The Line of Polity

by Neal Asher

  Eldene listened to the noise coming from the rest of the building. She nodded.

  ‘That’s everyone getting ready to move to the surface: civilians, military, the lot. The laser arrays might be gone, but a Theocracy device that could penetrate even down to here is still on its way. At present they control the surface, and we must take that from them, and we must hold it and not allow them to retake it. Staying here, we are dead; if we lose on the surface we are dead; and if we do not collect the rest of the votes required for the ballot and persuade ECS to come here, we are dead. Now, girl, do you understand that I am not telling you sweet fairy tales, but a . . . grimmer kind?’

  Eldene said, ‘What can I do?’

  Fethan reached down beside the bed and picked up the pulse-rifle she had abandoned there. He tossed it to her and, catching it, she jerked awake, finding herself again at the controls of the ATV. His reply was a fading whisper in her mind:

  ‘There ain’t that many choices going, girl.’

  Choice?

  Here on the surface, choices were limited to two – fight or die – and they were not mutually exclusive. A long day of avoiding ground actions only sometimes to come across the hideous results of such had shown her the consequences of these simple choices; and just seeing such had worn her ragged and almost to the edge of tears. Fethan took over, as the weight of Calypse and the sun dragged night over the land, whilst Eldene found a padded mat and a heat sheet and fell quickly asleep on the vibrating floor. When she awoke, with seemingly no transition, it was to bright daylight in the front screen, and she wondered why she had felt so weak before, and resolved never to feel weak again.

  On the other side of the cabin Thorn was also sitting up, having just woken as well.

  Fethan looked round at them both. ‘Ah, at last, the snoring ends,’ he said.

  ‘Why’ve you stopped?’ Thorn asked, scratching at his beard.

  Only when he said this did Eldene realize that there was no vibration from the engine.

  Fethan gestured to the door of the ATV. ‘Be best if I show you, I think,’ he said.

  Thorn opened the door only after he saw that Eldene had copied him in flipping up her mask. The door made a slight whump as it opened, but the pressure differential was such that little breathable air would be lost from the cabin. Eldene followed him out into surroundings little different from those she and Fethan had encountered when first going out into the wilderness. To her left lay flute grass, plantains and native rhubarbs, cut through with a curving path made by the ATV – that path already blurring out of existence as the new grass slowly regained its upright position. The ATV rested in an area strewn with blister moss, the occasional algae-green tricone shell, and flashes of that bright green plant Fethan had identified for her as real grass imported from Earth. To her right there stood an embankment topped with a high mesh fence. When Fethan clambered out of the ATV and led the way up the bank, Thorn and Eldene followed with caution, since the sounds of explosions and gunfire from beyond the fence were almost constant.

  Along the base of the embankment, below the fence through which they were gazing, was a muddy track, then a band of grape tree orchards. Beyond these lay squerm and sprawn ponds. On the causeways and embankments between, a running fire-fight was taking place: groups of Theocracy soldiers lay down covering fire for a gradual retreat towards a distant mesh-fenced compound; Underground forces advanced behind grav-sleds on which had been mounted shielded rail-guns. Bodies and wrecked sleds were scattered all across this area. A Theocracy armoured car was burning – the fire fed by its own internal air supply – and some of the ponds were red, and foamed with voracious feeding.

  ‘The rail-guns on the sleds are a recent addition,’ observed Thorn.

  ‘I was just speaking to their commander,’ said Fethan. ‘Because of the resistance here, and the lack of cover, they dismounted what they could salvage from the wrecked towers of the previous compound they took. This fight has been going on since yesterday: every time they drive the Theocracy soldiers back to the compound, they get hit by the towers still working here.’

  ‘Then we should go round,’ said Thorn.

  ‘That’ll add three hours to our journey and, from what I understand, the problem’s going to be solved anyway in the next hour.’ Fethan glanced to the sky above the far right of the compound. ‘In fact, probably in the next ten minutes.’

  The military carrier with its retinue of aerofans was clearly a welcome sight for the Theocracy soldiers guarding the compound, for they waved as it came racketing in over the ponds. Two minutes later they were burying their faces in the black soil as missiles lanced down from the carrier and turned the two ironwork towers behind the compound fence into glowing wreckage. These men could not hide from Lellan’s fighters, who guided the aerofans in above them and opened up with the side-mounted rail-guns. The rebels pounded those trying to hide into slurry, and those who abandoned their weapons and ran out with their hands in the air just made easier targets. Within half an hour the forces of the Underground had taken this more difficult compound.

  ‘Let’s get moving,’ said Thorn, as he observed the carrier and its retinue depart.

  Eldene tried to feel some pity for the Theocracy soldiers – as would have been morally right – but all she felt, when they drove down a causeway past smashed and near-obliterated bodies, was annoyance at such waste of equipment. As they passed the compound buildings – Fethan giving a salute to the commander of the rebels – she observed with a deep empathy a group of bewildered and bowed pond workers, their arms clutched protectively around their scoles. Almost with embarrassment she realized she was patting her hand against the itchy area below her breasts where the wound left by her own scole was still healing, then clutched that hand in her other one to still it. To then see that some of the rebels wore the padded overalls of pond workers underneath their flak jackets – bulging with their own scoles – immediately raised her mood. These people – obviously recent recruits – she saw, further on, distributing packs of ajectant and weapons amongst their recently liberated fellows.

  Beyond the compound lay more of the carnage of battle, which they drove through for the best part of an hour before seeing another high embankment and mesh fence ahead of them.

  ‘We should reach the first co-ordinates by late afternoon,’ said Fethan. He glanced at Eldene. ‘Do you want to take over now?’

  Eldene hesitated – she wasn’t confident about driving the ATV up the bank and using it to knock down the fence, as Fethan had done upon entering this agricultural area. Before she could formulate a reply, there came a sudden staccato clattering down the side of the ATV, and pieces of something were rattling and pinging around inside the cabin, and yellow breach-foam was oozing from holes in the vehicle’s walls as it sealed them.

  ‘Shit! Shit!’ Thorn yelled as the ATV lurched, throwing both him and Eldene to the floor. As she grabbed for one of the wall handles to try and pull herself upright, she got a canted view through the front screen as Fethan drove the vehicle down into one of the ponds. Thorn was quickly up into the weapons control seat, the visor across, his left arm stiff at his side and blood trickling down from his torn biceps.

  ‘Where the fuck did that come from?’ he asked, whilst manipulating the controls of the weapons turrets, and turning his head from side to side – the visor throwing up views for him in whichever direction he looked. ‘Got it!’ One of the turrets whined round above, and emitted a low thrumming as it emptied part of a magazine. ‘Fethan, take us up and out. They’ve just gone down into a pond.’

  ‘Sorry, trooper – got a burst tyre,’ said Fethan.

  ‘Who attacked us?’ Eldene asked.

  Thorn unstuck the visor from his face and glanced at her, then to Fethan, who looked curious to know the answer as well.

  ‘Small armoured car, bloody fast as well,’ he replied.

  ‘Running?’ suggested Fethan, studying the display that showed the tyre reinflating.

&nb
sp; ‘I’d guess so,’ replied Thorn, pressing the visor back into place. ‘Yep, definitely running – they’re up and moving now.’

  Fethan wound up the power in the motor, and slowly eased the ATV out of the pond. With a horripilation, Eldene observed the hooked bouquets that were the mouths of squerms flashing up before the screen and brass segmented bodies whipping through the air and dropping away. The ATV still had a lean-down on the back left corner as that tyre, after auto-repair, slowly inflated. They came up out of the pond and turned, bringing into view a black armoured car running on front steering treads and rear balloon tyres. It had nearly reached the embankment when both turrets on the ATV stuttered and hissed. After a few seconds one of the turrets stopped firing, and from it came mechanical clonks and buzzings as it inserted another magazine. On the bodywork of the car flashes ignited and fragments of metal, from its armour and from ricochets, splashed into the surrounding ponds or flung up small explosions of earth. Then it was up the embankment, flattening the fence before it, then down and gone.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Thorn succinctly, pulling the visor from his face. ‘That tyre ready to run yet?’

  Fethan shook his head. ‘Two minutes at least.’

  ‘Your arm,’ said Eldene.

  Thorn glanced at the wound, then reached down, pulled an evil-looking knife from his boot, and with practised ease split the material of his sleeve and peeled it back from his leaking flesh.

  ‘Can I help?’ Eldene ventured.

  ‘Well, there should be a suitable wound dressing in here somewhere.’ He gestured with his knife to storage lockers at the back, on either side of the packaged autodoc. ‘Try in there.’

  Eldene opened one of the lockers and looked with bewilderment at the packages and equipment it contained. She tried to find bandages, cotton wool, antiseptic, but saw nothing she could identify as such.

  ‘The blue one, there,’ said Thorn, who had moved up behind her.

  She picked up a round flat packet and then tried to open it.

  ‘No,’ Thorn told her, ‘just press the darker side against the wound.’

  She did as instructed, then snatched her hand away when the package seemed to move underneath it. In amazement, she watched the thing deform and spread on his biceps until joining in a ring around his arm.

  ‘It reacts to the blood,’ said Thorn, raising his fist and opening and closing it.

  Eldene stared – he seemed now to be in no way impaired by just the kind of wound that would have had a pond worker’s arm in a sling for many days. She looked to Fethan, who was watching her calculatingly.

  ‘Could have done with one of them when you lost your scole. It’s Polity tech – available to all for less than the cost of a cup of coffee,’ the old cyborg explained.

  Eldene then truly felt a deep anger at the Theocracy, even though she had no idea what a cup of coffee might be, or how much it might cost. That it came cheap she had no doubt – just like human life down here on the surface, and strangely it was not awareness of this second fact that made her angry, for she had been aware of that all her life. No, it was the growing awareness that such cheapening of human life was not necessary; that this was an economy the Theocracy rulers, for their own ends, must struggle to maintain.

  The edge of the crater was a hill of debris: mounded flute grass and its rhizomes, black mud veined with green nematodes, and stranded tricones – some of which had been killed by the impact shock and were giving off a stink it was possible to detect even through a breathing mask. Following Gant and Scar, Cormac climbed the hillock to gaze down into the devastation the fall of Dragon had wrought.

  The crater had a teardrop shape, and they stood upon one of its long, banked sides. At the rounded front of this indentation in the landscape, the debris was mounded even higher. Proceeding to the horizon, from the tail of it, was a wide lane of destruction that looked somehow unreal, so neatly had the plain been parted, and so regularly had the growths of flute grass been flattened on either side where the trail cut through stands of that vegetation. Cormac was studying this trail, when Scar hissed and pointed with one clawed finger.

  ‘Yes, it’s Dragon,’ said Cormac, looking again at what remained of the titanic creature.

  ‘Comprehensively wasted, I would suggest,’ said Gant.

  As Apis and Mika joined them on the hillock of debris, Cormac studied the slope down into the heart of the crater. Only a few tens of metres below where they stood, the slope consisted entirely of black mud – at least half a kilometre of it descending to a star-shaped explosion of white chalk that even now was being obliterated as the mud slid back down. What remained of Dragon was slowly being interred, and would perhaps, in a few months, be hidden from sight.

  ‘What are our chances of getting down there without getting buried in mud?’ he asked generally.

  ‘Do we need to get down there?’ Gant asked.

  ‘We need to get down there,’ said Mika quickly. Cormac glanced at her avid expression as she studied black bones and broken flesh, the glitter of a million scales, and masses of pseudopods spilt like intestines, beyond real intestines spilt like nacre and brass castings in a broken framework of sickle blades and tangled bare spinal columns.

  ‘Said without any bias at all, of course,’ he said. Mika glared at him as he turned back to Gant and Scar. ‘Nevertheless, we do need to get down there. I want to know for sure that this Dragon is dead,’ he continued.

  Gant nodded, then gestured to their left where the mounded debris rose highest at the head of the crater. ‘Limestone further up the slope there – probably torn up by the impact. I think I can see a way down.’

  Cormac glanced at the greyish-white smear down the slope he indicated, then gestured for Gant to lead the way. As a group, they trudged round the lip of debris. Here, Cormac found, was the highest elevation they had reached since crashing the lander. And here, gazing round, he saw just how utterly they were isolated in the middle of a bland and boggy wilderness.

  The stands of flute grass mostly stood high enough to conceal those areas between. There lay long valleys inhabited by blister mosses, low spreads of purple-leaved native rhubarb, and other growths with no Earthly comparison or name. Travelling them was easier than pushing through the grass stands but, since they had no maps of this wilderness, it was necessary to stick doggedly to a straight-line march so as not to be drawn off course by attempting easier routes. Those areas were also preferable to Cormac, for in them he occasionally got to see some of the native fauna: creatures both reptilian and bovine hurtling away in an odd gliding lope, ubiquitous tricones puncturing the surface and submerging again instantly, groups of creatures that appeared very like terrapins until their spiderish heads protruded and they contemplatively grated together their mandibles. Some of those same shelled creatures roamed the slope close by, and it was reassuring to see them bumbling along feeding on the broken vegetation rather than something more animate. In the distance Cormac could see creatures that he at first took to be wading birds, until he gave himself a reality check.

  ‘I’ve got no sense of scale here,’ he admitted to Gant. ‘What do you see out there?’

  ‘Creatures standing . . . about four metres above the flute grass. No way of telling their actual height, as there could be a few metres of leg and foot going way down through the grass and mud. They’re moving away from us, anyway. It’s those other ones that aren’t visible which I find more worrying.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Cormac.

  Gant shrugged. ‘I’ve led us round some big wormlike things that lie underground – don’t know if they’re predators or not – and Scar here stung the arse of something that started homing in on us all just before this happened.’ He gestured towards the crater.

  ‘I’ll thank you to keep me informed in future,’ said Cormac, almost unconsciously bringing his fingers up to the touch control of his shuriken holster as he scanned their surroundings.

  ‘Those are heroynes,’ said Mika.
r />   Cormac turned to her. ‘What?’

  She pointed at the distant creatures. ‘Heroynes.’

  ‘Dangerous?’ Cormac asked.

  ‘As dangerous to a human as a terrestrial heron is to a frog,’ said Mika. ‘They might mistake us for food.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be too much of a problem, then,’ said Cormac. Mika just stared at him, as he went on with, ‘Last I heard, terrestrial frogs didn’t go around armed.’

  At this, Apis let out a laugh that sounded almost like a gasp of pain. Perhaps it was the surreal imagery; perhaps he was just losing it. He laughed again, tears in his eyes, then shook his head and made a weak gesture towards Scar, who was now crouching, with his attention still directed down into the crater, as it had been from the first. Cormac nodded, allowing that Scar bore a resemblance to a large and heavily armed frog, then turned his attention to Gant as the Golem gestured beyond the distant heroynes.

  ‘That’s not all,’ he said. ‘From the direction they and those other things in the grasses are heading, I’m seeing munitions flashes; and from what I’ve been able to pick up on uncoded frequencies, there’s some sort of war going on.’

  ‘The Underground,’ said Cormac. ‘They’ll be taking the surface now. From what I know they would have grabbed the opportunity presented.’

  They soon reached the area earlier indicated by Gant, where the impact had peeled up a huge slab of limestone from the bedrock and dropped it like a ramp up the slope of mud. Also peeled up with this rock was a mass of chalk and tricone shell conglomerate that lay in boulders half-sunk all around. Chalky water had drained from these and from the slab, and had run down the slope to gather in milky pools. There was movement here as well, as tricones gobbled their way under the surface dragging crushed vegetation down to be munched at their leisure. Gant led the way down into the crater, quickly followed by Mika with instruments, recently taken from the pack Scar carried, clutched in both hands. The dracoman came down last – reluctant and hissing quietly as he stepped delicately down the stone. Broken shell in the chalky slurry across the face of the stone made footing firm and it was only minutes after stepping onto it that they could all step off it to trudge through a chalky morass towards the remains of Dragon.