Hilldiggers

by Neal Asher

  ‘Who died?’ I asked, though even as I asked I’d already guessed.

  ‘Our prisoner – from decompression.’

  Admittedly I could feel no great sympathy for someone who had tried to shoot me, but that still wasn’t a great way to go. They must have moved him out of the spin section, I thought, and wondered if he had again been glued to a chair somewhere, in which case he wouldn’t have been able to get to safety. But then my condition here wasn’t much better. Feeling a growing frustration with my current feeble state, I again pawed at the straps securing me. Rhodane watched me for a moment, then hauled herself over to the nearby wall beside something that looked like a collection of wasp’s nests. ‘We have no contact with the Brumallian Consensus, but aboard this ship there is general agreement that this might be best,’ she announced. She detached one of the oblate containers from the collection of the same, then returned to me. ‘Of course, you are not part of any consensus, so we need your approval too.’

  ‘Approval of what?’ I eyed the container.

  ‘This contains a biomed mutualite. Things like this were used during the War to sustain life in the critically injured, and to restore to function those with lesser injuries.’

  ‘How, precisely?’

  ‘It grows inside your torso, where it can take over the function of your liver and kidneys, and assist your heart and lungs. It also manufactures its own host-specific drugs, phagocytes, enzymes and much else besides.’

  ‘A parasite?’

  ‘No, a mutualite.’

  ‘But designed for Brumallians? I think you understand that internally I am very little like a normal human, let alone a Brumallian.’

  ‘Believe me, I understand. I’ve also studied the information Tigger made available about your condition and taken a look inside you with one of the med scanners here. If we don’t do something for you, you won’t be walking from this ship alive. Apparently Tigger offered to put you into stasis, but you didn’t say what you wanted before he . . . went out of contact.’

  ‘Out of contact?’

  She waved a hand in irritation. ‘The drone retains control over this ship, but is no longer responding to us.’ She now watched me carefully. ‘But a place has already been made ready for you – for putting you into stasis. We would rather you didn’t take that option, since that would defeat the whole purpose of your presence aboard.’

  ‘Spell it out for me.’

  ‘You were our insurance to get this ship safely down onto Sudoria, and then to get the evidence of Fleet’s crimes to Parliament.’ She shrugged. ‘Things have changed. Fleet just launched an attack on Orbital Combine, so you might assume that our chest of evidence is as trivial as evidence of common assault brought against someone who graduated to murder. That’s not so, and this evidence must be revealed, spread and generally known.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I’ve been around for a while. The Sudorians are currently trying to kill each other and unscrupulous politicians might find it expedient, at some later date, to blame it all on a common enemy. The Brumallians need to cover themselves, because once the fight between Fleet and Combine is over, then will come the finger pointing, and whoever survives will find it easier to point the finger at the Brumallians rather than at their own kind.’

  ‘You do understand.’

  ‘I also understand that Tigger provided this ship with chameleonware.’

  Rhodane grimaced and said, ‘Tigger’s chameleon-ware may well get us away from this hilldigger, and before this conflict began could have taken us through Orbital Combine’s defences and down to the surface . . .’

  I weakly held up a hand. ‘I apologize, I’m not thinking straight. You’ll need me down on the surface the moment you turn off the chameleonware. As I understand it, a Brumallian ship has never yet landed on Sudoria, so they might find it particularly disconcerting?’

  Rhodane shook her head. ‘We’ll have to reveal our ship before then. There’ll be a lot of automated weaponry going off, and hurtling chunks of debris. The slightest fault, the slightest error, the slightest bit of bad luck and we end up breathing vacuum. We need to go in under a meteor defence umbrella. So we need to reveal ourselves to Combine.’

  I replied, ‘But whatever way you cut it, you don’t want me in hibernation.’ I nodded towards the container she held. ‘Okay, give it to me.’

  Rhodane broke off the top of the vessel and held it out. Something glubbed wetly inside. ‘You just swallow it.’

  I did as instructed, though gagging and heaving as something large and slimy filled my mouth and reluctantly slid down my throat. I fought the urge to vomit again and flushed hot, with sweat beading my face. Lying back, I concentrated on just holding things together. I felt bloated as if after eating a huge meal, then that feeling drained away to be replaced by a hollow hunger, so I guessed the mutualite had now moved down from my stomach into my intestines. Then I grew cold, felt dry and papery and somehow insubstantial, but after a moment was able to talk again.

  ‘How long until it’s working?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s usually quick, but in your case that’s questionable.’

  ‘Undo these straps for me.’

  She complied and, still feeling fragile, I pushed myself upright.

  ‘I’m feeling much better,’ I said, then immediately blacked out.

  Orduval

  The armoured car bucked, the blast slamming the seat up underneath him. As the vehicle crashed down again, now flinging him from his seat, all became a chaos of falling, yelling bodies. Smoke filled the air and somewhere a disc-gun hissed and crackled. He was crawling towards the door, now hanging open and sideways on, when Chief Reyshank grabbed his shoulder.

  ‘No, stay here.’

  Reyshank and Trausheim crawled towards the door, following two other wardens outside. Firing continued; the spang of metal off metal.

  ‘Launcher!’ someone yelled.

  ‘On it,’ someone else replied.

  There came a whoosh then the nearby crump of an explosion, followed by a grumbling tumble of rubble and the clanging of something metallic falling. More weapons firing. All of the wardens were outside the vehicle now. Orduval got groggily to his feet and again began moving over to the door. Then Trausheim stepped back inside and caught hold of his arm, ‘Come on.’

  He stumbled out into dust-filled air, glimpsed a warden uniform on the ground, soaked with blood and raw flesh exposed through rips. ‘Move,’ Trausheim urged.

  In the shelter of nearby buildings, while some of the wardens moved ahead to check sidestreets, Orduval looked back towards the car. It was sprawled on its side with one tread hanging off. Across the street from it lay a caved-in building, which he guessed was either where that launcher had been, or was the source of the sniper fire after a mine had turned over the armoured car.

  ‘What now?’ he asked Reyshank.

  The chief gestured him to silence as he listened to his earpiece, then after a moment replied, ‘We’re pulling out. If we stay here, we’ll give the Groundstars too many extra targets – the Coplanetaries already pulled out an hour ago. We’re all hoping the fight’ll go out of the Groundstars once the Fleet base gets hit.’ Reyshank paused for a moment, noticing Orduval’s puzzlement. ‘You know about the Groundstars and the Coplanetaries, don’t you?’

  ‘I know the Groundstars support Fleet and the Coplanetaries support Combine, just a couple of groups amidst many. I didn’t realize they were so dangerous.’

  ‘Well, the Coplanetaries aren’t really much of a threat, but the Groundstars are ever since Base Commander Fregen supplied them with arms.’

  ‘And it’s his base that’s going to get hit . . . by Orbital Combine?’

  Reyshank nodded. ‘Most base commanders have surrendered, as per Fleet orders, but Fregen is holding out. His base is in a high population-density area so he’s reckoning Combine will hold off.’

  They moved on, trying to stay under cover for as
long as possible, but breaking into a run across any open ground. At one point a group of youths appeared from a sidestreet, picking up chunks of rubble and throwing them, but soon retreated after the wardens fired over their heads. Orduval noticed that the youngsters all wore armbands bearing the image of a white flower on a purple background. This indicated they were members of the Orchid Party, which now mostly consisted of student agitators looking for any excuse to throw rocks and wreck property. He spotted the corpse of a woman lying in a doorway, but no sign of the injury that caused her death. Every street seemed to have its own burning ground car, and the chatter of weapons fire remained constant, though thankfully distant. As they neared the outskirts of the city a light glared from behind them, casting black shadows, followed by a hissing rumbling.

  ‘Combine just stopped holding off,’ Reyshank observed.

  Orduval glanced over his shoulder to observe a thick pall of smoke rising from some distant point of the city. Within that oily blackness a hot bar of light stirred, reaching down from the sky. He recognized the effect of a microwave beam heating the smoke rising from the base, and no doubt from the burning corpses it contained. He felt sick and, as they continued up the street, wondered just how bad things were getting elsewhere. Support for either Combine or Fleet was variable among the planetary political units, but also among revolutionary and protest groups. With the two main Sudorian factions now in open conflict it struck him that their society might soon fall apart. Only the GDS wardens seemed capable of holding things together, yet here they were retreating.

  When they finally reached an area where the damage seemed somewhat less, Reyshank broke into a ground car.

  ‘You come with me,’ he pointed to Orduval, ‘and you three.’ He indicated Trausheim and two other wardens. ‘The rest of you head over to Bleak Street and link up with Jarden.’

  The next minute, Orduval was sitting between two wardens in the rear of the car as it pulled away. To his right he glimpsed the maglev tram track, between suburban houses, then the road drew adjacent to it as they left the city behind. Glancing back, he saw the bloody eye of the setting sun peering at him through columns of smoke, and here and there flickered the muzzle flashes of automatic weapons.

  High in the sky burned other fires, and sadly they weren’t stars.

  McCrooger

  After sliding for some time in and out of unconsciousness and the land of nightmares, I woke feeling relatively better; that is, I did not feel myself only a short pace from entering the underworld. Rhodane had resecured the straps across me before she departed, but this time I managed to undo them without any trouble and, pushing myself upright on the bed, felt no urge to vomit.

  One additional shove sent me drifting towards the door, which opened easily – obviously some repairs had been made. Pulling myself out into the corridor, I noticed a pronounced drift towards the floor, which told me the spin section must be slowly getting up to speed again. I moved along the corridor in bounds that grew steadily shorter, only halting when the jarring of my feet against the floor reminded me of the fragility of my bones. Meanwhile, the gradually increasing spin seemed to be trying to drag the meat from my skeleton. My injured arm began to ache, as soon did many other parts of me. After a little while, when it seemed the spin had stabilized, I moved on, and finally reached the area best described as the Bridge, and entered it through another one of those fleshy doors.

  Inside, Brumallians sat in organic control stations that seemed melded around them. These in turn encircled a concave floor that I knew to be a view screen with facility for semi-holographic projection. Rhodane leant out of her own station to observe me as I entered, then eased herself out and walked over. She wore a headset that looked like a horseshoe crab impacting with the side of her head.

  ‘Would it be foolish to ask how you’re feeling?’ she enquired.

  ‘I feel like someone has beaten me from head to foot with rocks, but, as you can see, I’m standing, so that’s a plus. What’s the situation now?’

  With one hand clasped against her headset she gestured over to the dish screen. The screen itself darkened and stars resolved, and then from the surface of it a hilldigger rose before me, flickering as waves of interference occasionally erased it. ‘They gave up some hours ago. We were worried they were going to head for Brumal next, since the hilldigger’s next logical target would be our launch site. However, its course is now away from Brumal, out towards another hilldigger that didn’t join the rest of the Fleet.’

  ‘And Sudoria?’

  Again a wave of her hand, and now Sudoria rose before us, the dish screen itself cupping the glare of the sun. The planet itself remained constant, but views of the stations surrounding it kept flickering in and out of existence, though I did get one brief glimpse of something disappearing in a ball of flame. ‘Fleet jamming is lighter here and we can now open communications with Combine. I was going to come and get you.’ She again waved at the display and Sudoria disappeared, to be replaced this time with a blank grey floating screen. ‘Now let’s talk to Combine.’

  Yishna

  Surprisingly, Defence Platform One had remained intact even though severely damaged by the missile hits from Blatant. On one of her screens she observed the last of the repair teams and GDS investigators leaving it, to take cover aboard a better-defended satellite. The ruined platform was only partially covered by others located at three compass points, though completely lacking in cover at the fourth point, where Twelve, which was also being evacuated, still lay under construction. It occurred to her that the positioning of Dravenik’s hilldigger Blatant near Platform One, and the ensuing events, had not just been an excuse for this conflict, but a preparation for it too. For Combine’s defences had been weaker there, and Blatant’s return strike against Platform One had weakened them further.

  ‘First impacts in twenty seconds,’ said Gneiss over general address.

  Yishna finally latched down her suit helmet, then sat tense in her chair, tightly gripping the arms. Twenty seconds later, space above Sudoria filled with incandescent explosions and vapour trails as projectiles struck defence buoys or were intercepted by beam weapons. Glittering menisci occasionally flashed into existence as projectiles struck station energy shields. Though projectiles were targeted at stations all around the planet, the main attack was, of course, concentrated almost a quarter of an orbit away, over the cross formation of five defence platforms with the wrecked Platform One at its centre.

  Yishna watched the contrails and explosions rapidly draw closer over One and Twelve. The first strike on One cut straight through the massive wrecked disc and punched a column of fire down towards atmosphere, where it began to dissipate in a glowing cloud. Further hits kept tilting and straightening the platform, relative to the planet. Chunks of it came away and trails of debris burnt down towards Sudoria. The platform began to slowly come apart just as Twelve now began to receive its first strikes.

  Yishna released her grip on the arms of her chair then pulled up displays fed from Combine Tactical. She could easily discern her brother’s initial plan of attack and, of course, Tactical had anticipated it too. A cruiser was already moving into position below Platform Two, ready to move in below the gap Harald was creating and then fill it with defence buoys. She quickly switched back to the display showing her that specific area, then abruptly froze when Corisanthe Main jolted underneath her. She waited anxiously for the howl of breach alarms and then the application of one of the Emergency Ozark Protocols, all of which, because of her meddling, would result in an ejection of the containment cylinders. After a moment she realized she was holding her breath, and let it out slowly as the quadrant guns began grumbling. That had been a close one, obviously slamming into the energy shields, and the station staggering under the blow like a knight taking the impact of a mace on his more rudimentary shield.

  She sipped flavoured water from the spigot inside her helmet to moisten her arid mouth, wondering what Harald’s objective could be once h
e had made a hole in Combine’s defences. Tactical had come up with many suggestions, most of them involving the steady destruction of the platforms one by one. To Yishna this seemed quite likely, yet somehow inelegant. She grimaced, returning her attention to her displays, just in time to see Platform Twelve’s shield now go down.

  Antimunitions from the beleaguered platform filled space above it with explosions, which, like an insect swarm, drew closer to the platform, then three strikes occurred simultaneously all on one side. The platform tipped ninety degrees, and began to drift. A glancing strike on what was its underside set it spinning like a coin. Checking Combine Tactical, Yishna saw that the fusillade was now over. Platform Twelve had not been destroyed, but for the present it was useless. Spying a couple of inter-station shuttles heading over towards it, she wondered if there would be anyone still alive inside to rescue, and a bitter nausea filled her. She then noted the cruiser, a 1,000-foot-long armoured tongue, begin edging out from under the aegis of Platform Two.

  Platform One was now just a spreading mass of glowing wreckage sliding slowly towards atmospheric burn-up. Far below this, a disc-shaped cloud extended over the area where one of the projectiles had penetrated down to ground level. Being deep in a desert region, there were hopefully few casualties involved.

  The cruiser finally began to fire buoys up at a slant, wave upon wave of golden beads all heading towards one targeted region of space. Cutting the view now to Platform Two, Yishna there observed guns and missile racks swinging over to point in the same direction. Obviously the next strike was already on its way. Abruptly her screen flickered off, then on again, to show her Gneiss on a private channel. The Director looked wired, even slightly unstable. Yishna had never seen him like this before.

  ‘Yishna, how goes it?’

  ‘We’re as prepared as we can be. That’s all I can say.’

  ‘Then it’s time for you to turn your attention to other matters.’

  ‘Those being?’