Hilldiggers

by Neal Asher

  ‘Fleet ships are a long way off right now, but watch stations will still spot us, and Harald could get a hill-digger out to squash us before we arrived at Sudoria.’

  ‘That will depend upon how much he considers us a threat.’

  ‘We won’t worry him at all, but he might think it handy to tell everyone he destroyed a Brumallian ship that was heading for Sudoria. That’d make him look like the good guy.’

  ‘And what is the plan should they send such a ship?’

  ‘There is none – as yet.’

  It wasn’t particularly comforting to know that the virus left inside me might not, in the end, be the cause of my death.

  ‘You must have studied this ship carefully,’ I said. ‘How well would it stand up to a hilldigger?’

  ‘There’s an old expression . . . a snowball’s chance in hell?’

  ‘You seem decidedly unworried about it all.’

  ‘The emotional range of a tiger’s facial expression isn’t huge, but like yourself I find little to recommend mortality – even more so now I am . . . diminished.’

  ‘Does it hurt to have lost your other half?’

  ‘I’ve lost my ability to travel through space, many tools, weapons and processing space, so my loss is like yours, one of strength. Didn’t lose much memory and knowledge – just a few seconds.’ Those amber eyes fixed on me. ‘Given time and materials I could easily rebuild my other half, with all its previous advantages. I might have lost a lot, but I still do possess sufficient tools.’

  I realized, as Tigger spoke, that he was gently prodding me in some direction. I replayed our recent conversation in my mind and asked, ‘So how could this ship be saved in the event of Harald sending one of his hilldiggers against it?’

  ‘With current Brumallian technology, not a chance.’

  Ah.

  ‘And how well do you understand Brumallian technology?’ I asked.

  ‘Better than them.’

  Tigger halted, sat back on his haunches, raised a paw and, peering down at it, extended one claw at a time for inspection. I halted as well and rested my back against a pillar, feeling a muted vibration through the ship’s bones. Guessing where this conversation was leading I took a leap ahead.

  ‘Providing the Brumallians with any technology that would give them a definite military advantage would seriously piss off Geronamid, but obviously having that AI angry with us is substantially better than being dead.’

  ‘Oh, I agree.’ Tigger raised his head to meet my gaze.

  ‘Were you waiting for permission from me?’

  ‘Well,’ Tigger shrugged, ‘I’d then only be following orders.’

  Tigger, who could have been a major AI but chose to be a drone, was clearly not a great lover of responsibility. He wanted me to take the rap. I considered then who we should talk to, since this being a Brumallian ship, there was no Captain aboard.

  ‘Tell Rhodane,’ I said. ‘She can put it to the Consensus.’ I wondered if that would be limited to a consensus of the present crew, for Fleet’s blocking of signals prevented communication back to Brumal. I saw then how their system might not work so well in some situations.

  Only later did I find out how they got round that one. They asked the ship.

  Harald

  With AC hum permeating the air and vibrating the catwalk below his feet, Harald folded his eye-screen to one side and peered over the rail down at the linear accelerator. Having finished the final checks, the gunnery crewmen were now moving into position on their monitoring platform above the aseptic gleam of the machinery surrounding the vacuum breech. The 800-foot-long accelerator – six feet wide, wrapped in heavily insulated coil sections and cooling jackets, and trailing massive power cables – slanted down through the body of the ship, its mouth opening directly below Ironfist’s nose. A conveyor belt crammed with resin-encased iron projectiles snaked down to the breech machinery. Unlike the solid projectiles fired at the military infrastructure around Brumal throughout the war, Harald knew that inside their bullet-shaped cases these consisted of a block of irregularly shaped iron fragments bound together by the resin.

  ‘It will be interesting to see how closely fact matches theory,’ he commented.

  Standing next to him, with her hands folded behind her back, Jeon grimaced. ‘The ballistics formulae incorporate a degree of error, but on hitting an orbital target these projectiles should break apart like antipersonnel bullets to inflict maximum damage. Missing the target and entering atmosphere, they should quickly burn off their cases, then break apart and burn up before reaching the planet’s surface.’

  ‘Should?’ Harald repeated.

  ‘We can’t be entirely certain with a ton of iron travelling at such speeds. At the worst, one in ten will forge-weld into one single lump on atmospheric impact, and retain coherence long enough to strike the ground as a plasma column, but thereafter there’s a less than point one per cent chance of hitting a major population centre.’

  Harald nodded slowly, then pushed his microphone across in front of his mouth. ‘Run test,’ he ordered.

  After a moment the hum dropped to a lower note, which it held for a couple of seconds before rising back to its previous level. Through Harald’s headset, his gunnery officer informed him, ‘Resonance in coils four and fifteen, but within operational parameters.’ Harald flipped his eye-screen back into position and read the data feeds from the other five hilldiggers chosen for this chore. Four of them were ready, but one had detected major faults in its linear accelerator. How surprising that one should be Davidson’s Resilience. However, Harald had already factored in that at least one hilldigger would be unable to fire.

  ‘Estimated damage such a forge-welded lump could cause?’ he enquired of Jeon.

  ‘About five hundred kilotons.’

  ‘Enough to take out a small city, then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Harald stared down at his hands and observed how he was white-knuckling the rail. He deliberately relaxed his fingers. ‘Commence firing,’ he ordered over general com.

  Down below, a snake of missiles advanced one segment down a conveyor, an arm slid one translucent yellow bullet – in which could be seen dark iron bones – into one of the two inner breech sections. With a hiss this section slid down into place in the vacuum breech. The hum dropped to a low note. Simultaneously the second inner breech section clonked across, and another projectile was fed into that too. The hum rose as the first section retracted, dropped again as the next fed in. So it continued for the first five shots – the motion similar to that of a simple pump. Then, after these second-stage test shots, the firing accelerated until the hum never rose again; the breech sections were in constant motion with projectiles being fired once every second.

  Harald summoned up an exterior view of the fleet, but there was very little to see as the projectiles departed at near relativistic speeds other than the occasional spurt of a drive flame to keep the hilldiggers in position. The time until the projectiles reached their targets was one hour, but within only a few minutes Director Gneiss and the rest of the Oversight Committee would know Combine was being fired upon. Harald now keyed into feeds from Fleet stations all around Sudoria and flicked through multiple views, observing landing craft in the process of evacuation, as ordered previously. Accounting for the transmission delay, those craft should already be on their way down to the planet’s surface. Quite probably the personnel aboard would be arrested once the wardens managed to reach them, but that was a problem to be resolved later. Those personnel would be safer in custody on the surface, for most certainly, knowing it was under attack, Combine would react fast to remove Fleet eyes from orbit. He waited, constantly checking the time display.

  The smell of heating metal filled the air, and the accelerator’s loading gear continued to produce its fast metronomic racket. Over the last three minutes the five ships had fired over a thousand projectiles. Gun technicians constantly monitored their displays, hands at rest as the machinery did i
ts work. A pause. Misload. One of the breech sections dropped down and swung aside, as one of the five spares slid into place. Harald observed a hydraulic plunger shoving the misfire out of that particular section. The resin body of the projectile was cracked, exposing the iron inside, and when it crashed into the reject shoot, it fell in half. That would have to be investigated but Harald was not over concerned, since errors were certain to arise when using a new design of projectile like this. At least no manual intervention had been required. As the end of the load came in sight on the conveyor, it became easier to see how fast these objects were being fired. Harald tracked the last one down, saw it safely on its way, listened to the hum rise again, steady, then slowly fade.

  He was utterly committed now; there was no way to recall those shots.

  Again he checked his time display; in a few minutes’ time he would know Orbital Combine’s response. When it finally came, it was not unexpected.

  One display feed from Sudoria blinked out, while another showed the reason why: a Fleet supply station – a cylinder 4,000 feet long and half as much wide – hung in space now ripped open, gutted by incandescent fire. Harald guessed some hot-burning chemical warhead had been used. Then another station – a trans-shipment base for Fleet personnel consisting of four similar cylinders joined end to end – flew apart in a fusillade of rail-gun strikes directed from above. Internal atmosphere exploded into vacuum and something detonated inside one of the cylinders, tearing it open and causing all four of them to separate. Harald could see how Combine was using methods that reduced the chances of too many fast-travelling, dangerous chunks of debris going into orbit, as the previous firebomb, and now the rail-gun missiles were fired from above, so any misses or pieces of shattered station would travel on downward to burn up in atmosphere.

  Coverage then became even more intermittent as Harald lost feed after feed. He felt a twisting in his gut upon seeing a watch platform destroyed just moments after a lander had departed it. There the evacuation had been tardy and the lander, struck by following debris, tumbled out of control. He never saw if the pilot regained control; suspected the first Fleet casualties.

  ‘Reposition to second strike point,’ he ordered over general com. ‘Evasive course correction on Ironfist’s lead. Prepare second loads.’

  He felt the rumble of drives starting, followed by a sideways drag of acceleration. In the Bridge the gravity floors would correct for the latter, but not down here. On his eye-screen he observed multiple drive flames igniting; the main fusion engines of hilldiggers and support ships, and the blue-red spears of steering thrusters. His diminishing view of events around Sudoria showed nothing being fired in this direction just yet. Perhaps they were not prepared to fire on the fleet itself until there were no more Fleet observation posts left in orbit, but more likely Combine considered it not worth wasting the ammunition, knowing their targets could move out of the way long before anything had a chance of reaching them.

  The last feed from Sudoria orbit winked out, but there were still telescope views from the surface on night-side. As expected, the tacom aboard Wildfire, to whom Harald had assigned the task of monitoring Sudoria com, contacted him.

  ‘I am receiving messages from our groundside bases. GDS wardens are now withdrawing from any of those bases they haven’t taken. In those they have captured they are closing down all feeds. All the commanders of bases still in our control have received a message from Combine that they are to hand over control to GDS immediately. Otherwise, all those bases remaining under Fleet control will be destroyed. Their commanders have half an hour in which to comply.’

  ‘What about bases in urban areas?’ Harald asked.

  ‘Nothing about them. Either Combine is hoping to bluff them into surrender or intends to take them out anyway.’

  ‘Don’t waste bandwidth stating the obvious. Anything for us from Combine Oversight?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I have a message addressed generally to all of us, followed by an eyes-only one from Director Gneiss on Corisanthe Main for you. Relaying right now.’

  Harald frowned. He really needed to hone down these tacom communications. It had not been necessary for this tacom on Wildfire to advise him of Director Gneiss’s location. He opened the screen to his personal inbox, selected the general message there – audio-visual – and opened it. The image of a woman, grey-haired and jowly, appeared on one of his screen sections – Rishinda Gleer of Combine Oversight.

  ‘Fleet Captains, officers and men, your unprovoked attack on Orbital Combine has of course provoked the expected response. I see that the missiles you have fired at us will arrive in fifty minutes. Perhaps I should update you on the casualty figures before we cease to be able to count them. Thus far the course you have embarked upon has cost, up in orbit, the lives of approximately 200 Fleet personnel and eighteen Combine personnel. On the surface 715 Fleet and GDS personnel have died, but that figure is still on the rise since there is now rioting down there and certain revolutionary groups and belligerent supporters of Fleet or Combine have taken advantage of the chaos, in some cases deliberately creating more disorder by opening asylums. Chairman Duras has declared martial law, and Parliament has voted unanimously to revoke Fleet’s wartime prerogatives. Parliament has also ordered the arrest of Admiral Harald on charges too numerous to count. Any who facilitate his arrest or otherwise removal will not be regarded as complicit in Fleet’s recent treasonable actions. Consider, all of you, that you are attacking your own home planet, and you could be killing family or friends. You may already have killed family or friends, so please stop this madness now.’

  Harald grimaced: carrot and stick – again not unexpected, but not very pleasant to hear. He opened the message from Director Gneiss:

  ‘Admiral Harald, I am not going to waste words in trying to dissuade you from your course, since if mere words could have dissuaded you, they would have done so by now. Through your sister and your service record, I know that you are not unintelligent, so will have already made your calculations.’ Gneiss paused for a moment, and Harald abruptly paused the message. This was the first time he had ever seen Director Gneiss so closely imaged and it now struck him that there was something decidedly odd about the man. Here he was delivering some vitally important message, yet from his demeanour it was almost as if he did not care about the content. Harald set the message playing again.

  ‘Now, I think it pertinent to point out to you that your sister is aboard one of the Combine defence platforms. That was a tactic of Oversight I was not completely in agreement with, but perhaps it might stay your hand a little.’

  You’re lying, Harald thought. I know exactly where my sister is, and her presence there will not stay my hand at all.

  Gneiss continued, ‘That consideration aside, it seems you will carry through your plans with a ruthless efficiency. But let me appeal to you now: you can still save many lives without sacrificing your aims, unless those aims are solely for massive death and destruction. Order all your groundside base commanders to surrender at once. All bases that have not been taken over by the GDS have been targeted by Combine’s orbital weapons. Now, I know you’ll at once assume that we won’t hit the . . . sixty per cent of your bases that lie within urban areas. You would be wrong. The wardens are currently evacuating all the residents from the areas surrounding those bases, and the weapons we have aimed at them are not linear projectiles or explosive munitions, but high-intensity close-focus masers. We can excise those same bases with an accuracy measured in feet. They will burn, as will everyone inside them. Order their surrender.’

  Gneiss paused again, gazing at something out of view. Harald wished the man was in reach for he felt an overpowering urge to prod him.

  ‘Finally, Admiral Harald, your supporters believe you aim to restore Fleet ascendancy within the Sudorian system by slapping down us usurpers in Orbital Combine.’ Gneiss returned his gaze directly to the screen. ‘All your actions apparently indicate this but, as I said before, I know your sister. And
I have researched your other siblings. I know their history, and I know their antecedents. I know your antecedents, Harald, for of course I knew your mother.’ Gneiss paused yet again, but this time some intense but unidentifiable emotion twisted his features. ‘Your goal is apparently one thing, but in reality it is something else. I think, somewhere inside, you realize that your will is not your own. Perhaps, if you can recognize that truth, we can halt this now. I look forward to hearing from you soon, Harald Strone.’

  Harald felt a sudden surge of anger. Stupid games. Gneiss understood nothing and Harald should concede him nothing, and perhaps, in his last moments as Combine turned to wreckage around him, Gneiss would understand the futility of his petty attempts at manipulation. Then, abruptly as it had come, Harald’s anger disappeared and he considered the situation with calm rationality. After a minute of contemplation, he nodded as he came to a decision.

  ‘Wildfire tacom.’

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘Send a message to our groundside base commanders. I am ordering them to stand down and surrender themselves to GDS.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I don’t intend to repeat myself. Them dying down there will make little difference to my plans, and would be a foolish waste of future resources.’

  ‘Understood – am sending message now.’

  Corisanthe Main was the primary target, and once it was his to control . . . Harald suddenly found himself mentally groping in a blank spot and felt a moment’s panic. He drew back. That station was the target because, with the Worm aboard, it was Combine’s power base. He must focus solely on that objective. The ground bases were irrelevant: everything ended at Corisanthe Main.

  But why hit Combine anyway?

  There had been so much going on that he had little time to consider anything beyond immediate objectives – just making cursory preparations as in his dealings with Lambrack and any other rebellious Captains. He felt with all his heart he was doing the best thing possible for Fleet. Fleet needed to be strong to face internal threats and now external ones. Sudorian defence could not continue being divided between it and Combine . . . Harald closed his eyes on an unaccustomed confusion. He realized that this did not entirely account for his own hatred of Combine, and his ultimate aim to board Corisanthe Main and take complete control there.