Neal Asher - The Departure

‘You used the lasers?’ Braddock frowned. ‘I thought they had only anti-personnel capacity?’

‘A rifle, too, is an anti-personnel weapon, but it’s amazing what happens when you fire a tracer bullet into a petrol tank.’

‘Point taken,’ Braddock conceded.

‘Now these.’ Saul gestured, as on all three screens he pulled up views, through the sat cams, of the space planes approaching.

‘And you can’t use the lasers against them,’ said Hannah, pulling up a swivel chair beside him, and sitting astride it with her forearms resting on the back.

‘No, they wouldn’t be able to penetrate.’

‘So you’ve no usable weapons out there now?’

‘On the contrary,’ replied Saul, an idea taking shape in his mind, ‘I have a number of satellites at my disposal.’

‘But you said Smith—’

Saul held up his hand to silence her. ‘Please, I need to think.’

It was all about trajectories. The less atmospheric pressure around the planes, as they continued rising, the more dependent they became upon steering jets rather than ailerons and wing-repositioning, and the less manoeuvrable they thus became. The two satellites were still within range and remained under his control, while his defence against Smith’s perpetual probing attacks was steadily growing stronger and almost self-maintaining. He pulled up some nice close-shot pictures of each on two of the three screens and set the cameras to tracking them whilst maintaining a view of the approaching planes on the third screen. ‘What are you doing now?’ Hannah asked.

‘It’s nice that they’re bringing those planes up in such a tight formation,’ he noted.

She shot a look of puzzlement at Braddock, who brought his two fists together with a thwack, and then grinned. Then she nodded in understanding.

‘Now I need to disarm Smith,’ continued Saul.

He opened fire from the other satellites under his control upon the ones that Smith controlled. Smith was quick to reply, and their incandescent battle must have been clearly visible from Earth, as lasers repeatedly targeted fellow satellites. But the whole thing was taking longer than Saul had expected, and on checking stored schematic he discovered that all these satellites were protected externally by a layer of ceramic tiles.

The contest centred at first on the two satellites located over Minsk, but then it spread. Three hundred satellites in all were disabled within the first six minutes – ten times the timespan involved if they had not been protected by those tiles – so that massive areas of the globe dropped out of coverage.

Smith’s expected attempt at communication came through shortly after the first satellites went down, but Saul ignored it. The man probably hoped to dissuade Saul from such a mutually destructive battle. Only when those satellites that Saul wanted disabled were out of action did he cease his attacks, whereupon Smith’s attacks ceased a fraction of a second later. Now, of course, Smith had nothing left within range of Argus – or of those two satellites down below.

Saul began calculating vectors in his head, loading engine-thrust calculations, and even then using the steering jets on the satellites to turn them, whilst simultaneously starting up their engines so as to set them on a rough vector he could correct later … four seconds later. The two satellites now shed their panels, folding and twisting away like discarded Christmas decorations.

They were now well on their way, but Saul maintained his mental link to the steering thrusters, so he could still make instant adjustments.

‘Twenty-three minutes,’ he noted. ‘Long before then, either Smith will warn them or they’ll figure out what’s going on and start evasive manoeuvres.’

Just then a scraping sound issued from the toilet, as someone tried to force the door open.

‘Let them out, Braddock,’ he said, ‘then bring them over here.’

Braddock nodded, without questioning the order, and headed over to the toilet door. A panel beside it contained a motion detector to open it automatically whenever anyone approached. That was until he had put a single shot through it, after the three prisoners were inside. Now he just landed a boot against the door and burst it open inwards. Someone yelled in pain and Saul glimpsed the man tumbling backwards holding his head.

‘Out,’ Braddock ordered the three of them.

The two women pushed their way out first. Both had cropped blonde hair, probably because keeping long hair clean up here was nigh an impossibility, and they were of very similar appearance. They looked remarkably young to Saul, seeming little more than teenagers, but that merely meant they might have been using anti-ageing drugs. He checked personnel files stored in Tech Central itself and discovered that they were twins. Angela and Brigitta Saberhagen were very bright twins who had been born in Berlin twenty years ago, then turned into societal assets from the moment they started dismantling computers at the age of five. The man was bearded, balding and running to fat. Despite the clean technician’s clothing, his hands were ingrained with dirt, and Saul found that somehow reassuring. His name was Girondel Chang, home city Nanking in China, but he certainly didn’t look at all Chinese. Braddock ushered them over and mustered them in a line, but far enough away that he could still bring any one of them down if they decided to attack Saul.

‘Do you have any survival gear in or near here?’ Saul asked them, even though he already knew precisely what was available.

The twins merely looked at each other, and it was their bearded companion who replied, ‘Emergency survival suits in the lockers.’ He nodded towards a column of locker hatches that rose up one wall.

‘Well, get yourselves suited up, then,’ Saul instructed, ‘and fetch two extra suits out for myself and Hannah – Braddock here is fine in his spacesuit.’ He paused for a second. ‘My name is Alan Saul.’ He had used their names deliberately, to humanize them, to help transform them from nameless terrorists into real people.

‘We already know your name,’ said Brigitta, the twin who, from her record, he had known would speak first. She turned to study the screens, perhaps instantly understanding the need for survival suits.

Saul nodded to Braddock, and the soldier herded them towards the lockers, where they retrieved baggy survival suits that could easily be pulled on over their clothing. Here and there, wherever views were obtainable, he saw other station personnel already opening similar lockers and donning similar suits. They all clearly knew what was coming. However, there didn’t seem to be enough suits to go around, and in some areas people were already fighting over them.

‘What do you want of them?’ Hannah whispered.

‘I’ve got limited control of some sections of the station computer network, and I can also program some of the robots, but even if we manage to deal with Smith, I still cannot become omnipresent and omnipotent.’ He glanced at her. ‘If I gain full control here, I’ll be needing people, so I may as well start recruiting them now.’ It was a lie, of course. If he gained full control here, he could easily keep the place running with just the robots. But what to do with the humans then? Slaughter them all?

‘That’s good to hear.’

‘I don’t think there’s any need for sarcasm, at this point, do you?’

‘Actually, I think there’s a very great need for it.’ She eyed him carefully.

‘Keeping me grounded, Hannah?’

‘I try, but perhaps it’s already a bit late for that.’

He smiled tightly, but let that go.

The three staff returned with Braddock, but had yet to pull up their hoods and seal their visors. Hannah got up and accepted the two suits Chang had draped over one arm. The barrel of Braddock’s gun rested against the back of the man’s neck while Hannah was so close. Saul gestured to three chairs over to his right – the ones he knew they had occupied previously.