Hilldiggers

  ‘Gravity disruptor ready to fire,’ came the reply from Firing Control.

  Harald called up a series of views showing him the Defence Platform, above and ahead of them, and another view along the entire length of Ironfist. ‘Are non-grav sections now prepared for inversion?’

  ‘All are prepared.’

  Harald now opened communication with hilldiggers Wildfire and Harvester. ‘Captains, are you within close range of or else within your specified cover points?’

  The Captains of those two ships quickly replied to confirm. Wildfire lay only a few minutes away. Harvester – and the ship slaved to it, Musket – was at that moment moving into its designated cover point.

  ‘Very well, you know what to do now.’ Shutting off that link, Harald opened his microphone to general address. ‘Invert the ship,’ he ordered. ‘Engineering, stand by for fast engine restart.’

  Ironfist’s steering thrusters came on all along one side, and the great ship began to roll. On the Bridge, of course, with a fully functional gravity floor, everyone maintained their positions easily. However, because of the effect of the planet below, they could all feel the ship itself turning over. Within a few minutes Ironfist was lying on its back relative to the planet, its underside facing up towards the platform. Most importantly nothing stood between the head of the disruptor, mounted below the ship’s nose, and that Combine Defence Platform.

  ‘Fire disruptor.’

  The ship then seemed to heave like some animal about to vomit. All around the Bridge could be heard the creaking and cracking of internal structures. Around the disruptor itself, which resembled two projecting fins curving forward, a shimmering haze appeared. With a thump that Harald could feel in his bones, that same shimmer sped away, became a wavefront propagating through the thin air, and then through the vacuum beyond. To either side the wavefront feathered: it was directional, but only in the way that a tsunami is. Harald quickly magnified his view of the Defence Platform just in time to see the wave strike it. At the forefront of the impact the platform seemed to stretch, almost like an oil spill riding over a wave in water. But, as the wave passed through it, the platform just ruptured and came completely unstitched. There followed some explosions, from munitions detonating, but surprisingly few. Platform Four just came apart.

  ‘Get us to the cover point, now!’ Harald ordered. ‘Engines to full power!’

  Ironfist’s main drive threw out a bright fusion flame, a mile long, from four fusion-chamber mouths each 600 feet in diameter. The flame was so bright because of the secondary burn of atmosphere. Even protected by the automatic adjustment of the gravity floor, some crew staggered and others toppled over as the massive acceleration threw the million-ton hilldigger forward, as steering thrusters then turned it over, and as the belly thrusters went to maximum power to throw it up out of atmosphere. Now, Harald knew, was the most dangerous time. It would take them less than twenty minutes to reach the cover point, since they had already been heading towards it at half speed behind Franorl’s Desert Wind, and if the Combine Oversight Committee could manage to get its act together within that time and order the use of their own disruptors, Ironfist would be going the way of Defence Platform Four. Harald, however, had bet on them not being able to come to a decision that quickly. He sat clutching the arms of his chair, the screens before him running a chaotic series of views and code streams because he had not meanwhile offlined his control glove.

  Engine shutdown was followed by the sideways pull of steering thrusters at turnover, as the massive ship flipped over from nose to tail, the decelerating blast of the main engines now bringing them into their cover point. He glanced over at the seemingly panicked activity evident at Damage Control. It was a risky option to put the ship under this sort of strain right after using the disruptor. The recommended strategy was for a full maintenance check to be carried out, from engines to nose. Doubtless there would be hull breaches, cracks or breaks in the ship’s skeleton. They would either make it or not.

  ‘We are now in the cover point,’ a voice announced.

  Harald unclenched his fists and smiled, more for the reassurance of those around him than because he felt any desire to. Their cover point lay close to Corisanthe Main, on a line running directly between that station and Corisanthe II. Harvester and Musket rested midway between Corisanthe II and III, whilst Wildfire’s position was close to Main, on a line drawn between Main and Corisanthe III.

  Here then was another weakness in Orbital Combine’s defences – one they seemed not to have recognized. He surmised that Combine’s gravity weapons – the ones he wasn’t supposed to know about – would be sited on the main three stations. The problem with such weapons was that the gravity wave, which propagated from a spacial distortion, had substantially more range than any conventional weapon. Even using such weapons in interplanetary space, during the War itself, had been a risky option. Here, in the vicinity of Sudoria, where everything was so close, it became riskier still. Because the stations rested at the points of a narrow triangle with Main at the apex, the firing of such a weapon at the Fleet ships where they were presently positioned by any of the two Corisanthe stations closest to them risked the destruction of the station that lay closest to the weapon’s target. That risk was substantially less if such a weapon was fired from Corisanthe Main aiming at Wildfire, Desert Wind or Harald’s own ship, Ironfist. However, if Combine did attack, they could not fire three weapons at once since the ensuing disruption would be sure to destroy their own stations. Yet if Combine limited itself to firing at just one ship, it risked immediate retaliation from the other two.

  Harald was betting the members of the Oversight Committee were too cowardly to take such a risk. However, he was not betting on his own Captains being prepared to use their gravity disruptors. He would control that option.

  McCrooger

  First came a rush of dizziness, then I felt the kind of high you get from sucking on pure oxygen. The sound of my heart was loud, intrusive, and my lungs ached and bubbled as I breathed. Here I was holding the station Director at gunpoint and making demands, and I wondered if I would even be able to stand upright once I was off this slab.

  ‘Why would you, an envoy from the Polity, want me to do that?’ enquired Gneiss.

  ‘Because the Worm instigated this present conflict.’

  ‘I thought you had brought us evidence proving Fleet the guilty party?’

  ‘Fleet is just the tool that Harald is using, and Harald himself is one of the tools the Worm is using.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, taking a pace forward, ‘the children of Elsever Strone.’ He paused, a brief look of pain crossing his features. ‘I would like to have known Orduval, but sadly that was not to be.’

  My hands were sweaty, and the gun was beginning to feel rather heavy; I brought my left hand up to support the butt and concentrated on keeping the barrel on target.

  ‘The protocols,’ I reminded him.

  Gneiss focused back on me. ‘I am presuming that since you know that the protocols exist, you also know what they entail?’

  I didn’t know the full consequences of all the protocols, only that, after Yishna’s interference with them, they would now eject all four Ozark Cylinders from the station, and that at some point those cylinders would pass beyond Corisanthe Main’s shields, to where they could be destroyed.

  He continued, ‘Do you want me to use the protocol that results in the thermal and EM sterilization of the cylinders?’

  I shook my head, mainly trying to shake off the sweat running into my eyes.

  ‘Which, then?’ Gneiss asked, mistaking my gesture.

  Thinking muggily, I said, ‘The one that results in the ejection of a cylinder.’

  ‘But what will that achieve?’

  Damn, I definitely wasn’t thinking straight. ‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but I’m holding the gun. What will be achieved, you can leave me to worry about.’

  ‘Very well, there is one other small problem.’

/>   ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘Without some sort of containment breach, I can only accede to your demand by using the system access in my office,’ said Gneiss.

  I swung my legs off the slab while eyeing him closely, trying to read him. Sometimes he showed strong emotion but at seemingly inappropriate moments, while the rest of the time he was disconcertingly blank, perhaps because, facing him, my point of focus immediately became those odd-looking eyes. I guessed he probably had some way of alerting station security from his office, or hoped he could engineer some sort of intervention on the way there. I stood up, shakily, then stepped to one side.

  ‘I guess you’ll have to take me to your office, then,’ I conceded, just to see how he would respond.

  ‘You will be seen by others,’ he pointed out, which threw me completely.

  ‘Then it’s up to you to find a way to get me there without being seen.’

  He gave a mild nod of agreement, almost as if I had posed a little puzzle for him the resolution of which he deemed of no consequence.

  ‘Over there,’ he pointed, ‘is a locker storing bio-containment suits. They look little different from emergency survival suits, which many of the crew are now wearing since they enable greater freedom of movement than spacesuits.’ Peering at my gun, he added, ‘You will be able to conceal your weapon in the belly pocket.’

  I just could not make this guy out. He showed no emotional involvement in what was happening to him – in what I was forcing upon him – yet surely that could not be right, for this man was station Director of Corisanthe Main. I was also getting an impression from him of complete disregard for his own safety. Almost as if he would be prepared to take a bullet, just as an intellectual exercise.

  I lowered the gun, since my arm was aching, and moved back towards the lockers he had indicated. I took hold of the handle of one and pulled and, still watching him, groped about inside. After a moment I pulled out a package, and quickly recognized a suit similar to the one I had worn on the escape-pod taking me down to Brumal.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ he observed.

  Glancing down I noted fresh blood staining my dungarees, and a trail of droplets leading back to the slab. I could survive without my heart beating or my lungs breathing, by dint of IF21 distributing oxygen about my body, but I wondered if my body could survive without any blood inside it.

  ‘Kneel down,’ I instructed Gneiss, ‘and place your hands on the floor under your knees.’

  With a slightly puzzled look he obliged. I quickly placed my gun on the floor, opened the packet and pulled on the containment suit. It came with its own integral overboots, so would at least prevent me from dribbling more blood all over the place. I pulled up the hood but did not bother to close the mask since I had no idea how long the small oxygen supply attached to the belt would last me.

  ‘Okay, you can stand up now,’ I said, the gun once again in my hand.

  Gneiss straightened up, shaking some feeling back into his hands. ‘Shall we go now?’

  I nodded, and he turned and strode over to the door. Quickly moving up behind him I pressed the barrel of the gun into his side. ‘I think you should understand something, Director Gneiss.’

  ‘That being?’ he asked, as he pushed down the big lever of the door handle.

  ‘I’m dying,’ I replied. ‘I probably won’t leave this station alive. I truly believe that what I’m now forcing you to do will solve a lot of your problems, and I’m prepared to do anything towards that end. If you cross me, I promise I’ll kill you.’

  With an unreadable look, he opened the door and we stepped out into the corridor. I thrust the gun into my suit’s belly pocket, but retained a firm hold on the butt.

  We got about twenty feet along the corridor when a worried-looking woman immediately zeroed in on Gneiss.

  ‘Sir, we’ve been trying to raise you on your personal com . . .’ she said.

  ‘I switched it off.’

  ‘The situation has become very serious. Oversight has been trying to contact you. Fleet has just destroyed Platform Four with a gravity disruptor. The Fleet ships are now—’

  Gneiss held up his hand. ‘I’ll deal with this when I reach my office, where I won’t get very quickly if you feel the need to tell me the whole story here.’

  ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  Gneiss quickly moved on and I followed him closely. The woman gave me a puzzled look and turned away. Thereafter no one ventured to approach us, and I got the impression that their Director was someone the other station personnel liked to avoid. We entered a lift that took us up only a little way, then entered a series of corridors where everyone we encountered seemed in a great hurry. Gneiss paused by a long narrow window with a view out across the station and into open space, where distantly could be seen Fleet’s firework display.

  ‘Almost certainly Harald will have placed his ships where the use of gravity weapons by Combine will result in huge collateral damage to Combine itself,’ he said.

  ‘So presumably Combine has prepared for that,’ I suggested.

  ‘The Oversight Committee lacks foresight.’

  ‘But you are on the Oversight Committee and, as far as I can gather, you are also in charge of running Combine’s defence.’

  ‘Yes, so it would seem.’

  His strange nonchalance covered up something else I was only just beginning to perceive, some need in him.

  ‘Harald is responding to the Worm’s will in the only way he knows,’ I said, studying him carefully. ‘But I see I am not telling you anything you don’t already know.’

  His reaction to that was odd. He noticeably jerked as if coming out of a reverie, and for a brief moment looked actually scared.

  I prodded him in the back with my gun. ‘Your office.’

  The office itself was spartan and lacking in much to personalize it. A picture on one wall displayed a desert scene, while some mostly empty shelves held partially dismantled bits of hardware. A full-length oval mirror in an ornate frame stood opposite a desk loaded with consoles and a framework for opening the soft scroll screens they used here. There was a couch with a low table nearby. Nothing on the table but a film of dust.

  ‘Now you must initiate that emergency protocol,’ I said. ‘I’ll be looking over your shoulder and, believe me, I know more about your computer systems than you might suppose.’

  He looked at me as if offended by such an inference, then his gaze strayed over my shoulder, towards the mirror behind me. Vanity? I just could not see the possibility of that vice within him, so even the presence of that mirror struck an incongruous note. Just to remind him, I pulled out the gun, and gestured with it to the desk.

  ‘Unfortunately I misled you,’ he said, and the weirdly crazy expression that momentarily passed over his face made me step back a pace.

  ‘If you could elaborate,’ I prompted.

  Again that glance towards the mirror, then he focused on me and leant forward a little. ‘I cannot initiate any of the emergency protocols. No director should possess the power to destroy all or part of the Worm, or even eject it from this station, without good reason. So the protocols only become viable once automatic systems have picked up a definite breach in one of the canisters.’

  ‘Then why let me come here at all?’

  ‘Because, as you so rightly pointed out, you are holding a gun.’ He peered at the weapon. ‘Finely made, too. It looks like the kind manufactured for ship or station assault. Is the ammunition armour-piercing? Such weapons often use such bullets for the penetration of armoured spacesuits.’

  What was he wittering on about?

  ‘Yes, the bullets are armour-piercing.’

  He continued, ‘I believe the reasoning behind such weapons is that, when you’re assaulting a ship or station, the possibility of your bullets causing an atmosphere breach is rather irrelevant, since you’ll be wearing a spacesuit.’

  ‘Do you think that would stop me from firing in here?’ I asked. ‘Please don’t mak
e that mistake.’

  Almost as if to challenge me, he took a pace forward. I wasn’t intending to kill him, but I doubted I could subdue him in any other way. Rewind a few months and I wouldn’t even have needed the gun, but now I felt drained in more senses than one, since every time I took a step now, I could feel the blood squelching in my boots. If he went for me, I would probably end up with broken bones, and that might hasten my end.

  His gaze wavered, sliding past my shoulder again to the mirror. What was it about that damned mirror? I quickly stepped to one side and took a proper look at it. Its frame, I noticed, had an even patina all round except in one particular place, for the snake’s head incorporated in the design was highly polished as if by the frequent touch of a hand. I now recognized the design of the frame was an Ouroboros – a snake swallowing its own tail forever – and I thought that entirely appropriate. I quickly brought my gaze back to him.

  ‘We use optical diamond so the Worm can be viewed,’ he told me. ‘It’s a foolish conceit, since there is no need for us to actually see it, and diamond, though incredibly hard is also incredibly brittle.’ He paused for a moment, his gaze cast down, introspective. ‘When we were lovers I took Elsever down there to see my charge. I was foolishly proud as well as in love. I think it was just awaiting the opportunity . . . or perhaps it had even manufactured that opportunity.’ He looked up again. ‘That was when it touched her, of course.’ Then he drew his lips back from his teeth, almost as if he were in pain – and threw himself at me.

  I had him in my sights all the while. He seemed to make no attempt to avoid getting shot, but I couldn’t do it. I flicked my finger away from the trigger as with both hands he grabbed me by the loose material across my chest, hoisted me off the floor then propelled me backwards and slammed me against the mirror. I felt ribs crack and something again began bubbling in my lungs. The gun barrel was pressed right up against his guts, and I knew that in a second I could blow them and part of his spine out of his back.

  ‘It touched her! It touched her!’ he shrieked in my face. Then his expression changed, looking lost. ‘I have to stop you.’