Polity 2 - Hilldiggers (2 page)

Ball-jointed lasers swivelled in the wall to point towards me. A treaded robot rolled from the rear of the hold and closed saw-tooth arms around the sphere to drag it twenty yards further inside, where a ram descended from the ceiling, clamping it into place, while the robot released its grip and retreated. Pillars now rose from the floor all around, each with metallic protuberances and inset glass lenses that were certainly the business ends of some scanning system. Eventually doors opened to one side of the hold, and six Fleet personnel marched in, five to surround the sphere and the other one remaining to guard the door.

These people wore armoured and powered space-suits that resembled lobster shells, and flat mirrored visors concealed their faces. Each of them carried a short disc-gun carbine from which trailed armoured cables to plug into their suits. This weapon could fire explosive-centred alloy discs at a rate of a thousand a minute, and at four times the speed of sound. That was the top setting. Inside a ship, rate and speed could be tuned down to avoid puncturing the hull, and the non-explosive discs used could also be set to unwind so they entered a human body as a spinning potato peel of metal. Very messy. How did I know all this? Those in charge of Fleet did not want Polity tech to enter the Sudorian system without their approval, and the Polity, but for one exception, adhered to this stricture. The one exception was a drone, which had been here studying this civilisation for a quarter of a century and relaying intelligence to the Polity. As a consequence I already knew much about these people and their dirty little secrets.

The political situation here was complicated. Fleet retained power in the system beyond the planet Sudoria by dint of the fact that it controlled the hilldiggers: big-fuck warships that could employ gravtech weapons capable of doing just what their name implied. According to the last report from the survey drone, Admiral Carnasus and his twelve captains ran this fleet, and lieutenants of theirs held twenty-five seats in the Sudorian parliament. A further thirty-nine seats were controlled by the various planetary parties, while another fifteen were controlled by Orbital Combine—the rational scientific political unit holding sway in Sudoria's many space stations which, like the three main Corisanthe space stations, were originally part of the war industry.

When we first contacted them here, subsequent communications made it clear that Fleet did not want any dealings with the Polity, but Combine desperately wanted access to our artificial intelligences and underspace technology, and all but a few of the Sudorian planetary parties wanted trade. Orbital Combine and those parties then agreed to the establishing of a consulate on Sudoria. Fleet, being outvoted, cited laws established during the war here to prevent technological import (though where they had expected it to be imported from back then, I've no idea), but could do nothing, legally, to prevent Polity humans from coming here. I was to be the test case, and it long ago occurred to me that Fleet might now try something drastic to discourage further contact with the Polity.

After a few minutes, three more individuals entered the hold. These wore no armour, and the only visible weaponry they carried were sidearms—probably straightforward chemical projectile guns. They were clad in the one-piece foamite suits that were the uniform of Fleet personnel; garments that closely followed their musculature, though being over a half-inch thick they made the three of them appear quite bulky. The uniforms were cut low around the neck and down below terminated in wide deck boots. Belts and webbing straps held their sidearms, ammunition clips, an assortment of tools and the rank patches containing their security scanner barcodes. The two to the rear wore around their throats necklaces consisting of variously coloured bars, perhaps to visibly indicate their rank to their associates. The one I assumed to be the boss here, preceding these two, wore a simple platinum band around his throat. His red foamite suit stood out in vivid contrast to their dull blue ones, and he carried fewer tools. But it was the physical appearance of these three that interested me much more than their attire, for the people of Sudoria had been changed by old adaptogenic drugs and technologies to live on a planet where the temperature did not sink much below sixty degrees Celsius, and sometimes rose above a hundred degrees at the equator.

Projecting lower jaws were balanced by the bulbous rearward projection of the skulls, while their ears were just shapeless knubs as if seared by the heat of their world. Their noses ran narrow down the angular jut of their faces, with nostrils apparently normal but capable of opening as wide as an average human eye. They retained their head hair, though some cosmetic genetic tweak prevented it from growing on their faces or anywhere else on their bodies. Fleet personnel shaved the front of their skulls and plaited the rest in a queue in the manner of the ancient samurai. Their skin was a dark metallic violet that grew more reflective as the intensity of the sunlight increased. Though little different in appearance from standard, their eyes possessed nictitating membranes. Webs extended between their fingers, for cooling rather than swimming, but were probably unnecessary here in the ship, with its temperature maintained at a comfortable fifty-five degrees Celsius.

I undogged my suit helmet and placed it to one side. The one in the red suit halted by the sphere and peered inside at me, his nostrils flaring wide and the nictitating membranes momentarily dulling his eyes. I guessed I would eventually learn what such reactions meant, but the twist to his mouth and rest of his expression seemed likely to be a sneer. After a moment he stepped back and gestured for me to step out into the hold. I unfolded myself from the floor, reached over and pulled down the manual locking mechanism, and the door section, consisting of twelve hexagonal chainglass sheets inside a single ceramal frame, thumped up from its seals. I pushed it open and stepped outside.

Hot, damned hot.

I felt a slight shifting of the fibres tangled throughout my body as the two viral forms at war inside me readjusted their positions. Though not myself thermodapted, one of those conflicting viral forms enabled me to easily tolerate this temperature—just within the normal human range—and also other temperatures, both high and low, that would result in those standing before me curling up and expiring. Unfortunately, the second viral form might result in a similar end for me, too. But what would they know; they hadn't seen a 'normal human' in 800 years.

“I am told that you can speak our language,” the boss began.

“Fluently,” I replied. Most people working for ECS loaded languages to their cerebral augs for instant translation., or loaded them via internal gridlinks directly to their minds. Due to certain physiological... differences, I couldn't use any form of prosthetic augmentation so had to learn them the old-fashioned way. However, I am, I believe, a competent linguist. It took me a year or so to learn four of the languages spoken here (in one case, sort-of spoken), which brought the total of the languages I was conversant with up to one hundred and twenty, though I suspect I might have since forgotten one or two. “I presume you are the captain of this ship?”

“I am Captain Inigis,” he replied, “and knowing your facility with our language you will understand this instruction.” He gestured at me with one webbed hand. “Strip.”

I shrugged, unsurprised. The dilemma faced by the Orbital Combine and the planetary parties was that those who most objected to my presence here were also the ones necessarily employed to pick me up. So I went through the laborious process of undoing all the catches and stickpads of the suit, stripped it off and kicked it to one side. I stood there for a moment in the absorbent undersuit until the captain gestured again, so I stripped that off too and stood naked before them.

Inigis now walked over to two of the scanning pillars that had earlier risen from the floor and pointed down between them. “Come and stand here.” I padded over as instructed and noticed the captain quickly stepping back out of the way—touch of xenophobia there. The pillars revolved until their scanning lenses were pointing in towards me. I felt a tingling of my skin and momentary hot flushes as if a blow torch quickly skimmed over it, not held there long enough to burn, but long enough for me to be aware of it. X-ray, terahertz, magnetic resonance, point radar and much else besides. More viral shifting, but no slippage as yet. A faint ringing started in my ears and I suddenly gained the distinct impression that someone else had just entered the hold: a tall man, slightly stooped, features shadowed. I glanced over, wondering how he fitted into this scenario, then felt my stomach sink and my skin prickle. No one there—it had to be an effect of the scanning, since I was receiving the full works without any regard for my health. Someone else would have suffered radiation sickness after this and the cancer-cell hunting nanites in their bodies would have needed to work overtime. In fact I rather suspected Inigis hoped I would die from such heavy inspection. As the scan completed, he seemed rather disappointed I didn't keel over.

Next, Inigis stood over by one of his companions, viewing an unscrolled flimsy screen. I noted how an optic cord joined this screen to the suit of the individual who handed it over, and inspected him more closely. His foamite suit was bulked with additional equipment, earphones covered his ears, a close-viewing screen covered one eye, a microphone was fixed before his mouth, and wires actually penetrated his skull. He seemed to be muttering perpetually, and moving his fingers in a continuous dance while operating the virtual control gloves he wore. Tacom, I realised. Fleet communications were run by individuals like this. Returning my attention to Inigis, I could see—even though not quite used to their facial expressions yet—he was at first puzzled, but began to show a growing satisfaction.

“What you're seeing,” I volunteered, “are the results of a viral infection I contracted on a world called Spatterjay. Every native there has it.” I gestured to the various rings of bluish scar tissue showing on my skin. “The virus is contracted through the bite of some particularly nasty critters.”

It was a half-truth, really, but I doubted they would be able to distinguish the dying virus from the one that was killing it... and killing me too. Even so, as I spoke, a sharp memory returned to me. I stood upon the deck of a sailing ship, and oozing along the planking by my feet was a leech as long as my arm. Blood trickled between my fingers, my hand clamped against the hole where the thing had reamed a chunk of flesh from my stomach. A sailor, dressed only in canvas trousers, his bare skin seeming tattooed with multiple blue rings, glanced at me unsympathetically and said, “Now you're buggered.”

“I'm supposed to believe this?” Inigis asked, snapping me back to the present. “This seems more likely to me to be some form of organic technology. You were warned that no such Polity technologies are allowed here.” With finality he pressed a button that ravelled the flimsy screen back into its case, and handed this back to his tacom officer.

“It's not a technology, just viral fibres. Your own biologists should be able to confirm this.”

“A normal Polity human was to be sent,” he insisted stubbornly.

“I very much doubt Geronamid agreed to that, since very few 'normal humans' exist in the Polity nowadays. Anyway, any Earth-standard human wouldn't be able to survive in your environment. He would have to be thermodapted like yourselves, or kept alive by Polity tech, which of course you won't allow.” I shrugged. “One such as myself seemed the politic choice, since I can survive in your environment and, being so obviously unlike you, I'm less likely to arouse suspicion.” That was all absolute heirodont shit, of course. Geronamid chose me because I could survive in a wide range of environments—including that of the other inhabited world of this system—and because I possessed other non-technological advantages.

“It will be necessary to confirm this under question—”

The side door opened and two more people pushed into the hold, past the guard stationed there. One was female—the first I had seen, Fleet being so patriarchal—the other a quite old man, stooped and leaning on a gnarled wooden cane with a gold handle. These two did not wear Fleet uniforms. The woman was clad in a tight-fitting bodysuit, which was black from head to foot and revealed all her curves, and a brightly coloured wrap draped around her hips, its pattern a wormish tangle. The aged man wore baggy trousers and other dress with a decided Arabian air, also a skullcap with cooling veins webbed through it and pipes running down into his clothing. Being old he was unable to keep cool, and this was their solution here. I recognised him from com recordings: Abel Duras, Chairman of the Sudorian Parliament. The woman, whose name I did not know, I rather suspected to be a representative of the Orbital Combine.

“What precisely do you think you are doing, Captain?” she said to Inigis. Then she glanced at me with a slight smile, looked me up and down. “No concealed weapons, I see.”

I studied her. Lighter-boned than the men, she possessed a pouty soft-faced sexuality emphasised by the kohl round her eyes, lips whitened after the manner of women here, and her black hair long and curly. Despite the adaptation differences she looked like someone I once knew, but when you get to my age most people seem familiar. I wondered if I found her so attractive because her mass of hair de-emphasised the shape of her skull and the jut of her face. She also looked dangerous, probably because of those long canines that protruded over her lower lip even when she closed her mouth.

“Fleet security protocol demands full scanning of the suspect in case he presents a danger to this ship,” said Inigis tightly. “I have detected organic Polity technology and must secure him until the danger this represents has been assessed and negated.”

“You're overstepping your remit here. Captain ...” the woman began, anger penetrating her good humour. She desisted when Duras reached out and clamped a hand on her arm.

The old man nodded to himself for a short moment, then raised his head to focus sharp black eyes on the Captain. “Consul Assessor David McCrooger is not a 'suspect', Captain Inigis, but a representative of the Polity—a human dominion on such a scale that boggles the mind, and one that certainly contains war craft quite capable, I rather suspect, of digging their own hills.” He now looked towards me. “Is that not so, Consul?”