Neal Asher: Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

‘It’ll scrape off,’ someone else commented briefly.

When they reached the door leading into Medical, the construction robots were already on their way out, a fog trailing after them. Saul entered and gazed at the stack of corpses, then walked over and took hold of one to sling it over his shoulder.

‘Follow me through into the surgical area.’ He gestured to the viewing window. ‘The clean lock is vacuum tested, so it should hold. Bring yourselves a corpse each.’

As he stepped into the clean lock he overrode its hygiene safety warnings, since he only wanted to use it as an airlock. Once inside, he quickly stripped off his suit and was down to his undergarments by the time Langstrom came through.

‘Do what I do,’ he instructed him.

He stripped the suit off the corpse he’d selected, then stepped over to a dispenser for some disposable towels, which he used to clean away the spill of blood around the neck ring. A repair patch taken from the maintenance kit of his suit sealed the single hole that had killed the wasted-looking soldier. By the time he was donning this second suit, another five of Langstrom’s men had entered. Twenty minutes later, they were all filing out, every one of them looking like enemy combatants. Saul remembered to warn the robots, and anyone else defending the station in the vicinity. He wanted only those he had already instructed to shoot at him.

Hannah had once read somewhere how it was the waiting that was the worst part and, though she understood that sentiment, she could not really agree. She would have been quite happy to just wait forever for a fight and never get involved in one. She’d seen quite enough of the results of warfare to be sure of that.

‘Why haven’t they decompressed the arcoplex?’ asked Angela suddenly.

‘They’ve got vacuum-penetration locks, so what would be the point?’ replied the lab assistant now sporting a missile-launcher.

‘The point would be to kill as many of the enemy as possible, but without putting themselves in danger,’ Hannah replied. ‘Isn’t that always the point of war?’ She paused for a second. ‘Anyway, the fact that they haven’t done so thus far but are certainly inside doesn’t mean they won’t. So just be ready to close up your suits.’ She nodded in acknowledgement to Angela, who simply shrugged in reply.

The sounds of battle had grown closer, but when it finally arrived, Hannah found herself gaping, unable to respond. Two soldiers appeared first at the end of the corridor, and began loping forward. They immediately opened fire, ceramic ammunition slamming into the floor plates ahead of them. Belatedly, Hannah realized they must have already encountered Rhine’s explosives and were now attempting to make this corridor safe. She began to raise her weapon . . . just as bright rose light flared beside her, and something like a pink tracer bullet shot towards the two intruders. The thing expanded as it travelled, thus creating the illusion that it wasn’t actually moving away, was merely some fault in Hannah’s vision. It struck one soldier on the shoulder and there detonated like a firework, flinging him back into the trooper behind. Both of them collapsed, licked by flame and screaming. A missile followed shortly afterwards, exploding against the far wall and tearing it wide open.

‘We need to calm . . .’

Gunfire stitched across the wall beside their door. A corridor wall exploded inwards, and the whole area was abruptly filled with smoke from burning plastic. More troops began appearing. Were they mad? Didn’t they realize what had just happened to their fellows?

Two more missiles sped into the confusion and silhouettes of dismemberment tumbled out on fireballs. Angela carefully saved her shots until she had a clear target, and with the next two turned three of the enemy soldiers into screaming and burning ruin. Then all at once it just seemed to stop – no one else attacking at the far end, though someone was groaning loudly amid the wreckage. Hannah unclenched her hands from her Kalashtech, realizing she still hadn’t fired a single shot.

‘What are they doing?’ she asked.

‘Probably bringing up something heavier,’ said the other lab assistant, as he passed over more missiles for the launcher.

‘Did you hear that back there?’ Hannah called out, glancing back into the factory.

‘We heard,’ Brigitta replied.

‘Seems inevitable,’ said James, from where he crouched with his weapon laid across a machine cowling.

Just at that moment a massive explosion shuddered their entire surroundings and the air was filled with shrapnel glass. Hannah ducked her head, her ears ringing, as fragments impacted all around her. When she looked up again, the air inside the factory was filled with lethal glittering flakes, and she quickly slid her visor down. Again she found herself gaping, until gunfire chattered, and James began dancing beside his machine, shedding pieces of his body. She only realized what had happened as she saw the first troops descending through the void where the glass viewing floor above had been. Then she shrieked something wordless, and finally opened fire.

‘Over there,’ said the man they called Charlie, whom Alex could still only think of as Chairman Messina.

The ground was bulging up alongside some kind of fruit tree scattered with white flowers, one of its roots heaving up as if the tree was getting ready to walk. A huffing sound ensued as the ground broke open and the cylinder of a vacuum-penetration lock abruptly rose into sight. As it rose, breach foam exploded all about it to fill the air like green snow, and the circular lid on its end flipped open.

A soldier rocketed out, his weapon aimed towards the ground while he turned. Messina’s rifle cracked sharply, and the top of the man’s head disappeared in a spray of brains and skull. The impact sent him cartwheeling backwards into the branches of the fruit tree.

‘Not very good positioning,’ Messina noted.

‘Positioning?’ Alex echoed, pride surging in his chest. That had been one hell of a shot from the erstwhile Chairman.

‘Out in the open like that,’ Messina explained. ‘I thought you were a soldier.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Alex replied, suddenly feeling crestfallen and inadequate.

‘Do you want the next one?’ Messina asked cheerfully.

‘Sure,’ Alex replied, gazing up to the point where it appeared the trees were growing down towards him. More foam exploded up there, and shortly afterwards he heard a full clip being fired by one of the more inept snipers covering the area. This should be easy, he felt, like shooting fish in a barrel – a phrase he had never really understood because who would waste bullets to destroy such perfectly good food?

‘Oops,’ said Messina.

Objects began to rise out of the first lock and, the moment Alex focused his gaze on them, they exploded. Flash grenades! Black after-images chased each other across his vision, almost blotting out the next figure that rose into view. He tried his best but knew he would not be able to manage a single-shot kill, and so he fired a short burst. He glimpsed a man spinning, one leg hanging on by a thread, fired again to send him bleeding into the foliage.

‘Messy,’ observed Messina.

From behind came the crump of an explosion, and smoke gouted from the doorway into the maintenance building dividing up the Arboretum. The battle had started there too, and it seemed intense – as if that place was the main target. Alex blinked, trying to recover his vision, determined to do better for his Chairman, who seemed singularly unimpressed with his clone’s marksmanship.

Another lock cylinder rose into view on a green snowstorm, further objects flying outwards. This time Alex closed his eyes before the detonation, then opened them to see a growing smoke cloud. Beside him Messina fired off a shot, then a second one just after gunfire began snapping through the leaves and branches around them. Alex flicked his scope over to infrared, but the intruders’ suits were insulated, so he only picked out his targets in the reflected gleam of the smoke bombs, as they emerged from one of the locks. He calmed his breathing, steadied himself, fired one shot, and saw glowing fragments flying out of his latest target’s neck, then swung to aim at the next lock to rise up.