Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

The room he had since occupied lay in what had been intended to be a residential section. It was also where Messina’s forces first gathered when they had attacked. Here he had found oxygen bottles, a scattering of ammo clips and, best of all, a ration pack before concealing himself away as instructed. The corridor outside his hideaway looked no different, and those distortions were no longer evident, yet, when he reached out and touched the wall, that horrible vibration was still present, if less strong than before. He moved further along, intent on heading out of the end of this section to reach a point where he could get a view into the station, down beside Arcoplex One. But only as he reached his destination and carefully made his way out into the station’s framework superstructure did he think to pause and extend his external aerial lead to a nearby beam, and again turn on his suit radio.

A haze of static and a high-pitched whining filled his suit helmet, but out of it, just discernible, came a voice:

‘. . . please reply . . . Come on, Alex, we need to talk to you. This is the Sc . . . calling A . . . please rep . . .’

‘Alex here,’ he said at once.

‘We’ve got . . .’

Alex quickly turned on his visor display and sorted through the various menus to find the one for the radio. Since it was being boosted through that same board from the thruster, he might not be able to do anything, but he was sure there was some facility available for cleaning up signals. Soon he found the relevant menu and discovered he could indeed do something, and the words came clearer, though a sound occurring behind them seemed to keep drilling into his spine.

‘This is Captain Scotonis of the Scourge here,’ said a new voice. ‘We’re not far away from you but, as you might have gathered, we’ve got a problem.’

‘I’ve gathered nothing,’ said Alex. ‘I’ve been hiding, remember.’

‘Ah . . . yes.’

‘Why are you talking to me?’ Alex asked. ‘It’s normally that Ruger guy.’

‘He’s a little inconvenienced now,’ the captain replied, ‘and we’re running out of time. Alex, that structure in the outer ring of the station is some sort of space drive. It moved the entire station six hundred thousand kilometres in just eight seconds, but crashed it into an asteroid. There seems to be little damage and, from the readings we’re getting, it seems that drive is powering up again. If they use it again we’re never going to get to you.’

‘What?’ Alex could think of nothing else to say.

‘We need you to knock it out, Alex. I can’t stress enough how important it is that you do so. If they manage to get it running again, Messina will forever be a slave and you’ll end up either captured and killed.’

‘Space drive?’ Alex echoed.

‘An inertia-less drive.’

Alex just had to accept it, because this explanation fitted the facts much better than anything he had so far heard from the tactical team. He turned himself round so he was facing out towards the rim, and through the superstructure there he could just about see the newly built ring – this space drive. It somehow looked incredibly substantial now, as if the station structure all around it was made of balsa and the thing itself was fashioned of blued steel.

‘Any advice on how I stop it?’

‘Do you have explosives?

‘Only ceramic ammo.’

‘That might be enough if you can put enough bullets into it. You have to try. Alternatively, I’m sure you’ve been trained to . . . improvise.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Alex. ‘I’ll call you when I have some news.’

He pulled the aerial wire away from the beam and wound it back into the pouch containing the booster board. Bullets might well be enough, as Scotonis had suggested. The thing bore some resemblance to a particle accelerator and doubtless numerous holes through the surrounding coils and into the accelerator pipe itself should seriously fuck with whatever it was doing. Then there were also the power-supply cables. The schematic Alexandra had already pulled up showed the main feed running in over by the endcap of Arcoplex One, with control optics leading to both Tech Central and the EM field transformer room – a definite weak spot. But first the bullets. He began to make his way through the superstructure towards the ring itself.

As he started to get a clearer view of the device, Alex did not lose that impression of substantiality, and the image of it hung heavy in his mind, almost too heavy, making his head ache with the load. He decided to get right on top of it before opening fire, since that way he would be able to target whatever aspect looked the most critical. However, even as he drew closer to the thing the sensation he was getting through his handholds grew ever more unpleasant. Upon reaching the base of one of the big beams that supported the device, he paused, just holding himself in position by hooking the sight of his rifle on the metal. Even so, that weird vibration travelled up through the weapon and into his arms, which were now aching as if they had been beaten. His recently healed leg had also begun to smart, and the pain in it there was growing steadily. He couldn’t pause, had to move in.

Alex again hung his rifle across his back and scrambled along the beam. The intensity of the pain increased until it felt as if he was being electrocuted through his hands. Abruptly he propelled himself from the beam towards the device, but the pain continued to grow even though he was touching nothing. As he drew closer to the heavy coils and skeins of wiring, his visor display suddenly began flashing a ‘systems failure’ alert and the smell of burning infiltrated his helmet. In an instant he realized what the problem was: being this close to such a mass of powered-up coils was inducing currents in the wiring of his suit. This could kill him.

He prepared to propel himself away but, when he was a metre from the thing, his descent abruptly slowed as if he was dropping into an invisible marsh. He bent his legs and then shoved hard against . . . nothing. It was enough to send him sailing away again, though slowly. He unstrapped his rifle and turned himself so that he could aim it back towards the device. Smoke now filled his suit helmet and he could hear a sizzling from the vicinity of his chest. He opened fire, spraying a full eighty-round clip along the length of the device, the dampened recoil making little difference to his progress away, then automatically loaded another clip before assessing the damage.

Nothing, no damage at all – but he could see objects bobbing about around the device like disturbed wasps, and realized he was seeing the bullets he had fired. As he watched them, they all lined up along the length of the device, then, led by the bullets at one end of that line, they began spiralling around it. Alex finally caught hold of a beam and drew himself to a halt, snapping his hand away immediately afterwards. This made no sense. Certainly the problems with his suit could be attributed to magnetic fields, and maybe a similar effect had worked on the metal within his suit to prevent him landing on the device itself, but what the hell was doing that with his bullets? They were made of ceramic, so could not be affected by magnetism.

He had to accept this and move on. First he needed to get somewhere he could change out of his present suit and into the VC suit strapped on his back. He kicked off from the nearby beam, sending himself on a course parallel with the device, still holding his rifle in readiness. Just half a kilometre round from his present location lay the cold store supplied by the hydroponics unit in which he had concealed himself for so long. He corrected his course off another beam, kept scanning all around for any activity. Maybe, because he had not actually managed to do any damage, his attempt had not yet been detected.