Polity 4 - The Technician (52 page)

‘That is
understood already,’ the dreadnought’s AI replied pedantically.

‘Repetition
never does any harm, whilst a failure to understand might,’ the drone replied.

‘Yes,
quite.’

The
other system dreadnought had, as instructed, remained in position over Flint,
for that place had to be kept safe. Now the remaining two.

Right on
cue the AI of Scold asked, ‘So what’re our targets?’

Amistad
directed his attention out into space. Scold and Cheops were a million kilometres out and a mere hundred
kilometres apart.

‘Yes,
surprise us,’ said Janice Golden, interfaced captain of Cheops.

‘According
to haiman specialist Drode, the device will be here no earlier than four hours
from now and no later than five hours,’ Amistad stated. ‘And as you have
probably already surmised, you and Scold are to
engage it.’

‘Not a
surprise,’ she said.

‘I want
an attack plan ready, based on the data we already have, ready within the
next—’

A data
packet arrived from Scold, approved and digitally
signed by the Cheops AI. Amistad opened and absorbed
it instantly. It seemed they had already been discussing the matter. Yes, the
mechanism was made of super-dense matter and massed as much as the planet Mars,
therefore only certain weapons would be effective: open-splash antimatter,
intersecting X-ray lasers to create internal heat points, and the four
prototype U-jump missiles that Scold nurtured in its
weapons carousel.

‘That’ll
do nicely,’ said the war drone.

‘And
what about you?’ Janice asked.

‘Monitor
and command,’ Amistad replied.

She
emitted a derisory snort.

Amistad
understood her doubt, since she had probably already checked up on the war
drone’s history.

‘Though
I will assist – circumstances permitting,’ he added.

The
reaction jets now flipped over the geostat weapon so its business end pointed
out into space. The thing was tuned to firing down through atmosphere at
targets on the surface, but firing into space, not one scrap of its energy
would be wasted, and with a little tinkering, some quite interesting attack
patterns could be introduced into the coming fight. If they were needed of
course – Amistad tried to stamp down on the surge of excitement he felt, an
almost nostalgic excitement.

As they approached the barrier, Grant slowed the gravan, doubtless
waiting for some message from the planetary AI Ergatis. Down on the surface,
force-fields kept any unwelcome visitors out, but up here things were
different. Some fifteen years ago, an air car had flown this route, its driver
and passengers perpetually warned not to cross the barrier. It was a well-known
story that Shree had covered in her persona as an Earthnet reporter. There had
been no response; apparently their com was down. A submind of Ergatis,
occupying a simple crab-drone body, had intercepted, intent on landing on the
car to deliver its warning. It had been fired upon. That was enough. The
geostat weapon powered up and fired as the car crossed the barrier, vaporizing
it.

Following
the subsequent investigation, Shree was surprised to discover that the three in
the car weren’t Separatists, but members of a small, previously ignored
organization called Humans First. The investigation also revealed that along
with them and their car, half a ton of planar explosive had also been
vaporized.

‘We’re
not going to be stopped?’ she asked.

Grant
slowed further. He looked nervous. Wondering if com might be down right now,
Shree scanned their surroundings for some sign of a crab-drone. To their right,
about a kilometre away along the barrier, something caught her eye. Something
white there, on the move. After a second she realized she was seeing the
Technician passing through one of the barrier arches like a train entering a
tunnel. Kind of it. As she understood it, sections of the barrier usually had
to be rebuilt whenever a hooder ventured through this area.

‘I’ll
find out,’ Grant said. ‘Ergatis?’ Word recognition in the console com directed
the signal where required and the AI answered at once.

‘Yes,
you have permission to cross the barrier,’ said the AI.

‘Just
wanted to be sure no one had a finger on the trigger,’ said Grant.

‘Someone
has, but that weapon is no longer pointed at you.’

‘What?’

‘Amistad
just hijacked it to be part of the reception committee – just a few hours
remain before the mechanism arrives.’

‘I see,’
said Grant, just as the gravan slid over the barrier.

‘Good
luck,’ said Ergatis, ending the exchange.

‘Reception
committee? Mechanism?’ Shree asked. She had been aware that Grant had his
suspicions about her and had been keeping her out of the loop. Time for an
update, she felt, though peering down at the barrier they had just crossed, and
which was now receding behind, any new information probably made no difference
at all.

‘The
mechanism that the Atheter used to rub out their own minds and which has since
been ensuring there’s no chance of resurrection,’ Grant stated. ‘The one that
fucked over the Technician a million years ago, and the same one that fucked
over Penny Royal just a decade or so ago. That mechanism.’

Shree
felt cold fingers crawling up her spine and focused on him completely. ‘Yes, I
know what this mechanism is . . .’

‘It
surfaced from underspace a number of days back and since then has been taking
ten-light-year hops in this direction. Amistad reckons it’s coming here to
utterly ensure every last trace of the Atheter has been erased. It also seems
likely it might want to erase any bothersome aliens who might get in the way.’

‘Us?’

Sanders,
behind, standing in the cockpit doorway. Shree turned to study her. Having made
use of the onboard medical kit Sanders now seemed steadier, though her face was
still a bruised and battered mess.

‘Yes, us,’
said Grant.

‘How can
Amistad know that?’ Shree asked.

‘Probably
because he’s smarter than us. Probably because this is how Dragon set things up
when it delivered its cure to the Technician.’

‘What?’
Sanders spoke the question simultaneously with Shree.

Shree
didn’t like this at all. Could things have changed in ways bearing on her
mission here? Might there be a reason not to kill Tombs and destroy the Atheter
AI?

‘It’s
complicated,’ said Grant. ‘Dragon came here when the Theocracy was in control,
left a couple of its dracomen on the surface, one as bait for the Technician.
Its body was the cure for the Technician – undid the damage done to it by the
mechanism.’

‘For
what purpose?’ asked Sanders.

‘I don’t
really know – something to do with Tombs, something to do with the device and
the Technician itself. Amistad didn’t really take the time to explain.’

It
seemed clear to Shree that nothing she had just learned would alter her course.

The
building that housed the Atheter AI now drew into sight, and within a few
seconds they were over it and Grant slowed the gravan and set it descending in
a spiralling course. Shree spotted a single Human figure walking in along one
of the foamstone pathways leading towards the building: Tombs. Grant turned the
vehicle in towards that pathway, slowed it further and brought it down, finally
landing with a gentle bump and a sighing away of motors.

‘So here
we are,’ Grant said, ‘though I’m damned if I know why.’

Shree
gave him a tight smile, quickly unstrapped herself, then opened and stepped out
of the door on her side and headed round the van. She was already striding down
the walkway as Grant stepped out of the side door followed unsteadily by
Sanders.

‘Tombs!’
Grant shouted.

Tombs
held up a hand but continued on, stepping between two pillars and into the
building. Glancing over her shoulder, Shree kept going, seeing Grant
hesitating, turning back to Sanders.

‘You
okay?’ Shree heard him say.

‘Just a
bit wobbly – you go ahead,’ Sanders replied.

Shree
broke into a trot, glanced back again and saw Grant hurrying after her. He
didn’t trust her – knew something was up. He wasn’t to know that it was already
too late. He could shoot her maybe, but even then she doubted he could stop her
reaching inside her jacket and pressing her finger to the top of the cylinder
concealed there. She paused at the pillars, glimpsing Tombs standing near the
centre of the building; she stepped inside then immediately moved to one side,
listening as Grant reached the pillars a second later.

‘Tombs?’
he called.

Shree
prepared herself, loosened herself. Twenty years ago Grant would have been no
pushover, but now he was soft, hadn’t been in combat for too long, hadn’t
retained the paranoid instincts required for survival.

He
stepped through and Shree swung her leg up, then back round in a perfect
reverse kick to slam her heel up into his solar plexus, knocking all the breath
out of him. He bowed over, and she stepped in, squatted on one leg, swinging
her other leg round to take his feet away from underneath him. He hit the
ground on his side, too winded to respond, and she came down hard on his side
with her knee. Relieving him of his gun took a second. She tossed it, then
pulled his knife from his boot and sent that clattering after it. She stepped
away, drawing her thin-gun from its concealed holster and turning to aim it at
Tombs.

‘So,
proctor, how did you know?’ she asked. Aboard the gravan, before he knocked her
out, he had talked of Jain technology and she knew he had been directing his
comments at her.

‘How did
I know what?’ Tombs enquired, seemingly unconcerned at having a weapon aimed at
him.

Gasping,
Grant managed to get to his knees, but he still could not gather the breath to
speak. She noted him sliding his hand down to his boot, it coming to rest against
the top of an empty sheath. Soft, weak. She almost regretted the defeat of the
Theocracy. At least, before and during the rebellion, men like Grant had
remained admirable.

‘You get
up and go stand by Tombs,’ she said. ‘Try anything and you’re dead. Understood?’

Finally
managing to get to his feet, he walked an unsteady course over to the proctor.
She saw him glance across at his knife and gun. She doubted he could have done
anything with them had he retained them. Taking his place a couple of paces to
one side of Tombs he studied the man, seemed puzzled, maybe by the same thing
that was puzzling her: Tombs’s apparent serenity. Tombs glanced round at him,
gave him a slightly regretful smile, then swung his attention back to her.

‘Sanders,’
she said, ‘get out from behind that pillar and in here now or I put a hole
through Leif Grant’s skull. You have five seconds. Five . . . four . . . three
. . .’

‘Okay.’
Sanders stepped from behind a pillar and entered the arena too. Without being
instructed she walked over to stand beside Grant. Good girl.

‘Now,
again.’ Shree reached inside her jacket and withdrew the squat glassy cylinder,
slick in her sweaty hand. ‘How did you know about this?’

‘Ah, so
that’s what it looks like,’ Tombs replied. ‘I would have taken it from you
earlier, but the Atheter part of my soul retains a deep abhorrence of it. Far
easier to let you carry it until it was required.’

‘Oh, you
require it now, do you? And I’m supposed to hand it over?’

Arrogance,
that’s what it was. Born of his religious indoctrination and now reinforced by
his position at the centre of events here. Shree considered putting a bullet
through his leg to drain some of that out of him, but no hurry, and she did
want to know.

‘You
have a choice,’ said Tombs. ‘You can hand that over to me now and walk away, or
you can release it here to kill yourself, us, and the AI below your feet. In
doing so you would sacrifice the entire population of Masada too, because
Amistad and those Polity weapons up there are not going to be able to stop
what’s coming. They’ll distract it and delay it for a while, for a necessary
time, but ultimately fail.’

He
thought he could convince her, it was ludicrous.

‘How did
you know about this?’ she insisted.

Tombs
shrugged. ‘Blue told me. She subverted the Draco-corp network of a Separatist
cell and used them to deliver it to you. It couldn’t be kept here because of a
chance of the Polity finding it, and she couldn’t transport it back here
because even now her kind is subject to intense Polity scrutiny.’ He gestured
to the cylinder. ‘What you hold is the one thing that can stop the mechanism.’

‘You’re
talking nonsense.’

‘Such
timing,’ he said, turning fractionally to gaze beyond the building. ‘Here is
one who really talks nonsense, but less so now, and not for much longer.’

Shree
took a quick glance in the direction he was looking. A young gabbleduck now
squatted just a few metres out from them, its head tilted to one side as if it
was listening. But then maybe it was tilting its head for another reason, for
it looked like someone had taken a knife to its skull, which was crisscrossed
with pale blue scars.

‘You
here?’ it enquired, the nonsense words too much like a real question for
comfort. Then it got up onto all fours and loped in.

Shree
backed off, trying to keep her three prisoners and the approaching gabbleduck
in her potential field of fire. She watched it step up onto a walkway, lift its
feet up and down as if puzzled by this new sensation from them, then continue
its approach.

‘Don’t
concern yourself,’ said Tombs. ‘It’s completely harmless.’

To
Shree’s knowledge there was no such thing as a harmless gabbleduck. Sometimes
they might not choose to do harm, other times they were as vicious as
siluroynes.