Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

Am I punishing myself? she wondered. Had she found it necessary to come down here to feel shame, feel the gorge rising in her throat, for some kind of penance?

‘The physical work is complete now,’ said Nelson, stepping back. ‘The level of agony he will experience henceforth will be governed by electrical stimulation of his nerves and by the drugs employed. He will also experience pain from the various infections that will inevitably ensue. How long he remains compos mentis is now dependent on the degree of pain delivered, and how long he will last physically depends on the extent of those infections.’

Serene felt her father had already lost all the compos from his mentis over the course of the last week.

So this then was Nelson’s art.

The frame holding her father’s body now sported numerous silvery extensions supporting polished dishes and glass containers. He seemed a freeze-frame of an exploding human being. Opened up like a gutted fish, his internal organs were arrayed all about him, all the plumbing and nerves of his body stretched, force-grown or otherwise extended in order to support them. In some areas Serene could see his blood running through glass tubes. Wires were interwoven, electrochemical amplifiers connected here and there, nerve interfaces running optics between each other. Serene watched his heart beating in a glass vessel half a metre out from his chest, his kidneys throbbing on dishes up either side of his drooling face, his intestine formed into a neat spiral just below the plastic-enclosed mass of his liver.

She gazed at this display in bewilderment. Traitors should pay with their lives, and if they possessed information, they should be tortured until they revealed every last scrap of it; then they should be disposed of. The rebels aboard Argus Station and on Mars should face lengthy punishment before the eyes of the world, and an especial place should be reserved in Hell for Alan Saul. But this was far too much punishment for a man who had merely rejected the sexual advances of his own child; this was far too much even for the man who had made the dictator of Earth feel shame both when she was a child and again now.

It was time for this to end.

She swung her attention across to Nelson, and studied him intently.

His expression was one of childlike wonder, and his hand was inside his lab coat, where a bloodstain was showing through. He was probably tugging at one of his numerous piercings and, after she left here, he would doubtless end up jacking off on the output from a disabler. For putting temptation in her way, Nelson should be made to suffer. For distracting her from her prime purpose, he should end up on one of his own frames. But that was pointless, because with his screwed-up wiring, such pain as this would be the ultimate in ecstasy for him.

‘Sack,’ she said, glancing round and gesturing her bodyguard forwards.

Sack stepped up beside her with alacrity, but she had caught him out because it had taken him a moment to wipe from his face an expression of disgust that even showed through his keroskin. ‘Give me your sidearm.’

He reached under his jacket, removed a heavy automatic, spun it round in his lizard-skin hand and presented it to her butt first.

‘This was my father’s,’ he said, which gave Serene a moment of pause. Was that somehow significant? She shook her head in irritation, took the weapon and stepped forward, as close to her father as she could get.

Donald Galahad’s gaze seemed to focus on her for a moment, then drifted away again. He was making a throaty whimpering and when his mouth opened briefly she saw that he had chewed his own tongue down to a stub.

‘Father,’ she said, and his gaze drifted back to her. ‘Father, I am going to end this now.’ No reaction; his attention slid away again and more drool dripped from his chin.

‘But you can’t,’ said Nelson. ‘He is perfect now.’

How did she get here? How did this happen?

She raised the automatic and snapped off one shot, the recoil nearly throwing the weapon out of her hand. However, her aim had been true and the bullet punched a hole straight through the glass vessel her father’s heart resided in.

‘No!’ Nelson yelled, throwing himself at her.

Sack intervened quickly, catching hold of the man and slamming him face down on the floor, a knee planted in his back.

Blood arced from the hole in the glass vessel and spattered the floor immediately to Serene’s right. She inspected the weapon she held, realized it was of some antique design, hence the recoil. Now settling into a Weaver stance she fired twice more into the heart, watched it stutter to a halt, then transferred her aim directly to her father. His head was waving from side to side and his lungs, hanging in a large cellophane bag to the right of his heart, were still sucking and blowing. Obviously all the extra equipment here, the extra venous shunts and feeds of artificial blood, were keeping Donald Galahad functioning beyond the lifespan of his own heart.

Serene fired twice more, the first shot hitting his cheekbone and taking off the side of his face, the second demolishing his nose and blowing his brains out of the back of his skull. She lowered the weapon, suddenly feeling utterly calm again, utterly centred.

‘I understand now,’ she said, stepping back. ‘In my position it is possible for me to gratify every human urge, every single whim. I can indulge in any cruelty, play power games, mind games and never lose. This was necessary.’ She turned and gazed down at Nelson. ‘Kill him.’ Sack responded immediately, reaching down and twisting the man’s head right round with a sound like a tyre going over an apple, then stood up leaving Nelson shuddering on the ground, his head facing backwards.

Serene handed over the automatic. ‘I’ve outgrown such games now.’ She gestured back to her father’s remains. ‘But I needed to find out.’

‘Ma’am?’ Sack asked, puzzled.

‘Let us say I needed to get this thing out of my system, so I could at last see what is really important.’ She headed for the elevator, knowing that this time she wouldn’t be throwing up inside it. ‘Clear out this cellar,’ she said, ‘clear it out completely.’ She paused for a second. ‘I want it remodelled. I want sun pipes leading down here, and I want a garden. Yes, I want a garden . . . with a pool . . . with carp in it.’

She glanced back at her bodyguard even as she reached the elevator doors, again catching one of his usually hidden expressions. Only when she was in the elevator and ascending did she realize what it might signify. She had never seen Sack actually look frightened before, and she found that oddly appealing.

Argus

Alex and Alexandra carefully exited the hydroponics unit airlock and looked around. The robots were gone but, when Alex propelled himself to a nearby girder and paused there, he could feel the vibrations of their distant activity in the station rim. According to Alexandra, the robots were over two kilometres away right now.

Alex then launched himself towards the new structure just twenty metres away from the hydroponics unit, snagging a cable as he arrived and bringing his feet down on a thick mass of resin-bonded wiring. Alexandra caught the same cable, and pulled herself down beside him. He quickly reeled out their combined safety and communications line, and they connected up.

‘They sure that’s a fast transport system?’ she asked as soon as they could talk.

‘Looks something like a tubeway network,’ he said. ‘Tactical reckons that, with the interior being vacuum, they should be able to squirt passenger or cargo modules around faster than in a scramjet.’

‘Crazy,’ said Alexandra.

‘Exactly,’ he said.