Hilldiggers

  ‘We’ve got you,’ said Tigger, and that was the last I heard.

  For a while.

  Harald

  For a few seconds after their ejection the cylinders rising from Corisanthe Main maintained their cross-shaped formation, then they rose beyond the station’s shields. Suddenly the Brumallian ship was there, firing missiles, but none of them reached their target. Simultaneously, each cylinder tore open and bright eels of fire looped out to connect to each other, the empty wreckage of the cylinders tumbling away as something toroidal, and seemingly composed of bones and light, rose and expanded. Fiery tendrils stabbed out and touched the approaching missiles, which glowed briefly and were gone. Harald had watched the grainy recordings of that occasion before the end of the War when Fleet first encountered the Worm, but could remember nothing from then looking like this. But this must definitely be that . . . object. What else could those Ozark Cylinders have contained?

  ‘Franorl, cease firing!’

  The other Captain had been taking heavy fire from Corisanthe Main, and returning it with devastating effect now his ship had managed to knock out numerous shield generators aboard the station. He had redirected some weapons fire towards the Brumallian ship which had closed on one of the cylinders but also lay dangerously close to that expanding luminous ring. Perhaps he feared some attack from the enemy vessel against the assault craft currently departing his hilldigger.

  ‘They’re with the Brumallians!’ Franorl shrieked.

  Harald gazed at the image of this man who found plotting and murder so easy, but was now failing under the exigencies of such vicious warfare. He was clearly panicking.

  ‘Do not fire on—’

  The ring abruptly distorted, a loop of it flashing out over hundreds of miles and travelling along the entire length of Desert Wind. Franorl’s image winked out. All contact with Desert Wind shut down, then Harald’s screens blanked and the lighting on Ironfist’s Bridge flickered out, to be replaced by the muted glow of the emergency lights. He looked up, noting instruments gone dark and crew frantically trying to operate dead consoles. A huge electromagnetic pulse? If it had been enough to affect Ironfist like this, then Desert Wind and those assault craft were certainly out of play.

  ‘Verbal report!’ Harald stood up. ‘All stations report status.’

  As the crewmen around him gave their assessments, the lights reignited, consoles began to respond, and Harald’s own screens came back online. He sat down again, tried out his control glove and wondered if its inaccuracy was due to the EM pulse or because his hands were shaking so much. He swore viciously. Orbital Combine had done the unexpected: their power base was Corisanthe Main, and it was their power base precisely because the Worm had been aboard. By releasing it like this they had removed his prime target. Corisanthe Main was now of even less importance than the other stations.

  But was that all?

  Could they now somehow control the Worm, use it as a weapon? Harald thought not, but some change had certainly occurred, for the Worm had seemed unable to defend itself when Fleet had first attacked it all those years ago. It then occurred to him that being able to use such levels of power as it had just used, the Worm had not been ‘contained’ at all. It could have broken out at any time, so he wondered when it had ceased to be a prisoner.

  With some difficulty, as his systems rerouted, Harald managed to take a close look at the other hilldigger. Desert Wind’s drive and steering thrusters were now out, and numerous explosions had blown debris into space all along its length. Though the assault craft were still moving under their initial impetus, Harald suspected all their systems were dead. Upon reaching the station they would simply crash into it. This would be the case for Franorl’s ship too, though some hours later since it was moving much slower. But without defences or weapons, none of them would even reach the station. Even as Harald watched, two of the assault craft exploded, then something big detonated midway along the hilldigger, jarring it sideways. The Combine gunners were not hesitating to capitalize on their advantage.

  ‘Get me Gneiss, get me Gleer, get me any of those Oversight fuckers,’ Harald demanded.

  Nothing for a while, so all he could do was stare at the carnage, and at that expanding loop of . . . whatever it was. He felt a terrible hollowness as his doubts about his present course returned to haunt him. Angrily he dismissed them, but felt his anger still growing at this wrecking of his plans. He now realized how the taking of Corisanthe Main, the closing of his fist around Orbital Combine’s heart, had somehow grown more important to him than ultimately defeating it. Yes, other ways to that end still remained viable, but his original plan seemed to have a richness he could almost taste. To win in any other way seemed scrappy, untidy, the resolution of a sordid human struggle.

  ‘Gneiss here.’

  The station Director smiled at him – something Harald had never witnessed before. He felt his anger rise to a new pitch. Gneiss must have realized how much releasing the Worm would hurt him. This was personal.

  ‘I cannot even begin to fathom how you decided to commit such a crime against the Sudorian people,’ Harald hissed.

  ‘What crime, precisely?’ Gneiss enquired.

  ‘The Worm was one of our greatest assets and now you have flung it away.’

  ‘I have done no such thing,’ Gneiss replied. ‘For reasons that presently escape me, the Polity Consul Assessor managed to gain entry to one of the cylinders and there caused a breach. Subsequent events remain a puzzle to me.’

  Harald jerked back as if the man had slapped him. The screen view now expanded to include a figure standing at the Director’s side.

  ‘But not a puzzle to me,’ confessed Yishna. ‘A breach should have resulted in the ejection of only one cylinder, but it was my own alteration of the breach protocols, some time ago, that resulted in the ejection of all four cylinders. And it was Rhodane, aboard that Brumallian ship, who fired those missiles in an attempt to destroy the Worm.’ She paused, and Harald was sure he read both fear and puzzlement in her expression. ‘We made an earlier attempt to cause a breach, but station security forestalled us. Orduval was killed.’

  ‘Are you all insane?’ Harald demanded. He just could not see the purpose of his sibling’s actions.

  Rhodane? Orduval dead?

  ‘Not any more,’ Yishna replied. ‘Despite the failure of our plan, I think everything’s going to be all right now. Can’t you feel it going away?’

  Harald’s gaze strayed to another screen where he observed how the Worm ring had broken at one point and one end of it was spearing away into infinity. Returning his gaze to his sister, he noted the dressing on her shoulder, the intensity of her gaze. Her words still made absolutely no sense to him.

  ‘I asked you if you’re insane,’ he stated. ‘You have yet to provide me with an answer.’

  ‘We’ve both been working for the same master, Harald,’ Yishna told him, ‘but now it’s leaving us. This is now over. There’s no need for any further loss of life. Surely you know this? You must be able to feel it too.’

  All Harald could feel was his headache growing in direct proportion to the ball of rage inside his guts. He studied his sister and noted her speculative observation of him. ‘You still make no sense, sister. I am here to reinstate Fleet power and remove the threat that Orbital Combine poses to us all. I had hoped that by seizing Corisanthe Main and taking control of the source of Combine’s power I could bring this present conflict swiftly and neatly to an end.’

  ‘Brother, there are no swift and neat endings to civil war.’

  Harald allowed her his false smile. ‘In that you are incorrect. Because of a certain reluctance I’ve observed on the part of their Captains, I have now assumed control of the gravity weapons on board both Wildfire and Harvester.’ He held up his hand, enclosed in the control glove. ‘I can now end this conflict merely by inputting some simple commands.’

  Her expression became at first puzzled then changed to one of growing horror.
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  ‘Your head injury,’ she said. ‘We know about that.’

  ‘My head is perfectly fine, thank you.’

  The horror in her expression turned rapidly to calculation.

  ‘I begin to understand.’ She studied him closely. ‘With its prime instrument still operating, it does not need to endanger itself by being here.’

  ‘Ah, so apparently you are insane,’ said Harald.

  Abruptly Yishna leant forwards. ‘Let me come to you. Let me explain it all.’

  Harald nodded. It seemed somehow appropriate to him to have his sister at his side here, aboard Ironfist, as he proceeded to destroy the three Corisanthe stations.

  McCrooger

  The salvo fired by Desert Wind had come dangerously close to erasing our Brumallian ship from existence, and if the Worm had not acted when it did, we would have been dead. Even though I wasn’t dead, I wondered if the state I was in could really be described as life.

  ‘It acted simply to defend itself,’ Tigger informed me. ‘Be thankful Desert Wind distracted it from us.’

  ‘I figured that,’ I replied, while gazing through the ship’s sensors at the departing alien entity. After a moment I returned my gaze to my physical self, floating in some womb-like bladder, my body dead, spinal blocks in place, while some oxygenated fluid was being routed from an independent supply to circulate in my brain. Organic cables and tubes had been connected directly into my optic nerves, and elsewhere into my brain through holes carved in my skull.

  I’d looked better.

  The chameleonware was in operation now so we enjoyed a grandstand view without the danger of being attacked directly. Tigger had keyed into all and any uncoded communications, and we were listening intently as the drama continued to unfold.

  ‘What’s happening down on the planet?’ I asked.

  Tigger summoned up for me pictures of riot-damaged cities, burning buildings, pockets of civil disorder scattered here and there. GDS wardens were now back in control of three of the eight cities they had earlier been forced to abandon. Chairman Duras and what survived of Parliament had now returned to the capital in the mobile incident station, but no one was concerned with debating anything until the present emergency was over. Everyone kept looking to the skies.

  ‘They’re showing less inclination to kill each other down there,’ Tigger observed, ‘but that might be as much due to physical exhaustion as to the removal of the Worm’s influence. These are humans, and as such are prone to after-the-fact justification of their actions, so that justification might include insisting that they were right, and that those actions should therefore continue.’

  ‘Quit the moralizing, why don’t you?’

  ‘Sorry – moving up from drone to ship AI has given me preachy tendencies.’

  ‘I preferred the old Tigger.’

  ‘All right, the Worm has been driving these people bat shit for decades. Its departure doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll suddenly become less crazy. In some cases the exact opposite might occur.’

  ‘Are you thinking of Harald?’

  ‘Not really,’ Tigger replied. ‘He, like his siblings, is a different matter entirely. Its influence on them has been extreme, and he has perhaps found himself a convincing justification for what he’s doing.’

  This was pretty much what I had figured. The Worm had set him in motion, and kept prodding him in the direction it wanted him to go. He thought all along he was fighting for Fleet when in reality the Worm had been using him to exact its own vengeance, or simply to cause misery and destruction, for whatever motive. I knew this for certain now. I’d witnessed one Worm segment tear out through the wall of Ozark One, and I’d later seen Tigger’s analysis of the energy levels involved in the damage it had done to Desert Wind. The Worm had not really been a prisoner for some time – maybe even twenty or so years. Now it was gone and Harald was still running on autopilot – a tool set in motion and no longer requiring its close influence.

  ‘Can you do anything about him now?’ I asked.

  ‘We could try a direct attack on the Ironfist, but I don’t see that ending well for us.’

  ‘No, I mean can you somehow break his control over those other ships?’

  ‘I would first need to get in close to Ironfist and then it would take me an hour or more to actually break into his systems. There’s a good chance he would detect my interference and, as we know, his finger is on the firing button. Also, as shown during my attempt to stop the bombing of Vertical Vienna, he clearly has some means of detecting me.’

  ‘So you’re not even going to try?’

  ‘Of course I am, but I rather suspect this will be all over before then, one way or another.’

  Tigger then showed me a conversation recorded on camera aboard Corisanthe Main. I felt a tightness in a throat that was probably no longer connected to my brain. Perhaps I would have cried without those things plugged into my eye-sockets.

  Oh, Yishna . . .

  Yishna

  Despite the drugs, her shoulder ached, and controlling the interstation shuttle was no easy task with just one arm that felt quite numb. In truth, she felt numb inside too.

  Orduval . . .

  She felt personally responsible for his death and for everything else now happening. Knowing she had been striving to end this madness and herself had not fired a single shot did not lessen that feeling of guilt. She and her siblings were a unit, co-responsible. Perhaps if they could have properly understood what the Worm had wanted, all this mayhem could have been avoided. Perhaps if she had understood bleed-over, and realized how everyone was being affected . . . Yet the problem with attaining such understanding was that there had been no real basis for comparison. The only other records of asylum statistics dated from the period of the War and that was not exactly a normal time . . . But, damn it, she should have understood.

  Her escort abruptly veered, and she simultaneously received instructions through her console for a course change. A brief scan of her surroundings showed her the reason why. Two miles ahead and to the left of her she observed one of the drifting assault craft from the hill-digger Desert Wind being tracked in by a Combine warcraft. While she watched, the warcraft hard-docked and began to slow down both vessels. This was due to more negotiation with Harald’s underlings. The assault troops from Desert Wind had been given permission to surrender, and Combine craft were now diverting their crippled assault vessels away from the station. The hilldigger itself might be more of a problem, but not hers. Harald was her problem, and he had said nothing more since his recent communication with her.

  As her craft approached the rear of Corisanthe Main’s shields, her escort abruptly dropped away to the left and decelerated in readiness to return to the station. Checking a graphic display of the shields, she saw two of them parting ahead of her. Now would be a good opportunity for one of Harald’s ships to fire something big at the station, but she did not expect this response from him. Despite his head injury he must surely now be feeling something of what she herself felt: that removal of impetus, that lack of a previously intense driving force, something missing in his skull. Yishna wondered if she could live with the lack of it – if any of them could. She felt just as capable as before, but seemed to have lost any need for that capability.

  She passed between the two shields and watched them close behind her. Laying in a course to Ironfist entailed taking into account the larger chunks of debris floating about out here. But there was also a lot of smaller stuff – difficult to detect because it was moving so fast. Only a few seconds after departing Corisanthe Main’s aegis, one of the five miniguns aboard her shuttle began chuntering to itself, and something had flared to one side of her main screen, before objects started pattering against the hull. There was always the chance that she would not make it to Ironfist. That would simplify matters for her considerably.

  With its new course set the shuttle accelerated, and chuntering from the miniguns became almost constant. Though she had no time f
or sleep, Yishna closed her eyes momentarily just to rest them. For a second she felt herself begin to drift, then a sudden surge of panic jerked her upright and fully awake. She realized the reaction stemmed from the absence of that something in her skull, and with wry distaste decided that this must be how so many Sudorians felt as they slid into mental collapse.

  Now over to her right lay the enormous hilldigger Desert Wind, dead in space, in a pall of smoke. Some Combine craft were nosing about it, but there could be nothing aboard Corisanthe Main with engines powerful enough to overcome a million tons of inertia in time. Instead they would have to send for a civilian liner like the one presently towing Stormfollower to safety.

  Not my problem.

  Yishna focused ahead and eventually Ironfist resolved out of the darkness. The graphic display showed its shields parting before her, and a tacom aboard contacted her a moment later.

  ‘Proceed to Docking Bay Eight,’ he instructed her.

  ‘It would be helpful to know where Docking Bay Eight is located,’ she observed.

  He grimaced officiously, but shortly afterward she received a ship schematic and a radio beacon to follow in. First her shuttle drew alongside the nose of Ironfist, then headed on along the length of the massive ship, as if travelling beside an iron cliff, finally to slow, thrusters bringing her to a halt before an open bay door lit with the infernal red of emergency lights. She cruised in between two huge pillars, which revolved to present docking clamps to catch the craft like a tossed ball. The impact threw her forward and she yelped at the stab of pain from her shoulder. There was nothing gentle about this procedure, which confirmed she was entering Fleet’s realm. The clamps dragged the shuttle down to the floor of the bay. Then, sliding in floor slots, the pillars themselves dragged it to the rear, where a docking tunnel connected. Yishna unstrapped herself, pushed up from the seat, and in nil gravity made her way unsteadily back into the cargo section. Pointing her control baton at the airlock, she opened the inner door, pulled herself inside, then closed it behind her. When she finally entered the docking tunnel, she closed the outer door and, again using her baton, firmly locked it. The shuttle was Combine property and she did not want Fleet personnel poking about inside it.