s hiding behind. The probabilities are dwindling to the point where all her potential routes intersect with one of his formation’s flanks. And those flanks are sweeping together like jaws …
    He figured she’d take the route she did. It was predictable enough. He knows how Haskell thinks. After all, he was there when she started thinking. He intends to be there at the end too. Which can’t be far away. He hopes it will be quick. He lets the contours of the war that’s blazing overhead waft through him as he moves forward, bodyguards closing up behind him, following in the wake of his suit’s thrusters.
    F ind the traitor.
    Find the fucking traitor and rip out his fucking heart. Tear his flesh to bits. Gobble his flesh right off the floor. Fucking
eat
him.
    Find the traitor.
    But other than that, there’s not much in the way of thought. There’s just a set of nerve-reflexes honed to professional levels and looking for a target. Because somewhere in this spaceship there’s a traitor. And loyal SpaceCom soldiers are looking for that traitor. Loyal soldiers just like—
    “Linehan.”
    Linehan looks around. But there’s no one there. Just more ofthis shaft that he’s been crawling through, more of the endless innards of the
Montana
. The sights of his suit’s guns triangulate on the walls up ahead, but they’re not picking up anything that even passes for a target …
    “Linehan.”
    It sounds like it’s right inside his skull. It sounds familiar—like someone Linehan used to know. Someone who knows more about Linehan than maybe even he himself does. Someone who’s become a trait—
    “Show yourself,” says Linehan.
    “Why?”
    “So I can kill you.”
    “I don’t think so,” says Stefan Lynx.
    “You’re marked for execution.”
    “So I’ve heard.”
    “You’ve betrayed Admiral Szilard.”
    “I didn’t
betray
anybody, jackass.”
    “You were—”
    “Trying to get control of his whole fleet.”
    “Because you’re Autumn Rain.”
    “The original, baby.”
    “You tried to use me to kill the admiral but your buddy Carson backstabbed you.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Definitely. You’re a traitor.”
    “Whatever,” says Lynx. “I know what you’re thinking.”
    “Yeah?”
    “That if you can keep me talking long enough your armor can trace me.”
    “So far it’s working.”
    “But here’s the thing you should be wondering: why the hell haven’t you informed the SpaceCom razor you’ve been paired with that you’ve been chatting with me?”
    “What?”
    “The SpaceCom razor. The guy who Szilard said go run point inthe jungle for. Few score meters back in the shaft behind you, right? I’m sure that guy’s at least a captain. Must be some hotshot razor.”
    “He’s tracking you—”
    “And he hasn’t found me. So why the hell haven’t you told him that the traitor’s on the line?”
    “You’re … fucking with my zone-signal … my software—”
    “Sure I am. But tell me why you haven’t even
tried
to get him on the fucking line!”
    “I … don’t know. I—”
    “I’ll tell you why. Because you’re dickless. Because I’m the fucking Cheshire cat and I’ve sent you my smile to tell you to wake the fuck up. Szilard’s already sold you out.”
    “I—what are you talking about?”
    “Jesus Christ! Do you leave your brain at the door when you check into Hotel