Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

Var turned and headed downslope in big gouging strides that brought a lot of the slope down with her, determinedly refusing to think too deeply about any doubts, because to do so might result in her just sitting down on a rock and waiting to die. Within a very short time she reached the bottom, but pressing on to get herself ahead of the landfall that had accompanied her down. She then headed along the base of the chasma, and soon began to notice human footprints here and there. Next, some paths made by one-time residents of the trench base became distinguishable, until she passed an area scattered with cairns composed of rounded black stones, and realized she had stumbled upon the trench-base graveyard. Had she not known precisely where she was she might have assumed from her surroundings that she was walking through a mountain gorge, rather than a canyon. As she progressed, the rising sun slowly ate away the shadows from the cliff faces and slopes, revealing colourful layers of sedimentary rock and rare layers of obsidian jutting out like black bracket fungi. She would enjoy a few hours of the sunlight, which would save her some power – maybe an irrelevance since her air supply would run out before her power supply, and she would suffocate before she froze.

Further signs of previous human habitation began to appear, including the stripped-out hulk of an ATV resting on its side. This was one she already knew about, since a report existed in the Antares Base system suggesting that it should be retrieved for its reusable metals. This meant she was only a few kilometres away from the old base; in fact, several of the boulders from the landslip that had destroyed most of it were now visible. Impatient now, she picked up her pace and, trailing a cloud of dust, soon arrived by a wall built of regolith blocks. After a moment spent surveying her surroundings, she got herself oriented and headed for the one building that was still standing – a long structure with a roof fashioned out of curved bonded-regolith slabs. The edifice looked like an ancient Anderson shelter, and it was here that the personnel from Antares Base usually kept a cache of supplies.

The airlock and windows had not been removed from this structure, and a solar panel on the roof topped up a super-cap inside, which in turn provided enough power to provide light. However, there wasn’t enough power available to run the airlock’s hydraulic motors, so Var had to struggle to open it manually. Within a moment she stepped inside, the low-power LED lights flickering to life in the ceiling, and looked around.

Against one wall stood an old-style computer, cables leading from it snaking up the wall to penetrate the roof. Var felt a sudden surge of excitement as, only then, the realization dawned on her that the solar panel was not all that was installed on the roof. There was a satellite dish up there, too. She headed straight over and pulled out the single desk chair, and sat down. The keyboard, of an antique push-button type, had a brush lying on top of it, the need for which she understood the moment she picked it up. The keyboard was thick with dust, likewise the single-pane perspex screen standing behind it. She brushed them off meticulously, then finally hit the power button. The single-pane screen went from translucence to blank white . . . then a menu appeared. If she was right, here was a satellite uplink – and therefore a way she could communicate with Antares Base. She should be able to get hold of Carol, or else Martinez, maybe get something in motion even before Rhone got back there.

Words appeared on the screen: NICE TRY, VAR.

She gazed at them with a feeling of hopelessness overcoming her. Rhone must have taken precautions, and now he knew she was alive.

AMAZING THAT YOU SURVIVED THE FALL.

Did he want to chat now? She sat back and just stared at the screen. He continued:

WITH THE OXYGEN YOU TOOK FROM LOPOMAC, I’D GIVE YOU MAYBE FORTY HOURS. THERE’RE NO OTHER SUPPLIES OF OXYGEN DOWN THERE. SORRY, VAR, BUT I CAN’T LET YOU KILL US ALL. I’M SHUTTING DOWN THE SATELLITE RECEIVER NOW.

She stared at the words, desperately thinking of some reply that might change his verdict.

WAIT, she typed. DO YOU REALLY THINK SOMEONE WHO HAS KILLED BILLIONS ON EARTH IS GOING TO LET YOU LIVE? She hit ‘send’ and waited. A loading bar appeared briefly, then blinked out.

UPLINK DISCONNECTED were the next words to appear.

Var just sat staring, angry and frustrated. She just wanted to get Rhone within her grasp, but now knew that would never happen. She was dead, there was no doubt about it. She would do everything she could to survive, but just forty hours of oxygen was nowhere near enough to get her back to Antares Base on foot.

However, while still gazing blankly at the screen, she realized that there was at least one blow she could strike against Rhone. She reached out and flicked the screen back to the main menu, from there entered the uplink menu, and after a moment found ‘dish positioning’. After studying that for a moment, she keyed through to an astrogation program and ran a coordinates search, found what she was looking for and input some coordinates. The dish on the roof repositioned; the power drain involved was enough to knock out a few of the interior lights.

After two hours fifty-three minutes of further rotation of Mars, the dish would be in the right position. If she connected up the super-caps she had taken from Lopomac’s corpse, she should then be able to keep it on target for the ensuing six hours. An icon down in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen indicated that it possessed an integral cam. All she needed to do now was decide how she would inform the people on Argus of the betrayal here.

Argus

At the base of the smelting-plant dock, the giant ore carrier looked like the framework of an ancient zeppelin standing on its end, attached by one of the cables leading out to the smelting plant itself. However, a small compartment occupied the lower end, and it could be reached by an extendible airlock tube. This was how those working out at the smelter – any who weren’t robots – travelled back and forth between it and the station.

Hannah gazed up towards the plant itself, silhouetted against the lit-up asteroid. A half-metre-wide ribbed pipe carrying the mercury flow extended down from this, well outside the path of the ore carrier. All along its length were reaction motors, computer controlled to keep it in position against any station or asteroid drift. Presently the flow rate measured at under ten tonnes an hour – and that wasn’t enough.

Hannah turned away from the porthole and continued along the corridors which, having to skirt an evacuated area of the outer rim, would eventually get her to that same airlock tube. She had tried to contact both Leeran and Pike but received no response. An attempt to question Le Roque on her concerns had elicited just a shrug and, ‘He knows what he’s doing.’ Now she felt she had to get some answers, and just retreating to her laboratory wasn’t an answer.

Eventually she reached the airlock tube and boarded the ore carrier. It jerked into motion once the airlock tube detached, and rose up towards the smelting plant. A hard vibration within the carrier as it rose impelled Hannah to grab hold of one of the handles on the wall to steady herself. She didn’t know if such a vibration was usual, never having travelled this route before. Twenty minutes later, she left the carrier compartment and ascended a tubeway taking her up to the control block. Even here that vibration persisted, and Hannah assumed it must be down to the processes they were currently employing.

She found Pike and Leeran inside. The former stood facing the inward windows that overlooked the interior of the plant, while the latter was working at a bank of screens that displayed various views of the asteroid.