Approaching Omega (8 page)

Ten

After ten minutes, the process of descending became a mechanical routine. Latimer realised that he was breathing hard, and wondered how much air his suit had in reserve. He was too beat to call up the control screen in his helmet. He realised that he was all to happy for Emecheta to lead them: after what he'd seen in the op room, he knew there was little he could give in the way of impetus or foresight. Even before that, he admitted, he had given in to the superior leadership of the Nigerian.

Minutes later he felt a tap on his boot, and looked down. Renfrew was pointing, and Latimer saw that Emecheta had emerged into a corridor. Renfrew followed, and Latimer climbed the last few metres and dropped into a wide, grey passage.

Emecheta gestured them into a huddle, and all three touched helmets. Latimer saw that Renfrew was still crying, her cheeks running with tears.

"Okay," Emecheta was saying, "we have another ten levels to go before we get to the core. And we got to hurry. My guess is that Jenny told the AIs about us, before..."

"What do you suggest?" Renfrew said.

Emecheta peeled the softscreen from his arm and pressed it to the wall. He indicated their present position. "The quickest route is this one, by dropshaft. But that'd make it easy for them. There's another emergency access tube over here. We could take that all the way down, with luck arrive at the core undetected."

He was the perfect leader, Latimer thought. Calm in a crisis, rational. It was as if the mercy killing of his colleague — his ex-lover — had happened months ago, was a thing of the past.

Renfrew nodded her bulky helmet. "Let's do it."

Emecheta hesitated.

"What is it?" Latimer asked.

The Nigerian was reading something from the screen set into the arm of his suit. "The air supply's still working down here."

"What about it?"

Behind him faceplate, Emecheta frowned. "I don't get it. If you were the AIs, and knew we were here, wouldn't you depressurise the levels?"

Renfrew nodded. "Stands to reason."

"So they know we're in EVA suits," Emecheta said, "but they also know that our air supply can't last for ever."

"So they haven't worked it out yet," Latimer began.

"Get real, Ted," Emecheta snapped. "How long does it take those bastards to calculate anything?"

"So why have they left the air in?" Renfrew asked.

Emecheta hunched his massive shoulders. "Maybe they're playing games? Sucking us into thinking it's safe to crack our suits. Then they'd depressurise. Okay, let's move out. This way."

They hurried down the corridor, Emecheta leading the way, his rifle at the ready. Latimer walked backwards, covering the rear. This section of the ship consisted of the storerooms which contained all the necessary supplies a colony would need to build a new life on some virgin world.

He wondered if the hope of defeating the AI's, continuing the mission with the thousand sleepers in hangar Two — if they were still alive — was a futile dream. Perhaps... but something, some determined core deep within him, would not let fate, or the AIs, triumph. They would survive, and vanquish their enemy, and continue. Of this he was sure.

He had confidence in Emecheta and Renfrew. They would pull him through.

~

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Renfrew had turned to halt him. Ahead, Emecheta was crouching by a junction in the corridor, peering around the corner, laser poised.

Latimer heard his heart thudding, loud, in the confines of his EVA suit.

Emecheta stood and hurried back to them. They touched helmets. "Now I know why they haven't depressurised," he said. "Okay, we can crack our suits."

"You sure it's safe?" Renfrew asked.

"Sure I'm sure," Emecheta said, tapping the controls at the neck of his helmet. His faceplate whirred open and he breathed deeply.

Latimer cracked his helmet, tasting the fresh air and... there was something else. An odour, at once sweet and rank.

"Em?" he asked. "What the hell...?"

"Take a quick look around the corner, Ted. You'll see why they need air."

Heart slamming, fearing what he might find, but secretly knowing the answer, Latimer advanced cautiously towards the corner, paused and peered around.

The corridor opened out into a big chamber, featureless and grey.

Latimer ducked back and plastered himself against the wall, breathing hard. He had caught only a fleeting glimpse of the cyborged colonists in the distance. They had been cerebrally augmented, their crania implanted with leads and jacks that snaked down their backs and linked to what appeared to be powerpacks.

They were armed, and stood about in groups, casually, like soldiers awaiting a command.

He pulled back, breathing hard.

"Okay," Emecheta said. "What now?"

"Where's the emergency tube?" Latimer said.

Emecheta pointed. "Thataway — across the chamber."

"Great!" Renfrew hissed. Her teeth chattered in fright. "So... what do we do?"

"Well, we can't cross the corridor without those bastards seeing us," Emecheta said.

"There's got to be another tube nearby, right?" Latimer said.

Emecheta consulted the softscreen. "Here, to the left, about half a klick away." He indicated a corridor situated a short way behind them.

"Okay, let's go," Latimer said.

They hurried back the way they had come and turned down the corridor, almost running now in their haste to put as much distance between themselves and the cyborgs.

It seemed to Latimer that every muscle in his body was straining in protest, his every joint in pain. After so long in cold sleep, he thought, what do I expect? His lungs burned, and every breath was an effort.

He heard a sound behind him — the distinctive snap of a laser's safety-catch — and turned.

A colonist crouched, raised a laser to his shoulder, taking aim. Still running, Latimer loosed off a volley of laser fire, filling the corridor with actinic glare. When his eyes adjusted, he saw the colonist in pieces on the deck. He ran on, gagging.

Beside him, Emecheta turned and laid down a continuous hail of laser fire. Latimer looked over his shoulder and saw more cyborged colonists appear. It's only a matter of time, he thought.

Lances of laser fire tore past him, superheating the air and ricocheting off the corridor ceiling, zigzagging crazily down the perspective of the receding passage. He ducked, screaming, and sprinted.

Then Emecheta was beside him again, pushing Latimer and Renfrew to their left, along another corridor.

Ahead, he made out the service hatch. He entered the code while Emecheta and Renfrew crouched at the turn in the corridor, halting the charge of the cyborgs.

When he had the hatch open, he called: "Okay! Move it!"

He climbed into the hatch and descended, aware of Renfrew and Emecheta crowding into the tube above him and closing the hatch.

Emecheta and Renfrew had paused in their descent. He halted also, listening.

He heard footsteps in the corridor, running past the hatch, and almost wept with relief.

Slowly, taking the utmost care not to make a sound, he began climbing down again.

Eleven

They might have been descending for an hour when Emecheta hissed down at him: "Okay, we're almost there. Let's stop and think this through."

Latimer halted, aware of his trembling limbs. He was exhausted, and realised that he'd been climbing on autopilot for who knew how long, his mind numbed with the import of past events, too afraid to look too far into the future.

He was grateful for the respite. He looked up at Renfrew and Emecheta.

"The hatch about three metres below you," Emecheta was saying, "gives on to a corridor ten metres from the entrance to the core. The cyborgs might not be in the corridor when we emerge, but you never know. We gotta be careful. You bet you bottom dollar that the bastards have Central well guarded."

"I don't see how we're going to do it," Latimer found himself saying.

"Fuck that!" Emecheta spat. "We go in there with all guns blazing. The element of surprise. Remember, all we gotta do is hit Central. Take my word for it, those cyborgs and the rest of the roboid horde, they ain't autonomous. They're slaved. We hit Central, and the rest of the bastards go belly up."

Latimer nodded. "Okay, okay."

"Let's take a rest," Renfrew said. "I've about had it, okay? I need a break."

"Fine," Emecheta said. "Take it easy. Deep breaths. Tell me when you're both ready to go, okay?"

Latimer let a silence develop, then said: "Anyone ever tell you, Em, you're a born leader?"

"That, coming from the boss!" Emecheta laughed.

"I knew what I was doing when things weren't mad crazy, Em."

Emecheta was smiling. "I never told you, did I?"

Latimer looked up. "What?"

"For two years back in my twenties, I fought for the Nigerian Liberation Front. Kept that off my CV when I applied for the colony mission."

Latimer said: "Thought you were pretty handy with that laser."
Renfrew, above him, laughed.

"What's with you?" Emecheta asked.

"I never thought I'd be in this position," she said. "I thought it would be all plain sailing once I'd been accepted. The colony programme. A new world. A new start. Exploration. Adventure... but nothing like this."

A silence developed.

Renfrew went on: "What happened?"

Emecheta grunted. "What you mean, what happened?"

"I mean," she said, "why did the AIs turn on us, use us? I mean, who's fault is it?"

"It's no one's fault, Serena," Emecheta said. "It just happened. Call it bad luck."

"The Omega Corporation programmed Central," Renfrew went on. "They had branches developing artificial intelligence, even cerebrally assisted human-machine interfaces. They should have known that something like this might have happened, given the right circumstances."

Latimer said: "They weren't to know that! No one could have predicted a thing like this. Like Em said, it's just bad luck. Period."

Renfrew made to reply, thought better of it, and let the silence stretch.

Emecheta ended it. "Okay, you two rested enough? Shall we continue?"

"Fine by me," Latimer said.

Renfrew nodded.

"Okay," Emecheta called down to Latimer. "Open the hatch slowly, take a look. If it's all clear, give us the thumbs up."

Latimer descended the last few metres. He entered the code in the control unit and opened the hatch with care.

He looked through, expecting to see the corridor crawling with cyborgs.

Instead it was still, silent.

He signalled to Renfrew and Emecheta and stepped through the hatch.

In the corridor, Emecheta studied the softscreen again. He pointed ahead. "This way. Ten metres, and then left. There's a big hatch. We have the code here." He indicated flashing alpha-numerics on the 'screen. "I expect the core'll be guarded, so as soon as we're through, begin firing, okay?"

Renfrew nodded, glancing at Latimer. He sensed her fear. He felt it himself. It should never have come to this, he thought. I don't belong here.

Emecheta was striding along the corridor. Latimer and Renfrew followed. They turned right, and came up against the triangular recessed entrance to the core.

While Emecheta tapped the code into the control unit, Latimer and Renfrew readied their lasers.

Emecheta turned to them, shaking his head. "No luck."

"They've changed the code," Renfrew said. "They knew we're coming and changed the code."

The thought that the cyborg hordes were waiting beyond the hatch filled Latimer with dread.

"Okay," Emecheta said. "Stand back. I'll blast the unit open."

Renfrew said: "And tell them exactly where we are?"

"What about access tubes?" Latimer asked. "Let's check the softscreen, see if there's another way in there."

"This is the only way in, Ted," Emecheta said. "Don't you think I looked?"

They pored over the screen again. The core chamber which housed Central was a bee-hive shaped well, surrounded by a series of rising circular galleries. A single entrance gave access to each level, with no access tubes or other means of entry.

They were outside the second lowest gallery. Latimer suspected that the cyborgs had stationed themselves on every level, awaiting their arrival. He wondered why they hadn't come out in search of them.

"So..." Emecheta said. "What now?"

Renfrew looked at Latimer. The little of her face showing through her helmet looked white and petrified.

Latimer said: "Looks like our options are limited. Okay, blast the unit. But then we wait, okay? No heroics. Let's see what happens once the hatch is open."

Emecheta nodded. Latimer and Renfrew backed from the hatch, crouching in a recess in the corridor, while Emecheta stood beside them and aimed.

He fired. The glare was blinding. Latimer covered his eyes, and when he looked again the unit was a smouldering mass of melted circuitry and plastic.

The door stuttered open a metre and then stopped.

Latimer readied his laser, expecting an onslaught.

All was silent, suspiciously still.

He could see through the open hatch to the gallery beyond, and behind it the other galleries rising tier after tier.

There was no sign of the expected cyborg hordes.

He knew what they had to do now. In theory it was all very simple. Enter the well, lean over the gallery, and laser Central AI down below into a million little bits.

"Okay," Emecheta said. He glanced at Latimer and Renfrew, his face stern and beaded with perspiration. "I'll go first. I'll do what I can to destroy Central. I'll try to get in and out real fast. Get ready to back me up."

Latimer nodded.

Emecheta ran. He surged through the hatch like a quarterback, hit the gallery rail and fired. Immediately, fire was returned. A dozen lances of white light rained down from the galleries above. Emecheta ducked, rolled into a ball, and returned fire.

Without thinking, Latimer sprinted to the hatch, knelt, and sprayed laser fire high into the well of the chamber. He saw cyborgs explode in gouts of blood and metal, heard explosions and cries from throats that once had been human.

Emecheta was rolling, avoiding incoming fire, and loosing off shot after shot along the length of the gallery.

Latimer sighted to his left, along the curving gallery. Three cyborgs ran into view, lasers drawn. Latimer accounted for one, and Emecheta another: they hit the wall in sections, severed arms and legs spasming with ersatz life. Then Latimer saw that Renfrew was beside him, adding her fire-power to the battle.

For what seemed like an age, but must only have been minutes, Latimer and Renfrew held their position by the hatch, repulsing the cyborgs as they emerged around the bend of the gallery and picking off the occasional sniper which showed its augmented head over the gallery rails above.

"It's no good," Emecheta called back. "We need to hit Central! I'm going over. Cover me!"

Before Latimer could protest, Emecheta hit the control of his power-pack and shot over the edge of the gallery. Latimer and Renfrew set up a constant volley of fire, filling the air with a whine of laser fire in a blinding blitz.

Emecheta disappeared from sight, and Latimer waited for the explosion that might signal the destruction of Central.

He waited, picking off cyborgs when they appeared, but no miraculous explosion came.

"Cover me!" he yelled at Renfrew. "I'm going in."

He darted, doubled up, through the hatch and hit the rail. While Renfrew covered him, and he loosed off shot after shot into the air, he stood and peered over the edge.

Down below he made out the hexagonal hub that was Central AI and beside it, his EVA suit neatly divided just below the waistline, the body of Emecheta. In the second it took to fully comprehend what had happened, Latimer saw that there were no living 'borgs down below. Before dying, Emecheta had accounted for a dozen or more of the monsters.

A shot fell from above, almost hitting him. He pushed himself from the rail and dived back through the hatch, pulling Renfrew after him.

"What?" she cried. "Where's Em-?"

"This way," he told her. "Back to the tube."

They sprinted back along the corridor and piled into the access tube, Latimer dogging the hatch behind him.

"Ted?" Renfrew pleaded. "What happened?"

"Em's dead," he said, the words catching in his throat like a bolus of phlegm. "We're going down, to the lowest level."

"And then?"

"It's hardly protected. Em killed a whole bunch of the bastards. If we blast the hatch we can blow Central to hell."

Without waiting for her to respond, he began climbing down. His breath came in rasping spasms, his heart thumping. He felt dizzy, nauseous, and had to concentrate to keep himself moving. How easy it would be to stop and rest.

When he came to the hatch, he paused and listened. There was not a sound from outside.

He imagined the cyborgs taking stock of their casualties, regrouping, trying to second-guess Latimer and Renfrew's next line of attack.

He cracked the hatch and peered out. The corridor was deserted. He signalled Renfrew to follow him, and slipped from the tube.

He ran along the corridor and crouched at the corner. Ahead, he made out the triangular entrance to the core.

Panting, Renfrew dropped into a crouch beside him, laser at the ready.

He was about to blast the control unit when the communicator on the sleeve of his arms chimed, and the miniature screen flared into life.

Startled, he lifted his arm and stared at the face on the screen.

"Ted," a familiar voice said, "we need to talk. If you join us..."

She went on, but Latimer no longer heard the words. He was staring down at the perfect face of his wife. Carrie seemed unmarked by the depredations visited upon the rest of the colonists. Her face was as he recalled it: serene and oval, for all the world like a ballerina's.

"You should not resist what you do not understand, Ted. Join us, and apprehend the wonder of what we will achieve."

Beside him, Renfrew reached out and killed the screen.

"They'll be homing in on the signal!" she said. "Come on, move it!"

They ran, and then came to a sudden halt as a figure appeared around the corner.

Carrie faced them, small and graceful, smiling at them with one hand outstretched. "Ted, please. This is ridiculous. If you join us, we can be together..."

He felt himself weaken. He wanted to reach out to her, take his wife in his arms. The sight of her brought back so many memories and associations that, for a second, it was easy to forget where he was.

She was perfect, undamaged, and yet he knew that she must be like all the others.

She was perfect — except, he saw, she no longer wore her blonde fall of hair long and around her shoulders: her skull was shaven.

And only then did he make out the silver spars and jacks implanted in her cranium.

"Ted, join me..."

He gripped his laser. "And become like you?" he said through his tears.

She smiled. "I am better, Ted. Improved. Please believe me."

"Improved? You... you were perfect. You've become a monster, like the rest of them. What they did to the other colonists—"

"That was a necessary part of the process, Ted. We had to learn. We had to make mistakes before we learned how to achieve union. What happened was inevitable, a process of evolution."

He stared at her. "What do you mean?"

"Scientists foresaw it," she said. "Even back then." She smiled at him, and he recalled all the other times she had smiled like that, and before she could go on, tell him what he did not want to hear, he raised his laser.

But he couldn't bring himself to fire.

"Do it!" Renfrew hissed beside him.

He choked on a sob as Caroline smiled, reached out for him.

"Then I will!" Renfrew said, and raised her own laser.

Latimer heard the blast, and Caroline's gasp, but closed his eyes to spare himself.

Then he felt Renfrew's gloved hand grip his. "Come on! This way. They know where we are!"

He was running, blindly, obeying the dictates of some innate survival mechanism.

They turned a corner and Renfrew stabbed at a control unit beside a sliding door. They passed into a padded chamber and halted, panting.

They were in an observation nacelle, a semi-circular blister that obtruded through the skin of the ship. Curved rectangular viewscreens looked out into space, a depth of velvet blackness decorated by a million scintillating stars.

Beside him, Renfrew was laughing, hysterically. She fell against the closed hatch and laughed until she wept.

Latimer felt himself losing control. He thought of Carrie, and wondered whether it was better now that she was dead and no longer suffering.

But had she suffered? Perhaps she had been, as she claimed, improved? The thought filled him with dread.

Renfrew had slid into a crouch against the hatch, still laughing.

"What?" Latimer said.

"Ted, think about it! Those cyborgs out there! Think about it! The reason they didn't depressurise the ship was because the cyborgs had to breath, right?"

"My God..."

"Right on, Ted. We can beat the bastards! Seal your suit then get back into the corridor."