Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

‘A clone,’ she declared. ‘That doesn’t really make someone any more dangerous, or any less.’

‘I disagree,’ said Langstrom. ‘I’ve seen these Messina clones before. They’re very specialized, surgically altered, totally loyal and trained beyond anything possible with an unaltered human being. They’re dangerous. That’s been illustrated by the fact that the two remaining ones have evaded capture by us for as long as they have.’ He paused, looking grim. ‘It is also the case that they were not soldiers surviving from Messina’s forces.’

‘What?’ Hannah asked.

‘The equipment we found in their hide was all from the station – none of it brought in from outside. Also three maintenance staff have gone missing, and if you check a further email from me, you’ll find that DNA traces found in the cabins of the missing three all match up with Messina’s map too. And with Saul no longer in control . . .’

‘But he will be back in control soon,’ said the male of the two personnel Hannah did not recognize. He looked to her in appeal.

Le Roque held up a finger, pressing the fingers of his other hand against his fone. ‘We should have some data on that shortly.’ He leaned back and listened to whoever was talking, nodding and making single-word replies as he did so.

‘Perhaps we should be introduced,’ said Hannah, indicating with a smile the two unknowns at the table.

‘Leeran,’ said the woman, then gesturing to her partner, ‘and Pike. We oversee the furnaces.’

So that was why she hadn’t recognized them. They spent most of their time out on the furnaces and bubblemetal plants that currently extended outside the station.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Hannah, instinctively recognizing allies.

‘So that’s it,’ said Le Roque, leaning forward. ‘According to Raiman, Hannah has not been giving us the full truth. The Owner . . .’ he paused for a second, ‘Alan Saul is severely incapacitated. He’s lost enough brain mass to turn any normal human being into a bedridden vegetable. There’s regrowth indeed, but no indication that what will result afterwards will be any more able than one of our repros.’ He gazed steadily at Hannah. ‘We need to make some decisions.’

‘Raiman has no idea of the true situation,’ said Hannah. ‘He’s a military medic and his is just not the same area of specialization as mine. He doesn’t understand bio interfaces or the resultant neural growth.’ She paused, groping for the best way to put this. Certainly, if Le Roque, Langstrom and others here were turning against Saul, then it would be best if they did not know about Saul’s backup, his ‘D drive’. ‘How does Raiman explain Saul speaking to you all after he was shot?’

‘Did he?’ asked Dagmar.

‘Raiman?’ asked Hannah. ‘Did he what?’

Dagmar shook her head, refusing to lift her gaze from the tabletop. ‘Did Alan Saul speak to us?’ She began playing with a pen, tapping it against the table surface. ‘What we heard could quite easily have been created from recordings of his voice.’ Now she looked up directly at Hannah to add, ‘With someone else providing the words.’

‘Are you really accusing me of that?’ Hannah asked, the back of her neck feeling suddenly hot.

‘I’m merely pointing out a possibility,’ Dagmar replied.

An uncomfortable silence descended for a moment, broken by Le Roque clearing his throat, then continuing, ‘That’s as may be, but we still have decisions to make. I’ve kept this on ice until this meeting, and now we need to see it.’ He swung his chair round, holding up a small remote which he directed at the screen on the wall behind him. Hannah felt something tightening in her chest when the United Earth logo flicked into being, then faded to show Serene Galahad standing on the carbocrete of a spaceport, a space plane looming behind her.

‘It is with great pleasure that I can announce to you that vengeance is possible, as is the more important goal of retrieving the Gene Bank database and samples. It perhaps seemed to us all that the mass murderer Alan Saul had taken himself beyond our reach. However, thanks to the foresight of Chairman Alessandro Messina, this is not the case.’ Serene held up her hand, above which a frame etched itself out of the air, before accelerating towards the screen to fill it with the blackness of space, liberally sprinkled with stars.

‘Twenty years ago, Alessandro Messina understood the dangers of subversion, terrorism and rebellion in space, and in secret he began to make his plans. He needed something up there beyond Earth that could move fast and deliver a suitable response to those who might undermine humanity’s future.’

The screen view swung round to show a massive spaceborne construction station, out of which an equally huge spaceship was currently manoeuvring. Hannah stared at this thing. It could quite easily be some CGI effect that Galahad was using for her own obscure purposes. Some sort of propaganda exercise maybe as a justification for world-resource reallocation and an excuse for resultant starvation and further death tolls. Or perhaps just a bit of media glitz to take people’s attention away from just such problems . . .

‘Messina named this ship the Alexander , but now I feel it is time for a renaming. I considered the Vengeance , but perhaps that is a name that has been overused. So of course, considering what Alan Saul has inflicted upon the people of Earth, there is a more appropriate name available.’

The scene changed, the ship now viewed far out from its construction station. Sounds began to impinge, a repetitive thrum like someone hitting a taut cable with a hammer. These sounds had to be added, since this view was recorded through vacuum. Perhaps they were what the crew supposedly aboard the vessel were hearing.

The station started to come apart, great pieces of it exploding away, tearing up, the whole thing splintering like the trunk of a tree under machine-gun fire. Then either something else hit it, or the projectiles had hit something vital. The station exploded, the glare blacking the screen for a second, then the next jerky image showed glowing chunks of it tumbling away. The next view, probably captured by a camera on the Moon, showed one such mass of material crashing into its surface. Then another scene: debris burning up in Earth’s atmosphere, the view descending past them down towards the land surface, structures visible, then space planes neatly arrayed across a carbocrete expanse, then onto the surface itself, to Serene – a close-up of her face.

‘The name of this ship is henceforth the Scourge – for it is the whip with which we will punish Alan Saul, and all those other traitors up there on Argus Station. I hope you are watching this up there, you people. We are coming for you now.’

Le Roque clicked his remote, blinking the screen back to the United Earth logo.

‘There’s more in the same vein,’ he said. ‘A lot about how well Earth is doing since the attack on it, how production is up, resources growing, space projects expanding and advancing faster than they ever have before.’

‘Is that thing for real?’ asked Taffor.

‘It’s real,’ said Le Roque. ‘It must have been concealed under some sort of EM cloak that’s now been removed. We can see that damned ship from here.’

Hannah folded her arms, much of her anger at having been dragged here draining away and a cold dread settling in its place. They needed Saul more than ever now. Without him, without that demigod mind working for them, they would be defenceless.

‘How quickly could that ship reach us?’ she asked.

‘I haven’t calculated that,’ said Le Roque, ‘since the time it takes depends heavily on when it leaves. But what is certain is that it will get to us, and there’s nothing we can do about that. And you saw those weapons.’ He swung back to the screen again, already holding up his remote. ‘Now there’s this: a personal message for us.’