The Departure

by Neal Asher

  Now the entire tubeway shuddered under the clash of combat. Through multiple sensors Saul observed the robot-on-robot battle outside, and realized he had no way of knowing which side would win. If one of Smith’s robots made its way inside this tubeway first, then Saul was dead—though the reverse applied too.

  “You are a greater enemy of freedom than I considered,” declared Smith ludicrously, one hand at his collarbone, where blood and suit sealant had begun welling underneath. He looked grey and sick and—to Saul’s eyes—scared.

  Saul didn’t bother replying. Navigating only by cam view, he grabbed a nearby safety handle, propelled himself over to the knife and snatched it up, his shoulder jarring against the floor and causing something to twang painfully in his side. He then rolled through the air, bringing his feet down to adhere, pushed himself upright again and held the knife ready. However, this time Smith did not seem inclined towards hand-to-hand fighting. He resorted to a mental assault instead, but it bounced away as Saul now recognized it and closed down that route into his mind.

  Smith suddenly turned and fled, propelling himself along the tubeway, perhaps knowing he would lose in any physical encounter, but not knowing that Saul could hardly see him. Saul tried to slow him by interfering with the operation of his limbs, but Smith had closed down that route too and, in retreat, presented a sheer and slippery surface that Saul could find no purchase on. Tracking him by cams, Saul stuck with him to the limit of his own domain.

  Smith hauled himself to a halt before moving beyond the last of the cams that Saul controlled. Hand pressed to his knife wound, he gazed up at the nearest lens.

  “We will conclude this matter later, Citizen,” he managed to gasp.

  Then he was gone.

  ***

  Outside the tubeway itself the robot-on-robot battle continued, but the ones Smith controlled were now steadily retreating. This might look like a victory, but Saul knew otherwise. Smith might have pulled back, but mentally he seemed stronger. Though by using the element of surprise Saul had carved out a little realm for himself, Smith still controlled the rest of the station, its personnel, and the bulk of the robots. And now those jagged flashes of light were killing the last traces of Saul’s human vision, his side hurt even more than his head, and he was beginning to cough up foamy blood. Without medical attention he could soon die here, he realized, but he needed to give himself a breathing space.

  Taking a firm grip on the readerguns he did control, he began opening up on security personnel, but even now many of the troops were withdrawing into those grey areas where the readerguns were out of commission. Only those whose escape routes were blocked by the guns or robots that Saul controlled were still trapped.

  As he lay there, blood bubbling in his lungs, Saul perceived a number of options. He could continue this local slaughter until no one remained standing against him, but with cold calculation he realized that he might need personnel on his side to finally win this place. That meant demonstrating some compassion, even if it wasn’t genuinely there. He therefore shut down readerguns and put his robots on hold.

  “Lay down your weapons,” he broadcast to those trapped soldiers, through personal fones and spacesuit com systems.

  Through a thousand cams, he watched security-force personnel still firing on the robots poised to fall upon them. Some had already destroyed readerguns that had turned on them, that had been blocking their retreat. Hundreds of messages slid into the network, seeking instructions from the commander, or from Smith and his immediate subordinates, but so far no replies seemed to be forthcoming.

  “This section of the station is no longer under Smith’s control,” he informed them, his lips merely miming the words, but the com system turning them into something stronger than he himself could physically manage. “I am now in control of all local computer systems, robots and readerguns, so you will drop your weapons immediately and either leave the area extending between Arcoplex One and the Arboretum, and including Tech Central, or return to your quarters to await instructions.” With that, he made the robots in the area jerk forward menacingly like war dogs pulling at their leashes, and set readerguns in motion momentarily, but did not allow them to fire.

  A fit of coughing racked him suddenly, more blood emerging, his breath becoming noticeably shorter. Saul rested for a moment whilst watching the security forces scattered about the area. Listening to the exchange of orders, he finally managed to locate the military commander of all these troops. It was a guy called Langstrom, so he opened up com with him.

  “Political Director Smith has abandoned you,” he explained. “I now have absolute control of this section. The only choice you now have is whether you obey me and live, or disobey and die.”

  Momentarily transferring his attention to Tech Central, he saw Braddock herding all but three of the staff outside and sending them on their way. Hannah meanwhile held the remaining three at gunpoint, so perhaps it was Braddock’s idea to keep a limited number of hostages. But they needed to be people Smith actually cared about, and Saul doubted that such people existed. He next explored Tech Central’s schematic, in his mind, quickly finding what he required, then connected to a simple cleaner robot nearby and sent it over to Hannah’s location. Finally he summoned one of the least damaged construction robots remaining just outside the tubeway.

  “Who is this?” Langstrom responded, with seemingly admirable calm.

  About twenty troops had retreated into another tubeway, where they had eliminated the nearest readergun. They were obviously on the point of heading for the next gun along, just as Saul started making his announcements. Langstrom was a wiry black man clad in the same style of vacuum combat suit as his soldiers, except with a silver diagonal bar across the front, and he now stood near an uncompleted section of tubeway, gazing out into the web of girders running between the latticework walls. Within view were soldiers who until then had been fighting desperately against robots that Saul controlled.

  “My name is Alan Saul, but that of course means nothing to you.”

  “Precisely,” Langstrom replied.

  Just a mental nudge caused all the robots within view to once again advance slightly. Firing broke out again, until Langstrom issued orders into his helmet mike.

  “If he really controls all the readerguns and robots, like he says he does,” observed a huge bulky man standing just behind Langstrom, “we don’t stand much chance of getting out of here.”

  “And if he’s lying, and we surrender our weapons,” said Langstrom, “you know damned well what Smith will do with us.”

  “Have you recently received any word from Smith?” Saul interjected.

  Langstrom shook his head involuntarily, then said, “No word, as yet.”

  There was nothing to stop Smith from communicating with his troops isolated here, but it seemed he considered them even more dispensable than the robots he had withdrawn from the fighting earlier. Saul also wondered if Smith was now receiving medical treatment, just like he himself would need very soon.

  “He wasn’t lying about these readerguns here,” said the bulky man, eyeing two corpses sprawled at the edge of the tubeway. “And he’s not lying about the robots either.”

  Langstrom nodded. “What guarantees are you offering?”

  “You know I need to offer you none,” Saul replied.

  The man again tried for some response from Smith, but got nothing. He then cursed and tossed down his machine pistol.

  “Smart move,” Saul remarked.

  “You’re watching?” Langstrom asked.

  “As I told you, I have control in a limited area, but my control there is absolute.”

  “You’ll let my men come in?” Gesturing up at the nearest cam, Langstrom pointed out the robots that hovered menacingly.

  “So long as they don’t try anything stupid, Langstrom,” Saul agreed.

  Langstrom nodded briefly and waved his men back. Speaking over com, he called them all in, and soon they began retreating.


  “What is it you want?” was his parting question.

  Right then, Saul wanted more than anything to not be leaking so much blood inside his suit.

  “Not your concern right now,” he replied.

  As the commander moved off, Saul opened com with Tech Central. “Hannah,” he began.

  Braddock was now back inside, too, where he had ordered the three remaining captives to call up views of the surrounding area on their screens. Both he and she looked up simultaneously.

  “A cleanbot has arrived just outside, and I want you to follow it.”

  “Where to?”

  “There’s a surgical area located one floor below you.”

  “I see,” she said, suddenly looking worried.

  Just then the construction robot arrived, dropping through the hole in the tubeway roof, and advanced towards him. He could only see it through the cams, as he programmed in its next location, retracing Smith’s escape route along the tubeway, before giving it very careful instructions about how to pick Saul up. Even so, the world greyed for a moment as its claws closed around him, but it seemed that unconsciousness remained out of his reach.

  Hannah felt overcome by a sudden atavistic fear at the sight of the construction robot crouching in the corridor with bloodstains on its cowling. When she saw Saul slumped in front of it with his back propped against the wall, she assumed it must have attacked him. Then she noticed the Caduceus symbol on the door he was resting beside, and logic triumphed. She stepped over the cleanbot that had guided her here, and rushed over to kneel before him.

  “Smith…got away,” Saul managed.

  Those were definitely not the words she wanted to hear. She stared at the blood plating the outside of his spacesuit, dried out and turned oak-brown by vacuum. “Where are you wounded?”

  “Side.” He gestured with one blood-smeared glove.

  Hannah peered at the mess of suit sealant that had boiled out of there. “Can you move?” A weak shake of the head. “I’m going to need Braddock,” she decided.

  After a pause Saul replied, “He’s coming now.”

  Braddock arrived in double-quick time, armed and looking for a fight, but as soon as he saw Saul, his face turned white. Was that because without Saul their chances of survival became precisely nil?

  “The prisoners?” Hannah enquired.

  “I locked them in the toilet,” Braddock told her.

  “Okay, help me.”

  They carried Saul as carefully as possible through the door and into a surgery prep room.

  “Get his suit off,” Hannah instructed, as she herself frantically began checking the cold stores and equipment cupboards ranged along one wall. It was good that the level of gravity lay as close to zero as made no difference, otherwise Braddock’s task would have been much more difficult. By the time she had found trauma dressings and a pair of scissors, Braddock had removed the spacesuit to expose the blood-soaked undersuit. Whilst he held Saul in place Hannah cut away the undersuit, and soon located the wound. She then affixed a trauma dressing, which quickly formed itself over the wound while infusing it with coagulants. After that they loaded Saul on to a special gurney which closed pads securely over his arms, legs and forehead, before rolling him through the clean lock leading into the operating theatre.

  “What about Smith?” Braddock asked.

  “He got away,” she replied bluntly, trying to stamp down on her fears. She just had to be pragmatic; no use wondering when Inspectorate enforcers would come piling in here to drag them away, no use thinking about what lay in store if Smith managed to get to them.

  “So we’re fucked,” replied Braddock, equally blunt.

  She quickly stripped off her spacesuit and undersuit, hardly noticing Braddock’s embarrassment as he turned away. She then propelled herself through into the surgeon’s lock, quickly donning surgeon’s whites and forgoing the decontamination process. Now in utterly familiar surroundings, she connected up a pressurized blood feed to her patient, before administering a general anaesthetic through it. While Saul was relaxing into unconsciousness, she began sifting through the tools she required, picking up a wound ring of the appropriate size.

  “We need him awake again as quickly as possible,” warned Braddock, from the other side of the isolation window, having obviously located the intercom. “If Smith discovers he’s out of it, his people will be down on us in a second.”

  “No, really?” said Hannah, sarcastically.

  She stripped away the dressing to expose the weeping hole in Saul’s side, then folded up the wound ring and inserted it into the gash, before opening it out to leave a neat round hole into his body, out of which oozed black, jelly-like blood. Next she swung over the microsurgery unit and positioned its slow-worm head in the mouth of the wound. The head pushed its way in, tentatively exploring inside the patient’s body, suction pipes slurping as they cleared out yet more congealing blood or leaking fluids, while sensors mapped out the internal damage to its screen, for her inspection.

  The knife had penetrated his side, slicing straight through his liver and pancreas, and, just missing the splenic artery, had twisted upwards and into the lobe of one lung. The comprehensive damage ended only a couple of centimetres from his heart, but, even so, the lesser vena cava had been nicked. Starting with that vein, Hannah began repairing the damage, working the microsurgery head gradually back out, cauterizing and gluing on its way. Most of this repair work could be left to automatic programming now the damage was mapped into the machine’s processor, but she did pause it a couple of times to inspect the situation more closely. This was all wrong, she soon realized. Some of the damage within Saul had already begun to heal up, and checking his bloodwork, she found it flooded with unassigned stem cells and other elements she just did not recognize. And she felt renewed awe of the man he had once been.

  The work continued until the slow-worm head slipped obscenely out of the wound carrying the wound ring with it. Micro-manipulators then drew it closed, the astringent smell of wound glue arose, then a brief sound like that of a fingernail being run along the teeth of a comb as the surgical head stitched in a neat row of staples just to make doubly sure.

  “I’m done now,” said Hannah.

  “That was quick,” remarked Braddock.

  “Left untended, a normal person would probably have died quickly,” she explained flatly as she folded the microsurgery head back down into its sterilizer. “He was already beginning to heal up.”

  “Heal up?” Braddock echoed, puzzled.

  “His predecessor’s nano-viral fix.”

  “Nano-viral fix?” asked Braddock. “Predecessor?”

  “It’s a long story,” she replied.

  “Right,” Braddock snarled, obviously annoyed. “So what happens now?”

  “You think I know?” Hannah spat back.

  She shifted the microsurgery unit away from the gurney, then headed over to the drug dispensary. There she tapped her requirements into a touch screen, and waited while it buzzed and hummed to itself. Shortly a drawer emerged, holding three loaded syringes: one containing a counter-agent for his anaesthetic, the second a mix of sugars, antishocks, viral and bacterial applications, the third a wide-spectrum stimulant package. She injected just the counter-agent and waited.

  Saul lay utterly still for a short while, then suddenly jerked, his left hand rising to touch the wound in his side. He opened his eyes and licked his lips, then slowly sat upright, using his arms to lever himself up. Just as well, because straining his stomach muscles didn’t seem like a great idea right then. For a moment Hannah assumed that the chilly distance of his expression was due to the drugs, then she realized that he was back inside the station’s computer network.

  “The pain…has gone,” he slurred. “And I can see again.”

  See?

  He reached up and probed his forehead, closed his eyes and for a moment fell utterly still. Then abruptly his eyes reopened.

  “Unbelievable,” he said,
the slur vanishing from his tone.

  “What is?” demanded Braddock from behind the glass, before peering suspiciously at the door behind him, cradling his machine pistol even closer.

  “The Argus satellite system,” Saul explained, shaking his head slowly. “There are seven thousand satellites in all, of which only ten per cent are functional. I’ve just managed to achieve a limited penetration, but that’s enough to interpret how it’s intended to run.”

  Saul carefully swung his legs off the gurney, then didn’t appear strong enough to proceed any further, besides which, the pressure feed was still plugged into his arm.

  “How, then?” Hannah asked, as she uncapped each in turn of the remaining two syringes.

  “All queued up and ready for mass slaughter,” he continued. “But in the typically fucked-up way of any operation run by government.”

  “How fucked up?” asked Braddock.

  “The satellites can pick up ID implant signals and target individuals, but what criminal or revolutionary ever sticks to the same identity?”

  “True enough.”

  “So they tried recognition systems.” Saul glanced across at him. “The satellites all possess high-definition cameras capable of reading the writing on a cigarette packet from orbit. The images they obtain can then be run through complex recognition systems—the aim being to target selected individuals.”

  “Yeah, and so?

  “A slight problem is that such recognition systems are keyed to a human’s face, not to the top of his head.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  Hannah held her syringes ready. “So that means the Committee’s dream of being able to identify and eliminate single insurgents from orbit is still very much a dream?”