The Departure to-1

by Neal Asher

  ‘Okay.’ He led the way up the entrance tunnel, where the technician waited for them, leaning against the wall.

  Saul was still having trouble worming his way inside the computers of the space plane, then abruptly everything collapsed and he could see clearly inside. No one at home, which made things a damned sight easier. Checking systems he saw that, but for the disconnection of a few umbilicals, the plane stood ready for launch. The technician waved them ahead of him to a ladder leading up to the airlock situated in the belly of the plane, and they proceeded through the airlock and up into the rear of the passenger compartment. Saul then experienced a moment of complete confusion when the images in his mind did not match up properly to what he now saw.

  Too late.

  A cold barrel was pressed against the back of his neck, and two men clad in white spacesuits grabbed his arms and dragged him forward. Two more grabbed Hannah, and just too many guns were aimed at them for him to do anything to resist. All of those occupying the plane were armed with assault rifles or other military hardware.

  ‘Welcome aboard,’ said Malden.

  10

  Willingly Don Your Chains

  If you forcibly deprive someone of that airy concept called freedom, he will resent you and, given the chance, he will fight to regain it. Better, as governments all across the world discovered long ago, to have people willingly give up their freedoms, to actually collude in the process; then, before they realize their mistake, their chains are adamantine. Make the process slow enough to sit below immediate perception and they will grow accustomed to their enslavement; they even might not realize they are wearing any chains at all. By so slowly depriving people of what were only really considered inalienable rights during a brief period in human history, and in only a few countries, did the Committee come to power. But how did it get the people to willingly forgo all control over their own destinies? Simple, really: it used the formula proven by the governments that were its original components. First make the people afraid . . .

  Antares Base

  As it strode away from the airlock, Var struggled against the shepherd’s grip, which wasn’t as secure as it should have been. The burst of ceramic ammunition she had fired into it had damaged the robot, some of its tentacles left merely as stubs waving in the thin air, whilst others just hung slack. With her free left hand, she reached into her hip pouch and took out one side arm, aimed and pulled the trigger, firing up inside the tick-shaped body, towards the gaps in its armour. The robot shuddered, things shorting out inside it, and molten metal and fragments of plastic ammo rained down on her. Then the stub end of a tentacle smacked hard against her forearm, right where she’d had her ID implant removed, and the gun spun away. The shepherd adjusted its grip, tossing her about like a fish in a net. She felt a rib crack, but now her right arm was free. Again into the hip pouch, this time her hand closing on the hydraulic shears. She brought them out, closed them over one snake of ribbed metal and set their little hydraulic pump running. The shears sliced with ease through the tentacle and it dropped away, dead. Another tentacle, the shears closing on it, then she fell free.

  She bounced once, twice, in a cloud of dust, the shepherd already moving two or three lengthy strides away from her before it came to an unsteady halt and began to turn round. Up on her feet in an instant, and running, she saw a figure step out through the airlock.

  This could be one of Ricard’s men – there was no guarantee all of them were in Hex Three, and in fact it seemed likely the bulk of them were standing guard over the technical staff attached to the base. The figure held up a hand, something clutched in it, and waved her down with the other hand. Instantly recognizing what he held, she dropped. He threw, and the cylindrical package arced over her head.

  Light flared and something whoomphed. A blast picked her up and tumbled her forward. One gleaming shepherd leg cartwheeled past her in Martian air suddenly thick with dust. Then the figure was helping her up and she recognized Lopomac’s pudgy face, its skin webbed with ruptured capillaries, yet to heal since the decompression he had survived three months ago. Pausing only to snatch up the rifle she had dropped, he pulled her towards the airlock and inside.

  ‘You saw Le Blanc’s little speech?’ Var asked, after she removed her EA suit helmet in the suiting antechamber.

  ‘No,’ Lopomac replied, resting the assault rifle across his shoulder. ‘We were too busy watching you fucking over Hex Three.’

  Carol was waiting here, Kaskan too, his eyes reddened. All three were watching Var with something approaching hunger. Carol and Kaskan wore EA suits too, as if all three had been readying themselves to come out to her, before Lopomac destroyed the shepherd and got her back inside. Should they go out again? She didn’t know. She needed to assess the situation here first.

  ‘We’ve been abandoned,’ she said, probing her cracked rib. ‘The Committee has left us out here to die, though apparently someone back there convinced Ricard that a reduced base staff can survive the fifteen or twenty years, until they build another Traveller to send out here.’ She decided not to mention Messina’s Alexander – it didn’t seem relevant.

  ‘Another Traveller?’ Lopomac echoed, puzzled.

  ‘All the others have gone through the Argus bubblemetal plants.’ She then focused on Kaskan. ‘Kaskan, I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘No need.’ He waved a hand in irritation, almost dismissively. ‘I saw what that shepherd grabbed from the crawler before Ricard turned it round.’

  Her throat tight, Var turned to the other two. ‘What’s the situation here? Ricard captured Miska, and I’d have thought he would have got you two as well.’

  ‘Kaskan saw Ricard and two of his enforcers dragging Miska off towards Hex Three, and told us,’ said Lopomac, something odd in his expression.

  ‘Ricard seemed to have forgotten about the cams up on the roof, too,’ said Carol. ‘We were watching when you rounded Shankil’s Butte with that shepherd almost on top of you just about when he sent us a summons. We decided we’d best not respond, and broke into the geology storeroom instead.’

  ‘Hence the seismic survey charge?’ suggested Var.

  ‘Lopomac’s idea,’ Carol explained. ‘He decided we needed to first lose our ID implants, then cut the cam-system feed, and then arm ourselves.’

  Good, that meant Ricard would not be able to keep track of them, though he would know which airlock she had used, so they had to get out of here fast. Lucky for them it had been decided that Antares Base should not carry readerguns. ‘How many charges?’ she asked, now heading towards the door, the others falling in behind her.

  Carol grimaced and held up a single cylindrical charge, its detonator and detachable remote control already in place. Really, it surprised Var that any of these things had been available, since they’d stopped doing seismic mapping on Mars over five years ago.

  ‘Speaking of which’ – Lopomac nodded towards the assault rifle – ‘you got any ammo for this?’

  Var reached into her hip pouch, took out the remaining clip and examined it. ‘Plastic only, I’m afraid.’

  She tossed it to him. He caught it negligently, held it up and frowned at it. Then, showing none of Var’s hesitation, he removed the empty clip and replaced it with the new one, setting the rifle over to single shots. Var meanwhile opened the door from the suiting antechamber and stepped out into the corridor.

  ‘The situation is this,’ Lopomac said, as he followed her out. ‘Ricard has two enforcers guarding Hydroponics. He’s got four in the community room, along with that shit Silberman – where all staff were summoned just ten minutes ago.’

  ‘They’ll have seen Le Blanc’s speech,’ said Var.

  ‘Not much help while they’re under guard.’

  ‘Miska?’ She halted at the end of the corridor, wondering where it would be best to head now.

  They seemed reluctant to say anything for a moment, then it was Lopomac who spoke. ‘We didn’t break out those charges just because Ricard summon
ed us, nor because he’d got a shepherd up and running.’ He paused, not looking at her, but frowning down at the assault rifle he held. ‘On the way to Hex Three, Ricard stopped off at an airlock – the outer door is still open because someone is lying across the threshold.’ He looked up. ‘We guessed that someone isn’t Ricard or one of his men.’

  Var felt the tight ball of doubt in her gut expand and dissipate through her limbs, to leave her with a colder and more pragmatic clarity. If there had been any doubt that Ricard intended to carry through his orders, it had just been dispelled. Her own ruthlessness had now been utterly justified.

  ‘Very well,’ she said succinctly. ‘Silberman is the only exec Ricard has left. I killed the other four. I also killed four or possibly more of his enforcers over at Hex Three.’ She awaited some response to that, but only Kaskan reacted.

  ‘Good,’ he said, ‘but maybe not good enough.’

  She nodded. ‘Ricard still has Silberman and the six you mentioned in the community room and Hydroponics, plus himself and two others still over in Hex Three. We have to deal with them or we die – if not very soon then later, when he truly fucks things up here.’

  ‘They’re all armed. Ricard controls the reactor and we can’t afford to use that seismic charge or get into a fire-fight in Hydroponics,’ Lopomac pointed out, adding, ‘Even with plastic ammo. Then there’s that.’ He pointed to one of the nearby metre-square windows, providing a view across to where she had entered, and then out towards Hex Three. The dust was settling and, coated with it, the remains of the shepherd looked like some strange Martian cactus. However, just beyond it, the second shepherd was striding into view.

  Var reached into her hip pouch to take out the remaining side arm, then just stared at it. Ruthless she might be, but simply not ruthless enough. Kaskan was right: even with potentially a hundred and fifty people against them, Ricard’s men still held the upper hand. Four or five assault rifles – and she guaranteed that Ricard still had some ceramic ammo available – could easily turn that number of people into mincemeat. But even if the enforcers presently in the Community Room were somehow driven out, they could simply withdraw to an airlock antechamber like the one she and her friends had just departed – easily defended – then head out of the main base. No one would follow, not with assault rifles trained on the exit, and certainly not at risk of being snatched by a shepherd.

  Thereafter, Ricard controlled the reactor, which meant, essentially, that he could shut down all systems. Eventually the air would turn foul and he could dictate whatever terms he chose. She suspected he would just wait until there was no need to turn those systems back on again. He was stupid enough.

  ‘We need to take off the head. We need to get Ricard,’ she decided.

  ‘We can’t get to him through Wing Five,’ said Lopomac. ‘We’d need to repair the window and repressurize before we could open either of the bulkhead doors, and that would mean going outside just to get to that section.’

  ‘Maybe we can make it to Hex Three without that shepherd getting to us first,’ she suggested weakly.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Lopomac, ‘though the closest we can get to it without actually going outside is the Hydroponics hex, where Ricard has two enforcers. If I didn’t know him to be so stupid, I’d reckon he was covering that approach, too.’

  ‘I can kill the two in Hydroponics,’ said Kaskan.

  ‘But how do we do that without risking the glass being smashed, and wiping out any chance we have of surviving here?’ Var asked.

  ‘I’ll give the plants too much of a good thing.’

  Earth

  Rows of seats ran down the middle of the passenger compartment, while either side was walled with aluminium cupboards. A large video screen to the fore provided a display from the cockpit, almost as if a hole had been cut through the craft’s exterior to show a carbocrete runway curving away to the right. Flexi-displays were hooked on to the back of each seat, facing the passengers behind. They were of the kind that could be removed, bent into a curve, and lodged inside space helmets to give a 3D effect. Inset into the arms of each seat, ahead of the sockets for oxygen hoses, were VR half-gloves for calling up any chosen view or entertainment.

  The two soldiers dragged Saul to one of the front-row seats and manhandled him down into it, then shoved Hannah into the seat just beside him. She glanced to one side, noting the technician now stripping off his overalls and donning a spacesuit like his fellows. Two guards remained standing over her and Saul, with squat, ugly machine pistols trained on them.

  ‘Can you think of any reason why I should not kill you immediately?’ Malden demanded, stepping into the space before them and leaning back against the bulkhead.

  ‘You want to know who and what I am, and why I am here,’ Saul instantly replied.

  ‘That’s true, but you nearly fucked up this entire mission.’

  Saul pressed the heel of one hand between his eyes. Before he could reply, Hannah said, ‘How? We didn’t even know about this mission.’

  Malden’s gaze strayed towards her. ‘You led the Inspectorate straight to Embarkation, and now we’ve got more on the way. Luckily I’ve given them other distractions.’

  ‘The space plane?’ said Saul.

  Malden’s gaze swung back to him. ‘A distraction to facilitate our boarding this space plane, but I used the aeros to remove what I thought was a threat to us.’

  ‘You thought I worked for the Inspectorate.’

  ‘What was I to think? Inspectorate enforcers were heading here; you were ahead of them. It was only after I hit them that I realized they were after you, upon discovering your sloppy penetration of their security here. Did you deliberately follow me?’

  ‘No. Pure coincidence – or more likely our aims are the same.’

  Malden then just stared at Saul, almost statue-like, his eyes a deep, dark red and with fractured blood vessels webbing his face, and Hannah realized that Saul’s prediction was on the button. Malden was dying, and it seemed likely he knew it. Perhaps this was the real reason he had not killed them. Maybe he hoped she could do something to help him to change that verdict or, if not, maybe he hoped Saul might somehow replace him.

  ‘So why are you here?’ Saul asked.

  ‘I intend to take Argus and the Argus Network out of Committee hands.’

  Saul tilted his head, with a flash of amusement. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘That’s . . . interesting.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ Malden countered.

  ‘I’m here to take Argus and the Argus Network out of Committee hands.’

  Malden gazed at him blankly for a moment, then stepped closer, studying Saul more intently.

  ‘It’s true,’ Hannah interjected. ‘You’re not the only one who doesn’t care for our rulers.’

  ‘Yet, despite your dislike, you worked for them willingly enough,’ Malden commented.

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Little is fair, in this world.’ He returned his attention to Saul and continued, ‘Do you know they never decommissioned the Traveller VI engine on the Argus asteroid? They kept it at first because they were going to reposition out at the Lagrange point between Earth and the Moon, then as a safety protocol. They’ve kept that engine fuelled and workable for decades just in case the asteroid needed to be used against anything bigger coming in out of the Oort cloud.’

  ‘Yes, I do know,’ Saul replied. ‘But why does it interest you so?’

  ‘I’ll use it to drop the asteroid on Brussels,’ said Malden. ‘The impact should depopulate much of Europe and take out most of the Committee and nearly forty per cent of the Executive.’ He paused. ‘Centralized world government is never ever a good idea.’

  Hannah sat quietly chewing that over. Saul had previously stated his intention of seizing control of Argus and the satellite network, and now that she looked at it in the light of Malden’s statement, it didn’t seem enough. Had Saul intended to do something similar? Because,
once he had taken control up there, the question remained: what next?

  ‘That seems . . . drastic,’ said Saul.

  ‘You disagree?’

  ‘Let’s say I have moral doubts,’ Saul hedged.

  ‘Why?’ Malden asked.

  ‘Perhaps I’m not so careless of human life as you,’ Saul suggested. ‘Anyway, I’d have thought the power of the Argus Network would’ve appealed to you.’

  It was like seeing two big cats facing off in a world full of herbivores, but Hannah felt one of them was severely underestimating the potential of the other. Malden had been an intelligent and resourceful man, who was now running some serious hardware and software in his head. Saul had been a genius with an intelligence difficult to describe, let alone measure, and the additions inside his skull were of an order of magnitude more powerful than Malden’s, or at least they would be when the organic interface had made sufficient connections.

  ‘Of course, it does,’ Malden replied. ‘But Argus Station is not essential to that network. In fact, once I’ve seized control of the network and taken the Argus computers out of the equation, I can operate it from down on Earth.’

  Hannah seriously doubted that would improve the situation on Earth for anyone.

  From outside came a series of clattering booms as umbilicals detached. Hannah glanced round to see two of the soldiers closing the airlock hatch, while others were returning to their seats to strap in. The erstwhile technician came across to them and pulled their straps into position, and from where they inserted in sockets down beside their hips, there came the click of locks closing. After he stepped over to Saul, Hannah reached down and tentatively tried to disengage her own strap. No joy. It seemed the locking mechanisms of the straps could be controlled via the plane’s computers, so they wouldn’t be going anywhere until Malden gave instructions to unlock.