by Neal Asher
‘Here,’ said Var.
Saul turned to see her prodding at something on the ground with her toe and then gazing back the way they had come. He walked over and peered down at an assault rifle clip lying by her feet.
‘It was from here that one of Ricard’s men shot my friend,’ she explained.
‘You killed Ricard and his men,’ Saul noted.
‘Will it ever end?’ she asked.
‘Everything ends,’ he opined, turning away and finding a rock to sit down on, and again studying the base.
Over to the right he could see the Mars-format space plane, parked by a low building to one side of a couple of fuel silos, at one end of a rough airstrip where rocks had been dozered to either side and holes filled in and packed down. Checking trajectories in his mind, he focused on the far end of the strip. Half an hour to go now.
‘Time for you to talk to Rhone,’ he said.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Have you ever known me not to be?’ he asked, not sure what she had known about him.
Var made some adjustments on her wrist console, while Saul reached out to the base and established multiple links between the radio receivers there and the internal public address system.
‘This is Var Delex calling Antares Base,’ she said, her words echoing in his mind as he heard them at both ends. ‘I need to speak to you, Rhone. There’re some things you need to know.’
Saul watched the sudden panic stirred up at the other end. Rhone, who had been working at a console in Mars Science, now banished the supplies lists from his screen and called up control schematics for the communication system, immediately trying to shut down public address. Saul allowed him a few tries, then put up the words ‘Talk to Var’ on his screen, before freezing out his keyboard.
‘Can he hear me?’ Var asked on a private channel.
‘Yes, he can hear you,’ Saul told her, ‘and so can everyone else in the base.’
‘Listen to me, Rhone,’ she continued on an open channel, ‘the Scourge isn’t coming. In fact, Earth now has nothing capable of getting out here, and won’t have anything for years yet.’
Saul didn’t disabuse her of that notion, as she would learn about the huge orbital activity around Earth soon enough.
‘You can, if you wish, rebuild the base where it is or move it underground as we planned, but your chances of survival won’t be much different from before. However, I have an alternative offer.’
Rhone had now moved to another console and had summoned a few of his armed staff. He there used the dishes on the roof of the base to triangulate Var’s position. Saul let him do that, as he wanted Rhone to know precisely where they were.
‘Alan Saul is here on Mars, Rhone, and he is about to deliver fuel for our space plane. I’m leaving Mars with him to join him on Argus Station. All the staff of Antares Base are welcome to join him too . . . all of the staff, Rhone. I understand why you did what you did and, though I’m not prepared to forgive it, Alan Saul is.’
‘Shouldn’t you talk to her?’ asked one of those with Rhone.
Rhone rounded on him. ‘If we submit, Galahad will end up killing us. Var is either lying or doesn’t know what’s happening around Earth . . . and do you think for one moment that someone who has stolen a space station and launched an attack against Earth that killed millions gives a fuck about us?’
‘Still . . .’ replied the man, uncertain.
‘You saw that thing that came down?’ Rhone asked. ‘It had just one pilot, and I’m surprised it reached the ground in one piece. We have the advantage now, especially if Saul is outside. Just think how grateful Galahad would be if we could capture him alive or even have his corpse to show her. You two, take Piers and Thorsten out there.’ Rhone checked his screen. ‘They’re on Shankil’s Butte. Capture them if you can, or bring back their corpses.’
So far so predictable: he was sending his most trusted lieutenants to do this job. Replaying cached base recordings, Saul confirmed that all four of them were either directly responsible for or closely involved in the recent killings there.
Rhone now keyed into the frequency Var was using. ‘Var, what a surprise to hear from you.’ He grimaced as his own voice was repeated over the PA system. ‘I was sure that fall killed you.’
Of course Rhone had told everyone in the base that Var had suffered an unfortunate accident. Would she now let him get away with that?
‘Well, I’m alive . . . and I’m waiting for your answer to Alan’s proposal,’ was all she said.
Rhone shut off com and turned to others who had joined him. ‘They’re desperate to get to our space plane. We do have the advantage here.’ Those others, unarmed staff of Mars Science, spectators, nodded dubious agreement. He ignored them as he opened up com again. ‘I’ll be needing guarantees. Perhaps we should continue this discussion inside . . . Also, I need to confirm that Alan Saul is indeed with you. I don’t see why he would risk his life coming down to the surface.’
Var turned to him and Saul nodded and spoke. ‘This is Alan Saul. I came down to the surface of Mars to rescue my sister, whose married name is Delex but whose maiden name was Saul. Everything Var has told you is true. You must also be aware that aboard Argus Station we now have a working version of the Alcubierre drive, which effectively takes us out of the reach of Serene Galahad. We are also completely self-sufficient, have a great deal in the way of resources and can survive out here. Think very carefully about your next decisions, Rhone.’
Rhone sat back, his expression blank as he glanced at a screen showing his four recruits coming one after the other out of a base airlock. Meanwhile, the fuel drop tank had begun its descent and opened its first parachute.
‘Galahad is building ships, fast, and I’m told it’s likely they will have similar drive systems,’ said Rhone.
‘That’s true,’ said Saul, glancing at Var and seeing her frown. ‘But there are other truths you seem to be avoiding. A moment ago you wondered if someone like me, who has killed millions, would give a fuck about you all, yet you seem to be forgetting how Serene Galahad released the Scour on Earth and killed billions. Do you think she cares about rescuing you for anything other than punishing you on ETV prime-time?’
‘So you say,’ replied Rhone.
Saul saw no point in arguing further. This man knew for certain that the Scour had originated from ID implants. ‘I’ll want your decision soon.’
Rhone turned to stare up at one of the base cams, now aware that Saul had indeed penetrated the place. Maybe that would be enough to sway Rhone, but Saul doubted it. He swung his attention out towards the horizon, beyond the airstrip. The drop tank had now opened out its second and larger parachute and was inflating its gas bags. Saul estimated that it would be visible within the next twenty minutes. He looked back towards the base. All four of Rhone’s most loyal people were now outside, three of them moving away from the base in Saul’s direction while another was driving an ATV round from the other side.
The timing was almost perfect but – even down to his walking pace in getting here to this butte – Saul had ensured that.
Argus
Ghort’s first instruction, upon handing over a powered socket driver – the only tool Alex could first be trusted with – was: ‘It’s pointless trying to race the robots, but I’m fucked if I want them more than ten joints ahead of us by end of shift.’
The task was simple enough. Structural members were to be anchored to the top and bottom faces of the fifteen-kilometre circumference of the station ring. This first involved cutting away marked-out areas of cladding material to expose one of the stress beams – a beam nearly a metre square, precisely following the curve of the station and made of a complex lamination of bubblemetal and graphyne. With the section of beam exposed, they attached a jig, which Ghort positioned precisely with an integral laser survey device, before heaving the U-plate in to slot over the beam and then clamping it down. Akenon and Gladys then towed over their multi-weld unit and, using nic
kel-carbon and high-temperature epoxy wire, welded the plate in position. Then the three of them unloaded the beam-end joint from their dray and it was Alex’s turn, using his socket driver to tighten, to the correct tension, the eight bolts the others quickly started in their threaded holes in the U-plate.
The first time Alex had tried to tighten a bolt, he ended up spinning round in vacuum on the end of the socket driver, while the other three laughed. That was the limit of his hazing, however, for there was work to be done and one of the construction robots working along the adjacent beam had already finished its joint and was moving on to the next. Thereafter the work became just mechanical, repetitive and somehow comforting. Alex had assumed that while performing this task, he’d have too much time to reflect on his past, but it didn’t work out that way. All he thought about was the next thing to do, how he could position himself so as not to get in the way of the others, how quickly he could lean in to tighten the bolts and how best to position himself while doing so. However, as they progressed and the nearby construction robot ran out of joint ends and had to wait for one of its kin to bring another load, there was finally time for banter.
‘We’re fast becoming fucking obsolete,’ said Gladys, pointing back along their course around the rim, where a hemispherical robot on gecko treads was now pausing regularly beside each of their previously affixed joint ends.
‘What’s it doing?’ Alex asked.
‘Inspecting our work,’ she replied. ‘Used to be it was us inspecting their work.’
‘Don’t exaggerate, Gladys,’ said Akenon. ‘Last thing you inspected was the crabs on your snatch.’
‘Go fuck yourself, Ake.’
‘Sure, I got less chance of catching anything nasty that way.’
‘Right,’ interjected Ghort, as Alex leaned forward and began tightening down the latest set of bolts, ‘we’ll take a break after this one.’ He pointed across to the outer edge of the station ring, where there clung a mobile overseer’s station, overlooking the webwork of beams of partially constructed floors extending from the outer rim.
Alex wound in the last of the bolts and stood upright. They’d now been working solidly for six hours, and muscles he was unaware of during the most severe forms of combat training were now aching. This was the perfect reminder of something one of his instructors had once told him: ‘Never underestimate the strength of manual workers. You might exercise and train for three or four hours a day, but that length of time involved in hard physical activity only gets them as far as their first tea break.’ He stretched his back, then opened the gecko pad on the side of his socket driver, before stooping to secure the tool down by his feet. He quickly followed the other three as they headed towards the overseer’s station.
‘All this has got to go.’ Ghort gestured to the partially completed new floors. ‘He wants a clean rim, so all those extensions you guys had started on now have to be dismantled.’
‘I guess he knows what he’s doing,’ said Gladys, her voice subdued.
‘More so than any Committee bureaucrat,’ remarked Akenon contemplatively.
Since he had first met them Alex had noticed how Akenon and Gladys always talked in hushed tones when the conversation turned to Alan Saul – the Owner. However, Ghort’s attitude was rather more difficult to pin down. The man seemed to continue working dutifully, as instructed, but his expression closed up when the Owner was mentioned, and he became hard faced and acerbic whenever the conversation turned to politics, any hazy concepts such as freedom or any speculation on what their future might hold.
They passed through the airlock two at a time and, once inside, Ghort delivered the welcome news that the place was fully pressurized, which apparently meant no food paste or metallic-tasting fruit juice from their suit spigots today. After they removed the helmets of their heavy work suits, Akenon popped open the case he had lugged in. Taking out Thermos flasks of hot coffee and individual boxes of pasteurized and sealed sandwiches, he handed them round. Sipping coffee through a straw, Alex headed over to the windows and gazed across the face of the rim. Gladys shortly came up to stand beside him.
The rim face extended for hundreds of metres inward, at which point the station enclosure rose up in a slope for just over two kilometres to the jutting prominence of Tech Central. Over to the right of that, the rest of the station, along with a truncated view of an extended smelting plant, lay silhouetted against the rusty brown face of Mars.
‘Never seen it like this,’ she said, gesturing to the scene before them.
‘Well,’ said Alex, ‘I suppose it looks a bit different to Earth.’ He nodded towards Mars.
‘I don’t mean that,’ she said, and stabbed a finger, ‘I mean the robots.’
It seemed that the enclosure was another item that ‘had to go’, because large areas of plates had already been stripped away, while yet more were being rucked up, like fish scales, and carried off. Both there and around the rim, the robots swarmed like steel ants, and the station seemed to be dissolving in some areas and re-crystallizing in others even as they watched.
‘What’s that about robots?’ Ghort asked, moving up beside them. This interruption reminded Alex that Ghort, though trained in construction before a delegate had spotted his talent for thumping people, was not an old hand like the other two. Alex would have expected seniority issues to arise from the order delivered from on high that Ghort should become foreman of this small team, but the other two seemed perfectly happy with having him in charge. Alex also sensed that this wasn’t down to sheer luck, but to a certain individual’s ability to slot personalities together with the ease of Lego bricks.
‘They were never this integrated before,’ said Gladys, still watching the robots. ‘We’d get work orders, a specific job to do, and that would get slotted into the system of a team of robots, and they’d set to work. We had to iron out any errors, sometimes stop them working and ask for reprogramming to include stuff they weren’t programmed to do.’
‘The robots are more efficient now,’ suggested Alex.
‘Nah, the robots were always fine if they were programmed right. The problem was everything behind them.’
‘Crap in crap out,’ said Akenon, round a mouthful of sandwich.
‘Never seen them running this fast,’ continued Gladys. ‘They just ain’t stopping. The bloody things are even anticipating now, and covering stuff that shouldn’t be in their programming. I saw one stop halfway through a job to repair some weapons damage to a beam junction. If one of them ran into anything like that before, it just shut down to wait for its new instructions.’
‘It’s him,’ Alex suggested, noting a brief and quickly suppressed flash of anger in Ghort’s expression.
‘Yup,’ Gladys agreed, ‘it certainly is.’
As he later walked out to start the next six hours of their shift, feeling buoyant after solid food and hot coffee, Alex considered how he was now part of something awesome and thus understood the attitude of his co-workers to the Owner. As he began work once more, he was thinking again about nothing beyond the next bolt to wind down, and then how best to apply the diamond cutting wheel Ghort had begun instructing him on how to use, and how best to make sure he didn’t slice a hole in his suit. The time seemed to flash by till, when Ghort called a halt, Alex stuck his tools to the deck with a feeling of weary satisfaction.
‘It’s only eight beam ends ahead,’ said Akenon. ‘That’ll do.’
Another small victory in the human–robot race, with the necessary handicap applied.
Back inside the station, Gladys commented, ‘The new boy didn’t slow us down.’
‘The new boy done good,’ said Ghort drily, slapping Alex on the shoulder.
Alex was amazed at how happy he felt to be complimented on performing such simple tasks so ably, and puzzled too because he felt the urge to cry.
Everybody seemed to be working at a frenetic pace, so it should have come as no surprise to Hannah to find tasks queued up in the station’s sy
stem for herself, too. In her personal queue she found the names of everyone aboard the station listed in order of importance under ‘neural tissue samples’, though with a vague proviso in there of ‘scheduled when available’. On top of that it turned out that a long production floor, provided with power and plumbing points but no equipment, beyond the sealed door adjacent to her clean-room, was to be opened to her. It seemed that this was where she would be growing those tissue samples in aerogel matrices and setting up production of the cerebral hardware and bioware required to link those people the samples were taken from to their backups.
Hannah sighed. She had always preferred focusing on research and did not enjoy the work involved in mass manufacturing the product of such research. However, she couldn’t really fault Saul in his aim to give the people here a chance at a form of immortality.
Investigating further, she found that this was not the last of it. He wanted her setting up artificial wombs and other related devices and, by the look of the list, this meant human cloning. She was uncomfortable with that, but saw how it related to the growing of neural tissue samples: backups for both body and mind. Neither was she comfortable with the plug-ins: exterior hardware that made a link between the internal bioware in their skulls and their backups, and which also enabled limited access to the station’s computer systems and its robots. That gave her pause as she realized that Saul wanted the people here to take some steps up the same ladder he himself had climbed, but did not want them to climb too far. She could see that, with this setup he would always remain in control: able to shut down that exterior hardware and boot people out of the system at will. Was that moral? Was it right? She didn’t know, but recognized that it was certainly a precaution she would also take, were she in his position.