So be it, thought Smith. If they want me, then they’ll have to earn it.
He set aside the night-vision binoculars he was using to spot for Duffy and picked up his own rifle.
“Hooah,” he said.
Duffy grinned. “Hoo-fucking-ah.”
They opened fire at the swarming figures.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-NINE
The stairs went down and down and down. Through long patches of darkness and into a light that seemed to come from the burning heart of the Earth herself.
Great coils of steam rose from below, and when I looked over the edge of the railing I could see the work platform far below. A dozen men milling like ants around something that gleamed like silver. A God Machine, I had no doubt. A big one. Bigger than the one in D.C. And around it were smaller ones that the workers were lifting and carrying away with them. From what I could make out, they had finished the construction of the devices, or at least all the ones down there. But they were still placing them.
My heart lifted and perched on a fragile branch of hopefulness. There was still time.
The stairs were metal, so I had to move slowly enough to stay silent, and it was a long way down. The elevator looked like it opened right behind the big machine, so taking that would definitely have been suicide.
I moved down and down, and I could feel the rising heat even through the suit’s cooling system. Sweat stung my eyes but I blinked them clear.
Down and down.
When I was two flights up from the bottom I paused again and gave my earbud the tap-pattern to let them know I could hear but not speak. I wanted confirmation that they were seeing this, too.
There was absolutely nothing. Not from the TOC, the ORB, or my team. I glanced around. Down here, deep inside the caldera, this close to a trillion tons of lava and gas, yeah… no signal of any kind was getting out without a cable running up to the surface.
Fair enough. It meant the assholes down there weren’t speaking to anyone, either. I crouched and watched, letting what I saw teach me.
The big God Machine was maybe six times larger than the smaller ones, though less than a fifth the size of the massive one at Pushkin. It had a line of green crystals in slots on its side, but they were covered with a thicker slab of glass that was veined with wires. Some kind of signal blocker, I guessed, to keep the effects of the activated crystals from affecting the workers. Okay, that made me unclench a little. And I thought about the wires in the coverall I was wearing. Maybe a backup to that? I hoped so.
The God Machine was already on. I could see it vibrate and the air around it shimmer. The effect made the stone wall against which it was set look insubstantial. Hard to say whether that was an accurate assessment or merely a distortion effect, like a heat haze. No green men stepped through, though; nor did I catch any glimpses of alien worlds.
The smaller machines were not active, it seemed. The workers picked them up and placed them on carts before pushing them down side tunnels. When I leaned to look into the tunnels it appeared as if they curled around, and my guess was they formed a ring around what I assumed was a rock-lined thermal vent. I’m no scientist, but I’ve blown enough things up to be able to make an assessment. If the vent was as big as it looked, based on the arc of the tunnels, then it seemed likely Valen was going to use his machines to drastically destabilize it once all of the devices were on. The big machine already running had probably set the groundwork — literally — by tampering with the fault lines running through the whole caldera. I would have bet a shiny nickel that there were more of the big ones somewhere. Running. Getting the whole thing ready to blow.
I saw something odd — well, something in keeping with the general and pervasive oddness of the scene. The tunnels themselves seemed to shimmer, very much like the walls had in the hallway at Pushkin. What did that mean? Were they real tunnels, or some kind of matter disturbance effect of the God Machine?
The big question remained… what next? I had a whole bunch of grenades as well as some blaster plasters. I could blow the big God Machine halfway into orbit. What, though, would be the effect? Did those machines just turn to rubble when they blew? The ones in D.C. exploded with real force. What would happen to the big vent if I destroyed this one?
Would destroying it be enough? What if the machine needed to be adjusted and dialed down, like cooling a nuclear reactor? The more complex the machine, the greater the forces within it, the more complex it gets to turn it off.
I mean, sure, I could try and force Valen to do it, but how would I know if he was doing that or turning it so high it overloaded? I already half suspected he was out of his mind and maybe suicidal, because he was here instead of fleeing the country before it blew.
Which meant… what? Was our race against the clock not as down to the wire as it seemed? If so, damn, that would make a really nice change and I would promise to devote my life to good works and Jesus. Hell, I’d get a sex change and become a nun if this was all next week’s doomsday clock.
But I didn’t think so. Too many loose ends. Too many of these militiaman flunkies who could get drunk and talk big and ruin the whole thing. No, I thought the clock was ticking and boom time was close.
Real damn close.
But how to stop it? I was pretty sure the tallest of the three men nearest to the big machine was Valen Oruraka, because he was giving orders to two others.
Well, as my old math teacher tried to explain to me once, when faced with a complex problem, begin by solving those parts you understand.
Okay.
I crept down to the ground level, picked up a clipboard that was resting on the edge of a cart, walked over to the men loading a God Machine onto another cart, and shot them in the head. Another man cried out and tried to unsling a rifle. He died, too.
First part of the problem solved.
The tall man whirled and stared at me through the orange lenses of his goggles. Yeah, the same eyes I’d seen in D.C. looking down the barrel of a Taser, except now I had the only gun.
“Hello, Valen,” I said.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FORTY
He stared at me with eyes filled with strange lights. Not madness, exactly, but definitely a profound surprise, horror, and something else. Relief? No, that was wishful thinking on my part.
“Ledger,” he said hoarsely.
I touched the barrel of the gun to his face, right between his goggle lenses.
“Turn it off,” I said.
Valen reached up a gentle hand and moved my gun barrel. Not to the side, but down, placing it over his heart. Making a statement about his acceptance of what I could do, but also creating an easier line of communication between us. It was a strangely intimate act.