Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

‘Command access only,’ Holsten noted.

‘I’d be a pisspoor chief engineer if that could stop me. I wrote most of the access scaffolding. You ever wonder what our lord and master scored so high on, that he got this job?’

‘Well now I’m wondering.’

‘Long-term planning, if you can believe it. The ability to take a goal and work towards it through however many intervening steps. He’s one of those people who’s always four moves ahead. So if he’s doing this now, it may look just like pique but he’s got a reason.’

Holsten considered that for some while, whilst the mutineers continued ranting at Karst. ‘Competition,’ he said. ‘If by chance we get past the satellite and on to the planet… and survive the monster spiders.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ Lain agreed. ‘We sod off to Terraform B, or whatever the place is, then come back a few centuries later to find Scoles is well established on the planet, maybe he even cuts a deal with Kern. Guyen…’

‘Guyen wants the planet,’ Holsten finished. ‘Guyen is looking to beat the satellite and take over the planet. But he doesn’t want to have to fight anyone else for it, as well.’

‘And more – if Scoles does set up there and sends a message saying, Come on down, the spiders are lovely , then what if a load of people want to join him?’

‘So, basically, Guyen can’t ignore us.’ And a thought came to Holsten on the tail end of that: ‘So basically the best result for him, other than surrender, would be Kern blowing us to bits.’

Lain’s eyebrows went up and her eyes flicked over to the wrangle in progress at the comms.

‘Can we hear if Karst is transmitting to the satellite?’ Holsten asked her.

‘Don’t know. I can have a go at finding out, if these clowns’ll let me try.’

‘I think you should.’

‘Yeah, I think you’re right.’ Lain unclipped her webbing and pushed herself carefully from the seat, attracting the immediate attention of most of the mutineers. ‘Listen, can I have the comms for a minute? Only—’

‘He’s launched a drone!’ the pilot shouted.

‘Show me.’ Scoles lunged forwards, got a hand on Lain’s shoulder and simply shoved her, breaking her grip on Holsten’s seat back and sending her tumbling towards the back of the cabin. ‘And she doesn’t get near anything until we know what’s going on.’

There was a clatter and an oath as Lain hit something and scrabbled for purchase to prevent a rebound.

‘Since when do these shuttles carry drones?’ Nessel was asking.

‘Some of them are equipped for payload, not cargo,’ came Lain’s voice from behind them.

‘What can the drones do?’ someone demanded.

‘Might be armed,’ the pilot explained tensely. ‘Or they could just ram us with it. A drone can accelerate faster than us, and we’re starting deceleration anyway. They must have launched it now because they’re close enough.’

‘Why are we letting them catch us?’ another mutineer yelled at him.

‘Because we need to slow down if you don’t want to make a big hole in the planet when we try to land, you prick!’ the pilot yelled back. ‘Now get strapped in!’

Amateurs , Holsten thought with creeping horror . I am on a spacecraft intending to make a landing on an unknown planet, and not one of them knows what they’re doing.

Abruptly down was shifting towards the front of the shuttle as the pilot fought to cut their speed. Holsten scrabbled with his seat, sliding forwards until he got a grip.

‘Drone’s closing fast,’ Nessel reported. Holsten remembered how swiftly the little unmanned craft had closed the distance between the Gilgamesh and the planet, the time before.

‘Listen,’ came Lain’s forlorn voice as she worked her way forward again, hand over hand, ‘was there any traffic between Karst and the satellite?’

‘What?’ Scoles demanded, and then an ear-wrenching screech erupted from the comms that had everyone clutching at their ears, Nessel slapping at the controls.

Holsten saw Scoles’s lips shape the words, Shut it down! It was plain from Nessel’s frustration that she couldn’t.

Then the sound was gone, but it had paved the way for a familiar voice.

It came over the speakers with the booming volume of a wrathful god, uttering the elegant, ancient syllables of Imperial C as though it was pronouncing the doom of every hearer. Which it was.

Holsten translated the words as: This is Doctor Avrana Kern. You have been warned not to return to my planet. I do not care about your spiders. I do not care about your images. This planet is my experiment and I will not have it tainted. If my people and their civilization are gone, then it is Kern’s World that is my legacy, not you who merely ape our glories. You claim to be human. Go be human elsewhere.

‘She’s going to destroy us!’ he shouted. For a long moment the mutineers just stared at one another.

Lain hung on to the seat backs, pale and drawn, awaiting developments. ‘So this is it, then?’ she groaned.

‘That’s not what she was saying,’ Nessel objected, although precious few people were listening to her.

Welcome to the classicist’s lot , Holsten thought drily. He closed his eyes.

‘The shuttle’s changing course,’ the pilot announced.

‘Bring it back on. Get us down to the planet, no matter what—’ Scoles started.

The pilot interrupted him. ‘The other shuttle. The Security shuttle. We’re still good, but they’re…’ He squinted at his instruments. ‘Drifting? And the drone’s off now… it’s not following our course adjustments. It’s going to overshoot us.’

‘Unless that’s what they want. Maybe it’s a bomb,’ Scoles suggested.

‘Going to have to be an almighty big bomb to get us at the distances we’re talking about,’ the pilot said.

‘It’s Kern,’ Lain declared. Seeing their baffled faces she explained, ‘That warning wasn’t just for us; it was for everyone. Kern’s got them – she’s seized their systems. But she can’t seize ours.’

‘Good work there,’ Holsten muttered into the mask radio around his neck.

‘Shut up,’ she returned by the same channel.

Then Kern’s voice was on the radio again: a few sputtering false starts and then words emerging in plain language, for everyone to understand.

‘Do you think that you have escaped me just because you have locked me out of your computers? You have prevented me turning your vessel round and sending it back to your ship. You have prevented me dealing with you in a controlled and merciful manner. I give you this one chance now to open access to your systems, or I will have no option but to destroy you.’

‘If she was going to destroy us, she’d have done it already,’ one of the mutineers decided – on the basis of what evidence, Holsten did not know.

‘Let me get at the comms,’ Lain said. ‘I’ve got an idea.’ Once again she kicked off for the comms panel and this time Scoles hauled her to him, a gun almost up her nose. Her deceleration-weight yanked at him, and the pair of them nearly ended up crashing into the pilot’s back.

‘Doctor Mason, your opinion on Kern?’ Scoles demanded, glaring at Lain.

‘Human,’ was the first word to come to Holsten’s mind. At Scoles’s exasperated glower, he explained, ‘I believe she’s human. Or she was human, once. Perhaps some melding of human and machine. She went through the Gilgamesh ’s database, therefore she knows who we are, that we’re the last of Earth, and I think that means something to her. Also, a laser like she’s got must be an almighty energy sink compared to just shutting us down or telling our reactor to go critical. She won’t use her actual weapons unless she absolutely has to. Even Old Empire tech has limits, energy-wise. So she’ll shoot us as a last resort, but possibly she’ll try to get rid of us without killing us, if she can. Which she can’t at the moment because we’ve sealed her off in the comms.’