Polity 2 - Hilldiggers (3 page)

I thought about the cities that were now mass graves on Brumal—the only other inhabited world in this system—and pretended ignorance. “Digging hills?”

Duras moved rather quickly for such an old man and, before Inigis could object, strode over to stand before me. “Fleet capital ships are called hilldiggers, because their weapons created mountain ranges on Brumal, but I am sure you've studied the historical files we transmitted and are well aware of this.” He turned and stabbed a finger at one of the Captain's aides. “You, go find the Consul Assessor some suitable clothing, and confirm that his cabin is prepared.” Duras reached out and grabbed my biceps and, towing me after him, headed for the door.

The snouts of disc-guns wavered in our direction and the Captain seemed about ready to detonate, but I judged him to be overextended and likely in some serious trouble if he pushed this any further. I caught his signal to the guard standing beside the door. The man moved across to block our exit—a delay giving Inigis time to think.

“Yishna,” snapped Duras, “remove this obstacle.”

The woman moved forward, and the guard, while beginning to turn his weapon towards her, hesitated. She stepped in close, grabbed and flipped him neatly over her hip. He landed with a crash on the floor beside me. Because of the ease with which she did this, I instantly recognised her to be someone to be reckoned with. Combat training had remained obligatory for all Sudorians ever since the War, and the guard, being a member of Fleet and therefore subject to further training, should have been more able than her.

The guard's armour must have absorbed the force of his landing for he still kept hold of his weapon. I saw him swing it, one-handed, up towards Yishna and Duras, pause, then swing it towards me. Was this a standing order, or had Inigis or some other given him instructions over his suit's comlink? Yishna of Orbital Combine attacked one of the guards, at Abel Duras's instigation; the guard's weapon inadvertently fired and blew the head off the Polity Consul Assessor—such an unfortunate incident, but what can you do?

I stooped, quickly grabbed the man's forearms and hauled him to his feet. I could feel the vibration of his suit motors through my hands as he tried to bring the weapon to bear on me fully. It fired a short five-round burst, and shattered metal ricocheted around the hold. Enough—someone could get hurt. I released his left arm, and reached over to take the weapon from his right hand. He punched me with his free hand using the full force of his suit motors. I took that, then I took away his weapon, snapped its power-supply cable and skimmed it away. He tried to bring a knee up into my groin—all reflex now because we'd passed the point where this could have been dismissed as an accident. Tired of this I threw him. His flat trajectory bounced him off the hold wall ten feet away. When he clattered to the ground, he showed no signs of wanting to get up again.

By now the others were closing in, and Inigis began shouting something. Behind me, Duras was cursing. I quickly stepped up beside him, turned the manual wheel on the locked bulkhead door, and pulled it open. Pieces of shattered locking mechanism clattered over the floor. Duras eyed me, glanced at the downed guard...and perhaps wondered if Inigis might have the right idea.

“Stay exactly where you are!”

I glanced round. Captain Inigis and his men were ranged around us, every weapon trained. Duras patted me on the arm and stepped out in front of me.

“So, Captain, not only have you insulted the Polity by treating their Consul like a criminal, you have also made two attempts on his life: one by using the kind of scan on him normally confined to inspecting munitions for faults—and now like this.” Duras gestured to the guard who was beginning to make tentative exploratory movements, perhaps wondering how far he could move before things began to hurt.

“I am merely ensuring the safety—”

“Do be quiet, Inigis,” Yishna interrupted. “You know you've botched this, and if you push it any further there will certainly be repercussions. Probably in Parliament, but definitely in Fleet Command when I describe your incompetence to Harald. My brother and I disagree on many matters, but we have always agreed that idiots should not be allowed to thrive.”

Inigis grew paler as she spoke; I suspected he had just been reminded of a rather unpleasant fact. I studied the woman. Obviously her brother Harald ranked higher in Fleet than Inigis, but knowing Fleet's attitude to any contact with the Polity, wondered if she might be bluffing. How important was her brother? Whatever, it worked for Inigis let us go. While Yishna and Duras conducted me to my cabin, apologising the while, it seemed some other menacing party accompanied us—whispering grim truths in my ear, yet forever out of sight. An after-effect of the scanning, or so I thought.

—RETROACT 2—

Harald—in childhood

Harald Strone knew where he wanted to be—and had always known. As he walked into Yadis Hall to take the seat at his assigned console, he received some strange looks from the Fleet personnel present and, maintaining a bored expression, removed his control baton from his belt cache.

“What are you doing here, boy?” asked the man who loomed over him.

Harald stared up at him, noted the missing ear and the scarring on one side of the face before turning his attention to the man's ranking necklace: a ship's engineer, retired from service, but looking rather young for that. Harald inspected him further and realised that though his interrogator moved easily and looked intact from a distance, both his legs and his right arm were artificial. Silently, Harald reached back into the belt cache for his identity plaque.

“Harald Strone...I see. My apologies, but—”

“Yes, I know,” interrupted Harald. “I look like I should be out sand boarding and skirl catching. But, as you see, I am eighteen years old and my authorisation is in order. I am here to take Fusion Mechanics Grade Alpha.”

The engineer nodded, then moved away, but he did not return Harald's identity plaque. The boy grimaced and quickly slotting his baton into the reader in the console, then began his examination by unscrolling a flimsy screen and pressing his palm against it. As, like a concert pianist, he began rattling away on the ship-clone engineering console, solving the problems thrown up on the screen, he wondered if this time he might get caught. Thus far he had managed to take Grade Alpha in Navigation, Astrophysics, Command Management, Weapons Solutions and Design and Materials Technology. Rather than risk too much exposure, he took the twelve other Fleet examinations at Grade Gamma, had avoided demonstrating the extent of his abilities in combat training, for like his siblings his control of his body was equal to that he exercised over his mind, and had thus far managed to keep his doctorates in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science off the record—mainly because of his facility in the latter discipline. Pursuing their own particular interests, his sister and brother Rhodane and Orduval did get caught and a huge furore ensued, but then they were allowed to continue, though under close supervision. No one, however, had yet caught Yishna, whose computer-science qualifications matched his own, and she was already working as a laboratory technician on the space station Corisanthe III.

The extent of time allowed for this examination was set at four hours. After only one hour, Harald turned off his console and removed his baton, then walked over to the same engineer sitting in the monitoring booth with three other invigilators.

“You realise that by pulling your baton authorisation now you'll have to go through the exam again from the beginning?” the man warned.

“Yes, I understand that. May I have my identity plaque back now?”

The man smiled sympathetically. “Fusion Mechanics can be difficult. I suggest you take one of the applied mathematics courses to begin—”

“Chinzer,” interrupted a female tacom officer sitting beside him, “before you make too much of an idiot of yourself.” She pointed to one screen on the montage of them before her.

The engineer stared at the information she indicated. “Well, fuck me.” He looked up at Harald with sudden respect, picked up the ID plaque from the table before him, and handed it over. “Congratulations, Engineering Candidate Harald Strone.”

“Thank you,” said Harald politely, pocketing his plaque. It was a gratifying response, but he would rather have gone unnoticed. With head ducked, he headed for the exit, and, as he stepped out from the examination room, he realised such circumspection had come too late. The three Fleet security personnel standing outside were obviously waiting specially for him.

“Harald Strone.” The officer in command eyed him almost with bewilderment. “First, my congratulations on passing yet another Alpha Grade examination—but you must have realised such a level of achievement would not go unnoticed.”

“But I took some with only Gamma Grades too,” Harald protested quietly.

“Yes, you did.” The officer looked towards the others. “Twelve of them.”

One of the others swore in disbelief.

“And as startling as that is in itself,” the officer continued, “what we would really like to know is how a twelve-year-old managed to alter his ID to give him an age of eighteen years.”

“I know computers,” muttered Harald. He took out his ID plaque and baton, plugged the plaque into one baton port, and quickly entered the code that would update the plaque, and simultaneously correct the errors he had introduced. Then he held both items out to the Fleet officer.

Puzzled, the officer used Harald's baton to start running up on the plaque's small screen all the information it contained. “Applied Mathematics and Computer Science,” he said. Now he was staring at Harald with something more than bemusement.

“I suppose I'm in trouble,” Harald suggested.

The man handed back both plaque and baton, then checked the timepiece on his sleeve. “No, Harald Strone. In five hours you will be in a hilldigger.”

Harald's expression showed delight, but the machine that was his mind—its oiled and beautifully polished components sliding into position with perfect precision—just ticked off another box and stepped him up another rung.

—Retroact 2 Ends—

McCrooger

I felt edgy, and unable to relax. It seemed I could hear the murmur of voices out in the ship's corridors, yet when I ducked my head through the curtain covering the cabin door to look, I encountered either silence or other sounds bearing no relation to that previous murmur. Within my cabin, shadows seemed to flicker out of synch with whatever was casting them, and occasionally I would catch movement at the corner of my eye as if something had just scuttled out of sight. Clad in loose trousers, a shirt and some kind of embroidered garment that draped over me tabard-like and laced up from under my arms down to my waist, I inspected my cabin more closely—perhaps to assure myself that nothing was hiding there.

It was a small neat cell, similar to those found in the oceanic ships of my homeworld. A mattress rolled out from an alcove set at floor level into the wall, but there were no blankets available—who needed them in this temperature? A spigot operated by a snake-shaped lever shot water into a three-quarter-globe basin, and the toilet was an interesting horn-shaped affair that folded out from the wall and which you applied to the necessary part of you with a sucking thwock. When you had finished your business, it then made some very alarming sounds similar to those of a carpet cleaner, as it sprayed and then sucked away water. No towels—moisture on any part of the body being a pleasure as it quickly evaporated. I was inspecting my face in a circular mirror, running fingers through the short grey fuzz on my scalp—hair that never grew any longer and rarely fell out—and trying to figure out the purpose of the various devices slotted into the wall below the mirror, when there came a repetitive clink-clink-clink from outside the curtain door.

I jumped in surprise, but luckily controlled the violence of my reaction enough not to break anything.

“Come in,” I called, and turned.

Yishna entered first, then Duras, lowering the stick he had obviously used to tap against the door frame. I noticed how the gold cane grip seemed to be moulded in the form of a beetle of some kind. Yishna studied my spartan accommodation with the same amusement she had shown on first bringing me here. Duras merely grimaced, displaying yellow teeth, then abruptly turned around and headed back through the curtain. Yishna turned as well, with some hand-flip gesture which I presumed meant 'Follow us'. They led me out into a tilted box-section corridor like something out of an Escher nightmare, where it was necessary for me to stoop while walking, and conducted me to another much larger cabin. This contained a table laden with food and drink, surrounded by four strapwork chairs. These last items I eyed dubiously.

“Consul Assessor David McCrooger, welcome to the Sudorian Democratic Union.” Duras turned towards me, holding out a wooden box.

I accepted it. “Thank you for the gift. I regret that I was unable to bring you anything in exchange, but perhaps, should technology proscriptions ever be raised, I can one day return the favour.” I placed the box down on a side table, twisted the simple latch and flipped it open. Inside rested a handgun and a knife. I took out the knife first, pulled it from its ornate sheath and inspected the blade. It was similar in shape to a Gurkha knife, though with a blade fashioned from some translucent ceramic. I didn't need to touch it to know the edge could probably shave iron. I carefully replaced it in its' sheath, then picked up the handgun. The grip, fashioned of carved bone inlaid with gold and what looked like flat polished emeralds, lay slick in my hand. As I pulled it from the holster I expected to find myself holding some kind of ancient muzzle-loader. It was certainly a gun relying on chemical propellant, but even so was a finely manufactured automatic weapon. Peering into the box I noticed a row of ammunition clips underlying the gun compartment. There was something strange about the cartridge visible in the top of each clip. I levered out one clip and inspected it. The cartridge was of some ordinary metal like brass, but the bullet itself was sharp and fashioned of some hard black material.