Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

Argus

The Imperator detached from the docking pillar with a resounding crash. Then with a blast of compressed air through the nozzles of its steering jets, it began falling away from Argus Station. Langstrom manipulated the joystick, began fuelling those steering jets, igniting thruster flames in order to turn and cant the plane just so, while bringing the station up in the main screen.

Saul was amazed to find he still possessed some capacity for awe. The massive disc-shaped station seemed like some odd creature of the abyss that had extended a feeding tube into a random chunk of marine debris. But it was neither shape nor analogy that impressed him, rather a combination of the sheer scale of what he was seeing and the knowledge of their position and intent. Here they were, three hundred million kilometres from Earth, engaged in mining an asteroid, while getting ready to start up an engine that was a wet dream of science-fiction writers of the past.

‘So where to?’ asked Langstrom.

From where he was standing by the rear door of the cockpit, Saul glanced back at the six EVA workers, who were now ensconced in the forward travel compartment where Messina himself and anyone with him would have strapped themselves in during either launch or docking. They were gazing at the big screen on the cockpit bulkhead, which displayed the same view as from the cockpit itself. None of them was strapped in, for out here they would be experiencing no unexpected decelerations or course changes. In fact, barring the possibility of the plane crashing into something, neither was possible.

‘The coordinates of the first target are on your screen,’ he replied.

Langstrom swung the nose of the plane away from Argus, steadied it on blackness punctuated by the cold glare of stars, then fired up the main engine. Saul just leaned back against the wall for the duration of the burn. While this was occurring, he could feel his links to the station stretching, delays increasing in ways only noticeable to a computer, or maybe to a being with a mind that was half computer. And now, with this minuscule transmission delay giving him an ersatz breathing space, he began thinking about certain things he had effectively put on hold.

My sister is alive.

It was only as he arrived on Argus Station that he started to realize that, though his motives had seemed quite plain – namely freedom from and vengeance upon the Committee – they were not. Something else in his subconscious had also been driving him, something left over from the person he had been before Smith had destroyed his mind. That earlier self wanted to find his sister, and it was now a moot point as to whether that was the main driver of his actions or just an incidental goal. But, now he had effectively found her, what next?

Using Var’s face, and a program related to facial recognition, he ran a search through his extended mind. Immediately data began to accumulate, and he needed to delete everything concerning recent communications from Mars. What remained was both fascinating and frustrating. Fragments of memory surfaced: escaping their tutors as children and entering a zero-asset area, but no memory of what had occurred before or afterwards, and no memory of what their parents had looked like; talking about death in the Dinaric scientific community, again a dislocated memory, nothing before or after; remembering her determination to build spaceships, the conversation conducted somewhere he just did not recognize; then something new with a brief vision of him gazing over the rim of a glass at her, her arm wrapped round a man. Just using logic, Saul could place these memories in time, but they were like fragments from a film and possessed no emotional content. Really, he didn’t know her any more – hadn’t even been able to recognize her face – so what was he supposed to do about her?

‘It’s an asteroid,’ Langstrom commented.

Saul focused on him as the space plane’s acceleration began to wane.

‘No, it isn’t,’ he replied. Langstrom peered round at him in puzzlement, so he continued, ‘Like a lot of objects out here, it was identified as an asteroid hundreds of years ago, and that designation was never changed despite contrary evidence, and is still retained in astrogation systems. When we get closer, you’ll see what I mean.’

Saul turned and ducked into the passenger area, the six EVA workers watching him with cautious curiosity. He crooked a finger at them. ‘I need two of you with me now.’ He had expected reluctance from them, but was surprised when all of them began to rise. ‘Bring your helmets and the tool chest.’ He gestured to the heavy box that he had ordered to be brought aboard.

Leading the way out of the section occupied by acceleration chairs, then through Messina’s luxurious private apartment, he glanced back to notice two of the EVA workers had fallen in behind him, one of them towing the tool chest, while the other four were hesitantly tagging along beyond them. He had no problem with that, just so long as they didn’t get in each other’s way. Finally he entered the plane’s cargo hold, which was cold and empty, and turned to the six as they finally all trooped in behind. He pointed down to the floor at a panel measuring two metres by one metre, which was secured by a series of heavy bolts set only ten centimetres apart around its rim.

‘General arming or disarming of this plane was carried out from outside, and usually when it was grounded,’ he explained. ‘We could go outside now and use the same route, but there’s an easier way. The missile cache is right underneath here and it contains four thirty-kiloton warheads. I want them taken out and laid on the floor, then secured with magnetic clamps so that I can work on them.’

A heavy shaven-headed individual with the singular name Ghort, whom Saul had already recognized as being one of Messina’s former bodyguards and who surprisingly had not joined Langstrom’s police force but opted for a job in maintenance, gazed down at the floor contemplatively before saying, ‘If they were loaded from the outside, then the compartment they’re in might not be pressurized.’

Saul simply pointed at the space helmet Ghort was holding.

‘Ah, I see.’ Ghort turned to the four that had trailed along behind and gestured for them to move back, himself walking over to the hold door they had all come through.

‘As you see,’ said Saul, ‘you can seal this entire hold while you work. You have two hours now before we start decelerating, so I’m hoping you can have them out and secured in just an hour – which should give me time to prepare them. I’ll leave you to it, then.’ He headed for the door.

‘If I might ask,’ said Ghort, a slight edge to his voice that intimated at hidden resentments, ‘what do you intend to do with them?’

‘As our first target becomes visible, I’ll explain,’ Saul replied. ‘It’ll become clearer then.’

As he left them, the four who had followed remained behind, donning the helmets they had brought. Ghort opened the tool chest and he and one other stooped over it to take out powered socket drivers.

‘You’re going to use the tactical nukes?’ said Langstrom when Saul returned to the cockpit. ‘They’ll certainly make a nice display, but they’ve got a lot of space to cover.’

Saul reached over and patted his shoulder. ‘Patience, and you’ll see.’

Langstrom looked round at him in surprise, but didn’t have anything to add. Saul returned to the passenger compartment, sat down in an acceleration chair and strapped himself in. He then simultaneously watched feeds from the hold where Ghort and the others were working, from the mining of the cinnabar asteroid and from anything else his attention was drawn to in Argus Station. Even while observing these, he continued working on the esoteric maths and theoretical stats of the station’s space drive, both modelling how it should work and figuring out what adjustments would need to be made to the magnetic field in order to make it perform just so. As Ghort and crew were fixing the last missile to the deck, securing the floor plate again and repressurizing the hold, a new feed from Argus drew his attention.