Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

by Neal Asher

  Earth

  It had been five hours since the broadcast, but still Serene cursed her stupidity. She had read the recently revealed reports on Messina clones, about Alexes supposedly just like those that made up that undercover squad hiding aboard Argus Station. She had read about the conditioning, the brain surgery, the inducement and the brainwashing. She had known how it produced something utterly loyal to the Committee and the administration of Earth, but only after a total and unquestioning loyalty to Alessandro Messina. She had also known that the Alexes were supposed to be almost childlike, socially inept and trusting. And she had got it wrong.

  The Alex she had spoken to had not been quite so easy to handle, and in retrospect she realized that though the wholly naive Alexes might be used in military units they wouldn’t, in any sane world, be used for undercover infiltration work. So, for her to even hint at Messina dying had been completely the wrong thing to do. She had complacently slid into error by assuming that the Alex was loyal to the office when in reality that loyalty was primarily to the man. That particular Alex must have lost any awe of Messina’s administration and his subordinates. She put her error down to her present physical condition and mental state, the latter of which she intended to do something about right now.

  She walked slowly and carefully into the room, every stab of pain from her damaged pelvis further feeding the cold rage inside her. Gazing about at the awaiting technicians, managers and political officers, she reached up self-consciously to touch the dressing over the burn on her face and running down the side of her neck. The doctors had told her that grafts of her own skin from her personal stock would eliminate any scarring, and that the implants in her pelvis should soon heal the damage there. She had painkillers she could take, but they blurred her round the edges, made her less sharp, and she needed to stay sharp. That was evident.

  The assassination attempt had been well planned. Rounds of armour-piercing bullets were fired from the top of the mass driver and through the cockpit screen, to take out the pilot. They couldn’t have known she was in the cockpit, too; if they had, the bullets would not have been concentrated on the pilot’s position, but on her. Taking out the pilot, however, was not enough to bring about a crash, not enough to ensure the death of Earth’s dictator, since the aero’s autopilot would have taken over, to bring it down safely. Hence the subsequent two copperhead tank-busters fired from the ground. The first of them took out one engine and one entire fan, the second filled the rear compartment with vaporized copper, incinerating fifteen of the passengers. Had Serene not instantly taken the controls, the machine would have plunged straight into the ground. As it was, she felt lucky to have managed to drag herself out of the wreck.

  ‘Have they been brought in?’ she asked, turning to Clay.

  ‘They’re in,’ he confirmed.

  Clay had got off lightly, just a broken arm and a few cracked ribs, all now internally splinted and not hindering him in any way. Sack hadn’t been so lucky. The rear compartment wall he was sitting against had heated up, melting the plastic of his seat, thus jamming his safety belt. He managed to snap the belt only when it had burned through enough to weaken it, and then follow her and Clay out through the shattered cockpit screen. Currently he occupied a room in an advanced Committee hospital in Sydney, on life support while the doctors there tried to replace his ninety per cent skin loss with some artificial concoction.

  ‘And you’re sure we got them all?’

  ‘I got all who remained alive,’ he replied. ‘I had to use and lose some good contacts and close down some undercover networks but, yes, all of them.’

  Now that he knew he could not use their brief sexual liaison as leverage, he was trying to assert how useful he was here on Earth, perhaps also hoping that recent events might have changed her mind about sending him to the Scourge. He would be disappointed.

  ‘What do you mean by “all who remained alive”?’

  ‘Twelve of them got forewarning, and made a visit to a Safe Departure clinic before I could get to them.’

  She stared at him. They went to a suicide clinic, easily slept their way into death and then a community digester. She would have to close those clinics down. They were an anachronism the people of Earth could no longer afford. They promoted the idea that a citizen’s life was his own when, in reality, it belonged to the state. They should not have the option to end it so easily. That should be the prerogative of herself and her government.

  She refocused her attention on the people within the room, and on what she had come to see here at this Security Development Facility in Brazil. It hadn’t originally been included on her tour route but, considering the fact that some societal assets felt in a position to try and assassinate her, she had changed her mind.

  She could send a signal to ID implants to kill with the Scour but, since the Scour was being blamed on Alan Saul, she wanted something that was her own, some power to kill instantly that was obviously her own. She needed visible evidence of her ability to take any life she chose. And here they were developing just what she needed. She walked over to the table and surveyed the collection of items on display. They called these things DUs – disciplinary units.

  ‘These are all of them?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  The developer, Santanzer, was a nervous individual who reminded her of Shimbaum. Apparently, because the director of this establishment and most of his management team had been visiting an Inspectorate HQ in Brazil when Saul decided to drop a satellite on it, this place had since been run by a disparate team of political officers and low-echelon managers. They had obviously decided that Santanzer should be the one to speak to her. She was starting to realize that her harsh reputation was causing some irresponsible staff either to absent themselves when she visited, or to pass responsibility further down the chain. In future she would ensure she spoke only to whoever made the decisions, but just for now she would let it go. She picked up a silver ring twenty centimetres across, gazed at it for a second then put it down dismissively. The item was in fact an explosive collar.

  ‘Too dramatic,’ she said, remembering her stained office carpet in Italy, ‘and too messy.’

  Next she picked up a rather heavier item which could inject a selection of drugs directly into the recipient’s neck. This might have its uses, but it wasn’t what she wanted right now. Another collar delivered electric shocks, while another was a pain inducer, and still others were varied combinations of all these things. But she liked simplicity, and finally selected a ring made of a strap of metal that seemed almost indistinguishable from a large jubilee clip, and studied the metal cylinder that the free end of the strap passed under.

  ‘This.’ She held it up to show Clay.

  He nodded and turned away to speak through his fone to the guards currently standing watch over the prisoners. There were thirty SAs in all, including Technical Director Rourke from the Outback mass driver, one of her recently appointed Australian delegates, along with her advisers and bodyguards – a total of forty-eight people. Of course, the delegate and her staffs had not been involved in the incident, but that a bunch of democratically minded SAs could conduct such an assassination attempt under her watch could not go unpunished.

  ‘Diamond filaments imbedded in the metal make it practically unbreakable,’ Santanzer explained. ‘Those filaments are what science-fiction writers have been dreaming about for centuries, and now we have them. They could be used to take elevators up into orbit.’

  She gazed at him with slight contempt. Here was yet another expert trying to blind the stupid politician with science.

  ‘Strange you should put it that way,’ she observed. ‘To my recollection, diamond filament was manufactured in China over eighty years ago, but since cost of production was so prohibitive, and other much cheaper options were available for the more prosaic tasks it might be used for, it was shelved.’ She eyed him carefully. ‘We can easily manufacture it now because of a steady improvement in furna
ce design over those eighty years.’

  He didn’t know what to say for a moment, then gulped out a, ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘What I would prefer you to tell me about,’ she continued, ‘is this motor here and its power supply.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He seemed unable to do more than mouth those two words.

  ‘Perhaps a practical demonstration?’ she suggested nastily. ‘Here and now rather than the one being prepared for us?’

  He spoke all in a rush. ‘The battery is a nanotube store, kept up to charge by induction through the strap itself. It discharges into a micro-conveyor, which is an array of micro-wheels on a—’

  ‘I know what a micro-conveyor is. Please continue.’ She glanced round at Clay, who nodded, then pointed to the door leading out of there. She began heading towards that door, her four new bodyguards close behind her, Clay trailing them, and all the other flunkies walking attentively but silently after him.

  Santanzer stayed at her side. ‘The conveyor simply closes the strap, which is prevented from being pulled back by spur hairs within the exit hole. As soon as the device receives an ID code, it checks it against the recipient’s implant and, if there’s a match, it can close the hoop . . . sufficiently in less than a second.’

  As she reached the door, two of her bodyguards moved ahead to open it and check the area beyond. That was unnecessary, really, since the place had been swarming with Inspectorate enforcers for a week before her arrival, but this was what they were trained to do. After a moment they nodded, and she followed them through, Santanzer was still at her side, and frequently looking back towards his superiors in the vain hope that one of them would take over from him.

  ‘But there is more than one speed setting,’ she observed as she stepped out onto a platform overlooking a warehouse floor.

  A racket greeted her there: the meaty thuds of rifle butts liberally applied, the shouting and begging and the screams from those feeling the touch of a disabler. Steel stairs led down to the main floor, a large area that had now been cleared of crates. Fifty Inspectorate enforcers had the prisoners all crammed together, and there seemed to be a bit of a riot going on. The prisoners, it seemed, were objecting to their new neckwear.

  ‘It allows any setting you choose,’ Santanzer replied, gazing over the rail with horrified fascination as he finally started to accept what might soon happen here.

  Two bodyguards went down the stairs first, and she followed, her pelvis complaining at the extra effort. Finally down on the warehouse floor, she walked out to where a large comfortable chair had been provided for her, a small round table standing beside it, upon which sat a bottle of champagne in a cooler, and a single flute glass. She unhooked her palmtop from her belt and placed it on the table, then carefully sat down while Clay checked the secure seal on the bottle, before opening it and filling the glass for her. It was one taken from Messina’s stock, specially sent over for the occasion – and specially sealed and poison-free so long as the seal remained intact. She took a sip, opened her palmtop and studied the list of ID implant numbers displayed, and the icon for the new program that had just loaded. Then, after a pause, she raised her gaze towards the prisoners.

  ‘Bring delegate Grace Turpin and Technical Director Rourke forward,’ she instructed.

  Enforcers cut the two she named from the crowd, shoved them to the front and then down onto their knees. Their suits were soiled and soaking wet, and only now did Serene detect the slight smell of faeces and urine. All these people had been kept without access to toilet facilities for some days, because, after their sojourn in Inspectorate cells in Australia, they had spent most of their time in the holds of aeros or scramjets. Doubtless they were dripping wet because the enforcers here had recently hosed them down to make them at least a little more presentable for her. She eyed them for a second longer before selecting their two implant codes from the list ranged before her, then dragged them across and dropped them on the ring-shaped icon. A new menu opened to show numerous settings. The thing was of a gratifyingly simple design: she could govern the speed of strangulation, she could render someone unconscious then open the collar again, and she could snap the collar closed so quickly it would decapitate whoever was wearing it in, as Santanzer had told her, less than a second.

  ‘Chairman,’ said Rourke, ‘we were utterly shocked and—’

  The slowest setting, she decided, but without full closure since that would make a terrible mess here. Of course, she wouldn’t have to clear it up herself, but felt some sympathy for those who would. The two began making retching sounds and struggled to free their hands from the plastic ties binding their wrists behind their backs. Grace Turpin toppled over on her side, her legs kicking, her body thrashing and bucking, and shortly afterwards Rourke lay down beside her too. One and a half minutes of this was followed by a further thirty seconds of death rattles and the occasional spasmodic twitching.

  Serene took another sip of champagne, then flicked her gaze back to the list. Some in the crowd of prisoners were sobbing, four had tried to run and been beaten to the floor, while one had managed to ram his head into an enforcer’s gut and then deliver an excellent kick to another enforcer’s head, before running. A disabler dropped him, screaming, beside a wall of crates.

  However, most just remained in a kneeling position, doing nothing. She had previously noticed how, if you first selected a couple of prisoners from a crowd you intended to do away with, the rest somehow convinced themselves that they were being given an object lesson, and that they weren’t going to die, too. She smiled with a feeling of peace easing the tension in her body, selected the whole of the rest of the list and dragged it to the ring icon, left the setting the same, pressed send and sat back.

  The noise was abominable, and in a short time the smell was too. Serene finished her champagne, then poured herself another glass. The enforcers moved back from the thrashing, retching mass of humanity. Out of this mass crawled one woman whose collar seemed to have malfunctioned.

  ‘Deal with her,’ said Serene, pointing.

  An enforcer stepped over and beat in the woman’s skull with his rifle butt.

  In two minutes it was all over.

  ‘Santanzer,’ Serene said next.

  The man stepped over beside her chair. ‘Ma’am?’ He didn’t look well

  ‘You are now the technical director of this facility. How soon can you go into production?’

  ‘Within two days, ma’am.’

  ‘At what rate?’

  ‘The furnaces can produce two metres of strip every hour, but motor production and assembly is slower – about five to six thousand collars every twenty-four hours,’ he replied.

  ‘Not enough and not fast enough,’ she said. ‘That’s only a million in six months. You’ll be provided with all the resources you need to increase that figure.’

  ‘How many do you want?’

  ‘Let’s go for a nice round figure,’ she said, standing up. ‘If you haven’t produced a billion within the first year, I’ll be back here to find out why.’

  She headed for the stairs feeling slightly woozy; the champagne had gone to her head.

  Argus

  They had food and water here in this zero-gravity hydroponics unit, and remained safe from discovery after Alexandra had managed to run a program through the local agribots so that they would ignore this apparent new staff complement. But Alex had become frustrated by the lack of action, and by all the sneaking about and spying. However, their instructions from Serene Galahad, then reaffirmed by the leader of the tactical team on Earth, had been quite explicit: no military action. Instead they were to watch and report everything they could and be ready for the arrival of the Scourge. Now, as Alex listened in frustration to the various sounds penetrating the surrounding walls – the clattering, the intermittent whine of a cutter and occasional deep groans and bangs – it seemed that they were trapped here, and that they were about to be found.

  ‘What are they doing?’ he ask
ed Alexandra.

  She continued studying her screen for a moment, then looked up. ‘It looks as if they’re dismounting the whole hydroponics unit.’ She paused for a second, her expression distant. ‘To isolate us?’ she wondered, clearly puzzled.

  Alex shook his head. ‘Then why not just send in the robots? In this confined area we wouldn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she suggested, ‘they’re worried about the damage if there’s a firefight in here. Hydroponics is important, so perhaps they just intend to isolate us and wait us out.’

  Good, she was starting to think a little bit more outside the box.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he opined. ‘We’re just in the way.’

  She focused on him. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Alex frowned for a second then continued, ‘That thing they’re building in the outer ring . . . we saw how they cut straight through underneath the space dock, took out those big structural beams and repositioned them. They’re building it all the way round, and this unit is standing in the way. So they’re moving it.’

  ‘Makes more sense, that. I guess if they wanted to isolate us, they just had to weld the doors shut,’ she said, adding, ‘Maybe we should sabotage it?’

  ‘You heard what Tactical Analysis said,’ he said. ‘They can discern no military application for it, other than maybe some sort of EM defence, which the station already has. It looks more like some sort of fast transport system and, if anything, it’s a good thing that they’re diverting station resources into the project.’