Hilldiggers

by Neal Asher

  ‘Yes, sir . . . Erm, your sister, Yishna? She is now aboard the transport heading back towards Sudoria.’

  ‘With Chairman Abel Duras?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Let her go. We certainly don’t want to aggravate our parliamentary Chairman.’

  He cut the link to Security, then addressed those at Firing Control. ‘Maybe Combine technology was used to stop that missile, so I want one prepared for simple mechanical detonation as used during the fourth battle Arkan. Keep me informed.’

  Quickly departing the Bridge and reaching his cabin he seated himself on his divan and opened a secure channel. His eye-screen immediately lit up, but it took a moment for the individual he was calling to respond and sit down to answer.

  ‘Jeon, what do you have for me?’ he asked.

  ‘One part of it – whatever it was – tried to intercept the missile. The detonation destroyed it, however. I last detected the other part in the region of BC32 but have since lost that trace. Maybe destroying one half of it somehow damaged the other half?’

  ‘Let us hope so. Inform me if you pick up on it again. If not we can always hope our next strike against BC32 will deal with it.’ He cut the link, quickly opening another. ‘Cheanil?’ The woman looked very ill and Harald realized he should wait no longer. ‘First give me Combine visuals of Defence Platform One and Dravenik’s ship, and then fire on my order.’

  ‘I have it all ready for you, Harald.’ She reached out for something and Harald’s eye-screen display instantly divided into four. Two of the views were of the defence platform, one of Cheanil herself, and another of the hilldigger Blatant. He cancelled one of the two views of the station and opened communications with the Blatant.

  ‘Commander Harald,’ said a tacom officer, gazing at him from one screen quarter.

  ‘I need to speak to Captain Dravenik, at once.’

  A holding graphic appeared, and Harald impatiently rattled his fingers on the divan arm. He checked the time display in one corner of his view, but Dravenik did not seem inclined to keep him waiting.

  ‘What the hell is going on out there, Harald? I’m told the Admiral has been attacked and that you have fired on Brumal. If Carnasus is incapacitated, you must put on hold all further actions until I have reviewed the situation.’

  ‘Carnasus is dead,’ said Harald.

  Dravenik drew back as if Harald had spat at him. ‘Dead?’

  Harald considered the possibility of this communication being recorded. If that was the case, the recording would be aboard Blatant. Maybe it might be recovered, but Harald was prepared to take the risk of that just to enjoy the satisfaction of his next words.

  ‘Yes, he is dead. I killed him, just as I am about to kill you . . . Cheanil, fire now.’

  The view of the defence platform showed very little, just a faint hazing of vacuum and then some interference on the image. Dravenik’s face winked out of existence as the microwave surge wiped out all com from his ship. Blatant seemed to ripple, or perhaps that was just interference too. Such a small image in one quadrant of his eye-screen. He enlarged it to fill the entire screen, but still it did not seem real enough. He saw out-gassing and stars of fire spread all along the hilldigger. Missiles were being fired, swarms of them. Dravenik had managed to get some of his weapons systems online, but not nearly enough, nor quickly enough. Then the multiple explosions began to tear Blatant apart: white balls of fire blasting out and wreckage spewing into vacuum. As he had expected, the intense microwave hit was detonating the shaped charges in the nukes and other chemical munitions. He had calculated that at least one of the shaped-charge explosions among the hundreds of missiles aboard, though not precisely timed, would lead to a thermonuclear detonation. So it occurred. His screen blanked for a second, then returned in negative with hazy lines across it. Debris spread. He observed something mangled passing down to the right, and the image shuddered.

  ‘Cheanil . . . Cheanil, reply.’

  Three returned images, all shadows under heavy interference, then nothing. Lit-up icons indicated he had lost the signal. Harald did not suppose Cheanil had survived Dravenik’s reply to Defence Platform One, just as calculated. He felt she had performed her duty adequately. Now, during this emergency, Harald could take full charge of Fleet.

  McCrooger

  A dull grumble grew into a roar, and those of us within the barge fell silent. I felt something lurch in my stomach. That first explosion, a few hours before, I had been optimistic about. I was not feeling so sure now, for the pendant in my hand no longer bore the shape of a tiger, but had become a smooth ovoid as if the drone’s direct link to it had been somehow cut. It was then that I also noticed something else, something strange. There was a crusty black substance on my fingers that I assumed was mud until, on closer inspection, I saw a partially closed rip in the flesh of the back of my hand, caused when the quofarl had captured us.

  Blood?

  I had not bled in more years than I cared to count – the last time being when I received a serious slash from a chainglass knife that had cut through my biceps right to the bone. Even then the quantity of blood would not have filled a shot glass, and the wound had closed very quickly. But here, what I previously ignored as a mere scratch, had bled copiously, and the wound had still not closed. I realized I was now seeing the physical results of the war being fought between the two viral forms occupying my body.

  ‘That could have been thunder,’ Rhodane commented, eyeing me tentatively.

  ‘You don’t really believe that, Rhodane,’ said Shleera. ‘I would guess that was another nuke exploding. If they’d used gravtech, we would have felt more vibration through our feet.’

  I could only hope that Tigger had obeyed me and somehow diverted the strikes launched against Vertical Vienna. Within the barge much angry argument ensued and a woman, sitting nearby, began sobbing. Everyone here believed the worst, including me – the sight of that cut on my hand had dispelled my usual optimism.

  ‘What did the Brumallians do with any prisoners they took during the War?’ I asked, and then wondered if the question sprang from sudden feelings of mortality.

  ‘There weren’t that many captured,’ Rhodane replied. ‘Some survived, some were tortured, and many others interrogated by means that left them drooling and mindless. The Sudorians were no better.’

  Great.

  I abruptly seated myself on the deck. I could easily break out of this barge, but what then? Or could I in fact break out of this barge? As a test I drove my finger down hard against the floor. It made a satisfying donk and left a dent in the metal. Okay . . . though my finger did ache a bit afterwards. But back to the initial question: I was just another of the dispossessed all wars produced – one of the millions driven here and there by events we could not control. How would the Brumallians react? They possessed some ships, as I saw, but I doubted they could put up much of a fight against the superior forces of Fleet. I considered how such a unique society as theirs might respond. A normally governed society could perhaps hold back from trying to retaliate against its attacker, realizing there was little chance of succeeding, but here society’s actions were the direct result of Consensus. Would they want vengeance and would that want immediately turn into action? In response to a possible threat, they had immediately begun work again on their spaceships. But now they had actually been attacked.

  Perhaps half an hour passed before the door seals whumphed open. Those around me immediately began pulling on their helmets and surging away from the opening doors. I thought it telling that no warning had been given, for that simple lack of consideration could have killed people in here as the poisonous air from outside flooded in. Rhodane kept her head bare.

  Quofarl stood out on the ramp. They now wore extra armour and carried heavy weapons. Two of them immediately marched inside, the occupants of the barge quickly parting before them. I stood and observed them focus in on me, whereas before they had been concentrating on Rhodane.

  ‘Y
ou two –’ they intoned.

  ‘– come.’

  I was surprised to recognize the same two who, with Rhodane herself, had accompanied me into Recon York. We stepped forward, perhaps expecting to be shoved on our way, but the two quofarl just gestured us towards the doors and waited for us to move off.

  Rhodane quickly turned to Shleera. ‘I’ll see what I can do about all this.’ She made a gesture encompassing the interior of the barge, which already was beginning to smell of human sewage.

  ‘Do what you can,’ Shleera replied, ‘and try not to get yourself killed.’

  As we left, all the quofarl fell in behind us rather more like an honour guard than the kind that might be too liberal with the rifle butt. Many of those we left behind called out their best wishes to Rhodane, and some even to me, before the doors closed.

  ‘What now?’ I asked Rhodane.

  She was coughing, eyes watering, and it took her a moment to reply. ‘Let us hope they are correcting a perceived error.’

  Upon hearing that I realized I still did not know enough about Brumallian society. I realized the Consensus could not decide everything, and that there had to be levels of decision-making below that to tighten the essential nuts and bolts of their civilization. Yes, the Consensus might decree that non-Brumallians should be imprisoned, but I doubted it had specified where or how. Did individuals make such lesser decisions, or perhaps subgroups of the overall Consensus?

  ‘Do you yet have any idea of what happened?’ I asked.

  She glanced at me, expression bland, and nodded to one side. ‘I can’t pick up very much out here, but my sense of direction is fine and I know that is not the sunrise.’ An orange glow etched out the dark horizon. It told me nothing – Tigger could still have diverted the attack. She added, ‘That’s where Vertical Vienna is . . . or was.’

  The cold finally drove Rhodane to put her helmet and gloves back on. Beside us on the canal path grew plant life resembling blue cycads. Where guards brushed against the overhanging leaves, pieces snapped off and tinkled to the ground. As we trudged over frozen mud, I studied these quofarl and picked out one of the two I had met before. ‘You, quofarl.’ He glanced towards me and I signed a question, asking his name. It was short and pithy with a nuance of meaning conveying hard relentless striving. In my mind I translated it as ‘Slog’.

  ‘Slog, can you tell me what has happened?’ I signed as he stepped up beside me.

  ‘Fleet destroyed Vertical Vienna,’ he replied.

  ‘We heard two explosions,’ I suggested in the interrogative.

  ‘One missile detonated before reaching the ground.’

  ‘Was the city fully evacuated before the second missile hit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Damn them,’ muttered Rhodane. ‘Damn all Fleet to the hells they create.’

  Finally we cut away from the canal, heading along a path through the vegetation. Fluted mollusc shells like old porcelain crunched underneath our feet. Upon reaching another canal where a small barge was moored, much debate ensued between the quofarl escorts. I guessed this sort of thing might be a problem without someone appointed to give orders. Eventually they came to the conclusion that the ice lay too thick for them to commandeer a barge from there to the city and down, so on we trudged. Dawn lit the sky by the time we reached the underground city’s head. In its light I saw the large catfish forms of wormfish writhing under the ice and peering up at us with bemused eyes. The temperature above the city grew noticeably warmer and the ice thinner, and in places broken. We clambered aboard another barge, motored into the top of one of those watery lift shafts with living pumps labouring ceaselessly all around us, then plummeted down the descent tube. I was getting very hungry now and starting to feel a bit strange, but we did not come upon any grobbleworm stalls this time. We were quickly whisked from the barge and guided through corridors and hallways until I thought I vaguely recognized our surroundings. Having removed her helmet and tested the air, Rhodane told me, ‘Eighteen hundred dead, and the entire city of Vertical Vienna gutted.’

  Eventually they brought us to a room, into which Slog and his companion accompanied us while the rest of the quofarl departed. Glancing around I saw this place was furnished, but with oddly grating discords in the layout and the furnishings themselves. A cylindrical shelving unit occupied the central space, loaded with a seemingly random collection of screens, pherophones, mollusc shells and curiously shaped glass tanks containing squirming life forms. Plants, which were all dark green leaf interspersed with bright orange tendrils, were arrayed around the walls, growing from polished woody spheroids I recognized as the husks of things I had seen on some of the trees up on the surface. There were paintings too, displaying bizarre Brumallian landscapes or crowded city scenes. Triangular wooden tiles covered the floor, upon which was scattered various geometrically shaped mattresses, and similarly shaped low tables of verdigrised metal sealed under a glistening skin. Putting aside some device which apparently fitted over her face – I suspected it to be their version of a VR mask – a Brumallian woman rose from one mattress and turned to face us. It took me a moment to recognize one of the Speakers who along with Rhodane had questioned me.

  Without much ado she informed me, ‘Fleet is not listening. It is in fact jamming all communications. You must present our case to the Sudorian Parliament, but let me first present our case to you.’ She gestured to a large chest standing open nearby.

  Feeling somewhat tetchy, I replied, ‘You had better feed me first.’

  In their terms, the evidence was incontrovertible, though it took me some time to understand this since much of it could be easily falsified back in the Polity, yet not here. The Brumallian Speaker, whose name referred to some flower found in this acidic environment and who I called Lily, showed me a picture of the missile launcher in question, then gestured to a nearby table on which lay a piece of metal with something like a barcode etched into it.

  ‘There are some launchers stored 8,000 miles from here, but they are the only ones we have left. This was one of the last seized by Fleet and taken into the ground base nearest to Vertical Vienna, where it was supposed to be destroyed,’ she told me.

  This proved Fleet was last in possession of the missile launcher and, before using it, neglected to file off the serial number. There was more evidence: footage, obviously taken from concealment, of a Fleet Special Operations team transporting a bulky cargo out towards the launch site; Brumallian remains found at the site DNA matched, perfectly, with Brumallians who had disappeared during the War; and a chemical analysis showing that the propellant used in the missile was of Fleet manufacture. But it was not just that: there was lots of linking evidence, lots of detail, carbon-crystal storage filled with information. As I ate roasted molluscs off a gold-plated spike I assessed it all throughout the many ensuing hours.

  ‘You understand that this proves the remnant of the launcher definitely came from that launch site,’ Rhodane pointed out while I studied a particular recording. Without her I would have missed a lot of stuff like that.

  Finally satisfied and somewhat weary, I realized that here lay proof of the innocence in this business of the Brumallians, and that here also was a weapon the Sudorian Parliament could use to politically castrate Fleet. Of course the evidence lay here while those who needed to see this lay some millions of miles away, with Fleet sitting directly in the way. And political castration was not quite the same as the physical kind; Fleet might be put firmly in the wrong and voted down in Parliament, but votes, and being in the wrong, did not necessarily take fingers off triggers.

  ‘And how am I supposed to present this evidence to the Sudorian Parliament?’

  ‘We have ships,’ replied Lily.

  ‘So do Fleet – large powerful ships sitting in orbit above us.’

  ‘They are withdrawing towards Sudoria. It has become apparent that we were not the real target.’

  ‘Real target?’ Rhodane queried.

  ‘Orbital Combine,�
� Lily replied.

  10

  Technologies and knowledge were being rediscovered – not discovered for the first time – so the process was a whole lot faster. As the third generation of Sudorians was growing up, small but thriving industries and agricultural concerns had been established and our society had wealth to spare for more than just survival. The first crossing of the Komarl was made on foot, or rather the first successful crossing, and those adventurers reported finding the wreck of the Procul Harum. Within a few decades we had taken to the air and built ground vehicles capable of negotiating the desert sands, and soon the first expeditions were being made out to the ship. The secrets of the ship were being quickly rediscovered and much of its physical structure was transported back to our then small civilization. This caused something of a renaissance, and no little degree of that thing called arrogance. The final expedition made was the one sent to retrieve one of the U-space engines. We know that the expedition party planned to try firing up a ship’s fusion reactor to provide power during this task. We know that they were preparing to dismount the one engine protruding above the desert sands. The ensuing explosion caused a dust storm out of the desert that lasted for days. An observer flight reported just the nose of the ship remaining, and that a perfectly spherical part of a nearby granite mount was missing.

  – Uskaron

  Yishna

  She watched the image displayed on Chairman Duras’s cabin screen, first feeling contempt for Fleet’s military posturing, then a growing horror. Seeing the multiple launches from Blatant, she assumed it was making an unprovoked attack on Orbital Combine, and only when the first explosions began to tear the hilldigger apart did she realize what was really happening. In blank shock she watched the final detonation that obliterated the great ship, then tracked the descent of the missiles it had fired down onto Defence Platform One, and watched the subsequent detonations turn that platform into a burning ruin. Then Director Gneiss was back gazing at Duras with an implacable indifference.