by Neal Asher
Mars
‘He’s given them orders to capture us,’ said Saul, ‘and if they can’t do that, then to kill us. Since they’re armed and we are not, I think the former would be more likely.’
Yes, he was keeping something from her, but this was no game. For a moment, earlier, she had sensed a cold distance in him. He had some sort of surprise in the offing, something that was going to turn things their way, but it seemed likely to be something nasty and he wasn’t sure how she would respond. Now he was coldly factual again, and Var felt she knew what the surprise was going to be. He was going to kill them.
‘They’ll be here within twenty minutes,’ she said.
‘Certainly,’ he agreed.
She was damned if she was going to ask him again how he intended to respond. She’d been thinking about this all the way from the underground base, and now realized there could be only one answer. When the Scourge had engaged Argus Station, it had been fired upon. The Argus Station was now somewhere above them and probably had workable weapons aboard that he controlled. He must intend to hit the approaching four from orbit, thus reducing the odds against the two of them, but then?
Var turned from him to watch the ATV pull to a halt beside those proceeding on foot, and the three of them climbing inside. All of them wore vacuum combat suits obviously salvaged from Ricard’s men, and all were armed with assault rifles. She grimaced, not liking the idea of seeing the ATV destroyed, even though it would be of little use where she hoped to end up. Then she too found herself a rock, and sat down.
‘There,’ he said, pointing towards the base airstrip.
Three dots resolved in the sky, grew larger, soon becoming identifiable as an object like a football coming down with two in-series parachutes attached to a line behind. Just a few metres from the ground, right at the far end of the airstrip, it shed its two chutes then hit and bounced. As it bounced for a second time, its outer layer of airbags was already deflating and thus absorbed even more of the shock of its ensuing impacts. Soon it was rolling, soggily, a great cloudy trail of dust behind it, finally coming to halt right up against one of the two fuel silos as its air bags continued deflating.
‘Good shot,’ said Var, the skin on her back crawling. Was it pure luck that the fuel drop tank had come down precisely where required? Or had Saul been able to make such a precise atmosphere insertion and adjustments, on its way down, to put it there? If it was the latter explanation, then he had just done something no one else had managed throughout the history of orbital drops on Mars. She shivered, then shrugged – no, just a lucky shot.
The gas bags finished deflating, and were sucked away into their compartments to deposit a cylindrical tank on the ground. A hemispherical heat shield on the end of it detached and fell away, exposing gleaming equipment underneath – by the looks of the tangle this probably comprised all the pumping gear and hoses. Var transferred her gaze back to the ATV. It was about ten minutes away now – about halfway between the base and the butte.
‘Isn’t it about time you took your shot?’ she asked casually. ‘What will you use, a railgun missile or a laser? Or did that maser work out?’
He glanced at her. ‘None of them. They were all wrecked during the Scourge’s attack and are now either being rebuilt or salvaged for undamaged components – the rest going into the smelters.’
‘What?’ Var stood up; then, distracted by a silvery flickering, she glanced over towards the airstrip, where she could see a faint dust trail leading away from the drop tank. Something must have overheated and blown up, scattering debris – probably one of the canisters that inflated the gas bags, but nothing large enough to damage a drop tank.
‘I have been pondering something,’ he said. ‘Will those who supported Rhone be a help or a hindrance to me? Should I let them live even though they killed your friend Lopomac and have murdered people in your base? Should I capture them all, find out who the killers are, and have Hannah mind-wipe them?’
‘What?’ said Var, immediately feeling stupid for repeating herself, and hating it.
Saul stood up. ‘Let’s go down to meet them.’
‘Are you crazy?’ She paused. ‘You are crazy.’
‘Trust me,’ he said, and gave a perfunctory smile. It wasn’t a very good smile, but then he’d never really been able to muster a sincere one ever since he’d realized, at a young age, how most people were idiots to him. What he thought of other people now had to be a matter for much concern.
He headed for the path leading down off the butte, and Var hesitated before following. She had no choice but to trust him now because, with the open ground all around them, there was nowhere to run. It seemed he had walked them both into a trap.
The ATV had drawn to a halt at the base of the butte and its four occupants were now outside it. Saul paused beside a boulder just before he – and she – stepped out into sight.
‘So, should I let them live?’ he asked again.
‘Only if they’re no danger to us,’ Var replied sharply, angry because she still had no idea what he had planned.
‘Very well.’ He turned away from her. ‘This is Alan Saul,’ he began, addressing the four gathered around the ATV as he stepped out from behind the boulder. ‘I suggest you put your weapons on the ground and step back from them.’
‘And I suggest you walk over here,’ replied someone whose voice was vaguely familiar, but whom she couldn’t put a name to as she too stepped out. ‘I also suggest you put your hands on your heads and walk very slowly. Whether we have bodies or living prisoners for Galahad is a matter of indifference to me.’
‘No,’ said Saul patiently, ‘you’ll put your weapons on the ground now and step back from them. This is the only chance you will get.’
‘And why the fuck should we do that?’ asked the same voice as the four stepped away from their vehicle and began to approach.
‘Because this one warning is the extent of my generosity to murderers.’
What the hell was he doing? Var suddenly felt very vulnerable as one of the four began raising his assault rifle to his shoulder. She felt a moment almost of betrayal. Because of everything he had done, her brother must have some insanely over-inflated opinion of his abilities. Did he really think these four would give up so easily? Did he really think the presence of Argus above and the lack of any support from Earth here would be enough to make them rethink?
‘Please keep your finger off the trigger,’ he said mildly. ‘Last chance for you all.’
‘One in her leg,’ said one of them. ‘She might survive if we get a patch on.’
A series of short thrums carried on the thin air. Dust exploded around the four, and they danced and spun in explosions and jets of vapour. Bits of EA suits and bits of human being sprayed out, rifles tumbled away, and the four went down.
‘I needed them away from the vehicle,’ Saul stated.
‘It came down with the drop tank,’ she said, suddenly understanding, ‘behind the heat shield.’
‘Certainly,’ he said as, with delicate sinister steps, a spidergun rose from behind another nearby boulder and stalked closer, two of its weaponized limbs not wavering from the four corpses. ‘Now let’s take their ATV and go and pay Rhone a visit. I want to be back aboard Argus before the next Martian sunrise.’
Earth
The giant aero was half a kilometre long, with a hammer head to the fore containing flight and weapons control, and also Serene’s personal cabin with its viewing lounge. The long and fat main body contained quarters for the crew and her extensive staff, engines sitting over six fans, fuel tanks, weapon turrets that could be extended above and below, but with the largest area taken up by space-hogging helium-filled closed-cell foam. A further six Wankel engines, driving six fans for both lift and steering, sat in movable extended nacelles.
Serene’s motorcade arrived even as the fuel hoses were being detached and the crew filing aboard. She gazed from her limousine at the behemoth and allowed herself a wry smile. Her
e was a quite practical demonstration of her power down here on Earth, but her thoughts were occupied by her tenuous hold on power beyond Earth’s atmosphere. She had seen how an Alcubierre warp bubble could tear apart anything it touched, and the danger remained that Saul might, at any moment, decide to obliterate her installations up in orbit, and she needed something to counter him, hence the delay of a week before starting this trip.
She had given Calder full control of all orbital resources and the power to demand resources from Earth’s industries. She had also instituted changes down here that should more than double supply from Earth. However, it had been necessary to alter Calder’s main aim of building three workable Alcubierre drive battleships: Earth’s defences needed to be upgraded first. To begin with, she had not known how, but a study conducted by a specialist tactical team had come up with the answer.
While under warp, the Argus Station had struck an asteroid and the tidal forces at the edge of the warp had torn the asteroid apart. However, the impact had also shut down the warp itself, and it had taken quite some time before Argus had managed to generate another one. This, then, was its weakness as a weapon.
‘They are correct,’ Calder had said, after reading the tactical team’s report and talking to the new tactical adviser, Peshawar. ‘The Newton impact required to shut down the warp is measurable. It is also evident that once the vessel generating this warp has set its course, it cannot deviate.’
‘We need a larger railgun system up there,’ Peshawar had noted, ‘to give us the required coverage. It’s not the case that we can target the warp vessel at long range, since we cannot predict when it will stop and change course, thus avoiding long-range fusillades. However, the closer the vessel gets to Earth, the fewer course-change options it will have.’
Which was, Serene had reckoned, just a fancy way of saying Saul could dodge the shots on the way in, but had less chance where the firing became gradually more concentrated. Now many of the components, including thousands upon thousands of the missiles those weapons fired, were being made down on Earth and sent into orbit by mass driver. Up there they were being assembled in the core and construction station, to be sited both there and in other positions up in orbit. Within just a week they would have four or five ready to fire, which would make the installations above just a little bit safer. Peshawar opined that at least fifty needed to be built to stop Argus Station in mid-flight, but he added that one attack initiated by the station would leave it vulnerable, since its warp bubble would then be down long enough for just a few railguns to disable it permanently.
Serene opened the door of her limousine and stepped out, Sack immediately at her side, Elkin and her two aides moving in, other PAs, executives and support staff swarming all around them like pilot fish about a shark. Beyond the razor-mesh fences, readergun towers and stalking spiderguns, she could see shepherds striding over compacted rubble, while beyond them dust clouds arose around the yellow and orange safety-painted steel of automated demolition machinery whose blades, wrecking balls and giant air chisels were tearing into the surrounding sprawl. This abandoned section of sprawl now being cleared for her private aeroport was one of the few places such machines were still at work. Elsewhere across Earth, sprawl clearance, but for a few special exceptions, had mostly been put on hold so that every resource could be concentrated on the work underway in orbit. It was annoying, but necessary.
‘Update me.’ Serene crooked a finger at Elkin, then turned and swept towards the ramp that had been hinged down from the body of the aero.
‘Production in all sectors dipped by eight per cent, due to retooling, but is now up by twenty per cent,’ Elkin replied as she fell in at Serene’s shoulder. ‘However, the impact of this has yet to be felt in orbit, due to various bottlenecks.’
‘Like what?’
‘Transport is the main problem: conveying materials to the mass-driver facilities and spaceports. Simultaneously there are some delays in getting space planes commissioned.’
‘But no more than expected?’
‘Precisely as expected, ma’am,’ said Elkin, ‘but with the good news that the two mass drivers previously thought to require a complete rebuild were not as badly maintained as reported, and will be online within ten days.’
Serene paused at the foot of the ramp. ‘So why is that?’
‘The manager of the Antarctic driver was found to be massaging the figures and, shortly after the head of the inspection team threw him out of the overseer’s station on the top of the driver, the manager of the Sri Lanka Sigiria driver discovered some errors in her figures and was able to manage a test power-up the very next day.’
‘I take it the leader of that inspection team was promoted?’ Serene began to climb the ramp.
‘The South Zealand and Antarctic delegate did promote him to head of regional inspection, also allowed his collar to be removed and his wife to have access to treatment for bone cancer.’ Elkin paused for a second. ‘I have a focus group investigating the possibility that perhaps his wife’s condition was the reason for the inspector’s diligence, and that therefore those with similar motivation might be moved into critical positions.’
‘Very good.’
The stick had certainly been shown to work, and now the carrot seemed to be working too. As she entered the aero, Serene reflected on her basic aversion to the idea of using reward as a means of motivation, and realized that this was because, fundamentally, she just didn’t much like human beings. Glancing at Sack, taking a seat beside her, his suit tight against bulky muscle overlaid with alien keroskin, she considered how this instinct probably influenced how she had started to feel about him, too.
Mars
Saul strode on past the corpses and opened the outer airlock of the ATV, then paused and turned. Var had halted by the dead and was gazing down at them. Doubtless he had lost her now just as, to a certain extent, he had lost Hannah.
‘The cold reality is that each of them was either a murderer or had assisted in committing murder,’ he said by way of explanation – or perhaps justification.
She turned to him abruptly. ‘And that bothers you?’
‘Not much,’ he continued, ‘but they were in my way, so I removed them.’
‘You could have brought the spidergun into view while we were still hidden,’ she stated, ‘and they would probably have surrendered instantly.’
He walked back over to stand beside her as she stooped beside one of the corpses to undo a belt holding a holstered sidearm, then stood up to buckle it around her waist.
‘I’m sure those two,’ she gestured to a couple of the corpses, ‘were the ones who shot Lopomac, and also took a shot at me.’
‘They also killed other personnel, after Rhone’s return.’ Saul pointed to a third corpse. ‘This one too.’
‘Then fuck them.’ She stooped again to pick up an assault rifle and some spare clips.
‘Yes, quite,’ said Saul, realizing he had half expected the kind of moralizing he received from Hannah. ‘Their lives turned on this moment, yet one of them decided to reach for a trigger.’
‘No need to go on,’ said Var grimly, turning away and trudging towards the ATV.
Saul overtook her and stepped inside the vehicle first.
She followed him inside as he plumped himself down in the driver’s seat. As she closed the outer airlock door he started up the vehicle, took hold of the control column and turned it round, sending the ATV speeding back towards the base. A moment later, he summoned the spidergun, and it was soon flowing along beside them.
‘The circle closes,’ said Var.
‘In what respect?’ Saul asked.
‘I was just thinking about the last time I drove back to the base this way,’ said Var. ‘I had one of Ricard’s shepherds chasing me and ready to grab me once I stepped out.’
‘And you gave it Gisender’s corpse,’ he stated.
‘I did, yes.’
At that moment, back in the base, Rhone was getting the
bad news.
‘Alan Saul is with her,’ said someone in Mars Science. ‘They’re gone.’
‘What do you mean “gone”?’ Rhone asked, looking up.
The man shrugged. ‘He’s got a spidergun with him.’
Rhone had simply no reply for that. He gazed at his screen, watching the approaching ATV and spidergun emerging clear out of the dust, then tapped at his fone with his forefinger before turning to gaze up at the nearest cam.
‘Who do you trust in there?’ Saul asked Var.
‘Only Martinez, the head of Construction and Maintenance, and Carol Eisen, both of whom were with me from the start,’ Var replied.
Saul winced and calculated that Rhone’s chances of leaving Mars alive had now nosedived from a point barely above zero. ‘They are among those who were killed. They’re both lying on a gurney in your medical area.’
Var dipped her head and squeezed her eyes shut. After a moment she raised her head and stared forward blankly for a moment, before turning to him. He realized then that she had already suspected this but had not wanted to ask. ‘How did they die?’
‘Carol received a single shot through the head, which looks like a routine execution. They must have nailed Martinez outside, however – multiple gunshots and his body dehydrated.’
‘Bastard,’ Var spat.
‘Is there anyone else there you trust?’
‘Dr Da Vinci has always seemed honest enough, but I can’t say that I completely trust him,’ she replied. ‘He turned against me once he suspected I was murdering personnel.’
Saul recollected his earlier view of the doctor sitting on the floor of his surgery and getting drunk. The man had obviously not liked the manner in which Rhone had assumed power. Gazing at him now through a cam covering the surgery, Saul watched him struggling alone to insert one of the corpses into a body bag. He was evidently hungover and looked thoroughly miserable.