Hilldiggers

  Looking at his companion, the older one said, ‘Now.’

  Trausheim seemed reluctant, but obeyed. The two of them moved to either side of Orduval and hauled him to his feet. His chair went over with a crash as they hurried him from his table and over to the stairs.

  ‘Hey!’ someone shouted.

  He glimpsed another of the wardens shoving a woman back down into her seat. Orduval’s feet could not seem to find the steps, but no matter, since the two men were nearly carrying him anyway. More customers were rising, and a large group of people had begun arguing with some of the wardens.

  ‘That’s Uskaron!’ A shout followed from the gallery as the other wardens piled down the stairs, quickly pushing customers out of the way. Then they had their captive out into the street, and being hustled into an armoured car. He glimpsed a crowd pouring out of the teahouse behind him as armoured doors closed and the vehicle pulled away.

  ‘I’m sorry we had to do it like this,’ said the older warden, turning to his younger companion. ‘Trausheim, I recollect giving a specific order that no one was to mention that name.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, it was just . . .’

  ‘Yeah.’ He turned back to Orduval. ‘Are you really . . . Uskaron?’

  Orduval leant back in the padded seat. ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Why here, now?’

  ‘Part providence, but mainly because I have some . . .’ Orduval frowned, not entirely sure what he intended to do now, since certainly his chances of getting to see Yishna now were remote ‘. . . some research to conduct,’ he finished.

  ‘Into what?’

  ‘That being my business.’

  ‘Well, before you can go about your business, you’ve got some explanations to make.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Chairman Duras.’

  McCrooger

  The weird perceptual effects I was experiencing seemed to fade in and out, as if they originated from beyond the ship and then sometimes something about my surroundings managed to block them. But though these nightmares were weak, they also sometimes slid into my consciousness while I was awake. Occasionally the feel of the floor would remind me of that skull-cobbled street, or I would turn expecting to see someone behind me, but find no one there. Things flickered at the extremities of my vision, and sometimes I would see a dark figure retreating around a corner ahead of me. Usually all these effects were preceded by an apparent distortion of my surroundings. It all combined to add to an air of menace, so when Rhodane summoned me to the interrogation I felt edgy and angry.

  His cell was much like the medical area I had found myself in when I woke up: looking like the interior of a walnut shell, only green. The Sudorian soldier, however, did not lie strapped to a comfortable bed but was instead ensconced in a chair. He shivered occasionally, probably because they had removed his helmet and the temperature in there must have been chill to a Sudorian. Something like a melted crab clung to the side of his head, with its leglike protrusions penetrating his skin. Blood had crusted around the wounds.

  Slog and Flog squatted against the wall over to one side. I did not think they were there to guard him, since with his insulating suit epoxied to the chair he wasn’t going anywhere, but were watching out of curiosity. Slog, who I now identified more easily by a blotch resembling a birthmark on the side of his neck, was sharpening his mandibles with a small hand-held rasp. The Sudorian soldier kept glancing at him, whether out of fear at the implicit threat or just through irritation, I couldn’t say. The prisoner otherwise seemed pretty self-possessed.

  ‘I thought it might be a good idea for you to question him,’ Rhodane suggested.

  I hesitated, then abruptly stepped forward. ‘What’s your name?’

  He stared at me for a long moment, then winced and jerked his head, replying, ‘Erache Turner.’

  ‘What is that thing on the side of his head, Rhodane?’ I asked.

  ‘The broud encourages him to answer quickly and discourages him from lying,’ she replied. ‘It uses pain, certain neurochemicals, stimulation and uninhibitors.’

  Rather unpleasant, I gathered, but I wasn’t feeling particularly sympathetic right then since, as well as the nightmares and other weird effects I had been experiencing, I still felt nauseous most of the time, aching from head to foot as if from unaccustomed exercise, and my shoulder still hurt, a lot. In fact, at that very moment my right leg started to develop a case of the shakes. Looking round I noted a shelf-like protrusion beside the door, stepped back and rested my weight on it.

  ‘Why did you try to kill me?’ I asked him.

  Again that pause then wince. ‘I didn’t try to kill you.’

  I glanced at Rhodane. ‘But he can obviously resist it.’

  ‘The absence of further discomfort shows that he did not lie.’

  The prisoner looked rather smug all of a sudden, and I realized my questioning required more precision. ‘Why did one of your companions try to kill me?’

  ‘I don’t know—’ His head snapped back and he grimaced. The broud shifted slightly against his temple. ‘You were in his sights when—’ His jaw locked into a line and his eyes squeezed shut. ‘Fuckit! We were ordered!’ Panting, he opened his eyes. A little trickle of blood ran down his cheek.

  ‘Who gave the orders?’

  ‘Admiral . . . Carnasus—’ Gloved fingers clamping onto the chair arms. ‘Fleet!’ He started shivering.

  ‘Did your orders come directly from Admiral Carnasus?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did your orders come from Harald Strone?’

  ‘. . . Yes!’

  My mouth suddenly arid, I glanced at Rhodane. ‘Any suggestions?’

  She had been standing, arms folded, staring pensively at the prisoner. Her mouth had a slight twist, as if she had tasted something bitter. Of course – Harald was her brother.

  ‘Why were you sent to Brumal?’ she asked.

  The man stared at her. ‘Traitor, how can you . . .? We were sent . . . we were sent.’ He yelled and thrashed about as much as his glued-in-place suit would allow. He started gasping again, and despite the room being cold for a Sudorian, sweat beaded his face.

  ‘Answer me,’ said Rhodane, ‘and the pain will stop.’

  ‘Harald sent us.’ He managed this through gritted teeth. ‘He sent us—’ His head snapped back and his eyes closed – apparently the broud was as impatient with procrastination as it was with prevarication. ‘We were sent to scout—’ He shrieked. This performance went on for some minutes until eventually it started to all come out. The missile launcher came from a Fleet ground base, and they moved it using antigravity lifts, camouflaged and at night. The bodies had been stored in the same ground base: Brumallians killed during the last stages of the War or during the subsequent occupation, and put on ice for further study. The missile they had fired was guided in by a beacon on Inigis’s ship, a beacon in the viewing gallery which someone activated once I was in there alone.

  ‘I don’t think there’s much else I want to ask,’ I said, standing up.

  ‘I will obtain further details,’ Rhodane informed me.

  I left that place, clamping down on my need to vomit.

  13

  The first five hilldiggers were built during the first twenty years of the War and it was this effort that pushed the economy of Sudoria into collapse. The Planetary Council plutocrats had of course gathered to themselves a huge proportion of Sudoria’s wealth, and lived sybaritic lifestyles utterly at odds with the famine and want experienced by the majority. The revolt, when it came, was led by workers in the space industry and by Fleet personnel returning groundside. Chaos ensued and many of those sybarites turned up in the Komarl, bolted to rocks with the kind of fixings used in the construction of hilldigger skeletons. Things settled down a little, but there was much argument about what kind of regime should come next, how wealth should be distributed, who should be in charge of what . . . The list just kept growing. The old planetary parties began scrabbling
for power, and some infighting ensued. The people lost focus and indulged in some rather silly squabbling. The fifty-megaton Brumallian warhead that annihilated the city of Cairo-Desit came as a timely reminder. It took just ten days to form Parliament after that.

  – Uskaron

  Harald

  Feet thundered on the deck plates, the racket of machinery was constant. A hot metal smell permeated the air, as did the drifting smoke from welding whose arc flashes lit the interior of the engine galleries. Standing on a high catwalk, his guards deployed around him, Harald was hardly aware of this commotion. He instead stared at the code scrolling down in one segment of his eye-screen, while clenching and unclenching his hand to stretch his fingers inside the control glove. One of the other two screen segments, either side of this main one, held his cracker programs, worms and viral decoders – a toolkit he had built up over many years of breaking into Fleet com. He began working the glove, selecting out lines of code to copy and then apply his programs to, before dropping the results through analytical sieves. It soon became evident to him that Lambrack was using a standard randomizing protocol, but obviously running a book code behind that, for the third screen divided itself into blocks displaying parts of images, and from the speaker issued something sounding like an alien tongue. He made the obvious selection – Uskaron’s damned book – and felt a cynical contempt when two more screen sections lit up to show Captains Davidson and Lambrack, and their voices became clear.

  Lambrack: ‘. . . to come over to his side. In a way I admire that. It shows a degree of ruthlessness we need in an Admiral, but I still cannot agree with his obvious intent. The purpose of Fleet is to defend Sudoria, obeying the dictates of Parliament. If we follow Harald, we’ll end up with a military dictatorship.’

  Davidson: ‘I understand that probability, but wonder if that is really his intent. It could be that he feels, as do many in Fleet, that Parliament is making a mistake in its dealings with this Polity.’

  Lambrack: ‘Maybe our politicians are making a mistake, but it’s theirs to make. Yet think about it. Sudoria’s defence is not weakened by Combine continuing to run those defence platforms. The only question is one of centralized command, which is always preferable in conducting a war. Do you think that is a question worth internecine conflict – worth killing our own people over?’

  Davidson: ‘It won’t necessarily come to that.’

  Lambrack: ‘Davidson, you’re only giving him the benefit of the doubt because he cleared your way to the Captaincy of the Resilience. Don’t be naive. He’s manipulating you.’

  Davidson: ‘But he still could have killed me rather than Grune.’

  Lambrack: ‘No one would have believed you guilty and Grune innocent. This way, all the other Captains who were wavering are more likely to take Harald’s side.’

  And so Lambrack continued to work on Davidson. Harald began recording their exchange in case anything useful to him arose. With Lambrack being a long-established and respected Captain, Harald could not employ the same peremptory justice he had used against Grune, but with the present recordings he had sufficient to bring the man before a Fleet court. The problem would be extracting him from his ship, and that Harald did not have time for currently. However, there was an alternative.

  Harald wiped the code screens and put through a direct call to Captain Lambrack. Watching the man, he saw him glance to one side and frown.

  ‘We’ll have to cut this now, Davidson. It seems Harald would like to speak to me. Just consider all I’ve said. We will need to act quickly and decisively to prevent an all-out firefight with Orbital Combine.’

  Harald would have liked Lambrack to elaborate on that, but the man cut his connection with Davidson, then his image appeared alone.

  ‘Admiral Strone, what can I do for you?’

  ‘I note,’ Harald replied, ‘that you and Captain Davidson have been rather stretching the definition of the “diamond formation”.’

  ‘We wished to conduct a private conversation,’ replied Lambrack.

  The two ships had pulled back only a little way, to a position where they could use com lasers without any possibility of interception of laser reflection from their own hulls. Harald had not intercepted the lasers; he had simply subverted Davidson’s onboard com system remotely. It would certainly come as a surprise to many hilldigger Captains just how well he had penetrated the security of their ships, both informationally and physically.

  ‘I have to wonder what you needed to talk about that required such privacy,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I imagine you do.’

  Harald knew he was not going to get anywhere with this so decided to take a new tack. ‘No matter. We have some more immediate concerns that I’ll get to in a moment. But first, I understand that your brother is a senior researcher aboard Corisanthe II and that you have recently been in communication with him?’

  Lambrack glanced to one side, then returned with, ‘I note this is not encoded com. A rather shoddy attempt to smear my name, don’t you think?’

  ‘You misunderstand me. How could I use such a fact to smear your name when my own sister ranks so high aboard Corisanthe Main? I am merely seeking to confirm some rumours concerning equipment recently moved from II to Main.’

  ‘Equipment?’

  ‘Weapons.’

  ‘That’s not the kind of thing my brother and I would discuss.’

  ‘Then what do you discuss?’

  ‘Our recent conversation centred around events in Parliament and how they may affect us both. I imagine this was a subject raised by many officers in Fleet who have relatives in Combine and on Sudoria itself. Or rather, it was something undoubtedly raised until you restricted communication.’

  Harald awarded Lambrack that point and smiled and nodded for the benefit of those who would certainly be watching this or would view a later recording. Inside he seethed, however. By not pretending loyalty to Harald or his aims, Lambrack placed himself in an unassailable position. Harald could accuse the man of sedition, but that would only cause more problems than it would solve.

  ‘It’s an unfortunate situation and of course I would perfectly understand any reluctance you might have to obey any orders putting members of your family in danger.’

  ‘I have not disobeyed any of your orders, Admiral Strone,’ replied Lambrack firmly.

  ‘No, you haven’t as yet.’

  ‘Are you implying that I intend to?’

  ‘I would never question your loyalty to Fleet.’

  ‘I am so glad. Now what were these “more immediate concerns”?’

  Harald paused for a moment. The fact that Lambrack had a brother aboard Corisanthe II with whom he had recently been in communication was now firmly established in the minds of any listeners. Yes, his own sister Yishna occupied a high position aboard Main but, since he was Admiral and the initiator of Fleet’s present actions, his own motives would not be questioned. Lambrack’s would – however, that was a lever he could use at another time. His aim now was to get Lambrack away from Davidson, and away from this entire mission.

  ‘I have a task for which you are best suited,’ said Harald, ‘in view of your probable reluctance to be involved in what lies ahead.’ Lambrack just stared at him in silence so he continued, ‘Our satellites around Brumal have detected the launch of a ship from the planet’s surface. It is a Brumallian biotech vessel and its course is presently taking it towards Sudoria.’

  ‘What?’ Lambrack looked shocked.

  ‘Yes, those who question whether the Brumallians have been complicit in recent events, or even capable of involvement, perhaps need to examine their assumptions. One doubts that such a ship – flying in flagrant breach of the surrender terms – has anything but hostile intentions. What would you think, Lambrack?’

  ‘I think this is certainly something that needs to be checked.’

  ‘You’ll do more than check, Captain Lambrack. You’ll intercept and destroy this vessel, then you will progress to Brumal to d
estroy its launch site, which lies above BC30 – the city they call Recon York.’

  ‘You’re sending me?’

  ‘You’re right for the task, Captain, and here is an enemy about whom you’ll have fewer reservations.’

  Lambrack swore and cut the connection. A little while later, as he continued his inspection of Engineering, Harald watched the Captain’s ship dropping out of formation and turning to head back towards Brumal.

  McCrooger

  A long intestinal corridor ran right around the ship’s internal ring, the walls braced by cartilaginous bulwarks, and ceilings and floors either held together or apart by pillars of a substance like glass heavily streaked with impurities, and through which ran capillaries with lucent fluids flowing inside. With little else to do once I could manage to stand for more than a few hours at a time without falling poleaxed into sleep immediately afterwards, I walked this ring, Tigger pacing at my side, the ship wheezing and glubbing around us like a hungry stomach. Convalescence, I tasted the word and found it bitter. I had never needed to convalesce since my first visit to Spatterjay, and now found weakness abhorrent. Six days remained until we arrived at Sudoria, and by then I needed to be fully ready.

  ‘Still no luck trying to get a transmission through?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Tigger. ‘The EM chaff broadcast from Fleet satellites swamps everything. I could probably get something through, but it would be loud, and everyone would know where it came from.’

  I noticed how his heavy paws and my booted feet left bruise-like marks in the translucent floor behind us, which had faded by the time we came round full circle to this same stretch of floor again. I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone else was following us just out of sight, and kept looking out for the imprints they must leave. ‘I think we should hold off on that for the present, though I wonder what the general reaction would be to a Brumallian ship arriving unexpectedly in orbit, if we don’t get something through to them beforehand.’

  ‘The least of our worries,’ the drone stated.

  ‘Um.’ I grimaced. ‘Fleet?’