The Departure to-1

by Neal Asher

  A cell?

  He felt as if he had been beaten from head to foot, and his skin scoured with acid. Because he was bound upright, naked and cruciform against a white-tiled wall, with manacles about his wrists and ankles and a steel band about his waist, he instantly thought he had returned to the world of nightmare. But reality possessed a much sharper edge, and a particular pain throbbing in his side reawakened memories of Smith’s knife going in, and his surroundings smelt of shit, which he realized must be his own as soon as he saw the pain inducer projecting from a ceiling-suspended framework. Turning his head slightly, he noted an optic cable trailing from his temple to a box mounted on the wall, just above his shoulder. From this, yet more optics ran up the wall and across the ceiling, connecting into the hardware above the inducer. And then he remembered precisely how he had got here.

  ‘The three . . . bodies,’ Saul had managed, after being dragged down here from the Political Office, and when the two soldiers secured him to the wall.

  ‘Three bodies?’ Smith had enquired with interest, standing with Saul’s VC suit draped over one arm. ‘What three bodies?’

  ‘On the way in . . . the blood on them was dry.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Smith had nodded. ‘I used some of the casualties from our previous encounter, just to set the scene. I also needed to let you kill a few yourself, just so you would feel confident enough of victory to come directly against me. Rather negligent of you to leave your robot behind, but that wouldn’t have mattered anyway, since I had one of my officers standing by with a PA50 tank-buster, just in case.’

  ‘Why?’ Saul had asked.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why the charade, if you had suitable weapons . . . to hit my robots?’

  ‘I only have the one, you see. Initially, I could have sent my soldiers directly against you, but that would have resulted in too many deaths, and I will be needing them now. It was better just to manipulate you, which of course was so easy. You even destroyed those three space planes for me, which of course I can now deny responsibility for.’ Smith had smiled.

  Despite the pain in his head, Saul had retained enough analytical capacity to realize that Smith could have brought him down much earlier. It seemed that this whole charade had not been necessary, but merely to satisy Smith’s enjoyment of manipulation.

  Saul had blinked, the ache in his head partially receding, and he had begun to probe the computer networks in his vicinity, first picking up on the cam view inside the cell itself, then venturing beyond it to see soldiers moving about in the corridors of the cell block. He had reached further, trying to get in contact with Hannah – but then Smith was there, blocking him, undermining him.

  ‘I did consider shutting you completely out of the station network, but it seems that switching off your internal modem would require either destructive computer intervention or even surgery,’ Smith had said. ‘I then considered keeping you unconscious until we two found an opportunity to spend some quality time together, before I got Hannah to surgically extract all that hardware in your skull, but the problem is that while you’re unconscious you are not suffering, and I so very much want you to suffer, Alan Saul.’

  Smith had stepped back and, with a surge of dread, Saul could clearly see the inducer in the ceiling. The man had continued, ‘Then I figured out the perfect solution: recurrent inducement. For any normal subject, periods of unconsciousness last between ten minutes and an hour, but I feel certain, in your case, the recovery period will be quicker. Let’s see, shall we?’

  The agony, as ever, had been unbelievable. He roasted, screaming, in invisible naked flame, his contorted body pounding against the wall behind him like it was being electrocuted. Blackness had overcome him . . . then, seemingly in no time at all, he had been back in the cell, and trying to remember who he was, where he was . . .

  ‘That took only four minutes,’ Smith had said, checking his watch. ‘Remarkable.’ He had departed, slinging Saul’s vacuum suit over his shoulder.

  Then the agony once more, again and again, Smith’s voice recurring too, after the first two times. How many times thereafter, Saul had lost count.

  ‘Readings indicate that you are now fully conscious,’ declared that hated voice.

  Saul licked desiccated lips, trying to think of the words to beg for relief, even though he knew he was merely hearing a recording.

  ‘And once again it is time for instruction.’

  ‘No . . . please . . .’

  A light appeared, up there in that hardware, blinking from red to green, and in the next instant every square millimetre of Saul’s skin began to burn. He felt a moment of utter disbelief that such agony could be possible, as he glimpsed his arm, corded with veins, and could not understand how the skin wasn’t melting. He screamed repeatedly and tried to tear his manacles from the wall till, after an eternity of just ten seconds, his mind escaped once more into comfortable darkness.

  Saul crept into wakefulness like a wild animal approaching a suspicious bounty of food. He couldn’t remember where he was or even when he was, but knew danger lurked close by. He therefore needed to move fast. With a feeling of déjà vu, his mind groped out and tried to incorporate a thousand cam views, tried to latch onto the huge surrounding traffic of computer code . . .

  Not fast enough.

  17

  Retirement without Pension

  As the Committee steadily expanded in power, it grew far too large and complex, until in danger of ceasing to function in any meaningful manner. Sitting above the massive bureaucracy there were over three thousand delegates representing countries or regions across the Earth. Even minor matters, like the standardization of paperclips, became the subject of debates that raged for years, while vastly more important issues were consigned to a political wasteland. However, a winnowing process was already at work as some of the delegates clawed more power to themselves, and created factions or supporters, whilst others of their kind were consigned to a political void. Secret decisions began to get made as an ostensibly egalitarian regime shed any pretence of equality for all. This was the time of the efficiency experts, promoting the division of Earth into larger regions and thereby the dismissal of delegates who failed to secure their hold on power. And, as with all such regimes, the penalty of failure was inevitably severe. It has, ever since, been the case that very few delegates will go into quiet retirement. And the word ‘retirement’, in Committee circles, has become a euphemism for something a great deal less pleasant.

  ‘It is essential that you remain within the arcoplex,’ declared Smith. ‘You will be perfectly safe there and, at present, facilities external to the arcoplex are unable to guarantee your full protection.’

  The man peering from the screen frowned, and Hannah felt sure she recognized him from somewhere but could not place him just then. Meanwhile, the view over his right shoulder was distracting, for it showed a window through which the interior of Arcoplex One could be seen, which resembled a city distorted through a fish-eye lens.

  ‘Why have you shut down rotation?’ the man enquired. ‘Zero gravity is making a lot of people in here feel sick.’

  ‘It is a safety protocol, Delegate Shanklin, which negates the possibility of catastrophic failure of the cylinder motors, should they suffer munitions damage.’

  Shanklin was the Committee delegate for East India, and therefore controlled the Asian voting bloc, but other than that, Hannah knew little about him.

  ‘Yet you didn’t shut it down when either Malden or Saul penetrated the station?’

  ‘The threat they presented to the structure of the Argus Station was negligible. Should those currently approaching us aboard the space plane be prepared to use force on Messina’s behalf, they will be equipped to the highest level of Committee military requirements.’

  Shanklin stared at him for a long moment. ‘I’m hoping, Smith, that we haven’t all made a big mistake with you.’

  ‘Considering that you have,’ Smith replied, ‘the time
in which you might have corrected that mistake has already expired.’ Then he shut off the transmission.

  ‘Your backers?’ Hannah risked asking him.

  ‘Committee delegates tend to get overly attracted to power and its trappings,’ he replied distractedly.

  ‘How many are here?’

  Without looking round he replied, ‘Fifty delegates in all, along with their staff and families. Over two thousand people.’ Coming from him it was a surprisingly direct response.

  ‘So they got you here, didn’t they?’ ventured Hannah. ‘And now they’re just a millstone round your neck.’

  He turned to give her an unreadable look. ‘They certainly would have been useful in re-establishing the rule of the people back on Earth, but a further one hundred and seventy delegates have made a provisional commitment to back me for the chairmanship.’

  To Smith, it seemed, ‘the people’, ‘the state’ and ‘the Committee’ were all the same thing, but only if it meant he himself got to give the orders.

  ‘Would have been?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Alessandro Messina’s tyrannical arrogance is such that he would likely not let it come to a vote.’

  Hannah glanced out through the windows allowing a view across the wheel of the space station. From where she was seated, she could just about see the space plane dropping down behind the station’s rim. Next she transferred her gaze back to the screens, one of which now showed the space plane moving in to dock, whilst another displayed the interior of that same dock.

  ‘His failure is inevitable,’ Smith added, studying the screens.

  The docking pillar, one of five sticking out from the rim, was pentagonal in section, each external face of it wide enough to encompass the largest type of space plane. As the plane settled against it, she could just about discern the docking clamps engaging underneath it. A belly lock in the plane could be opened to the inside of the docking pillar for loading and unloading cargo, whilst a separate passenger airlock would be engaged via an extending tube. She focused on the interior of the dock, wondering if Smith’s reliance on such views showed how less able he was than Saul, who had no need for such extra aids.

  The interior view showed four of Langstrom’s troops making their way alongside the cargo train that serviced the dock, and then descending an internal face of the pillar itself. Ahead of them emerged one end of the passenger embarkation tube, a cylinder three metres high and two wide. As the soldiers approached, the two doors in its side opened to show three figures clad in VC suits, and upside-down. They instantly pushed themselves out, flipping over to come down upright on the floor, legs bending to absorb the shock so that their boots did not disengage. They then moved back-to-back, checking their surroundings.

  To one side of the passenger tube, a pair of long double doors hinged up from the floor, opening directly into the belly of the plane. Out flew an object a couple of metres across, looking not unlike a balled-up mass of water pipes.

  Smith hissed with anger, and immediately readerguns opened fire, sending the three men tumbling away, but seemingly uninjured. The balled-up thing opened, into a chaotic collection of robotic arms terminating in twin-barrelled guns which at once began firing, so it seemed rather like a faming tumbleweed. Munitions debris spread out in a cloud as readerguns exploded all around the dock. Then, even as the onslaught diminished, the three figures in vacuum combat suits righted themselves and started firing too – at the four personnel who had come to greet them. Hannah found herself flinching as she watched bullets tearing into their bodies, jerking them about helplessly, spewing chunks of flesh and bone out in every direction.

  ‘Low-impact ammunition in the readerguns,’ observed Hannah. ‘You should have thought of that.’

  Smith glared round at her and, by the look on his face, she half expected him to come over and hit her.

  ‘They were dispensable,’ he replied coldly.

  Did he mean the human troops who had just died or the readerguns themselves?

  In the dock itself, more troops in VC gear piled out of the airlock, as the big robot settled quietly to the floor. One squad of about twenty troops moved swiftly to the base of the dock and through, down beside the train there, whilst others began removing equipment from the space plane’s hold. Smith watched this activity for some minutes before speaking again.

  ‘I am assuming that you were watching that, Langstrom?’ he demanded.

  Down in the righthand corner of the screen a frame opened up to show Langstrom. ‘I saw – and we’re ready. We’ve got ten-bores and rocket-launchers deployed,’ the commander grimaced, ‘which we’ll need seeing as they’ve got a spidergun with them.’ He glanced at something off-screen. ‘The first of them are not coming straight in but, as you predicted, they’re heading for the upper spindle anchor. Maybe they’ll pass through Arcoplex One to get down here.’

  ‘Most unlikely,’ Smith replied. ‘Though an arcoplex offers them cover, traversing it will be a slow process, for they would consider it necessary to use urban-warfare techniques. There are also few exits, all of which could provide ambush points.’

  ‘They’ll blow it?’ Langstrom suggested.

  ‘This is not likely either, since Chairman Messina will want as little damage done to the station as possible.’ Smith raised a hand to the side of his head, an unconscious gesture as new information became available to him. The screen previously showing Delegate Shanklin now revealed the first squad of invading troops deployed in and about the massive machinery at the far end of Arcoplex One. Some were gathered about an airlock, which opened even as she watched. One of them made some adjustments to a package, then tossed it inside before the outer airlock door closed again.

  ‘They are physically bypassing the airlock’s electronics,’ explained Smith. ‘In those circumstances there is little I can do.’

  Now a fresh view: the interior of the arcoplex cylinder. It resembled a long street of buildings tilting inwards, with further buildings projecting from the sides and down from overhead, some of which were actually connected to the cylinder spindle. Sunlight flooded from the dispersal units positioned at intervals along the spindle jacket, bathing everything in a bright, almost Mediterranean light. Enough illumination, therefore, to see a troop of enforcers heading towards the airlock situated at the street’s end, while civilians were heading in the opposite direction. Men, women and children were down on the street itself using gecko boots, while others higher up were propelling themselves from surface to available surface, or aboard a couple of aeros. Most of those feeing the scene carried bundles and bags just like any refugee throughout history.

  Then the airlock opened.

  Hannah could not understand what the attackers hoped to achieve here if they were not using the arcoplex as a route to the station core. The inner door of the airlock just stood wide open now, and nothing much seemed to be happening there at first. But next some sort of detonation within the airlock blew out a cloud of vapour like smoke from the muzzle of a cannon. It dispersed as rapidly as milk in water and, almost at once, people started writhing in mid-air. Then one of the aeros slammed into the side of a building, and stuck there, its rear fan spitting out debris. Several enforcers rose from the floor, tearing at their clothing, while the others just began contorting where they were. Within just a few seconds all of them were motionless but for those on trajectories they’d set themselves upon as they died.

  ‘Quick,’ observed Langstrom.

  Smith replied, ‘In my opinion, they have just made use of the Novichok agent the Department of Warfare was developing. It was efficiency-tested during the Chicago riots and found to be very effective.’

  ‘Take some clearing up.’

  ‘That nerve agent has an active life of only about an hour,’ replied Smith dismissively, ‘so in itself should not be a problem for us. Though effecting sanitary measures to clear up the human detritus might not be so pleasant.’ He pondered this for a moment. ‘I will follow Saul’s lead and
reprogram construction robots to accomplish the chore. They can move a proportion of the deceased to cold sections of the station, to prevent any immediate overload of the digesters.’

  This exchange seemed so blandly conversational that Hannah felt a creeping horror. The two men were talking about the death of two thousand fellow citizens, yet Smith’s biggest concern seemed to be organizing the funeral arrangements.

  Somewhere down in that part of his mind where decisions were made even before coherent thoughts could express them, some dreg of pure reason alerted Saul to the impending agony, utterly certain, the moment the optic plugged into his skull registered his rise to full consciousness. In a state between unconsciousness and waking, Saul rejected wakefulness and yet, deep amid a morass of dreams and undesignated data, he managed to apply logic and found the ability to think. He discerned reality below that filter that led into the conscious world, and without any sense of self he managed to process it. His organic brain demanded that he return to that world above the surface, but what did it amount to? Just the fleshly vessel for part of his mind, a part that he’d so far found necessary only because within it lay his reason for physical existence. He remained detached from the now and, on one level, wondered how long it would take him to decide not to bother continuing with such an existence at all.

  ‘It’s monitoring him,’ said a vaguely familiar female voice.

  ‘Just unplug it?’ suggested a male voice. ‘Do something like you did with the cams?’

  ‘Dangerous.’

  ‘Smith’s busy out there.’

  The words murmured out of some abyss, and seemed almost irrelevant to him. All but the last four words made no real sense to him, but with those Saul felt a need to agree. For, in the current halfway house of his mind, his awareness of fighting out in the station seemed like a raw point inside his own skull. But to agree with the words he needed dangerous consciousness, and that was not an option.