The Departure

by Neal Asher

  “You go on,” said Var, gesturing Carol over to the dust cowling along the edge of the roof. She herself began crawling on her belly towards another section of roof.

  “I’ll deal with the hatch,” she said to Lopomac. “You put a piton in and give us a line.”

  The hatch above the reactor room was not the only access to the roof. A small vertical airlock sat directly over the garage, built in its previous incarnation when it had simply been a major storeroom. The hatch had allowed personnel access to the roof in order to make repairs to cams, lights and radio dishes, but it hadn’t been used in years, and even the ladder descending from it had been removed. On reaching it, Var thumbed its console whilst Lopomac drove in another piton. The console screen instantly warned her of a pressure differential, but she ran a reboot and it corrected the error to show no differential at all. Finding the manual lever stiff and the seal stuck, she cautiously got up on her knees to provide herself with more leverage, and heaved. The outer hatch eventually came up with a thin tearing sound, strips of torn seal hanging from it. She dropped down inside, and clinging to the upper section of ladder that had been left inside the airlock, she released the lever of the lower hatch, then paused to check image feed.

  Another grenade detonated by the bulkhead door leading into the reactor room. The blast sent the forklift skittering over to one side, and the door tumbling into the room beyond, where it slammed against one side of the reactor itself. Var winced—she’d have to check for damage—but at least Silberman and the others were still where she wanted them.

  “Any movement from Ricard?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” said Carol. “He’s keeping his head down.”

  “Lopomac, where’s that line?”

  “Coming.” He dropped a coil of rope over the edge, then peered down towards her. She attached her climbing motor, then kicked down on the hatch, once, twice, until it fell open, then as fast as she could she lowered herself into the garage underneath. After a moment, Lopomac joined her.

  “They’re in the reactor room,” she explained, unshouldering her assault rifle and knocking off the safety. The enforcer who seemed always to get the shit jobs had been sent in first, the other two rapidly following.

  “Come on,” said Var.

  She quickly opened a bulkhead door, leading into the next outer section, then in towards the reactor room beyond. Lopomac unshouldered his assault rifle and held it ready. By now Silberman himself was entering the reactor room. Of course, he would be puzzled: how had they sealed the door like that and yet apparently disappeared? As she reached the junction from which the corridor led up to the reactor room door, she waved Lopomac ahead. “When I give the word.”

  He still looked a bit sick, but nodded and moved over to the opposite side of the corridor entrance, resting his back against the wall, with his assault rifle braced before him.

  “The reactor?” he queried.

  “Not in line of sight,” she replied.

  That was true enough, but a stray round might still hit it. She just had to hope the imminent fire fight damaged nothing vital, but it was a risk they had to take. Also backing against the wall with her rifle ready, she once more studied her visor screen.

  Silberman sat himself at the control console to work through the menu. After a second, she realized he must be turning the power back on to the rest of base. This accomplished, he stood, gestured to the other three and headed back towards the door. What would he now be thinking? He must realize that there were few places they could be hiding in the outer section, yet would assume they hadn’t been stupid enough to seal themselves inside one of the less vital inner sections.

  “Ricard’s on the move,” announced Carol.

  Var briefly switched to an exterior cam view. Ricard was now in a crouch, his rifle up against his shoulder as he swung it about to check the screen view through its telescopic sight. This told her all she needed. Silberman had just informed Ricard of the situation, and now Ricard was worried; he thought they must be somewhere outside the hex.

  “Kill him, if you can,” she instructed, flicking back to the previous view inside the hex.

  Waving Mr Shit Job ahead, Silberman stepped out of the reactor room, the other two enforcers emerging behind him. Let them get halfway down the corridor…

  They were a few paces away from the room when Silberman abruptly halted and gestured behind him. One of the enforcers turned, and started to head back. Silberman had clearly decided to leave a guard.

  “Lopomac,” she said, “now!”

  As one, they swung round, facing along the corridor, rifles up against their shoulders. Lopomac went down on one knee, but Var remained standing. She opened up on full automatic, whilst Lopomac fired in short bursts. The lead enforcer was slammed back into Silberman, but the spray of blood and escaping vapour showed that his body had not been sufficient protection, for the bullets had gone straight through him and struck Silberman too. One of the enforcers behind spun against the wall, smearing bits of himself across it, steaming like raw meat dropped onto a hot stove. The last enforcer managed to stumble a few paces towards the reactor room, before shots stitched across his back and he went down.

  Var took her finger off the trigger. “We got them,” she said, for Carol’s benefit.

  “I missed Ricard,” said Carol. “He’s back down in his hollow.”

  “Keep your head down,” said Var as she advanced.

  None of the four scattered on the floor showed any signs of life. Simple as that: extinguished in just over ten seconds of gunfire. Var called up a menu on her visor screen, and keyed into a com icon that was presently dormant. It started flashing, down in the bottom right corner of her visor as the rest of the menu faded. Then it blinked out, and her helmet speakers beeped to let her know the new channel had been opened from the other end.

  “You’re alone now, Ricard,” she said.

  After a moment, he asked, “What do you mean, alone?”

  “I mean Silberman and the last of your enforcers are dead.”

  “Then you’ve won.”

  Var turned and began heading back the way she had come, leaving Lopomac standing behind her, seemingly horrified by what they had just done. He wouldn’t be strong enough, she realized, he wouldn’t be able to carry this through to its inevitable and necessary conclusion.

  “Surrender yourself now, Ricard, and you get to live until the base personnel decide what to do with you,” she said. “If you don’t surrender, then that’s fine. You can stay out there until your air runs out.”

  Into an outer section now, blast damage evident all up the walls beside her, the broken window ahead where the enforcers had entered.

  “Someone was shooting at me from the roof,” he protested.

  “Carol?”

  “I hear you.”

  “You can come down now.”

  “Okay, on my way,” the woman replied, relief obvious in her voice.

  “I need some sort of guarantee,” insisted Ricard, but his decision was already made. She could hear it in his voice—he was all out of choices.

  “I give you my word that no one here will try to kill you, Ricard. I need you alive, and telling the people here what instructions you received from Earth. I need them to know.”

  She could now see him through the window, as he stood up, holding his rifle above his head.

  “Put the weapon on the ground,” she said.

  By the tilt of his head, he was still gazing up at the roof, expecting shots from there. With care he lowered his rifle and did as instructed, then began walking in towards the hex. Var moved towards the window, detaching the mostly used-up clip from her rifle and slotting a new one into place. She vaulted the sill, boots thumping on to the dusty ground. His head jerked back down, seeing her now. She walked out towards him, closing the gap until they stood just five metres apart.

  “The base personnel will understand,” he ventured anxiously.

  “Yes,” she replied, “they c
ertainly will.”

  She pulled the trigger and watched him dance for a moment, then tumble backwards through a cloud of dust. The base personnel would certainly understand that this man wasn’t worth the precious air it took to keep him breathing.

  Argus Station

  Twenty people waited in the control room. These included Langstrom, Peach and Mustafa, escorting a thin man with cropped grey hair standing hunched over in his prison overalls. There were also thirteen frightened-looking staff Saul had summoned, all of them clad in the same sort of technician’s garb worn by Chang and the twins, who were also present. Saul glanced at Hannah and nodded to the console they had used earlier. Understanding at once, she moved over to it, then turned and stood with her arms folded. Saul moved past this small crowd to gaze out across Argus Station, leaving them hovering and unsure about what they should do. He didn’t need to look round to know that the spidergun now loomed in the doorway. Even without the multiple views he could summon the sudden terrified stillness would have told him enough.

  “You are Robert Le Roque,” he began, still without turning.

  “I am,” the thin ex-prisoner agreed, straightening up and stepping away from Langstrom to move to the fore.

  “Formerly technical director of this entire station?” Saul now turned to focus on the man.

  “Until Political Director Smith decided otherwise.” Le Roque smiled nastily and glanced towards Langstrom. “But Director Smith is currently being processed into fertilizer for the Arboretum, so he has turned out to be unexpectedly useful in the end.”

  “Yes, the station digesters are going to be busy for some time yet.”

  Le Roque folded his arms, as if feeling cold, and continued, “So what are your intentions now, and what do you want with me?”

  Saul studied the man a moment longer. Certainly, to have reached the rank of Technical Director of this station, Le Roque must have had some less than savoury aspects to his past. But, having studied the extensive data filed in the Political Office, Saul knew political manoeuvring was not the main reason for this man’s promotion. Le Roque was highly intelligent and capable; in fact if he had been less so, he would have ended up in a cell long ago, for he had been far too much of a free thinker

  “I want you to resume the position you held here previously,” said Saul. “I want you, and your staff here”—he gestured to the others present—“to prepare everyone aboard Argus Station for the moment when, in twenty-three hours’ time, it swings about the Moon and I again fire up the Traveller engine to put us on a course for Mars.”

  Shock registered on the man’s face, amid gasps from others in the room. Le Roque, however, recovered quickly. “And if I’m not willing?”

  Saul shrugged. “I’ll find someone else, then. But you and everyone here must understand,” he surveyed the group before him, “that there’s no going back. So food, water and air cannot be wasted on those who will not work for the survival of all aboard.”

  The expressions of shock were still there, but in some faces he could see the kind of cowed acceptance that resulted from a lifetime of being ground down by the Committee. There would be, he knew, some here—and throughout the rest of the station—who had loved ones down on Earth who they had expected to return to, and he had now taken that option away from them. Part of him wanted to offer them some solution but, having set himself firmly on this course, he simply could not afford to expend valuable resources such as those space planes out on the docking pillars. Also, he could not afford to show the slightest sign of weakness. What would they be returning to anyway? Even a brief inspection of the data flooding Govnet rendered the expected results. If they thought they would just disembark from those planes and return to normal lives down there, they were sadly mistaken. Perhaps he should now acquaint them with some of the facts.

  “You realize, I hope,” he said, “that even if you made it down safely to one of the space-plane runways on Earth, your first port of call would be an adjustment cell—where you would be interrogated until every last detail of what has happened here was extracted from you. After that there would be no release either—whatever authority remains down there would not want you blabbing your story to anyone else. Already the Committee “press officers” are at work, and Govnet is flooded with news of a successful test run of the Argus network, and the successful repositioning of the Argus Station.”

  He let that sink in for a moment, before turning back to Le Roque.

  “What about…after?” The man’s voice caught in his throat. “After we’re safely on course for Mars? What will you want of me then?”

  “I’ll want you to get everyone onboard the station back to work, all previous maintenance schedules adhered to, the self-sustaining programmes recommenced and the researchers in Arcoplex Two back on the job. I also want the entire station secured for space flight, strengthening made wherever required, the tubeways fully completed, and work started on a full enclosure of the inner station.”

  “We will need the smelting plants back online,” observed Le Roque.

  Saul nodded towards the Moon now beginning to recede behind the Argus Station. “After we swing round the Moon, the smelters can once again be extended. They will continue to function with the existing arrays of mirrors for seven months, though with declining efficiency, and we can extend that period by manufacturing more mirrors.”

  “Mars?” said Le Roque.

  “Yes.”

  Le Roque grimaced towards the others before refocusing on Saul. He ran a hand down his yellow overalls. “I would like to change out of these before I get to work.”

  “Of course.” Saul gestured towards the door of the man’s former apartment. “I want you to move your personal effects later to Smith’s quarters in the Political Office, which I notice are more capacious than your apartment here. After that you can convert the control centre located there into a secondary version of this one.” Saul stabbed a finger down at the floor. “I’m sure you’ll find a better use for the rest of the Political Office—I note manufacturing space has been tight while valuable resources were squandered there, and also on the cell block.”

  Le Roque nodded briefly, and departed.

  Saul turned to Chang and the twins. “Anything you want,” he said. “Within obvious limits.”

  Brigitta glanced at her sister. “We want to transfer to Robotics.” She paused as if not quite sure how far to push it. “Will you be running this place like Smith did?”

  “No,” Saul replied firmly, before turning to Langstrom. “As the new head of security here, you will now find that the list of punishable offences has been substantially reduced, so reading it won’t take you long. All of the sections headed “Political Subversion” have been deleted, and you will be receiving no instructions from the Political Office. That’s because it has ceased to exist, and you answer to me alone.”

  The legal system here had been merely a straight upload from Earth: unless something was actually approved, it was considered illegal—Roman law—but with the extra twist that all “offenders” were deemed guilty until proved innocent. Judgement and sentencing was delivered by an Inspectorate Executive, who would also have investigated the alleged “crime” they sat judgement upon. The catalogue of such crimes, their parameters nicely vague and open to Inspectorate interpretation, had been huge, but it took Saul less than a minute to hack it down by nearly 90 per cent. It was now not a crime, for example, to suggest that your food ration tasted “funny”—an offence that had merited being “interviewed” for five hours by an Inspectorate Exec, assisted by two enforcers and a pain inducer.

  Langstrom looked thoroughly surprised as Saul continued, “Your men will only carry ionic tasers and nightsticks, and your main duty will be to ensure civilian order. However, I have some other chores for you to complete before then. First you must ensure that everyone is released from the cell block, and that all Smith’s toys there are decommissioned.”

  One of those in the cell block was th
e food critic. His subversive criticism of the Committee had resulted in a two-day period of adjustment after his “interview.” With the right treatment he might be able to recommence his job in Atmosphere Management in a month or so, when he regained control of his bowels and stopped dribbling.

  “Very well,” began Langstrom. “I’ve never really agreed—”

  “I’m not interested in your opinion, Langstrom. I will judge you later by your actions.” Langstrom kept silent as Saul continued, “Your next task will be to round up the entire executive staff of the Political Office, plus certain other unpleasant individuals who work under them—I’ve already forwarded a list to your computer.”

  It hadn’t been difficult to draw up this list. The Executive contained few redeemable souls at the top, and those in the lower ranks who seemed destined for promotion all demonstrated the kind of inherent nastiness and lack of empathy required for future exalted positions. Saul quickly tired of studying the records of these people, and it had been simplicity itself to create a search engine fit for the exercise.

  “You’ll then take them all to Arcoplex One,” he finished, “where they will join Chairman Messina and his surviving delegates.”

  At that, many in the room exclaimed in surprise, and he turned towards them.

  “Yes,” he said, “Chairman Messina and fifty of his core delegates are currently detained in Arcoplex One until Hannah here decides their fate. They are sharing their accommodation with the two thousand corpses resulting from the nerve gas Messina’s troops employed as they boarded the station.” Saul paused, seeking the right tone. “That way our political elite can quickly acquaint themselves with digester technology.”

  One of the staff let out a bark of laughter, then abruptly looked frightened. Others, too, showed shocked amusement, before dipping their heads to hide their expressions.

  “Laughter is not an offence,” Saul declared mildly. He turned back to Langstrom. “Any questions?”

  “None I can think of right now.”

  “You and your men must adhere to the laws of this station too,” Saul warned. “Since you’ll be in a position of trust, any infringements will call for a harsher punishment than is dealt out to ordinary civilians.”