The Line of Polity (52 page)

Incorporating human DNA had been a mistake brought about by lack of imagination and resources, but now, utilizing the complex calloraptor trihelix, he knew he could make something much more useful. Isolating what he required was the work of a moment, as were the subsequent processes of meiosis and recombination. Almost with a shrug he tore out the walls of Medical, and expanded the space there to take a huge polyhedral framework of Jain structural members. To the junctures of polyhedra he pumped raw materials and, in their passage through nanotubes and nanofactories, they knitted into complex organic molecules. Small pearls sprouted and grew as they were pumped full of the required nutrients. Then, at the last, Skellor opened nanotubes into microtubes to transfer the already well-developed zygotes he had grown into the awaiting eggs. Raptly watching the growth of this army of his creatures, he found himself more reluctant to disengage from the process than he had been before. With slow grinding force of will he forced his awareness out from the warm internals of the ship and himself, out to his interface with the harshness of space. Here he observed the system and what he had done.

The planet itself could have been the twin of Neptune, and now would bear a closer resemblance as the debris from the shattered moonlet spread as it followed the moonlet's original orbit. Coldly, Skellor calculated that this debris would form a complete ring in one hundred and twenty years solstan — the five largest surviving chunks of the moonlet acting as its shepherds. But what did any of that matter? With that same grinding strength of will he forced himself into a higher awareness of the present, and realized it was time for him to stop playing with the power he now possessed, and to use it. Employing the conventional ion manoeuvring thrusters, he drew the
Occam Razor
away from the debris and closer into the sun itself. For a time he felt as one great beast wallowing in the harsh radiation, then he forced his attention back to the underspace package he had earlier put aside. Once again he felt something like dry laughter echoing inside himself — knowing where this communication was from.

Five thousand hours of secret holocording, filming, and depositions — in fact recordings in every medium available to humanity. Those same hours, which he viewed in less than one hour realtime, told him a lot about his destination, but it took him a while to understand the purpose of the transmission. Subsequent communications from someone called Lellan, and transmissions of realtime events on the surface of the planet, brought home to him what it was all about. As did the meticulously recorded ballot of the indigenous population, which clearly made their wishes known. The five thousand hours detailed
atrocities
and the
unjust
rule of a Theocracy. This was a cry for help directed towards the Polity. These people
wanted
Polity intervention.

Annoyingly, the signal might already have got through to the Polity — but no more. His reply to it and his offer to act as a signal-boosting station had been immediately accepted, and someone called Polas was grateful in the belief that the signal was now being relayed into the heart worlds of the Polity. This would all give Skellor time to get a lot closer, where he could more easily employ the signal-blocking technology of this ship. Chuckling to himself — inside, for his face no longer had the ability to show expression — Skellor gave his instructions, and smooth as a snake the
Occam Razor
slid into underspace. They would certainly get intervention on this world called Masada — but he didn't think they would like it.

16

Certain now that the boy was deeply asleep, the woman tiptoed away to her seat in front of the screen and reopened the book. She did not like to act the censor, but this picture book was definitely now out of the realm of Disney and into that of some psychotic relative of the brothers Grimm, and she suspected that some of the later stories had a greater potential for bloody distortion. The one she chose now was entitled 'Four Brothers in the Valley' and the initial picture was far from ominous, displaying as it did the four good Brothers themselves making ready for their journey.

"Yeah, right," said the woman, wondering if there might be a hint of AI to this book. She reached out and touched the top of the text column, and the Brothers moved now — talking to each other and laughing. The woman cleared her throat — slightly embarrassed to be speaking to herself — and began to read.

"Four good Brothers set out upon a journey to find and bring finally to justice the Hooded One. Brother Stenophalis wore armour of aluminium and carried a thrower of iron. Brother Pegrum wore armour of brass and carried a sword of light. Brother Egris wore armour of iron and carried the caster of thunderbolts. And Brother Nebbish wore his armour of faith and carried in his right hand the Word of God and His Prophet."

The woman paused as the book clad each of the brothers in the required garb, and set them on their way. It all seemed like a happy scene from some wonderful tale in which right and justice would triumph. She tried fast-forwarding the text but it just wouldn't move.

"I see," she said, then read on.

Three of them came over in the first pass, and turned the entire area occupied by the rebel tents into a brief morass of fire and flying dirt. Lellan guessed that this was just a probing attack, however. The pulse-cannon, on the one remaining tank, spat up from its place of concealment close beside the embankment. One of the fighters — a wedge-shaped, one-man craft with swing wings, and enough weapons pods to give it the appearance of a tern with a very bad fungal infection — flared briefly and then became a line of white-hot fragments tumbling across the sky. Another of the fighters bucked as if an invisible hand had slapped its back end, then overcorrected and nosed straight into the ground — the following explosion sleeting mud even as far as where she and her brother were dug into the embankment.

"I'd get out of there, Carl. They'll have you spotted now," said Lellan.

Stanton lowered the intensifier and glanced round at his sister, as he listened in on the man's reply.

"It'll be the carrier they hit next," Carl replied. "We'll take a second shot at them, then leave the pulse-cannon on automatic."

Stanton nodded to her his agreement with Carl — the Theocracy fighters would take out preselected targets to begin with, before raining down the real shitstorm.

In the second pass came five of the fighters, low this time — then turning away from the swarm of missiles released. The carrier leapt out of its pond on the first scattering of explosions, and came apart on the next. Only small fragments reached the ground, as was the similar fate of another of the fighters.

"Now we get our heads down," advised Lellan.

The fighters came in low again, flying directly along the embankment this time, high-powered rail-cannons opening up to create a long swarm of explosions that wiped out every weapon the rebels had mounted there. Still more fighters came hurtling in low over the flute grass, into the face of pulse-cannon fire from Carl's tank. A row of explosions stepped through the grasses towards the tank, and on the final explosion it ceased to fire. Lellan hoped the pulse-cannon had been on automatic — hoped that Carl was still alive.

"Polas, speak to me," she said.

"Main body is coming in right now with the big bastards behind — three of them," came the reply.

"Remember, everybody." Lellan addressed her troops scattered through the flute grass. "When I give the order, you cease firing and let our friends deal with the bombers."

A full wave of attack aircraft came in only shortly after she spoke, and their numbers darkened the sky.

"Kill them," she hissed.

All through the long grasses, troops cast aside the flak blankets they had been lying under, shouldered their hand-helds, and began firing. Soon there was more light in the sky than the predawn sun had managed, and a constant rain of wreckage. Stanton led the way out of their foxhole, brought his hand-held to his shoulder, and just held its trigger down. There were enough targets for each of his five missiles to find one. Amid the grasses there came explosion after explosion, as cluster shells dropped, and even though a counter in the corner of her visor was ticking up just how many of her people were dying, she knew it could be a whole lot worse. On the big bombers following, there would be daisy-cutters — wide-area antipersonnel weapons — and probably enough of them to kill off most of her little army.

"Ram and Rom, are you ready?" she asked.

"We were
created
ready," came the ironic reply.

Gazing at the chaos filling the sky, the wreckage and burning fighters falling to earth, Lellan decided that now was the time.

"Cease firing and go for cover," she ordered her troops, knowing that the only cover they had out there was under the Kevlar-filled blankets. She continued, "Drones, the sky is now yours."

The two cylindrical war drones burst from where they had buried themselves in the soft ground far to the right flank of Lellan's army. Immediately they performed a strange ballet around each other as they hurtled up into the sky. Then suddenly lines of violet fire began spewing from one end of each drone, so that they seemed tumbling torches. Unseen through this, their missiles speared out with horrifying accuracy, and all across the sky the fighters were disintegrating. Lellan observed some fighters turning to attack the two rising cylinders, but they were nowhere near as manoeuvrable as the drones, which simply slid aside and obliterated their assailants as they went past. It wasn't all one-sided though; the two drones were jerked about by the occasional hits they suffered, then one of them lost its APW in a brief flare. But they continued to rise, their course coming to intersect perfectly that of the first bomber. The lumbering giant did not stand a chance, and the explosion that cut the sky was twinned by the flare of sunrise, which heralded the sudden attack of the Theocracy infantry.

Suddenly their ATV was full of people, and Eldene felt angry at her space being invaded — then suddenly confused about why she felt thus.

"Slow and easy," Thorn advised her. "Take us round the other side of the crater."

"Did it work?" she asked, almost too shy to look round at the intruders as she spun up the vehicle's turbine.

"Spectacularly," said Thorn, but she could tell he was angry about something. She watched him as he turned to the four newcomers. "Let me introduce some old comrades," he said to her. "Ian, Mika, and my old friend Gant — who is dead."

Eldene was busy wondering about the yellow-faced boy in the big suit, before Thorn's final words impacted. She did not react, however, merely turned her attention back to the screen and set the vehicle in motion. That she felt confused again came as no surprise to her — she'd been in a state of confusion right from the moment she had seen Fethan ram his hand into Proctor Volus. As Thorn returned to the back of the ATV, the strange boy moved up beside her and studied the controls she was operating. She gave him a tentative smile and he returned it tiredly, as he took hold of one of the support handles fixed above the screen. She could sense he felt more comfortable here.

"Dead or not, he looks mighty well to me," commented Fethan in reply to Thorn's brief acerbic introduction.

With the vehicle getting up speed, they all either grabbed handholds or quickly folded down seats, as the inclination took them.

"You angry because you forgot about my memplant?" asked Gant.

Thorn grimaced. "I don't know myself why I'm angry." Still showing some irritation, he sat down by the weapons console and swung the targeting visor across his face, probably to hide his expression.

"Angry or otherwise, I need you getting me up to speed concerning what's going on here," said the one called Cormac, and Eldene felt her spine crawl at the sound of his voice. She glanced round at him and took in eyes as unforgiving as lead shot, but then he smiled at her and suddenly the coldness was gone. All she could do was turn away and concentrate once again on her driving.

"Oh, I can tell you all that, Agent," said Fethan.

"Please do," said Cormac. "Beginning with why you keep on calling me 'Agent'."

"Last I heard you was an agent — didn't think you'd retired," said Fethan.

"You know me?"

"Know of you, who don't? You're Ian Cormac — not what I'd call a
secret
agent."

"I've never been considered that," Cormac replied. "I'm a ... facilitator, and it is sometimes useful that I'm recognized. Polity secret agents wear a different face every day and often they are Golem... or something else." He eyed Fethan.

"The name's Fethan," said the old cyborg. "I'm a facilitator too."

"Well, facilitate away and tell me what the hell's going on down here."

As Eldene manoeuvred the ATV around the edge of the crater and into a clear bright day, Fethan tersely detailed all that had occurred over the last few days.

"So nice to encounter old friends," muttered Cormac, when Fethan told him about John Stanton — though Eldene could hear no pleasure in his voice. Finally, some time after Eldene had stopped the ATV and powered it down, Cormac observed, "So it seems Lellan is caught. She cannot stay hidden in the cave systems because of the approach of this Ragnorak device; she cannot destroy all the Theocracy forces on the surface because that would result in a nuclear strike being used against her; she cannot lose against said forces because there would be no taking of prisoners; and in the end all she can do is drag the battle out and hope for Polity intervention here."

"But that's on its way, apparently," said Thorn. He gestured to a coms helmet lying on the floor at the rear of the ATV. "Polas earlier sent out a message of encouragement to the troops, informing them that Lellan's U-space plea for help has been picked up and relayed by an ECS dreadnought — and that same ship is now on its way here."

Cormac went very still for a moment, then asked calmly, "And the name of this dreadnought? Was a name ever given?"