Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

Rhine had now come out from his little hideaway. ‘Told what?’ he asked.

She swung towards him, now finding a more viable target for her anger. ‘Why wasn’t I told that the robots are building your damned vortex generator in the outer ring?’

‘Are they?’ said Rhine, looking delighted.

Hannah swung back to Paul. ‘This is madness. We can’t afford to waste resources on this fantasy while the fucking Scourge is heading directly our way. Every moment of wasted effort gets us that much closer to either dying or ending up in an adjustment cell.’

Paul just stood there for a long moment, making no discernibly human response. Then he finally said, ‘I am puzzled. You were unaware of ADAR 45A?’

‘Yes, I was unaware of ADAR 45A,’ said Hannah. ‘So you need to shut down work on that and concentrate on our defences.’

‘I am sorry, Hannah Neumann, but there is conflict and I am therefore unable to comply,’ Paul replied.

‘What?’ Hannah stared at this unknowable being standing before her. She still felt angry, but that was being eaten away quickly by a fear that had been with her since she had taken over from Le Roque: that she was not doing enough, that she was losing control. ‘What do you mean? You and all the other robots aboard this station were instructed by the Owner to obey me and me alone.’

‘Yes, but obedience to you is secondary to obedience to the Owner himself.’

‘He’s awake?’ Hannah asked, feeling a sudden surge of hope.

‘He is not yet awake.’ Paul bowed his head for a second, as if in thought, then continued, ‘Before the Owner became comatose, he had queued up orders of primary importance, such as full enclosure of the station, securing the power supply’ – Paul gestured towards the machines now making Casimir batteries – ‘and, once resources were available after enclosure, then the construction of the vortex generator. When the threat of the Scourge became evident, ADAR 45A was moved to the head of the queue.’

By whom? Hannah wondered, but knew the answer to that already. Saul might have released his hold on consciousness, but his unconsciousness wasn’t of the human kind.

‘Surely you can see that wasting resources on this could kill us?’ she said.

‘On the contrary,’ Paul replied, ‘if we do not construct this device, we are finished.’

‘Can you elaborate on that,’ said Hannah, even though the meaning was plain.

‘The Scourge will first disable us, then launch an assault. With two thousand troops at their disposal, and doubtless spiderguns too, it is a certainty that we would lose. The only uncertainty is whether or not their victory would be a Cadmean one, because the station and all aboard could be destroyed in the conflict.’

There it was, stated out loud and in plain terms: everything the tactical models had been telling them, everything Le Roque had banged on about in those early meetings, and everything they had since tried to ignore. She had often wondered about Le Roque’s rather easy acquiescence to her; how, once it was evident she controlled the robots aboard Argus, he hadn’t tried anything else. There had been no assassination attempts, no further efforts to take her captive, no angry protests – just acid observations. She now understood why. Le Roque had sought power not because he loved it, but because he knew someone needed to take charge. The moment Hannah took command away from him, he stepped aside with alacrity, because nobody ever wants to be captain of a sinking ship.

Hannah turned to Brigitta and Pike, who stood goggle-eyed as they listened to this exchange. Meanwhile, Rhine had returned to his equipment and was now frantically working a console.

‘None of this leaves the room,’ she declared. ‘At some point wider knowledge of the construction going on out there will get out, so we need a story to cover it.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said Brigitta, who was clearly sharper than the other two.

‘What do we do?’ asked Pike.

Hannah focused on him carefully, feeling less sure about how he would react. ‘I – and a few others I trusted – knew about this all along. I allowed construction of the vortex ring to proceed in secret, because I did not want its purpose generally known. Messina’s clones currently aboard have been in regular contact with Earth, and I did not want them to find out about it and inform Earth.’ It was essential that the likes of Le Roque and Langstrom did not know how this development had blindsided her. They might lose any confidence they had left in her; so might feel the need to try and take control again.

She glanced next at Paul but the proctor was unreadable. She then strode over to where Jasper Rhine sat working. ‘What are the chances now of this vortex generator working?’

He glanced up with a slight dreamy smile on his face, which did nothing to inspire her confidence. ‘I never checked this. It’s amazing.’

‘Answer the question, Jasper.’

He waved a hand at the console screen. ‘Another two months and main construction will be completed, after which we’ll need to connect it up properly to the station system. It will, of course, work – but there’s much we still need to do.’

‘Like what?’ Hannah asked.

‘I checked with our long-range sensors, and I also checked the old asteroid survey maps,’ continued Rhine. ‘We need to further alter our course by half a degree and begin decelerating in about a month, so that we can moor to asteroid HJI457.’

‘You what?’ asked Brigitta, from behind Hannah’s shoulder.

‘That’s where we’ll get the ore,’ he explained, looking at her happily. ‘We should be able to swing one of the smelters right round to it, and haul the stuff straight across. It’ll be a low-temperature process compared to the usual smelting, and we can condense it in pipes cooled by vacuum, then use vacuum distillation to purify it.’

‘This still isn’t very clear, Rhine.’

‘Nearly eighty per cent cinnabar and vermilion, eight per cent pure product, and the rest is just rock.’

‘What product?’

‘Mercury, of course,’ Rhine replied, as if that was patently obvious. ‘You didn’t think the vortex generator would work without it, did you?’

Her throat trying to close up on her, Hannah asked, ‘And how much mercury do we need, Rhine?’

‘Oh, don’t worry. There’s enough there. We’ll have to process about three-quarters of the asteroid to achieve about ten thousand metric tonnes of the pure metal.’

Pike grunted as if someone had punched him in the stomach.

‘Oh, is that all?’ he said.

Hannah closed her eyes, fighting the urge to start crying, then gritted her teeth as a call came through on her fone from Le Roque.

‘What is it?’ she asked sharply.

‘We’re in trouble,’ he replied.

‘Tell me.’

‘The smelting plants just folded up their mirrors and are retracting into the station rim.’

‘I see,’ she replied. ‘I rather think we’ve been here before.’

‘Certainly,’ he continued, ‘and, just like last time, there’s a course correction in the system queue – and it wasn’t there before.’

‘Let me guess: a correction of half a degree.’

‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Dr Neumann?’

An hour later she was standing in Tech Central, as the smelting plants locked home in the rim.

‘What the hell is going on?’ asked Le Roque.

Hannah turned to gaze at two unused screens. Nightmarish images appeared there, but they seemed hazy now and, just for a second, she glimpsed the image of one of Argus’s steering thrusters firing up, its flame spearing out into the darkness.

Scourge