Hilldiggers

by Neal Asher

  ‘Get this mess cleared up.’ Harald gestured to the corpse. ‘We have work to do.’

  12

  Human embryos weren’t the only organic cargo of the Procul Harum. We also brought with us the components of whole ecologies in what was called a ‘genetically plastic’ form. The huge efforts involved in establishing our agriculture are often neglected in many texts, so let me restore the balance. Thousands of Terran animals were altered to survive here, in much the same way as we ourselves were, along with plants and the whole support ecologies right down to the bacterial level. Some were only partially adapted, hence the large specially cooled underground complexes used to grow much of our food. Areas of desert were stabilized using tough local flora, then the thin but increasing topsoil converted to support Terran crops. The tools we used to achieve all this were developed on Mars and under the domes of Earth’s own moon. It is worth remembering that a large proportion of our food is produced in vats by bacteria that was also designed before we even set out from the Solar System. There has been much research into the impact of ourselves and everything we brought on the indigenous environment of Sudoria. Many thousands of species have been wiped out, on both sides, but thousands of new ones have been created and introduced. Much recent research has focused on creating Terran-Sudorian hybrids, which now seem to be filling all available niches and finding new ones. Suffice to say that, with the level of our present genetic technologies, we are some way beyond the environmental disasters that plagued Earth a thousand years ago.

  – Uskaron

  McCrooger

  A town in a cylinder world, the inner curve of that world giving the illusion of the buildings leaning into each other, as if complicit in some plot. I gazed around, sure I had been here before, but only recognized it on finally peering down to see the skull-cobbled street. Then the figure was standing before me, and I told it that it could not be my father, for he had died long ago. It made no pretence of trying to be him, merely stared, its face a shining wormish tangle that seemed to project pure malice. I turned away and sought consciousness . . .

  I awoke feeling a little better and a little stronger – approximately the strength of cardboard as opposed to wet tissue paper. Reaching down to the straps securing me to the bed, it took me a while to figure out they clung to the mattress below with some kind of organic Velcro. Finally managing to pull them away, I lay exhausted for a while before sitting upright. That exertion set me drifting away from the bed, catheter and sucking anal tube trailing after me like umbilicals, so I pulled myself back down using one strap then secured it over my skinny legs.

  Studying myself I realized that the loose skin made me look a lot worse than I actually was. I’d shed about a quarter of my body mass and now carried the musculature of a ‘normal’ human. Even so, I wondered how I would stand up under gravity, or if I would be able to stand up at all. We were heading now for Sudoria, which was about 1.2 standard gees, and I did not relish the prospect. Something else I did not relish was having to accept that my surroundings seemed slightly distorted, with the shadows out of place, and that the malady I had suffered aboard Inigis’s ship was back to add to all my other ills.

  My shoulder was stiff, with a dressing like cured hide around it which extended down to cover my collar bone at the front and scapula at the back. I was naked and not particularly proud of that nakedness. I drew out the catheter, wincing, then slid back on the bed and removed the other tube, gagging at the smell.

  What now?

  I just sat there for a while feeling like shit, until a sucking exhalation alerted me to the opening of that door.

  ‘Rhodane,’ I said.

  ‘Consul Assessor.’

  ‘Be a good girl and get me some clothing will you?’

  She snorted at that, but departed nevertheless. I must have drifted out of consciousness for seemingly only an eye-blink later she was back, accompanied by Slog and Flog. She had brought along some Brumallian dungarees, underclothing and a shirt that looked to be made of the same foamite that Fleet personnel wore. I was grateful, for the shirt was thick and would go some way to conceal my debility. I sat upright and reached for the garments.

  ‘You are not ready,’ she said predictably.

  ‘Is that Tigger’s medical opinion?’ I enquired, as I took the clothing from her then struggled to dress.

  ‘No, it is mine.’

  ‘I need something to eat and drink,’ I said. Though I did not feel particularly hungry I was anxious to get myself functional again – working on the premise that this might even be possible.

  ‘Do you feel ready to enter the spin ring?’ asked Rhodane.

  ‘You’ll have to explain that.’

  ‘Brumallian ships do not possess artificial gravity, but an internal ring of compartments is kept spinning to give the—’

  ‘Yeah,’ I interrupted. ‘I get the idea. I don’t know if I’m ready, but there’s one way to find out.’ I realized I was not my usual cheerful self at this point, and really did not care.

  ‘Come, then.’

  She led the way to that disconcerting door and I followed. Slog hovered about me as if ready to assist. I gave him a look he interpreted rightly and he hovered no more. The door brushed over me smooth and dry as snakeskin. On the other side was something I’ll call a corridor, but which looked more like an intestinal tract. The walls, however, were not soft – bearing a resemblance in feel to grainy wood and the look of cloudy glass. Light permeated this corridor, as I was to discover it permeated throughout the ship – emitted by layers of luminescent bacteria similar to that found in the body of one of their multi-legged biolights, which were thankfully absent here. After two branchings of this corridor I became increasingly aware of a bubbling sucking sound. Finally we came to its source: a wall I could see slowly revolving about a centre point. Rhodane pressed her hand against some fleshy nub and that same centre point slowly opened wide a sphincter.

  ‘Here,’ she said, and launched herself through.

  I wondered if I was ready for this, since I had a good idea of what to expect. Gritting my teeth I moved ahead of the two quofarl, then pushed myself through. Hollow shafts, like the spokes of a wheel, revolved about me. Rhodane had pulled herself into one of them and there clung to a ladder. She held out a hand, which I grabbed, and she pulled me in. For a moment, because I could still see beyond the door, I felt a surge of nausea as I revolved. Closing my eyes I clamped down on that reaction and began to push myself backwards along the ladder. After only a short distance, centrifugal force began to impinge, and I was no longer pushing myself along the ladder, but descending it. Looking up I saw Flog come through the opening and now, from my perspective, it was he who was revolving. He too grabbed the ladder and began to descend behind me.

  At first it was easy, but with each step I felt my skin and flesh beginning to sag on my bones, and breathing started to become an effort.

  Pausing, I asked, ‘When we reach the bottom will the spin acceleration be the same as Brumal’s gravity?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Rhodane from below.

  I had hoped otherwise.

  Nearing the bottom of the ladder the soles of my feet hurt as they came down on the rungs, and for a moment I visualized myself walking along that skull-cobbled street, then my hands began to ache from holding up my abruptly enormous weight. It felt to me as if my internal organs were being sucked down towards the bottom of my torso, only suspended in place by threads and weak sheets that could tear or break at any moment. My leg muscles burned with lactic overload and my testicles seemed to have turned into lead shot. Finally reaching the floor, I swung round to the wall and rested my back against it. I really wanted to sit down, but knew that if I did so I would not be able to get back up again.

  ‘Can you continue?’ asked Rhodane.

  I nodded very carefully, frightened that too vigorous a response might damage my neck. She stared at me for a long moment until I realized my gesture had been wasted – not being emphatic e
nough for her to recognize.

  ‘I can,’ I said.

  As she moved on, I stepped out from the wall and turned to follow her. Slog and Flog, recently departing the ladder, moved in either side of me and gripped a biceps each. I felt that protest now would be foolish, because it seemed unlikely I would be able to manage any distance at all down here on my own.

  Rhodane led the way into a kind of dormitory, with beds jutting from the wall like bracket fungi, and sporting those familiar organic mattresses. Tottering through the door after her, I could think of nothing to say, I was so unutterably weary. She merely gestured to one of the beds, onto which Slog and Flog released me. I hauled up my legs, then . . . nothing.

  Yishna

  Leaning her forehead against a port of the inter-station shuttle – the cool glass soothing the burn inside her skull – Yishna observed a landing craft departing Corisanthe II, and knew Duras was aboard and now on his way back to the planet’s surface. He might well achieve all he intended down there, but she suspected it would not be enough. A conflict between Fleet and Combine seemed unavoidable, no matter what votes were won in Parliament. As the shuttle turned, she took her head away from the port, then pulled herself over and down into the chair beside Dalepan, and strapped herself in.

  ‘What preparations are being made?’ she asked.

  ‘All the quadrant guns are now operational,’ said Dalepan, as he guided the shuttle towards the distant speck of Corisanthe Main. ‘Presently all other weapons systems are being checked, as are all the safety protocols.’ He gestured to the spacesuit he wore. ‘Everybody works wearing one of these now.’

  ‘If it comes to us ever needing them, we’ll probably have lost,’ said Yishna.

  ‘Perhaps so, but we also have a few surprises awaiting the hilldiggers – should they attack. Gneiss has only just informed me that Orbital Combine has been working in secret to build and develop gravity-disruptor weapons, which are also being installed on the Corisanthe stations and on some of the defence platforms. We are also launching stealthed space mines, and Fleet is being ordered to stand off by a million miles.’

  ‘Which Fleet will not do.’

  Dalepan nodded, then went on, ‘I think the largest imponderable concerns directed and undirected weapons. All the stations of Orbital Combine are a sitting target so Fleet could remain far out and pound us with inert missiles fired by linear accelerator. If we reply in kind, the hilldiggers merely need to be moved.’

  ‘Collateral damage,’ said Yishna, understanding at once.

  ‘Precisely. If they bombard us from a distance, a proportion of their missiles will inevitably strike Sudoria. Is Harald prepared to countenance that? How far is he prepared to go to win?’ Dalepan gazed at Yishna queryingly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, and then began to consider what might be her brother’s objectives, and just what he might do to attain them.

  Upon their arrival at Corisanthe Main, they were forced to wait until sufficient precautions were taken before the shields shut down. While this was being done, Yishna observed a maintenance vessel approaching the station, clutching in its multiple grabs some kind of massive engine. Space all around it was filled with suited figures and installation pods. After the shields shut down, a computer-controlled maintenance sphere mounted with a missile launcher came out to escort them in. Upon docking, five heavily armed OCTs came aboard to check over their ship before she and Dalepan could disembark.

  Once inside the station, he told her, ‘Stay healthy,’ before moving off. She smiled her thanks, but had to wonder about that comment. Certainly she had not been too healthy when last she left this place, and now, upon her return, felt a growing fear that she might once again become the troubled person she had been then. Shaking her head angrily she set out, two of the armed OCTs staying to escort her to the Director. From them she discovered that all Worm research had been stopped – the containment cylinders locked down under a security protocol, but thankfully not one for a physical breach, she realized, because, after her own interference, that would have meant the containment cylinders had long departed the station. Everyone she saw on the way was wearing either spacesuits or emergency survival suits and seemed to be moving at an accelerated pace.

  In his office the Director had the same question for her as Dalepan had asked aboard the shuttle.

  ‘I’ve considered this,’ she replied, ‘and come to the conclusion that, just like myself, my brother is prepared to do anything to attain his goals.’

  Director Gneiss gestured to the seat before his desk, swung a screen scroll across on a pivoted arm, extended the flimsy screen, then tapped something into a console before him. Yishna sat eyeing the sensor head mounted in the wall behind him, then his suit helmet resting on the desk beside him. She had yet to collect a suit for herself from the stores. After a moment he gazed across at her, and once again Yishna was struck by how she somehow knew him, yet could never read him. Having been away for a while she had nearly convinced herself that her prior opinion of him had been distorted somehow. But here, now, upon her return, she found him just as unnerving as ever.

  ‘We have defences against conventional weapons, and possess many such weapons too,’ he stated. ‘We also have gravtech weapons of our own; however, there is as yet very little defence against them, and in the end, should they be deployed by either side, very little will remain around Sudoria but the wreckage of the hilldiggers and our stations.’

  ‘But don’t the same rules apply to gravtech weapons as to missiles that aren’t self-directed, like those fired by linear accelerator?’ Yishna interlaced her fingers in her lap and attempted a relaxed mien. She had no doubt that members of the Combine Oversight Committee were watching very closely everything that occurred in this room and logging questions on the screen the Director kept flicking his plastic gaze towards.

  ‘Your point?’ he asked.

  ‘A gravity-disruptor burst expands like a torch beam – by the inverse square law – so to hit one of our stations without striking Sudoria, that weapon would need to be fired at or below the orbital level of the station.’ Yishna shrugged. ‘Should a hilldigger manage to attain such an advantageous position, that would mean it no longer needed to use such a weapon.’ Gneiss just stared back at her so she continued. ‘What Harald could do in close with gravity disruptors, he could also manage at a distance, with little danger to Fleet, with missiles fired by linear accelerator. To go back to your original question: I feel my brother will be quite prepared to inflict con-siderable collateral damage on Sudoria while attaining his goal. But I feel the real question to ask is how much collateral damage to their home planet are those under his command prepared to tolerate?’

  ‘You make some interesting points,’ said Gneiss.

  ‘Harald is not Fleet,’ Yishna added. ‘And it is well to remember that there’ll be few under his command who do not have family down on the surface, and even aboard some of the Combine stations.’

  ‘What does Harald actually want?’ Gneiss asked. It was another of those questions posed by him that seemed to contain too many perilous levels of meaning.

  ‘You know the answer to that as well as I do,’ Yishna replied, deciding to give as good as she got.

  ‘We are supposing that, like many in Fleet, Harald resents Orbital Combine’s growing power?’

  ‘So it would appear.’

  All surface . . . all ephemeral . . .

  ‘He instigated recent unfortunate events so he could use them as an excuse to take away our control of our defence platforms. We are supposing, from his recent actions, that if he cannot attain this end through Parliament, he will resort to force.’

  Yishna shook her head. ‘I feel you’re missing the point. If Harald cannot take control of the platforms through Parliament, he’ll know that he cannot ultimately take control of them by force. His aim will be to take control of them out of our hands, so he’ll attempt to destroy them.’

  ‘And having done that, he wil
l cease?’

  ‘Of course not. We built the platforms . . .’ Yishna paused, realizing that during this discussion she had come to properly understand Harald’s aims. ‘I think that what Parliament decides has become irrelevant. Harald knows that, even with a parliamentary vote going against us, we’ll not hand over the platforms.’

  ‘Conflict cannot be avoided, then?’

  ‘I think not. I think it my brother’s intention to smash Combine and then absorb its remnants into Fleet. I talked to Duras about this, who feared his next target might then be Sudoria itself. I doubted that then . . . now I am not so sure.’

  ‘Do you feel any sibling loyalty?’

  ‘I am loyal to Combine because it allows me to do those things that most interest me, involving research of the Worm, and now to stand at the fulcrum of events concerning our contact with the Polity. During his petty games, my brother killed the Consul Assessor, and I can never forgive him for that.’

  ‘Your brother will attempt to seize the Worm for Fleet?’

  ‘If possible. And if not, he’ll destroy it.’ Even as she said the words, a sudden outfield thought occurred to her: It has prepared for this possibility. A simple containment breach, which would be almost inevitable if Corisanthe Main came under heavy attack, and her alteration of the protocols would result in the Ozark Cylinders all being ejected. Then she shook her head. Madness, surely?

  After a long pause while he studied his screen, Gneiss said, ‘You should go now and draw yourself a spacesuit from stores.’

  ‘What do you want of me now?’ Yishna asked, standing.

  ‘There is much work to be done and you possess so much expertise.’

  ‘You might trust me, but will the Oversight Committee let me stay here?’

  ‘I have always trusted you, Yishna, for I know what you hold most dear. As for the Committee, they heed my advice. You will now take charge of the research body and find useful employment for it, and you will also act as my troubleshooter, as problems are sure to arise from the new . . . installations.’