Hilldiggers (polity)

by Neal Asher

  The projectile struck, and punched through, exploding fire through the ship's internal spaces, jetting fire from its exit on the other side. Still turning, the ship presented new Polity chameleonware which wiped out the same fire to the hilldigger's scanners. Then the feedback from Rosebud screamed through Tigger—the ship's agony.

  Didn't these fools know their ships could suffer?

  The spread of the chameleonware continued autonomously. It needed to. Tigger crashed into oblivion.

  Harald

  On his instructions the eight remaining hilldiggers of the Fleet began to put some distance between each other, randomising their formation since they were now close enough to Sudoria that the possibility of running into hidden defences could not be discounted.

  In the Admiral's Haven, Harald gazed at all eight hilldigger Captains displayed on the screens arrayed before him. "Our plan of attack is not complicated, but then complicated plans have a tendency to go wrong. And this will not." Not much response from them to that, but he had expected none. "If you would all turn your attention now to the graphic, I will detail how it should run." On his own eye-screen he observed the graphic representation, updated realtime, of the disposition of Combine stations and ships surrounding the planet Sudoria. Using his control glove he shifted his selector to frame Defence Platforms One and Twelve.

  "Once these two have been destroyed, only Platforms Eleven, Two, Three, Four and the main stations remain relevant for our purpose. The hole in planetary cover we will shortly have made will give us ready ingress to the defences of Orbital Combine. If you will observe the trajectory of our last fusillade…" He panned the view back to a rapidly approaching icon representing 1,500 projectiles, then slashed a line from them to Sudoria. "As you see the missiles will come in low and fast over Platform Eleven, through the gap created by the two destroyed platforms, and will impact on the side of Platform Two. Eventually it too will fall." Harald paused, inspecting their expressions. Most looked satisfied; a few, notably Orvram Davidson, looked grim.

  "Once Platform Two is down, we move into low orbit then harrow up Platforms Three and Four in a line, until reaching Corisanthe Main."

  Two Captains began speaking at once: Tlaster Cobe and Orvram Davidson. Davidson then fell silent and let Cobe speak. "But, taking that route, we'll come under fire from Corisanthe II."

  "Yes," replied Harald, "which is why only four ships will be conducting that attack. When they have dealt with Platforms Two and Three, those ships will then be in danger, at which point Desert Wind, Harvester and Slate will assault Corisanthe II."

  "There are over a hundred thousand people aboard Corisanthe II," reminded Davidson.

  "I am aware of that fact," said Harald. "There is a similar number on Corisanthe III, which has been growing in recent years since Combine began assembly of its space liners there. We will also need to attack that station, to prevent resupply to the other stations from there. This is why I am relating this plan to you now, so you have a chance to voice any objections." He studied the faces before him. He expected no protest from those he had already chosen for the assault on Corisanthe II, but Cobe and Davidson of Stormfollower and Resilience respectively, and perhaps Schumack of Musket, might begin to show signs of rebellion now.

  "I am sorry, but I cannot—" began Davidson.

  The screen showing Captain Lorimar of hilldigger Slate suddenly blanked out. Almost immediately Harald received a concerted scream from the tacoms aboard all the other ships, "Minefield!" He stood up and, using his control glove, crowded the images of all the Captains into one screen, noting that Davidson, Cobe and Schumack had now cut their connections. There was no tacom connection from Slate—absolutely nothing. Before he even needed to ask for it, the tacom from Wildfire—the ship nearest to Slate's location—sent him visual feed which he now projected on one of the empty screens before him. Debris glittered across space, and tumbling through it came the rear section of a hilldigger, exposed girders glowing against darkness and its engine galleries open to vacuum.

  Harald just stared, unable to make any sense of what he was seeing, until someone's gasp of Slate's gone' set his mind in motion again. Thousands had just died, and an entire hilldigger was just a spreading cloud of radioactive detritus. He felt a horrible, bone-deep guilt and, though he was accepting what he was currently seeing and hearing, he just didn't know how to react. Then he detected, amid the chatter, the words, "Stealthed mines."

  "What do you have for me, Harvester tacom?" Harald managed.

  "Am relaying now. They are invisible to most forms of scan, but we get a time-discrepancy on laser detection," replied the tacom officer serving on that ship.

  At last feeling some control, Harald called up views fed from other ships on the large screens before him and in his eye-screen. An explosion a hundred miles out from Desert Wind blanked instruments for a short while, but it proved that they were now able to detect these near-invisible mines. Slowly, in a representative view, the minefield began to be revealed.

  "They're moving," came a general tacom report.

  The flare of drive flames created brief constellations out in vacuum. However, the same flames immediately located every mine for Fleet's instruments. More explosions—two mines drawing too close to Harvester. Harald realised that Combine had expected that, after one or two detonations, the mines would inevitably be detected, so had programmed them to become missiles like this, giving them the remote possibility of causing more damage.

  "Remove them," Harald instructed, and multiple explosions filled space around the hilldiggers. Switching from view to view, he coldly studied the spectacle, but these camera angles also presented him with an unwelcome reality: Stormfollower, Resilience and Musket were turning. It disappointed him that all the Captains he suspected might rebel, had now done so.

  "Captains Davidson, Cobe and Schumack," he broadcast. "Return to formation, or you will lose command of your ships."

  After a long delay, Davidson reinstated his comlink. "A hundred thousand people? To be honest with you, Admiral, I have not been in agreement with all your actions since you took command, but my loyalty to Fleet has so far kept me from disobeying. Now I cannot obey you any longer. Captain Ildris once gave me a lecture on the responsibility of command and one particular phrase stands out in my mind: 'History has taught us that saying one was only obeying orders can never be an excuse for committing atrocity'."

  Even while Davidson spoke, Harald opened com channels he had long ago prepared for this moment. Communications were the key, he had told Yishna, but even she could not have guessed to what extent he meant this. Immediately the tacom officers aboard the three departing ships, though quite possibly still loyal, were frozen out. But routed through their equipment, Harald began to seize control of the hardware of those ships. With a single thought he shut down their engines. With an analytical omniscience he gazed through Bridge cameras at the three Captains and their crews, as they began to realise that the controls were no longer responding to them.

  Other views showed emergency lights flashing in various vital sections of each ship. Harald observed a crowd of engineers struggling into survival suits as they abandoned the engine galleries of Resilience, once the last of the stragglers got out of there, the heavy blast doors quickly closed off that particular area. As weaponry areas—also equipped with blast doors because of the danger from exploding munitions—were abandoned because of similar false emergencies, Harald closed them off too. Exterior views showed him airlocks opening those areas to vacuum—if anyone remained behind, their life-spans would now be measured by the air supply in their survival suits. Harald next shut off all the internal lifts, and the internal rail system, closed off more selected areas and opened more to vacuum, shut maintenance tunnels, locked spacesuit lockers, disabled EVA units and shuttles. He set recognition programs to work through the camera systems, ready to alert him should the crew try to return to any vital zones, and there prepared some nasty surprises for them should they t
ry.

  "Captain Soderstrom," he finally broadcast. "As we agreed, in this eventuality, I am slaving Stormfollower and Musket to your ship, Harvester, and you will take them in with you when you attack Corisanthe II. Resilience I will slave to Wildfire for the attack on Corisanthe III. Meanwhile, myself and Franorl, in Ironfist and Desert Wind, will take out the defence platforms and assault Corisanthe Main."

  "You can't do this," protested Davidson.

  Ignoring him, Harald restarted the engines of the three ships, and turned them round.

  McCrooger

  The spin section juddered to a halt and a stink of barbecue immediately filled the air. Luckily someone had thought to strap me into my bed, so I wasn't thrown across the room.

  "I will get you there…that is all I can promise," someone informed me, in neither Brumallian nor Sudorian. Tigger, then.

  The ship was shuddering and, now in zero gravity, I immediately threw up. The vomit departed in a straight trajectory and splashed on the ceiling, little bile-coloured globules rolling away from the point of impact. I weakly pawed at the straps, then looked up to see Rhodane, who fought her way through the malfunctioning door then pulled herself across the room and down beside me.

  "Are you hurt?" she asked.

  "Nothing broken," I replied. "But if we are now under attack I don't particularly want to stay here."

  Rhodane shook her head. "The drone allowed us to take a hit. The others are now analysing what happened, but it seems that receiving the hit was the only option to keep us safe."

  "What?"

  "If Tigger" — she stumbled over the name—"had used the main drive to move us out of the projectile's path, the hilldigger would certainly have spotted us. The concealment technology he employed managed to hide the energy released by the strike."

  "Anyone hurt?"

  Rhodane looked shifty. "Just one casualty…but the projectile passed through a mostly unoccupied section of the ship and automatics are now sealing it off. We are still travelling towards Sudoria and, unless it changes course, we should be out of range of the hilldigger within a day or so."

  "Who died?" I asked, though even as I asked I'd already guessed.

  "Our prisoner—from decompression."

  Admittedly I could feel no great sympathy for someone who had tried to shoot me, but that still wasn't a great way to go. They must have moved him out of the spin section, I thought, and wondered if he had again been glued to a chair somewhere, in which case he wouldn't have been able to get to safety. But then my condition here wasn't much better. Feeling a growing frustration with my current feeble state, I again pawed at the straps securing me. Rhodane watched me for a moment, then hauled herself over to the nearby wall beside something that looked like a collection of wasp's nests. "We have no contact with the Brumallian Consensus, but aboard this ship there is general agreement that this might be best," she announced. She detached one of the oblate containers from the collection of the same, then returned to me. "Of course, you are not part of any consensus, so we need your approval too."

  "Approval of what?" I eyed the container.

  "This contains a biomed mutualite. Things like this were used during the War to sustain life in the critically injured, and to restore to function those with lesser injuries."

  "How, precisely?"

  "It grows inside your torso, where it can take over the function of your liver and kidneys, and assist your heart and lungs. It also manufactures its own host-specific drugs, phagocytes, enzymes and much else besides."

  "A parasite?"

  "No, a mutualite."

  "But designed for Brumallians? I think you understand that internally I am very little like a normal human, let alone a Brumallian."

  "Believe me, I understand. I've also studied the information Tigger made available about your condition and taken a look inside you with one of the med scanners here. If we don't do something for you, you won't be walking from this ship alive. Apparently Tigger offered to put you into stasis, but you didn't say what you wanted before he…went out of contact."

  "Out of contact?"

  She waved a hand in irritation. "The drone retains control over this ship, but is no longer responding to us." She now watched me carefully. "But a place has already been made ready for you—for putting you into stasis. We would rather you didn't take that option, since that would defeat the whole purpose of your presence aboard."

  "Spell it out for me."

  "You were our insurance to get this ship safely down onto Sudoria, and then to get the evidence of Fleet's crimes to Parliament." She shrugged. "Things have changed. Fleet just launched an attack on Orbital Combine, so you might assume that our chest of evidence is as trivial as evidence of common assault brought against someone who graduated to murder. That's not so, and this evidence must be revealed, spread and generally known."

  "I understand."

  "You do?"

  "I've been around for a while. The Sudorians are currently trying to kill each other and unscrupulous politicians might find it expedient, at some later date, to blame it all on a common enemy. The Brumallians need to cover themselves, because once the fight between Fleet and Combine is over, then will come the finger pointing, and whoever survives will find it easier to point the finger at the Brumallians rather than at their own kind."

  "You do understand."

  "I also understand that Tigger provided this ship with chameleonware."

  Rhodane grimaced and said, "Tigger's chameleonware may well get us away from this hilldigger, and before this conflict began could have taken us through Orbital Combine's defences and down to the surface…"

  I weakly held up a hand. "I apologise, I'm not thinking straight. You'll need me down on the surface the moment you turn off the chameleonware. As I understand it, a Brumallian ship has never yet landed on Sudoria, so they might find it particularly disconcerting?"

  Rhodane shook her head. "We'll have to reveal our ship before then. There'll be a lot of automated weaponry going off, and hurtling chunks of debris. The slightest fault, the slightest error, the slightest bit of bad luck and we end up breathing vacuum. We need to go in under a meteor defence umbrella. So we need to reveal ourselves to Combine."

  I replied, "But whatever way you cut it, you don't want me in hibernation." I nodded towards the container she held. "Okay, give it to me."

  Rhodane broke off the top of the vessel and held it out. Something glubbed wetly inside. "You just swallow it."

  I did as instructed, though gagging and heaving as something large and slimy filled my mouth and reluctantly slid down my throat. I fought the urge to vomit again and flushed hot, with sweat beading my face. Lying back, I concentrated on just holding things together. I felt bloated as if after eating a huge meal, then that feeling drained away to be replaced by a hollow hunger, so I guessed the mutualite had now moved down from my stomach into my intestines. Then I grew cold, felt dry and papery and somehow insubstantial, but after a moment was able to talk again.

  "How long until it's working?" I asked.

  "It's usually quick, but in your case that's questionable."

  "Undo these straps for me."

  She complied and, still feeling fragile, I pushed myself upright.

  "I'm feeling much better," I said, then immediately blacked out.

  Orduval

  The armoured car bucked, the blast slamming the seat up underneath him. As the vehicle crashed down again, now flinging him from his seat, all became a chaos of falling, yelling bodies. Smoke filled the air and somewhere a disc-gun hissed and crackled. He was crawling towards the door, now hanging open and sideways on, when Chief Reyshank grabbed his shoulder.

  "No, stay here."

  Reyshank and Trausheim crawled towards the door, following two other wardens outside. Firing continued; the spang of metal off metal.

  "Launcher!" someone yelled.

  "On it," someone else replied.

  There came a whoosh then the nearby crump of an explosion,
followed by a grumbling tumble of rubble and the clanging of something metallic falling. More weapons firing. All of the wardens were outside the vehicle now. Orduval got groggily to his feet and again began moving over to the door. Then Trausheim stepped back inside and caught hold of his arm, "Come on."

  He stumbled out into dust-filled air, glimpsed a warden uniform on the ground, soaked with blood and raw flesh exposed through rips. "Move," Trausheim urged.

  In the shelter of nearby buildings, while some of the wardens moved ahead to check sidestreets, Orduval looked back towards the car. It was sprawled on its side with one tread hanging off. Across the street from it lay a caved-in building, which he guessed was either where that launcher had been, or was the source of the sniper fire after a mine had turned over the armoured car.

  "What now?" he asked Reyshank.

  The chief gestured him to silence as he listened to his earpiece, then after a moment replied, "We're pulling out. If we stay here, we'll give the Groundstars too many extra targets—the Coplanetaries already pulled out an hour ago. We're all hoping the fight'll go out of the Groundstars once the Fleet base gets hit." Reyshank paused for a moment, noticing Orduval's puzzlement. "You know about the Groundstars and the Coplanetaries, don't you?"

  "I know the Groundstars support Fleet and the Coplanetaries support Combine, just a couple of groups amidst many. I didn't realise they were so dangerous."

  "Well, the Coplanetaries aren't really much of a threat, but the Groundstars are ever since Base Commander Fregen supplied them with arms."

  "And it's his base that's going to get hit… by Orbital Combine?"

  Reyshank nodded. "Most base commanders have surrendered, as per Fleet orders, but Fregen is holding out. His base is in a high population-density area so he's reckoning Combine will hold off."