by Neal Asher
Jeon picked up a sealed injector pack and placed it beside the labelled box, then turned her attention to the two emptying vials. Once they were drained she took a sterile swab and, pulling the tube from his arm, pressed the swab into place. ‘Hold that,’ she instructed.
Harald obliged, feeling thoroughly alert now, but still there were holes in his memory, fuzzy and disconnected incidents he could not put into context, occasional oddities like the phrase ‘Polity Consul Assessor’ – itself a collection of words that seemed to make no sense at all. Jeon now handed over both the box and the injector pack.
‘The two drugs must always be injected together, but use no more than one dose every two hours. I know you’ll be strongly tempted to use them more frequently as the initial effect begins to wear off, but be warned that cutting gangrene out of someone’s head is a rather different matter to removing it from elsewhere in the body.’
‘I am not so stupid,’ Harald protested.
‘No, you’re not,’ Jeon admitted, ‘but you’ll still overuse the drugs. People like you, and me, always do.’ Now she picked up a tube of capsules. ‘These are painkillers which you dissolve under your tongue. Use them sparingly.’
Harald pocketed the drugs then, shaking at first but slowly getting it under control, he walked over to the door. Pausing there, he gazed down at himself. Despite some sponging down of his foamite suit, there were still bloodstains at his shoulder and all down one side as far as his knee. Though tempted to change into a new uniform, he decided that keeping this suit on would remind people of what had happened. He opened the door and stepped through with Jeon behind him. Four guards outside immediately came to attention. Noting that two of them also wore blood-splashed uniforms, he wondered if it was his own blood or that of his would-be assassin.
‘We’ll head for the Bridge,’ he decided, because that seemed the most likely location of his missing com helmet – and because, at that moment, he did not know in which direction it lay.
The guards turned smartly to face down the corridor, two setting out ahead of them, with the other two falling in beside himself and Jeon. After a couple of turnings they finally arrived at a bank of elevators. There Harald felt himself tensing up as he warily watched two technicians depart one of the lifts. He had no direct memory of it, but strongly sensed he had been shot in a place like this. One of the guards confirmed this for him by training his disc carbine on the departing technicians, while the other three carefully watched the surrounding area. Harald now transferred his paranoia onto them, nervous of their weapons, which could be turned on him at any moment.
Finally their own lift arrived.
‘I’ll be returning to my station on the Bridge within the hour,’ announced Jeon. ‘I have to check that recent upgrade to the U-space scanner. We need to keep a watch out for that Polity artefact.’
Harald nodded to her knowingly, and she departed along the corridor. As he stepped into the lift, he tried to put together all she had said to him. The last he could remember, she had worked from her own separate research area, yet now she must have a station on the Bridge. But ‘U-space scanner’ and ‘Polity artefact’? Obviously there was a great deal of information he needed to reintegrate.
Having drawn smoothly to a halt, the lift unit revolved till its exit aligned with the entrance to the Bridge. Harald stepped out and surveyed, seeing many gazes turn towards him. He knew he should say something encouraging, but was terrified of revealing his ignorance. Raising a hand in greeting instead, he hurried towards the stair leading up to the Admiral’s Haven. Leaving his escort below he quickly climbed it alone. Once out of everyone’s view he allowed himself to slump in exhaustion. But when he spotted his com helmet and control glove, like an addict drawn to his fix, he quickly stepped over and picked them up.
At first there seemed to be something wrong with the resolution of the eye-screen, then he realized the problem was in his eye itself. This defect required him to use the entire screen for just one image at a time. He proceeded to access his private records and Fleet logs, carefully scanned and reintegrated information, then began to relearn the history of all recent manoeuvres in an attempt to bring himself back up to date. Yet when, many hours later and after another shot of the drugs Jeon had provided, he stood up and prepared to go down into the Bridge to issue orders, he felt a hollow detachment from all he had done or intended to do. It almost seemed as if, like some automaton, he was carrying through the schemes and Machiavellian plans of someone else – and someone he did not know too well.
Yishna
She gazed to her left and to her right, eyeing the quofarl on either side of her. She had never thought she would ever get so close to such creatures, having only ever seen them before on a screen. But now here were two of them ready, like asylum orderlies, to restrain her. Quite rightly too.
What had made her take out her control baton? What had so angered her about Rhodane that she had been prepared to take her own life in the process of taking her sister’s? Well, it seemed to be the same thing that had driven her to alter the containment breach protocols aboard Corisanthe Main, and whether that was psychosis or some exterior influence almost did not matter. Either way it was not really part of her own conscious mind.
‘Feeling better now?’ asked McCrooger, who stood before her.
‘What did they give me?’
‘A powerful sedative and anti-psychotic. I’m guessing they interfere with the signal, or the program, or whatever it is.’
Signal or program? Yishna felt she should ask more about that, but felt a huge reluctance, and the opportunity went away as he held up her baton and continued, ‘Now, I’m guessing this signals Combine to either drop the umbrella or fire on us?’
‘Near enough,’ Yishna replied.
He stared at her for a long moment. ‘I see . . . so neither of those. Something aboard your shuttle then?’
She gave a sharp nod, both chagrined and glad of the quality of the mind before her.
‘Do you still feel the urge to . . . use this item?’
‘I was only taking precautions,’ said Yishna, then cringed at her blatant lie. The baton had been in her hand before she even knew what she was thinking, and her finger was ready poised over the button to send the mine’s detonation code. Her sister, Rhodane, something about her, about some lack of connection, had caused a resentment and a twisted terror to arise within Yishna. True, she had stopped herself from actually operating the damned thing, but wondered if she could have held out much longer had not McCrooger tackled her.
‘I shan’t dignify that statement with a reply, because we have no more time to spare. Director Gneiss is demanding to speak to you, and won’t cover us down to the planet’s surface until he’s done so. Meanwhile, every moment we stay here we are in danger.’
‘Then let me speak to him,’ said Yishna.
‘But you might tell him this ship presents a danger.’
‘I might, but it would take a lot more than any claim from me to persuade him. What I brought aboard that shuttle was my own idea. He doesn’t believe the Brumallians to be a threat.’
‘Very well, stand up.’
Glancing at the quofarl on either side, Yishna pushed herself to her feet. It was only then that she realized she was experiencing gravity, and wondered briefly if the Brumallians had conquered that technology. Once out in the corridor, however, when she saw the curve of the floor, she realized she must be in some part of the ship that had been spun up.
‘The drug?’ she managed, as she walked between the quofarl.
‘Like Rhodane, you find it difficult to talk about what that drug is suppressing,’ he said.
‘I . . . yes.’
‘The Shadowman has you by the throat, Yishna. Though her mind has been shaped by him, he has no hold on Rhodane any more. And your reaction to her, I suspect, was either due to that – the elimination of a faulty tool – or to the possibility, however remote, that the evidence we’re bringing here might end th
is war.’ The door opened and he used sign language to the two quofarl, who then chattered something in Brumallian, before stepping back. They entered some kind of control room where Brumallians sat enclosed in organic technology. Rhodane stood over on the other side of a viewing pit, with something clinging to the side of her head. Immediately Yishna felt another surge of resentment towards her, and just could not fathom why. Fortunately it was weaker than before, so one she thought she could control.
Out of the viewing pit rose the holographic image of Director Gneiss.
‘Yishna, where’ve you been?’ he asked. On the surface he evinced suspicion, but underneath that display Yishna wondered if there was anything at all. She did not even want to try to analyse that impression, as she was currently having enough problems with her own emotions.
‘I’ve been scanning this ship,’ she lied, glancing towards Rhodane, whereupon her emotions ricocheted between resentment, outright hate and strangely a deep sibling love. She tried to push all that emotional clutter aside and operate on intellect alone. ‘It seems clear of anything untoward.’
‘Whatever.’ Gneiss waved a dimissive hand. ‘I just wanted to be sure you’re all right before clearing the ship to land. I’m sending over your route and destination coordinates right away. You’ll be landing on the edge of the Komarl, where Duras will meet you.’
Yishna gazed at Rhodane, who nodded briefly. Gneiss now blinked out, and Yishna felt McCrooger’s hand close around her upper arm.
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘I could see that was difficult for you.’
‘The Shadowman?’ Yishna queried, remembering his earlier words. Somehow, down deep, she knew exactly what he was talking about, yet there seemed something blocking that information from her conscious inspection.
‘Certainly not racial conscience . . .’ said McCrooger. He turned to Rhodane. ‘We’re going in now, I take it?’
‘We have our route cleared down to the surface, and shields and defence buoys are being deployed to cover us,’ said Rhodane. ‘It should take us about two hours to reach our landing coordinates.’
Soon came a rumbling sound, as a Brumallian ship entered the atmosphere of Sudoria for the first time ever.
16
One would have thought that economic collapse on Sudoria would have resulted in automatic victory for the Brumallians. What actually happened is a perfect demonstration of how artificial and insubstantial is this human construction called an economy. Why were some people starving when others were growing more than sufficient food? The extent of the madness operating up to the point of the revolt was revealed when entire warehouses packed with hoarded food were broken into. It was all about money and greed. The people were being taxed savagely to pay for the war effort and further enrich the plutocrats, but because of this tax burden they could not afford to buy sufficient food and essential goods. The subsequent introduction of a fair rationing system after the revolt began to settle unrest, and the fate of Cairo-Desit got people back to work, now knowing they were working for their very survival. Had the owners of those warehouses been prepared to reduce their prices, they might not have ended up drive-bolted to rocks out in the Komarl. It was a simple economic mistake with harsh consequences.
– Uskaron
Director Gneiss
‘If you had a spare spacesuit to sell here, you would net enough profit to buy yourself a shuttlecraft,’ observed Roubert Glass, the Director of Corisanthe III. ‘The price for one suit is now about a hundred times what it cost only a few hours ago, but few people are ready to sell since there’s only about one spacesuit for every 800 citizens aboard.’
‘I see you’re wearing yours,’ observed Director Gneiss. Indeed, Glass, who was a thin and rather sickly-looking specimen with anaemic blonde hair contrasting starkly with his narrow dark face, appeared to be wearing a spacesuit obviously a few sizes too big for him. Gneiss turned his attention to another screen, showing a view of the station itself from a nearby satellite that had thus far survived the bombardment. Corisanthe III, which had originally started out as a simple cylinder, was now vaguely disc-shaped – after conglomerations of industrial units, private accommodation and the connecting infrastructure had spread out gradually from the cylinder’s waist, till eventually subsuming it completely. Spotting an anomaly on the vast structure, Gneiss instructed the satellite to focus in. This revealed, in appalling clarity, a gaping hole in one of the surrounding units. Something had obviously detonated there: either a missile had got through or more likely a shield generator had blown catastrophically. He could now see living quarters standing open to vacuum, and in the surrounding cloud of debris he spotted blankets, furniture, a view screen, and three decompression-bloated bodies, one of them too small to be an adult. A one-man EVA unit was working nearby, equipped with a grab claw and a vacuum glue gun. The operator was collecting debris and sticking it together in a conglomerate to be hauled inside – the quickest way of clearing free-floating debris that could otherwise become a danger to the station. This ghoulish mass of detritus contained bodies as well. After a further moment of close inspection, Gneiss drew the focus back.
Above the station the menisci of its energy shields flashed into view intermittently under the impact of missiles fired by the approaching hilldiggers. Ships crammed with people were constantly departing from below the station, while other ships were returning from the surface of Sudoria. Nevertheless, ensconced in his office aboard Corisanthe Main, Gneiss could tell by the numbers he called up that this civilian evacuation would take months. Hopefully their assessment of Harald’s strategy was correct, and he did not intend the total destruction of this place but merely to break supply chains by keeping the station on the defensive.
‘Wildfire and Resilience are bearing down on you again,’ warned Gneiss. ‘Clearly, whatever problem caused Fleet to pull back has now been resolved. We want you to get as many of your attack craft out as you can, and while you can. The evacuation will meanwhile have to cease.’
‘“We”?’ enquired Glass.
‘I am acting commander for the duration of this emergency, and I require you to get as many of your ships out of the station as you can. I don’t want them trapped there when they could better serve us out in space.’
In reply Glass merely sent a couple of camera feeds that now flashed up as icons on Gneiss’s screen. As he connected to them he observed panicked crowds milling about within the main concourses of Corisanthe III, and a riot breaking out in the storage areas to the rear of the cargo docks.
‘We were going to cease the evacuation anyway,’ commented Glass. ‘As you can see, it’s getting out of control down there.’
Gneiss silently eyed the ugly scenes. He could spot station security personnel trying desperately to keep order and medical staff stretchering out the injured. Against the far wall of one storage area rested a stack of bulging body bags. One of them was still open, with a woman kneeling beside it rocking back and forth in grief. There was no sound accompanying these images, and they seemed all the more poignant for that. Gneiss sensed that soon things would be getting even worse: additional shield generators blowing, more areas of the station decompressing, more panic, more body bags.
‘Why did they withdraw?’ wondered Glass.
‘My intelligence is that there was some sort of attack on Admiral Harald,’ replied Gneiss. ‘My source informed me that he was assassinated, but I rather doubt that since this would all be over now if he had been.’
‘Too much to hope for,’ Glass said glumly.
‘Quite.’ After a brief silence between the two men, Gneiss continued coldly, ‘Keep me informed of the situation with those ships.’ He then moved to put his links to Corisanthe III on hold.
‘Wait!’ said Glass. ‘We’re getting something . . . a message laser from the Resilience.’
It had to be a surrender demand, Gneiss decided as he observed the image of a young man in a Captain’s uniform fill the screen. But this was no Captain he recognized, so
perhaps other intelligence received earlier that told of some sort of reorganization of the command structure in Fleet was true.
‘This is Captain Orvram Davidson calling Corisanthe III. Please respond.’
‘Should I respond?’ asked Glass.
‘Connect him to me, if you would,’ Gneiss instructed.
In the corner of the screen an icon lit to indicate that the connection had been made. On his own screen, Captain Davidson would now be seeing Gneiss himself.
‘This is Director Gneiss, Combine military command for the duration. What can I do for you, Captain?’
‘I think rather I can do something for you,’ said Davidson hurriedly. ‘I have little time over this link, since it’s jury rigged and will soon be detected and shut down. You need to know that not all of the ships now attacking Combine are doing so willingly, nor are they still under the command of their legitimate Captains and crews. Harald has managed to slave the controls of my own ship, Resilience, to those of the Wildfire. Stormfollower and Musket are similarly slaved to Harvester. After using false emergencies to get my people out, he closed the blast doors on weapons systems and engine galleries and then opened those areas to vacuum.’
‘Do you seriously expect me to believe that you can do nothing at all?’ asked Gneiss.
Davidson winced. ‘I sent twenty crew to break through to the coil-gun breech. Supposedly a flak shell accidentally detonated after they gained access, and I’ve heard nothing from them since.’
‘You are a soldier, and you must find a solution,’ said Gneiss, without a flicker of emotion.
‘Yes, but it is extremely difficult here,’ said the Captain. ‘Harald has shut down all the lifts and the internal railway, closed spacesuit lockers and shut down EVA vehicles, and strategically opened many intervening areas of the ship to vacuum.’