by Neal Asher
"I've been scanning this ship," she lied, glancing towards Rhodane, whereupon her emotions ricocheted between resentment, outright hate and strangely a deep sibling love. She tried to push all that emotional clutter aside and operate on intellect alone. "It seems clear of anything untoward."
"Whatever." Gneiss waved a dimissive hand. "I just wanted to be sure you're all right before clearing the ship to land. I'm sending over your route and destination coordinates right away. You'll be landing on the edge of the Komarl, where Duras will meet you."
Yishna gazed at Rhodane, who nodded briefly. Gneiss now blinked out, and Yishna felt McCrooger's hand close around her upper arm.
"Well done," he said. "I could see that was difficult for you."
"The Shadowman?" Yishna queried, remembering his earlier words. Somehow, down deep, she knew exactly what he was talking about, yet there seemed something blocking that information from her conscious inspection.
"Certainly not racial conscience…" said McCrooger. He turned to Rhodane. "We're going in now, I take it?"
"We have our route cleared down to the surface, and shields and defence buoys are being deployed to cover us," said Rhodane. "It should take us about two hours to reach our landing coordinates."
Soon came a rumbling sound, as a Brumallian ship entered the atmosphere of Sudoria for the first time ever.
16
One would have thought that economic collapse on Sudoria would have resulted in automatic victory for the Brumallians. What actually happened is a perfect demonstration of how artificial and insubstantial is this human construction called an economy. Why were some people starving when others were growing more than sufficient food? The extent of the madness operating up to the point of the revolt was revealed when entire warehouses packed with hoarded food were broken into. It was all about money and greed. The people were being taxed savagely to pay for the war effort and further enrich the plutocrats, but because of this tax burden they could not afford to buy sufficient food and essential goods. The subsequent introduction of a fair rationing system after the revolt began to settle unrest, and the fate of Cairo-Desit got people back to work, now knowing they were working for their very survival. Had the owners of those warehouses been prepared to reduce their prices, they might not have ended up drive-bolted to rocks out in the Komarl. It was a simple economic mistake with harsh consequences.
— Uskaron
Director Gneiss
"If you had a spare spacesuit to sell here, you would net enough profit to buy yourself a shuttlecraft," observed Roubert Glass, the Director of Corisanthe III. "The price for one suit is now about a hundred times what it cost only a few hours ago, but few people are ready to sell since there's only about one spacesuit for every 800 citizens aboard."
"I see you're wearing yours," observed Director Gneiss. Indeed, Glass, who was a thin and rather sickly-looking specimen with anaemic blonde hair contrasting starkly with his narrow dark face, appeared to be wearing a spacesuit obviously a few sizes too big for him. Gneiss turned his attention to another screen, showing a view of the station itself from a nearby satellite that had thus far survived the bombardment. Corisanthe III, which had originally started out as a simple cylinder, was now vaguely disc-shaped—after conglomerations of industrial units, private accommodation and the connecting infrastructure had spread out gradually from the cylinder's waist, till eventually subsuming it completely. Spotting an anomaly on the vast structure. Gneiss instructed the satellite to focus in. This revealed, in appalling clarity, a gaping hole in one of the surrounding units. Something had obviously detonated there: either a missile had got through or more likely a shield generator had blown catastrophically. He could now see living quarters standing open to vacuum, and in the surrounding cloud of debris he spotted blankets, furniture, a view screen, and three decompression-bloated bodies, one of them too small to be an adult. A one-man EVA unit was working nearby, equipped with a grab claw and a vacuum glue gun. The operator was collecting debris and sticking it together in a conglomerate to be hauled inside—the quickest way of clearing free-floating debris that could otherwise become a danger to the station. This ghoulish mass of detritus contained bodies as well. After a further moment of close inspection, Gneiss drew the focus back.
Above the station the menisci of its energy shields flashed into view intermittently under the impact of missiles fired by the approaching hilldiggers. Ships crammed with people were constantly departing from below the station, while other ships were returning from the surface of Sudoria. Nevertheless, ensconced in his office aboard Corisanthe Main, Gneiss could tell by the numbers he called up that this civilian evacuation would take months. Hopefully their assessment of Harald's strategy was correct, and he did not intend the total destruction of this place but merely to break supply chains by keeping the station on the defensive.
"Wildfire and Resilience are bearing down on you again," warned Gneiss. "Clearly, whatever problem caused Fleet to pull back has now been resolved. We want you to get as many of your attack craft out as you can, and while you can. The evacuation will meanwhile have to cease."
"'We'?" enquired Glass.
"I am acting commander for the duration of this emergency, and I require you to get as many of your ships out of the station as you can. I don't want them trapped there when they could better serve us out in space."
In reply Glass merely sent a couple of camera feeds that now flashed up as icons on Gneiss's screen. As he connected to them he observed panicked crowds milling about within the main concourses of Corisanthe III, and a riot breaking out in the storage areas to the rear of the cargo docks.
"We were going to cease the evacuation anyway," commented Glass. "As you can see, it's getting out of control down there."
Gneiss silently eyed the ugly scenes. He could spot station security personnel trying desperately to keep order and medical staff stretchering out the injured. Against the far wall of one storage area rested a stack of bulging body bags. One of them was still open, with a woman kneeling beside it rocking back and forth in grief. There was no sound accompanying these images, and they seemed all the more poignant for that. Gneiss sensed that soon things would be getting even worse: additional shield generators blowing, more areas of the station decompressing, more panic, more body bags.
"Why did they withdraw?" wondered Glass.
"My intelligence is that there was some sort of attack on Admiral Harald," replied Gneiss. "My source informed me that he was assassinated, but I rather doubt that since this would all be over now if he had been."
"Too much to hope for," Glass said glumly.
"Quite." After a brief silence between the two men, Gneiss continued coldly, "Keep me informed of the situation with those ships." He then moved to put his links to Corisanthe III on hold.
"Wait!" said Glass. "We're getting something…a message laser from the Resilience."
It had to be a surrender demand, Gneiss decided as he observed the image of a young man in a Captain's uniform fill the screen. But this was no Captain he recognised, so perhaps other intelligence received earlier that told of some sort of reorganisation of the command structure in Fleet was true.
"This is Captain Orvram Davidson calling Corisanthe III. Please respond."
"Should I respond?" asked Glass.
"Connect him to me, if you would," Gneiss instructed.
In the corner of the screen an icon lit to indicate that the connection had been made. On his own screen, Captain Davidson would now be seeing Gneiss himself.
"This is Director Gneiss, Combine military command for the duration. What can I do for you, Captain?"
"I think rather I can do something for you," said Davidson hurriedly. "I have little time over this link, since it's jury rigged and will soon be detected and shut down. You need to know that not all of the ships now attacking Combine are doing so willingly, nor are they still under the command of their legitimate Captains and crews. Harald has managed to slave the controls of my own
ship, Resilience, to those of the Wildfire. Stormfollower and Musket are similarly slaved to Harvester. After using false emergencies to get my people out, he closed the blast doors on weapons systems and engine galleries and then opened those areas to vacuum."
"Do you seriously expect me to believe that you can do nothing at all?" asked Gneiss.
Davidson winced. "I sent twenty crew to break through to the coil-gun breech. Supposedly a flak shell accidentally detonated after they gained access, and I've heard nothing from them since."
"You are a soldier, and you must find a solution," said Gneiss, without a flicker of emotion.
"Yes, but it is extremely difficult here," said the Captain. "Harald has shut down all the lifts and the internal railway, closed spacesuit lockers and shut down EVA vehicles, and strategically opened many intervening areas of the ship to vacuum."
"What do you expect from us—that we don't fire on you? You must understand that, though I sympathise with your plight, there are over 140,000 non-combatants on board the station you are currently approaching."
"I understand that perfectly, which is why I am now sending you this." A package arrived at Gneiss's screen. He opened it and studied the blueprint of a hilldigger, with shield generators and their fields of cover highlighted. All the generators were numbered.
"This is not new information to us," observed Gneiss.
"It has cost us a further five lives and may yet cost us more," said Davidson, "but in two hours' time, as Resilience draws close enough to Corisanthe III to employ beam weapons, we will destroy shield generators fourteen, sixteen and twenty. This will allow you to fire on our ship's engines, and on the main reactors feeding the weapons systems—as you can see indicated on the schematic."
Gneiss could indeed see the targets mentioned. "We will endeavour not to hit anything else," he said, knowing that all three targets could result in a chain-reaction detonation.
"And we on board will endeavour to survive," replied Captain Orvram Davidson.
Orduval
The mobile incident station was a massive rectangular vessel half a mile long, bristling with com and scanning gear interspersed with the occasional gun turret or missile launcher. Its flat sides were inset with windows and its partially camouflage-painted hull lay open along the rear corner, with internal joists exposed, for construction had yet to be completed. It came in to land on the Komarl sands, blowing up a storm around it before settling down with a grinding roar. On one of the screens in the control centre, Orduval observed the flat circular feet extending below to crunch down on the sand and adjust the station level. Gazing out of a window he felt sure, even at night, that he recognised this stretch of desert. Wasn't that mount rising over there in the distance his erstwhile home?
"Reyshank has told me you've some important research to conduct. Another book perhaps?" suggested Chairman Duras, ensconced in one of the control chairs, his fingers intertwined over the head of his cane, as it balanced on the floor before him.
Leaning against the window frame, Orduval turned towards him. "When will that ship with my two sisters arrive?" He nodded towards the sky still lit by the fires from the battle raging above.
"Within the hour, and with the dawn," Duras replied, with a touch too much poetic drama, Orduval felt.
"You yourself chose the landing site?" he asked.
"Parliament chose it—those of them aboard this vessel. This part of the Komarl lies far enough from the nearest city that any detonation here will have little effect and, should any biologicals be deployed, the prevailing winds blow out into the deep desert. We also have ground installations targeting that ship should it deviate from its predetermined course here. We're probably taking unnecessary precautions."
"I see." Orduval paused for a moment, trying to get his thoughts in order. Yes, he needed to talk to Yishna about what had happened aboard Corisanthe Main at the time when he and his siblings had been conceived, but that did not seem quite so important now. "There will be a better time for me to conduct my…research," he added, in response to Duras's earlier enquiry.
The Chairman nodded. "Then if you don't want to tell me about that now, perhaps we can fill in our waiting time discussing your previous books."
"My history of the colonisation, you mean?"
"Please don't pretend to be obtuse."
Orduval grinned. "I guess you'd like to know about my conclusions on the War?"
Duras studied him intently. "I would like to know the source of proof that The Outstretched Hand went to Brumal with hostile intentions, and how you managed to place that proof on my secure system."
Orduval gazed out at the night-time desert, and considered the impact of what he must now reveal. No one here knew about Tigger and, by binding agreements, the drone was not supposed to be in the system anyway. However, those who might object most strongly were currently fomenting a civil war, so their protests would seem somewhat irrelevant now.
"Fleet has maintained a strict embargo on Polity technology, but you have to wonder how the Polity found out so much about us in the first place—"
Duras interrupted, "So the Polity still has something operating here amongst us?"
"Yes, it's a mechanism, an artificial intelligence, which calls itself Tigger. It obtained the proof that our very first physical contact with the Brumallians involved missiles, not handshakes. As Tigger said, The Outstretched Hand held a knife'. On the same day as my book was released, Tigger used some stealthy technological means to place that same information on your system."
"Considering its source, we could question the veracity of such information."
Orduval turned to him. "But you won't, because even though you weren't alive at the time, you feel certain that it is true. Those who took us to war profited hugely during those first twenty years, we all know that now, so it is but a small step of logic to surmise that they started the War intentionally."
"Yes, that's true." Duras looked tired, and he stared down at the floor, seeming at a loss to add anything else. Really, it did not matter so much now, considering what was going on above. Orduval turned to scan the rest of the control centre. The GDS technicians responsible for bringing the incident unit in to land were now leaving their posts and heading off. A group of delegates from Parliament stood clustered in deep discussion over by the rear doors. As he understood it, Parliament would reconvene in due course, so the Consul Assessor could present the Brumallian's evidence against Fleet. He understood why the residents of Brumal might want this so as to themselves escape the finger of blame, but did not see how it could benefit his own planet, Sudoria, now.
Eventually an officer in the GDS stepped over to join them. He nodded towards the desert, now growing lighter with the onset of twilight. "The Brumallian ship is arriving, Chairman."
"Thank you, Pierce."
The officer bowed and returned to his controls.
Peering up at the sky, Orduval could see nothing yet. He turned to Duras, who was now struggling to his feet, depending heavily on his cane. "You'll be going out to meet them now?"
Duras seemed about to reply, then his eyes narrowed as light flared through the windows. Orduval swung round, feeling an immediate frisson of fear. The shape now descending towards the dunes was one he felt must be eternally imprinted on the Sudorian psyche. For this was the shape of the age-old enemy, and here it was descending on their homeworld. Another name for shapes like this was the Tears of Satan in reference to some ancient personification of evil, and indeed the descending ship looked like a giant teardrop, but with landing rockets blazing beneath it. It was the sight of these flames that dispelled any fear in him, because they meant the Brumallians still did not possess gravtech, being obliged to counter gravity so crudely.
"Yes, I'll be going out to meet them," replied Duras, "once the area is secure."
As the rumble of the incoming ship's drives began to reach them, Orduval saw dust clouds being kicked up as balloon-wheeled armoured cars hurtled out towards the ship.
"Along with who else?" he enquired.
"A GDS combat group led by Reyshank, who I trust," Duras replied. "Should there be anyone else?"
"Will you board the ship itself?"
"I have requested as much, since I'm curious to see inside one of those things. I never got a chance during the War."
"I want to go with you."
"And so you shall."
Duras gestured with his cane towards the back of the control room, and slowly led the way. Following the Chairman, Orduval checked some of the screens about him and there saw views of launchers swivelling into position, and he picked up snatches of conversation from the crews controlling the weapons: "Target acquired…warhead load prepared…Combine link-up confirmed…satellite masers…"
As they entered the lift and descended, Orduval's stomach churned with a variety of twisted emotions including joy at the prospect of meeting his sisters again. Had they changed much? How would they react to the changes in him? The lift finally shuddered to a halt and revolved to access the opening. They stepped out into the rear of a bay in which some GDS troops were scrambling aboard two balloon-wheeled armoured cars. A door ramp had been lowered onto the desert sand, and distantly the rising sun was etching the horizon distinct from the sky. Reyshank was standing ready by one of the vehicles, and waved them over. Soon the pair were crammed aboard, surrounded by ten heavily armed GDS wardens, and the car lurched out of the bay into the nascent morning. It was far too noisy to speak while travelling, but the journey was thankfully short. Soon the vehicle drew to a halt and the wardens swarmed out onto the sand ahead of them.
Following Duras outside, Orduval gazed around at the perimeter set up by GDS armoured cars, then up at the ship. Perhaps it was the lack of light, but what struck him most about the vessel was not its strange appearance, but the smell. It reminded him of the kind of odours found at the coasts of Sudoria's small briny seas and somewhat of the smell encountered in the cooled underground buildings where Sudorian farmers raised their less heat-tolerant livestock. He knew, at once, that he was in the presence of some immense living creature.
