Hilldiggers (polity)

by Neal Asher

  The smell of heating metal filled the air, and the accelerator's loading gear continued to produce its fast metronomic racket. Over the last three minutes the five ships had fired over a thousand projectiles. Gun technicians constantly monitored their displays, hands at rest as the machinery did its work. A pause. Misload. One of the breech sections dropped down and swung aside, as one of the five spares slid into place. Harald observed a hydraulic plunger shoving the misfire out of that particular section. The resin body of the projectile was cracked, exposing the iron inside, and when it crashed into the reject shoot, it fell in half. That would have to be investigated but Harald was not over concerned, since errors were certain to arise when using a new design of projectile like this. At least no manual intervention had been required. As the end of the load came in sight on the conveyor, it became easier to see how fast these objects were being fired. Harald tracked the last one down, saw it safely on its way, listened to the hum rise again, steady, then slowly fade.

  He was utterly committed now; there was no way to recall those shots.

  Again he checked his time display; in a few minutes' time he would know Orbital Combine's response. When it finally came, it was not unexpected.

  One display feed from Sudoria blinked out, while another showed the reason why: a Fleet supply station—a cylinder 4,000 feet long and half as much wide—hung in space now ripped open, gutted by incandescent fire. Harald guessed some hot-burning chemical warhead had been used. Then another station—a trans-shipment base for Fleet personnel consisting of four similar cylinders joined end to end—flew apart in a fusillade of rail-gun strikes directed from above. Internal atmosphere exploded into vacuum and something detonated inside one of the cylinders, tearing it open and causing all four of them to separate. Harald could see how Combine was using methods that reduced the chances of too many fast-travelling, dangerous chunks of debris going into orbit, as the previous firebomb, and now the rail-gun missiles were fired from above, so any misses or pieces of shattered station would travel on downward to burn up in atmosphere.

  Coverage then became even more intermittent as Harald lost feed after feed. He felt a twisting in his gut upon seeing a watch platform destroyed just moments after a lander had departed it. There the evacuation had been tardy and the lander, struck by following debris, tumbled out of control. He never saw if the pilot regained control; suspected the first Fleet casualties.

  "Reposition to second strike point," he ordered over general com. "Evasive course correction on Ironfist's lead. Prepare second loads."

  He felt the rumble of drives starting, followed by a sideways drag of acceleration. In the Bridge the gravity floors would correct for the latter, but not down here. On his eye-screen he observed multiple drive flames igniting; the main fusion engines of hilldiggers and support ships, and the blue-red spears of steering thrusters. His diminishing view of events around Sudoria showed nothing being fired in this direction just yet. Perhaps they were not prepared to fire on the fleet itself until there were no more Fleet observation posts left in orbit, but more likely Combine considered it not worth wasting the ammunition, knowing their targets could move out of the way long before anything had a chance of reaching them.

  The last feed from Sudoria orbit winked out, but there were still telescope views from the surface on night-side. As expected, the tacom aboard Wildfire, to whom Harald had assigned the task of monitoring Sudoria com, contacted him.

  "I am receiving messages from our groundside bases. GDS wardens are now withdrawing from any of those bases they haven't taken. In those they have captured they are closing down all feeds. All the commanders of bases still in our control have received a message from Combine that they are to hand over control to GDS immediately. Otherwise, all those bases remaining under Fleet control will be destroyed. Their commanders have half an hour in which to comply."

  "What about bases in urban areas?" Harald asked.

  "Nothing about them. Either Combine is hoping to bluff them into surrender or intends to take them out anyway."

  "Don't waste bandwidth stating the obvious. Anything for us from Combine Oversight?"

  "Yes, sir. I have a message addressed generally to all of us, followed by an eyes-only one from Director Gneiss on Corisanthe Main for you. Relaying right now."

  Harald frowned. He really needed to hone down these tacom communications. It had not been necessary for this tacom on Wildfire to advise him of Director Gneiss's location. He opened the screen to his personal inbox, selected the general message there—audio-visual—and opened it. The image of a woman, grey-haired and jowly, appeared on one of his screen sections—Rishinda Gleer of Combine Oversight.

  "Fleet Captains, officers and men, your unprovoked attack on Orbital Combine has of course provoked the expected response. I see that the missiles you have fired at us will arrive in fifty minutes. Perhaps I should update you on the casualty figures before we cease to be able to count them. Thus far the course you have embarked upon has cost, up in orbit, the lives of approximately 200 Fleet personnel and eighteen Combine personnel. On the surface 715 Fleet and GDS personnel have died, but that figure is still on the rise since there is now rioting down there and certain revolutionary groups and belligerent supporters of Fleet or Combine have taken advantage of the chaos, in some cases deliberately creating more disorder by opening asylums. Chairman Duras has declared martial law, and Parliament has voted unanimously to revoke Fleet's wartime prerogatives. Parliament has also ordered the arrest of Admiral Harald on charges too numerous to count. Any who facilitate his arrest or otherwise removal will not be regarded as complicit in Fleet's recent treasonable actions. Consider, all of you, that you are attacking your own home planet, and you could be killing family or friends. You may already have killed family or friends, so please stop this madness now."

  Harald grimaced: carrot and stick—again not unexpected, but not very pleasant to hear. He opened the message from Director Gneiss:

  "Admiral Harald, I am not going to waste words in trying to dissuade you from your course, since if mere words could have dissuaded you, they would have done so by now. Through your sister and your service record, I know that you are not unintelligent, so will have already made your calculations." Gneiss paused for a moment, and Harald abruptly paused the message. This was the first time he had ever seen Director Gneiss so closely imaged and it now struck him that there was something decidedly odd about the man. Here he was delivering some vitally important message, yet from his demeanour it was almost as if he did not care about the content. Harald set the message playing again.

  "Now, I think it pertinent to point out to you that your sister is aboard one of the Combine defence platforms. That was a tactic of Oversight I was not completely in agreement with, but perhaps it might stay your hand a little."

  You're lying, Harald thought. I know exactly where my sister is, and her presence there will not stay my hand at all.

  Gneiss continued, "That consideration aside, it seems you will carry through your plans with a ruthless efficiency. But let me appeal to you now: you can still save many lives without sacrificing your aims, unless those aims are solely for massive death and destruction. Order all your groundside base commanders to surrender at once. All bases that have not been taken over by the GDS have been targeted by Combine's orbital weapons. Now, I know you'll at once assume that we won't hit the…sixty per cent of your bases that lie within urban areas. You would be wrong. The wardens are currently evacuating all the residents from the areas surrounding those bases, and the weapons we have aimed at them are not linear projectiles or explosive munitions, but high-intensity close-focus masers. We can excise those same bases with an accuracy measured in feet. They will burn, as will everyone inside them. Order their surrender."

  Gneiss paused again, gazing at something out of view. Harald wished the man was in reach for he felt an overpowering urge to prod him.

  "Finally, Admiral Harald, your supporters believe you aim to restore Fleet as
cendancy within the Sudorian system by slapping down us usurpers in Orbital Combine." Gneiss returned his gaze directly to the screen. "All your actions apparently indicate this but, as I said before, I know your sister. And I have researched your other siblings. I know their history, and I know their antecedents. I know your antecedents, Harald, for of course I knew your mother." Gneiss paused yet again, but this time some intense but unidentifiable emotion twisted his features. "Your goal is apparently one thing, but in reality it is something else. I think, somewhere inside, you realise that your will is not your own. Perhaps, if you can recognise that truth, we can halt this now. I look forward to hearing from you soon, Harald Strone."

  Harald felt a sudden surge of anger. Stupid games. Gneiss understood nothing and Harald should concede him nothing, and perhaps, in his last moments as Combine turned to wreckage around him, Gneiss would understand the futility of his petty attempts at manipulation. Then, abruptly as it had come, Harald's anger disappeared and he considered the situation with calm rationality. After a minute of contemplation, he nodded as he came to a decision.

  "Wildfire tacom."

  "I hear you."

  "Send a message to our groundside base commanders. I am ordering them to stand down and surrender themselves to GDS."

  "You're what?"

  "I don't intend to repeat myself. Them dying down there will make little difference to my plans, and would be a foolish waste of future resources."

  "Understood—am sending message now."

  Corisanthe Main was the primary target, and once it was his to control…Harald suddenly found himself mentally groping in a blank spot and felt a moment's panic. He drew back. That station was the target because, with the Worm aboard, it was Combine's power base. He must focus solely on that objective. The ground bases were irrelevant: everything ended at Corisanthe Main.

  But why hit Combine anyway?

  There had been so much going on that he had little time to consider anything beyond immediate objectives—just making cursory preparations as in his dealings with Lambrack and any other rebellious Captains. He felt with all his heart he was doing the best thing possible for Fleet. Fleet needed to be strong to face internal threats and now external ones. Sudorian defence could not continue being divided between it and Combine…Harald closed his eyes on an unaccustomed confusion. He realised that this did not entirely account for his own hatred of Combine, and his ultimate aim to board Corisanthe Main and take complete control there.

  Doubts, now?

  Something seemed to shift inside his head, and suddenly he realised such introspection was foolish. Combine must be brought down, Fleet must be the ultimate power, and Corisanthe Main must be his. That was all he needed to think about now.

  Yishna

  Ensconced in a study unit overlooking Centre Cross Chamber, Yishna inspected station schematics and cladograms showing energy output from the various reactors. She pulled across her microphone, turned it on and selected, on a touch-screen, the OCT she wanted to contact.

  "Dalepan, you'll need to install a heavy-duty cable from junction Oz56v through to Oz78v—I'm transmitting to you that section of the schematics now."

  "And where will I obtain the cable?" Dalepan asked.

  Yishna called up another display showing a manifest of recent supplies brought aboard. "Stock Room Eight, and if you don't find it there you'll find it still awaiting collection on Dock Eight."

  She heard Dalepan issuing instructions and returned her screens to disaster planning. Now supposing a hit on a particular section of Quadrant Two, she checked the resultant protocol the computer threw up: these doors would close; power would be cut to these doors so would have to be rerouted; potential loss of life, fifty souls; potential Ozark containment breach. In this instance refer to Emergency Ozark Protocols—permissions through Station Director.

  There it was again, and Yishna felt a chill sweat break out on her body. If, or rather when, the station came under attack, her earlier interference with those protocols would almost certainly be revealed. Yet, knowing what she had done and being in a position to now easily correct matters, she found she could not. There seemed some block in her. Every time she went to access the Director's 'eyes only' files the task suddenly seemed insurmountably difficult, and the harder she pushed herself the more frightened she became. Shadows loomed and nightmares threatened, and something seemed to shift titanically within her psyche.

  "I can't find any heavy-duty cable," said Dalepan, interrupting her thoughts.

  And there was always something else to do.

  "Let me put a tracker on the manifest," she sighed.

  The tracker quickly found the cable at neither location, so logically it must be in transit between them.

  "Someone must be moving it right now," she told Dalepan.

  "Well, I figured—what the hell is that?"

  Just as he spoke, an infernal light glared in through upper ports in the roof of Centre Cross Chamber.

  "Attention all personnel!" Director Gneiss's face appeared on one of her touch-screens, his voice issuing from the screen speaker and also over the public address system. "Our telescope arrays have been monitoring Fleet manoeuvres between here and Carmel, and twenty-five minutes ago Fleet hilldiggers fired approximately a thousand inert relativistic projectiles at Combine stations. Expected time of impact is thirty-eight minutes from now. This is an act of war and in response we are neutralising all Fleet satellites in orbit that could pose a danger to us militarily or be used for intelligence gathering. It is fortunate Fleet evacuated those satellites first. All personnel are to don suit helmets and check suit integrity before moving to their stations." Gneiss paused for a moment, and Yishna thought he looked almost bored. "Okay, most of you know what to do now—those of you who don't, check with your superiors. Further updates and announcements will be made on Media Channel One. That's all."

  Yishna immediately began searching for exterior views of activity from Main and from other stations. While she did this a rumbling noise dragged her attention up to where armoured shutters were closing across all the Centre Cross ports.

  It's really happening. My brother…

  On her screens she soon observed ships launching from Corisanthe stations II and III. They were big, well armed, but nothing like the scale of the hilldiggers. Defence buoys were also going up: robotic spheres containing a honeycomb of hard ceramocarbide steel whose sum purpose was to detect incoming projectiles and put themselves in their way, the honeycomb being specially designed to break those projectiles apart. Once all these had departed, the energy screens would also go up, and rail-guns and beam weapons would be made ready. Soon a lot of fast-moving metal would be flying about out there.

  Yishna dragged her spacesuit helmet a little closer as she continued to flick through these various scenes, then paused the display at something she could not identify: Corisanthe II was rail-gun-launching a stream of large pill-shaped objects through a window that remained in its growing defences. These objects were now speeding away from Sudoria, out towards interplanetary space. She considered asking someone about them, but instead decided to track the information down herself. Keying into current launches from Corisanthe II, she immediately hit a security block, but one she possessed the clearance to get round. A little further work pulled up a schematic of one of the unfamiliar objects on her screen. It seemed they contained new concealment technology that had not been made available to Fleet, and this was wrapped around an old plutonium-based technology. They were atomic stealth mines—all of them in the megaton range—and so a rather unpleasant surprise awaiting Fleet.

  Then the schematic abruptly disappeared as Dalepan appeared before her. "About that cable?"

  Prosaic interruption, but on such mundane details might their lives depend.

  McCrooger

  The food, drink, and gentle exercise seemed to be doing the trick, and I now felt some optimism while striding around the circular corridor. Big mistake: an abrupt change of cour
se threw me stumbling towards a wall, and I put out a hand to steady myself. As my palm hit its slick surface my forearm bones snapped with a gristly crunch, and a spike of bone stabbed out through the muscle. Turning I shouldered into the wall, and, gripping my wrist, stared at the injury with disbelief. It just didn't seem to make any sense. I then reached out to a nearby pillar, tried to grab hold and couldn't, so held one hand in place with the other as I tried to pull the bones straight so they would heal in the correct position. The broken end of the bone disappeared back into muscle with a glutinous sucking sound, and agony washed up my arm, bringing with it a tide of blackness.

  After an unknown time, consciousness returned to me. I found myself lying on the floor, my face in something sticky. Blood? Blood all around me in a spreading pool. My arm was bleeding copiously and I knew that even for a normal human this degree of bleeding wasn't right. It seemed, along with ridiculously brittle bones, I had also developed some form of haemophilia.

  "Help," I managed, but it only came out in a whisper. Again, "Help." No one around. I knew there was no way of getting to my feet, since I felt like a wet rag, but if no one turned up soon it seemed likely I would bleed to death. Summoning every fragment of will I could muster, I managed to roll over onto my back. I groped down my chest with one hand and closed it over my pendant, which was now just a shapeless lump. Bringing it up near my lips I managed one hoarse, "Tigger," before even the energy to speak deserted me.

  Normal perception began to break apart then. Nightmare creatures slid out to shake their twisted limbs at me, gape with slobbering mouths and slink away again. A dark figure loomed, studying me analytically, and I could hear the sound of footsteps on a hollow bony floor…which slowly changed to a sharp awareness of my own breathing and heartbeat and, somehow, of the autonomous system that kept them going. I felt incredibly weary and it seemed that there, in that deeper knowledge of my own function, lay my answer. I knew instantly that I could, through an act of will, simply stop everything. I guessed this to be something like the perception which must be experienced by those who delivered their famous last words and then promptly died; they knew they could let go their hold on life at any time, and so chose the appropriate moment.