Africa Zero

by Neal Asher

  The pilot looked wide-eyed at Gurt. I squeezed his wrist again to get his attention.

  “Which Family?”

  “Fuck you!”

  I squeezed again and asked again. It was on about the fourth occasion that he fainted. I stood up and looked down at him.

  “By his ankles,” said Gurt.

  I nodded then said, “Bring him along. Try not to damage him too much.”

  “Skin him now?” Gurt asked.

  “No, there’s easier and less messy ways. We’ll take him to the complex,” I said.

  * * *

  The tank started first with the droning of the hydrogen turbine that got the allotropic uranium up to speed. The batteries were at full charge as I always kept them and had more than enough power to get us to the complex, but they’d not last long if, as seemed highly likely, I started using the energy cannons or any of the esoteric carousel weapons. Gurt ungently taped the pilot in the chair for the satcom and wrapped extra tape round his mouth. I had the sauraman sit in the driver’s chair. I sat at the weapon’s console. As in the gun ship, the weapons console could be slaved to the driver, but I thought Gurt would enjoy the experience of driving a ceramal battle tank. It seemed just his sort of thing and it was unlikely he could damage it. I pointed at the two joysticks.

  “One for each tread,” I said. “Push them forwards and we go forwards. Pull them back and we go back. One forward and one back and we go in a circle—”

  “I understand,” Gurt interrupted. He squinted at the grey bulkhead before him.

  “That pad there,” I said and pointed at the touch pad clearly labelled ‘front screen’. He hit the pad harder than necessary and the bulkhead effectively disappeared as the front screen came on. He grinned out at the interior of the cave and tightly gripped the sticks.

  “When we get out of the cave head south southeast,” I said, pointing at the face of the gyrocompass. “Try not to knock over too many trees and avoid large boulders.” I sent the signal to the door in the cliff and it revolved open. Gurt thrust forward with the controls and with a rumbling drone the tank surged forwards. As we came out into the sunlight I hit another screen button and the ceiling, side walls, and rear bulkhead disappeared. It was almost as if we were riding on an open platform. Gurt grunted and looked about in surprise, then he grinned at me with delight. He seemed to be adapting to the technology very quickly. I grinned back at him then put radar, laser bounce, and air perturbation detectors online. Gurt immediately drew back on the joysticks and brought the tank down to a crawl when faced with the forest of dwarf water oaks. He looked an enquiry at me.

  “Take us through,” I said. He looked for some sort of track, saw none, shrugged and pushed the sticks forward. The tank hit the trees at about twenty kph and did not slow. Trees shattered before it and rode up over the roof. The tank lifted a little over some of the bigger stumps where trees broke off, but mostly the trees were torn right out of the ground and shoved aside. The noise was hideous until I muted it. We were in a chaos of shattered wood and branches for about five minutes before we broke out onto an upslope. Small boulders on the slope broke with dull explosions under the treads. At the head of the slope we rode up then came down with a crash on level veldt thick with elephant grass.

  “Open her up,” I instructed, most of my attention on the detectors. Gurt pushed the sticks all the way forwards and the tank accelerated to its full speed of eighty kilometres per hour. From the grass came a constant hiss as of fire and it built up in clumps on the front of the tank before riding up over the roof. I kept watching the detectors.

  At fifty kilometres and about one kilometre up I had four signatures. The computer decoded them and flung up a schematic of a lunger gun ship in the corner of the screen. There was no concerted movement from them for ten minutes. They seemed to be following a search pattern. Then as one they started to come in our direction. A quarter of an hour and they would be on us. I guessed they wouldn’t attack right away as they had no idea who was in this tank. I also guessed that someone higher up the chain of command would have an idea and eventually order an attack. I had the computer target the ships at that extreme range and selected the missile launcher. I put the shield on auto and diverted half of the power from the U-charger to its laminar storage capacitor. As they only carried energy cannons they would not be able to attack until close in. The tank slowed as soon as I did this and Gurt looked at me.

  “Nothing to worry about,” I told him, watching the detectors for a moment longer before selecting the scope. It had just occurred to me that there was an outside chance that these were friends and it just wouldn’t do to go shooting them out of the sky. I used the laser bounce to sight and focus, as the gun ships had a coating that made them invisible to radar. Shortly I had a picture on my screen of the four ships. Like the one back in the cave and the ones I had destroyed, these were without markings. My hand paused over the launch control and I felt a twinge of guilt. Damned if I know why. I yielded to this and selected only one missile. Then I tapped the launch control.

  As if by magic the missile launcher appeared suspended over our heads. It turned and spat a single missile from the side of its post-box launching mouth. That missile shot away without pause for acceleration. Its engine ignited when it was some distance towards the horizon. The launcher operated as a mini rail gun to sling the missiles out. It had been discovered in a war some centuries back that the pause for acceleration in the old style missiles had allowed enough time for a laser to target, and missiles had often been detonated only a few metres from their launcher. The launcher disappeared from the overhead screen and I called up the scope picture again to watch the show. Gurt slowed the tank so he could watch as well.

  The four gun ships were cruising at full speed about fifty metres above the ground. Abruptly one of them tilted and turned violently. The pilot must have picked up on the incoming at the last moment. He did not move his ship quickly enough. The missile went in so fast it showed only as a flicker of a line on the screen. The explosion gutted the ship with fire, blasting out through its four limbs before disintegrating it completely. Red-hot hull plates and distorted structural members rained out of the sky. To one side I observed a thruster motor, still firing intermittently, hit the ground and disappear in a hot blue explosion. The other gun ships had gone into avoidance manoeuvres and the screen tracked on only one of them. I clicked on the radio.

  “Consider that warning enough. Come no closer,” I said.

  On the laser bounce detector I observed the three remaining ships pull away and hold at a distance ten kilometres out from where I had destroyed that one. No doubt they were asking for instructions and hoping the instructions they received were not: “Go in.”

  “They’re going to need a sieve to find what’s left of you, Mr Collector,” someone hissed at me over the radio. Checking a couple of readings I could see that I had screen or holovisual if I wanted them. I selected screen and looked into the angry face of one of the gun ship pilots. He was angry at me. The cheek.

  “Ah, a talkative one,” I said. “Your friend doesn’t say much.” The pilot looked confused so I turned the screen so he could see my prisoner over my shoulder. His confusion went away.

  “You bastard,” he said.

  “That’s hardly fair,” said I. “I didn’t start this. Perhaps if you tell me what this is all about we can sort things out amicably.”

  The pilot shut off communication and I turned to Gurt.

  “Keep us moving. I think the shit’s about to hit.”

  Gurt immediately understood the ancient euphemism and had us pelting across the veldt as fast as the tank could manage. I got all my detectors online and watched for movement. I was tempted to take out the three remaining gun ships but thought that might be a waste of missiles of which I might have sore need. The tank only carried fifty, after all. As we hurtled along I observed more blips on the screen, which the computer identified as more gun ships. It also informed me that some of t
hese gun ships were carrying missiles.

  “Why you waiting?” Gurt asked, and for the life of me I had no answer for him. Perhaps I was getting soft in my old age. I quickly targeted the ships with missiles and launched. I think fingers must have hit firing buttons simultaneously because as my missiles sped away the computer picked up on incoming.

  “Ah,” I said, and made a selection on the carousel. It was something I’d always wanted to try. At the back of the tank the carousel whirred and clicked and an object like an iron camera thunked up into position, tracked, and fired. The muted sound that came from it was as of escaping compressed air. It tracked again, fired again and again. The object’s title was MMG, which stood for mega-multigun. It fired ceramic bullets five millimetres across at a rate of one million per minute. There was not much else as effective at stopping missiles. I watched my screen and saw approaching missiles disappearing. I also noted that the same was happening at the other end but not as effectively. My missiles were being brought down by lasers. Three got through and three gun ships disappeared from the screen. One of their missiles, obviously with its targeting out, hit about ten metres from the tank. The blast slewed us sideways and a sheet of fire and debris momentarily covered us. Gurt got the tank back in line and kept us moving forwards. On my screen I got an error message and looked up at the multigun. It was gone.

  “Fuck,” I said, called up the laser from the carousel, and activated the ionic screen. I launched two more batches of missiles as the remaining gun ships with missiles launched theirs. Suffice to say that after that exchange they no longer had the capability of firing missiles at me. The tank, unfortunately, dropped to a power level that shut off the engine, and we sat there in the burning elephant grass with the U-charger whining at full load as it struggled to restore power. I should have expected what happened next.

  “Collector, you are an anachronism and a pain,” said someone, and I noted that there was no visual transmission. I waited and the voice continued. “Admittedly you’re resourceful, but in the end your resources are limited. I would guess that right now you’re running out of energy.”

  I looked at the screen and noted that the gun ships were pulling away. I’d expected tactical nukes next and reckoned I had enough armament to field them. It didn’t look like that was going to be the next. I thought fast and came up with only one conclusion. I pulled up the microphone and held it in the palm of my hand, then I leant across and set Gurt’s joysticks to drive. As soon as the U-charger had stacked up enough power in the batteries the tank would take off. I looked Gurt in the eye and nodded towards the door. When he sat there looking puzzled I turned the microphone off.

  “Get out and run. I’ll be with you in a moment. No questions,” I said, and turned the microphone back on. Gurt got out of his seat and picked up the APW and a hand gun. He opened the door, leapt out, and set out into the burning grass land at his steady loping pace.

  “Who am I speaking to?” I asked as I quickly set the defence and weapons systems on automatic.

  “What does that matter to you now?” the voice asked, relishing his victory.

  I was out of my seat and through the door in a moment, the microphone still in my hand. My captive watched me go with stark terror in his features. I guessed he knew what was coming.

  “Look, I’m carrying enough armament to take out anything you’ve got. Perhaps we should discuss this. What do you want of me?”

  By this time I was running into the grassland after Gurt. One of the advantages of not having to breath is that you can talk quite calmly while making like an Olympic sprinter.

  “What I want of you, Collector, is your absence. Goodbye.”

  I was about a hundred metres from the tank and fast catching up with Gurt when I heard the tank start moving. It’s all very well rolling across the veldt in a high-tech battle tank, but there comes a point when you begin to think you’re invulnerable. That is something you should never think and was the kind of attitude that had got a lot of my kind dead. Behind me the tank started discharging its load of missiles. The carousel was operating as well, shooting out the black erratically flying spheres of smart bombs. I reckoned a few more gun ships would bite the dust before it was all over.

  The sound was like the sea and the entire area was bathed in crimson light. I came up behind Gurt and brought him down to protect his body with mine. There was a brief roaring as the ionic shield came full on for a moment then collapsed. At that moment I crushed the microphone I held, then, with my eye shutters up to filter radiations that might damage my more delicate optics, I turned my head and looked back. The armour went from red to white in an instant then the tank exploded flinging chunks of ceramal in every direction. The smoke and fire picked out the shape of the laser beam like a nacreous column rising into the sky. It bored into the ground for a moment then shut off. Where my tank had been was now a crater lined with cooling glass. I rolled off Gurt and allowed him to sit upright.

  “You won’t question him now,” he said.

  For a moment I didn’t know what he was talking about, then I remembered the pilot I had left in the tank. I tried to feel some sympathy for the man, but all that came out was a snort as I tried to suppress a laugh.

  “He not there anymore,” said Gurt.

  That did it. I cracked and sat laughing with ash and smoke swirling about me. Gurt looked at me in his puzzled way for a moment then he, too, started to laugh. Eventually we staggered to our feet and headed away from the burning area. It was only at nightfall when we sat at a fire, over which Gurt roasted half a springbok downed by shrapnel, that he asked me what had happened.

  “Some of the families have weapons in orbit. That was the blast from a satellite sun laser,” I explained.

  “Sun laser?” he asked.

  I wondered if he would understand. I did my best to explain.

  “A laser beam is coherent light . . . light that has all its photons travelling in parallel. It’s usually generated by crystals that lase, like rubies...”

  “Ruby laser,” Gurt said.

  “Yes ... A sun laser is a huge solar collector that focuses sunlight into one point. At that point is something called a cohering field which does the same job as a ruby, but in one hit. No material object would stand the temperatures involved. Sun lasers were used in some of the big engineering projects.” I pointed at the half moon that showed part of the labyrinthine bases on its face. “They used them to bore the lunar caverns and to smelt the asteroids for the materials to build bases.”

  Gurt stared at the moon as if seeing it for the first time. I realised then that I had been right about him: he was an intelligent primitive. He had a huge ability to learn, and to absorb information. Obviously until now he’d had few sources of information and no teachers. I decided I should take on those roles.

  “Where do you come from, Gurt?” I asked.

  “Ankatra,” he enlightened me.

  “Where is that from here?”

  He pointed vaguely southeast.

  “How far?” I asked with infinite patience.

  “Don’t know. We in machines and rooms and I falling,” he said.

  I took that in and chewed it over. ‘Falling’ inclined me to think Gurt had at some point been in a spacecraft or on a station.

  “What happened in the rooms?”

  “They studied us. They took bits of us away. They wanted to see how strong and how fast we were. Horl showed them. He killed one of them. They burned him.”

  “What then?”

  “We went to sleep and woke up in a pen. We escape in the night then God soldiers find us and shoot at us. I escape then caught and God soldiers keep me. I escape again.”

  I had a sudden intimation of what might be going on.

  “How many of you at the colony?” I asked.

  “Many thousand,” Gurt answered proudly. It was obviously a number he had only recently mastered.

  “What was it like there?”

  “We fighting all the
time about lemu rights.”

  “Lemu rights?”

  “Meat.”

  Oh hell.

  “Do you have another name for this colony?” I asked.

  “Gascar,” he replied.

  I sat back and thought about that one. The last time I had been to Madagascar there had only been a few widely-spaced human settlements. That had been four centuries ago. Someone had obviously made a few changes there since. I considered all that had happened in the light of his story. Perhaps I had been arrogant to assume that the Family gun ships had been sent to dispose of me. It sounded to me like someone had been running a secret project, had loused, then sent the ships in to clean up. My meeting Gurt had obviously been a large spanner in the works. Now, whoever had been running that project, thought myself and the sauraman dead. We had to get to JMCC. I had to find out what the hell was going on.

  * * *

  Gurt learned fast. Over the next few days I spoke non-stop on any subject that took my interest, and anything I thought might be of interest to him. As we walked I would point out a ruin and give him a potted history, or I would point out a genetically-adapted plant and do the same. I told him about the Pykani and the mammoth and one night when a devil shriek echoed down from the sky I told him about the Great African Vampires. More and more often he asked questions, and his questions rapidly gained coherence.

  “Why did the ice come?” he asked me one evening.

  “That was a big surprise for everyone. I told you about the resource wars and how the Corporations took power from the Governments?”

  “You did.”

  “Well, it was the Corporations that got us into space. They knew that Earth was getting used up. With the fossil fuels down to their last dregs they knew we’d soon not have the resources for a concerted space-effort, and that we’d end up trapped on Earth and knocked back into the Stone Age by repeated environmental disasters. They made the effort and got us into space, leaving Earth to its steady global warming. That global warming was well underway when a comet completed its twenty-thousand year orbit and struck, right in the middle of what was then called America—there’s nothing but volcanic islands there now. The debris flung up brought about a darkness that lasted long enough to kill two thirds of life on Earth. The humans and animals that survived, walked out into the beginning of an ice age. Earth’s orbit had been perturbed enough to bring that about.”