Hilldiggers

by Neal Asher

  ‘What do you expect from us – that we don’t fire on you? You must understand that, though I sympathize with your plight, there are over 140,000 non-combatants on board the station you are currently approaching.’

  ‘I understand that perfectly, which is why I am now sending you this.’ A package arrived at Gneiss’s screen. He opened it and studied the blueprint of a hilldigger, with shield generators and their fields of cover highlighted. All the generators were numbered.

  ‘This is not new information to us,’ observed Gneiss.

  ‘It has cost us a further five lives and may yet cost us more,’ said Davidson, ‘but in two hours’ time, as Resilience draws close enough to Corisanthe III to employ beam weapons, we will destroy shield generators fourteen, sixteen and twenty. This will allow you to fire on our ship’s engines, and on the main reactors feeding the weapons systems – as you can see indicated on the schematic.’

  Gneiss could indeed see the targets mentioned. ‘We will endeavour not to hit anything else,’ he said, knowing that all three targets could result in a chain-reaction detonation.

  ‘And we on board will endeavour to survive,’ replied Captain Orvram Davidson.

  Orduval

  The mobile incident station was a massive rectangular vessel half a mile long, bristling with com and scanning gear interspersed with the occasional gun turret or missile launcher. Its flat sides were inset with windows and its partially camouflage-painted hull lay open along the rear corner, with internal joists exposed, for construction had yet to be completed. It came in to land on the Komarl sands, blowing up a storm around it before settling down with a grinding roar. On one of the screens in the control centre, Orduval observed the flat circular feet extending below to crunch down on the sand and adjust the station level. Gazing out of a window he felt sure, even at night, that he recognized this stretch of desert. Wasn’t that mount rising over there in the distance his erstwhile home?

  ‘Reyshank has told me you’ve some important research to conduct. Another book perhaps?’ suggested Chairman Duras, ensconced in one of the control chairs, his fingers intertwined over the head of his cane, as it balanced on the floor before him.

  Leaning against the window frame, Orduval turned towards him. ‘When will that ship with my two sisters arrive?’ He nodded towards the sky still lit by the fires from the battle raging above.

  ‘Within the hour, and with the dawn,’ Duras replied, with a touch too much poetic drama, Orduval felt.

  ‘You yourself chose the landing site?’ he asked.

  ‘Parliament chose it – those of them aboard this vessel. This part of the Komarl lies far enough from the nearest city that any detonation here will have little effect and, should any biologicals be deployed, the prevailing winds blow out into the deep desert. We also have ground installations targeting that ship should it deviate from its predetermined course here. We’re probably taking unnecessary precautions.’

  ‘I see.’ Orduval paused for a moment, trying to get his thoughts in order. Yes, he needed to talk to Yishna about what had happened aboard Corisanthe Main at the time when he and his siblings had been conceived, but that did not seem quite so important now. ‘There will be a better time for me to conduct my . . . research,’ he added, in response to Duras’s earlier enquiry.

  The Chairman nodded. ‘Then if you don’t want to tell me about that now, perhaps we can fill in our waiting time discussing your previous books.’

  ‘My history of the colonization, you mean?’

  ‘Please don’t pretend to be obtuse.’

  Orduval grinned. ‘I guess you’d like to know about my conclusions on the War?’

  Duras studied him intently. ‘I would like to know the source of proof that The Outstretched Hand went to Brumal with hostile intentions, and how you managed to place that proof on my secure system.’

  Orduval gazed out at the night-time desert, and considered the impact of what he must now reveal. No one here knew about Tigger and, by binding agreements, the drone was not supposed to be in the system anyway. However, those who might object most strongly were currently fomenting a civil war, so their protests would seem somewhat irrelevant now.

  ‘Fleet has maintained a strict embargo on Polity technology, but you have to wonder how the Polity found out so much about us in the first place—’

  Duras interrupted, ‘So the Polity still has something operating here amongst us?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a mechanism, an artificial intelligence, which calls itself Tigger. It obtained the proof that our very first physical contact with the Brumallians involved missiles, not handshakes. As Tigger said, “The Outstretched Hand held a knife.” On the same day as my book was released, Tigger used some stealthy technological means to place that same information on your system.’

  ‘Considering its source, we could question the veracity of such information.’

  Orduval turned to him. ‘But you won’t, because even though you weren’t alive at the time, you feel certain that it is true. Those who took us to war profited hugely during those first twenty years, we all know that now, so it is but a small step of logic to surmise that they started the War intentionally.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’ Duras looked tired, and he stared down at the floor, seeming at a loss to add anything else. Really, it did not matter so much now, considering what was going on above. Orduval turned to scan the rest of the control centre. The GDS technicians responsible for bringing the incident unit in to land were now leaving their posts and heading off. A group of delegates from Parliament stood clustered in deep discussion over by the rear doors. As he understood it, Parliament would reconvene in due course, so the Consul Assessor could present the Brumallian’s evidence against Fleet. He understood why the residents of Brumal might want this so as to themselves escape the finger of blame, but did not see how it could benefit his own planet, Sudoria, now.

  Eventually an officer in the GDS stepped over to join them. He nodded towards the desert, now growing lighter with the onset of twilight. ‘The Brumallian ship is arriving, Chairman.’

  ‘Thank you, Pierce.’

  The officer bowed and returned to his controls.

  Peering up at the sky, Orduval could see nothing yet. He turned to Duras, who was now struggling to his feet, depending heavily on his cane. ‘You’ll be going out to meet them now?’

  Duras seemed about to reply, then his eyes narrowed as light flared through the windows. Orduval swung round, feeling an immediate frisson of fear. The shape now descending towards the dunes was one he felt must be eternally imprinted on the Sudorian psyche. For this was the shape of the age-old enemy, and here it was descending on their homeworld. Another name for shapes like this was the Tears of Satan in reference to some ancient personification of evil, and indeed the descending ship looked like a giant teardrop, but with landing rockets blazing beneath it. It was the sight of these flames that dispelled any fear in him, because they meant the Brumallians still did not possess gravtech, being obliged to counter gravity so crudely.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be going out to meet them,’ replied Duras, ‘once the area is secure.’

  As the rumble of the incoming ship’s drives began to reach them, Orduval saw dust clouds being kicked up as balloon-wheeled armoured cars hurtled out towards the ship.

  ‘Along with who else?’ he enquired.

  ‘A GDS combat group led by Reyshank, who I trust,’ Duras replied. ‘Should there be anyone else?’

  ‘Will you board the ship itself?’

  ‘I have requested as much, since I’m curious to see inside one of those things. I never got a chance during the War.’

  ‘I want to go with you.’

  ‘And so you shall.’

  Duras gestured with his cane towards the back of the control room, and slowly led the way. Following the Chairman, Orduval checked some of the screens about him and there saw views of launchers swivelling into position, and he picked up snatches of conversation from the crews controlling t
he weapons: ‘Target acquired . . . warhead load prepared . . . Combine link-up confirmed . . . satellite masers . . .’

  As they entered the lift and descended, Orduval’s stomach churned with a variety of twisted emotions including joy at the prospect of meeting his sisters again. Had they changed much? How would they react to the changes in him? The lift finally shuddered to a halt and revolved to access the opening. They stepped out into the rear of a bay in which some GDS troops were scrambling aboard two balloon-wheeled armoured cars. A door ramp had been lowered onto the desert sand, and distantly the rising sun was etching the horizon distinct from the sky. Reyshank was standing ready by one of the vehicles, and waved them over. Soon the pair were crammed aboard, surrounded by ten heavily armed GDS wardens, and the car lurched out of the bay into the nascent morning. It was far too noisy to speak while travelling, but the journey was thankfully short. Soon the vehicle drew to a halt and the wardens swarmed out onto the sand ahead of them.

  Following Duras outside, Orduval gazed around at the perimeter set up by GDS armoured cars, then up at the ship. Perhaps it was the lack of light, but what struck him most about the vessel was not its strange appearance, but the smell. It reminded him of the kind of odours found at the coasts of Sudoria’s small briny seas and somewhat of the smell encountered in the cooled underground buildings where Sudorian farmers raised their less heat-tolerant livestock. He knew, at once, that he was in the presence of some immense living creature.

  The ship creaked and groaned constantly, but not with the familiar sound of cooling metal. This was more like that heard from a settling woodpile. Orduval could feel heat on his face from the rocket-burned sands, and the occasional waft of smoke blew across. They had advanced to within fifty yards of the ship when, with a liquid crunch, a thirty-foot-wide hemisphere blistered out from the organic hull. A hole appeared at the centre of this extrusion, widening into an entranceway from which spilled out a segmented tongue that after a moment ridged up into steps.

  Reyshank and his men reached the steps first, and clambered up inside the ship through a draught of chill air. Without hesitation, Duras entered next, followed closely by Orduval. Within was an oblately spherical chamber, where an interstation shuttle rested bound to one wall with vine-like growths. Here awaited the GDS soldiers, spread out and at their guard, some of them shivering violently. Orduval also felt the extreme cold in here, but noted a breeze against his legs as the cold air from the interior poured out into the desert morning, and glancing up saw a warm fog materializing about the ceiling as the hot desert air slid in.

  In the centre of the chamber stood Yishna and Rhodane. With them were the Polity man McCrooger and two quofarl clad in bulky cooling suits, who stood guard over a prosaic-looking chest. Despite the nervously anticipated presence of his two sisters, Orduval found his attention immediately fixed on McCrooger. The man looked very different indeed from how he had appeared in those early broadcasts from the ship that transported him insystem. Now he was rail-thin, sickly-pale, and hardly able to support his own weight. Obviously he had suffered wounds, judging by the dressings covering his arm and one shoulder. Could the Brumallians have tortured him?

  Orduval finally turned his attention to his two siblings. He wanted to go over and greet them, but something about Rhodane checked him and his grin disappeared as suddenly he felt a deep and puzzling distrust of her.

  ‘Would that be the evidence you have brought us?’ Duras indicated the chest with a wave of his cane.

  ‘It is,’ said McCrooger, stepping forward with an invalid’s care.

  ‘Then,’ announced Duras, ‘after I have taken a look around this ship here, we must take it across to the incident vehicle, where you can present it to Parliament.’

  Abruptly the floor juddered, and behind them the hatch shut with a huffing sound. Recovering his balance, Orduval looked up to see that a projection hovered in the air immediately over their heads. It looked familiar, like some kind of animal, though seemed unable to hold its shape for long and kept collapsing formlessly like a blob of mercury floating in zero gravity.

  ‘Orduval, I was wrong,’ said a mechanistic voice. Amber eyes blinked within the metallic mass, then faded. ‘You caused your own fits . . . to escape . . .’ The shape disappeared.

  The news hardened something inside Orduval. Into the stunned silence that followed he said, ‘That was Tigger telling me . . .’ but somehow he could not go on.

  Duras turned to gaze at him curiously. ‘Telling you what?’

  ‘Telling him how he escaped the grip of the Shadowman,’ said David McCrooger. ‘And why he is once more in its grip.’

  McCrooger

  I glanced round at Rhodane and Yishna, and saw that both of them looked slightly ill. Well they might feel so, since their superb intellects were in conflict with something they registered unconsciously but could not allow themselves to know. Of course they probably did not feel quite as bad as I did. It seemed to take all my will to prevent my legs from shaking and I felt ready to vomit. I even wondered if I was about to bring up that mutualite I’d swallowed earlier. Also the temperature inside the ship was rising, and though the Sudorians here seemed to be enjoying this and the two quofarl were protected from it, I was sweating heavily. And if that wasn’t enough discomfort, there was that continuous weird distortion of my perception, and hints of dark figures lurking at the periphery of my vision.

  ‘Once more in the grip of the Shadowman?’ Duras repeated. ‘An interesting conjecture.’

  ‘Do you dream of the Shadowman?’ I asked him. ‘Do all of you?’ I turned to the soldiers in the room. They all looked slightly unnerved by my question.

  ‘I have nightmares,’ admitted Duras, ‘which get worse if I don’t take my medication. It is a common complaint.’

  ‘Yes, very common, I gather. So many of you are now on medication, aren’t you? Or in asylums? You’re all drowning so deep in this that you cannot see the surface.’ I then wondered if the distortion I was aware of all the time was what they had come to view as normality, the younger of them having grown up with it and the older having lived with it for thirty years.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Duras huffed.

  I held up a hand, but snatched it back down when I noticed it shaking. ‘Please, bear with me,’ I said, and turned to Yishna. ‘Yishna, what exactly is an information fumarole breach?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  I didn’t reply, since she’d heard me plain enough. As I awaited her reply, she smoothed her hands down her body – something she usually did when aiming to be seductive, but now just a nervous reaction. Realizing this unconscious gesture, she snapped her hands down by her sides. They too were shaking.

  ‘I cannot discuss such critical Combine research so publicly,’ she reproached me.

  ‘A fumarole breach is more than just a power surge,’ Orduval intervened blandly. ‘I know that now. Why else did Fleet ships take the equipment damaged by fumarole breaches and drop it into the sun?’

  I glanced at him, saw his thoughtful and pained look. He nodded to me as if he knew where I was going but found it difficult to help me. Turning back to Yishna, I began, ‘Let me guess. An information fumarole breach is when, somehow, equipment is infected by informational viruses or by nanotechnology. And you and your three siblings were apparently conceived during such a breach.’

  There had to be more to it than the coincidental timing – something I didn’t know.

  Orduval came to my rescue with, ‘We were actually conceived inside the Ozark Cylinder in which the breach took place.’ So, that was how the Worm’s nanotech got to Elsever’s womb. I watched Orduval for a moment, hoping he would add something more, but it seemed as if just saying that had required a huge amount of effort, and he now looked utterly weary.

  Yishna looked pained, but remained silent.

  I went on, ‘Perhaps then you can tell me about bleed-over? That’s much more in the public domain, and there seems less secrecy about it.
’

  ‘Bleed-over is a U-space effect generated by the Worm,’ she finally replied.

  ‘And those experiencing bleed-over, what do they feel?’

  Almost with gratitude, since it took them away from the other subject, Yishna explained about the feelings of anger and other emotions that had quite possibly resulted in the Exhibitionists and other strange cults developing aboard Corisanthe Main. I waited for her to understand the most obvious implication of what she was telling me, but it seemed to have completely passed her by.

  I tried again: ‘There’s things you need to understand about U-space, Yishna,’ I began. ‘It requires a huge amount of energy to actually penetrate that continuum but, once there, small amounts of energy to cover huge distances relative to realspace. If bleed-over is a U-space effect generated by the Worm, it could just as easily also be present anywhere within a few light years of here as on Corisanthe Main itself.’ I spread my hands to encompass the group. ‘You are all suffering from bleed-over. I am suffering from bleed-over.’

  ‘I had thought something . . .’ Yishna began, then trailed off.

  She still wasn’t getting it. She, and it seemed all the scientists on Corisanthe Main, had been assiduously measuring and cataloguing bleed-over and fumarole breaches, yet utterly failing to understand what they were. As far as I gathered from the research I had managed to conduct while here in the Sudorian system – mostly through the console Yishna had given me – only the cultish elements of the major station had come close to understanding, with their concept of telepathic inductance.

  ‘What does this all mean?’ Duras interrupted.

  ‘It means that you are feeling what the Worm feels, it having been broken into four and held confined for decades. It means that an alien entity utterly incomprehensible to you is attempting to influence you, maybe even manipulate you, and the Shadowman is just one aspect of that influence. Is it any surprise your asylums are so packed?’

  Yishna made a sound that seemed to begin as a denial then just trailed away.