Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

by Neal Asher

  ‘Use the ship’s guns on them,’ he urged.

  ‘I was more concerned about the robots,’ replied Scotonis. ‘A few deserters are hardly a problem to us.’

  Clay did not bother pointing out that, though they might not be a problem to Scotonis or his plans, they could certainly be a problem for Clay himself. But Scotonis already knew that, and clearly it didn’t much concern him.

  Clay watched the figures approaching. The firing from Tech Central had ceased, and one of the two pursuing robots seemed to have been disabled. The other one was still coming, though slowly, and apparently damaged. Two of the men were down, slumped motionless against the hull. One of the soldiers towards the rear turned and opened fire on the surviving robot, just as the first of the men leaped onto the rising door. It must have been accurate shooting because the robot went down like a felled buffalo. That soldier at the rear hurried after the rest, and Clay realized that all of them were going to get aboard.

  Time to go.

  Clay turned to head up the disembarkation tube. He would proceed through the airlock, and back into executive quarters, then seal the airlock behind him. He managed only two paces before a gloved hand slammed down on his shoulder, pulled him back and thrust him to the floor. He now found himself gazing along the barrel of a Kalashtech towards the face of a black man. He didn’t recollect seeing a black man among Liang’s soldiers – not that he had necessarily seen them all. Suddenly he began to get a feeling that something was very wrong here. The black man raised a finger to his visor. Shush, be quite now. Clay did not dare speak.

  The last of the soldiers had managed to get in by throwing himself through a steadily narrowing gap as the space door closed up. Watching them, Clay did not notice the panic-stricken relief of troops who had just escaped with their lives. They seemed efficient; seemed to know what they were doing. One of them went over to a wall console and began tapping something in. Red lights started flashing as the door fully closed – an indication that the space was now recharging with air. Other men started moving along the tube, checking each of the troop sections in turn, entering them just like soldiers checking buildings during urban warfare. As the lights flashed to amber, one of the troops began disengaging his helmet. That was when Clay realized everything he had witnessed out there had been staged, and that the enemy was aboard.

  The lights turned to green, indicating the space was fully pressurized. Clay knew that if he spoke, if he tried to alert Scotonis, he would get a bullet straight in his face. He therefore kept his mouth firmly closed as all the other men removed their helmets, but for the one holding him at gunpoint. The black man then gestured him to his feet and indicated that he should remove his helmet, which he did. As another soldier pressed the barrel of an automatic against Clay’s temple, the black man also removed his helmet, and Clay finally recognized him as Commander Langstrom.

  ‘Stinks in here,’ observed Langstrom.

  ‘Seems the maser cooked a few of them,’ said another, stabbing a thumb back towards the rear troop section. ‘Why did you bother to keep him alive?’

  ‘I thought it was a good idea,’ said Langstrom, ‘as we might need some intel about the ship’s interior.’ Langstrom turned to another member of this group, who presently stood with his back to the rest as he studied a wall console. ‘Do we actually need him, sir?’

  That other individual turned round, and Clay felt stark terror as he was examined by those pink eyes in a preternaturally pale face. Alan Saul himself was right here in front of him, just a few metres away from him.

  ‘We’ll keep him for the moment,’ said Saul. ‘If I can’t access the ship’s systems from here, he can show me a better access point.’

  Taking an optic from a pouch at his belt, Saul plugged one end straight into a socket in his skull, then turned and plugged the other into a jack point in the console. He dipped his head, obviously concentrating hard while the others fidgeted nervously.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ he said contemplatively, then turned his gazed back to Clay. ‘So, tell me, Clay Ruger, why did you offline all the ship’s inducers?’

  ‘They weren’t needed,’ Clay replied, the gun barrel pressed against his head feeling as if it was about to bore into his skull.

  ‘I see,’ said Saul, his expression turning distant. Then he added, ‘I have them.’

  Clay risked speaking again. ‘What do you have?’

  ‘Sending now,’ Saul ignored him, ‘though of course it will be a little while before it takes effect.’ He then smiled briefly. ‘I’ve also left a little something for Galahad.’

  ‘We need to get out of here, too,’ said Langstrom.

  ‘No problem,’ Saul explained. ‘I’ve disabled all the ship’s armaments, and they just won’t have enough time to get them working again.’

  ‘That’s it?’ said Langstrom disbelievingly.

  ‘That’s it,’ Saul replied, disconnecting the optic, coiling it up and putting it away again.

  The green lights were now back on, flashing before changing back to amber, and Clay could hear the wail of escaping air as all around him began putting their helmets back on.

  ‘What about him?’ asked the one who was holding a gun to Clay’s head.

  ‘What about him?’ Saul shrugged. ‘He’s as dead as the rest of them and, like them, he just doesn’t know it yet.’ Saul donned his own helmet.

  Escaping air became like a wind as the weapon withdrew from Clay’s temple. He quickly put his helmet back on. He could have been shot then for doing so, but he would just as certainly die if he merely stood there. The ramp was now part of the way down again, and one of the soldiers was getting ready to climb out. Clay began backing away from them, and was ignored.

  What did he mean by ‘dead as the rest of them’?

  Just then the charge detonated outside; a bright flash showing through the opening space door, shortly followed by a shower of metal fragments. Clay used this distraction to break away and run for the airlock leading back into the ship’s executive section, expecting to receive a bullet at any moment. As he opened the airlock, he saw shots pinging off the metalwork nearby, then his head was jerked sideways by one ricocheting off his helmet. He threw himself beyond the airlock and ran, diving into one of the crew sections, desperately searching for some kind of weapon and finding only a large wrench. He picked it up and waited.

  ‘Are you done there?’ asked Scotonis over his suit radio. ‘That door is still open.’

  Clay peeked out. The intruders were all gone – he could now see them loping towards Tech Central, the two who had apparently fallen out there getting up and rejoining them. He stepped out and headed for the space door control, and set it to close again.

  ‘I’m done,’ he replied. ‘We need to go now.’

  ‘We are going,’ replied Scotonis. ‘Did you send those troops back out?’

  ‘They left voluntarily,’ Clay replied, slightly worried about the tinge of hysteria in his voice.

  Argus

  A blizzard of hardened breach sealant swirled through the smoky air. The fight in the dividing section of the Arboretum had spilled out into the main Arboretum itself, and the crackle of gunfire was now constant. Alex’s main problem was identifying his targets. Someone had told them to put their helmets back on, which rather buggered up infrared detection, especially with the numerous fires and other hot spots created by explosions and tracer bullets.

  ‘It is getting a little fraught up here,’ noted Messina.

  It certainly was. The crackling of gunfire in the surrounding trees was frequently punctuated by the crump of a grenade going off. Though they were concealed by the surrounding foliage, it in no way protected them. Alex studied the arm of his suit, where the padding had been rucked up and was spattered with blood. It didn’t hurt and his mobility was unimpaired so he didn’t think there could be much damage. However, he was aware how, in the heat of battle, it was easy not to register quite serious wounds.

  Bullets zipped
like vicious hornets into the foliage in a nearby tree, leaving severed leaves and twigs drifting away. Alex swung his rifle towards the spot where he suspected the shooter was concealed, but he could see no identifiable target through the smoke.

  ‘They must have some general idea where we are by now,’ he said. ‘Should we relocate?’

  ‘Is that what a soldier would do?’ asked Messina, eyeing him doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, it is, sir.’

  ‘Sir?’ said the erstwhile Chairman, his expression flat.

  ‘It’s what I always used to call you.’

  ‘You knew me . . . from before?’

  The hidden sniper fired into the other tree once again, using up an entire clip to hit the same place as before. Whole branches tumbled away and tracers started a couple of small fires. So much foliage had ended up drifting away after that one fusillade that it must soon be evident that the tree was unoccupied. Someone obviously thought they were concealed there, but it wouldn’t take them long to realize their mistake. Similar saturation fire into the tree they were hiding in would kill both himself and Messina very quickly.

  ‘Did you clock that?’ said Messina.

  ‘I’m on it,’ Alex replied, adjusting his aim to the source of the tracer bullets. Nothing much was identifiable through the murk, but at least he now had a better general idea of the shooter’s position. He centred his cross hairs, squeezed the trigger and held it back, emptying a full clip, then he quickly changed clips and waited.

  ‘That seems to—’

  A hail of gunfire hit their tree, smacking and cracking all about them, raking up nests of splinters like porcupine spines. Alex reached out, grabbed Messina by the shoulder and shoved him off the edge of the platform. The man didn’t need any more impetus before taking himself rapidly down the tree trunk. Alex hurled himself down next, head-first, flipping over at the last moment and landing heavily on his back, before bouncing and then floating up again until Messina grabbed him. The fusillade of fire continued for a while longer, then abruptly cut out.

  ‘So you knew me from before?’ said Messina.

  ‘Yes, I knew you from before,’ gasped Alex, turning towards him.

  Messina nodded contemplatively, then pointed towards a nearby penetration lock. It seemed a sensible place to go, since it offered more cover than anything else nearby. They began to crawl towards it.

  They were just ten or so metres from the tree when a grenade exploded behind them. Both hung on to the ground, twigs and leaves storming above them, shortly followed by the whole tree tumbling end over end. Yes, if they’d stayed in it, they would be dead by now.

  ‘What was I like?’ Messina asked as they began crawling away again.

  The question gave Alex pause for consideration. What was Messina like? It having been so long since his last reconditioning, he now found it difficult to form a clear picture of him in his mind.

  ‘You were a leader of men,’ he replied.

  As they approached the penetration lock, Alex paused by a soldier’s corpse. The woman was floating just off the ground, held in place only by a commando knife she had thrust into the soil. There was a bullet hole through her visor and it was full of blood, one eyeball pressing against the glass. He pulled her down and relieved her of her ammunition and her sidearm. Shortly after that, he and Messina reached the penetration lock. After the initial three troops had come through here and died, the attackers had ceased to use it. It could be used again at any moment, but that would be no problem since he and Messina would have plenty of warning. They hunkered down next to it, on either side, Messina covering one direction while Alex covered the other.

  The shooting continued all around them, streaks of tracer bullets cutting through smoke and debris. The air quality, Alex noted, was getting quite bad, and he had to keep snorting dirt and splinters out of his nose. This was the problem with fighting in zero gravity: the detritus thrown up by bullets and explosions didn’t just settle back to the ground.

  ‘It was confusing at first,’ Messina continued. ‘There I was, with no memory of my past, doing what I was told while trying to understand the hatred directed at me. I was assaulted frequently, and nearly got killed on the last occasion. But now my confusion is gone.’

  ‘It’s gone?’ said Alex, noncommittally.

  ‘They tried to keep it from me, of course, but the image of the face I possessed before is not something that can be concealed for long.’

  Alex looked round to see him up on his knees now and gazing back, resting his shoulder against the penetration lock.

  ‘I know who I was,’ he said – a little sadly, Alex thought.

  ‘You were Chairman Alessandro Messina, ruler of Earth,’ Alex stated firmly. Then his gaze strayed to what he assumed was a chunk of debris sailing through the air towards them. It took him half a second further to realize his mistake.

  ‘Grenade!’ he shouted, heaving himself to his feet and reaching for Messina.

  The erstwhile ruler of Earth stood up, ready to throw himself clear, then took a couple of steps forward, forced by the impact of the bullets hitting his back and blowing chunks of flesh and rib out of his chest. Alex rolled aside, firing at a half-seen figure, coming back up onto his knees as the same figure staggered, then sighting properly and emptying the new clip into it. He saw bits of his target flying away, before the grenade detonated and picked him up in a hot fist.

  Screaming somewhere . . . Alex realized it was himself as he was hammered into foliage and finally slammed to a halt against a solid branch. With his ears ringing, he dragged himself back to the ground and then headed over to the penetration lock. But Messina wasn’t there. Alex looked up and saw his Chairman’s remains revolving in the air above him, like some grotesque expanded sculpture constructed of offal.

  Alex went into the trees and found the assailant dead, cut in half. He moved on, no longer concerned now for his own safety; determined to find someone else to kill. When his ammunition ran out, he grabbed up more from the new corpses; when he couldn’t find any more ammunition he used a commando knife or his bare hands. Towards the end, his opponents didn’t seem to put up much of a fight. He did not know why. How long passed before he realized that the shooting had stopped, he didn’t know. He found himself back by the same penetration lock, on his knees, covered in blood, most of which was not his own.

  It was over.

  Alex reached down to his belt and drew the sidearm he had taken earlier from the corpse here and which, during his madness, he had completely forgotten about. He put the barrel in his mouth, tasted metal and powder residue, and there he paused for a brief eternity, until he realized he had no reason to pull the trigger. He shoved the weapon back into his utility belt and stood up, looking around.

  From close beside Hannah, missile after missile sped up into the roof, the blasts tearing out beams and wall panels, filling the air with hot wreckage and creating a burning hollow down through which the soldiers kept throwing themselves. The fires etched them starkly in silhouette, made them easy targets. Hannah hated how obvious the killing was each time she aimed and fired, then watched one of them jerk about like a fish on a line. Plasma shots rose up like ack-ack fire and turned four of them in a row into screaming torches while oily smoke billowed.

  Though terrified, Hannah felt a horrified sympathy for the enemy even as she shot them. They possessed no more self-determination than just about anyone on Earth, perhaps even less. They had been directed into this assault with little regard for their lives. To those that had sent them they were just a disposable asset. Taking the station was all that mattered to Serene Galahad; the human cost was irrelevant.

  The attack stuttered to a halt amid a snowstorm of fire-retardant foam. Ten minutes passed, though it seemed to be eons. They were probably regrouping, calling in reinforcements, doing whatever it was soldiers did after receiving a bloody nose.

  ‘Is anyone else hit?’ Hannah eventually called out.

  ‘James and Tyson are dead,�
�� Brigitta replied. ‘I’ve lost two fingers from my left hand and none of the rest of us is in good shape.’

  Wondering which one of them had been Tyson, Hannah suggested, ‘Use your suit medical kits while you can.’ It would be suicide to venture out of cover now, so they just had to do the best they could.

  Brigitta replied. ‘Have you got any ice?’

  ‘What for?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘My fingers.’ It seemed Brigitta had a streak of morbid humour, only just revealed.

  ‘Sorry, no.’

  Angela called out to her sister, ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of spares.’ This humour seemed a family trait.

  A further twenty minutes dragged past. Gunfire and explosions could still be heard throughout the arcoplex, and somewhere close above them a fierce firefight erupted. This lasted for a good five minutes, until a large blast terminated it abruptly.

  ‘Get ready,’ Hannah warned.

  Another blast behind spun Hannah round. They were trying the corridor again and had encountered another of Rhine’s booby traps. As she opened fire on figures only half seen through the smoke, she heard Angela’s grunt beside her and saw her sit back, gazing down at a hole in her thigh.

  ‘Angela?’

  The quiet one of the Saberhagen twins grimaced, then raised her plasma weapon again and turned the far end of the corridor into an inferno. A few further missiles converted it into a route no one would be venturing along for a while.

  Next the soldiers were again descending from above and the firefight was renewed, the nightmare continued. This fresh battle could only have lasted minutes, yet it seemed ages before the firing from above became only sporadic, then finally ceased. Hannah gazed in perpetually growing horror at the scene before her: the corpses floating through the air, the commingled cloud of body parts and gobbets of flesh, blood and a thousand twinkling stars composed of glass and bits of foam. The two lab assistants, who had been taking it in turns with the missile-launcher, quickly ventured into the factory to snare a floating corpse from the air and relieve it of its weapons and ammo.