The Departure to-1

by Neal Asher

  ‘Alan Saul,’ enquired Langstrom, ‘are you listening?’

  ‘Always,’ he replied, through their public address system.

  ‘We’re with you, then. Just tell us what you want.’

  ‘You’ll excuse me if I reserve judgement on that.’ Saul paused for a second. ‘Though I perfectly understand your change of allegiance, I don’t see why any of your men should want to stick with you, especially since assault troops are on the way.’

  ‘Then you obviously haven’t spent most of your life shovelling Committee shit.’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Just tell us.’

  ‘Very well.’ Saul considered the situation, and decided he wasn’t going to let Langstrom or his men get anywhere near Tech Central. ‘Since I disarmed you and sent you away, I see that you have all rearmed yourselves. I want you, Mustafa and Jack, and the thirty-two other men formerly of SA22 Assault Group, to now disarm and confine those other hundred and eleven soldiers with you.’

  The three men just stood staring at the source of his voice for a moment, till Jack was the first to snap out of it.

  ‘Just bring ’em through one at a time,’ he said, gazing fixedly at Langstrom.

  Langstrom shook his head. ‘No need. They’ll follow orders now Smith’s spies are out of the way.’

  ‘Smith’s spies would be the eighteen held in the disciplinary cell?’ Saul suggested. ‘And our friend down at your feet.’

  The gory detritus in the air, Saul noticed, was all heading towards the louvres of an air cleaner, which began to make a sound like an air-locked central heating system as it gobbled them down. Langstrom glanced down at the corpse, taking a step back from the spreading blood. He then glanced up at a nearby cam, as if hoping to catch a glimpse of Saul. ‘Yeah, they’re not so hard to spot.’

  ‘Once you’ve disarmed the rest, SA22 should be ready to fight the troops it was formerly ordered to assist.’

  ‘We knew that would be necessary.’

  Saul studied Langstrom carefully. How was he to judge this man? Could all this be some elaborate scheme to get a killer close enough to Saul to end things quickly?

  ‘It will only become necessary if their space planes manage to evade the satellites I’m dropping on them … but be ready, all the same.’ He left it at that, returning his attention to the screens in front of him, and the vector calculations inside his head.

  ‘The pilots have spotted the satellites,’ Braddock informed him.

  The four space planes were now separating, their steering jets blasting, and contrails whipping away from their almost retracted wings. Saul adjusted the paths of his two satellites and after a minute, the planes reacted to that. Perfect, they were dropping lower while extending their wings, hoping for greater manoeuvrability within atmosphere. Saul made another course correction to the satellites, whereupon one pilot – obviously a lot smarter than his fellows – raised his plane’s ailerons to aerobrake hard. All the steering jets pushing the plane down, it dropped out of formation just as the pilots of the other planes got wise, too, and tried to do the same thing.

  Too late.

  He had imaging from the two satellites displayed on the screen, imaging from other satellites, too, and from the station itself. A grandstand view. One of the satellites streaked in, striking a space plane trying to throw itself into a turn. The target became an explosion fifteen kilometres long, stabbing past a second plane, the blastwave setting the second plane into a spin that he hoped it couldn’t correct. The next satellite hit the third plane, shearing off its rear half and leaving the rest to tumble through upper atmosphere, on and out of sight. Calculating its vector, he realized it would never actually hit the ground.

  ‘It’s recovering,’ Braddock noted, gazing at the spinning plane as it gradually stabilized.

  The spinning craft finally managed to correct, then abruptly extended its wings and began arcing down.

  ‘Heading back to Minsk,’ Saul noted. ‘Or maybe one of the emergency runways in Australia or Canada. Must have been damaged.’

  ‘It’s out of it, then?’

  ‘Yes, but we still have this problem.’ Saul called up an image of the plane that had dropped out of formation first. It was once again rising through the upper atmosphere. ‘But we have time,’ he continued. ‘It’ll have to do a full orbit of Earth’ – he ran some calculations based on the fuel the plane had available and its optimum approach speed – ‘which gives us twenty-two hours.’

  ‘Can you hit it with some more satellites?’

  ‘No, they’ll be watching out for that now.’ Saul turned his chair so as to face both Braddock and Hannah. ‘We’ll have to kill them near or actually inside the station, if we’re still alive by then.’

  15

  Drive to Fusion

  When, back in 2035, the first commercial fusion reactor went online, scientists speculated that they were now just ten years away from using the same technology to build a fusion drive. It was to prove, however, a lot more difficult to develop than they supposed. Within ten years, the first prototype was assembled in orbit, then towed out from Earth for test firing. It worked for just six tenths of a second before sputtering out, yet it took the engineers a further five years to find out why. The problem was gravity. On Earth, the engine tolerances were correct, but once away from gravity the device distorted. In fact the engine was far too sensitive, since the slightest misalignment could shut it down. It took a further ten years to design and build a more robust machine, and only five years after its first successful test, the next massive fusion engine was being installed in the steadily growing hull of the first Traveller spacecraft.

  Chang and the Saberhagen twins ensured that everyone they could communicate with was made as safe as possible. They found every available spacesuit or survival suit and assigned them, before ensconcing those people still without suits in the safer, inner areas of the living accommodation – the sections that could be sealed with bulkhead doors. But in total that amounted to less than eight hundred people, because the moment the three of them tried opening com with those outside the area Saul controlled, Smith shut the communication down. Just as he seemed to be shutting down so much else, for all construction and maintenance work aboard Argus had now ceased. Even the ore carriers were no longer running between the station itself and the smelter plants, which had started folding up and closing their huge mirrors.

  ‘You’ve now lost your chief security force here,’ Saul observed, ‘and now only one of those space planes looks like having a chance of ever getting here.’

  Smith’s image flicked into view on the middle screen, the communication link having been immediately accepted. ‘It has been a consideration of mine at what point you would resort to the infantile gloating of a terrorist. But I feel it necessary for you to understand that, whilst you consider yourself of great significance, to the state and to the people at large you are merely an irritating inconvenience.’

  ‘Your laser network isn’t looking too healthy.’ The jibe was out of Saul’s mouth before he could stop it.

  Smith shook his head as if hearing the absurd logic of a child. ‘It is true that over eighty per cent of the seven hundred satellites are temporarily in need of maintenance, but we have over six thousand satellite lasers on the point of being activated.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  ‘Not within your own limited lifespan, I would suggest,’ Smith replied, allowing himself a nasty smile.

  ‘Only one space plane.’ Saul held up a finger.

  ‘That plane contains over fifty highly trained military personnel, armed with state-of-the-art suppression hardware. The robots you have stolen from the state will not be sufficient to interfere with their mission, Saul. Not in the least.’ Smith paused, then shrugged. ‘It is my own opinion that the dispatching of four planeloads of troops was the hysterical overreaction of untrained personnel down below.’

  Saul leant back in his chair. ‘I wonder, Smith,
how some of your masters might overreact if they were told that you’ve created a back door through which to seize control of the entire satellite network?’

  ‘Your naivety is perhaps the result of a sheltered upbringing, or maybe the consequence of some mental debilitation suffered under adjustment.’

  ‘Perhaps you would like to elaborate?’ Saul suggested calmly.

  ‘My deserved political status as delegate for Argus Station was approved a year ago, during early-session Committee hearings. After the Committee is relocated here, it is inevitable that I will be voted in to replace Chairman Messina, almost at once. It is my experience that the Earth government is always practical about the realities – which is why it has survived so long.’

  ‘You threatened to fry them?’ Saul suggested.

  ‘Very practical of them to avoid such unpleasantness.’

  ‘I see,’ said Saul, feeling he now saw even more than Smith was admitting.

  By reducing to just one the number of space planes about to dock with the Argus Station, Saul felt sure he had actually done Smith a favour. Did that mean that Smith hadn’t fought as hard as he might have to prevent Saul destroying those other planes? It now struck him as highly likely that the force, ostensibly dispatched here to counter the threat Saul himself presented, would also have received instructions concerning Smith. That those troops had been dispatched so quickly indicated that they had been assembled and waiting long before Malden had launched his coup. They had been ready to seize the station back from Smith, and thus re-establish Chairman Messina’s control here.

  ‘Are those people over in Arcoplex One your hostages?’ Saul asked abruptly.

  Smith gave him that nasty smile again, and cut the communication link.

  Saul continued staring at the blank screen, assessing and calculating, then began mentally probing towards the Political Office. But there he hit a wall, for Smith had pulled back and consolidated, so his grip over the Political Office and the rest of the station now seemed absolute. He was clearly playing a waiting game, perhaps hoping Saul would squander his robots against the forces aboard the approaching space plane, thus weakening two enemies simultaneously. Saul realized even more urgently that to succeed he needed to eliminate Smith before that plane arrived. The situation would have been hopeless had it not been for Langstrom’s defection, which in itself still gave him grounds for suspicion.

  Saul shook his head, wished he hadn’t when he instantly felt dizzy and sick, then with a thought summoned up views of Braddock, who was now guiding Chang and the twins back down to Tech Central accommodation, located three floors below. As Braddock stepped back to let the three others file into the accommodation section then closed the door on them, Saul addressed him through the intercom, while simultaneously engaging the locks.

  ‘You should find yourself somewhere to rest, Braddock,’ he suggested. ‘Get some sleep.’

  Hannah, after recently removing Saul’s blood pressure-feed, was already fast asleep in a wide comfortable hammock in Le Roque’s former apartment adjoining Tech Central.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll go get some sleep,’ Braddock agreed, gecko boots slamming down heavily as he marched resolutely towards the cageway.

  Meanwhile, the last of those whose loyalty to him Langstrom was uncertain of were being ushered into Barracks Two and Three. Sergeants Jack and Mustafa then shut the bulkhead doors and engaged the electric locks, finally securing a hundred or so potential problems.

  ‘Okay, Langstrom,’ Saul said, ‘time for you to prove yourself further.’

  ‘How?’ Langstrom sat in his office, gazing at station schematics on his screen.

  ‘Smith’s adjustment cell block is only a hundred metres away from your barracks, and it’s situated close to the Political Office.’

  Both the adjustment cell block and the Political Office lay between Arcoplexes One and Two, and had been built well inside the lattice walls. The reason for this was obvious, since it gave them both room to expand. Langstrom called up images of both structures on his screen and began to study them intently, only glancing round as Mustafa and Jack rejoined him.

  ‘I want you to hit the cell block first,’ instructed Saul. ‘Secure the place so that you won’t have any of Smith’s guards at your back, and then move on to the Political Office.’

  ‘What about the readerguns?’ Mustafa enquired.

  Via the multiple viewpoints provided by construction robots clinging to nearby station frameworks, Saul focused first on the barracks, suspended within inner station structure like a starfish caught in a net, then on the cell block that lay a little further away. Certainly, readerguns were in evidence, but it seemed that not one of them was functional.

  ‘They’re disabled in the cell block itself, and along your route to the Political Office,’ Saul informed them. ‘Smith and I both sacrificed readerguns to prevent them falling under each other’s control. However, it seems likely they’re still in operation within Smith’s domain.’

  ‘Why not use the robots to attack?’ Mustafa asked.

  ‘I could, of course, but I’m offering second chances.’ That was not entirely true, because though he could use his robots, it struck him as unlikely they would prove sufficient to penetrate the Political Office. He needed soldiers, but before he could trust them he needed to assess them in action.

  ‘We never even had a first chance,’ grumbled Mustafa. ‘Your robots gonna leave us alone?’

  ‘My robots will leave you alone,’ Saul confirmed.

  The three of them now headed off to Barracks One, where their men checked and loaded their weapons while Langstrom delivered the briefest of briefings Saul had ever heard: ‘Guys, we hit the cell block, let the prisoners go, and stick the guards in the cells.’

  ‘What if the guards resist?’ asked a tall Nordic-blonde woman.

  ‘I didn’t say they had to go into the cells alive, did I?’

  General laughter greeted this, so it indeed seemed no love was lost.

  Within minutes they set off again, propelling themselves, by wall handles, down a long corridor leading from the barracks to a point where it expanded into a tubeway, then through a large airlock, then further along the tubeway for about five hundred metres, until they reached a point where any construction of walls and ceiling ended. From there they progressed along a wide walkway, now down on their feet using their gecko boots. As they proceeded, Langstrom issued brief comments over radio, which his sergeants translated into orders.

  ‘Five in the admissions section, maybe six,’ observed Langstrom.

  ‘Peach, your guys in. I want ’em disarmed and on the floor,’ ordered Mustafa. ‘Use zip-cuffs.’

  As they reached a crossroads in the walkway, Langstrom gestured right and then left. ‘We need to cover the other entrances.’

  Sergeant Jack raised a fist, held up three fingers, twice, then also gestured right and then left. ‘Three minutes,’ he added. ‘Let us know when you’re in position.’

  Breaking into long loping strides, twelve troops went right and twelve went left. This confirmed for Saul that the men were organized in units of four, below the sergeants. Langstrom now slowed his pace, gazing up at three robots moving through the scaffolds above.

  ‘They ain’t moving the same,’ remarked Jack.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Langstrom replied.

  Saul was surprised but a brief analysis provided the reason: the programs that he’d put in place – almost completely displacing their previous programming – displayed his own particular coding quirks, and the robots moved more like living creatures now.

  Soon the soldiers reached a point where new wall and ceiling construction extended out from the cell block.

  ‘Top and bottom,’ said Langstrom. ‘The four blind wings.’

  Two fingers up from Jack, then a thumb stabbed up and down. Eight men detached their gecko boots from the floor, propelled themselves up on to the top surface of the tubeway and set off. A further eight men headed over one side of th
e walkway and began making their way across the scaffolding underneath. Saul again checked a schematic of the complex, and immediately saw what Langstrom meant. Four diverging corridors possessed only one conventional way in, and finished up against the exterior walls. However, temporary airlocks were positioned above and below each end to facilitate future installation of vertical shafts. Perhaps waiting for when further levels of cells needed to be added, which indicated the way Smith and his kind thought.

  Soon they entered the tubeway into the complex, at which point he lost sight of them, since the staff inside had disconnected the cam system.

  ‘There’s about forty prisoners over there,’ Langstrom reported eventually. He paused for a moment. ‘Are you watching, Saul?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Saul replied, though it had taken him a moment to realize he could. Via the barracks, he keyed into the feed transmitted from thirty-five pincams, each fitted at the temple of every soldier and connected to their fones. Langstrom was currently pointing to a doorway above which hung a big blue sign proclaiming: ‘Adjustment’. Now another view: Peach turned out to be the big blonde and, noticing she had removed her suit helmet, Saul decided they must have already passed through an airlock in the tubeway. She and the other three of her unit were approaching Admissions, where four guards were crouching behind a makeshift barricade composed of tacked-together sheets of bubblemetal.

  One propelled himself out as Peach and her men approached. ‘Good,’ he said peremptorily. ‘It’s about damned time.’

  ‘Time for what?’ Peach asked, still moving forward.