by Neal Asher
Saul felt it almost as a visceral clunk deep inside his torso as that same beam went into place, then as a gradual easing inside him as bolts were tightened through perfectly lined-up holes before welders glared distantly in vacuum. He now hung in a complete spherical cage, five kilometres across, in orbit about the sun, though admittedly some parts of the cage were not permanently secured since access would be needed for further materials.
‘The last beam is in,’ declared Var, almost belligerently.
‘So a watershed has been passed?’ Saul asked.
‘Yes,’ she affirmed. ‘On the Traveller construction station, I always found that marking these occasions with some sort of celebration, no matter how minor or constrained by political oversight, increased the subsequent work rates.’
‘Certainly,’ Saul replied, noting to himself how robots did not need such motivation. However, the bulk of his attention remained focused elsewhere, because new data were coming in.
Serene Galahad’s comlifers had blocked his access to all of Earth’s satellites and computer systems, also the solar observation satellites, but they had not extended their range far, merely cut off all other installations beyond Earth’s orbit from any contact with Earth. The Martian satellites were available to Saul, but they were far away and transmission delays were long. Still, just a few million kilometres out, an old satellite orbited the sun in a parallel path to the Earth’s. It had been overlooked because it remained mostly powered down until it detected comets or asteroids arriving in-system that might be a danger to Earth. Saul had sent a relay out from behind the sun, made a connection through it to that elderly satellite, and turned its radio and optical telescope array so as to now watch the home world.
‘Railgun,’ he remarked, his tone belying his sudden qualms. Galahad was working fast.
‘What?’ asked Var.
‘About twenty minutes ago, Galahad fired a very powerful railgun at the Moon.’ So saying, Saul instituted an immediate check on Argus’s weapons. Two railguns were operational but the plasma cannon that the Saberhagen twins were building was still far from completion. Perhaps his allocation of resources had been in error? Yes, Earth was a danger that could not be ignored – and in an instant he began to divert resources. The Saberhagens would shortly be receiving the components they were waiting for.
‘Second firing,’ he now said, appalled at the destructive power of what he had just witnessed. ‘They must have solved the component distortion problem, because that looked like a railgun-fired nuclear weapon.’
‘Seems a bit advanced for them,’ said Var sniffily.
‘Any more advanced than building vortex . . .’ Saul felt a sudden surge of both annoyance and frustration, immediately followed by the realization that he had become arrogant. Even as he sent the orders for the smelting plants to close down immediately and retract, he considered how, if he had only been watching still from Mars, they would have been in serious trouble, because he was now witnessing a launch of railgun missiles around the sun directly towards their position. Thankfully, so as to obtain the correct orbital vector, they were travelling slowly, but he was well aware that if he hadn’t been watching, he would have had to sacrifice both smelting plants just to save his ship.
‘This is a problem?’ Var enquired.
‘Yes, and I’ve just given orders for everyone to prepare for a shift in precisely one hour,’ he replied. ‘It seems Galahad wants to let us know she hasn’t forgotten us. Forty railgun missiles are now heading round the sun towards us.’
Using the impeller on the wrist of his suit, Saul rapidly sent himself down towards the ship’s core, with Var in quick pursuit.
‘We need the solar energy,’ she protested.
‘We’re not moving far,’ he replied.
To avoid these approaching missiles, they only had to move a small distance relative to the sun, which could have been achieved with the steering thrusters or even the Mach-effect drive, were it operational. However, there was too much equipment, not to mention the remainder of the asteroid and the Traveller engine, unsecured inside the station. They must move without inertia, therefore the Rhine drive was required so Saul checked its status, as he had been checking it so often. Major changes to the station’s structure, including the heavy armour being put in place in the station ring, had caused distortions in the vortex generator that had been necessary to straighten out. It was good, as he knew from the last time he checked it, just a few minutes before.
Approaching the surface of the ship’s core, he slowed himself with his impeller just enough so he could absorb the remaining impact by bending his knees and have his gecko soles still remain in place. Var landed shortly after him and he was pleased, for her, to see that she had landed as perfectly as himself. He strode towards the nearest airlock, heaved open the door, pushed himself down inside, and waited until his sister crammed in beside him. The airlock gave them access to a corridor leading to the Tech Central control centre, which internally had been left much as before. Saul removed his VC suit helmet and clipped it to his belt.
‘Humans in space really need to start thinking less two-dimensionally,’ Var commented, as she followed him.
‘To do that,’ Saul replied, ‘humans either have to change, or have been raised in a zero-g environment.’
‘Well, even that’s started now.’
Saul nodded in grave agreement. Those being ‘chipped’ provided an example of the former . . . but he didn’t know how to react to the news that some station personnel were getting pregnant, and that thus far eight in all had refused termination. This could be taken as meaning they were starting to feel safe, but this urge to procreate was more probably a response to the constant danger: a biological imperative and a hedge against the future.
He entered Tech Central to find that Hannah, the Saberhagens, Rhine, Le Roque and even Langstrom were present. This event was something cooked up by Hannah and Var between them, Hannah having brought two bottles of fizzy wine, which was brewed on the station, and a collection of the special glasses required for drinking such a beverage in zero gravity. This gathering was so that the main players aboard the station could celebrate the fixing of the last structural beam. Var had also allowed all the work crews a shift off to celebrate similarly – a humanizing event – and a large number of them were waiting in the Arboretum for the return of Ghort’s team, before the party began. Currently, however, Le Roque and Brigitta were speaking into their fones, and Langstrom and Rhine were working consoles, while Hannah stood on her own beside a medical gurney wheeled in specially to carry the drink and glasses. The rest of the station’s personnel, meanwhile, were receiving the news that the station would shortly be on the move, and the party atmosphere was fast dissipating.
‘Too human for you?’ Hannah snapped at Saul.
‘No, it seems Galahad wants to spoil your party,’ he replied tightly, then shot at Le Roque, ‘You have tracking on them?’
‘I do, and they’re up on all screens and accessible to all personnel,’ the station’s technical director replied. ‘Every damned one of them is on target and we have to move.’
Saul turned back to Hannah, who had now been joined by Var. ‘Railgun missiles heading straight for us. I feel they are an important reminder to us all.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she replied, suddenly looking tired.
Rhine was working his drive, Saul deliberately not interfering but keeping a watch on him from the inside of the computer system. The warp bubble should be near enough spherical despite the remaining mass of the asteroid, and the shift would be a short one, but still the margins for error were tight. Saul did not want to risk losing any of the newly constructed parts of the station. He walked over to join Hannah and Var.
‘In fact, this celebration has made things easy for us,’ he offered. ‘All but one of the human teams have locked down their work and are not presently anywhere that might be dangerous, while the team that fixed that last beam is on its way in.’ Even as he
said this, his mind was ranging throughout the station, constantly checking. If the station hit anything large enough to knock out the warp, then they might experience a momentum change; however, there were impellers mounted on the biggest unsecured objects – the Mars Traveller engine and the asteroid chunk – and any drift could be corrected.
‘Oh, goody,’ Hannah replied.
Var popped the cap off of one of the bottles. ‘They didn’t need to give us a reminder. The images I’ve seen of those three ships they’re building tell the whole story.’ She used a small manual pump on the base of the bottle to squirt a stream of the wine into one of the capped glasses, then paused in bringing the glass straw up to her mouth. Everyone in the control room was staring at her. ‘What? It seems a shame to let it get warm.’ She sipped.
The shift was imminent and they could all feel it: a slightly different sensation now, as if the new surrounding superstructure was somehow distorting whatever it was that affected them. Saul nodded towards the glasses on the gurney. ‘Pour them all.’
Var raised an eyebrow and did as instructed. She was already on the third glass when the drive engaged. The light of the sun dropped rapidly through the spectrum, and the moment of their shift was marked by a flash of intense red through the windows. Then the sun was back, glaring on the structures visible outside.
‘Just a few thousand kilometres,’ said Rhine.
Saul focused through that warning satellite on the stations ranged about Earth. By his calculation, it was possible that the enemy had tens of thousands of railgun missiles available. If it had been Galahad’s intention just to send them a reminder, then fine; the smelting plants could be extended and they could simply get back to work here. However, if the dictator of Earth was intent on driving them away from their power supply, that was a different matter. Saul did not want to spend the next weeks, if not months, dodging pot-shots from Earth, nor did he like the idea of the work here going on hold during that period. Galahad could commission her ships within that period and he would be forced to run out-system before having achieved what he wanted here – without having made the necessary preparations for the immense journey across interstellar void.
‘Drink your drinks,’ he instructed, taking a sip of the wine himself while wondering how alcohol might affect or impair the distributed functioning of his mind.
They all gathered round to accept their glasses in turn. Saul moved away to gaze out through the windows of Tech Central. He decided against ordering the smelting plants to be extended again just yet. Calculating signal delays, he reckoned on twenty-three minutes before Galahad learned that they had moved, then a further twenty-eight minutes before he learned if she had devised an immediate response to that. Meanwhile he watched the workers coming in, the proctors installing further elements of the Mach-effect drive, and simultaneously absorbed detail and tweaked and changed his plans to greater efficiency.
‘She can’t touch us,’ said Langstrom with relish.
Saul turned to him, a hollow feeling in his stomach. ‘On the contrary,’ he replied, now seeing a second launching of missiles from the vicinity of Earth. This launching was early, before Galahad could know they had moved, a wide spread to incorporate where some tactical team of hers had calculated he might move his ship. None of them was on target, but Galahad’s message had been delivered. Walking past Langstrom to join the rest, he announced, ‘We’re shifting again.’ And immediately began inputting new coordinates, factoring in known solar-system debris and deciding on two further shifts to take them to their first destination.
There was time yet, so he would allow all solar energy collection to continue for a while yet. He studied the disappointed expressions around him.
‘We would have had to have moved shortly, anyway,’ he stated, his voice taking on an echo as it repeated through the PA system, ‘since we are running out of materials.’
They then watched him attentively, aware that he had something more to say. Via cams throughout the station, he saw people turning to public screens now displaying his face.
‘A second launching of railgun missiles is heading on its way towards us,’ he continued, ‘and it is a simple fact, with the resources Earth commands and its supply lines established, that they could keep up this rate of fire indefinitely. We are therefore going to shift away from the sun.’
‘We need energy,’ Var protested pedantically, ‘and you’re taking us away from it.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Le Roque – posing a question to which, in the long term, there was really no simple answer. Saul, however, gave them the simplest answer he could.
The abrupt relocation of the station had been brief but disconcerting, especially since it occurred while Alex and Gladys were in the elevator taking them down into the Arboretum. A brief announcement through his fone informed Alex that Earth had just fired railgun missiles at them, so the Owner had shifted the station out of their way. They were safe again, it seemed, yet suddenly Alex felt angry at his powerlessness, his lack of knowledge.
He stepped out of the elevator to feel the ground solid underneath his feet for the first time since he had last been here, with Messina, when the Arboretum hadn’t been spinning, and his feet had hardly touched the ground, as he went on his killing spree among the invading troops. He now scanned his surroundings and saw no signs of the battle that had taken place here.
‘She’s a bitch, that Galahad,’ Gladys muttered, then pointed over to the dividing section of the Arboretum, where Akenon and Ghort waited for them, having already shed their suits and used the elevator some minutes earlier.
‘So this is your first time here?’ she asked, perhaps not wanting to talk further about the station shift, or its implications.
‘First visit to the Olive Tree, yes,’ Alex replied, playing along. ‘After my previous experiences in the Arboretum, this isn’t a place I’ve wanted to return to.’
‘Come on!’ urged Akenon.
They picked up their pace and soon reached the other two.
‘It’s this way.’ Ghort pointed up some steps rising against the dividing section, which led to a metal walkway jutting two metres off the ground before following the inside circumference of the Arboretum cylinder. Alex supposed they were expected to walk there, rather than on the premium soil inside the cylinder itself, to save them trampling on a jungle of squashes growing underneath the trees, or pushing through densely packed fruit bushes. The walkway curved its way round to a balcony jutting out directly above, where the people occupying the tables and chairs seemed to hang suspended upside-down. As he and his team climbed up and made their way round, perspective slid round with them, until at last they were approaching the balcony the right way up.
The area was occupied by ten circular tables, each with seating space for four. Every table but one was now occupied by personnel, the empty one being reserved for them, the team who had fixed the last beam. A desultory cheer greeted them, the party atmosphere obviously diminished by the recent station shift. Waving and grinning, Ghort led the way to the table and they sat down. Shortly, four bottled beers, along with the luxury of open-topped glasses, were brought out to them. Alex sipped, gazed into the Arboretum, which resembled a forest distorted through a fish-eye lens, and wondered what people here talked about in their time off. He listened carefully, but very little was being said, since everyone on the balcony seemed to be concentrating on the wall-mounted screen above the doors into the bar, while those sitting inside were similarly occupied with a screen there.
‘Now that the heroes of the hour are present, I’ll continue,’ said the Owner, gazing out with unhuman indifference from the screen for a moment, before attempting a smile that was only frightening.
Alex glanced at Ghort but received only an unreadable blank stare in return. Did he resent being demoted from bodyguard to Chairman Messina to the role of a working grunt? Did he hate the Owner?
The Owner continued, ‘Serene Galahad has fired upon us again, and quite likely
she will keep on firing on us until she has driven us away from the vicinity of the sun. We are therefore obliged to move a lot further. Our first shift away is imminent, and the second will come directly after that – bringing us to the periphery of the Asteroid Belt.’ He gave another brief smile, this one thoughtful and slightly more human. ‘There our main task will be to get the Mars Traveller engine into position and operational, because we’ll need it to take us into the Belt, to our first target: an asteroid containing essential materials. This we’ll slice up and bring inside the ship.’ He paused to gaze, distractedly, to one side. They could all immediately feel it, so none of them needed his next announcement of, ‘First shift.’
The screen then flicked back to a holding image: a picture of the station – or rather ship – as it now looked. The shift ensued as a weird twisting sensation emphasized by sudden nightfall inside the Arboretum as the sun-catchers ceased to have anything to catch and the light tubes ceased to have anything to convey. Lights on the wall above the balcony and within the bar switched on automatically. In this artificial glow, Alex studied the faces around him. Some wore expressions of excitement, but most were pensive and serious, for no one could work in space for any length of time without knowing how quickly its vagaries could kill.
‘What about power?’ hissed Akenon, as conversations started up again around them. ‘We managed okay on fusion, but nowhere near as well as by the sun.’
‘He’s now got the reactor from Mars,’ Ghort noted, ‘besides three new ones built in Arcoplex Two waiting to come on line.’
He’s got the reactor from Mars, Alex noted; whereas Akenon and Gladys would have said we have it.
