Neal Asher - Hilldiggers

It now had a wormish shape, but one seemingly formed out of a compacted mass of steel and silver skeletons, like thorny baroque sculptures. It was now elongating, with a simultaneous narrowing of its girth. During this transformation it started to look insubstantial, its elements gradually parting and a pearly glow issuing from between them, then the elements becoming translucent, fading. Then abruptly it turned blindingly bright and stabbed towards the cylinder wall, impacted hard and simply began boring through the metal.

A shock wave skidded me along the floor still buried under the wreckage, like a bug being smeared under a foot. Incandescent vaporised metal and plastic and chunks of wreckage exploded into the chamber as the Worm tore its way through. Nothing hit me directly, but then nothing needed to, since I was already pretty well broken up by then. Then the Worm was through, and the debris cloud went into abrupt reverse as the inert atmosphere all around me roared its way out through the massive hole punched in the cylinder wall.

I lay there wondering why I felt no pain, concluding that my body was now so nearly a corpse that I was beyond feeling. I could see that my right leg was missing below the knee and that a rip down one side of my suit had exposed my intestines and one shattered rib to vacuum. I was actually steaming—the fluids rapidly boiling away from my body—and wondered if I could remain conscious even while my present environment turned me into something with the consistency of dry leather and kindling.

However, two huge bulky figures suddenly loomed over me, one pulling away the wreckage while the other heaved me free. The one holding me then launched himself away, and it seemed but a moment before we were out in open space, Sudoria turning below us, stars above, and a pillar of rainbows over to one side. Some leviathan mouth then closed over us, and Slog and Flog dragged me deeper into intestinal spaces. I glimpsed Rhodane's worried expression, and felt something pressing against my neck.

"We've got you," said Tigger, and that was the last I heard.

For a while.

Harald

For a few seconds after their ejection the cylinders rising from Corisanthe Main maintained their cross-shaped formation, then they rose beyond the station's shields. Suddenly the Brumallian ship was there, firing missiles, but none of them reached their target. Simultaneously, each cylinder tore open and bright eels of fire looped out to connect to each other, the empty wreckage of the cylinders tumbling away as something toroidal, and seemingly composed of bones and light, rose and expanded. Fiery tendrils stabbed out and touched the approaching missiles, which glowed briefly and were gone. Harald had watched the grainy recordings of that occasion before the end of the War when Fleet first encountered the Worm, but could remember nothing from then looking like this. But this must definitely be that…object. What else could those Ozark Cylinders have contained?

"Franorl, cease firing!"

The other Captain had been taking heavy fire from Corisanthe Main, and returning it with devastating effect now his ship had managed to knock out numerous shield generators aboard the station. He had redirected some weapons fire towards the Brumallian ship which had closed on one of the cylinders but also lay dangerously close to that expanding luminous ring. Perhaps he feared some attack from the enemy vessel against the assault craft currently departing his hilldigger.

"They're with the Brumallians!" Franorl shrieked.

Harald gazed at the image of this man who found plotting and murder so easy, but was now failing under the exigencies of such vicious warfare. He was clearly panicking.

"Do not fire on—"

The ring abruptly distorted, a loop of it flashing out over hundreds of miles and travelling along the entire length of Desert Wind . Franorl's image winked out. All contact with Desert Wind shut down, then Harald's screens blanked and the lighting on Ironfist's Bridge flickered out, to be replaced by the muted glow of the emergency lights. He looked up, noting instruments gone dark and crew frantically trying to operate dead consoles. A huge electromagnetic pulse? If it had been enough to affect Ironfist like this, then Desert Wind and those assault craft were certainly out of play.

"Verbal report!" Harald stood up. "All stations report status."

As the crewmen around him gave their assessments, the lights reignited, consoles began to respond, and Harald's own screens came back online. He sat down again, tried out his control glove and wondered if its inaccuracy was due to the EM pulse or because his hands were shaking so much. He swore viciously. Orbital Combine had done the unexpected: their power base was Corisanthe Main, and it was their power base precisely because the Worm had been aboard. By releasing it like this they had removed his prime target. Corisanthe Main was now of even less importance than the other stations.

But was that all?

Could they now somehow control the Worm, use it as a weapon? Harald thought not, but some change had certainly occurred, for the Worm had seemed unable to defend itself when Fleet had first attacked it all those years ago. It then occurred to him that being able to use such levels of power as it had just used, the Worm had not been 'contained' at all. It could have broken out at any time, so he wondered when it had ceased to be a prisoner.

With some difficulty, as his systems rerouted, Harald managed to take a close look at the other hilldigger. Desert Wind's drive and steering thrusters were now out, and numerous explosions had blown debris into space all along its length. Though the assault craft were still moving under their initial impetus, Harald suspected all their systems were dead. Upon reaching the station they would simply crash into it. This would be the case for Franorl's ship too, though some hours later since it was moving much slower. But without defences or weapons, none of them would even reach the station. Even as Harald watched, two of the assault craft exploded, then something big detonated midway along the hilldigger, jarring it sideways. The Combine gunners were not hesitating to capitalise on their advantage.

"Get me Gneiss, get me Gleer, get me any of those Oversight fuckers," Harald demanded.

Nothing for a while, so all he could do was stare at the carnage, and at that expanding loop of… whatever it was. He felt a terrible hollowness as his doubts about his present course returned to haunt him. Angrily he dismissed them, but felt his anger still growing at this wrecking of his plans. He now realised how the taking of Corisanthe Main, the closing of his fist around Orbital Combine's heart, had somehow grown more important to him than ultimately defeating it. Yes, other ways to that end still remained viable, but his original plan seemed to have a richness he could almost taste. To win in any other way seemed scrappy, untidy, the resolution of a sordid human struggle.

"Gneiss here."

The station Director smiled at him—something Harald had never witnessed before. He felt his anger rise to a new pitch. Gneiss must have realised how much releasing the Worm would hurt him. This was personal.

"I cannot even begin to fathom how you decided to commit such a crime against the Sudorian people," Harald hissed.

"What crime, precisely?" Gneiss enquired.

"The Worm was one of our greatest assets and now you have flung it away."

"I have done no such thing," Gneiss replied. "For reasons that presently escape me, the Polity Consul Assessor managed to gain entry to one of the cylinders and there caused a breach. Subsequent events remain a puzzle to me."

Harald jerked back as if the man had slapped him. The screen view now expanded to include a figure standing at the Director's side.