Polity 2 - Hilldiggers (48 page)

At this point Yishna muttered some curse, and we all turned towards her. Her eyes were closed tight and her hands trembling.

“He's right,” she said, then paused with her mouth still moving but nothing coming out. Then she shook herself, perhaps trying to break the words free. “The...Ozark Protocols.”

“Tell me, Yishna,” I said.

“I altered them. In some cases they originally called for the destruction of the Worm, so I changed that to...survival. It wants to survive.” She gasped, and now subsided to her knees. Rhodane immediately squatted down beside her and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. Orduval moved over too and stood staring down at them, his hands clenching and unclenching spasmodically.

“You have all, for a long time, carried that worm in your heads,” I told them. “You need to be rid of it.” I focused now on Duras. “It is not the Worm that needs its freedom, but all of you need to be liberated from it.”

“You may well be correct there,” said Duras, “but you may have noticed that we are in the middle of a war.”

“Let me put it another way,” I said. “If you can remove the Worm from Harald's head, there will be no more war.”

Harald

Carnasus had ordered his old Admiral's chair moved up into his Haven just after the end of the War—an action then filled with significance. Harald's guards were even now bringing the chair back down to place it in its former central position on the Bridge. He wondered how many around him understood the significance of that move, since most of them, like himself, had been children when the chair was originally moved. Around the spot where the chair would be relocated, technicians were connecting up the new screens Harald had ordered. Waiting until the chair was finally in position and the legs bolted down, he walked over, placed his hand on the old cracked hide of the seat back, then opened his com helmet to general address.

“If I could have your attention please, this is Admiral Harald,” he began.

Everyone on the Bridge turned towards him. On the single image showing in his eye-screen he observed the crew down in Engineering also pausing in their tasks to glance up at the public address screen. Testing a link to one of the larger screens arrayed before him, he called up an image from one of the ship's refectories, and saw the crew gazing up from their hurried meals. He felt a moment's trepidation, but before his head injury he had worked out the wording of the short speech, so it had to be right, didn't it?

“Those of you who know any history will perhaps understand that fifty years ago Corisanthe was merely the name of a small desert town, until one of the residents built the core station that eventually developed into the ones we know today.”

Probably everyone did know that fact, as it had been regularly covered in the main history curriculum in most schools since the War.

“Back then,” he continued, “just about everything in orbit around Sudoria came under Fleet jurisdiction—a security requirement necessary during our war against Brumal. Then thirty years ago Fleet encountered the Worm and, believing it to be some new weapon controlled by the Brumallians, they attacked it and managed to break it into four segments which in turn contracted down to those items currently held aboard the station we are now approaching. Fleet used a converted troop transport to get these four pieces to the original Corisanthe Station, where they were secured in four containment canisters, then the outer enclosing cylinders were swiftly constructed around them.”

He gazed about him, checking that he still had everyone's attention.

“While this process was ongoing, over two thousand civilian”—he placed a sneering emphasis on the word—“scientists were brought up to study the Worm, and significant technological advances resulted from their research. These advances enabled us to win the war against the Frazerworldlers, so we can never begrudge them that. However, in the later stages of the war, this scientific population of the Corisanthe Station frequently came into conflict with Fleet, raising petty objections to our security protocols, when not squabbling amongst themselves. So immersed were they in the importance of their research, they seemed to forget about those fighting and dying at the front.”

Harald slowly paced in a circle round the chair, called up some more screen views, and continued.

“As the scientific community grew, the demand for extra space resulted in the division of the original station into three. Shortly after the War, many of the discoveries they had made were allowed into the public domain, and this resulted in a sudden growth in high-tech industries, whose management in turn began to finance that ongoing research. Fleet authority was thus gradually being displaced until Parliament, in its wisdom, decided to take away what remained of such authority and hand it over to a consortium of industrial companies who in themselves had by then become a political force and whose representatives made up a substantial portion of Parliament. These companies went on to build ever more satellites and stations, then in time amalgamated to become the entity we now know as Orbital Combine.”

He paused again to consider the emphasis of his next words.

“This division of our strength was foolish in itself, but even more so when it seemed evident we might face threats from beyond the Sudorian system. It had to be tolerated, however, since it arose by democratic means. But those who acquire power tend to scrabble for more, and so we have seen Combine building its Defence Platforms and ships as it prepared to usurp Fleet's former position as sole protector of Sudoria. And now Combine has moved directly against us and, for the good of the Sudorian people, we must bring that organisation's power to an end.”

Many impassive expressions from those keeping their own counsel, and rather less nodding in agreement. Harald felt sweat trickling down from his forehead. Would they obey him? Could he trust them to obey him?

“We have the means to do so,” he confirmed. “It must always be remembered that it is the Worm that raised Combine to power, and the Worm still remains the central basis of that power. Remove control of the Worm from that amalgamation of companies known as Orbital Combine, and you remove what binds them together. Then Combine will assuredly fall apart.”

Harald slipped on the control glove that had been hanging at his belt.

“I require only one thing of all of you: that you do your duty, as you have always done and always will, on behalf of the Sudorian people.”

Stepping back he seated himself in the former Admiral's old chair. Within the Bridge itself, hands drummed on consoles, and there arose a murmur of approval. This same busy but muted applause occurred throughout the ship. Harald felt that their reaction was nowhere near enough, and decided then that he must consolidate his power further—but not right now.

The speech had sapped his strength and a nugget of pain was growing inside his skull. He quickly shut down general address, then double-checked to be sure his image no longer appeared on any screens throughout the ship. Quickly he slipped a painkilling capsule into his mouth and, as it dissolved, he removed the paired syringes from a belt pouch and carefully injected the combined drugs that Jeon had provided earlier. His weariness began to disperse, but the pain in his head increased—probably exacerbated by the stimulant. A bewildering surge of anger hit him, and he sat for a while with his eyes closed, his fingers digging into the chair arms. Slowly, the pain began to subside, dragging the strange anger away with it. Opening his eyes, he realised he could not afford too many more lapses like this over the coming hours.

Calling up new images on the screens before him, Harald confirmed that the ships were ready to move in closer to Sudoria. Defence Platform Two still hung tilted in vacuum, a gaping hole in its side with what looked like an oxygen fire raging inside it. Its shields were failing and below it he could see an inter-station shuttle departing. They were now evacuating. Before speaking, Harald worked some saliva into his dry mouth.

“Soderstrom, ignore the support ships now,” Harald instructed. “Concentrate all fire from your own ship and from Stormfollower and Musket on the platform itself. I want it completely out of commission within the next half-hour.”

Those three ships, holding a V formation above the stricken Defence Platform, with Soderstrom's Harvester at point, showed no sign that their firing pattern had changed, but now only the shields directly above Platform Two flashed in and out of visibility, and the attendant supply ships were left unharried to make their escape towards Platform Three. Harald then switched to a more distant view, transmitted from one of the many camera satellites Fleet had deployed. Now that he had acquired more data, on that original view he overlaid a schematic of the projected reach of the shields and weapons on the remaining platforms. As he had supposed, knocking out three platforms gave him a nearly clear run down to atmosphere below the platforms, where few weapons and shields were directed. Of course taking a hilldigger down into atmosphere was fraught with its own problems. As far as he recollected it had only been done twice, and then only into the thin upper reaches of Brumal's exosphere, whereas here it would be necessary for them to go down nearly as far as Sudoria's thermosphere—almost fifty miles deeper.

Beside Ironfist, the hilldigger Desert Wind held station as before.

“Are you ready, Franorl?”

“I'm ready, and I'm bored with waiting if you really want to know. How are you feeling, by the way?”

How am I? Harald was functioning quite ably but could no longer feel any lasting emotional engagement with what he was doing. In fact the only emotions he seemed to be experiencing were those sudden strange surges of anger. Also, the pain in his skull seemed to be just waiting to expand with joyous abandon.

“I am still alive, which certainly wasn't someone's intention,” he replied.

“I was advised that your injuries were severe, else I would not have pulled the fleet back,” Franorl explained.

Harald expected the Captain to have received an eyewitness account of the attack on him, and his injuries, since he maintained spies amidst Harald's staff. The man was a climber and warranted close scrutiny. Harald was beginning to feel that he had trusted Franorl, and some others, too readily. Only Jeon herself truly knew how serious Harald's injury had been and how close he had come to death, and he did not intend to make that knowledge available to any of those he distrusted.

“Merely a concussion, from which I have recovered well,” he replied. “Now, observe Platform Two.”

The shields above the platform were now constantly lit up and in motion. A shimmer in space above them, almost like a heat haze shot through with flashes of greenish light, showed that Harvester and the two ships slaved to it were currently using their beam weapons. On the platform itself pinpoints of fire flared brightly wherever shield generators began burning out. Then small, relatively cool explosions began to ignite outwards from the shields. The attackers were now launching atomics which the Defence Platform's beam weapons were intercepting and vaporising. The constant shifting of shields was an attempt by those in the station to cover lost ones, but the bombardment was becoming too much, and eventually projectiles began to get through. And only one was ultimately required.

A sun-bright explosion blanked all the instruments for a couple of seconds. When they finally came back online, the platform was flying apart on the periphery of a fireball. The ball deformed, elongated as gravity dragged it down, began to disperse higher up so it took on the shape almost of a flowering cactus. Debris streaked down into the atmosphere, burning up. A chunk of something looking like a burning tram carriage tumbled past Harald's immediate viewpoint.

“Now, Franorl, we begin our run,” said Harald. Then he spoke, over general address to his Bridge crew. “Begin descent into atmosphere. Main engines at half power until we hit the exosphere, then one-eighth drive and steering thrusters only. Firing Control, I want you to use defensive fire only until we are below the level of the platforms.” It was not necessary for him to issue that order out loud, since the crew had already received the attack plans, but he felt this crucial moment demanded his vocal reinforcement. Now contacting the Captain of Harvester, while observing that ship and its two slaves on-screen, he ordered, “Soderstrom, move into position over Corisanthe II, and remind them there just what hilldiggers can do. I don't want to see a single supply ship leaving that station intact.”

Around him, Ironfist rumbled as its main drive ignited. After a moment he observed flares of light from the formation of the three other ships as their drives started up too. Then followed a detonation in the engine section of one of the rear two vessels, tipping it up and spewing debris out into vacuum.

“Soderstrom, what was that?” he enquired coolly.

After a short delay Soderstrom appeared in Harald's eye-screen. “An explosion in Stormfollower's engine galleries. Understandably, Tlaster Cobe isn't speaking to me.”

Harald opened some connections to Stormfollower, and his view into the stricken ship's Bridge showed it to be partially abandoned, though the Captain still stood there surveying the Firing Control screens. Then, attempting to link to cameras in the engine galleries, Harald found they were all blanked out, which could be due to either the explosion or to sabotage. He began running checks through the entire vessel and soon found what had happened. From a camera forward of the galleries, he observed a party of three crewmen in space-suits moving through a section he had opened to vacuum on seizing control of this same ship.

“Soderstrom,” he snapped, an ugly suspicion rooting itself in his mind, “that ship was slaved to yours. So you knew precisely what to watch out for.”

“With the greatest respect, Admiral Harald, running one hilldigger during a battle is enough of a chore. Attempting to also control two others whose crews are out to thwart you is no easy task.”

Harald made a comlink through to the Bridge of Stormfollower. “Captain Cobe, I see that you have managed to cripple your own ship.”