The Machinery of Light Read online

  Praise for David J. Williams

  “David J. Williams writes on the finest edge of science fiction. The Autumn Rain novels are driving and relentless, full of rock ’em sock ’em cyber warfare, space commandos, cutthroat politics and one stunning reversal after another. Strap yourself in. These books start fast and never let up.”

  —JEFF CARLSON, author of Plague War

  Praise for

  THE MIRRORED HEAVENS

  “Williams’s first novel delivers a powerful, rapid-fire SF adventure/intrigue story with echoes of cyberpunk. This stellar hard SF debut with hopes of sequels belongs in most SF collections.”

  —Library Journal

  “Slam-bang action and realpolitik speculations.”

  —Sci Fi Weekly

  “A crackling cyberthriller. This is Tom Clancy interfacing Bruce Sterling. David Williams has hacked into the future.”

  —STEPHEN BAXTER, author of the Manifold series

  “The Mirrored Heavens is a complex view of global politics in time of crisis. Williams understands that future wars will be fought as much on-line as off. It’s also rousing adventure with breathless, non-stop action—Tom Clancy on speed. And you will not be able to guess the ending.”

  —NANCY KRESS, author of the Probability trilogy

  “Explodes out the gate like a sonic boom and never stops. Adrenaline bleeds from Williams’s fingers with every word he hammers into the keyboard. The razors of The Mirrored Heavens would eat cyberpunk’s old-guard hackers and cowboys as a light snack.”

  —PETER WATTS, Hugo-nominated author of Blindsight

  “The Mirrored Heavens presents an action-jammed and audacious look at a terrifyingly plausible future.”

  —L. E. MODESITT Jr., author of the Saga of Recluse series

  “The Mirrored Heavens is a twenty-first-century Neuromancer set in a dark, dystopian future where nothing and no one can be trusted, the razors who rule cyberspace are predators and prey, and ordinary human life is cheap. It starts out at full throttle and accelerates all the way to the end.”

  —JACK CAMPBELL, author of the Lost Fleet series

  “The Mirrored Heavens has almost non-stop action. … [It] seems the verbal equivalent of a first-person shooter video game. The action is hard-hitting, as well as highly destructive and widely fatal. … The work … evokes some of the best of cyberpunk.”

  —Blogcritics Magazine

  “David J. Williams’s The Mirrored Heavens is a definite frontrunner for my ‘Unexpected Surprise of the Year’ Award. If Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, and William Gibson had ever teamed up to write a book, this is the sort of thing they would have come up with.”

  —Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist

  “Calling to mind Clint Eastwood and Dirty Harry … Mirrored Heavens’s action is wild and relentless. … Mirrored Heavens cleaves closely enough to the cyberpunk canon to be clearly identified with it, while departing from it sharply enough to refresh and renew its source.”

  —Seattle Times

  Praise for

  THE BURNING SKIES

  “[Williams] is standing toe to toe with Richard Morgan at his best.”

  —Rescued By Nerds

  “I loved it! … The Burning Skies is a great blend of military science fiction and cyberthriller that should appeal to fans of Richard Morgan.”

  —Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, 8 out of 10

  “About as perfect of a middle book as you could ask for. … [The] perfect mix of physics, technology, and action.”

  —MentatJack

  “If any Hollywood producer is reading this please do take up this series and think of it as a cross between The Matrix, Star Wars and The Spy Game. David J. Williams is a terrific writer and his vision is definitely one which is vastly different from what is being currently offered on the SF market scene. His books are the kinds which are truly made for the big screen … and with the dramatic ending in The Burning Skies … you’ll be shaking with anticipation for the third book to see how it all ends.”

  —Fantasy Book Critic

  BY DAVID J. WILLIAMS

  THE AUTUMN RAIN TRILOGY

  THE MIRRORED HEAVENS

  THE BURNING SKIES

  THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT

  To the Muses

  For carrying me through

  CONTENTS

  The Earth-Moon System on the Eve of World War Three

  Sketches of the After

  Flash Priority: Control to Senior Handlers

  Part I: Incandesce

  Part II: Apogee

  Part III: Lodestone’s Vigil

  Part IV: Eternity’s Ashes

  Part V: Autumn Rain

  Acknowledgments

  SKETCHES OF THE AFTER

  How then to do justice to such sketches? Start by saying that they were imperfect representations of imperfect things. They were flesh that wants to live reduced to ink or keystrokes—or just to memory ground beneath the mill of time. Yet those images, they might survive that flesh … that memory may yet evade the oblivion of eons, become instead the foundation for the tales that flow from old to young to ancient in endless migration across the chains of generation all the way to when the arks of the third planet scatter before the ravaging sun, when the descendants of apes watch the very concept of the years melt in flame behind them. Phrase the words just so, write them just right, and maybe they’ll make it that far. Maybe they’ll do justice to what really went down: the two twenty-second-century superpowers that watched each other across endless steppes and ocean—that feared and hated each other, that built arsenals that spanned the globe and more, looking down upon our planet from on high in space. Space. For even as the radio signals from the first Cold War echoed on the fringes of the Milky Way and sped toward the galaxy’s heart—even as the transmissions from Sputnik and Soyuz raced out into the endless parsecs to join forever with those of Gemini and Apollo … the spark of conflict that set those vessels in motion flared anew in an hour when our race’s promise and our race’s tragedy surged together in a collision that shattered across the shards of time, leaving in its wake only this poor substitute for the real thing, babbled by a madman long gone on the sheerest midnight, riding astride that which might comprise the story of Autumn Rain, tales of pandemonium and glory, sketches of the after to end all others, liquid words flung down from the sky, absorbing all tears, frozen in the ground for all of winter, yet pregnant with the possibility of coming forth one day someday into eternal spring …

  INFOCOM

  INTELLIGENCE

  22:05 GMT 10.01.2110

  FROM: CONTROL

  TO: ALL SENIOR HANDLERS

  CC: PRESIDENT STEPHANIE MONTROSE

  FLASH PRIORITY FLASH PRIORITY FLASH PRIORITY

  > PRESIDENT HARRISON IS DEAD

  > PRESIDENT MONTROSE HAS ASSUMED COMMAND OF ALL U.S. FORCES

  > PREEMPTIVE STRIKE AGAINST EURASIAN COALITION UNDERWAY

  TEXT AS FOLLOWS:

  While we have every confidence that the integrity of our zone/net infrastructure will be maintained intact during the destruction of the Coalition’s military capability, each of you must be prepared to operate in isolation should the eventuality arise. It is therefore necessary to familiarize you with the overall contours of our calculations. Three factors are paramount.

  The Eurasian Coalition: We anticipate that our DE/KE strikes will combine with our superior zone capabilities to deliver rapid and overwhelming advantage against the East. Establishing control of the Moon early will be critical, along with all libration points. In addition, the Coalition itself is just that: a coalition, and this can be turned to our advantage, as substantial fault lines exist between the Russian and Chinese nets, along with much mutual suspic
ion.

  SpaceCom: The partnership between InfoCom and SpaceCom has been instrumental in Montrose’s securing of the presidency/the zone’s executive node. That said, we must regard this alliance as temporary at best. All SpaceCom agents within your respective purviews should be monitored in anticipation of eventual termination; orders for this could come at any time, possibly before the cessation of combat with the Eurasians.

  Autumn Rain: As of a few hours ago, the core of this commando group was intact; while their individual situations vary (see attached ANNEX), all should be regarded as highly dangerous. They should be used if possible, but ultimately they must be disposed of. Information on any member of the Rain should immediately be reported to me, pursuant to further instructions. The Rain’s spymaster/creator, Matthew Sinclair, remains imprisoned at L5, and our agents are currently taking custody of him. However, it is believed that various documents of Sinclair’s remain at large; regaining such files is a task of utmost urgency.

  ANNEX: KEY RAIN AGENTS/ASSETS

  RAIN TRIAD (PROTOTYPE):

  Carson, Strom (RAZOR-MECH): Now working directly for President Montrose and responsible for recovering the rogue supercomputer Manilishi, which has escaped into the Congreve sub-basements beneath the lunar farside. Members of Montrose’s own bodyguard corps are accompanying Carson, and if necessary will ensure his liquidation subsequent to the Manilishi’s recapture. (It should be noted that Carson was one of the Manilishi’s trainers ten years ago, and as such, undoubtedly maintains considerable emotional sway over her.)

  Sarmax, Leo (MECH): Partnered with InfoCom razor Lyle Spencer to terminate fugitive U.S. handler Alek Jarvin and then investigate a Eurasian black-ops base beneath the Himalayas. Nothing has been heard from either Sarmax or Spencer since crossing into Eurasian territory some hours ago. Though Carson is the ostensible “leader” of the Carson-Sarmax-Lynx triad, Sarmax held that role in the years after the unit’s initial formulation (SEE FILE LG-340038AZ), when all three men held senior ranks in Praetorian intelligence. Sarmax retired soon after the non-prototype triads went rogue, when his lover—Rain agent Indigo Velasquez—joined the rebel Rain units. (We have reports that Velasquez was executed by Sarmax himself, which might explain the isolation/retirement from which he has only now emerged.)

  Lynx, Stefan (RAZOR): Led ex-SpaceCom mech Seb Linehan in an attempted assassination run on SpaceCom commander Jharek Szilard at the orders of the now-deceased President Harrison. Since Szilard remains alive, Lynx and Linehan must be presumed dead. The SpaceCom flagship Montana is still in lockdown, and no further reports have been received. Whether Szilard is still using that ship as his actual base remains unclear, and we are working to ascertain his exact location.

  RAIN TRIADS (NON-PROTOTYPE):

  Subsequent to the surgically altered prototype triad, at least ten more triads were developed via genetic acceleration. A significant portion of the Rain perished during their attempted insurrection. The remainder went underground and only recently resurfaced, destroying the Phoenix Elevator and setting in motion the current crisis. It is believed that all remaining members of all remaining triads are now deceased, subsequent to their defeat at the Europa Platform (SEE FILE LG-340489AZ), but we have yet to confirm this.

  MANILISHI:

  Haskell, Claire (RAZOR): Supercomputer/cyborg capable of running superluminal hacks (SEE FILE LG-340527AZ). Haskell was originally handled/run by Sinclair’s handler Morat, and maintained a romantic liaison with Rain agent Jason Marlowe. Both Morat and Marlowe are believed to be deceased at the hands of Haskell herself, and this history could be exploited when we take custody of the Manilishi. Acquiring control of her is our top priority.

  MESSAGE TERMINATES MESSAGE TERMINATES MESSAGE TERMINATES

  PART I

  INCANDESCE

  A woman listens to the world burn.

  It’s hard to miss. It’s on every channel. Reports rendered in toneless staccato, attack sequences confirmed by unseen machines, horrified civilian newscasts that suddenly go silent … the woman’s jaw hangs loose while her mind surfs the signals reaching the room in which she’s riding out the storm, as far away from this craft’s hull as possible. Vibrations pound through the walls as energy smashes into the ship from the vacuum beyond. The woman hears shouts as the soldiers in the corridors around her react to the blast-barriers starting to slide shut. She hears the muffled boom of each one closing, growing ever closer, the succession of walls parading past her and echoing in the distance.

  She’s locked into one of the modular sections now, along with ten other guards—and the prisoner in the high-security cell they’re guarding. She looks just like the rest of those sentinels, though really she’s nothing of the kind. She’s not sealed in either; she may be confined behind these doors, but she’s still in touch on zone, her razor awareness reaching out to the rest of the ship. Nearly half a klick long, the Lincoln sits at the heart of the L5 fleet’s defenses, on the libration point itself. The whole fleet turns around it. Beyond that is a sight like nothing ever seen …

  World War Three began ten seconds ago, with a sudden U.S. attack on the Eurasian Coalition’s forces across the Earth-Moon system. A cacophony of light hit the East—and within a second the East hit back with everything it had left. A myriad of guns keep on flaring like there’s no tomorrow. For many millions, there won’t be. The war to end all wars is underway in style. Way behind the speed-of-light weapons come the kinetics: hundreds of thousands of hypersonic missiles, projectiles, railgun-flung rocks—all of it swimming through space and streaking through atmosphere. And right now most of it’s way too slow in the face of massed particle beams and lasers: directed-energy batteries that flail against incoming targets even as they triangulate on one another. On the screens, the woman can see the Earth glowing as portions of the outer atmosphere reach temperatures they really shouldn’t. Chunks are coming off the Moon’s surface. The room in which she’s sitting starts to shake even harder. She hears one of the guards praying—his words audible only inside his helmet, but she’s hacked into that helmet, getting off on every fucking word—and every word is just one among so many … because now she’s honing in on Earth, sifting through the traffic that’s getting through the swathe of energy that’s bathing the planet. It’s so bad she has to take one of the mainline routes in; riding on the command frequencies, she plunges through air that’s shimmering with heat, drops deep beneath the Rocky Mountains and into the command bunker within which America’s planetside generals are monitoring events.

  Those generals are exclusively InfoCom and SpaceCom. All the other ranking officers have been purged, or have sworn to obey the new order. The death of the president has been announced to the armed forces, along with the order to take revenge upon the Eurasian foe whose assassins struck him down in his hour of triumph. There’s a new president now, and everyone’s getting in line fast. They’re too busy dealing with the blizzard of death blazing through the sky to do anything else. But so far the cities in both East and West are being left untargeted. Neither side can afford to bother with them. Both sides are bringing every resource they can to bear upon the challenge of breaking down the def-grids of the other, def-grids largely consisting of DE cannon arrayed in strategic perimeters, shooting at the waves of projectiles heading in toward them. It looks to be the mother of all free-for-alls.

  It’s anything but. The woman can detect an initial pattern already. The American preemptive strike has drawn blood. The Eurasians are reeling. She’s studying the planetside portion of the Eurasian zone now, watching the webwork of nodes that stretch from Romania to Vladivostok, from the wastes of Siberia to the Indian Ocean. She takes in the Eastern def-grids as they struggle to adjust to the onslaught. She’s looking for an opening, following the routes she’s been instructed to take. Moving beneath the American firewall and through a back door into the neutral territories—into a data warehouse in London, from there to Finland and across the Arctic Circle and through long-lost phone lines b
eneath the tundra, straight into the Eastern zone … straight into Russia. She’s never worked the zone like this before. She’s running codes that make her virtually unstoppable, swooping in across the steppes, closing upon a target.

  The target’s a man. He’s sitting in the sixth car of a Russian train, several hundred klicks east of the Caspian Sea, going at several thousand klicks an hour: full-out supersonic maglev, heading southeast. The train just went below the surface, and there’s palpable relief aboard at getting underground before the rail got pulverized. It looks to be a normal transit train—the last ten cars of the train are packed with equipment, the first ten cars with specialists and staff officers, bound for various bases and various locales. There’s nothing aboard that’s even remotely atypical.

  Except for the man the woman’s tracking.

  He’s one of the staff officers, sitting in a compartment all his own, staring at the wall that’s rushing past the window. She can see him quite clearly on the train’s vid, but somehow she can’t seem to get near him on zone. His codes are too good. She can trace the route they’ve taken, though. Doesn’t surprise her in the slightest that he’s come from the very center of Moscow, from cellars deep beneath the Kremlin itself.

  And yet he’s undercover. No one else aboard this train has the slightest clue he’s anything but what his ID says he is: a medium-range gunnery officer, attached to somebody’s staff in Burma. But the woman has been told this man is key—has been told she has to watch him closely. She expects she’ll find out what that’s all about soon enough. In the meantime, she’s tracing some signals he’s sending—riding alongside them as they flick out ahead of the train, along the rails and through a maze of tunnels, heading beneath the Himalayas, diving down toward the root of the mountains—