The Departure

by Neal Asher

  “You’ll find it in the fridge.” He was staring at Saul, who could see how pale and sad the doctor looked. Perhaps Bronstein secretly had some reservations about the nuclear incineration of four million people, being a surgeon after all. “I’ll be up front,” he finished, then abruptly returned to the cab.

  Hannah got changed first, ignoring Merrick’s faint smile as he inspected her naked body. Then she helped Saul to dress. He kept deliberately emphasizing his debility, though already starting to feel much better. He began to feel even stronger after eating the tomatoes and sausage Hannah had taken from the fridge, washed down with a pint of water and accompanied by the painkillers and antibiotics she supplied him. Merrick seemed pretty relaxed around the pair, abandoning his rifle on the seat beside him, sprawling out his feet and closing his eyes. He probably reckoned that Saul was in no condition to jump him, or maybe he believed that Saul was genuinely now a paid-up revolutionary. However, as Merrick took the opportunity to use the toilet, he took his assault rifle along with him.

  “I need the toilet too,” said Saul, standing up shakily and clutching his stomach, as Merrick returned. The sudden lurching of the vehicle negotiating through the crowds or around fallen debris was timely indeed. Saul stumbled forward just as Merrick turned his head to point back towards the empty toilet, and a side-fist caught the man precisely on his temple. Saul clutched the front of Merrick’s jacket as he went down, guiding his descent on to one of the bunks, and then quickly took hold of his rifle.

  Saul turned to Hannah. “I’m not joining any revolution,” he announced.

  She stared at Merrick, perhaps wondering if he had killed the man. Then she looked up at Saul. “I didn’t for a moment think you would.”

  You have to grab your opportunities when you can, and he now saw one, just as the vehicle slowed down on approaching some sort of encampment sheltering in a highway tunnel. Saul activated the beacon, and an instant later a voice spoke in his head.

  “You took your time,” said Janus.

  “Download to me,” he instructed. “Download now.”

  “You have been found,” replied Janus. “The Inspectorate comlife has you located in an All Health mobile hospital presently on the A12c.”

  “Not a problem,” he said. “Just download.”

  “My home is in your head,” Janus observed.

  “I know, and I repeat: download to me now.”

  As the vehicle entered the tunnel, they simply opened the side door and stepped out. Saul stumbled and went down, splitting the knee of his trousers just as chunks of data began landing inside his skull, like bricks tumbling into a goldfish bowl.

  “I’m drowning,” said Janus. And those were the last words the AI ever spoke.

  8

  MEGADEATH REQUIRED

  In the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the governments that wielded the biggest sticks were those with easiest access to fossil fuels, primarily oil and gas. Russia, steadily tightening a fuel stranglehold on Europe, wielded a very big stick indeed, in fact one so large that, in a shameful replay of history, everyone looked away when it annexed the Czech Republic, and Red Army troops marched again through the streets of Prague. But then, perhaps, everyone was busy watching the Middle East, and shrieking hysterically about the protectorate America had begun forming there after being dragged into a worsening situation when Israel nuked Tehran and proceeded to roll its tanks into Syria. Or perhaps they were more intent on China’s sabre-rattling in Tibet, or India’s response of a hydrogen bomb test conducted in the Bay of Bengal—a test, incidentally, aimed at focusing the attention of the new Caliphate of Pakistan, which responded in turn with its own test in the Arabian Sea. Yet, even after all this mayhem, sanity prevailed and the expected World War Three failed to materialize. However, there are those who seriously still think such a war would have been a good thing. For the resultant megadeath would have taken the strain off world resources, while inevitable technological advances could have made us more able to use them effectively. It would have at least given the human race a breathing space, whereas now, without one, the human race suffocates.

  ANTARES BASE

  Var waited until the shepherd headed out of sight around the other side of Hex Three, where it would doubtless enter through the big airtight garage doors—a process likely to take at least fifteen minutes. With the diamond saw resting on her shoulder and the battery box clutched in her right hand, she started walking and then, once accustomed to the weight and balance of her burden, broke into a steady lope. She skirted the water tank and continued on down between it and the hex wall, to where that connected with the outer wall of Wing Five. Then, after a few paces along the wing wall, she came to the first of the metre-square windows. Luckily, Wing Five was not being used as a dormitory, since Ricard did not like having ordinary station personnel bunking too close to him. Instead, that wing now contained workshops and storage. At this end lay a workshop for the crawlers, with direct access for the vehicles running underneath the hex towards the garage on the further side, while a light-engineering workshop lay further along, towards Hex One, beyond which the wing was divided into a regular series of storage rooms.

  Nobody at home, it seemed. Var peered in at a crawler stripped of its wheels and raised on a lift, then transferred her gaze to the bulkhead doors separating this particular wing from Hex Three. These were the same sort of doors as could be found scattered throughout the complex, the sort that had killed those workers processing soil in one of the laboratories. And the doors still operated according to the same safety protocols.

  Var placed the battery box on the ground, plugged in the diamond saw’s power cable, then set the thing running. It jerked and twisted under the force of its spin, the blade turning to a blur and gyroscopic action making it awkward to manoeuvre. For a second she hesitated—strangely reluctant to harm her own base—then she brought the saw blade down against the window. A thin shriek assaulted her ears as the blade juddered against the glass, raising a spray of fine white powder. As it hit one of the resin laminations, this bubbled between the layers of glass, then the saw pierced all the way through, and internal air pressure booted it out again. A great plume of vapour shot out from the gash, but maybe that would not be enough. Var cut again, then again, the blade slicing open slots that extended to just under its full ten-centimetre diameter. Beyond the blur of vapour and glass dust she saw three of Ricard’s armed enforcers charging through the bulkhead doors, with a couple of execs trailing behind them. She gazed at them a little disbelievingly, seeing they’d demonstrated just how stupid they were to come running unsuited into a section already shrieking with decompression klaxons.

  Var shoved the blade still harder against the glass, then, with a thump, found herself flung back, in a cloud of glittery fragments, on to her backside. The entire window had blown out, the vapour plume reached thirty metres behind her, but diffused as the thin Martian air sucked it in like a dry sponge on milk. After carefully shutting off the saw and laying it on the ground, Var stood up and walked back to the gaping window to peer inside. As expected, the bulkhead doors had closed, and the five who had foolishly entered were pressed up against them, two of them desperately trying to operate the frozen controls, before sliding to the floor. All of them had trails of vapour issuing from their mouths, as their lungs expelled both air and moisture with a thin shriek. She grabbed the top of the frame and hauled herself up, then carefully over any remaining fragments of glass to drop inside. There she waited as the three enforcers writhed about, fearing they might grab for their weapons if they saw her. It was only then she realized they could not see her, for their eyes had started bulging, the fluid inside them expanding, and vapour wisping away as their surfaces dried out. Even as she watched, she noticed a fresh gust of vapour, as first one eyeball burst, then another.

  Var strode across and picked up the discarded weapons: two side arms and a scoped assault rifle—probably the same one used to kill Gisender. The three enfo
rcers were also carrying universal ammunition clips, but a check revealed that only one of the spares contained ceramic ammunition. The rest held plastic ammo, sufficient to kill, but too light to punch a hole through a window, a door or any other vital infrastructure. These went into her hip bag, before she returned to the broken window and stepped outside.

  Perhaps she should be feeling some guilt about what she had just done, but found no such emotion inside her. People just like these had made her life a misery from her first conscious moments, then later forced her to make the journey out to this godforsaken world. They deserved everything they got. Like so many others who concealed their rebellion deep inside, she had just been waiting for a chance to strike back—and it felt good.

  Pausing, she remembered what her personal political officer had said to her back at the Traveller construction project: “You’re too dangerous to live, Var, but too valuable to kill.” That was just before he informed her that she had been appointed Technical Director of Antares base, replacing the previous incumbent who had recently died of cancer. But as enforcers had taken her off to a holding cell, “the only accommodation presently available,” she had known the real reason they were moving her out. They knew she had just discovered the truth about her husband, Latham Delex; how he had not died in an aero accident, back down on Earth, but in an adjustment cell. They wanted her to continue being useful to them, but in a situation where she wouldn’t have access to the massive orbital tools of her main profession—tools she might use against them.

  Ricard and his staff were now sealed in Hex Three, until such time as they could suit up and find another route out. Var did not intend to allow them the time, however, and quickly strode round the hex to bring the next two windows into view. Here lay the private community room for Ricard’s staff. After much fumbling she managed to swap the assault rifle’s existing clip for the one with ceramic ammo. Then adjusting the weapon to a three-shot setting, she fired once at each window. One pane blew out but the other held, so she hit it again and it blew out too. Var did not bother checking inside. She’d already seen movement in there, and knew she’d just killed someone else—quite likely more than one. She jogged round the hex to the next windows, and opened fire again.

  After that, again approaching the hex, she peered in through the broken windows of Ricard’s office and apartment, and was disappointed to see it empty. She moved along, then climbed through the next shattered window and into the control room. Here she found one exec slumped over a console, while another lay writhing and clawing at the diamond-pattern metal of the floor. She headed over to the console and hauled the first one out of his chair, aiming to dump him on the floor. He grabbed her wrist and held on tight, his lungs pumping wildly as he tried to stay alive. She waited patiently until his grip slackened, before shrugging him off, then paused briefly to gaze down at the two of them. Five years she’d known these people, but right now, she couldn’t even remember their names.

  Sitting down, she reached into her hip bag and took out the data disc she had retrieved from the crawler. She fed it into a slot, from the disc menu selected Le Blanc’s speech, then from the control menu selected broadcast and repeat. A subscreen blinked on, down in the bottom righthand corner, confirming that Le Blanc’s speech was now being broadcast throughout the base.

  Back outside the Hex again, Var realized that by now Ricard and his remaining staff must be aware of what was going on. They would already be suiting up, grabbing weapons, reacting purposefully. She quickly strode round to the personnel airlock, and fired one burst into its outer door. One bullet ricocheted off, but the other two punched through the bubblemetal, disabling the airlock and killing anyone inside.

  Var paused to check the display on the side of her weapon, seeing that only seventeen shots now remained of the fifty-round clip. Just then a shadow speared across the arid ground over to her left, removing her attention from the weapon. A shepherd had arrived.

  The machine paused, surveying its surroundings with its blind blunt dome, then abruptly jerked into motion again to come striding towards her. She felt a sudden dry terror, but managed to take careful aim, this time using the scope and setting the rifle to full automatic. As she opened fire, emptying all seventeen shots into the thing, it shuddered and staggered, with chunks of metal and ricocheting bullets flying away from it. Var turned and ran, aware that it was still loping after her, even with one of its legs no longer working properly. Just a few metres from the personnel airlock leading into Hex One, its shadow finally fell across her and its sticky tentacles dropped on her like writhing lianas. They wound themselves around her torso and hauled her off the ground.

  EARTH

  The pain was intense as Saul’s pulse thundered in his head again, but he now seemed to be positioned over to one side of it. In his two-year life he had encountered the number pi only once, and memorized it to fifty decimal places, but it had never been of much use to him, so he’d done no more beyond that. Janus’s calculation of pi was delimited only in terms of processing space. The installation software had made a compromise during integration, however, so now Saul could instantly remember the number to five hundred decimal places, then calculate it thereafter. Such compromises and complete displacements were working all through his artificially extended mind, and blocks of information shifted rapidly about as if being moved by some ancient computer-defrag utility. He remembered some parts of the processing plant in which he’d been destined for incineration. Janus had known it wholly and completely: the schematics, computer systems, security, power inputs and outputs, the materials used in its construction, the manufacturers of its components, its overall history and its maintenance log, so Saul now knew all that too, as Janus and he gradually became one.

  Govnet remained open to him, so he managed to download data from it for inspection, thus learning that the encampment had been established in a cam deadspot inside the tunnel, probably around the location of a former black market. But, with tentacular code, something started groping its way after him in that virtual world, trying to latch on. There seemed something familiar about this shadowy presence and he wondered whether he was detecting Malden. But somehow that wasn’t right; somehow he knew he would identify Malden instantly if the man put in an appearance. As this thing, this comlife, oriented towards him, shifting the information of its substance in some sinister manner, he immediately tried to shut down the radio modem in his head. The result was overload: a spike driven in between his eyes, his vision filled with lightnings. But the modem closed.

  “Alan,” urged Hannah. “Alan.”

  He was down on his knees and she was trying to pull him back to his feet with one hand, whilst she clutched Merrick’s assault rifle in the other. He raised his head to study their surroundings through watery eyes. To his right stood a row of double-skin inflatable tents, and directly ahead lay a campfire around which a crowd of ZAs was gathered. Many of them were staring at him and Hannah, and some of them were beginning to walk towards them. They needed to get out of here, now.

  There was no reason to suppose these people were hostile, but they would certainly want to know about the AH trailer van, and why he and Hannah had deserted it. The state of his skull would raise questions too. Or maybe they thought he and Hannah might be able to provide answers regarding that distant atomic blast.

  “Alan!” she repeated.

  He was still weak and his head ached abominably, but his awareness of his body, provided by the martial training in his previous existence, had grown to something almost mathematical in its precision. He stood upright, automatically assimilating a mental model of the movements of every muscle and bone in his body, whose names, strength, position and size he now knew, calculating the stresses caused, calculating potential, as he also filled in a rather more sketchy model of his surroundings. This other model he expanded, briefly switching on his modem again to download a city map, seemingly snatching it from beneath the multiple limbs of some shadowy behemoth, mapping the
sprawl around him and working out precisely where he wanted to be next in order to further his plans, for they had not changed.

  “Who are you?” called the woman leading a group of four zero-assets towards them.

  “Rifle,” he said, reaching out to close his hand about the assault rifle Hannah held, delighting in the complexity of the structure of both hand and arm, and already seeing much room for improvement.

  “No.” She did not release the gun.

  He turned to gaze at her, targeting the points on her body he could strike to get her to release the weapon, finally deciding that one jab in her solar plexus would be quickest. She met his gaze and straight away let go, looking terrified. Weapon held one-handed, its butt tucked under his arm, he turned back to face those still approaching. The woman halted then and, as if Saul had struck her, abruptly lurched backwards into the man directly behind her. The other ZAs halted as well, and Saul measured subtle alterations in their pose. They went from a belligerent curiosity to something cowed and frightened. What were they seeing? He turned and began heading back out of the tunnel, already downgrading their importance within his mental model.

  “Your eyes,” said Hannah.

  “Bloodshot like Malden’s,” he stated. “Blood-pressure differential through the organic interface to his cerebellum, caused by increased demand. It will kill him eventually.”

  “And you?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  He halted and turned to her. “Because of the viral nanite fix my previous self made.” He paused, briefly studying the map in his head of the surrounding sprawl. “Telomeres reconfigured, T-cell boost and an increase in stem-cell division, but with strong immune response to stem-cell mutation. I heal about four times faster than a normal human being, and this body physically adapts to internal and external pressures at the same rate. Also, those little biomechs are still in my bloodstream, constantly running repairs. This is why I survived Smith’s torture.”