by Neal Asher
‘Chairman Messina?’ Langstrom prompted.
‘Is not your concern.’
Saul refocused his attention on the activity within Arcoplex One.
Delegates arriving in the conference chamber were obviously annoyed to see so many others present and started gesturing back to the walls any who had the temerity to gather about the tiers of horseshoe tables and chairs. No sign of Messina there – he was still in his apartment questioning two of his bodyguards about where the other two had gone. The missing pair were already in the chamber, one clutching the hand of his young daughter whilst the other leant back against the wall, arms folded and his expression sour. Saul had already checked on earlier discussion between them, whose content was little different from so many he had already heard. Messina was fucked, they had agreed, and now the time had come for them to look after themselves. Out of curiosity, Saul reviewed the data on these two men. The one called Ghort, leaning against the wall, had not actually killed anyone, so under Hannah’s terms was salvageable. Unfortunately the one with the daughter had eagerly dispensed Messina’s personal justice in the past, and even kept image files of the proceedings.
Finally Saul and Hannah themselves reached the entrance to the building containing the conference chamber. There he paused, gazing along the length of the arcoplex. It seemed not all had answered his summons. Two were in fact hiding nearby, in a room where they had first smashed all the cams. A recorded video showed them entering the place, while the station net had registered the toilet being used only a minute ago.
‘If you do not both go to the conference chamber straight away, I will have to send a spidergun after you,’ he announced loudly, via the intercom inside their refuge. Hannah turned to him in puzzlement, then swung her gaze to follow his. After a minute a door opened and a couple of people propelled themselves out. They abandoned their hide at a reluctant pace, but speeded up once they registered the spiderguns.
‘There, that’s all of them,’ declared Saul, folding his arms.
‘We were—’ began Delegate Margot Le Blanc, as she approached him with her bodyguard.
Saul waved her inside. ‘I don’t care what you were. And that’s something you’ll all have to learn very quickly.’
‘Very well.’ Delegate Le Blanc swept on past, her dignity somewhat diminished by her lack of experience in using gecko boots.
After a moment, Saul dispatched one of the spiderguns after her, while simultaneously watching through cams as Messina finally quit his apartment and entered the conference chamber. The Chairman took the prime seat at the horseshoe tables, and only when properly seated with his two remaining bodyguards behind him did he gesture imperiously and the delegates took their seats. As Le Blanc hurried in and sat down, Messina eyed her calculatingly. He seemed just about to say something, but then the spidergun entered. Some delegates leapt from their seats and began backing off, while an uproar arose among the surrounding crowd as they retreated further against the walls.
Saul grinned. ‘Let’s go.’
Entering the lobby, they climbed a spiral stair two floors up, then took a short corridor to the double doors leading into the chamber. These had meanwhile swung closed, muffing the uproar inside. This entire building, Saul had discovered, had been planned as the Committee base inside the station. The three tiers of horseshoe tables within the chamber had seating for no more than a hundred and fifty, so it seemed to have been intended for Messina and his core delegates only. Whether the remaining delegates were due to have been assassinated, or just abandoned on Earth, he did not know. He stepped up to the doors, with Hannah at his side and the second spidergun close behind.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.
‘You’ve not made your decision,’ he replied, pausing, ‘and I now realize you may be incapable of making one.’
‘But it’s not my decision,’ she said. ‘You’ve already decided that Messina and the rest must die, and you just want me to confirm that.’
‘No, I want you to perceive the correct course.’ He turned to her, wishing he could force her into seeing what was so plain to him. ‘Tell me, if we were back on Earth, with unlimited resources, what would you do with them there?’
‘Try them, then send them to prison for life,’ she replied. ‘They’re guilty of too much wrongdoing to ever be released, and if they were released they would only scrabble for power again. They would never be genuinely useful.’
‘So a trial would be irrelevant because you already know they are guilty. It would just paint a gloss of justice over a course of action that is already just.’
‘Some might be innocent . . .’
‘No, not among the seventy-nine.’
Hannah shrugged, looked away.
He continued, ‘This Argus Station is not Earth, and its resources are severely limited. Keeping this lot alive, whilst they contribute nothing, would definitely mean others here dying. So what is the right decision?’
With her face still averted, she replied, ‘They should die.’ She then turned to him, her expression registering shock at her own words. Doubtless she was now telling herself that she was equally as bad as those she had judged. He tried not to feel contempt for her weakness.
‘I am glad to hear you say that at last. Now consider this point: It has been within your power to sentence those people to death, but it is also within your power to allow them to live – and within your power alone. When the time is right, I am going to ask you whether I can offer them the choice.’
She was clearly confused, for she hadn’t yet seen that other option, but eventually she would.
He continued, ‘As for what I want you to do now, just go wherever you feel comfortable.’
‘I’d feel more comfortable not being here.’
He glanced at her. ‘Which was exactly the position of many decision makers within the Committee who had dissidents killed or drew up the plans for sectoring.’
Hannah showed further discomfort at that statement, but stayed by his side as he pushed open the double doors and strode through, heading straight out into the middle of the chamber. Behind him, he had one of the robots remain on guard at the door, whilst the second climbed the wall and scuttled across the ceiling, positioning itself up above like some macabre chandelier. The uproar quickly waned, for they were frightened, but from Saul’s presence they now knew they weren’t facing instant extinction.
For a moment he scanned the faces all around him. Seated as many were, they obviously felt themselves to be in a superior position, but no matter. In a bit of theatre, he waved his hand, and the six massive screens ranged high on the walls all around the room flickered on. The views he chose for three of the screens were the same as those displayed previously in Tech Central: one of Earth from the station, another of Earth from cams on the Argus satellites, and finally a view of some of the satellites themselves.
Messina cleared his throat. ‘What can we do for you, citizen?’
Most of those present were wearing fones, but some were not. Saul nodded towards a fourth screen, routeing through to it a list of the names of everyone in the chamber, excluding the seventy-nine. ‘There are one hundred and fifteen of you here who are, from the available evidence, not directly responsible for the murder of citizens you governed. You will see your names are on this list and, as soon as I have finished here, you may depart forthwith to quarters assigned to you.’
‘Doubtless my name is not there,’ said Messina.
Saul turned to face him. ‘No, it is not.’
‘So you intend to kill me and everyone else not on your precious list,’ Messina suggested, with lazy contempt.
‘That decision is not mine, and has yet to be made.’ Saul eyed him steadily. ‘Some seem to find it more difficult to pass a death sentence than you do, Alessandro Messina.’
‘Perhaps that’s because they are not properly elected representatives of the people,’ the Chairman replied. ‘These last few years have needed some hard decisions ab
out the very survival of the human race.’ He sat up straighter and stabbed a finger towards Saul. ‘It seems to me that you yourself are demonstrating that you do not have the strength of character to make such decisions. You treat us with spite, whilst running away from Earth and all that must be done there.’
‘Yes, I may be fleeing Earth,’ Saul replied, ‘but I have nevertheless made some decisions.’ Again he waved a hand towards the screens. ‘Twenty-three of your satellite lasers are still functional, and they can each fire a shot every two seconds. They could keep that rate of fire up for five days, until depleting their fusion reactors of fuel.’
Messina glanced at the delegate sitting beside him, a woman with her hands poised over an open laptop, and with some very sophisticated fones seemingly welded against her head. Saul knew her to be officially the delegate for New Zealand and the Antarctic Region, but that was an empty title since she was primarily Messina’s personal statistical analyst.
‘Yes,’ Messina continued, having just received some figures from her. ‘Enough to kill five million people.’
‘Not nearly enough,’ said Saul. A rumble of whispered conversation broke out, and hissed like a wave over shingle. Saul noted Hannah staring at him, appalled, but he kept his eyes on Messina as he added, ‘However, I have some extra proposals.’
‘Oh, yes?’ The Chairman sat forward. Obviously the word ‘proposals’ gave him the odd idea that he still retained some influence over events.
Saul changed the screen views, adding two more on the blank screens.
‘Even though this station may be moving away from Earth, I still have access to Govnet,’ he informed Messina.
One screen now showed an aerial shot of a mass of buildings protected by high fences, and it was possible to see the readergun towers surrounding the place, and the hundreds of aero gunships lined up, row upon row, across an enclosed landing field. On the other four screens views appeared briefly only to be replaced by new ones. Some of these Saul snatched from groundlevel cams operating in bright sunlight: they showed armed enforcers departing a gunship, armoured groundcars, a cell complex, warehouses, government bureaucrats hurrying busily to some new assignment, yet more enforcers overseeing prisoners clad in yellow boiler suits as they rolled drums out of a warehouse; several Inspectorate execs up on a roof, peering at something in the distance through image amplifiers, with the familiar shape of a spidergun squatting behind them.
‘One of you here will recognize this place,’ Saul remarked.
‘Inspectorate HQ Brazilia East,’ stated a swarthy individual who was seated five seats over to Messina’s right.
‘Of course you recognize it, Delegate De Sousa. It cost eight hundred billion, approximately ninety-three per cent of one year’s budget, to build it, and brought forward by ten years the expected famine in South America, at a further cost, thus far, of over a hundred and eighty million human lives.’
‘Hard choices,’ replied De Sousa. ‘They were going to die anyway.’
‘Yes, quite. Billions are due to die anyway, and many of you here have been busy running the selection process.’ Saul paused. ‘Just prior to your departure, De Sousa, food riots broke out in central Salvador, but now no one goes hungry there since, on your way up here, you ordered your people to drop nerve gas. Under your orders, too, they’re presently struggling to sector the North Salvador sprawl, but power outages keep taking the readerguns offline and therefore ZAs keep escaping.’
‘And what would your solution be?’ Messina asked.
‘You’re about to find out.’
Saul was already beyond the confines of the chamber, mentally, delicately tuning programs that controlled massive data flows. It was as if he was manipulating screen icons that governed the rotation of tornadoes or the rolling force of tsunamis.
Hannah felt like a child that had been summoned to her political officer to receive a lecture. With only herself and Saul and the spiderguns here, she still felt wrong-footed, in an inferior position, for surrounding her were some of the recently most powerful people on Earth. She wanted to fold up inside herself and disappear.
‘Is all this drama strictly necessary?’ Messina demanded. ‘Are you really using the hard decisions we were forced to make to justify killing us?’
He still sounded so superior, so in control.
‘No, I need no justification for that.’
Even as Saul said this, Hannah felt something akin to embarrassment. Why was he revealing all this? Certainly it could not be for the benefit of those here. It seemed more like grandstanding, showing off. Or was he demonstrating all this to himself, simply to justify the actions he was about to take? Could it even be extra data for her to integrate, so she could offer all those present that mysterious choice he had mentioned?
‘Then there’s HQ Athens.’ New pictures appeared on the screens instantly. ‘The Greeks, being such a contentious people, started rioting early. The enforcers don’t have so much to do there now: merely deploying spiderguns to hunt down the remaining dissidents hiding among the olive groves.’ Here came a scene of ragged refugees running from a dilapidated stone building. Sound now, too: Hannah was sure she could hear the sea over the pistoning of hydraulics and the drone of an aero’s fans. Then came the crackle of high-speed machine-gun fire. Shots tracked across the fugitives and they all went down in a cloud of dust. As the viewpoint started to advance, she realized that the scene was actually being viewed through the eyes of a spidergun.
‘I could go on and on,’ Saul continued. ‘But for every minute I stand here talking, your Inspectorate forces are exterminating, at their present average rate, one hundred and twenty thousand civilians across the entire globe.’
Hannah turned to him abruptly. ‘You could stop it. You could stop the spiderguns,’ she pleaded. ‘You could ground the aeros, shut down the readerguns, shut down the shepherds. You could trash their computer systems.’
As he turned towards her, she could see a bloody tear at the corner of his eye. ‘I could do all those things, but the infrastructure would still be there. Inspectorate enforcers would still be there, with their guns and their nerve gas. Some will then realize how it was done, and from where, and they’ll take those readerguns, spiderguns, shepherds and aeros off Govnet, they’ll shut down satellite com dishes, and switch over to different frequencies. It may take them days but eventually they’ll cut me out of the circuit – a task all the easier as radio delays make my task ever more difficult. So, should I follow your suggestions?’
‘You’ll do precisely what you think best.’
He returned his attention to the screens. ‘Yes, I think you may be right.’
‘And what is that?’ Messina interjected.
‘ID codes,’ he said. ‘And then infrastructure.’
He pointed at the screens and everyone turned to watch, seeing the spidergun’s point of view swinging round. A grounded aero slid into frame, Inspectorate enforcers fanning out from it. Shock registered in their expressions as the spidergun suddenly advanced towards them. One of them shouted something in Greek, Hannah did not know what. Machine guns sighed and picked them off the ground, tumbling them backwards in the dust.
‘Fifteen million spiderguns, eight million shepherds and their numerous brethren,’ he recounted. ‘Now for the readerguns.’ He glanced again at Hannah. ‘As with the spiders, I loaded a complex virus which does one simple thing. It’s now loading to their kill lists the ID codes of all local Inspectorate enforcers, execs, Committee officials and political officers.’
‘You cannot do this!’ Messina roared. He stood up; some of the delegates stood as well.
Hannah only caught it at the last moment, as a spidergun here shifted. De Sousa, perhaps considering himself under as great a threat as Messina, raised something from his lap. The sound made by the robot weapon just seemed to ape that of the machines featuring on one of the screens, but the red streaks that issued from two of its limbs were painfully bright. Strapped into his seat, De Sou
sa juddered, fragments showering out of his back and all over the bodyguard behind him. The gun the delegate had held went flying upwards through the air. Screaming and shouting filled the chamber, and those of the crowd furthest from the exit swarmed towards it. But those nearest to it came face to face with the spidergun posted there and started pushing backwards, with the outcome a milling crush. More firing, and a bodyguard went spinning away with half his head gone, a female delegate vibrating in her seat, something like a make-up compact spilling out of her hand. Hannah found herself crouching, but couldn’t remember dropping into that position.
‘The spiderguns will only kill those of you stupid enough to draw weapons,’ Saul announced, his voice much amplified. ‘Just keep still!’
It took some minutes before the shouting stopped, before someone suffering hysterics was slapped into silence, and by the end of it the whole balance of the room had changed. Some of the delegates abandoned their chairs and joined the main crowd. Others sat alone, their staff and flunkeys having withdrawn. No longer a single entity, the crowd had now separated into protective huddles. Messina himself was leaning forward, his hands laid flat on the table before him. For the first time, he actually looked frightened. Hannah stood upright, edged closer to the real power in the room: Saul, standing there, still as a statue.
‘A salutary reminder,’ he said, ‘that I can and will do this.’
A number in the tens of thousands was now displayed at the bottom of a screen showing shepherds marching through some urban sprawl, and it began to rapidly increase. The views depicted changed constantly: a street somewhere with gunfire crackling across armoured cars, dead enforcers strewn all around; an aero gunship dropping out of the sky; blocks of offices now, Brussels perhaps, where corpses were strewn across the carbocrete and sheets of paper snowed from the sky. And during the time it took Hannah to fully register each scene, the number below had leapt into the hundreds of thousands.
