by Neal Asher
‘Biochips, comlife,’ interjected Rhone. Var glanced round at him and he stabbed a finger at the screen. ‘Her . . . that’s the sort of stuff she was talking about – human minds interfaced with computers.’
Var absorbed that information, not entirely sure of the detail but pretty sure of the results. She turned back to the screen.
‘It still sounds arrogant,’ she said to Neumann, trying to keep her voice level.
Neumann shrugged. ‘He dropped the Argus satellite network on Inspectorate HQs all across Earth, and turned all the robots of Earth against the Committee. He wiped out something like two-thirds of the upper Committee administration and military and most of the Committee itself, including Messina, who is now . . . our prisoner. So I think I’ll allow him his arrogance.’ She paused for a second, then went on, ‘But you’ve got more immediate problems. Have you had deaths there, within the last three months, from something you may have identified as Ebola?’
Var nodded numbly. How did this woman know that?
Neumann continued, ‘Right, the signal must have got through despite the solar storm. The deaths we had here only happened after we turned off the EM shield.’ She paused for a second, contemplatively, then continued, ‘They were caused by a cybernetic virus emitted by biochips integral to your ID implants. That means you need to get all your implants removed, and fast. The woman who now styles herself the ruler of Earth, one Serene Galahad, seems to have the power to activate that virus in any implant she chooses, and she might just decide that independents on Mars are not something she wants.’
‘Jesus, that was it!’ exclaimed chief medical officer Da Vinci.
‘Galahad has no scruples in this area,’ Neumann added. ‘You’ve seen recent images from Earth?’
‘Some sort of plague,’ said Var. ‘We’re not getting much.’
‘It’s the same thing, and it killed just about every zero asset on Earth within one day – eight billion of them. It then went on to kill the remaining twenty-four delegates on Earth, except Galahad herself. And it tends to affect anyone who in any way questions Galahad’s authority.’
‘Eight billion,’ Martinez repeated numbly, others behind him echoing his words.
Var suddenly found a reason for hope. Maybe this news would be enough to dispel some of the bitterness in the atmosphere of the base. Then she pulled back from the thought, suddenly feeling very selfish as the true import of this woman’s words impacted. Eight billion.
‘You need to get on with removing your implants now,’ Neumann insisted. ‘We’ll talk again in twenty hours precisely. There’s no hurry, as we’ve got plenty of talk time before we meet face to face.’
The screen darkened. Var whirled around to Da Vinci, her stomach feeling like a knot of lead. ‘That’s true?’
He was distracted for a moment, still mulling over the horrifying news, then after another moment her words impinged. ‘Almost certainly.’ He nodded. ‘In every case the infection was concentrated in the arm, around the implant. And I thought that maybe, due to sloppy aseptic procedures . . .’
‘Move fast, then, to get all remaining implants removed.’ Her own was gone, so she had no worries for herself, but she could ill afford to lose any more personnel. ‘Come on, let’s get moving.’ She stood up. Best to keep people busy and distracted, and not let them think about this revelation too much.
‘Wait,’ said Rhone, nodding towards the screen.
There was an image there again, highly distorted and really creepy because the face there seemed to possess pink eyes.
‘Why . . . do I know you?’ whispered a voice that sent chills down her spine.
‘Who is this?’ she asked.
‘I am . . . I am the Owner.’ He faded away, and the screen turned white.
The voice sounded almost as if it hadn’t issued from a human being, so why, oh why did it seem so familiar to her?
Earth
Kelly Shimbaum nervously proffered a squat little ten-terabyte memory stick. Serene eyed it for a moment, then took it and set it down with an emphatic click on the desk beside her palmtop.
‘I asked you to tell me about the Alexander,’ she said quietly. ‘So tell me.’
Shimbaum gestured at the stick. ‘The Chairman . . .’ he began, then realized his danger and changed that. ‘Messina liked me to make a video presentation of the latest status update.’
Serene glanced towards one wall of the office, which presently looked just like a huge window offering a view across the extensive and lush gardens surrounding the house. The entire wall was in fact a high-resolution screen on which she could view the presentation Shimbaum had handed her. She contemplated the screen for a long moment then shifted her gaze along the adjacent wall to a short column on which perched a sculpture looking something like the by-blow of a hawk and a praying mantis rendered in heat-coloured iron.
‘That’s all very well, Kelly . . . I can call you Kelly?’ The nervous little man gave a stiff nod as Serene swung her gaze back to him. She supposed she could call him anything she liked and he would have to grin and like it. ‘Good. Now, what you have to understand, Kelly, is that until about twenty hours ago I wasn’t even aware of this project, so updating me on something I know nothing about might result in some confusion, you understand?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘So I repeat: tell me about the Alexander.’
‘Messina started the project twenty years ago,’ he began, his face now sheened with sweat, some of which had already soaked into his collar. ‘He wanted a big stick to wield out there because of the danger of the stations or Mars slipping out of his control.’
That made perfect sense. The problem with off-Earth environments was that only intelligent and highly trained personnel could work satisfactorily in them, and such people were not as easy to control as the average zero asset. Antares Base on Mars seemed a case in point that needed to be investigated: despite Serene ordering communications with the base to be opened once again, there had been no reply from its political staff. This could be due to solar interference, which was still high, but it had also been mooted that they, along with everyone else there, were now dead – which had been the intention. However, Hubble images showed the base still powered up and some signs of activity about it. Perhaps the radio transmitter had been destroyed during Political Officer Ricard’s thinning-out of the population? Serene shook her head in irritation and got back to the point.
‘How come so few in the Committee knew about this project?’ She did not know who had known about it, only that she hadn’t.
‘I didn’t question his instructions.’
Serene repressed her irritation at that response and continued, ‘So, after twenty years . . . how far along are you? What are the Alexander’s capabilities, and how big is it?’
‘The Alexander is the first ever space battleship. It was built around the engine taken from Mars Traveller IV.’ He paused, then added, ‘Documentation detailing the smelting of that engine on Argus was falsified.’
‘Do go on.’
‘The ship is two kilometres long, and four hundred metres in diameter at its widest point. Eight further fusion engines fixed in rings of four at two points along its body enable it to turn very quickly. It’s carrying seven hundred tactical atomic cruise missiles, with yields ranging from one kiloton to one megaton. These can be launched by its railgun or can launch under their own power from its ports. That same railgun is also supplied with case-hardened iron slugs that can be accelerated beyond scramjet missile speeds to deliver a cold yield of nearly half a kiloton. Additionally it possesses twelve antimissile lasers and a not-yet functional long-range maser. The crew complement is one hundred, with quarters for two thousand vacuum-penetration troops, and below the main bridge turret are Messina’s extensive quarters – currently being fitted out.’
‘Of course,’ said Serene, feeling as if her guts were trying to crawl out through her throat. Such power. ‘So it is ready to fly?’
&
nbsp; He shook his head. ‘Unfortunately not, ma’am. Messina wanted to take it to Argus Station with him, after that place was seized, but its construction scaffolds are still in place and all internal systems have yet to be connected up and tested.’
Serene just stared at him. His tone had turned slightly patronizing for a moment – the superior technical director of the Alexander Project having to apprise a mere politician of physical engineering realities. She picked up the memory stick, touched a control on her chair arm, and a panel in the desk’s surface slid aside to reveal various ports and controls. She inserted the stick and routed its contents to her screen wall.
‘It seems odd to me that construction scaffolds remain in place when all that remains to be done is internal systems work.’ She gestured to two bamboo seats on either side of an occasional table set against one wall of the room. ‘You can now take a seat while I watch your status report.’
He walked over woodenly, slightly more afraid than when he had first entered the room. Perhaps he was remembering that she was a physicist by training, who had then branched out into nanotechnology, long before her distaste of the political inefficiencies all around her had driven her into a new career. What he didn’t know was that she had already obtained information over and above what he was currently presenting her with, because she had her own source on the Alexander itself.
The presentation was as glossy and as slick as she expected. The video of the Alexander in its station seemed grainier, less impressive, less real than a science-fiction CGI. However, noticing someone space-walking on the station gave her more of a sense of its scale and she began to know this was for real.
The narrative wasn’t delivered by the technical director, but by someone obviously recruited for his assured verbal delivery, but the words had certainly been carefully drafted by Shimbaum himself. Serene easily read the subtext and quickly confirmed much of what her source had told her. There was absolutely no reason for the construction scaffold still to be in place; it was in fact a hindrance to systems testing and the impending engine and weapons testing. She opened her palmtop and rescanned various reports she had read during the scramjet flight here to Italy. So long as the ship remained confined within that station, Shimbaum retained his power-base. Meanwhile, the highly trained crewmen and Captain Scotonis were obliged to sit on their hands or repeat virtual weapons drills and emergency procedures.
The presentation ended, with various credits – listing names she would be sure to have investigated. She gestured to the space immediately before her desk and Shimbaum headed back over to stand like a naughty pupil before his headmistress.
‘The rather extreme reduction in Earth’s population,’ she said, ‘has freed up many resources, Kelly. Yet still our population is too high, and the one resource we have in excess is people.’ She gazed down at the controls exposed in the desk before her. Among them lay a miniature screen which, when tapped with her forefinger, displayed a simple menu selection.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, jerking his head slightly so that a droplet of sweat fell from his nose onto the floor.
Serene gazed down at the spot where it had fallen. The white carpet was one of those that rotated its fibres into combs in the underlay, cleaning out all dust, dirt and spillages, which were then conveyed away through a network of microtubules. She returned her gaze to his face.
‘Earth requires vengeance,’ she said, ‘and it requires the genetic database and samples currently aboard Argus Station. What it doesn’t require is little empire builders like you undermining the efficiency of its projects so as to retain personal power and status.’
‘I’ve done the best I can. The Chairman has been more than pleased with my—’
‘Not good enough,’ she interrupted, touching her finger to one menu selection and sitting back.
Atop its short pillar, the sculpture opened out its two scythe-like wings and fantail before it launched, the wings blurring into motion with a sound like a clapped-out petrol engine starting. It rose to a hover even as Shimbaum turned towards it, his mouth dropping open. The razorbird unfolded two chicken limbs below, each terminating in a long glass hook. Then, the sound of it turning to a high, ear-piercing whine, it shot towards the terrified man.
‘I—’ he managed, then the thing was on him with a noise like a hatchet chopping into a watermelon. He staggered as it clattered away from him and then turned smoothly to head back to its perch. Blood gouted from his neck, from his nose, and from the widening line dividing his head from forehead to chin. His skull fell in half as he collapsed, pumping blood across the self-cleaning carpet.
‘Sack,’ instructed Serene through her fone, ‘in here now.’
Her personal bodyguard was through the door in a moment, gazing down at the corpse on the floor with something approaching disappointment. She eyed him for a second, suddenly attracted by the sheer physical presence of the big man, but then, knowing the ultimate reason behind the sexual frisson she was feeling, she dismissed it – at least for now.
‘Take that mess away,’ she said. Eyeing the spatters of blood on her desk and the long spray of red up one wall, she added, ‘Oh, and get some of the cleaning staff in here, too.’
A team of four house staff arrived to wipe down her desk and clean the spray off the wall, then bag up and cart off Shimbaum’s remains, by which time the pool of blood had been reduced to a pinkish stain by the self-cleaning carpet. Meanwhile Serene manipulated further controls on the desk, opening a communications link through the screen wall and, just as the staff were about to depart, the person she wanted to speak to was gazing at her from the screen.
‘Captain Scotonis,’ she said, smiling. ‘You are now in charge of the entire Alexander Project. I want that ship commissioned within . . .’ she paused to recheck some statistics, ‘. . . within four mouths. Don’t let me down.’
Scotonis, a heavy-set Asian with narrow moustache and tuft of hair just below his bottom lip, lowered his gaze for a second, doubtless studying the bloodstain on the carpet. He had been in com long enough to have witnessed Shimbaum going into the body bag.
‘Certainly, ma’am. We’ll be ready for you.’
The bloodstain was completely gone by the time Serene began studying a report concerning effluent pollution of the American Great Lakes, gathering statistics on the remaining population surrounding them – in what had once been the state of Michigan – and considering what degree of thinning-out there might be required.
Argus
Hannah’s surgery seemed just another place in his head, it being easy, if he allowed it, for his focus to become unstuck from time. If he allowed the waves of weariness assailing him to triumph, if he released his rigid control for just a second, he could just as easily be talking to Rhine in his laboratory, or walking towards the ruination caused by the nuclear blast at Inspectorate HQ London, or even lying again in that crate that had conveyed him to the Calais incinerator. Only a firm intellectual knowledge of his position in time allowed him to keep hold of things. Only sheer strength of will kept him together. But this was just part of his malaise, for his sense of self had no location, and the physically real was no more immediate than some processing space either in his damaged skull, that brain tissue in a container in the clean-room adjoining Hannah’s laboratory, or some silicon within the station itself.
Saul opened his eyes but, because of the bullet damage to his visual cortex, his body was blind. Closing his eyes did not shut down vision; only stopping the program he was running through surrounding cams could do that. His perception of this body of his was no more than that possessed by the spidergun presently waiting in a corridor outside. Yet, he did feel weary, and sleep – which he had forgone for so long – beckoned to him.
‘Shall I sleep?’ he asked himself, not sure if he had spoken the words out loud, and as if his physical being was making an appeal to some other.
The coldly functional part of him opined that sleep might be a good idea, since it wo
uld help with the healing of this physical body and the brain it contained. So he began flicking over mental switches, allowing that purely human function to take over; parts of his mind comfortably sinking into a place where he could release control, relinquishing . . . everything. Then, on the border of oblivion, he felt a sudden panic, because the whole process seemed to be going into cascade. This was coma, so how could he wake up again? He was allowing himself to slide into normal human sleep without a chemical timer, without the neural safeguards to bring him out again, and he now seemed unable to stop the process.
He fought to stay conscious, but found the only way to retain some grip on the conscious world was by driving down mental partitions; separating away parts of his mind both here and in the container in Hannah’s clean-room. He fought to retain control and realized, very quickly, that his complete self could not do so. Only a part of him could do that – just one of those partitions. But to what end? What was the best course to follow?
Seemingly without volition, he found himself gazing through a single cam into Jasper Rhine’s laboratory. The man was working on a schematic of some massive engine, something Saul seemed to recognize almost at once. Here it was, a design loosely based on the theorized Alcubierre warp drive. Saul instantly copied the schematic to his mind, lost himself in its possibilities, nearly dismissed it because of its physical simplicity, but then knew that it was right.
Approved.
It went into the system queue, but there was something missing, something else needed. He visualized Argus Station’s present non-conjunction class route towards Mars. He felt himself fading as he encompassed it, the effort to stay conscious a Sisyphean labour. He riffled through astronomical maps and surveys and at last found what he wanted, then sent his instruction to the station’s steering thrusters and to the Traveller VI engine. The core of Argus Station would be, albeit briefly in astronomical terms, returning to its original home.