by Neal Asher
Angela was awake also now, and busy checking tactical data on her screen. Others were thoroughly aware of the situation too; Le Roque studying Saul’s battle plan and issuing instructions to those he had designated as ‘fire control’ and who were now heading for EVA units. Squads of robots, controlled by the chipped, were ready for quick deployment within the ship. Everyone now had their suits tightly closed up and, when not remaining strapped in their acceleration chairs, were ready with breach patches and welding gear. It was the best they could all do, Saul decided, but still many of them were going to die.
The next strike peeled up hull metal at the equator of Saul’s ship and glanced off the heavy armour around the vortex generator, blast walls absorbing the shot and asteroidal ice turning instantly to searing steam. The vortex generator remained untouched, however, and there were no personnel in that area, since Alex was conducting his hunt close to a hundred and eighty degrees further around that same ring. Saul still felt a moment of disquiet at that one strike since, without the abrupt Mach-effect nudge, the missile might well have penetrated the armour and struck the vortex generator, which was even now slowly winding up to speed. Another strike went in above the Traveller engine, taking a chunk out of its support pillar. He deliberately induced a misfire, leaving the fusion drive sputtering and burning dirty, before shutting it down. Robots ascended the pillar to make repairs, quickly slicing away wreckage and transporting up replacement beams. Meanwhile, the other ship decelerated to bring it closer; doubtless its crew assumed he had lost the ability for massive course changes.
Explosions lit the way ahead as Hermippe threw rubble and molten rock out into vacuum. The Command fired side-burn fusion engines to avoid the debris and brought itself closer still. Two hits on the Command followed: one a glancing blow near the nose that slagged some kind of weapons turret, and the other one punching right through its main body, the burning gas throwing it into silhouette. Another hit on Saul’s ship ensued, slicing in transversely and carving a molten trench through the side of Arcoplex Two. Breach alarms screamed there and bulkhead doors slammed shut internally around the area as it bled air. Through one cam, Saul peered at a group of four people strapped to acceleration couches and gazing up in disbelief through their visors at the long hole above them, its glowing lips open to the rest of the ship.
Another missile came in, almost perfectly on target, its line of flight destined to take it straight through the centre of the ship and just metres from where Saul himself sat. One Mach-effect nudge threw it many metres to the side, where it smashed explosively into the inner bearing of the Arboretum. The whole bearing assembly then fragmented; the cylinder world’s shaft at that end dislodged and swung fifty metres to one side. Chunks of ceramic flew in every direction and the mercury content of the bearing spewed out in a glittering cloud. Saul registered twenty-eight backups disconnected from their primary sources: fourteen incinerated when a plume of plasma from the initial missile impact played over their accommodation unit, twelve of them vaporized inside the building in which the bearing was housed, along with one broken neck and one shattered skull in the Arboretum itself. Saul also noted that there had been sixteen people in that accommodation unit – two of them yet to be chipped and now having lost any chance of eternity.
Enough – they were close enough now.
‘Brigitta,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘now.’
15
The Data Saved Us
That the Gene Bank samples and data were essential to save Earth’s ecosystem was just another misconception on the part of Serene Galahad and her advisers. When seeds buried thousands of years ago could still germinate, when a single bacterium could multiply into billions in the time it takes to plant a tree, and when the exigencies of evolution could turn a mouse into the equivalent of an elephant or a tiger, Earth was not dying. Earth was sick, however: the disease was called manswarm and, with the Scour, Serene Galahad had administered the antibiotic, whilst her sprawl clearances were the salve applied to Earth’s scabrous hide. But, even if manswarm had not been so reduced by her activities, the resource crash would have served the same ends as the Scour – and Earth would have regenerated itself, in time. This is a fact of biology and not of blind optimism. Earth has seen numerous extinctions throughout its existence, and in every case that engine called life has never stopped. It was in fact a kind of arrogance to suppose that humans could be so supremely destructive. And, even with that data, much of the life of our present time will still be little more than fossils in rock, a billion years hence.
Earth
Serene stared at Ruger as one of her security team disarmed him. Unlike Trove, he resisted not at all, just wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes and emitted a few further chuckles.
Why was the man laughing?
Elkin had confirmed, by a random sampling of the data stream, that the Scourge was indeed now transmitting the uncorrupted Gene Bank data. It would take maybe half an hour for the transmission to complete and Ruger – she glanced at the laptop now gyrating in the air above one of her spiderguns – had no way of stopping it if he decided things weren’t going his way. Ruger had to realize it was all over for him now.
Serene turned to Elkin and drew a finger across her throat. Elkin gave a signal and all the lights blinked out on the floating cams – signifying the ETV transmission was ended. Serene felt the situation was now back within her control, and that she had some decisions to make. With the data in her hands, she could now, if she so wished, just recall her three ships, but she decided at that moment not to. Various experts had assured her that the Gene Bank data alone, though lacking the genetic codes in the full gamut of samples, would assure the future of Earth’s biosphere. However, getting hold of those samples, and capturing or killing Alan Saul and his rebels, would be a huge bonus.
‘Bring them,’ she instructed Vaughan, gesturing towards Trove and Ruger.
By now all the Inspectorate staff aboard the station would be dead, and it was time to consolidate her position here. She would express some surprise upon learning about the full extent of the Scour deaths on board, then order Calder’s arrest and, after some assessment of the remaining staff, put someone else in charge. After that she would return to Earth, back to what she now knew to be her comfort zone, there put the finishing touches to her cover stories, execute Calder for unleashing the Scour here, then have a long talk with Ruger about his inappropriate humour.
‘Ma’am,’ said Sack, now up close to her side.
‘What?’ she asked, as the future opened out before her in her mind. She would indeed carry through her plan to turn the human race into something more manageable. She would continue demolishing unoccupied sprawls, restocking the oceans, begin establishing forests, jungles and other ecosystems and turn Earth back into the halcyon garden it had once been. With so much to do, she was anxious to be away from here and eager to get started.
‘The screen,’ said Sack.
Serene looked up and saw that the ETV talking heads had now been banished, and that Calder was gazing out from the screen. Everyone now swung round to watch.
‘Oh, good,’ said Calder, ‘I have your attention.’
Serene did not like his tone at all. She quickly scanned about: the bay was covered by her personnel; the dead Inspectorate staff they had found here were neatly stacked away in a nearby storeroom. Sharpshooters covered the entire area, but were almost superfluous while her three spiderguns were deployed.
‘Your arrogance, Serene Galahad, is astounding,’ continued Calder. ‘Did you honestly think that, with the resources and scientific personnel you put at my disposal, I could not work out what you did? Did you honestly think I would not find out that the biochips, manufactured in your Aldeburgh Complex, were the actual source of the Scour, and that you yourself controlled them?’
Cold dread ran its claws up and down Serene’s spine. She glanced at the expressions all around her, some puzzled and some doubtful, yet others suddenly attentiv
e and turning towards her. They expected her to make a response.
‘And do you, Calder,’ she said, forcing a tired smile onto her lips, ‘honestly expect anyone to believe that?’ She gestured to those gathered all around her. ‘Would I surround myself with staff who have all lost family to the Scour? No, I would not. I surround myself with these people because they are as dedicated as I am to exacting vengeance upon the mass murderer Alan Saul. And now you, in your pathetic and desperate attempt to usurp me, are scrabbling for some way to turn them against me.’ He was about to speak, but she quickly overrode him. ‘Do you also honestly think that, having such an option available, Messina and his Committee would have expended such a wealth of resources on sectoring, and on developing the Argus network?’
‘Oh, classic,’ said Ruger abruptly. ‘And yet none of it matters at all.’ Then he burst out laughing again.
‘Shut him up!’ Serene snapped, and felt some degree of satisfaction when her order was instantly obeyed and a rifle butt connected with Ruger’s head.
‘Good try,’ said Calder. ‘Your lies may well have worked on those around you, but that’s irrelevant now. I knew straight away once you had activated the biochips, and gave you the news you were expecting. It was, of course, necessary to supply some bodies from our morgue here, for veracity. And now, Serene Galahad, it’s time for you to pay.’
White light flashed near the end of the bay, metal screamed and a cloud of debris expanded. Serene felt something crash into her, tearing her gecko soles right off the floor. She struggled against Sack’s grip, though he was only performing his job and dragging her to cover. More explosions ensued and then gunfire erupted. Sack pulled her down by the airlock leading to Ruger’s shuttle, just as a spidergun opened fire at a group of figures already swarming into the hold, sending shattered bodies tumbling. She pulled close to Sack, suddenly wishing she’d taken things further with him, for he was her rock, all she could trust. A thrumming seemed to fill the air, Serene’s fone emitted a sound like water dropping into a chip pan, then she saw one spidergun fold up like a fist and another go tumbling aside, loose-limbed.
‘Tank-busters,’ explained Sack.
Vaughan and other security staff had launched themselves into the air and were firing their weapons furiously. Serene watched ceramic bullets smacking into some of them, then a ten-mil machine gun sounded, tearing up the floor in a line that terminated at Elkin and her two aides, who just flew apart.
‘We need cover,’ said Sack, glancing aside as the men guarding Ruger and Trove dragged them over.
Serene just stared, with mouth agape, as fragmentation grenades turned the entire bay into bloody chaos, and her security team died. She spotted Vaughan, the silver bars on the arm of his VC suit singling him out, bouncing off the floor only to rise again, his legs reduced to bloody tatters below the waist. About twenty of her people had closed in around her, crouching down and firing at the seemingly endless stream of Inspectorate personnel entering the bay, before themselves steadily falling. Then abruptly Sack was dragging her somewhere else, and she only realized he had opened the airlock door once she was through it.
‘Ten of you here!’ Sack bellowed.
There were moving bodies blocking all views, some of them bloody, one of them screaming, and bullet impacts were horrible meaty thwacks all around her. Then came a detonation, bright, blinding, setting her ears buzzing. The next moment they were inside the shuttle, yanking the door closed against a chaos of shouting and screaming, then hammering fists and the sounds of bullets impacting. She felt more than heard the docking clamps disengage, heard screams turning to grunts as someone administered an anaesthetic. Slowly she began to unfreeze, but then, seeing she was strapped into an acceleration chair, she realized the immediate danger.
‘Do not use the engines!’ she yelled, struggling to undo the straps, towing herself towards the cockpit. ‘We cannot leave the station like this!’
From the co-pilot’s chair Sack looked round at her. ‘We know about the railguns, ma’am. We’re just holding position for now.’
Serene glanced at Trove, now sitting in the pilot’s chair, her hands resting flat on the console, Sack’s gun jammed into her side.
‘Good,’ said Serene, fighting to keep a note of hysteria out of her voice. She had to keep control. She had to retain an aura of confidence. She glanced back into the crew compartment, saw that only two of her security team had made it inside, and one of them was strapped into a seat, the top half of his VC suit stripped away, dressings fastened across his chest and over the stump of his right arm. His eyes were closed and a morphia patch had been applied to his neck. The other had a combat dressing on one side of his face, burns showing under its edges and, by his bloody hands, had obviously been responsible for applying the dressings to his wounded comrade. Now he stood guard over their other prisoner, whose head was bloody, but who grinned at her nevertheless.
‘So, what’s so amusing, Ruger?’ she demanded.
‘You can’t ever leave because this Calder controls the construction station and, from what I just heard, its railguns too,’ he said. ‘And, anyway, none of it matters a fuck.’
‘So you don’t mind dying,’ Serene replied.
‘I do, but at least it’s going to be quick.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ Serene spat.
‘Oh, I reckon a multiple-megaton nuclear detonation will surely do the trick.’
‘What?’
‘Hey, Trove!’ he called out. ‘Is he on the move?’
‘Yeah,’ Trove replied from the cockpit. ‘I checked before this goon made me undock. He’s broken away from the tug, and his fusion drive just started. We’ve got half an hour at best.’
‘What are our chances of getting clear?’ Ruger asked.
Serene looked at Trove, who gazed back at her with dead eyes.
‘At the crawl speed of this heap of junk inter-ship shuttle?’ said the pilot officer. ‘The expression “snowflake in hell” springs to mind.’
‘What are you two talking about?’ Serene asked succinctly.
‘Oh,’ said Ruger, ‘I forgot to mention that Captain Scotonis is still aboard the Scourge. He knows you controlled the Scour outbreak and that you’re therefore responsible for the death of his entire family. He’s been trying to locate you, and you then made it nice and easy with that ETV broadcast.’
‘What’s he going to do?’ asked Serene, not at all liking Sack’s flat stare nor the silent attentiveness of her other personnel here.
‘He’s a bit pissed off,’ said Ruger, ‘so he’s going to drop the Scourge right on top of your head, and detonate its entire nuclear arsenal.’
Serene just stared at him, unable to think of any sensible reply. This could not be happening. She had so much to do, so many plans, she who held the destiny of planet Earth in her hands.
The Command
Bartholomew had known it wouldn’t be easy, but now the reality was hitting home as the damage and casualty reports came in. But Tactical were sure that Saul’s fusion drive was out, and insisted it was only a matter of time before they could confirm a full strike on the other ship’s vortex generator. This had annoyed Bartholomew somewhat, since after seeing the footage of what had happened to the Vision, it was obvious that a tactical assessment wouldn’t be required in order to confirm such a hit. Saul’s ship would spew mercury travelling at relativistic speeds, and probably tear out most of its equatorial infrastructure.
‘Are we close enough for the maser yet?’ he asked of his command crew.
‘Too disperse still, Admiral,’ replied Lieutenant Cole.
The maser beam was not completely coherent, so its effective range was measured in just thousands of kilometres within vacuum. Nukes were impossible at this range, since they could not be accelerated to railgun speeds without producing major internal damage, while their lasers, though able to reach the other ship, would waste their effectiveness against its hull. No, it would have to be the railgu
ns for a while yet, and meanwhile Saul wasn’t a passive target.
Bartholomew sniffed smoke in the air, redolent of burned meat. He’d lost half of his engineering team and shut down com to the affected part of the ship when it became necessary to close bulkhead doors and fill the place with fire-retardant foam. If there were survivors, they could be dug out later; for now they would just have to endure.
The ship lurched as another missile hit home. Damage-control diagnostics filled one corner of his large curved screen and, reading them, Bartholomew swore vehemently. They’d just lost one of the side-burn fusion engines.
‘Repairs?’ he asked.
‘Going swiftly,’ Cole replied.
Bartholomew switched over to the stats on the first hit, and called up a frame giving a view of the damage done, where robots were swarming over the wreckage. At least they were functioning above spec. It amazed him how fast they were making repairs. If they continued at their present rate, hull integrity in that section would be back to optimum within the hour. This was all doubtless due to the comlifer they had aboard, because Christopher Shivers had managed to iron out a lot of computer-control inefficiencies.
The admiral focused his attention on the main image on the screen: the spherical ship that had once been Argus Station was now speeding along almost parallel to them. They’d hit it, what, six times thus far, and had still failed to take out the vortex generator. Readings showed that it was still many hours away from full functionality but, even so, it must not be allowed to function since Saul would almost certainly then run. Bartholomew leaned back. Well, at least he should be thankful that his own ship’s generator was still intact.
‘Can we reposition yet?’ he asked.
‘Still too much in the way,’ replied Cole. ‘It’s as if he deliberately chose to intercept us here and negate that option.’ Then he added, ‘He’s firing steering thrusters again.’
Of course he chose the battleground, realized Bartholomew, watching the glare of the thrusters now turning Saul’s ship.