Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

by Neal Asher

  ‘Is that all?’ Alex asked.

  ‘How are you for air?’

  ‘Three hours left in this suit and about an hour and a quarter in the VC suit.’

  ‘That should be enough for now,’ Ruger replied. ‘Hide yourself while I get our tactical officer here to assess your situation. I will speak to you again in precisely two hours, Ruger out.’

  Alex quickly detached the transponder board and, like a night creature fleeing from the glare, returned inside the shadows of the station rim.

  16

  Rock Fall

  Mars looked ancient, unchanging and eternal. It had remained the same for billions of years, so how could humans possibly hope to make any impression on such immensity? What wasn’t taken into account was that for billions of years the strongest force on the surface of Mars had been the blowing of winds that, in the thin atmosphere, would struggle to turn a terran wind turbine, but which had nevertheless sandblasted the planet’s valleys over eternities of time. Putting a human colony, with all its disruption and its machines, in Valles Marineris was like allowing a family of mice to take up residence in a house of cards. Boulders which would have fallen from the cliffs only after a thousand years more of attrition by the dust storms, now came loose very quickly and fell. The warnings were there, but the colonists ignored them and instead decided rock climbing might be a good recreation. The result would perhaps have been less unfortunate if they had not decided to scale the cliffs and slopes directly overlooking their base.

  Mars

  After finishing the recording in the computer, Var cued it up ready to send on repeat, then she stood up. She had to keep moving, had to keep searching for some way to change her seemingly inevitable death sentence. Inserting Lopomac’s super-caps into the power box of the building brought all the light back on, and enabled Var to search through the containers scattered around inside. Rhone was right: there was no oxygen here, but she did find a ten-litre barrel of water that was frozen solid. She gazed at it for a long while, considering what would be required to crack the water to source its breathable oxygen, but the sums just did not add up. She would first have to thaw the water, then it would be necessary to find some kind of electrolyte to mix into it. Next she would have to rig up some method of getting the resulting oxygen into her suit, maybe using the bottle-recharging pumps to compress and store it. All that would take too much power, so it wasn’t an option.

  Within the building she also found some tools, a couple of radiant heaters that would have drained the super-caps within an hour, and some packets of dried soup. All of these were useless to her.

  Outside. . .

  She mustn’t simply accept Rhone’s word about the lack of oxygen here, because if there was any here he clearly wouldn’t have told her. She stepped out through the airlock into Martian twilight, now that the sun had gone down behind the mountains, then paused. Perhaps it would be better to wait until morning. She would still have enough air, and the light would be better. To do a proper search of her surroundings now would require her using her suit lights, which would again use up her remaining power supply. She decided therefore to search as best she could without the benefit of lights. Even though such activity would burn up her air supply quicker, she could not contemplate just sitting inside doing nothing.

  First she checked behind the nearby regolith-block walls, looking for crates, containers – anything. So desperately did she want to find some way to survive, she could almost visualize some tarpaulin-shrouded supply dump just waiting for discovery around the next corner, or down in the shadow of that boulder over there . . .

  After one hour of searching, the light growing increasingly dim, she noticed something that didn’t seem to make sense. One building was just a great mass of tumbled rubble, but why it had collapsed did not seem evident, for there were no boulders anywhere nearby. Perhaps one had struck it in passing and bounced on? And there at the foot of a five-metre slope of rubble, lying flat against the rusty Martian dust, protruded a human hand.

  Var began walking over, assuming this must be some formation in the dust that just looked like a hand. She squatted down and stared at it and, close up, it still looked like a hand. Then noticing an exposed blue logo along the forefinger, she realized what she was seeing was an EA suit glove. She felt a sudden hysterical relief and reached down to pick the thing up, but the euphoria dissipated when she could only lift it a little way, and realized it wasn’t empty, but attached to an arm extending out from underneath the rubble pile.

  She sat back on her heels. Surely all the dead from the Valles Marineris disaster had been found and buried? That was certainly her understanding but, then again, how much time would the survivors have spent searching for corpses? Most likely they looked just for as long as they expected anyone thus buried to survive, even clad in some sort of protective garment. After that they must have had quite enough to concern them in merely eking out their supplies until the arrival of the next Mars Traveller. Thereafter, when their efforts were devoted to building Antares Base, how many more searches would have been likely out here? She had no doubt that officials like Ricard would have considered any such search a waste of valuable Committee resources.

  Var unhooked Lopomac’s pick from her belt and scraped away the regolith from immediately about the hand and arm. She then stepped over to the rubble pile and heaved up the large block from underneath which the arm extended, and tipped it aside. She was aware that in Earth gravity she would never have been able to lift it, but also knew that if her muscular development had been similar to that of someone on Earth, she could have even more easily tossed the block to one side. Further rubble tumbled down, but that did not deter her. She kept at it because if this individual clad in the EA suit had been killed by the collapse of the nearby building, then there was a chance of finding an oxygen bottle here with something still inside it.

  After a few minutes, during which she exposed yet more of the arm and brought down more of the rubble slope, Var turned on her suit light. She worked methodically, trying not to get herself in a sweat and trying to keep her breathing even. Two hours later, she had exposed the helmet and upper torso, almost completely buried in the ground, with the other arm obviously folded underneath. The style of EA suit was the same as her own in that it would have the oxygen pack strapped across the belly, so it was now underneath the corpse. She would need one of those heavy picks inside the building to unearth it, and it was time to return inside anyway in order to send the recording she had made.

  As Var headed back, it occurred to her that there might be other corpses under the rubble, and so further oxygen bottles, too. She allowed herself to hope.

  Argus

  The robots were flowing back down the cables that extended to the smelting plant, even as the flow through the pumps within the plant ceased. Pike had insisted on running the furnaces for another hour, to build up a stock of a further fifty tonnes of liquid mercury. Maybe it would be required if there was damage or leakage. Saul allowed that overrun, since it did not slow down the vortex generator start-up test, and the mercury might be useful later, should they survive. However, if there was any damage to the ring while they were using it, and therefore leakage, the chances of making repairs were remote. Saul guessed that it hadn’t occurred to Pike what would happen if damage occurred to a tubular ring around which mercury was being propelled at relativistic speeds.

  The lights dimmed, and stayed dim. Saul headed over to the three recently installed acceleration chairs in Tech Central and peered at the displays positioned before them. Rhine occupied one of these chairs, overseeing the start-up test. One of the other chairs was for weapons control and presently unoccupied, while Chang sat in the third chair. He was effectively their pilot and was currently laying in a selection of courses they could take. His was an onerous task, since what course they took was dependent on how well the station could be set on a course, which wasn’t yet known. Saul simultaneously inspected their efforts from within th
e station system, and retained the option to take control at any time.

  ‘Pike is annoyed,’ called Le Roque from his main console.

  ‘Why’s that?’ asked Saul, already knowing the answer.

  ‘The energy drain has cut out the smelting-plant cable motors,’ Le Roque replied. ‘It’s not winding in any more.’

  ‘Jasper?’ Saul enquired.

  ‘Can’t it wait?’ Rhine asked, exasperated.

  ‘Yes and no,’ said Saul, closely inspecting the thin white scars that covered the man’s face. ‘Incidentally, your test results should be coming in by now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rhine agreed. ‘But, once I’ve checked them, we should go straight into actual start-up.’

  ‘But whichever way you cut it,’ said Saul, ‘you’ll still have to divert power to bring in the smelting plant, since we can’t go anywhere with it still dangling out there.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ Rhine said grudgingly, stabbing at his controls.

  The lights grew brighter for a moment, then dimmed again. Almost like a grumble in his gut, Saul felt the big cable-drum motor being set in motion again, once again winding in the smelting plant. In the virtual world, he also studied the results of the start-up test. Every single electromagnet, inductor and electro-stat plate on the vortex generator was functioning within desired parameters; all the alterations to the EM radiation transformers and emitters were also up to spec. Moreover, Rhine was correct to say that they should go straight into startup. Even with the immense drain from station super-capacitor storage, the huge load on every single fusion reactor and the necessity of cutting life-support and all other activities down to a minimum, it would take many hours to run the generator up to speed. It would be tight, but only because Saul had needed to ensure that all the work was completed to the highest standard possible within the time available.

  Saul turned now to watch as Hannah, the Saberhagen twins and Langstrom arrived in Tech Central, perfectly on time. He stepped away from Rhine and moved over to stand behind Le Roque. The man glanced back at him expressionlessly.

  ‘Everything is good?’ Saul enquired, nodding towards the images on the three big screens. Two of them showed exterior images of the Arboretum and Arcoplex One cylinders respectively, while the third showed the smelting plant being towed in from the cinnabar asteroid.

  ‘Do I really need to tell you?’ Le Roque asked, turning back to his controls.

  ‘Yes,’ said Saul, ‘I understand that my supposed omniscience is a slight bar to civil exchange.’

  ‘It is,’ said Le Roque, ‘but only in conjunction with paranoia inspired by a lifetime spent under the Committee.’

  ‘Except,’ said Hannah, at Saul’s shoulder, ‘under the Committee you would have faced an interview with your political officer concerning your “unhelpful attitude” and, if your responses weren’t satisfactory, perhaps a little adjustment would be prescribed.’

  Le Roque glanced at her briefly, then concentrated fully on Saul. ‘Everything is secure inside the cylinder worlds, and I’ve cut power to all the motors and have let them lose their spin at their own rate. It should take two days before they’re near to stationary, then I’ll apply the cylinder brakes. The smelting plant should dock and lock down in just five minutes or so, but then Leeran and Pike will have to secure everything inside it.’

  Saul looked round at his newly arrived audience. They had come here because of what Rhine was doing, and because now was precisely the right moment to set certain events in motion. ‘Time for a change of view,’ he declared.

  Saul mentally adjusted and focused the station’s main visible light telescope array, selecting three portions of the asteroid belt and routing the images through to Le Roque’s screens. The middle screen just showed blackness, while the two other ones showed conglomerations of rocks and dust only visible at extreme distance.

  ‘And these are?’ asked Le Roque.

  Saul fought the inclination to tell him that he already knew. That was a game they had already played.

  ‘The middle view is effectively what you would see if you stood out on the rim, looking towards the Scourge’s approach route,’ he explained. ‘The two rubble piles are those I visited with Langstrom.’

  ‘There’s no way they would not have seen us,’ interjected Langstrom.

  ‘True,’ Saul agreed, ‘and they might even have worked out what we were doing. However, they will know that, over such distances, a booby trap is nigh impossible, and so they will save any course corrections they need to make until the last moment.’

  ‘What sort of distances?’ asked Brigitta.

  ‘Those two rubble piles are one point two million kilometres apart, and nearly the same distance away from us. The Scourge is just half a million kilometres beyond them.’

  ‘What’s your window?’ Brigitta now asked.

  ‘With the likely spread,’ said Saul, ‘twenty hours, but right now is the best time.’

  He sent a coded command to one of the radio transmitters on the rim, and just a few seconds later all three screens blanked for a moment then came back on. The middle screen showed two glaring eyes of red and orange, steadily expanding. On the other two screens the two explosions were expanding oblate discs of fire beginning to extrude spindles of flame above and below. Just visible, within the sides of each disc, were arc-shaped clouds of shattered and molten rock.

  ‘By the time the shrapnel from each explosion intersects with the Scourge’s course, it will be spread across nearly a million square kilometres,’ said Saul. ‘That ship of theirs will have to change course, and soon, or else it will end up amidst chunks of rock travelling fast enough to punch holes right through it.’

  ‘And will it change course?’ Hannah asked.

  Saul glanced at her. ‘Maybe not, since the crew might be more frightened of Galahad than the possibility of their ship being hit.’

  Scourge

  A sound like the rending of metal impinged on his hearing, but it was brief, echoing and distant, and Clay found himself once again in Serene Galahad’s aero as it plummeted towards the ground. Then the side of his face smacking against his bedside shelf brought him rudely back to consciousness. He swore, realizing his cabin seemed to have tilted up on one side, and was glad that he’d taken the precaution of climbing into his anchored sleeping bag. He pushed himself away from the shelf, as a further sound like wind howling down a pipe told him one of the side-burn fusion engines had fired up. As his cabin seemed to right itself, he quickly contacted Scotonis.

  ‘What the hell is happening?’ he demanded.

  ‘We’re changing course,’ replied Scotonis. ‘We’ll be making another correction in fifty minutes.’

  ‘Changing course? You don’t say.’

  ‘I’m sure I just did,’ was Scotonis’s laconic rejoinder, and then he shut down the call.

  Clay swore again as he struggled out of his sleeping bag and into his ship suit. It was frustrating that, now he and Scotonis were effectively conspiring against Galahad, the captain felt free to voice opinions he would otherwise have kept quiet. It would have been nice to be able to reinstate, in all crew cabins, the inducers he had taken offline, but such an act would probably get him killed. Scotonis, Trove, Cookson, and the others among the crew whom they had selected to have implants removed and collars shut down, neither trusted nor liked him.

  Once out into the corridor, he quickly began to make his way towards the bridge but, after fifty metres or so, he came up against a closed bulkhead door. He slammed his fist against it. They were cutting him out, they were either going to betray him to Galahad or just . . .

  Then he spotted a red light flashing on the panel beside the door, and belatedly remembered what that meant. The section of the ship beyond the door had depressurized. Now he remembered the sound he had heard in half-sleep. He again called Scotonis.

  ‘Have we been hit?’ he asked.

  ‘Twice,’ said the Captain.

  ‘I can’t get to the bridge,�
� said Clay, only after he said it realizing how self-concerned that sounded, and quickly added, ‘Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘The first glanced off the hull but the second penetrated,’ said Scotonis. ‘And, yes, people were hurt. In fact, you’ll be able to see for yourself shortly. The hole was sealed by automatics and the damaged area is repressurizing right now.’

  Clay wanted most of all to turn round and head back to his cabin, but forced himself to stay. He leaned against the wall, staring at the panel as the light changed from red to orange, then to yellow and gradually to green. The door emitted a thump as it came off its seals, then, on its top pivot, it swung up inside the wall. Two corpses fell through at Clay’s feet, while another one behind them still seemed to be trying to hold on to the floor.

  Clay stared at them in horror. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen corpses before; he doubted there was anyone on Earth who hadn’t, even before Alan Saul’s attack and before the Scour. How could he have been a close adviser to Galahad and not see them? In fact, how could he have not seen every stage in the transition from living human being to the bulgy-eyed sacks of flesh lying at his feet? His horror stemmed from the sure knowledge that if he had woken just a few minutes earlier, it might have been him caught in this corridor trying to breathe vacuum. It would have been him lying there with his tongue protruding, broken capillaries in his eyes and face, and vacuum-dried blood in his ears.

  He stepped over them and moved on, the air smoky all about him, only realizing after he was ten metres beyond them that all three casualties were crew, and that two of them were ones who had joined his and Scotonis’s conspiracy. Moving further along, he found another crewmember simply standing with her back against the wall. This woman had managed to pull on a survival suit and just stared at him without comprehension.