The Departure (29 page)

“You know the drill!” he said.

The soldiers separated into groups of four, taking different routes through the surrounding scaffolding towards the transformers. Malden, Braddock, Hannah and Saul himself descended the steps, or rather they launched themselves straight down to the floor and approached the transformers directly. As Malden led the way, Saul noticed a trickle of blood issuing from one of the man’s ears. Obviously the hardware sitting in his skull rested there about as uncomfortably as that in Saul’s own skull.

“This is it!” Malden yelled as they arrived below the massed transformers. He stepped over to a large console peppered with switches, plunger circuit-breakers, dials and buttons seemingly dating from the last millennium, but probably needed because the usual computer-control hardware and software would not be robust enough here. He began by clicking over a long line of twenty switches and the steady drone in the air stuttered, the mosquito whine in Saul’s head wavering. Next Malden turned to the row of twenty plunger circuit-breakers, and as he shoved each one down, the dial above it dropped to zero, and the noise decreased in level each time. When the noise finally ceased, Saul felt hollowed out and slightly bewildered.

“It’ll take about a minute for the charge to dissipate,” Malden explained.

The fizzing from Saul’s modem waned to nothingness, and he already began to
feel
the computer network establishing itself around him; radio and microwave channels beginning to open up. Malden was now checking the positioning of all his soldiers throughout the chamber, so Saul launched his own penetration of the network, began putting all of himself online. It opened up around him a multidimensional reality into which he could slot himself. He began tracking and interpreting the information, starting to feel the shape of the codes and their purpose, and quickly managed to seize an updated schematic of the entire space station. Then Malden was in there with him doing precisely the same: becoming a node within that network and extruding informational tentacles. Saul glanced towards him, but Malden still wasn’t even looking at him; in fact seemed unaware of any other presence in the network.

With more of the network opening to him, other links began to open, too, and one piece of traffic in particular called for Saul’s attention. He remained wary of it until he recognized it as something instituted by Janus before their integration: the results of the search for his sister. Something tightened inside him and he wanted to inspect this data at once, but time ran out. Suddenly, looming on a horizon of pure information, there appeared a great black shape like a clenched fist, or a thundercloud expanding. It was the comlife that had been hounding him from the first moment he had opened his mind to the net.

“Malden,”
he conveyed a warning, in some manner beyond normal speech.

Malden sensed him at once, at last focusing on him within that virtual world. In the real world he turned and raised his machine pistol, aiming it straight at Saul’s face.

“Withdraw,” he instructed brusquely, “or die.”

Saul hesitated for just a moment, and Malden shifted his aim slightly, firing a burst just past him, ricochets zinging around behind. Saul began pulling himself out, shutting down his connection, but he kept his mind working at its optimum—all of his mind.

“There’s something else here,” he declared. “Comlife.”

“Withdraw,” Malden repeated,

Saul pulled out completely, and Malden lowered his weapon.

“Reality wins every time,” he said, and smiled.

Yes, it did, and in his enhanced state Saul saw the reality here with a painful clarity. The station schematic in his head revealed massive reconstruction inside, huge additions outside, but specifically it showed all points of access to this particular place. They would use low-velocity, soft-plastic slugs capable of penetrating spacesuits and human flesh, but less likely to damage the equipment located in here. A maintenance tunnel lay below those ridiculous steps, and that was one access point they wouldn’t be using. For why use such a narrow approach when those above it enabled a much wider field of fire? Already every soldier present here would have been located precisely by the monitoring system.

He stepped back beside Hannah and tightened a hand around her upper arm, leaning in close. “Get ready to run,” he urged her.

Braddock was gazing at them suspiciously, swinging his machine pistol back towards them. But soon enough he would find other distractions.

“Too easy,” Saul remarked to the soldier. “They were ready for us.”

Malden turned. “They were lax. They were—”

All at once he seemed to lose the ability to speak, just mouthing words but nothing coming out. He slapped one hand to his face, digging in his fingers before letting it drop, then screamed loudly and began to slump. Keeping his machine pistol trained on them, Braddock moved towards Malden, as the man finally collapsed to his knees, his head bowed.

“Your revolution served the purpose of the people down below.” Malden said in a voice not his own. “But it serves no purpose up here.” His head snapped upright and he turned it towards Hannah and Saul. “But I’m so glad you brought me these two traitors to the State.”

Weapons fire erupted, a stuttering mechanical sound like faulty diesel engines starting up. Numerous sources began laying down a withering fire. Up above, a figure flew backwards to slam into a scaffold pole, shattered bullets and fragments of his suit spraying out all around, and a mist of blood behind him. He grabbed the pole, trying to reorient himself, but the harsh slapping impact of bullets just continued, till eventually his grip slackened and he tumbled slowly away. The firing continued amid shouting transmitted over com. As Saul turned away, dragging Hannah after him, something exploded over to their right, where he glimpsed a splash of blood up one wall.

Braddock hurled himself aside as impacts tracked across the floor, throwing fragments of blue plastic in every direction. Their path terminated at Malden, who began to shudder convulsively as shots tracked up his back, the rounds shattering inside him but failing to penetrate all the way through. He vomited blood as the force of the shots threw him forward. Elsewhere someone began shrieking as he gyrated downwards, a bullet hole in his airpack acting like a jet motor. He slammed against the side of a transformer, next into the floor, then spun round and started to rise again. A short burst of fire tore his airpack apart, and most of his chest.

They were now under the steps, where Saul pulled open a circular hatch only half a metre in diameter and pushed Hannah down towards it. Bullets rattled against the stairway above, peppering more blue plastic through the air. Braddock, over to his left now, stepped out briefly and fired upwards, but the intensity of return fire forced him back under cover. He was shouting, the words resonating in Saul’s ears, asking for a response but receiving none. Saul felt that if whoever had spoken through Malden’s mouth really wanted them all dead, dead they would be by now. But the speaker wanted Hannah, and also wanted Saul.

They crawled through the maintenance tunnel as fast as they could. Firing echoed behind them, and he turned back to see Braddock entering the tunnel, shooting behind him from the cover of its mouth. No firing in return this time; none at all. Then out into a long low room lined with gas cylinders, illuminated by their helmet lights only.

“What happened to Malden?” Hannah asked breathlessly, but he could sense she had already guessed.

“The comlife got him.”

“Got him?”

“Went straight into his skull and spoke through him, which it could do easily enough since it is comlife with a human component.”

“The way he spoke…” she began, but didn’t want to say out loud what she was thinking.

“You mean with Interrogator Smith’s voice?”

She bowed her head. “We’re dead, aren’t we?”

“Either that or we may want to be,” he replied.

Just then the EM came back on, whining in his head.

***

“Who is this Smith, then?” Braddock gazed at them intently.

Hannah sat herself upright in the confined space, and looked across at the man. Braddock was resting against one wall, with his machine pistol in his lap; he could turn it on them in an instant.

“He’s the political director up here on Argus,” said Hannah, a slight catch in her voice.

“I know that,” Braddock snapped, now focusing his gaze on Saul. “But there’s something else. How the hell did he do that to Malden?”

“Hannah?” Saul enquired, looking across at her for an answer.

She dipped her head and stared at the floor, trying to dispel her doom-laden thoughts so that she could restore her mind to its analytical best. She now looked up at Saul. “He was our political director, so he must have taken whatever he wanted of my research and applied it to himself—whether with government permission or not, I don’t know.” To Braddock she now continued, “He’s the same type as Malden, but managed to outmanoeuvre Malden because he was well prepared, and because he’s been running the hardware in his skull longer and knows better how to use it.”

“What about him?” Braddock indicated Saul with a tilt of his chin.

What about him?
Hannah wondered. Saul had obviously expected to come up here and snatch control of the station as easily as he had taken control of the cell complex, and if there had only been normal humans and computers for him to overcome, he would have had every chance of succeeding. But, first, Malden had stood in his way, and now a comlife poisonous spider lurked at the heart of things. And, just to add to their woes, station security officers were now searching for them, so this little hideaway would not remain safe for much longer. Could Saul triumph over such odds? Was he strong enough yet? Gazing at him, she had to wonder just what was going on behind those unreadable red eyes. She now spoke to try and boost her own confidence:

“The hardware and software inside his skull is far in advance of that used by both Malden and Smith—his intelligence, too,” she explained. “He just hasn’t had a chance to use it yet.”

“What, my intelligence?” Saul joked.

Hannah did not respond to this attempt at humour. It was dry and disconnected anyway, since Saul was somewhere else, his gaze directed overhead and his face expressionless. It almost seemed as if an empty mannikin sat in his place.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“I am considering our options,” he replied.

“Perhaps if you could let us in?” she suggested.

His gaze dropped to focus briefly on her, then on Braddock.

“I am simply bringing more of myself online,” he explained icily. “Even though I cannot connect to the local network, I can that way more accurately analyse the circumstances that brought us to our current position, and from there divine a solution.”

His gaze drifted away from them as he continued speaking, till it almost seemed as if it wasn’t actually him speaking—as if the real Saul was elsewhere and had delegated the tiresome task of turning thoughts into words to some subprogram of his mind.

“Obviously, Smith took an interest in the attack upon his old stomping ground of Inspectorate HQ London, so located Janus on Govnet, and through Janus located my bunker. His abilities are such that he could not have failed to locate Malden, once Malden had started operating as comlife. He did not
fail
to locate him. From his own words, Smith clearly allowed Malden to conduct his little revolution, possibly with Committee approval or possibly not…”

The ensuing pause was lengthy, his lips still moving according to some subroutine, then finally the voicebox re-engaging. “Smith was sensitive to anything involving the name Avram Coran, therefore must have tracked that identity back to reveal how I obtained it at Gene Bank…He’s been on top of me and Malden right from the start, I think.” Saul refocused on Hannah, his voice becoming marginally more human. “But I still wonder why he allowed Malden to get away with what he did down at Minsk. I suspect Smith’s agenda might differ from the Committee’s.”

“Good to know how we got here,” Braddock interjected, “but I’d rather now know how the hell we’re going to get out.”

“Smith has tight control of the station network, and will be watching out for me. If I try to penetrate it, he might be able to do to me what he did to Malden. I need to create a diversion and find another route in, if I am to kill him.”

There it was, stated with cold precision:
kill him
.

“How, though?” Hannah asked.

“Robots,” Saul replied succinctly, a statement of fact, his gaze again elsewhere.

“If you could explain?” Hannah suggested.

“Once the EM shield is on, all electromagnetic communications go down. The computer networks throughout Argus Station are maintained by physical wiring and line-of-sight laser. However, for the robots both those forms of connection will only be intermittent, since they are constantly on the move. They will be running on their own programs for the duration of shielding, and only updated every time they physically connect up, or connect by laser, or when the shields go down.”

“Smith can’t be in the robots,” declared Hannah. “At least not fully. Maybe they possess stripped-down copies of his AI component within them, but there’s not enough processing space for much more.”

“I doubt he even bothers,” Saul said.

“We need to find robots?” Braddock asked.

“We do.”

“Readerguns are going to be a problem.”

“Quite true, but not until we depart the rim and head inwards, to where they are concentrated. And I have no intention of going there just yet,” he said decisively. “Come on, we’ve been here long enough.”

They’d reached their current narrow place of concealment via an even narrower crawlway designed for some of the very robots Saul was talking about. He now headed for the exit leading to this, then paused.

“Solar activity must be high,” he observed.

“What?” Hannah asked.

Saul continued, “I can see no other reason for Smith to keep the EM shield up and running, when it severely hampers his search for us.” He glanced round. “Only hardwired cams and detection systems can be used, since most portable detection equipment won’t work, and those searching will only be able to communicate with each other by using hardened consoles. As we have noticed, both consoles and the access points for them are few in this section of the station.” He nodded as if confirming this to himself, and entered the crawlway.