The Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams Page A

gone.
    “So how are you going to get us out of here?”
    “Let me get back to you on that,” she replies.

    F uck,” says Maschler.
    “No luck on the redundants,” says Riley.
    “Reboot,” says the Operative.
    “Already tried that,” says Maschler.
    “So do it again.”
    They shut the whole thing down, slot new batteries in, start it back up again. The batteries work. The screens flare back to life. But there’s no life in them. They’re spewing gibberish.
    “Fuck,” says Riley.
    “Maybe all that shit’s going to miss,” says Maschler.
    “Care to stake your life on it?” asks the Operative.
    “What would you have us do?” asks Riley.
    “I’d have you start the engines,” says the Operative.
    “Thanks,” says Maschler.
    “Let me clarify,” says the Operative. “You’ve already lined us up. We don’t need to steer. All we need to do is fire the burners.”
    “Huh,” says Riley.
    “So?” asks Maschler.
    “So how do I get to the motors?”
    “Go outside,” says Riley.
    “Great,” says the Operative. “Let’s go.”
    “All of us?” asks Riley.
    “You and I will suffice.”

    W hat the hell are you doing?” asks Marlowe.
    “The only thing I can,” the razor yells.
    She’s firing tracer rounds through the trapdoor, letting them go at rapid intervals to flare across the sky.
    “Morse code,” she says.
    “They’re probably a little busy up there,” says Marlowe. He goes from body to body, taking various devices: several grenades and a phosphorus charge that someone apparently was about to detonate to prevent this room from falling into Jaguar hands. Marlowe hooks his newfound possessions onto his belt. He hears a noise outside, looks up.
    Just in time to see something roar past the window.
    He screams at the razor to stop firing. She does. They hear something land on the roof.
    “They must have come up from the basement,” Marlowe shouts.
    “We’ve got no armor,” whispers the razor.
    Marlowe looks around the control room. The suit he glimpsed outside had light armor: not a match for what he was wearing earlier but far superior to what he’s got now. Marlowe steps back into the jumble of debris and bodies on the floor, kicks a shattered suit aside, grabs the assault-cannon that suit’s still clutching, rushes back up the staircase. He’s shouting at the razor to get out of his way. He rushes out onto the roof, starts firing at the suited Jaguar who’s just alighted upon it: and who now gets drilled through the visor by hi-ex armor-piercing rounds from Marlowe’s weapon. The Jaguar goes down, smoke pouring from his helmet. Marlowe hears suit thrusters below the level of the roof: he hears the razor scream. He races to the edge of the roof, leaps.
    For a moment he’s plunging. As he does he catches a glimpse of another suit, hovering in front of a nearby tower that’s been turned into more of an inverted melting icicle through the pounding of the now-silent space-to-grounders. Marlowe fires more hi-ex rounds, blows that suit backward into the tower even as he plunges past the hole in the wall of the control room—and sticks his feet out, finds purchase, twists into the control room itself. His head just misses torn metal. The Jaguar who’s just entered the control room through that hole is advancing on the staircase where the razor’s ensconced. Marlowe opens up: the suit whirls, burning—and then exploding as its motors ignite. Marlowe fires several more rounds for good measure, steps past what’s left of that suit. And hits the floor. Because every window’s being shattered. The room’s filling up with fire. Marlowe crawls along the floor to the staircase, steps into its shelter. The razor’s standing there, her gaze flicking between the sky and a still-intact computer monitor set into the wall.
    “Bought us maybe thirty seconds,” he tells her.
    But the woman doesn’t answer save to gesture at the sky. Marlowe glances at it—sees some kind of signal light