Owner 03 - Jupiter War (37 page)

‘Can you give me more detail on this outbreak?’ she enquired, making no comment on his suggestion that she depart.

Blank-faced, Calder replied, noticeably no longer using the honorific, ‘Just that it must have started amidst the Inspectorate personnel, since it seems to be mainly them who are infected.’

‘Well’ – she dipped her head for a moment as if in consideration – ‘I’ll leave it to you to speak to Bartholomew. It’s essential that his mission is not delayed, for its importance outweighs anything else, but he will need to institute ship-quarantine measures and have the medical staff aboard both ships running blood tests. If it turns out that he does have the Scour aboard, we must leave it to him to decide how to respond. He must therefore try to limit any outbreak and persevere with his mission.’

‘Understood,’ said Calder, grimacing.

‘You’re putting quarantine measures in place here?’

‘I am. Those infected thus far are being moved to areas I’m separating off from the rest of the station, while I’ve ordered all personnel not infected to use vacuum-survival or spacesuits and switch over to independent air supply. Meanwhile, I’m opening some areas to vacuum, to kill anything that might be lingering there, while flooding the remaining main air supply with a virobact vapour.’ He paused for a second. ‘You and your staff will also need to use similar suits and go over to independent air supply.’

‘Very well.’ Serene nodded to Elkin and Sack, who immediately went to a nearby locker and began dragging out vacuum-survival suits. For veracity’s sake, Serene reached down beside the desk and picked up the helmet of her VC suit, pulled it down over her head and clicked it into place, before closing its visor and turning on its integrated speaker.

‘How long until the virobact vapour is cleared from the shuttle bay Ruger is due to arrive at?’ she asked, glancing across the room just as one of the aides headed across to the door and opened it, admitting a swarthy, stocky individual in a VC suit, who surveyed his surroundings carefully as he stepped in. Serene instantly recognized Vaughan, the commander of her security team based here. With his big grey moustache, cropped hair and tendency to stomp giving him the mien of an antediluvian general, he was difficult to forget.

‘Within the hour,’ Calder replied. ‘It should be mostly clear by the time he docks; however, the medical advice is that we should stick with independent air supplies until four hours afterwards. Shall I inform Ruger of that?’

‘You will tell Ruger nothing,’ she replied. ‘I don’t want him being scared off. He might decide to try docking at another station.’

‘Very well,’ said Calder, still not resorting to ‘ma’am’.

Serene glanced up from the screen at Elkin, now in a survival suit with her visor closed, then transferred her gaze to Vaughan. ‘Are any of my security personnel infected?’ Of course she knew that none of them was, but didn’t want others to realize that she knew.

‘Thus far, no, ma’am,’ he replied, seemingly coming to attention.

Returning her focus to the screen, she said, ‘Since, as you say, it’s mainly Inspectorate personnel who are afflicted, my own personnel will now take over in the shuttle bay, where I will go to meet Ruger the moment he comes aboard. I’ll also need you to ensure that once he releases the Gene Bank data to us, it is recorded here immediately and simultaneously dispatched to the multiple locations that Elkin will provide. In the meantime, I’ll also want constant updates on the situation aboard the
Fist
and the
Command
.’

‘You will be meeting Ruger in person?’ he said, apparently puzzled. ‘But your space planes . . .’

‘I will not be requiring them just yet.’ She paused for a second, still gazing at Calder’s image. ‘That will be all.’ She shut down the call.

‘We’re still meeting Ruger, ma’am?’ Elkin was trying to keep her voice steady.

Serene studied her, aware that, with the Scour aboard, the woman in front of her wanted to get off the station as quickly as possible, but seemed to have forgotten their present situation. Calder had also expected Serene to flee but, even while the Scour was wiping out any physical threat to her here, she still had not negated the threat beyond it.

‘Note the timings,’ she said. ‘Our space planes will be ready shortly after the
Fist
and
Command
have gone. Note I said “planes” plural, so that both myself and all my security team can head neatly out into vacuum. What do you think Calder will do then?’ she asked. ‘And don’t ask Tactical – just work it out for yourself.’

Elkin seemed briefly puzzled, then she looked slightly sick.

‘He still controls the railguns,’ she ventured numbly.

If Serene fled, there would doubtless ensue an unfortunately timed test firing of the railguns, and the unfortunate demise of Earth’s dictator and her entire security team. But to react like someone who believed the Scour was a virulent and dangerous disease that she could catch at any moment would only hamper her plans. After the
Fist
and
Command
were definitely on their way, she wanted to meet Ruger to ensure the safe transmission of the Gene Bank data. She then wanted Ruger to hand for a long private conversation, and she wanted Calder arrested and available for a more public conversation on ETV, once he was found guilty of spreading the Scour aboard the station during an attempted
coup d'etat.

‘Yes, we’re meeting Ruger,’ Serene continued, swinging her chair round and standing up. ‘Are all the arrangements for the ETV broadcast now in place?’

It took a brief moment for Elkin to recover her calm, whereupon she said, ‘Everything is ready for you, ma’am.’

Serene turned her attention to Vaughan. ‘You are fully apprised of the situation here concerning the Inspectorate personnel and Calder?’

He lowered his head gravely. ‘I am, ma’am.’

‘I am sure Calder will not make a move on us while the
Fist
and the
Command
are still present. Once we are in the shuttle bay, I’ll order Bartholomew to fire on this station’s railguns and disable them. While that is happening, I will board a shuttle. Once the railguns are disabled, we all depart for Core One.’

It all sounded like a perfectly plausible plan, though it was not one she would adhere to. If Bartholomew really started firing on the station, his own ships would probably end up disabled or destroyed, and with no guarantee that everything Calder could use against her departing shuttle had similarly been disabled. Unforeseen circumstances such as, for example, all the Inspectorate personnel ending up dead, would cause her to alter her plans.

‘What about the Inspectorate personnel now in the shuttle bay?’ said Vaughan. ‘We’re clearly outnumbered.’

Thinking on the hoof, Serene suddenly said, ‘It occurs to me that there is actually no Scour outbreak aboard this station, or else one has been artificially implemented.’ Yes, this was a good idea; this might work. ‘Calder is merely trying to push me into fleeing, whereupon some unfortunate accident involving the test firing of a railgun would occur.’ She paused and dipped her head contemplatively. ‘Now knowing I am heading to the shuttle bay, he will most likely, as instructed, be withdrawing his Inspectorate personnel, perhaps holding them ready to return once the
Fist
and
Command
have gone . . .’ She looked up. ‘If that is not the case, Vaughan, then you must be prepared to fight. It’s as simple as that.’

Every expression standing before her seemed to be hiding something. These weren’t stupid people, so could most certainly smell the odour of rat. Their suspicions would grow, too, when it became evident that every single one of the rebel Inspectorate personnel aboard was dead.

‘Let’s go.’ She headed for the door.

Argus

The
Vision
remained in orbit about Europa, with its version of the Alcubierre drive kept ready, according to his readings, to be brought up to speed within half an hour. If he used his own Rhine drive to get to it, it would doubtless deploy this theorized weapon it possessed for knocking out his warp bubble, stopping him before he got close enough to use the Saberhagens’ weapons against it. However, he did not intend to attack as directly as that, at least not yet. As his ship headed out from Io, Saul focused EM spectrum telescope arrays beyond the
Vision
, on the rocks and dust floating out there, on the disperse gas and scattered atoms, and began recording vast amounts of data. There he should be able to find a hole in their communications and from them confirm that the attack he was about to make had been effective. Now, with the ship on a long curving intercept course, he shut down the Traveller engine.

He began, as they doubtless expected, probing for a direct way in, pinging the other ship at different radio, microwave and laser frequencies, and searching for some response. Already he had built up a huge collection of computer viruses and self-assembling worms to penetrate any gap in its defences, but it soon became apparent that the ship was hardened and closed off. However, the fact that there were no communication openings told him that the
Vision
did not have a comlifer aboard, and therefore another possible opening could be tried.

The
Vision
had clearly been watching, so it must have telescopes open to receiving certain portions of the EM and visual spectrum. Saul began close-scanning older images of the other ship, tidying them up so that he could study all its exterior equipment. Soon he located the dish of a radio telescope, and then the glinting dome of an optical telescope. It seemed highly likely that both of these would not be attached to the main computer systems of the ship itself. Most probably the images they captured would instead feed into the isolated computer of a tactical assessment team, there to be studied and checked before being transmitted back to Earth.

Saul began building, within his extended mind, models of the kind of enclosed systems he himself would have built to keep out someone like him, and began to look for holes. He himself would have ensured complete separation between the computers controlling the various sections of such a ship. He would scan all the visual data for anything nasty or potentially infective before transmitting it elsewhere. No, there would be too many safeties and too many protections involved on that route in. But there was one system interfacing with this visual data that would not be thus protected: the human mind.

The Argus telescope arrays detected a flicker beyond the
Vision
, bouncing off a chunk of rock which a spectrometer designated as consisting of nicely reflective aluminosilicate and mica. They were using a tight-beam green laser to send coded data back to Earth. Saul dumped data outside the spectrum of that laser and concentrated on the remainder, gathering fragments of code, here reflected from a swirl of graphite particles, there from ice crystals marking the orbit of Europa. He then began comparing those fragments with the image data and likely messages that the
Vision
would now be sending.

‘Brigitta,’ he began, viewing the Saberhagens inside their laboratory in Arcoplex Two, while firing up a steering thruster to alter his ship’s course slightly and then calculating orbital vectors with an accuracy he knew had been impossible until now – until
him
. ‘At this precise moment I want you to fire your railguns here, tracking across in this arc.’ He sent the timing and coordinates. ‘Twenty-three missiles should be sufficient.’

Brigitta peered at a screen, ran some vector calculations and sat back, puzzled.

‘What’s the point?’ she asked. ‘They’ll go nowhere near the
Vision
and hardly even worry the crew.’

‘Communications,’ Saul replied briefly, now copying across to his extended mind the models stored in Hannah Neumann’s files of human thought processes, along with other data concerning visual-centre reprogramming.

‘Ah, understood,’ Brigitta responded, quite quickly, Saul felt. ‘We’ll use the plated ones for partial atmosphere targets as they’re more reflective.’

‘What are you doing, Alan?’ Hannah asked from her laboratory, having been instantly notified by her computer that her files were being copied.

‘Induced psychosis by light-pattern emission,’ he explained.

‘It’s only temporary and you need a lot of data on the viewer,’ she replied.

‘Of course,’ he said, understanding that to her the functioning of the human mind was a complex thing, while his own understanding was now some way beyond that.

‘Perhaps if you can pass on some of the data?’ she enquired, reaching for the strap securing her in her seat, intent on standing up from the console and screen she had been working at – the one where she was assessing up-to-date data on Da Vinci’s condition and trying to see what problems might arise when the cryogenic pod started to bring him out of suspension some hours hence.

‘That will not be necessary,’ Saul replied.

Already he could see how the technique of mental reprogramming a human being through the eyes could be combined with one of his self-assembling worms. The psychosis would be longer-lasting and fed by a self-perpetuating paranoia. The result of these could extend from a crippling mental debility to a violent reaction, depending on where the recipient fell in the list of human mental types Saul had selected. He made two packages – one that was within the spectrum of the optical telescope and another to build the images from radio reception – and sent them both to the two telescopes operating aboard the
Vision
.

His ship was now flying just beyond the orbit of Europa, but still lay far enough away from that icy moon for the crew aboard the
Vision
to feel few worries. They might also be puzzled by the twenty-three missiles currently being fired out beyond Europa.

‘Do you need any more?’ asked Brigitta.

‘I’ll let you know,’ Saul replied as he counted down the seconds.

A block of coded data fell into his mind as the first of the missiles crossed the beam of the laser that was pointed back towards Earth. Then, in quick succession, the other twenty-two followed. Into the comparison programs he now added data about his own course, the firing of those missiles, about an attack through telescope imagery, psychotic episodes in tactical crew and the likely cut in the flow of telescope imagery to Earth. As he worked at the code, he was reminded of how just a few spoken words had given him access to Salem Smith’s encryption when he first boarded Argus, but this was proving very much quicker.