Polity 2 - Hilldiggers (27 page)

One of the men stooped to turn the unconscious officer over and cuff him.

“Now,” said Harald, “I have some terrible news to deliver about the assassination of our Admiral by Orbital Combine. And I have a missile to launch.”

Tigger

Right, stop Fleet from destroying Vertical Vienna, thought Tigger.

Preventing the first missile reaching the planet's surface was no problem, but what about the next one? He could introduce some massive fault into Ironfist's systems to prevent further firings, but then there were still five other such ships within a day's travel of Brumal, so what about them? If Fleet proved utterly relentless in its purpose, Tigger's continued actions would eventually reveal his presence, then the problems would really start.

Accelerating up through atmosphere, Tigger separated into his two parts—his tiger aspect dropping back down towards the planet's surface. Of course, even without McCrooger's instructions, Tigger would have intervened to prevent such wanton death and destruction, for he had seen the bitter results, close up, when he retrieved that disk for Orduval. Descending from the sky his tiger half landed on an icy canal path leading towards the ground-level cap of Vertical Vienna. His sensorium divided—since his consciousness also occupied his sphere half—he also left atmosphere and distantly observed the hilldigger Ironfist. Listening in to com channels he realised the launch of a missile was imminent.

On the surface, the cat half of Tigger scanned down inside the hive city and realised, with some relief, that the Brumallians were rapidly evacuating it. He estimated that within two hours not a living soul would still occupy the tunnels. This made his task somewhat easier, since he only needed to delay things that long and then Fleet would be destroying an empty city. Of course, there was nothing to prevent them then firing on other Brumallian cities. If that proved to be the case, Tigger decided he must come out into the open and yell for help from Geronamid. The AI, though against taking overt action, would not countenance blatant genocide here.

Still listening to com channels, Tigger then heard about the assassination of Admiral Carnasus. Apparently a Fleet officer had gunned him down in his Admiral's Haven. When Tigger learnt that Harald Strone had assumed command until Captain Dravenik could be recalled, he felt a deep disquiet. He needed to find out more, but that would have to wait, since he could now see the tops of two missile silos opening on the body of the hilldigger Ironfist.

Scanning, Tigger learned just enough to ascertain which missile was the main one and which the back-up. He focused on the main missile but found shielding and hardened systems defeating his probing. A lot of that shielding lay within the silo itself, so best to wait until after the missile was launched. Cruising 1,000 miles down, and to one side of the hilldigger, the drone decided his best option would be to introduce a fault into the guidance system, then return to the ship and tamper with those systems that loaded guidance to the missile. This way Fleet's inability to destroy Vertical Vienna right now would be seen as just one random fault, and thus be less likely to arouse suspicion.

The missile launched and Tigger began vectoring in on it. Scanning again he realised the missile itself was hardened against informational attack. It therefore looked like he would have to physically intercept it to introduce the fault. He sighed and accelerated. He would have to drill through the casing and inject micro-manipulator tentacles to tamper with its hardware. Merely pushing it off course would not work, since the guidance system would automatically correct. As he closed, he wondered at the degree of paranoia within Fleet—at them using a missile as difficult to interfere with as this. Did they think the Brumallians still possessed the ability, or the will, to maintain electronic warfare devices? If so, it showed that those in command of Fleet did not understand their old enemy at all.

Eight hundred miles from Ironfist the missile's drive shut down. Tigger closed in on it, extending four cell-form metal grabs to close around the armoured cyclindrical body. A rosy glow bloomed from the missile's nose cone as it entered thin atmosphere, and streaks of orange fire spat past the clinging drone. He extruded a chainglass drill and began cutting through metal. Then a sudden horrible and aberrant thought occurred to him and he put together some wildly disparate facts. There was that certain recent research undertaken on Corisanthe Main, which Fleet had access to despite its hostility towards Combine. And Harald, like his three siblings, was never to be underestimated.

“Oh shit.”

A second sun ignited high in Brumal's stratosphere, rolling out nuclear fire that skated on lightnings around the curve of the globe. On the surface, a running silver tiger howled and coiled in on itself, crashed into hard ground and skidded into the nearby canal, breaking ice as it entered the water, and sank.

Harald

Frowning, Harald studied the telemetry on his eye-screen.

“I don't understand, sir,” said one of the officers at Firing Control. “The missile was set for impact detonation and was hardened against interference.”

“I can only suppose, then,” said Harald, “that the Brumallians have developed some way of getting through our shielding.”

He stood upright, inspecting a view only he could see, then ran it again. Now the shadows looked right as well. The scene showed Admiral Carnasus interrogating Lieutenant Alun in Harald's presence. It showed Alun pulling out a gun and shooting Carnasus, then stepping over and pumping further shots into the Admiral's head. Harald needed to work on the interrogation next, altering stored footage of previous interviews with Alun to suit his purpose. Of course it still might be possible for an expert programmer to divine the falsity of these recordings. However, Harald intended events to move too swiftly now for anyone to get a chance to inspect them too closely.

Switching his headset to general address, he began, “I have an announcement to make,” then paused until everyone was facing towards him. “Evidence has been accumulating that the Brumallians were not working alone. It would now appear that Lieutenant Alun was in the secret employ of Orbital Combine.” First a shocked silence, then sudden heated debates all around him. Now Harald opened a channel to Ship's Security, “Order all Combine personnel aboard confined to quarters for the present.”

“Yes, sir...Erm, your sister, Yishna? She is now aboard the transport heading back towards Sudoria.”

“With Chairman Abel Duras?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let her go. We certainly don't want to aggravate our parliamentary Chairman.”

He cut the link to Security, then addressed those at Firing Control. “Maybe Combine technology was used to stop that missile, so I want one prepared for simple mechanical detonation as used during the fourth battle Arkan. Keep me informed.”

Quickly departing the Bridge and reaching his cabin he seated himself on his divan and opened a secure channel. His eye-screen immediately lit up, but it took a moment for the individual he was calling to respond and sit down to answer.

“Jeon, what do you have for me?” he asked.

“One part of it—whatever it was—tried to intercept the missile. The detonation destroyed it, however. I last detected the other part in the region of BC32 but have since lost that trace. Maybe destroying one half of it somehow damaged the other half?”

“Let us hope so. Inform me if you pick up on it again. If not we can always hope our next strike against BC32 will deal with it.” He cut the link, quickly opening another. “Cheanil?” The woman looked very ill and Harald realised he should wait no longer. “First give me Combine visuals of Defence Platform One and Dravenik's ship, and then fire on my order.”

“I have it all ready for you, Harald.” She reached out for something and Harald's eye-screen display instantly divided into four. Two of the views were of the defence platform, one of Cheanil herself, and another of the hilldigger Blatant. He cancelled one of the two views of the station and opened communications with the Blatant.

“Commander Harald,” said a tacom officer, gazing at him from one screen quarter.

“I need to speak to Captain Dravenik, at once.”

A holding graphic appeared, and Harald impatiently rattled his fingers on the divan arm. He checked the time display in one corner of his view, but Dravenik did not seem inclined to keep him waiting.

“What the hell is going on out there, Harald? I'm told the Admiral has been attacked and that you have fired on Brumal. If Carnasus is incapacitated, you must put on hold all further actions until I have reviewed the situation.”

“Carnasus is dead,” said Harald.

Dravenik drew back as if Harald had spat at him. “Dead?”

Harald considered the possibility of this communication being recorded. If that was the case, the recording would be aboard Blatant. Maybe it might be recovered, but Harald was prepared to take the risk of that just to enjoy the satisfaction of his next words.

“Yes, he is dead. I killed him, just as I am about to kill you...Cheanil, fire now.”

The view of the defence platform showed very little, just a faint hazing of vacuum and then some interference on the image. Dravenik's face winked out of existence as the microwave surge wiped out all com from his ship. Blatant seemed to ripple, or perhaps that was just interference too. Such a small image in one quadrant of his eye-screen. He enlarged it to fill the entire screen, but still it did not seem real enough. He saw out-gassing and stars of fire spread all along the hilldigger. Missiles were being fired, swarms of them. Dravenik had managed to get some of his weapons systems online, but not nearly enough, nor quickly enough. Then the multiple explosions began to tear Blatant apart: white balls of fire blasting out and wreckage spewing into vacuum. As he had expected, the intense microwave hit was detonating the shaped charges in the nukes and other chemical munitions. He had calculated that at least one of the shaped-charge explosions among the hundreds of missiles aboard, though not precisely timed, would lead to a thermonuclear detonation. So it occurred. His screen blanked for a second, then returned in negative with hazy lines across it. Debris spread. He observed something mangled passing down to the right, and the image shuddered.

“Cheanil... Cheanil, reply.”

Three returned images, all shadows under heavy interference, then nothing. Lit-up icons indicated he had lost the signal. Harald did not suppose Cheanil had survived Dravenik's reply to Defence Platform One, just as calculated. He felt she had performed her duty adequately. Now, during this emergency, Harald could take full charge of Fleet.

McCrooger

A dull grumble grew into a roar, and those of us within the barge fell silent. I felt something lurch in my stomach. That first explosion, a few hours before, I had been optimistic about. I was not feeling so sure now, for the pendant in my hand no longer bore the shape of a tiger, but had become a smooth ovoid as if the drone's direct link to it had been somehow cut. It was then that I also noticed something else, something strange. There was a crusty black substance on my fingers that I assumed was mud until, on closer inspection, I saw a partially closed rip in the flesh of the back of my hand, caused when the quofarl had captured us.

Blood?

I had not bled in more years than I cared to count—the last time being when I received a serious slash from a chainglass knife that had cut through my biceps right to the bone. Even then the quantity of blood would not have filled a shot glass, and the wound had closed very quickly. But here, what I previously ignored as a mere scratch, had bled copiously, and the wound had still not closed. I realised I was now seeing the physical results of the war being fought between the two viral forms occupying my body.

“That could have been thunder,” Rhodane commented, eyeing me tentatively.

“You don't really believe that, Rhodane,” said Shleera. “I would guess that was another nuke exploding. If they'd used gravtech, we would have felt more vibration through our feet.”

I could only hope that Tigger had obeyed me and somehow diverted the strikes launched against Vertical Vienna. Within the barge much angry argument ensued and a woman, sitting nearby, began sobbing. Everyone here believed the worst, including me—the sight of that cut on my hand had dispelled my usual optimism.

“What did the Brumallians do with any prisoners they took during the War?” I asked, and then wondered if the question sprang from sudden feelings of mortality.

“There weren't that many captured,” Rhodane replied. “Some survived, some were tortured, and many others interrogated by means that left them drooling and mindless. The Sudorians were no better.”

Great.

I abruptly seated myself on the deck. I could easily break out of this barge, but what then? Or could I in fact break out of this barge? As a test I drove my finger down hard against the floor. It made a satisfying donk and left a dent in the metal. Okay...though my finger did ache a bit afterwards. But back to the initial question: I was just another of the dispossessed all wars produced—one of the millions driven here and there by events we could not control. How would the Brumallians react? They possessed some ships, as I saw, but I doubted they could put up much of a fight against the superior forces of Fleet. I considered how such a unique society as theirs might respond. A normally governed society could perhaps hold back from trying to retaliate against its attacker, realising there was little chance of succeeding, but here society's actions were the direct result of Consensus. Would they want vengeance and would that want immediately turn into action? In response to a possible threat, they had immediately begun work again on their spaceships. But now they had actually been attacked.

Perhaps half an hour passed before the door seals whumphed open. Those around me immediately began pulling on their helmets and surging away from the opening doors. I thought it telling that no warning had been given, for that simple lack of consideration could have killed people in here as the poisonous air from outside flooded in. Rhodane kept her head bare.