Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

by Neal Asher

  Serene began to feel frustrated with this exchange, and wished she hadn’t started it. As she gazed at him, however, she wondered just how others around her might react to his dehumanizing skin . . . how things might be for him on a more personal level, and found herself wanting to continue the exchange.

  ‘What do others feel?’ she asked. ‘Can you give me a sense of their opinions?’

  ‘They vary,’ he said.

  ‘Give me an example.’

  After a long pause, he said carefully, ‘Those closest to you in Earth’s hierarchy are aware that the power and wealth they obtain is directly proportional to the potential danger to themselves of such proximity.’

  ‘Danger from me.’

  ‘Erm . . . yes, ma’am.’

  ‘And those not so close . . . for example those in the upper administration?’

  ‘They have the benefit of employment, they can support themselves and their families, and they know that if they keep their heads down their chances of surviving are good.’

  ‘And what of those we must now describe as the proletariat?’

  ‘They have their fears, of course, but they are distanced from them by the fact that they have absolutely no control over their lives.’

  This was going nowhere. ‘You’ve merely stated facts I already know. How am I viewed? What are people’s opinions of me?’

  ‘My contact with people outside of your immediate circle is limited, ma’am.’

  ‘But we have travelled widely and you have spoken with others . . .’

  ‘I do not wish to kill myself with my own words, ma’am.’

  ‘Speak your mind without fear, Sack, just this once.’

  He continued gazing at her for longer than felt comfortable, and she knew he didn’t believe her.

  ‘The world is currently a better place,’ he said, ‘but not because of the way it is ruled but rather because there are more resources now and fewer people. Many I have spoken to claim to resent their lack of freedom but, because they have been brought up with political officers micromanaging their everyday lives, they are not entirely sure what that lack is. Their resentment is also less because we no longer have the human resources for that same degree of micromanagement. Moreover, they all fear instability more than they resent being ruled autocratically, again because that is simply what they are used to. In their eyes you represent stability and, while they are terrified of you, it is not a human terror. You are remote, unpredictable, almost like fate . . . almost like the Scour.’

  It was the longest speech she had ever heard from him and its honesty had a surprising effect, with a tightness in her groin, and she speculated again on how things were for him on a more personal level . . . She shook her head, annoyed that the occasional reactions she felt to this lizard-skinned man might well have been described by her father as an example of perversion, and considered the content of his words. Though he had given her some things to consider, they were not new to her. She was, in the end, the head of state. She was the state. Realistically, she had to accept that the old ideologies – on which the Committee’s and her own rule had been built – all collapsed under the weight of the reality of human nature. In the end, she was no different from the kings and emperors of old. It was very depressing, and a perfect example of the sentiment that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

  ‘You may go,’ she told him, waving her hand with regal dismissiveness, uncomfortable with her reactions to Sack, and deliberately turning her thoughts elsewhere.

  Once Earth was organized precisely as she wanted it, she felt it would then be time to turn her attention to something long overdue. The nature of the human race itself needed to be changed. Primitive humanity required alteration.

  Argus

  With one part of his mind, Saul exerted full control of the robot steadily trying to salvage components from the hardware Alex had wrecked. The thing had all of the detritus now floating in a cloud between its highly complex forelimbs, directly in front of its sensor array, and was sorting through it quickly and methodically. The other two robots assisting the repair team were fully under Judd’s control, and they seemed to be working faster, as if the proctor’s kinship with them gave it some advantage. The team of eight technicians Le Roque had sent were working to strip back the damage, replacing a coil destroyed by stray shots, and assembling stock chipsets and other components for the high-voltage requirements here. It would take them at least two hours and twenty minutes to succeed, by the end of which time their common fate aboard this station might well have been decided.

  The Saberhagens had done their best but, with the EM pulses from atomic blasts screwing their targeting, it had not been enough to stop the Scourge. Saul had known this anyway. Their means of escape had been the Rhine drive, and now things weren’t looking so good. If this had been a land battle, the chances of success, as calculated right now, were less than forty per cent, with an error bar of over twenty per cent. But this was no land battle and, in this environment and with the weapons currently being deployed, the chances of mutual destruction stood at over eighty per cent.

  With most of the rest of his mind, Saul surveyed the entire station. He calculated that, before it had been destroyed, the maser had killed a quarter of the assault force – waiting until the last moment to deploy it had been the Saberhagens’ best move yet. Saul estimated that this left about fifteen hundred troops, which was still more than enough for them to establish a good foothold. Sending the robots out was a good tactic until those invading troops got organized, then they would start deploying their EM radiation pulse weapons and the gains achieved by outright confrontation would be lost. He would pull them inside once that happened, and resort to guerrilla warfare until he found a way to respond with ultimate ruthlessness.

  The sight of troops tumbling out into vacuum, generally in pieces, announced the arrival of Saul’s spiderguns at the two breaches in the station’s hull. Clouds of vapour drifted amid the human wreckage, and returning fire filled the vacuum about the two breaches with splintered ceramic bullets and flinders of metal. Even as the remaining troops were opening fire, the construction robots reached them and began tearing them apart. It was all horribly graphic out there in the utter silence of space. Next, Saul’s view, through the sensors of one spidergun, blanked. That happened so fast, Saul only realized why on scanning the hull of the Scourge. EM radiation pulse weapons were now being fired from ports in the side of the ship.

  Robots began to freeze up, tumble out of control or end up stuck in some kind of loop, which in one case involved a large construction robot perpetually trying to behead a man it had already beheaded. Saul instructed the remaining spider-guns to direct their fire at the ship, while the army of robot foot-soldiers abruptly reversed their progress and headed back for the holes torn in the hull. This was utterly necessary, but it frustrated him that they had done so little damage: a hundred and thirteen enemy troops taken out of the fight but, unfortunately, thirty robots and two spiderguns as well.

  The robots began flowing back inside the station and distributing themselves, according to his ‘ambush predator’ program. They headed past Langstrom’s men, secure behind the bullet-proof shields of ten-millimetre machine guns and some hardened glass shields recovered during the last battle to occur aboard this station. In what had now been dubbed Police HQ, some remaining soldiers were distributing weapons to volunteers from among the station staff. Others were spread throughout the station, setting up ambush points and kill zones. Numbers, all numbers: the plain and horrible fact of warfare.

  The assault force now began to enter the station, moving along its inner skin, the troops trying to find cover as fast as they could while still attaching safety lines, for they had learned that lesson from the fate of Messina’s original assault on this station. Saul noticed enemy spiderguns departing the Scourge and, using radio and microwave dishes up on the surface, he tried to get a response from them, but they were as utterly indifferent
to his blandishments as was the Scourge itself. They had also learned not to allow him that opening. Identification of fellows was by sight, since the attacking force wore VC suits of a silvery grey, and had for some reason painted the old Japanese rising-sun symbol on the fronts and backs of them. The attack would adhere to a set plan and communications amidst the assault force would be at a minimum – low-bandwidth radio, audio only, so there would be no chance of invading anything critical via that route. The spiderguns were pre-programmed, probably to kill any humans not wearing those easily identifiable VC suits, and to attack any robot outside their pack. Where was the opening he needed?

  Saul continued to watch the invading troops and noted that some were carrying the components of vacuum-warfare penetration locks. He considered the feasibility of spinning up the cylinder worlds again, to make it more difficult to use those things on them, but then considered the power better used to keep accelerating the vortex generator up to speed. Then, outside, he saw the chance he had been waiting for – an opportunity offered by their lack of communication and the way they needed to identify each other.

  ‘Judd,’ he said it out loud, ‘I presume you do not require me here?’

  The proctor, while assembling a chaotic mass of components seemingly at random, swung its blind head towards him.

  ‘You must go,’ it said, already knowing his intentions.

  ‘When it is not necessary to kill, it is not necessary to kill,’ he said, repeating Paul’s words and, of course, their implied opposite.

  ‘Just so,’ Judd replied, returning to its work.

  Saul propelled himself from the transformer room, giving his instructions to the spidergun lurking in Tech Central and ordering it to withdraw, then he contacted his commander.

  ‘Langstrom, I want fast-response team A heading for Tech Central immediately,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet them on the base level. I’ll also be pulling the majority of my robots over there too.’

  ‘That’ll weaken us,’ protested Langstrom. ‘We’re having trouble holding them even now.’

  ‘Beat a steady retreat,’ Saul instructed. ‘Let the invaders do all the work and take all the risks. You’re not fighting to win, but fighting to buy time.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ the commander asked.

  ‘Something unpleasant,’ Saul replied. ‘That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘Okay, the team is on its way.’

  He moved fast, retracing his route to the transformer room to reach the endcap of Arcoplex One. As he travelled, he watched multiple views of the battle in progress. Lang-strom’s men had remained in their hides around the rimward penetration, strafing the enemy with ten-bores and rifle fire, then suffering under returned fire as the enemy began to get their own heavy machine guns deployed. Langstrom’s teams subsequently began to retreat, squad by squad, taking up well-prepared positions to cover each step of the way. It all began to fall apart as two enemy spiderguns came into play with little to match them – the two Saul had deployed now drifting and twitching, having already been knocked out by pulse weapons. Then the proctors intervened.

  Saul saw them approaching fast, six of them having launched themselves at high speed from inside the station. They were all carrying lengths of ceramic scaffolding like staffs, and were nearly upon the enemy, who were spreading along the inside of the station hull, before they were spotted. A ten-bore spat at them, sending two of them tumbling away with chunks flying off their bodies, then EM radiation pulses hit the others, haloing them with pink fire. In the virtual world, Saul felt their serenity – for even the two that had been so severely hit were calmly reordering their body’s resources for survival, each aware of its losses but calculating its trajectory to see how quickly it could get back into the fight.

  The remaining four slammed into the inner hull, leaving huge dents – and in one case completely crushing an enemy soldier. Then they were up and into it, thrashing to and fro with their staffs, just about every blow proving a killing one. Why had they chosen to attack with such primitive weapons? Saul did not know and did not try to find out, nor did he try to fathom why they seized two of the heavy machine guns and tried to use them. It was a futile exercise, for the machine guns obviously required some kind of coded link with the gunners operating them.

  The wreckage they caused, in both mechanical and human terms, was horrific, but when the two spiderguns turned on them it began to tell. They started to become sluggish, as chunks of their bodies were blown away. One of them managed to snag a spidergun that approached too close, and simply tore it in half. Then, as one, they launched themselves away again, suffering further damage as they escaped. It was enough, though: Langstrom’s troops had meanwhile withdrawn to safer positions – safer still when a multiple launch of missiles intersected the remaining spidergun and blew it to pieces.

  Elsewhere numerous firefights were in progress, but the steady retreat was also becoming evident. The assault force was taking heavy casualties, too, and bodies and bits of bodies were spreading out in a steady cloud from the two attack points. The third, and smaller, force of about two hundred men was nearing Tech Central, advancing steadily behind two spiderguns and a line of heavy machine guns motoring across the hull on gecko treads. They were being very cautious, which was good since it gave Saul time to prepare. He exited the asteroid-side endcap of Arcoplex One and began to make his way towards the base of Tech Central, where the fast-response team was waiting, watching robots entering one after another ahead of them.

  ‘I’m going to let the force above enter Tech Central,’ Saul declared over suit radio. ‘Unless absolutely necessary, you will not engage them.’

  ‘Seems pointless us being here at all,’ replied one of the twenty soldiers.

  Saul swung towards him. ‘I thought you were overseeing the defence, Langstrom.’

  ‘I am,’ Langstrom replied, ‘but my people are well enough trained and prepared for them to know what to do.’

  Saul snorted in apparent annoyance and headed for the nearest airlock, the multi-armed welding robot that had been about to use it scuttling aside. Within the building, he gazed through numerous sensors, and quickly deployed his robots throughout the lower two floors. The main problem here would be the two spiderguns and, once they were out of the way, there would be a slaughter which it was utterly essential that none survived.

  He mapped the place in his mind and worked out what would be their most likely mode of attack. The invading force would use the usual methods of urban warfare to secure the place, room by room, working their way steadily downwards. Maybe the spiderguns would be deployed ahead of the troops as they progressed, to take out all readerguns, and that eventuality should be prepared for.

  Stepping inside, he sent his orders immediately, in just a microsecond. Construction robots began cutting away sections of cageway, so as to give themselves a wide angle of approach. Other robots with similar cutting gear positioned themselves nearby, because cutting gear was just what was required. It was a simple fact that spiderguns were lethal weapons, but they were also strictly anti-personnel weapons, and as vulnerable to a diamond saw as anything else made of metal. Other robots began concealing themselves for ambush, folding themselves up inside storerooms and cabins, climbing into ceiling spaces or the spaces under floors, behind wall panels or cramming themselves into air ducts, before welding and sealing themselves in.

  Saul now issued further instructions. He wanted ten undamaged VC suits, so it would be necessary for ten of the attackers to die very neatly. Robots would have to deploy their ceramo-carbide chisels and drills carefully, for a hole punched into the vertebrae just below the neck ring should paralyse and kill, and not be as messy as, say, a heart puncture. Whereupon the suit should be easy to patch up afterwards.

  The crump of an explosion shifted the air of the interior and was immediately followed by the shrieking of a breach alarm. Through cams focused up there, Saul watched a spider-gun leap in and take out the two readerguns. It
then shot through the door and headed for the nearest cageway. The troops followed the second spidergun in, carting two of the heavy machine guns dismounted and carried ready for use inside. Saul was impressed by the efficient way they progressed, trying to leave nothing to chance as they checked the many niches and hidey-holes. Some robots they did find and, as a precaution, disabled with pulse weapons, but they missed many more.

  ‘Nine of you will come with me,’ Saul said to the fast-response team. ‘The rest will remain in Tech Central and fire on us.’

  ‘You what?’ Langstrom exclaimed.

  Saul then explained the plan to him.

  Mars

  The sun was dropping out of sight and Coprates Chasma sliding back into shadow when Var came across further human remains. But this one would not be supplying her with further oxygen or super-caps. This person must have been inside, and unsuited, when the building had collapsed. The corpse was as dry and brittle as aged kindling but actually came up all in one piece, having been stuck to the bottom of a regolith block like a crushed bug. Moving both block and corpse exposed the floor below, which gave Var something to work to. She cleared compacted dust from this same point back to the wall foundations, then began working along these too, shortly exposing one side of an intact airlock.

  Even as she began digging out the airlock, Var wondered what she was hoping to achieve. Would another hour or two of air matter to her? Perhaps now she should really start thinking about how to ease her passing. She paused, almost resentful of this wholly pragmatic part of her mind. Just a moment’s thought brought home to her the realities.

  Opening her suit directly to the Martian atmosphere was probably the worst option. Yes, she would die within a few minutes, but it would be a horrible, agonizing death. She should know, since it was how she had killed a number of Ricard’s men and she had been there to watch the whole unpleasant process.

  The option of just keeping her suit on therefore seemed best. Just let the suit keep scrubbing out the carbon dioxide and, as the oxygen ran out, she would be breathing more and more of the constantly recycled remainder, which would be nitrogen – and nitrogen asphyxiation was fairly painless and quick.