Clay grimaced. Scotonis had slaughtered his entire crew and committed himself to suicide, death and destruction, yet Trove was talking about the man making a rational decision. Clay thought it unlikely that the captain was in the frame of mind to allow anyone a get-out clause.
‘There,’ she said, clicking the two panels closed again. At once the code began to scroll, then, after a moment, the second screen blinked on to show a holding image. It was the old space-exploration logo of a space plane penetrating the ring chain of the united world, all its links differently coloured to represent the various regions of Earth. This was something that Galahad had ordered to be changed into something more representative of her regime, but an idea that had been shelved until the future, when resources could be spared for such ephemera. Clay felt that her efficiency and the speed with which she managed to get things done would have been admirable, had she not been as barking mad as Scotonis.
‘There, what?’ he asked.
She clicked down a ball control and the logo disappeared to divide the screen up into twenty numbered squares, which Clay knew comprised just one page of a sequence of five. Each square was a cam view taken from either inside or outside the main ship. Dragging the cursor over each one expanded it, and by this method Trove worked through each of the cameras aboard the ship, pausing at corridors that had been turned into abattoirs filled with the floating dead, or bits of them, and where the drying blood on the walls had turned brown.
‘Bastard,’ she muttered.
After a while it became evident she wasn’t yet finding what she wanted, and Clay enquired, ‘He’s not letting you look into the bridge, is he?’
Just then, for the first time since they had boarded the shuttle, Scotonis addressed them. ‘Of course I’m not letting you look into the bridge. I require my privacy.’ He paused, then continued, ‘Perhaps you’d like to check out the views through exterior cams twenty to twenty-eight.’
Trove immediately selected number twenty-eight, which revealed the distant blade of a drive flame. She switched to twenty, because every tenth cam outside had telescopic functions and better resolution, and focused in.
‘They’ve sent a tug to collect us,’ she stated.
Scotonis gave a lethargic handclap in response.
The vehicle was three hundred metres long and essentially a squat Mars Traveller engine wrapped in towing and grapnel mechanisms, fuel tanks and jutting the combustion throats of hundred-year-old hyox rocket motors, with the small bubble of a crew cabin lost amidst all this panoply. Clay recollected that space tugs like this usually carried a crew of three, two of whom were unnecessary – the Committee had never considered it a good idea to allow just one person control of so much power, unless of course he was a delegate or the Chairman himself. The three consisted of the pilot, who was the only one really needed, his second officer to whom was delegated the minor job of observer, and a political officer specially seconded from the Inspectorate complement in Earth orbit.
However, since Serene’s ascension to power after Saul’s ruthless thinning-out of Earth’s bureaucracy, such political oversight there had become impossible and, so she claimed, unnecessarily interfering. So perhaps there was only the pilot aboard.
‘If we could only get to that shuttle,’ he said, imagining them secretly getting themselves aboard, then onto whatever Earth-orbit station it docked with, then onto a space plane heading down to the surface . . . No, that just wouldn’t run.
‘That shuttle will hard dock,’ announced Scotonis, and Clay wished he had kept his big mouth shut. ‘You’d have to suit up and exit through one of the hull airlocks, every one of which I control. Of course you could blow the airlock, as you did before, but then you’d need to face the anti-personnel lasers positioned out there.’
‘But surely, Scotonis, this is going to screw up your plan,’ said Clay. ‘How can you go after Galahad when you’re under tow?’
‘Ah, our political officer shows his ignorance again,’ said Scotonis. ‘I can just release the docking bayonets from here and pull away.’
‘Listen, Captain,’ said Trove abruptly. ‘I know you’ve committed yourself to killing Galahad, but why must we die? Once you’ve located her, you’ve got to put this ship on a re-entry course, and she and everyone else will know that there’s still someone aboard. Just let us go – our leaving won’t interfere with your plan.’
All so utterly reasonable. Clay sighed and gazed at the screen again. The tug was much closer now, and he could see its steering thrusters firing. He watched it roll, bringing into sight a hard docking plate with protrusions that were probably the bayonets Scotonis had mentioned. Clay could see no sign of an airlock, so the captain probably wasn’t lying about them needing to take a space walk.
‘If you leave now,’ said Scotonis, ‘you’ll need something to bargain with – something that might stop whoever is in charge up here from either shooting you down straight away or throwing you into an adjustment cell as soon as they get hold of you.’
The Gene Bank data Saul had transmitted to them in an attempt to forestall their attack and which they had not relayed to Earth, but which they had retained as a bargaining chip? Clay felt a sudden surge of excitement. Did Scotonis really intend to release them?
‘You can’t find her, can you?’ said Trove.
Clay gazed at her in puzzlement. What on Earth was she on about?
Trove continued, ‘You’re coming up blank on your radio and computer searches. I would guess that any information on her present location has been suppressed, simply because that location isn’t completely secure, for some reason.’
‘You were always the most perceptive of my command crew,’ Scotonis declared. ‘Her last known location was Messina’s Tuscan home, but data traffic there has recently waned. She could be, as you say, in a less secure location or else taking one of her tours.’
‘You need something to draw her out,’ said Trove, ‘and that’s where we come in.’
‘Precisely.’
‘I’m still not getting this,’ Clay interjected.
Trove turned and gazed at him. ‘We offer the Gene Bank data and demand to speak to her. We try to extract guarantees from her, some promise of safety, something perhaps witnessed by delegates and supposedly legally binding.’
‘But there’ll be no guarantee. She’ll just go back on her word once she has the data, and have us either killed or adjusted.’
‘Of course.’ Trove nodded.
‘So what’s the point?’
‘The point, Mr Ignorant Political Officer,’ said Scotonis acerbically, ‘is that if she communicates with you aboard the shuttle, I have a greater chance of tracing where her signal is coming from, and to where your signal is being routed.’
‘Not just that,’ said Trove. ‘Considering its original source, she’ll probably want the genetic data transmitted directly to some form of secure storage close to her. She won’t want to risk having something Saul might have attached to it on Govnet.’
‘No,’ said Scotonis, ‘I disagree. The data will go straight to secure storage at Messina’s home. But she will not necessarily be there.’
‘Even so,’ Trove insisted, ‘that might be another way of locating her. If I was her, I’d load the data to multiple secure locations, and I’d be confident that one of them is one I can carry with me.’
‘Perhaps,’ Scotonis allowed.
They were going to live, Clay was now sure of it. They were going to survive this. Of course, they’d probably end up as prisoners on one of the space stations but, once Galahad was dead, everything would change. He felt sure that he and Trove could come up with a plausible explanation as to how they ended up with their chips and collars removed, and why the mission to capture Argus Station had failed. Somehow the blame could all be laid on Scotonis.
‘How will it work?’ he asked. ‘With the data, I mean.’
‘I’m going to return system access to you,’ decided Scotonis, ‘so that you can access it
remotely and begin transmission of the data. And just maybe it will all have been sent by the time I drop this ship right on top of Galahad’s head.’
Clay suddenly realized that he could also download the recording he had shown Scotonis: the one showing how Galahad was responsible for the Scour. He could work that angle too, and get them free. Scotonis had found out, and had wanted vengeance for the killing of his family, which was sort of true. He had quickly taken complete control of the ship and forced his command crew to have their implants removed. It was all the captain’s fault . . .
The ship jerked, shuddered, and he felt vibrations through the deck of the shuttle and through his seat. Returning his attention to the screen, he saw that it was now completely filled with a close-up view of the tug.
‘When can we leave?’ he asked.
‘In another two days . . . when we are closer to Earth,’ Scotonis replied. ‘And I’ll even let you go if I do locate Galahad before then. There has been enough death already.’
This last comment might have given Clay hope for the captain’s remaining sanity, were it not for the fact that the man intended to drop a spaceship on Earth and detonate enough atomic bombs to erase an entire country.
10
The King Sleeps
The idea of cryogenic hibernation had been a staple of science fiction long before the hypothermic chilling of accident victims or battle casualties to prolong their lives became a standard medical technique. Research into this area stuttered to a halt under the Committee because saving people by reducing their temperature, either from injuries received or for some future time, was considered redundant. The thing about human beings, the Committee delegates felt, was that there was always a ready supply of them. And their own crack at keeping the Reaper at bay was better ensured by other medical research, the results of which they were already witnessing. But this changed under Chairman Messina. So strong was his urge to fend off his own death that he made sure funding was available for any research possessing the slightest bearing on that aim. Quite swiftly, then, the previous research was resurrected and, by the end of the Chairman’s time in office, viable techniques were available to put human beings in cryogenic suspension. Hence the rumour, which is connected to an old legend, that Messina didn’t really die on Argus Station, but sleeps in some cold coffin in a cave underground, awaiting his time to be woken and then to rule again. This is why some people still actively search old underground installations in quest of him, with ice picks ready to hand.
Argus
Controlling a robot was a weird experience that one of the other rebels, who once trained security mastiffs back on Earth, had likened to controlling a well-trained dog. The one presently following on Alex’s heels, as he walked out along the pitted surface of the old Mars Traveller booster tank, seemed to confirm that description. Presently it was clutching a metre-square fixing plate in its forelimbs, but shortly Alex needed it to set the plate to one side, grind a flat area down to clean metal, to get a good electrical contact, then attach the same plate. Alex quickly reviewed the simple series of tasks he had designed, noted subprograms kicking in to correct his errors or iron out inefficiencies, and to flag changes awaiting his approval. These basic changes were little different from those that would appear while he was programming on a screen or, so he was told, through one of the more modern fones that linked to the visual cortex, but how it worked inside his skull was something completely new.
Computer programs translated into accurate visualizations of actions within his head, while changing visualizations changed the programs but also caused alternate menu links to appear. What degree of roughness did he want the flat surface ground down to, and what tolerance on the ensuing flatness? These details loaded automatically with reference to the schematic in his skull, but awaited approval; meanwhile, the robot moved the necessary grinding head into position in one of the tool carousels that its arms terminated in. Alex found it best just to give approval, for he wasn’t a qualified engineer and could not confidently make the kind of changes others might make. However, after working with the robot for just a little while, he was finding engineering knowledge now embedding itself in his skull – his implant was teaching him.
‘Lock yourself down, Alex,’ Ghort instructed him. ‘They’re detaching.’
Alex glanced back towards the upper hemisphere of the ship’s skeleton, half a kilometre away, where Ghort and his robots, along with Akenon, Gladys and members of several other work teams, were preparing to reel out the new cable from its massive drum. He noted weird boreal effects on the metal-work there, caused by electric discharges induced by the proximity of the Io flux tube. He sent the order to his robot and it shuffled to one side, splaying its four legs and probing with clawed feet for some of the anchor points distributed all over the surface. As it located them, Alex stepped back, unwound the line from his belt and hitched it to a ring on the robot’s body. He then looked around to see the other workers nearby – checking over the new steering thrusters – also locking themselves down. With a thump he felt, through his feet, as the space plane on the other side of the booster tank undocked. Alex checked plans in his skull, then peered over one side of the tank, finally seeing the plane coming into view, firing off steering thrusters and turning – the jets issuing from the thrusters seemingly refracted through prisms. Finally, a kilometre out, it started up its main engine and headed away towards the visible horizon of Jupiter – off to salvage more tanks.
‘Now, that should have been our job,’ remarked Ghort, over the scrambled channel. ‘We already had experience with the ice asteroid.’
They’d been very wary about sending their scrambled communications over laser com but, as Alex had pointed out, it actually reduced the chances of them being decoded.
‘You’re questioning Saul and Var’s allocations?’ he asked. ‘You should know better than to question the pronouncements of God and his high priest.’
‘Now that they’ve made that hole and are preparing to shift the docks, a space plane would be a good way to get to him,’ Ghort noted. ‘A blast from its main engine straight through his sanctum would solve a lot of problems.’
‘Or we could have dumped a booster tank right on top of him,’ suggested Alex.
‘No,’ snapped Ghort, ‘that would also take out Tech Central and too much of the infrastructure, killing too many people and maybe ruining our chances of survival out here. No point in committing deicide if you kill yourself in the process.’
Kill too many people . . .
Alex found he had access to further memories of Ghort. On the surface the man had always been ruthlessly professional and coldly pragmatic in going about his duties, but Alex now saw that he had been a restraining influence on the other security personnel assembled around Messina. Upon Ghort’s promotion to chief of close protection, the response to imagined slights against their charge was limited to a physical beating, rather than the one concerned then being handed over to the Inspectorate for interrogation. Those whom Messina considered a danger to him – usually a delegate or delegate’s staffer – were handed straight over to the Inspectorate, rather than being subjected first to crude torture to extract a ‘confession’. The more rabid elements of the protection teams were often found wanting, and quickly dismissed. In his own way, and considering the circumstances he found himself in, Ghort had always managed to be a good man.
‘So we have something else in mind now?’
‘It is time for you to know,’ replied Ghort. ‘He doesn’t often leave his inner sanctum – probably staying optically plugged in there now – so we’re aiming for a targeted detonation. I liberated some demolition charges from our ice asteroid job.’
Alex stood there contemplating that statement, and the confirmation of his suspicions made him feel a little sad. He now remembered, some years ago, hearing Ghort talking to another of Messina’s bodyguards.
‘They’re like children,’ the other had said.
‘They’re e
fficient, obedient and will follow a kill order without a second thought,’ Ghort had replied, ‘but there’s no malice or cruelty there; you get plenty of both in children. Sometimes I think they’re the best of Messina. It’s a shame they’re never allowed to remember.’
The scene had been a bloody one, Alex recollected: a contender for Messina’s crown meeting an early demise, along with his family and his entire staff. Ghort had come to ensure tight security before Messina’s arrival to inspect the victims, while Alex and his brothers were leaving, their work already done.
‘Keep working, Alex,’ said Ghort in the here and now. ‘These pauses might arouse suspicion.’
Alex set his robot in motion again and walked alongside it – with his line attached it was almost as if he held it on a lead. For a second, his footing became unsteady as a couple of steering thrusters fired up to stabilize the booster tank’s position after the departure of the space plane, then he arrived at the fixing point indicated in his overlay. Detaching his line, he stepped back and set the robot to work. It placed the plate over to one side, stepped forward and positioned itself precisely over the designated spot, then lowered one of its tool-head arms to the pitted surface. Dust shot away, filled with a constellation of metal fragments erupting from the contact point of a rough carbide grinding wheel.
‘Why is it time for me to know now?’ Alex asked.
‘I’ve opened our current exchange to the others,’ said Ghort.
This meant every one of the rebels was listening in but, if they wanted to say something, they had to indicate so with a digital signature and then wait for Ghort’s okay. And they wouldn’t be able to join in if involved in some activity where their outward reactions during this secret communication might be noticed.
Ghort continued, ‘It’s time for you to know because we have all agreed that you will be the one to pull the trigger. We also need your input on how to go about this. We’ve had a number of suggestions, but you yourself have better training in this sort of thing.’