Neal Asher - The Departure

‘Surrender yourself now, Ricard, and you get to live until the base personnel decide what to do with you,’ she said. ‘If you don’t surrender, then that’s fine. You can stay out there until your air runs out.’

Into an outer section now, blast damage evident all up the walls beside her, the broken window ahead where the enforcers had entered.

‘Someone was shooting at me from the roof,’ he protested.

‘Carol?’

‘I hear you.’

‘You can come down now.’

‘Okay, on my way,’ the woman replied, relief obvious in her voice.

‘I need some sort of guarantee,’ insisted Ricard, but his decision was already made. She could hear it in his voice – he was all out of choices.

‘I give you my word that no one here will try to kill you, Ricard. I need you alive, and telling the people here what instructions you received from Earth. I need them to know.’

She could now see him through the window, as he stood up, holding his rifle above his head.

‘Put the weapon on the ground,’ she said.

By the tilt of his head, he was still gazing up at the roof, expecting shots from there. With care he lowered his rifle and did as instructed, then began walking in towards the hex. Var moved towards the window, detaching the mostly used-up clip from her rifle and slotting a new one into place. She vaulted the sill, boots thumping on to the dusty ground. His head jerked back down, seeing her now. She walked out towards him, closing the gap until they stood just five metres apart.

‘The base personnel will understand,’ he ventured anxiously.

‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘they certainly will.’

She pulled the trigger and watched him dance for a moment, then tumble backwards through a cloud of dust. The base personnel would certainly understand that this man wasn’t worth the precious air it took to keep him breathing.

Argus Station

Twenty people waited in the control room. These included Langstrom, Peach and Mustafa, escorting a thin man with cropped grey hair standing hunched over in his prison overalls. There were also thirteen frightened-looking staff Saul had summoned, all of them clad in the same sort of technician’s garb worn by Chang and the twins, who were also present. Saul glanced at Hannah and nodded to the console they had used earlier. Understanding at once, she moved over to it, then turned and stood with her arms folded. Saul moved past this small crowd to gaze out across Argus Station, leaving them hovering and unsure about what they should do. He didn’t need to look round to know that the spidergun now loomed in the doorway. Even without the multiple views he could summon the sudden terrified stillness would have told him enough.

‘You are Robert Le Roque,’ he began, still without turning.

‘I am,’ the thin ex-prisoner agreed, straightening up and stepping away from Langstrom to move to the fore.

‘Formerly technical director of this entire station?’ Saul now turned to focus on the man.

‘Until Political Director Smith decided otherwise.’ Le Roque smiled nastily and glanced towards Langstrom. ‘But Director Smith is currently being processed into fertilizer for the Arboretum, so he has turned out to be unexpectedly useful in the end.’

‘Yes, the station digesters are going to be busy for some time yet.’

Le Roque folded his arms, as if feeling cold, and continued, ‘So what are your intentions now, and what do you want with me?’

Saul studied the man a moment longer. Certainly, to have reached the rank of Technical Director of this station, Le Roque must have had some less than savoury aspects to his past. But, having studied the extensive data fled in the Political Office, Saul knew political manoeuvring was not the main reason for this man’s promotion. Le Roque was highly intelligent and capable; in fact if he had been less so, he would have ended up in a cell long ago, for he had been far too much of a free thinker

‘I want you to resume the position you held here previously,’ said Saul. ‘I want you, and your staff here’ – he gestured to the others present – ‘to prepare everyone aboard Argus Station for the moment when, in twenty-three hours’ time, it swings about the Moon and I again fire up the Traveller engine to put us on a course for Mars.’

Shock registered on the man’s face, amid gasps from others in the room. Le Roque, however, recovered quickly. ‘And if I’m not willing?’

Saul shrugged. ‘I’ll find someone else, then. But you and everyone here must understand,’ he surveyed the group before him, ‘that there’s no going back. So food, water and air cannot be wasted on those who will not work for the survival of all aboard.’

The expressions of shock were still there, but in some faces he could see the kind of cowed acceptance that resulted from a lifetime of being ground down by the Committee. There would be, he knew, some here – and throughout the rest of the station – who had loved ones down on Earth who they had expected to return to, and he had now taken that option away from them. Part of him wanted to offer them some solution but, having set himself firmly on this course, he simply could not afford to expend valuable resources such as those space planes out on the docking pillars. Also, he could not afford to show the slightest sign of weakness. What would they be returning to anyway? Even a brief inspection of the data flooding Govnet rendered the expected results. If they thought they would just disembark from those planes and return to normal lives down there, they were sadly mistaken. Perhaps he should now acquaint them with some of the facts.

‘You realize, I hope,’ he said, ‘that even if you made it down safely to one of the space-plane runways on Earth, your first port of call would be an adjustment cell – where you would be interrogated until every last detail of what has happened here was extracted from you. After that there would be no release either – whatever authority remains down there would not want you blabbing your story to anyone else. Already the Committee “press officers” are at work, and Govnet is flooded with news of a successful test run of the Argus network, and the successful repositioning of the Argus Station.’

He let that sink in for a moment, before turning back to Le Roque.

‘What about . . . after?’ The man’s voice caught in his throat. ‘After we’re safely on course for Mars? What will you want of me then?’

‘I’ll want you to get everyone onboard the station back to work, all previous maintenance schedules adhered to, the self-sustaining programmes recommenced and the researchers in Arcoplex Two back on the job. I also want the entire station secured for space flight, strengthening made wherever required, the tubeways fully completed, and work started on a full enclosure of the inner station.’

‘We will need the smelting plants back online,’ observed Le Roque.

Saul nodded towards the Moon now beginning to recede behind the Argus Station. ‘After we swing round the Moon, the smelters can once again be extended. They will continue to function with the existing arrays of mirrors for seven months, though with declining efficiency, and we can extend that period by manufacturing more mirrors.’

‘Mars?’ said Le Roque.

‘Yes.’

Le Roque grimaced towards the others before refocusing on Saul. He ran a hand down his yellow overalls. ‘I would like to change out of these before I get to work.’

‘Of course.’ Saul gestured towards the door of the man’s former apartment. ‘I want you to move your personal effects later to Smith’s quarters in the Political Office, which I notice are more capacious than your apartment here. After that you can convert the control centre located there into a secondary version of this one.’ Saul stabbed a finger down at the floor. ‘I’m sure you’ll find a better use for the rest of the Political Office – I note manufacturing space has been tight while valuable resources were squandered there, and also on the cell block.’