Lament for the Fallen (38 page)

He flies up and into one of them.

‘Look.’

Tightly packed as far into the distance as they can see are black metal spheres. They are not Furies and would be too large to fit into the tunnels of the prison.

‘I can’t penetrate inside them. I’ve no idea what they are. None of this is on the prison plan.’

He prods at a matt black surface. ‘They’re sticky. Metallic resin over a solid housing.’ The fluid sucks at his skinned finger, snapping back as he withdraws his hand.

‘This –’ says Samara.

‘Yes.’

‘We need to speak to the Five.’

Symon opens a secure channel and transmits a brief report to the symbionts of the Five and the other Nine. Hollis stares into the pipe through Fodiar. Samara and Fodiar can feel his apprehension.

‘Are you sure the station is disabled?’ he asks them.

‘The station itself, yes. I cannot tell anything about these,’ says Fodiar.

The Five split into a private channel and return moments later.

‘The Five authorize the Nine. We want all of you to secure the perimeter of Tartarus. I will be contacting President Ortega. Samara, Fodiar, Amaranth – please continue as before.’

The channel closes, leaving Fodiar and Samara together.

‘I’m transmitting Athena’s data record to Amaranth,’ says Fodiar.

Samara returns. ‘Symon, we can put everyone to sleep now.’

All through the system bodies slump as the observers cause them to lose consciousness. The prison doors open, and now there is complete access to the prison. Round silver droids fly out of the ferry. They will carry each of the bodies to the medical team for assessment. From there they will be returned to volunteer reintegration organizations all across the United States.

The dead, too, will be collected and returned to their families.

Samara waits at the ferry as the children are brought out immersed in life-support fluid. In the well-lit cargo bay, the extent of their deformity is clear.

[Even here, life strives and hangs on.]

‘They are worse than we hoped,’ says Dondé Hélène after examining them.

They are an assemblage of human parts, unformed and unorganized. That they are alive is simply chance. Transporting them to Earth’s gravity will kill them.

‘There’s no brain. Their nervous system is barely rudimentary. There is nothing we can do,’ she says. ‘Hollis agrees. We must let them go.’

Samara nods.

Dondé Hélène squeezes his hand. She switches off the life support and the lives swiftly fade.

Bodies are streaming out of Tartarus. Too fast to count. It will take two days before the vast labyrinth is empty.

After the first day, the Five convene the Nine.

‘We’ve spoken with Ortega,’ says Hollis. ‘He won’t tell us anything. He says, “Do what you came for and leave.”’

‘I think half their space fleet must be here,’ says Cičak from her vantage point outside Tartarus, as the remaining Nine arrive. She shows them the grey angular ships arrayed outside the debris field.

‘I count seventy-three, including ten stealth ships. Most of these are drones, but that’s still about two hundred marines out here,’ she says.

The Five are still mulling whether they should alert the other space cities.

‘I’m glad we leave the politics to you,’ laughs Cičak.

The channel closes. Another day passes.

The Nine work as a team. They have been all through the station. No living creatures remain on the base. The only functioning controls left are the ones maintaining its orbit and protecting the safe channel around the station and along the umbilical.

In the engineering hold, the location of so many card games, cargo has come loose and drifts. Empty food sachets mingling with metal rods and rolls of fabric.

The ferry has gone.

Samara stands alone in the cargo bay, his hood sealed and strange electrical patterns playing in the depths of his battleskin. The umbilical cable hangs before him. He leaps from the edge. Hovering. He flies out and on to the surface of Tartarus, where the rest of the Nine are preparing to leave.

‘Samara.’

‘Yes, Amaranth.’

‘We think we have found the mechanism behind the prisoner executions.’

‘Please,’ says Samara, ‘tell me.’

‘It is an algorithm used for test purposes that should have been disabled. A drone was placed in a cell and released at random intervals. They timed the response for the Furies to come upon the drone and eliminate it. They needed the drones to be able to randomly control their exit. Each would set up a resonance in the walls to trigger the unlocking mechanism.

‘That resonance is the same as a person performing stretching exercises while pressing against two facing walls,’ her sorrow apparent. This may bring closure, but not of the sort he might have wished for.

Samara considers. ‘No purpose, then? Senseless deaths caused by people doing a job they didn’t much care about.’

He breathes out his bitterness. The need for there to be a reason. He lets it go.

Samara smiles.

‘They’re coming,’ says Cičak, as three of the American stealth ships close in on Tartarus and make their way down to the cargo bay. ‘I’d expect about sixty marines on board those. What are they after?’

‘Have you made contact with them?’ asks Samara.

Cičak nods. ‘Commander Eristavi. He tells me their orders are to ensure we stay inside our access window, and for them to secure the station.’

‘Can you connect us? I’d like to know their plans.’

The view is blurry through the shielded walls of Tartarus and the weaker American communications system. Samara can only faintly see where Eristavi is hopping jerkily through the tunnels towards Athena.

‘Commander Eristavi, US Eleventh,’ comes the curt response.

‘I’m Samara Adaro of the Nine. We are making ready to leave. I would appreciate it if you could tell me your immediate intentions for the station?’

‘Your access window is over. We expect you to honour our agreement.’

‘Commander, Athena was not functioning correctly even before we shut her down. You’ll understand our concern.’

Eristavi cuts their connection.

‘We’re not going anywhere until we know they have control.’

The Nine form a row hovering in space amongst the American fleet. Technically, they are in international territory and outside the station exclusion zone.

‘Amaranth, tell me you kept observers inside?’

She grins. ‘Of course. Would you like to see?’

The marines have gathered inside the control deck, stabilizing themselves by holding on to whatever is near. They have locked a scaffold to Athena’s pillar, and four of them appear to be attempting to open the casing. The rest are scattered awkwardly within the open space staring nervously at the blackened shapes in the openings in the dome.

‘Do you think they have plans for this part of the base?’ asks Fodiar.

‘I’ve no idea, but that’s ancient tooling. I’d say almost a century,’ says Cičak.

Marines obscure the works, carefully aligning a tubular device against the pillar. They work carefully, but it is clear that they are figuring things out as they go. If there were ever plans for this part of the station, it appears that even these marines do not have them.

The marines jerk back. Their faces are obscured inside their suits, but their posture is of confusion and fear.

Outside, disk-like plates slide back all along the upper surface of Tartarus revealing dark tunnels. A stream of the metal spheres fly out. They surge directly at the hovering ships.

The Nine instantly vanish and scatter.

The first of the spherical drones strikes an American ship. It explodes in a single pink-and-white, eye-blistering pulse, fading to purple and blue.

Thousands more pour from Tartarus and light up the dark.

51

‘It’s a weapons platform—’ says Ortega.

‘We can tell it’s a –’ Hollis regains control, his gender stabilizing, his telepresence transmission flickering in the gloom of the room. ‘What we want to know is what is it for and how do we stop it?’ His voice is vitriol, his oscillating gender adding greater terror to his rage.

The Situation Room walls cling with stale sweat and confinement. Few of Ortega’s cabinet have strayed far from the stream of telemetry hovering over the desk between them. Skin flaccid and eyes bag-haggard.

Ortega stares at Alvarez in exhaustion. The other man shakes his head, his mouth hanging open.

General Graham has shunned everyone, sitting alone and uncommunicative in a corner. Alvarez has had the drones force-feed her, worried she is becoming catatonic. Ortega still has not taken anyone into his confidence and has carried her warning alone.

Ortega looks again around the table at people he has known his entire career. He feels as if he is drowning, that there is no air in the room.

‘It was Hammond,’ he gasps.

‘Mad Hammond?’ Alvarez’s voice is a muffled crackle, his throat is so dry.

Ortega nods. ‘Long before the war. He was worried the US would lose high orbit to the Chinese. Him and Oswald at State Security. The prison was probably the best political cover they could ever invent. All the money they needed and a legitimate explanation for security expenses and all that material going up. No one questioned it.’

Hollis is silent. He first met President Hammond at his inauguration party almost a century ago. The man was charismatic with a nasty edge. His xenophobia was not only pragmatic politics for the electorate. He was a believer.

He was assassinated midway through his second term. ‘And all we could think,’ Hollis remembers, ‘was, “Please, let the killer not be someone from orbit.”’

‘How come you didn’t know?’ asks Alvarez.

Ortega looks ill. ‘Hammond was the only one outside State Security who knew about it. Then the war and—’

‘Fine,’ says Hollis, sharply. ‘You can find excuses afterwards. We need to know how to deal with this. Are the drones controlled by Athena?’

‘No. Only to authorize them,’ says Graham. She does not look at anyone as she speaks. ‘They’re a mesh network. Entirely independent. They will remain dormant as long as they’re in Tartarus, but the moment they’re out they start attacking. They learn from each other as to what strategy works or doesn’t, and then they adapt. You’ll see location pings and then a telemetry burst when they detonate. Each drone communicates only once, when it explodes, detailing all its telemetry and its assessed probability of successfully destroying its target. The rest receive the signal and adjust their own tactics. It’s supposed to harden them to interference.’

‘Do you have their communication cypher sequence?’

Graham mutely shakes her head. ‘We know only that they use asymmetric encryption and a one-time quantum cypher series.’

‘What is their target?’ asks Hollis, his rage a physical presence in the room.

‘Anything outside of low Earth orbit that looks manufactured and large enough to contain a human or able to carry an explosive charge. That includes anything further out, like the colonies on Mars.’

‘How many are there?’

Graham moans. She is spent.

Ortega answers. ‘We think there are about fifty thousand of them. They carry a micro-nuclear payload. If you can get them below 500 kilometres from Earth’s surface, they will go completely dormant. It’s the only failsafe they have.’

Hollis nods. They can all see that the drones are still streaming out of Tartarus.

‘Well, they’ve just destroyed the last of your fleet. You better hope we can stop them. Some of the other cities may be very upset.’

He closes the channel.

52

[Got it,] says Syrice.

Amaranth only gasps, winded, as a series of drones detonate against the ion web between her, Vakhsh and Kouhei. A pink-white nuclear blast, with them at the epicentre, radiates out to a purple fringe and rapidly dissipates. Its force flings them apart, and the electromagnetic pulse momentarily disrupts their access to the connect.

‘That hurt,’ says Kouhei, disoriented and struggling to realign himself with the others.

With each explosion they intercept more of the drone telemetry bursts and learn more about how they operate. Unfortunately, the drones are learning more about them as well.

‘Quickly,’ shouts Vakhsh.

As they orientate towards the pursuing pack of drones, the ion strands flare between them. A flickering white web with the matt-titanium reflections of their battleskins at each corner. Energy builds again across the strands and they fire short bursts at the drones, more agile now and attempting to surround them.

Across the battle-zone two other trios of the Nine are being similarly pummelled. Debris from the American fleet is flung back and forth as drones erupt. An endless stream of black spheres is still pouring from Tartarus.

Samara opens a channel to the Five. ‘I don’t know how much longer we can hold them. We’re not regenerating energy from the detonations fast enough to keep up. There’s still more than two-thirds of the drones inside Tartarus, and we calculate we’ll run out with a quarter to go.’

‘The other cities know. We’re all burying ourselves deeper in the debris field. Achenia should be inside in about ten minutes.’

‘Do you think that will work?’

‘No,’ says Hollis. ‘We need more time.’

‘They’re figuring you out,’ says The Three.

‘We know,’ says Samara. The channel goes blank as a series of explosions sever the connection.

This blast is too close to the umbilical. The asteroid counterweight flings out, dragging a trailing cable behind it. Beneath, the remaining tether plunges towards the distant planet.

‘Amaranth, have you found them yet?’ Samara asks when he can speak again.

‘Yes, but we’re still struggling to get direct communication.’