Neal Asher: Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

‘They have to go.’ He turned towards her. ‘It’s the only way we can survive – we know that now . . . after Glasgow.’

She strode past him to the console, unhooking her palmtop from her belt. She placed this down on the table to the right of the console and opened it, then gestured to the seat. ‘Set us up for transmission. We want a local burst first, to secure things here, then the full Govnet transmission.’

He took the seat and quickly keyed in the required instructions, the screen now showing the main aerial and microwave array online, followed by subsections giving admission to other networks across the world, including readerguns, the transponders in all robots, and radio modems and servers. After that first burst, the signal would go viral. Serene Bluetoothed to the console here, sorted through her secure files and found the program required: the one that added just two digits to every zero-asset implant code on Earth. She readied it, then found two individual implant codes additional to that, and cued them up too.

‘We’re ready?’ she asked, linkage established and her finger hovering over the return key.

He had to clear his throat first, then after a nod managed a strangled, ‘We’re ready, ma’am.’

This then was the moment – so much like when she had pressed down the ball control to activate the guns on the aero she had flown here a seeming age ago, yet so much more.

‘I’m reminded of some historical context,’ she said, the politician in her insisting some words be said now. ‘When I press this button it’s like a reset for the whole human race. It’s like the “Year Zero” proclamation made by some of the worst and most genocidal dictators of our past, yet here and now it is utterly necessary.’

‘I know it’s necessary, ma’am, but it isn’t easy,’ said Anderson.

There, that itchy niggling of conscience which could grow into something inconvenient – the risk she just could not take. Nothing could stand in the way of what she intended to do now, and nothing must stand in the way of her future plans. She pressed her finger down on the return button, watched the loading bar appear and begin filling. There, it had started, just like that – easy. It wouldn’t get every zero asset on Earth, since not all had the new implants – just eight billion of them.

‘I did this with you. It wasn’t just you,’ he said.

Of course, he’d expected her to kill him here and now. He thought she’d dismissed the guards just so she could privately dispose of someone who knew too much.

‘Yes, we did this together,’ she replied. ‘And now I want you to head out to Sheila, ostensibly to help her with the selection process out there, but mainly to get her reaction. We need her to keep her mouth shut.’

‘Understood,’ he said grimly, again resting his hand on the butt of his sidearm.

He thought he understood, but he didn’t yet. In about an hour’s time he would begin to feel the effects of the biochip now active in his implant. By the time he realized what was going on, it would be too late for him. He might try to get back to Serene to exact some vengeance, but the chances of him achieving the quarter-hour journey from the perimeter back to here were remote.

Once activated, the biochips would release, from that sixth face on the cube, a potent cybervirus to multiply and spread through the recipient’s body, moving as fast as the beat of a heart. But it released more than just one mass of this thing, half virus and half nanomachine, for it acted as a template for further copies, continuously feeding them into the bloodstream for as long as the body’s bioelectrics kept the ID implant powered up. It was nasty, and fast. Based on the Ebola virus as the safest base agent to cut down on the possibility of air transmission, it also possessed a nano-mechanical component that made a nerve-toxin similar to Novichok agents. It took effect in an hour, whereupon loss of physical control was quickly followed by paralysis. During tests it had been a toss-up between whether paralysis of the heart or massive bleeding in the lungs killed the recipient first.

In her own mind Serene had named it ‘the Scour’ but, within days, as the signal retransmitted all around Earth, it would become a name familiar to all. She would ensure that her own personal signature became adhered to what she had created.

Mars

Var stepped into the agricultural laboratory and gazed at the equipment all around her, some salvaged from the old base, much of it put together from parts scavenged here. Screw you, Ricard , she thought. Switching her gaze downwards to the soil troughs, she considered how Ricard and his enforcers were now themselves components of the new soil used here.

Gunther, now chief of Hydroponics and Agriculture since Kaskan had sacrificed himself to destroy one of Ricard’s shepherds, gazed pensively at the green shoots spearing up from some of the troughs. He seemed to have developed a nervous tic, which became more pronounced when he coughed into his fist. He then rubbed at his chest, as if it was troubling him.

‘We received no seed stock from Earth, obviously,’ he said. ‘But we found that we actually had some stock here.’

‘Yes, I know about that,’ Var replied. ‘I wouldn’t have approved the work on Hex Four otherwise.’

Hex Four had been designated an arboretum right from the start, but completion of its construction had stayed on hold while the Committee constantly failed to send the required seed stock. However, after Var shot Ricard and gained approval from other heads of departments for her assumption of leadership here, she had ordered an intensive survey of the resources immediately available, including all the personal possessions, even those in storage belonging to personnel who had returned to Earth. And it was these last that had made possible what she was seeing here. She had not expected much, since the allowable weight of personal effects wasn’t much more than could be fitted into a wallet. However, for political staff like the enforcers and Ricard himself, things had obviously been different.

Ricard had actually possessed a small jar of olives, and Gunther’s staff, working non-stop in shifts, had been able to resurrect some of the stones. One of the enforcers had kept an apple carefully stored away in a vacuum-sealed cool box for some special occasion, and Gunther had removed viable pips from that. But the mother lode had been the stored effects of one Tina Bream, who had worked in what was now Gunther’s department and who had returned to Earth four years previously. She had brought in her own small quantity of seeds in very small containers: seeds for blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries and redcurrants, and even two plum stones and two cherry stones. She had also obviously been collecting seed from the empty plates of the political staff too: here some orange, lemon and pear pips, there some peach, nectarine and avocado stones.

‘Okay.’ Gunther flinched as if ducking a blow – a reaction to her that seemed all too common, and unjustified. Yes, she had been ruthless, but necessarily so. The reaction of some people to her now she felt stemmed from them being so thoroughly accustomed to Committee rule, to leaders who could have someone dragged off for torture or execution almost on a whim. Gunther gestured to the troughs with one shaky hand. ‘We’ve had no failures at all yet . . . though not everything has been planted. After the dome goes up on Hex Four, we’re going to have to partition it to provide the various environments. My suggestion is that we divide it concentrically: the hottest climate at the centre, then progressively cooler out towards the edge.’

‘That seems sensible, as it should make temperature control less wasteful.’ She gestured to the plants already growing from the troughs. ‘What are these?’