Owner 03 - Jupiter War

by Neal Asher

  The Rhine drive engaged just minutes before they reached the weapons cache, then disengaged just a moment later. The ensuing blast added to their bruises and caused two further broken bones: one a finger and the other in Ghort’s foot. The idea of mortality became of even greater concern as their suits notified them of radiation levels, and how they were way beyond safe limits.

  ‘Not much data available,’ said Ghort, grimacing in pain. ‘Seems the Vision hit us with a nuclear warhead, and that has taken us out of drive.’

  ‘Lucky shot,’ Marsin added.

  Alex said nothing, though he felt that it had to have been more than a lucky shot to hit them with an atomic warhead, since they were probably moving at a good portion of the speed of light. It had to have been a practically miraculous shot.

  As they reached their weapons cache, which had been inserted in a three-metre-thick composite blast wall, four metres out from another wall of iron-hard asteroidal ice, both of which were part of the elaborate armouring around the vortex generator, he waited for one of them to state the obvious.

  ‘Look,’ said Marsin, as two of the others towed the crates out of concealment, ‘if we do this now, we’ll probably just be handing ourselves over to Serene Galahad. We need to wait until we’re out of the solar system and safe.’

  Ghort shook his head. ‘You seem to put too much faith in the abilities of one man, so perhaps you’re starting to believe in his mythological status.’ He turned and gazed at the ring of faces gathered around him. ‘Whether Alan Saul is alive or not makes little difference to our chances of survival. We can control the robots, we can control this ship, and we can achieve as much as he ever could.’

  Alex wondered just when Ghort had slid from being merely a rebel into being a delusional rebel, nay even a rebel possessing delusions of grandeur. By all means dismiss mythology and anything based on faith, but facts should never be ignored. Saul was way beyond each and every one of them, and probably beyond all of them combined.

  ‘What about the proctors?’ someone piped up.

  Alex gazed at the woman who had spoken – the same one who had first escorted him into that meeting in Arcoplex One. She was only considering this now? He studied the rest of his fellows and realized that being mentally hooked into computers, also able to control robots and knowing you were practically immortal was no cure for naivety. Perhaps, in reality, it worsened such a condition. Perhaps the feelings of godlike power had led to a supreme arrogance and the people around him found it difficult to accept that some things were still outside their control, that some things lay beyond their abilities, and that there was someone who could crush them like a bug under heel.

  Ghort opened the crate and began distributing the weapons.

  ‘We have to do this now, else we’ll probably never get a chance later,’ he said.

  Perhaps ‘delusional’ was too mild a description.

  Alex received his weapon, along with the two grenades he himself had made, which he hooked onto his belt. Like the rest of them, he checked the action of his Kalashtech, inspected the ammo clip and received further ammo to drop into a belt pouch. As he did so, he nodded to himself with a feeling of deep sadness. They had been given every opportunity to see the error of their ways, and yet they were stubbornly persisting with their silly plan. He considered what a coincidence it appeared that he should have ended up in the work team of the leader of these rebels, and though he believed in coincidence, he knew enough to recognize when it wasn’t there.

  ‘So I am precisely where you want me?’ he said, voicelessly speaking to none of those around him, just into the system.

  The reply was instant, perhaps because his message had been expected.

  ‘I wondered when you would figure it out,’ replied Alan Saul.

  ‘They just don’t understand how much you can see, do they?’

  ‘But you do, Alex,’ Saul replied. ‘Now, why is that?’

  ‘Because I knew myself to be a simple creature programmed like a machine, and I know myself to be a simple creature now. I just looked at the odds.’

  ‘Never underestimate yourself. Your own self-knowledge has led you to understand that the simple answer, as Occam tells us, is often the right one. You do not overestimate your strengths, nor do you underestimate your enemies. You know where the greatest dangers lie, and how best to choose your allies.’

  Ghort was leading the way now, between the blast wall and a wall of ice, the others trooping dutifully after him. Now set on their course, they could only murmur weak protests and ask the questions they should have asked long ago. Were all humans programmed thus for self-destruction? Alex wondered.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.

  ‘What you must,’ Saul replied, whereupon Alex knew the conversation had ended.

  The Owner had other concerns: the survival of his ship, countering the forces of Earth arrayed against him, perhaps the contemplation of his route into future centuries or millennia. The chipped rebels were a small matter, and one he had countered with minimal effort, almost an autonomous one, simply by inserting Alex in place like an extra number in a formula.

  Still feeling sad, Alex raised his Kalashtech and opened fire, the shot hitting Marsin in the back of the neck and tumbling him forward into the midst of the rest. Next, emptying his weapon’s fifty-round clip, Alex sprayed the entire area ahead of him, pieces of suit, flesh, glittering clouds of ice and ejections of vapour filling the area, bodies tumbling and screams coming over their scrambled channels. In his mind the list of those ahead of him shortened, as the channels to each began winking out.

  Calmly striding forwards, he discarded the empty clip and inserted a new one, clicking his weapon down to three-shot bursts, as the vapour dispersed and the ice swirled like snow. Wherever he spotted movement he fired, further channels winking out. He pushed aside a floating body with the barrel of his weapon, saw shots slamming into it from someone crouching ahead, then he carefully aimed and fired, toppling the same crouching figure. Blood specks stuck to his visor, their moisture evaporating and the remainder flaking away from the frictionless glass. Seven channels remained open. He could hear Ghort shouting questions half in language and half in computer code, and the reply simply: Alex is killing us.

  ‘Traitor!’ Ghort spat – the word intended for Alex’s ears only.

  Alex stepped over bodies, shouldered aside someone who was still moving weakly, visor covered with blood and vapour jetting from holes too numerous to be stopped by breach resin. Two further steps forward, he grabbed another who was plainly dead, intestines trailing from a split in the lower torso and already drying like biltong in vacuum, then stepped aside holding the corpse as a shield and crouched. As expected, bullets picked up and flung about the mess all around him, but the survivors were aiming too high. Alex poked his assault rifle past the corpse, located three figures and fired. One of them skidded back into another, while the third flew up from the floor, somersaulting backwards and spewing vapour and blood. One figure now hauled up a dying companion, who took the impact of the next shots that Alex fired, before launching himself sideways and disappearing from view.

  Alex paused, seeing that now only five channels remained open. Clicking his weapon down to single shots, he walked back again, pressing the barrel to the wearer’s neck below any visor behind which there still seemed signs of life, before pulling the trigger. Within thirty seconds just one channel remained open. Seeing who it was, Alex reflected on the inevitability that seemed part of the narrative of his life.

  ‘I’m no traitor,’ he explained, as he collected up ammo clips and an extra weapon before turning again to set off. ‘I’m a realist.’

  ‘He’s still going to die,’ Ghort replied. ‘That copper head is still attached to his sanctum.’

  ‘Naive of you,’ said Alex since, though the detonator was in perfect working order and had doubtless been checked by one or other of the chipped, Alex had rendered the explosive itself inert, which was r
ather more difficult for anyone to check.

  ‘Bastard,’ said Ghort.

  ‘Factually correct,’ Alex replied, ‘and I’m still going to kill you.’ He paused for a moment to consider how short lived had been his distaste for any occupation ‘involving guns and blood’, and then moved on.

  It was a disabling shot, leaving the Rhine drive down, large areas of the ship beyond Saul’s reach, over fifty per cent of his robots now on autonomous function, the weapons out of his control, many external sensors down, and Arcoplex Two emergency braking because of damage to the outer bearing endcap. But the Traveller engine was still firing, the Mach-effect, after a momentary stutter, ramped back up to power, and the Vision – though its own vortex generator was building up power – would not be able to flee for half an hour. And because of the initial acceleration and present velocity, it still lay within reach.

  However, if the message that ship had received earlier was true, the other two ships could be arriving at any moment. As he inspected this damage Saul felt anxiety bite. Yes, Judd had been right about the weapon the Vision had possessed and certainly Saul was making the correct tactical response, but the reality was that his drive was down and would be inoperable for some time yet. If those other ships now arrived he would be at an extreme disadvantage. The harsh reality was that no matter how correctly he responded he was back in a fight for survival that he could easily lose.

  Saul rapidly began rerouting around burned-out parts of the system, in many places inserting robots as communications relays, shutting down damaged computers and bringing backups online, running diagnostics and rebooting further computers. Gradually the ship’s system rose to seventy per cent efficiency and, once again able to access certain parts of it, Saul quickly shut down the Mach-effect drive, since now it was no longer needed and those aboard Vision still might not have even noted the acceleration disparity and reported it. Next he shut down the Traveller engine and coasted on towards Europa, but still travelling faster than a railgun slug. Still rebooting and repairing, he noted with annoyance that the damage was such that control of the ship’s weapons lay beyond his reach, at least for the moment.

  Still there was no sign of the Fist and the Command arriving and, as the minutes slid by, he began to hope that the message the Vision had received had really been intended for him – a bluff.

  ‘Brigitta, do you have targeting?’ he asked, calmer now, realizing that very little could change what would happen next.

  The Saberhagen twin continued studying her screens and tapping away frantically at a console.

  ‘I have partial, but will need a ten-degree lateral shift of the ship’s pole to deploy the plasma cannon,’ she replied. ‘I’ve lost some of the hydraulics, and the cannon-steering rack is damaged.’

  ‘No need,’ Saul replied, already dispatching a conjoining of six of his new robots to make repairs, ‘I want you to use railguns only since, as I told you before, it’s not a good idea to apprise the enemy of everything we’ve got.’

  ‘If you say so – you’re the great military tactician.’

  Saul felt no irritation at this outburst of human pique. He was beyond that now . . . wasn’t he?

  ‘Calculate, with whatever targeting you have, on a minimum of five direct hits,’ he instructed, ‘and then fire when ready.’

  Within the system he watched her make the calculations, even as he regained the ability to take control there himself. He felt she was overdoing it a bit by firing twenty-five missiles from the two railguns, but decided it politic not to correct her error.

  The Vision was now under fusion drive and moving away from Europa, partially silhouetted against its cracked and icy face. Saul watched the two railguns turning, their noses still protruding from their ports but back ends swinging round, driven by hydraulic rams along their curved and toothed steering racks. The first missiles slid into the breaches – belt-fed like ancient machine guns – and a minute later a sudden power drain dimmed lights throughout the ship and it seemed to heave like some beast hoisting a burden. The missiles spat out, invisible to the naked eye at their acceleration, targeting hydraulics correcting minimally to give a suitable spread.

  Twenty more minutes passed without reinforcements arriving for the Vision, then, as more exterior sensors came on line, Saul detected another warp hurtle in and then shut down within the Jovian moon system. He inspected this data with skin prickling and his stomach sinking. The Fist had just arrived – immediately going over to fusion drive to bring it in-system. This tardy arrival confirmed the lie that had been told about the departure of the same ship from Earth, but it was here and Saul had no Rhine drive to take him away. He should have run when Galahad fired on them from the sun. He should not have been so damned sure of his calculations. He then tried to be optimistic about the fact that it had arrived alone, and thus speculated on his chances of being lucky and that the Command had suffered a malfunction. Perhaps there was still hope. Then he watched as the first railgun missile hit the Vision.

  It struck just ahead of the fusion drive, biting a chunk out of the hull and spewing fire and wreckage beyond. The Vision’s fusion flame sputtered and went out. The next missile struck just tens of metres from the first, caused an explosion inside which left the engine section of the ship hanging off at an angle, tethered by just a few twisted I-beams. The next blow was a glancing one upon the exposed ring of the Vision’s vortex generator, peeling up some of the armour there before the missile disintegrated in a line of plasma.

  For a moment Saul thought it had proved ineffective, but the massive coils of the power system of the vortex generator must have been damaged. A silver fumarole flashed out from the ship, as mercury, travelling at near relativistic speeds, exploded tangentially from the point of damage, and within a microsecond was spearing out even beyond Saul’s ship. A fraction of a second later the vortex ring dissolved like some high-speed fuse, and a disc of fire expanded outwards from it.

  It was enough, Saul felt: the Vision was no longer a danger to him. However, true to Brigitta’s calculations, fourth, fifth and sixth missiles slammed into the remaining hull of the stricken ship, one taking off its nose and the other two hammering dead centre and cutting it in half. Saul watched the drifting wreckage, oxygen fires burning inside until they exhausted, people tumbling through vacuum – some suited, and perhaps still alive until their air ran out. He watched other railgun missiles impacting on the face of Europa, their bright explosions throwing out plumes of ice crystals and creating circular rainbows. And he understood why he felt such regret and pity now, when they had never been part of him before. He understood that, in becoming what he had become, often he was more human.

  Then he erased that emotion, aimed his ship so as to swing about Europa and go in towards Jupiter, as he coldly calculated how he might similarly destroy the Fist and tried to discount the fact that this might not be possible at all.

  Scourge Shuttle

  Clay felt sick, which might have equally been due to the dose of radiation he had received aboard the Scourge or to his other injuries, but which he felt sure was due to a growing fatalistic acceptance that he was just not going to survive. He’d watched those two massive ships set out, he’d seen the huge amount of work that had gone into rebuilding the Traveller construction station, and he began accepting that Serene Galahad’s grip upon Earth was tighter even than Alessandro Messina’s. He felt as if he was feeding himself into the maw of some immense mincing machine.

  The shuttle jerked, shuddered, and a series of metallic clonks sounded from the rear.

  ‘That’s it, we’re docked,’ said Trove, glancing at him expressionlessly.

  Clay reached over to the console and picked up a laptop. The man Calder, whom Serene had put in charge up here, had already given him the transmission frequencies and various antennae to aim the microwave transmissions. All Clay had to do was insert his personal security code into the program currently open, hit transmit, and the Scourge would begin transmitting the
Gene Bank data.

  Three of the receivers were positioned on Earth, and two were aboard this same station, but none, by its location, gave any indication of where Galahad herself might be. Clay felt that Scotonis had made a long-odds gamble on locating her and had reckoned that he wouldn’t. In the end, the captain would hurl his ship down towards Earth at the most likely location – Italy – and the way Clay felt at the moment, he was sure Galahad wouldn’t be there. Afterwards, despite having brought the Gene Bank data back to Earth, he would be found guilty of helping Scotonis to annihilate an entire country, and then Galahad would have justification in exacting the most vicious vengeance available, probably live on ETV.

  Another clonk sounded from behind, followed by a ratcheting noise.

  ‘That’s the airlock tube in place.’ Trove studied her instruments. ‘We’re good to go now.’

  Clay hung the laptop on his belt, then reached over and took up one other item on the console: a sidearm with a gecko pad stuck on its grip. He studied it for a moment, then pressed the weapon down against his stomach, the gecko pad adhering it in place. It was futile, of course, for him to think he could defend himself with this, but at least, with it in easy reach, he had a chance of avoiding falling into Galahad’s hands. He hoped, if and when it came to it, he would be quick enough and brave enough to put the barrel to his head and pull the trigger.

  Trove stood up, slinging the strap of a Kalashtech over her shoulder. They had already discussed what to do once they left the shuttle, and she had decided against taking her own life if it seemed likely they would fall into Galahad’s hands. She intended to force someone else to do that job.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  Clay waited until she had left him room by moving out of the cockpit, then he followed her. Though he had huge reservations, there was nothing for it now but to go through with this, since Scotonis had given them no other options. His stomach tightening and the sick feeling suddenly dissipating, he watched Trove tow herself down into the airlock, check the pressure console, then open the outer door and pass through. He pulled himself through behind her into a wide octagonal airlock tube, with windows in what appeared to him to be the floor, giving glimpses of various inter-station shuttles in their docking cradles, with similar airlock tubes attached.