Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

As Var headed back, it occurred to her that there might be other corpses under the rubble, and so further oxygen bottles, too. She allowed herself to hope.

Argus

The robots were flowing back down the cables that extended to the smelting plant, even as the flow through the pumps within the plant ceased. Pike had insisted on running the furnaces for another hour, to build up a stock of a further fifty tonnes of liquid mercury. Maybe it would be required if there was damage or leakage. Saul allowed that overrun, since it did not slow down the vortex generator start-up test, and the mercury might be useful later, should they survive. However, if there was any damage to the ring while they were using it, and therefore leakage, the chances of making repairs were remote. Saul guessed that it hadn’t occurred to Pike what would happen if damage occurred to a tubular ring around which mercury was being propelled at relativistic speeds.

The lights dimmed, and stayed dim. Saul headed over to the three recently installed acceleration chairs in Tech Central and peered at the displays positioned before them. Rhine occupied one of these chairs, overseeing the start-up test. One of the other chairs was for weapons control and presently unoccupied, while Chang sat in the third chair. He was effectively their pilot and was currently laying in a selection of courses they could take. His was an onerous task, since what course they took was dependent on how well the station could be set on a course, which wasn’t yet known. Saul simultaneously inspected their efforts from within the station system, and retained the option to take control at any time.

‘Pike is annoyed,’ called Le Roque from his main console.

‘Why’s that?’ asked Saul, already knowing the answer.

‘The energy drain has cut out the smelting-plant cable motors,’ Le Roque replied. ‘It’s not winding in any more.’

‘Jasper?’ Saul enquired.

‘Can’t it wait?’ Rhine asked, exasperated.

‘Yes and no,’ said Saul, closely inspecting the thin white scars that covered the man’s face. ‘Incidentally, your test results should be coming in by now.’

‘Yes,’ Rhine agreed. ‘But, once I’ve checked them, we should go straight into actual start-up.’

‘But whichever way you cut it,’ said Saul, ‘you’ll still have to divert power to bring in the smelting plant, since we can’t go anywhere with it still dangling out there.’

‘Yes, all right,’ Rhine said grudgingly, stabbing at his controls.

The lights grew brighter for a moment, then dimmed again. Almost like a grumble in his gut, Saul felt the big cable-drum motor being set in motion again, once again winding in the smelting plant. In the virtual world, he also studied the results of the start-up test. Every single electromagnet, inductor and electro-stat plate on the vortex generator was functioning within desired parameters; all the alterations to the EM radiation transformers and emitters were also up to spec. Moreover, Rhine was correct to say that they should go straight into startup. Even with the immense drain from station super-capacitor storage, the huge load on every single fusion reactor and the necessity of cutting life-support and all other activities down to a minimum, it would take many hours to run the generator up to speed. It would be tight, but only because Saul had needed to ensure that all the work was completed to the highest standard possible within the time available.

Saul turned now to watch as Hannah, the Saberhagen twins and Langstrom arrived in Tech Central, perfectly on time. He stepped away from Rhine and moved over to stand behind Le Roque. The man glanced back at him expressionlessly.

‘Everything is good?’ Saul enquired, nodding towards the images on the three big screens. Two of them showed exterior images of the Arboretum and Arcoplex One cylinders respectively, while the third showed the smelting plant being towed in from the cinnabar asteroid.

‘Do I really need to tell you?’ Le Roque asked, turning back to his controls.

‘Yes,’ said Saul, ‘I understand that my supposed omniscience is a slight bar to civil exchange.’

‘It is,’ said Le Roque, ‘but only in conjunction with paranoia inspired by a lifetime spent under the Committee.’

‘Except,’ said Hannah, at Saul’s shoulder, ‘under the Committee you would have faced an interview with your political officer concerning your “unhelpful attitude” and, if your responses weren’t satisfactory, perhaps a little adjustment would be prescribed.’

Le Roque glanced at her briefly, then concentrated fully on Saul. ‘Everything is secure inside the cylinder worlds, and I’ve cut power to all the motors and have let them lose their spin at their own rate. It should take two days before they’re near to stationary, then I’ll apply the cylinder brakes. The smelting plant should dock and lock down in just five minutes or so, but then Leeran and Pike will have to secure everything inside it.’

Saul looked round at his newly arrived audience. They had come here because of what Rhine was doing, and because now was precisely the right moment to set certain events in motion. ‘Time for a change of view,’ he declared.

Saul mentally adjusted and focused the station’s main visible light telescope array, selecting three portions of the asteroid belt and routing the images through to Le Roque’s screens. The middle screen just showed blackness, while the two other ones showed conglomerations of rocks and dust only visible at extreme distance.

‘And these are?’ asked Le Roque.

Saul fought the inclination to tell him that he already knew. That was a game they had already played.

‘The middle view is effectively what you would see if you stood out on the rim, looking towards the Scourge ’s approach route,’ he explained. ‘The two rubble piles are those I visited with Langstrom.’

‘There’s no way they would not have seen us,’ interjected Langstrom.

‘True,’ Saul agreed, ‘and they might even have worked out what we were doing. However, they will know that, over such distances, a booby trap is nigh impossible, and so they will save any course corrections they need to make until the last moment.’

‘What sort of distances?’ asked Brigitta.

‘Those two rubble piles are one point two million kilometres apart, and nearly the same distance away from us. The Scourge is just half a million kilometres beyond them.’

‘What’s your window?’ Brigitta now asked.

‘With the likely spread,’ said Saul, ‘twenty hours, but right now is the best time.’

He sent a coded command to one of the radio transmitters on the rim, and just a few seconds later all three screens blanked for a moment then came back on. The middle screen showed two glaring eyes of red and orange, steadily expanding. On the other two screens the two explosions were expanding oblate discs of fire beginning to extrude spindles of flame above and below. Just visible, within the sides of each disc, were arc-shaped clouds of shattered and molten rock.

‘By the time the shrapnel from each explosion intersects with the Scourge ’s course, it will be spread across nearly a million square kilometres,’ said Saul. ‘That ship of theirs will have to change course, and soon, or else it will end up amidst chunks of rock travelling fast enough to punch holes right through it.’

‘And will it change course?’ Hannah asked.

Saul glanced at her. ‘Maybe not, since the crew might be more frightened of Galahad than the possibility of their ship being hit.’

Scourge

A sound like the rending of metal impinged on his hearing, but it was brief, echoing and distant, and Clay found himself once again in Serene Galahad’s aero as it plummeted towards the ground. Then the side of his face smacking against his bedside shelf brought him rudely back to consciousness. He swore, realizing his cabin seemed to have tilted up on one side, and was glad that he’d taken the precaution of climbing into his anchored sleeping bag. He pushed himself away from the shelf, as a further sound like wind howling down a pipe told him one of the side-burn fusion engines had fired up. As his cabin seemed to right itself, he quickly contacted Scotonis.