The Departure to-1

by Neal Asher

  ‘Too easy,’ Saul remarked to the soldier. ‘They were ready for us.’

  Malden turned. ‘They were lax. They were—’

  All at once he seemed to lose the ability to speak, just mouthing words but nothing coming out. He slapped one hand to his face, digging in his fingers before letting it drop, then screamed loudly and began to slump. Keeping his machine pistol trained on them, Braddock moved towards Malden, as the man finally collapsed to his knees, his head bowed.

  ‘Your revolution served the purpose of the people down below.’ Malden said in a voice not his own. ‘But it serves no purpose up here.’ His head snapped upright and he turned it towards Hannah and Saul. ‘But I’m so glad you brought me these two traitors to the State.’

  Weapons fire erupted, a stuttering mechanical sound like faulty diesel engines starting up. Numerous sources began laying down a withering fire. Up above, a figure flew backwards to slam into a scaffold pole, shattered bullets and fragments of his suit spraying out all around, and a mist of blood behind him. He grabbed the pole, trying to reorient himself, but the harsh slapping impact of bullets just continued, till eventually his grip slackened and he tumbled slowly away. The firing continued amid shouting transmitted over com. As Saul turned away, dragging Hannah after him, something exploded over to their right, where he glimpsed a splash of blood up one wall.

  Braddock hurled himself aside as impacts tracked across the floor, throwing fragments of blue plastic in every direction. Their path terminated at Malden, who began to shudder convulsively as shots tracked up his back, the rounds shattering inside him but failing to penetrate all the way through. He vomited blood as the force of the shots threw him forward. Elsewhere someone began shrieking as he gyrated downwards, a bullet hole in his airpack acting like a jet motor. He slammed against the side of a transformer, next into the floor, then spun round and started to rise again. A short burst of fire tore his airpack apart, and most of his chest.

  They were now under the steps, where Saul pulled open a circular hatch only half a metre in diameter and pushed Hannah down towards it. Bullets rattled against the stairway above, peppering more blue plastic through the air. Braddock, over to his left now, stepped out briefly and fired upwards, but the intensity of return fire forced him back under cover. He was shouting, the words resonating in Saul’s ears, asking for a response but receiving none. Saul felt that if he who had spoken through Malden’s mouth really wanted them all dead, dead they would be by now. But the speaker wanted Hannah, and also wanted Saul.

  They crawled through the maintenance tunnel as fast as they could. Firing echoed behind them, and he turned back to see Braddock entering the tunnel, shooting behind him from the cover of its mouth. No firing in return this time; none at all. Then out into a long low room lined with gas cylinders, illuminated by their helmet lights only.

  ‘What happened to Malden?’ Hannah asked breathlessly, but he could sense she had already guessed.

  ‘The comlife got him.’

  ‘Got him?’

  ‘Went straight into his skull and spoke through him, which it could do easily enough since it is comlife with a human component.’

  ‘The way he spoke . . .’ she began, but didn’t want to say out loud what she was thinking.

  ‘You mean with Interrogator Smith’s voice?’

  She bowed her head. ‘We’re dead, aren’t we?’

  ‘Either that or we may want to be,’ he replied.

  Just then the EM came back on, whining in his head.

  ‘Who is this Smith, then?’ Braddock gazed at them intently.

  Hannah sat herself upright in the confined space, and looked across at the man. Braddock was resting against one wall, with his machine pistol in his lap; he could turn it on them in an instant.

  ‘He’s the political director up here on Argus,’ said Hannah, a slight catch in her voice.

  ‘I know that,’ Braddock snapped, now focusing his gaze on Saul. ‘But there’s something else. How the hell did he do that to Malden?’

  ‘Hannah?’ Saul enquired, looking across at her for an answer.

  She dipped her head and stared at the floor, trying to dispel her doom-laden thoughts so that she could restore her mind to its analytical best. She now looked up at Saul. ‘He was our political director, so he must have taken whatever he wanted of my research and applied it to himself – whether with government permission or not, I don’t know.’ To Braddock she now continued, ‘He’s the same type as Malden, but managed to outmanoeuvre Malden because he was well prepared, and because he’s been running the hardware in his skull longer and knows better how to use it.’

  ‘What about him?’ Braddock indicated Saul with a tilt of his chin.

  What about him? Hannah wondered. Saul had obviously expected to come up here and snatch control of the station as easily as he had taken control of the cell complex, and if there had only been normal humans and computers for him to overcome, he would have had every chance of succeeding. But, first, Malden had stood in his way, and now a comlife poisonous spider lurked at the heart of things. And, just to add to their woes, station security officers were now searching for them, so this little hideaway would not remain safe for much longer. Could Saul triumph over such odds? Was he strong enough yet? Gazing at him, she had to wonder just what was going on behind those unreadable red eyes. She now spoke to try and boost her own confidence:

  ‘The hardware and software inside his skull is far in advance of that used by both Malden and Smith – his intelligence, too,’ she explained. ‘He just hasn’t had a chance to use it yet.’

  ‘What, my intelligence?’ Saul joked.

  Hannah did not respond to this attempt at humour. It was dry and disconnected anyway, since Saul was somewhere else, his gaze directed overhead and his face expressionless. It almost seemed as if an empty mannikin sat in his place.

  ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

  ‘I am considering our options,’ he replied.

  ‘Perhaps if you could let us in?’ she suggested.

  His gaze dropped to focus briefly on her, then on Braddock.

  ‘I am simply bringing more of myself online,’ he explained icily. ‘Even though I cannot connect to the local network, I can that way more accurately analyse the circumstances that brought us to our current position, and from there divine a solution.’

  His gaze drifted away from them as he continued speaking, till it almost seemed as if it wasn’t actually him speaking – as if the real Saul was elsewhere and had delegated the tiresome task of turning thoughts into words to some subprogram of his mind.

  ‘Obviously, Smith took an interest in the attack upon his old stomping ground of Inspectorate HQ London, so located Janus on Govnet, and through Janus located my bunker. His abilities are such that he could not have failed to locate Malden, once Malden had started operating as comlife. He did not fail to locate him. From his own words, Smith clearly allowed Malden to conduct his little revolution, possibly with Committee approval or possibly not . . .’

  The ensuing pause was lengthy, his lips still moving according to some subroutine, then finally the voicebox re-engaging. ‘Smith was sensitive to anything involving the name Avram Coran, therefore must have tracked that identity back to reveal how I obtained it at Gene Bank . . . He’s been on top of me and Malden right from the start, I think.’ Saul refocused on Hannah, his voice becoming marginally more human. ‘But I still wonder why he allowed Malden to get away with what he did down at Minsk. I suspect Smith’s agenda might differ from the Committee’s.’

  ‘Good to know how we got here,’ Braddock interjected, ‘but I’d rather now know how the hell we’re going to get out.’

  ‘Smith has tight control of the station network, and will be watching out for me. If I try to penetrate it, he might be able to do to me what he did to Malden. I need to create a diversion and find another route in, if I am to kill him.’

  There it was, stated with cold precision: kill him.

&nbs
p; ‘How, though?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘Robots,’ Saul replied succinctly, a statement of fact, his gaze again elsewhere.

  ‘If you could explain?’ Hannah suggested.

  ‘Once the EM shield is on, all electromagnetic communications go down. The computer networks throughout Argus Station are maintained by physical wiring and line-of-sight laser. However, for the robots both those forms of connection will only be intermittent, since they are constantly on the move. They will be running on their own programs for the duration of shielding, and only updated every time they physically connect up, or connect by laser, or when the shields go down.’

  ‘Smith can’t be in the robots,’ declared Hannah. ‘At least not fully. Maybe they possess stripped-down copies of his AI component within them, but there’s not enough processing space for much more.’

  ‘I doubt he even bothers,’ Saul said.

  ‘We need to find robots?’ Braddock asked.

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Readerguns are going to be a problem.’

  ‘Quite true, but not until we depart the rim and head inwards, to where they are concentrated. And I have no intention of going there just yet,’ he said decisively. ‘Come on, we’ve been here long enough.’

  They’d reached their current narrow place of concealment via an even narrower crawlway designed for some of the very robots Saul was talking about. He now headed for the exit leading to this, then paused.

  ‘Solar activity must be high,’ he observed.

  ‘What?’ Hannah asked.

  Saul continued, ‘I can see no other reason for Smith to keep the EM shield up and running, when it severely hampers his search for us.’ He glanced round. ‘Only hardwired cams and detection systems can be used, since most portable detection equipment won’t work, and those searching will only be able to communicate with each other by using hardened consoles. As we have noticed, both consoles and the access points for them are few in this section of the station.’ He nodded as if confirming this to himself, and entered the crawlway.

  Hannah followed him in, Braddock close behind her.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Hannah demanded as Saul abruptly halted in the crawlway.

  ‘To find larger and more effective versions of this chap who is directly ahead of me,’ he replied.

  ‘What’s ahead of you?’ asked Braddock.

  Hannah wormed her way further, till she was pressing against Saul. She felt him go tense for a moment, then relax as if such physical proximity had first irritated him, then been discarded as irrelevant. Up beside him, she could get a close look at what he was talking about.

  ‘Maintenance bot,’ she informed Braddock.

  The robot was about the size of a badger, and indeed had the same body shape, but was fashioned of metal and provided with numerous pneumatic starfish feet rather than four legs. It had halted on detecting a blockage ahead of it – namely Saul. He reached out and grabbed the machine, turning it on to its side so he could inspect it. Directly underneath its front end was a connecting plug enabling it to socket into a data port and upload new instructions, should the normal radio option be closed. On the side facing up lay a single panel which Saul flipped open. Inside were various chip sockets, but obviously not what he wanted. As he turned the thing over, Hannah noted the glassy hemisphere of a laser com unit on its back, but that wasn’t what he wanted either. Opening the panel on the other side, he revealed two coiled-up cables, one for recharging and the other an optic with a gigagate plug. Hannah well knew that all optic gate sockets were manufactured to take the smaller plugs.

  ‘Plugging in?’ she suggested.

  He silently answered by peeling artificial skin from his temple, then slid his nail into the plug of synthetic skin underneath and levered it out, before uncoiling the optic and inserting it into the teragate socket in his own head. After a moment, he set the robot upright and sent it scuttling ahead, but not so fast it would risk pulling the cable from his head. Soon they were heading out into a wider area which seemed to be used as an oxygen store, judging by the cylinders clustered all around them. Saul stood, then picked up the robot and cradled it in his arms like a pet.

  ‘What now?’ Hannah asked, eyeing the machine.

  ‘We need construction robots. Heavy robots.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because readerguns and machine pistols won’t bring them down straight away and because, with the right programming, they can kill.’ He turned to look at Braddock. ‘Are you prepared to help us?’ he asked.

  Braddock gazed at him bitterly. ‘I’m out of alternatives.’

  ‘Good. Well, stay alert. You know what’ll happen if they capture you.’

  Utterly logical, guaranteed to appeal to Braddock’s sense of self-preservation, Hannah thought. Almost like following a formula.

  Braddock nodded and, like a good soldier, checked the workings of his weapon before loading it with a fresh clip. Saul led them to the far end of the store where another robot had been bolted to the floor, its single function being to load the gas bottles stockpiled here onto a conveyor.

  ‘This leads out to the edge of the station,’ explained Saul, pointing up the conveyor.

  Abruptly, the loading robot opened out its single arm and clasped a four-fingered claw around one of the gas bottles. The conveyor started running for a second, then shut down.

  ‘The fuck!’ said Braddock, stepping back.

  ‘It’s under my control now,’ Saul told him. ‘Let’s go.’

  He climbed onto the conveyor and, after some hesitation, Hannah climbed up behind him. The belt then advanced a short distance to let Braddock get on and, with the soldier in place, it started running again. Hannah understood that she and Braddock were only witnessing the surface activity, and that Saul must be running some complex programs in his head as he used the line-of-sight laser from the ‘badger’ robot to similarly seize control of other machines in their immediate vicinity. Though this might well save them from capture and then inevitably torture and execution, she had to wonder what might come next. How important would Saul consider human life as he sank ever deeper into the machine?

  12

  Who Are the Slaves?

  Since before the start of the twenty-first century we have had robots, but they were then generally unsophisticated: automated machine tools, independent lawnmowers incapable of overcoming molehills, and other clunky underpowered devices. Following Moore’s law, the memory and processing power of computers had been growing exponentially for years before the software started to catch up, and thus – seemingly following an inversion of the evolutionary process in which brains developed before bodies – we come to the sophisticated independent robot, and that, like so many other developments in the twenty-first century, took power. Already robotics experts were running sophisticated robot minds in computers, but had yet to fully develop the hardware. There was no point in doing so – the mechanisms were rapidly becoming available but, generally, the reach of the robots made from these would be only as long as their power cables. The new nanotube batteries and super-capacitors changed all that, so within just a few years, robots became capable of doing things only humans could do before, and a few years later they went beyond the capacity of their masters, but still, slaves they remain.

  Antares Base

  The two enforcers were actually inside the Hydroponics hex, and why not, for the air was always pleasant and the lights much brighter and more cheerful than anywhere else within the base. The bulkhead doors were closed, of course, to prevent the moisture-laden special mix of air spreading out through the rest of the base, and also to keep the human-oriented air out of Hydroponics.

  ‘Here,’ whispered Kaskan, pointing up at the computer screen as, crouching low, he pushed the chair aside and moved up to the console.

  They were now in Wing One, in the small control room attached to Hydroponics. Here resided the computer that monitored the plant life, controlled the lights, the fluid mix in the troughs, and t
he gas mix of the air. Here also were packed tanks of various chemical fertilizers, as well as cylinders full of fungicides, for though they had managed to establish a small ecosystem here without introducing harmful insects, fungal infections were common.

  Lopomac remained outside to guard the corridor, and Carol paused by the door, while Var crouched behind Kaskan. All of them were suited in readiness for entering the airlock leading out of the adjacent hex. They had to keep low because of the windows ranged along one wall, just a metre away from the computer screen, which overlooked the interior of the Hydroponics hex.

  ‘A higher level of CO2 helps the plants grow,’ Kaskan whispered. ‘We keep it at just the right level to prevent anyone working there from getting asphyxiated – but that can be changed.’ He reached up, operating a ball control to call up a menu, then touched the screen, shifting upwards a marker on a bar control, but Var reached over and caught hold of his hand.

  ‘If they start suffocating they might fire their weapons,’ she said.

  Kaskan shook his head. ‘No, it’ll be gradual anoxia.’ He nodded towards the windows. ‘I’ll raise the nitrogen content too, so they’ll start to feel tired, maybe a little ill and certainly a bit confused. If they realize something’s wrong, they’ll head for the bulkhead door to try and escape, and that exertion will probably be enough to knock them out. The door, of course, will have automatically sealed by then, and even if they do fire their weapons it’ll be at that door, which won’t cause us a problem.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  Kaskan just gazed at her steadily, but it was Carol who answered from behind, ‘Because he’s seen it happen often enough.’

  Of course, Kaskan was one of those who had been due to depart at the time Var and others arrived. He’d been here during the first blowouts, during the period when it was discovered that not all the regolith blocks were completely solid and impermeable. Var remembered Gisender telling her about the time after one blowout, when even oxygen had been rationed and they had been forced to live right on the brink of asphyxiation for nearly a month. Many had not made it. Many had simply died in their cabins. Some, like Kaskan and Gisender, had been very suspicious of Ricard’s activities during that period, because the political director had seized control of the atmosphere regulators.