The Departure

by Neal Asher

  “I guarantee that any of your people who don’t put down their weapons, and surrender instantly, will be dead within a very short time.”

  With a look of intense frustration on his face, Smith seemed momentarily at a loss for words. Saul had no doubt that this man was prepared to sacrifice any number of lives, just so long as they didn’t include his own. However, already some of his fellows had abandoned their weapons and were moving away from them. Some of the machine-gun crews, too, were drifting out of the Political Office, while others still inside were trying to keep their hands up while propelling themselves clumsily towards Langstrom’s men.

  Smith knew that he had lost; it was now a matter of whether he was still prepared to allow pride and stubbornness to sway him. Saul did not like what he was reading in the man’s expression, or in the pose of his body, or the way he closed a hand over the weapon holstered at his belt.

  “Can’t you just finish him?” Langstrom asked.

  Saul focused on the question. “No readerguns installed in his control room.”

  “Typical.”

  Studying their immediate surroundings, Saul noted that with Smith’s men surrendering in the near vicinity, certain routes now lay open. He reached up and detached the optic from his head. Access stuttered for just a second, then the Political Office was once again included within the framework of the whole station network.

  “Braddock, Langstrom, let’s go and have a chat with the Political Director.”

  The three of them set off.

  “It will be interesting to evaluate how you managed this,” sneered Smith. “But that will be after you have found the challenges of Argus Station too much for you. Do you honestly think that a few traitors and revolutionaries can withstand the concerted might of the Committee and the People? We command the resources of an entire world: hundreds of millions of military personnel, countless space planes and ICBMs. You must know that resistance is futile.”

  “Yet you neglect one obvious fact,” replied Saul as he strode onwards. “They are all down on Earth, while I am up here. Give it up, Smith. Why waste yet more lives?”

  “Surrender is not an option open to me, as it would represent a betrayal of trust. Government forces are currently on their way, therefore it is certain that any who betray the people by putting their own physical survival first can be sure ultimately of a visit to an adjustment cell.”

  Saul could have cut Smith off the moment he realized what he was about to say, but he wanted everyone here to understand how low was Smith’s regard for their lives. Yet there seemed to be something more to his response than just that. Smith could not hope to hold out until the space plane arrived, so he must surely know that, after making such a statement, his own life would be forfeit. Besides, it seemed certain those aboard the approaching space plane would not have his best interests at heart.

  They reached the door leading into the control room, which opened with surprising ease since Saul had expected it to be sealed. As they entered, Smith turned away from the screen he was watching and stepped out on to an open area of floor. At once Saul sensed something was wrong, and he instinctively groped for a view through the eyes of his guardian robot. But, of course, having received no further instructions, it still squatted in the transformer room; just a heap of inert metal.

  “I suggest that you have been guilty of the same sort of arrogance, and lack of intelligence that resulted in your friend Malden’s demise,” Smith announced.

  Saul began to turn. “Braddock—”

  A shot rang out and Braddock spun past him, with a quarter of his head gone. Saul turned back just in time to notice the blunt object Smith clutched in one hand. Sheer agony ripped through him from head to foot, the impact tearing his boots from the floor. In that moment it felt as if he had been plunged directly into a furnace. Saul tried desperately to link up with his robots, with the readerguns, with anything, but the code had become just a scrambled mess of migraine lights flashing through his skull. He felt a hand close about his arm, shoving him to the floor, and a foot pressing down on his chest.

  “Now that was costly,” said Langstrom. “I could have taken him down long before now.”

  “His value to the people outweighs the level of casualties we have sustained,” said Smith calmly. “And, for the benefit of the people, it was necessary that one of my status should be seen as able to render him harmless, thus reinforcing Committee command structures.”

  “Still, there are people out there lying dead who didn’t need to be.”

  “I think not,” Smith replied. “The moment you so much as pointed a weapon at him, one of his robots would have torn you limb from limb. Anyway, since when has the extinction of subordinates ever been a problem to you, Langstrom?”

  “I was just saying,” the soldier replied.

  “Anyway, all those men against you were primarily loyal to Messina, so that’s been to our advantage. The same with those space planes he destroyed.”

  Through a blur of vision, Saul stared up at Smith smiling down at him. Then the man took his foot away and fired the disabler again, and Saul was once again in the furnace. He heard someone screaming, only realizing it was himself just before the world slipped away from him.

  ***

  “The Political Office is back online,” reported one of the twins—Hannah wasn’t sure which of them it was.

  “Yes, evidently,” she replied, studying the screen as some of Langstrom’s soldiers began making their way out of the office building. “Any sign of Saul?”

  The other twin began flicking through cam views, till she picked up Saul currently propelling himself along a pullway beside a stationary train. She then tagged him with a surveillance program and shunted the image over to one of the three larger screens. Hannah reached out and manually operated the camera focus, trying for close-ups, but failing. Saul appeared uninjured, but that was all Hannah could discern. As the program tracked him back towards Tech Central, she wondered if Braddock was still safe. What had happened in there, and how many people had died? She’d witnessed the fire fight from the outside, and later recognized the vicious sound of readerguns over com. Did the interior of the Political Office now resemble an abattoir?

  “So he now has full control,” suggested Brigitta, her voice devoid of all emotion.

  “So it would seem,” Hannah replied.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to suppress the feeling of helpless terror. Looking again at the screens, she watched the space plane inexorably drawing closer, only a half-hour away now. She then returned her attention to Saul himself, and watched as he finally passed the two wrecked robots on his way in. He seemed stronger now, snapping himself forward by the wall handles with obvious impatience. Soon he headed through the Tech Central door and Hannah spun her chair round to face him.

  “All done?” she asked.

  Moving forward, Saul dipped his head and began undoing the catches of his suit helmet. Only then did Hannah understand the doubt that stirred inside her. She spun her chair round and began to reach for the machine pistol lying on the console. Shots thundered into the console, flinging the weapon out of reach. She shrank away just as a hand closed on her shoulder, tipping both herself and the chair over backwards, banging her head hard on the floor. The hand now closed about her neck and the hot barrel of a machine pistol was almost touching her face.

  “Greetings, Hannah,” said Smith.

  Smith must have used the simple ruse of wearing Saul’s vacuum combat suit to get himself here, but the ruse hadn’t really been necessary. With Saul now captive or dead, only one option was available to keep herself out of Smith’s hands, but she wasn’t prepared to kill herself. Now, looking straight into his face, she knew he would be in no hurry to kill her either. She noted the red eyes, the broken blood vessels around them, and the veins standing out in his forehead. His breath smelled rank too—characteristic of someone maxed out on cocktails of painkillers, stimulants, ACE inhibitors and beta blockers
. Though perhaps not yet as screwed up as Malden, he must know he could not carry on living like this.

  “Commander Langstrom.” Smith spoke into the vacuum suit’s mike. “Now would be a suitable time for you to be present here.” Then, after a pause, “I do not see any difficulties in that regard. All the robots are currently inactive, as Saul did not program them for completely independent action, or to engage in hostilities without direct orders from himself. Therefore, once I have divined the basis of his code, they will be mine once again. Now, please do not make me issue a reprimand, as I require your presence in here right now.”

  Smith stood upright, hauling Hannah to her feet by her neck, before transferring his grip to the front of her survival suit. He then swung his attention to Chang and the twins, who remained standing by their consoles.

  “We had no choice,” said Chang defensively.

  “In no known situation are choices lacking,” Smith replied. “We must therefore work diligently together to reveal how difficult your choices were.”

  Hannah could see the sudden terror appearing in their faces, for they knew the techniques Smith would use to discover whatever version of the truth suited him. Chang moved forward slightly, but Smith swung the machine pistol towards him. For a moment, Hannah thought Chang might charge him, but the big man desisted, holding his hands out to his sides. “What do you want of us?”

  Smith hesitated, flicking his gaze to the three large screens, all of which now instantly changed images to show different views of the approaching space plane.

  “My current preference is for you to seat yourselves again, and then refrain from further comment,” he said.

  Shooting worried looks at each other, they obeyed him. Maybe if they just kept their heads down, he would forget about them. Hannah did not think so, but understood their bunker mentality.

  “What happened to Saul?” she abruptly asked.

  Without even looking at her, Smith released his grip, swung his arm away, then struck her hard with the back of his hand. The blow felt like it dislocated her jaw, and the adhesive sole of one of her shoes ripped free of the floor. Lights flashing in her vision, she tumbled over backwards, her spine jarring against the floor. In an instant he was crouching over her, the machine pistol again in her face.

  “Saul has suffered a misfortune, for him at least, in that he is still alive.” He grinned nastily. “Presently he occupies an interrogation cell, and is enjoying recurrent inducement—just enough to keep him from regaining full mental coherence.”

  Hannah felt sick. The Inspectorate used that technique to break people: give the victim just enough time to regain consciousness and some awareness of his situation, before hitting him repeatedly with an inducer until the pain again knocked him out. At that moment Saul would be in hell.

  “Didn’t you already do enough to him?”

  “It would appear that I did not and, though I feel more than his current mental retraining is required, I don’t want to damage the hardware and software installed in his brain, do I?”

  She knew at once what he meant: Smith wanted for himself to possess the more advanced hardware and biotech inside Saul’s skull. It seemed pointless, life-threatening in fact, to try explaining to him how very different was Saul’s organic interface from Smith’s, and also how it could not now be removed.

  “Okay,” she said, giving a little nod. Pretend to knuckle under, pretend that to survive she’d do whatever he wanted. But why not? Before Saul had freed her, that was how she had always behaved.

  Just then the doors opened, and in came Langstrom accompanied by three of his soldiers. Smith stepped back, hauling Hannah upright. He beckoned to one of the soldiers, a heavily built black man. “Restrain her.”

  “You want her in a cell?” the man asked.

  “No, restrain her here within my sight.”

  The man picked up the chair she had been sitting in, gripped Hannah by the biceps, and towed both of them over to one side of the room. Quickly and efficiently, he slipped a plastic tie about her wrists, then used strong tape to bind her to the chair. Meanwhile, Smith and Langstrom were busy studying the images coming up on the screens.

  “In twenty minutes they will be joining us here on Argus Station,” Smith announced.

  “You’ve told them that we’ve solved our little problem?”

  “Yes, I have so informed them, but such information will not prevent them from docking.” Responding to a limp hand gesture, one of the screens changed to show a massive airfield in some desolate desert location. Hannah squinted at the image, realizing, with a sudden lurch in her gut, that the thirty-odd shapes revealed were space planes, some of them in the process of launching.

  “I thought they were meant to wait until after full commission of the Argus Network?” observed Langstrom.

  “That was the original intention, but it seems that, now the predicted societal collapse has begun, things are accelerating.” Smith shook his head slowly. “In all regions we must rely on extreme measures to quell insurrection, but throughout most of South America, North Africa and Southern Europe we are not preventing the collapse, and have therefore withdrawn resources back to our bases, in preparation for later intervention.”

  Hannah felt a surge of contempt. Smith had always spoken like this, in such a convoluted manner, and sometimes it was difficult to work out exactly what he meant. The Committee had completely lost control, so was using gas, live ammunition and robots programmed to kill in order to prevent itself being overrun by the starving mobs. In the three areas mentioned, its forces had withdrawn to their bases for the time being.

  “And with the few remaining lasers that you and Saul didn’t wreck, between you,” said Langstrom, “there’s no way of reversing that disintegration now.” The soldier said it without emphasis, but the hint of criticism was there. Smith, however, did not seem to notice it.

  “One must await the appropriate time,” he replied, and pointed to the screen showing the launching space planes. “Messina is aboard one of those planes, which is already on its way here, perhaps to oversee any future interventions.”

  Langstrom gazed steadily at him. “Is he going to try and take the station away from you?”

  “He may indeed wish for primacy.”

  “You’ve warned them over in Arcoplex One?”

  “There is no necessary benefit in doing so. Alessandro Messina will not establish himself in control here by means of policy statements or Committee votes, therefore my pet delegates would not prove effective in such a situation.”

  As they both returned their attention to the screens, Hannah digested this reference to delegates. Didn’t Saul say earlier that Smith had opened a back door into the laser network? It seemed he had been clawing for power, and control of the network had been one chip in the dangerous game he was playing. Meanwhile, he had used his bargaining position to get all those delegates prepared to back him transferred up here, only now things had drastically changed. Perhaps the Committee had hoped to retain control down on Earth with the seven hundred satellites previously available, using mass slaughter as a tool, when necessary. Now that so few laser weapons were immediately available, it seemed Messina and the rest of the Committee were ready to abandon the planet, for now. Whatever way it went, the power base was now up here on Argus, and that’s where all the politicians wanted to be. And once they got up here, they would fight, as ever, to become top dog.

  “Let us assemble a small reception committee,” said Smith. “I believe you should ensure it consists primarily of those whose martial usefulness is in question. The rest of your men should be deployed around the core installations: here at Tech Central, the Political Office and the cell complex.”

  “More sacrifices, you mean?”

  Smith tilted his chin towards the screen. “I am ignorant of the orders issued to those in the approaching space plane. Whoever meets them can direct them straight to the nearest rim-side accommodation and, if they agree to go there, that will giv
e time for you to move out there from the core, and be ready to negate their interference.” He turned his gaze fully on Langstrom.

  “Once they dock on the rim they’ll probably head straight in towards the core,” suggested the soldier.

  “A more likely and even preferable scenario, because we’ll then know Alessandro’s true intentions. Militarily it is preferable, too, since a great number of readerguns and robots lie conveniently between the rim and the core.”

  “They’re going to be well equipped and there’s no guarantee they’ll use a dock at all,” Langstrom observed.

  “I have enabled access for your men to Kalashtek assault rifles, and ceramic ammunition capable of penetrating VC suits,” said Smith, “and you may also wish to deploy carousel missile-launchers wherever feasible.” When Langstrom still did not seem in any hurry to depart, he snapped, “Is there anything further?”

  “Nothing at all, sir.” Langstrom gestured for his men to follow him and, even as he departed, new staff were arriving and taking up positions at the consoles around the room.

  “You three,” Smith indicated Chang and the twins, “return to your accommodation for now. We will discuss that ‘choice’ you mentioned at a later juncture.”

  So much for keeping their heads down.

  ***

  The nightmare was a repeat of one he’d experienced more times than he could count. He was strapped naked to a cold steel wall, while in front of him stood a bench scattered with the kind of tools to be found in any workshop: screwdrivers, pliers, wire cutters, a soldering iron and an angle grinder. In this nightmare, however, he could hear the words.

  “The people,” declared Smith, “need to know.”

  It wasn’t Smith, however, who now stepped into view, but some interrogation-block technician—no, not even that; just some recorded mock-up of a human being. Saul could distinguish the man’s enforcer uniform underneath his transparent plastic overalls, but no sign of his face, for he wore a hazmat filter mask and green-tinted goggles. Careful not to tear his surgical gloves, he picked up the angle grinder, removed the grinding disk and replaced it with one used for coarse sanding.