Hilldiggers

by Neal Asher

  ‘And we’re going to bring down Orbital Combine?’

  ‘Yes, Alun, we are going to bring them down – and hard.’

  Alun grinned fiercely and departed. Harald’s smile evaporated as the door closed behind him.

  The man was now on his way to make his other report, and on his way to a bitter destiny. Harald focused on his eye-screen again, and ran through a recording of this most recent meeting with Alun. There was plenty there he could use, plenty he could change, distort and edit together. Afterwards he checked the time, then speed-read another five reports. He moved on to check the programs he had made to track events. Franorl was now in position off from Corisanthe Main, and the party of Combine observers was aboard Desert Wind. And any moment now . . . Harald observed the com icon light in the corner of his screen, initiated it and read the expected text summons from Admiral Carnasus. He stared at it for a long moment, then abruptly gave his response before wiping the summons, and then opening a secure com channel. He observed a white and sickly face, framed by black hair, turning towards him.

  ‘Are you still ready, Cheanil?’ he asked.

  ‘I am still ready,’ she replied.

  ‘Stay ready. Your time comes within the hour.’

  – RETROACT 15 –

  Yishna – leaves Corisanthe Main

  A vision arose in her mind of steel hearts beating in darkness, the spaces between them crammed with folded layer-upon-layer of reality, programs chewing through the folds like metallized bugs and long segmented worms, and the feeling of being smothered inside this mass . . . Yishna woke with panic heavy in her chest and lay motionless on her sweat-soaked mattress. Every clink or distant sound caused this panic to surge sickeningly. Slowly a feeling tingled in her legs, a restlessness. She had to move them but felt frightened to do so. She fought against it, slowly overcoming the paralysis. But moving her legs didn’t seem to help. Carefully she reached out and put on the light, then lay there gasping, for even the bright sunny glow did not dispel the inner darkness, rather seemed thinly layered over it. Abruptly she sat up, swung her legs to one side of her sleeping mat and stood up.

  The same nightmare had been recurring in every period of sleep for some time, so that she had now become afraid to close her eyes. Trying to stay awake did not help, since even then the nightmare eventually crawled into her conscious mind, or otherwise loomed at the periphery of her perception. Drugged sleep merely held it off for a little while, then it returned with redoubled force. Trying to remain rational, she analysed her condition, but the fear that she knew precisely its source caused her to veer away from making any conclusions.

  Standing leadenly in her room within Corisanthe Main, it took Yishna some minutes to notice the flashing icon on her touch-screen. She keyed it and found a summons from Director Gneiss, but timed for an hour ago. Though dreading this summons, now that it had come she felt relieved. Still dressed in the clothes in which she had slept, she moved quickly out into the corridor and strode woodenly towards the Director’s office. Seeing OCTs and researchers bustling about around her offered a welcome distraction from the shadows. Finally she came to stand before the curtain drawn across his office entrance, and there lost her impetus. After a moment Gneiss himself drew the curtain aside. She tried to tell herself that he must have been on his way out, but knew deep inside that he had somehow sensed her presence.

  ‘Yishna,’ he looked her up and down, ‘come in.’ He gestured her over to his divan, then sat down beside her, peering at her intently, the spoked wheels of his irises seeming almost on the point of revolving. ‘You know why you’re here?’

  ‘I think so,’ she managed, though she felt his question contained several perilous levels of meaning.

  ‘Can you explain?’

  Stay at the surface. Don’t go any deeper . . . it’s dark down there. Why was she here in his office now, not why did she exist.

  ‘I just can’t seem to . . .’ Yishna could not go on. The nightmares had started after she interfered with the emergency protocols, and from then on she had felt her condition steadily worsening, until, over the last year it seemed all she could manage was to drag herself to a convenient research unit. But, once there, she had discovered nothing new, and often found herself just staring at the screens for hours. She knew that no psychologist could have helped. How could she explain to them her fear that the territory of her mind had been invaded? How could she now tell Gneiss? Or did he already know?

  ‘You need a break. When was the last time you left Main?’

  Entirely unexpected. She looked at him in puzzlement. Leave Corisanthe Main?

  Gneiss leaned back. ‘I have recommended you for a position outside the station. You’ll still be working for me, but must report directly to the Oversight Committee. We need somebody of your . . . potential, in at the ground level.’

  What was he talking about?

  He continued flatly, ‘We don’t know when this individual is going to arrive but we definitely need an established Combine representative in this matter.’

  ‘Representative?’

  ‘We need a representative in place when this Polity Consul Assessor arrives.’

  ‘Oh.’ She recollected hearing something about that, but could not summon any emotional response. Gazing down at her grubby clothing and the dirt under her fingernails, she said, ‘I’m a mess.’ The words seemed to cause a moment of disconnection, a lessening of the intensity between them. The moment became almost humanized.

  ‘Do you think I don’t understand?’ Gneiss stood, paced over to his workstation and picked up a console. ‘It gets to some people. Dalepan said you were sensitive to it.’

  ‘To what?’

  He gestured about him with the console he held. ‘All of it: bleed-over, the oppressive claustrophobic atmosphere, the downright strangeness . . . Stand up now.’

  Yishna got up, realizing with some disgust that she had not washed her hair for longer than she cared to think about.

  ‘Yishna Strone, you will be the Orbital Combine representative designated to meet the Consul Assessor when he arrives. Get yourself cleaned up and your belongings packed. You leave on the next shuttle heading over to Corisanthe II, and from there you will take the next landing craft groundside, where you will be taken to meet Chairman Abel Duras.’

  ‘But why?’ Yishna could not understand why he had chosen her. Surely he, as well as many others, must consider her a burnout.

  ‘I have every confidence in you, and I know the power of your mind. It goes away, you know, once you are back in the real world.’ He seemed almost wistful, his strange eyes gazing beyond Yishna to some other place or state of being.

  He was right. Aboard the shuttle, as it headed for Corisanthe II, Yishna felt as if she was pulling out into sunlight from underneath some bleak shadow. And in her mind suddenly flashed an image of Gneiss, black and toad-like, with Corisanthe Main clutching him like a fist.

  – Retroact 15 Ends –

  9

  The War properly ended when Fleet employed its gravity disruptors against the remaining Brumallian warships and their orbital support industry. The near-genocide committed thereafter from orbit and through the deployment of ground troops underlined that ending of conflict in so sordid a fashion as to begin a major shift in Sudorian public opinion. There are only so many broadcasts about Brumallians being conquered that any civilized human being can cheer. We grew uneasy at seeing images of yet more quofarl being incinerated in tunnels or disc-gunned into bloody fragments in forests. Seeing ordinary Brumallians trapped on shores or riverbanks, and then shelled into non-existence, increased that unease. ‘They won’t surrender,’ we were assured. ‘We have no choice,’ said those GDS troops and Fleet marines, their expressions haunted. We grew sick of seeing piles of worm-riddled corpses being pushed by bulldozers into pits. We grew increasingly suspicious of Fleet’s censorship of certain broadcasts. But, even then, many of us had grown desensitized to the images, and the real turn in public opinion w
as instigated by a simple audio recording that was smuggled out. There are few of us, as a result, who have not heard the terrible sound that ensued after phosphor bombs were dropped into an underground Bruniallian town with a population of ten thousand. It was a sound often reproduced in the protest songs that followed; that concerted shrieking rose like a symphony of Hell recorded from the Pit.

  – Uskaron

  McCrooger

  The quofarl first surrounded us, then closed in. Two grabbed Rhodane, thrust her down on the floor and pinned her there. As two grabbed me, I allowed them to shove me to the floor, and as I went down I felt something rip across the back of my hand, probably the edge of a quofarl carapace. They searched us, thoroughly, then grudgingly hauled us back to our feet.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Rhodane finally demanded.

  The quofarl responded only with an irritated clicking of their mandibles, and aimed their weapons more deliberately. Now Rhodane began to look really worried as she observed other Brumallians spreading out through the surrounding area. It was not just quofarl arriving, but others laden with equipment. Abruptly lights set into the walls came on, and the hum of power permeated the air. Some of the biomechanisms around the bases of the ships began showing signs of movement, the pumps accelerated, and light and heat began to emit from the ships themselves.

  ‘Are you picking up anything from the Consensus?’ I asked.

  ‘Something is definitely going on,’ she said.

  ‘No shit?’

  She held up her hand, listening intently to the chatter of the other Brumallians here. I guessed she was also trying to interpret the chemical messages in the air.

  ‘Perhaps you should never have brought me down here?’ I suggested.

  ‘It’s not that. Something about Fleet . . . and an evacuation. I think the Speakers—’

  The quofarl abruptly parted.

  ‘Come –’

  ‘– with –’

  ‘– us,’ they said, and a couple of the hand gestures I read indicated: Move now, urgency, danger, outsiders, protect citizens. The butt of a weapon smacked into my back and I started to turn in anger, but Rhodane grabbed my arm and began towing me after the two quofarl who led off. ‘Keep moving, don’t question their orders, don’t disobey – and don’t do anything stupid.’

  ‘Danger?’

  ‘They are confused and scared, so will kill us at the slightest provocation. There’s a threat to—’

  ‘Silence,’ ordered the quofarl, and that’s what they got.

  They did not take us out the way we had come in, but into a tunnel to one side, then at its end through two sets of heavily armoured doors and out into the open air. The ground lay hard underfoot – mud frozen solid and blistered with shell-ice – and snakes of aubergine cloud occluded the starry firmament. To my right I observed more quofarl shoving ahead of them another figure in an envirosuit like Rhodane’s. I also noticed that one of them carried a similar figure slung over his shoulder. So it was not just us, and I guessed this was some instinctive or preplanned reaction to threat.

  Finally they brought us to the edge of a canal where a massive cargo barge sat on the steadily freezing water. By now Rhodane had put on her helmet and gloves, so looked little different to the other Sudorians being forced into the barge. Typical: round up the aliens and intern them. I guessed some things would never change.

  It was crowded inside, people sitting with their backs against the outer walls or scattered in groups about the cold alloy floor. I estimated there to be at least 200 people gathered here. Frightened chatter filled the area, but it always dropped to silence when the doors opened and more people were shoved inside. I supposed these Sudorians were used to dealing with Brumallians and well aware of how dangerous quofarl could be, but I also wondered how many had died already, for the one I had seen being carried over a shoulder had not been brought here with us but taken towards a barge moored further along the canal. Standing head and shoulders above everyone else, blatantly not wearing protective gear and evidently neither Sudorian nor Brumallian, I became the focus of much attention.

  ‘What’s he?’

  ‘That Consul Assessor from the Polity.’

  ‘I thought he was dead.’

  ‘Looks very much alive to me.’

  ‘Is he anything to do with this?’

  Finally seals thunked down in the doors, fans started running, and the temperature began to rise. After a little while someone called out, ‘It’s safe!’ and people began to remove their atmosphere helmets.

  ‘Have you any idea what’s going on?’ I asked Rhodane once she had taken off her own.

  ‘Not yet.’ She raised her hand in greeting to a woman just across the room, who began to make her way towards us. ‘Shleera will know.’

  ‘So this is him.’ Shleera looked me up and down, and I studied her in return. I realized that her bulk was not all due to her envirosuit. She was overweight and wore spectacles – both of which were never seen in the Polity unless as a matter of choice.

  ‘It certainly is,’ Rhodane replied. ‘Shleera, meet the Polity Consul Assessor, David McCrooger.’

  ‘I would rather have met you under different circumstances,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know what’s going on here?’ Rhodane asked.

  ‘Fleet,’ Shleera spat. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Have they attacked?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Shleera glanced around at those who were gathering closer. ‘Consensus Speakers have been in contact to deny any responsibility for the missile strike on his ship’ – she gestured at me. ‘They investigated and retrieved enough evidence to refute Brumallian involvement but, before they could pass it on, Fleet cut communications. Now Fleet are pulling their personnel out of the ground bases.’

  ‘I have heard nothing about this.’ Rhodane was looking puzzled.

  ‘Perhaps you’re not as close to them as you would like to think,’ Shleera replied.

  ‘We did hear something about an evacuation,’ I interjected.

  ‘Evacuation,’ Shleera shook her head. ‘That’s not the ground bases, that’s Vertical Vienna. It started in secret shortly after the missile strike, and is now being conducted with some urgency.’

  ‘Fleet wouldn’t dare,’ said Rhodane.

  ‘Parliament has allowed Fleet to take the caps off its guns. You do realize the Carmel space station is working again?’

  ‘Shit,’ said Rhodane, or rather used some nearly untranslatable Sudorian equivalent.

  ‘Vertical Vienna?’ I enquired.

  She glanced at me. ‘The subterranean city nearest to the missile’s launch site.’

  I considered that, and found my hand straying to the tiger pendant on my chest. After a moment I coughed into my hand and said, ‘Tigger.’

  Rhodane looked at me, ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. “Tigger” is just an expletive in my language.’ The pendant moved against my chest. I casually took hold of it, and looped the chain off over my head. As soon as Rhodane returned her attention to Shleera, I opened my fist and glanced down to see that the miniature tiger now held one paw over its eyes and seemed to be wincing.

  ‘You were saying Fleet would destroy an entire city in retaliation?’ I asked.

  ‘They’ll call it a military excision,’ Rhodane replied. ‘And it will all look very neat in the media, because all anyone will ever see is a hole in the ground.’

  ‘Or not even that,’ Shleera added, ‘if they use a gravtech weapon.’

  ‘So you’re saying that Fleet may very soon be launching an orbital strike against the Brumallian city called Vertical Vienna?’

  The pendant squirmed in my fist. Rhodane gazed at me with a blank expression, but Shleera’s look gave me the distinct impression she thought me rather thick.

  ‘Yes, that’s very likely,’ said Rhodane, before Shleera could comment.

  I raised my fist, rubbing one eyebrow with my forefinger, opened my hand as I lowered it, then quickly closed it agai
n. The tiger lay on its back in my palm, paws in the air and eyes crossed. In my own tongue – the language spoken on Spatterjay for a millennium and on Earth for a similar period before that – I said, ‘Tigger, stop those fuckers from destroying that city. Use any means necessary.’

  ‘What was that?’ asked Rhodane.

  ‘I believe in a supreme being,’ I replied, ‘and I just prayed for intercession.’

  – RETROACT 16 –

  Tigger – in the Past

  With his two halves joined together Tigger gazed down at the river, tracking further along its course to where it poured into the fifty-yard-wide mouth of the underground pipe. Seismic mapping had shown only two breaks in the pipe, where water seeped into the surrounding limestone and sought out its previous natural routes from the time before the Brumallians had diverted it to New Pavonis – a city named after one on Mars that lay in the shadow of Pavonis Mons. New Pavonis had been one of Brumal’s largest underground cities, its population topping five million.

  ‘Okay, graverobber,’ said Tigger to himself, ‘let’s take a look.’

  Still remaining combined, because for this task he felt he would require all of himself, Tigger descended alongside the massive waterfall into misty depths, tracking his progress by radar once the light from above ground began to fail. Two hundred yards down, the pipe began to curve, the waterfall becoming a torrent that gradually filled the entire pipe as it narrowed. He submerged, initiating sonar and switching on his headlights. Here he came upon the first rupture; the pipe being sheared through and displaced to one side by half its width. Some water had flowed into crevices throughout the surrounding rock, gradually widening its escape route, but not enough to make a visible difference to the main torrent. Five hundred yards further on, the pipe began to widen again, to level out, and here the flow hit a series of generator stations and baffles. Emerging from the main flow of water again, he kept his lights on as he cruised along above the surface. Some Brumallians had escaped from here through exit tunnels leading to the surface. Many others had not. After their exit tunnels were blocked by collapses they tried to head downstream back towards their city. Only death had lain in that direction.