Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

She shook her head, because it all seemed too implausible. They were probably fighting their own battle for survival out there, so putting together some way of enabling her to survive would be the last thing on their agenda.

Var stared at the screen, contemplating the grim reality of her situation. Nevertheless there was still a little hope, no matter how small. She edited the message she was sending, adding that she had found some extra air, and telling her brother precisely how long she had left. Then she stood up abruptly, headed outside again, fully aware of how hope could be a dangerous thing.

19

Plasma Weapons

It can be argued that that the billions of Euros spent on trying to develop plasma weapons would not have been expended but for these weapons lodging themselves in the public consciousness, first through science-fiction films, then during the boom in computer games of the twenty-first century. The great problems in propelling plasma at a given target have always been air pressure and power. The second of these, for portable devices, was overcome by the development of high-energy density power storage like nano-film batteries and super- and ultra-capacitors, but the first – air pressure – has always remained a problem. Firing plasma through atmosphere to hit a specific target is like firing a jet of water through the sea: it breaks up, loses coherence, and the ratio between distance and energy requirement has always been an exponential one. To some extent this was overcome by laser-guided electric discharges, remote magnetic lenses and tunnelling acoustic shockwaves, all of which resulted in a portable plasma weapon . . . mounted on a tank. But, in the end, one must sometimes go back to the first purpose of the weapon, which is to kill and destroy, and the plasma-firing tank is substantially less effective in this respect than one firing depleted-uranium Hyex shells – and substantially more expensive.

Argus

‘Sometimes there’s just no other option,’ said a voice behind Hannah.

She turned to see that the Saberhagen twins had joined her group, and felt a sudden deep gratitude for their presence. Hannah herself carried a standard Kalashtech assault rifle, but the twins both carried somewhat complicated-looking weapons that they must have fashioned themselves, along with coils of superconducting cable terminating in standard bayonet power plugs. She had seen a lot of this in Arcoplex Two as the defence efforts became more organized, some clever people having been preparing for just such an occasion.

‘What’s he doing?’ Brigitta asked, nodding along the corridor to where Jasper Rhine had a floor plate up and was concealing something underneath.

‘Booby traps,’ Hannah replied. ‘His Casimir batteries have a high-energy density, so inject a little nitric acid and they go off like grenades.’

‘How does he intend to detonate them at the right time?’ asked Angela, with clinical interest.

By now Rhine had replaced the floor plate. He stood up to press some minuscule object against the wall, before returning towards them with a big bag slung over one shoulder.

‘That’s the clever bit,’ replied Hannah. ‘They’re not activated now, but they will be after we’ve all taken our positions. Once activated, they respond to nearby movement.’

‘But you have a danger of chain reactions – one goes off and they could all go off?’ suggested Brigitta.

‘Not so,’ said Rhine, pausing beside them. ‘All the time and resources spent in developing the machinery of oppression was not wasted.’ He gave a crazy smile and headed off.

‘HAD cells,’ Hannah explained, pointing towards a small metal button on the wall. ‘Human activity detectors were developed to save having readerguns perpetually powered-up. They operate at low power and contain shape-identification software. In a readergun, upon detecting the human shape, they send the signal for the gun to power up. Here the signal is picked up by a micro-relay that opens the acid bottle.’

‘Neat,’ Brigitta opined. ‘But is it enough?’

Hannah didn’t want to reply. She had spoken with Saul and he had been quite blunt: they were outnumbered and unless he could find an efficient way to use his own particular talents, they would inevitably lose. And, as he had told Langstrom, the defenders would now be fighting not to win but to buy time. She just hoped Saul had found some way for them to survive this, and was ashamed to admit to herself that she did not care how savage it might be.

‘Let’s hope so,’ she allowed, studying the rest of her group.

Her assistant James was among them, along with four other lab assistants and two robotics engineers. The latter two, and also two of the lab assistants, carried Kalashtechs like herself and James. One of the lab assistants was just a girl, and it would have been nice to tell her to go away and hide herself, but in the end, if they lost here, she would be treated no better by their attackers than any of the adults. The remaining two lab assistants held a sidearm each, while one carried a handheld missile-launcher and the other carried a tube of the ring-shaped magazines this weapon used.

‘Okay,’ said Hannah, ‘Alan managed to take a few seconds out of his busy schedule to organize our defence here.’ They smiled in response; even before Saul had been shot, it had become a standing joke that if he took any more than a few microseconds to think about something, then he was giving it deep and intense thought. ‘The area we have to defend extends from the end of that corridor’ – she pointed to where Rhine had been laying his booby traps – ‘through to the rear of the factory.’ She pointed the other way, along the corridor, to where it flared then terminated against a pair of wide concertinaed doors that opened on to the robotics factory. Then she began walking towards them.

Reaching the doors, she stabbed a finger against the panel to one side of them. They began sliding open to reveal the factory floor of Robotics within. All the machines were shut down now, after that mad rush to get as many robots as possible finished ready in time for the attack.

‘So what have you brought to the party?’ Hannah asked, indicating Brigitta’s unusual weapon with a nod.

Brigitta held the object up. ‘When we thought they could become a threat, we began making something we thought might be useful against the proctors. These comprise arc-heat helium in a Tesla bottle which is fired with what we’ve dubbed caps. They maintain the Tesla bottle around the plasma for about twenty metres, but we’ve only got ten shots each.’

Hannah gaped at the woman. ‘What?’

‘The bottle caps melt in excess of that range, which tends to make the effect even nastier,’ continued Brigitta blithely. ‘At twenty metres, the bolt discharge throws molten metal about too.’

‘So let me get this straight: in your spare time you’ve managed to knock together a couple of plasma rifles?’ said Hannah sharply. ‘As I recollect, the Committee only got as far as reducing them in size so that a tank could carry them, then gave up.’

Brigitta winced. ‘They’re not plasma rifles as such, because the plasma would dissipate over just a few metres, without the caps.’

‘A small point, don’t you think?’ Hannah observed. She was about to ask further questions, but a sound that had been hitherto just a background hum now rose into complete audibility. Hannah recognized the sound of small-arms fire impacting on the outside of the arcoplex, along with the occasional ominous rumble of explosions. The latter worried her more, because the sound must be transmitting through the station’s structure – since vacuum lay outside the arcoplex – and that meant the battle had drawn very close.