Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2) (55 page)

Tight
, Saul understood.
Very tight.

Saul was fast, but so was this Alex. Neither of them telegraphed blows and at this range neither of them could get their blocks into place fast enough. Constricted by the surrounding
scaffolding, there was also little room for them to separate. They ended up face to face, short powerful karate punches blurring between them as each tried to drive the other into a bad
position.

Stop just responding. Calculate.

Time seemed to slow down as Saul’s thought processes speeded up. He could see that, though they were both managing to deliver solid blows, they weren’t delivering them with maximum
effect – the padding and armour in their suits absorbing most of the impact. Saul altered the parameters for himself.
Pull back on next strike, the block will drive it into the upper
chest: pause – now.
His next punch hit a floating rib, between bands of armour, and on the one after that, as Alex shifted his head aside to avoid it, Saul opened out a thumb. His fist
grazed along Alex’s temple, but the thumb went straight into his eye.
Weakening now, and a loss of depth perception.
Saul turned as if evading yet another blow, but raised his leg and
slammed his knee into his opponent’s thigh, behind the front pad of armour.

Alex’s next straight-fingered jab aimed at the point just below Saul’s ear missed entirely, and now it was all over. As he drove blow after blow into his opponent’s body, Saul
also gazed through the senses of a spidergun, now back in range, as it etched out numerous target points. Other robots were returning to the room too. Alex meanwhile lowered his arms and Saul
realized the other man was now waiting to die. Surely this was the next logical step: remove this impediment and then try to repair the damage here. But there was an objection partly within himself
and partly distributed amidst all of his mind and those things fashioned by it.

Alex drifted backwards with his eyes closed, but as nothing happened he opened them. He spat blood, then snarled, ‘You must kill me!’

‘
An interesting problem
,’ whispered a voice in Saul’s mind.

‘
What would you suggest?
’ Saul asked without speaking.

‘
Reprogramming by reality is already underway
,’ replied Paul, now actually entering the transformer room. ‘
I suggest confrontation followed by a naturalistic
approach. Direct intervention is not necessary.
’

‘Why?’ Saul asked out loud.

The proctor sailed across from the platform and landed on the scaffolding. It reached in with one long arm and snared Alex by his spacesuit, dragging him out like a rabbit out of a burrow.

‘When it is not necessary to kill,’ said Paul, ‘it is not necessary to kill.’

‘Take him, then,’ said Saul dismissively. Then he spoke directly to Langstrom’s fone: ‘You can forget about Messina now – we’ve got bigger problems.’
Then he turned to inspect the damage.

Suffer the Children

Before the twentieth century, increasing mechanization in industry was only seen as a boon by industry chiefs. Less outlay on labour of course meant more profit, and
the only ones complaining were Luddites and could be ignored. In the twenty-first century, industries increasingly fell under the control of the state, while continuing mechanization and
‘social justice’ created an ever-growing underclass of the unemployed and unemployable. This class was generally kept under control by the media bread and circuses of the time, but the
problems started with the growth in the number of people being displaced by increasingly ‘expert’ mechanization – people less easy to control. To manage this, the political
classes chose to find employment for them, chose to bring them into the fold by creating a huge and pointless bureaucracy, but even that had its limits. It soon became evident that not all could be
thus employed. It soon became evident that, in a population boom, too many educated people were available. The answer was simple: cripple education systems, allow the health and social
professionals more of a free hand with the pacifying drugs, start damaging people even when they are children and ensure more of them end up in the more easily controlled underclass. However, even
this has proved only a temporary solution, and it is certain that more drastic measures will need to be applied.

Scourge

The background noise aboard the ship had changed, as the preparations being made by the troops transmitted through the metalwork like infernal machines ticking over in a
cellar. Clay Ruger reached up, touched his aching head, and couldn’t quite believe that he was still alive. Only now, as he hazily recollected events in the bridge, did he realize that the
weapon Scotonis had held must have been loaded with taser bullets – the kind that delivered a disabling charge on impact.

He sat upright, then tried to use his fone to get through to Scotonis himself, but heard only a fizzing noise. The taser bullet had obviously taken out his fone too. He carefully climbed out of
his bed and went to the door, but it wouldn’t open. Next he began walking over to his console, to reach Scotonis that way, but the ship shuddered, a sound like thunder rumbling through it,
then came the throaty roar of a side drive, which sent him staggering against a wall.

Clay clung in place until the shuddering ceased, his eyes closed and a cold sweat sticking his ship suit to his back. Distantly he could hear people shouting and a breach klaxon sounding. He
took a deep breath, then turned and walked over to his console, sat down and put through a call, to which the captain immediately responded, but with only his image icon appearing on the
screen.

‘How’s your head?’ Scotonis asked distractedly.

‘It’s been better,’ Clay replied. ‘Why did you do that, anyway, and what the hell’s going on now?’

‘The point was that you were supposed to be dead,’ the captain replied calmly, ‘and I couldn’t risk you walking out of the bridge and being seen by the staff officers
that Commander Liang had sent up into the executive area. We had you carted out in a body bag to Medical, where Dr Myers checked you out, then we had you moved to your own cabin after Liang’s
men were gone.’

Clay absorbed that information, but still a big question remained. Why the hell had Scotonis
not
just killed him? In the same position, he himself wouldn’t have hesitated. It
occurred to him then that maybe Scotonis was a better human being than Clay was, but that wasn’t a thought he wanted to examine too closely.

‘So Liang had been told that I was supposed to die?’ he ventured.

A voice in the background spoke and Clay recognized the gunnery officer, Cookson. ‘Glancing hit,’ he explained. ‘We’re low profile right now. Close defences can handle
most of it.’

The captain replied, ‘That’ll change.’ Then, ‘What was that you said, Ruger?’

‘So, now I’ve got to stay in my cabin?’ Clay replied instead.

‘No, too risky,’ said Scotonis. ‘Now you’re awake, I want you to move yourself to Messina’s quarters. You’ll be able to get a good view on the big screens in
there.’

‘What’s happening, Scotonis?’

‘We’ve arrived,’ the captain snapped in response. ‘Now get moving – because Liang’s men might be back at any time.’

‘My door is locked.’

‘It isn’t now. I just unlocked it.’

Clay shut down the console, stood up and surveyed his room, considering what personal belongings he needed from here, but decided not to delay further since Messina’s quarters were better
protected than the rest of the ship. So he headed for the door. Immediately outside his cabin, the acrid smell of burning plastic hit his nostrils and, looking up, he saw a stratum of smoke across
the ceiling. The breach klaxon was still sounding somewhere in the distance and he could hear a robotic voice saying something repetitive but indistinct. The moment he stepped out into the
corridor, the ship shuddered once again and another klaxon opened up nearby. Clay stood dumbfounded for a moment, but when, on looking up, he saw the smoke was on the move, he immediately broke
into a run. Ten minutes of sweaty panic brought him to Messina’s apartments, which were positioned below the bridge. He entered and hit the control closing the airtight door. In here, he was
surrounded by impact armour and breach-foam layers within the walls, similar to those located in every essential bulkhead throughout the ship.

He swung his gaze across the partially completed furnishings, and then headed over to a large and comfortable acceleration chair positioned before a multi-screen which looked like a minimalist
sculpture fashioned out of one huge curving sheet of black glass. He sat down, strapped himself in, flipped over the chair-arm console and set both the screen and bridge communication running.
Images appeared of the views currently available to the bridge crew, and one more showing them all seated and watching the action on their multi-screen.

‘What’s the situation?’ Clay asked.

‘Tell him, Cookson,’ said Scotonis.

Gunnery Officer Cookson eyed his captain askance, then said, ‘We’ve railed out five test shots, and from them located some of their weaponry, but of course they’re not too
happy about that.’

Another image now: a close view of Argus Station. Above it streaks of fire appeared, like white contrails, before deforming and fading down to orange, then to red, and finally disappearing.
Targeting frames next appeared all over the station like a sudden pox.

‘We’ve precisely located the two railguns Alex detailed, and will shortly be opening fire on them. But first we’re going to fuck up their targeting.’

‘How?’ asked Clay.

‘You will see shortly,’ said Scotonis. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, we have work to do.’

Clay grimaced at that, then, using his console, he first opened up the command channels so that he could hear all the exchanges between command staff, then began calling up other views and
additional data. In the troops’ quarters things had changed drastically. Large areas of the accommodation had been collapsed so as to leave three long hexagonal compartments where now the
troops were massing with all their equipment. They were all suited up and carrying weapons, and those behind the primary assault teams were already heading out into a newly connected tube leading
to the main exterior airlock, carrying the various sections of vacuum-warfare penetration locks.

‘Detonation in five,’ Cookson announced. ‘Four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . and
now
.’

The image of Argus Station whited out, then came back with a ball of fire expanding above it. The image fizzed, breaking into squares – the EM radiation pulse delivered by the blast. As
this ball of fire inflated, it grew diffuse but even so, when its perimeter hit the station, the effect was visible. The whole massive structure tilted, and debris was blown away like chaff from a
plate.

‘Reacquiring,’ said Scotonis.

Clay did not need to ask what had happened. They’d detonated a nuke close to the station to interfere with electronics and now, since the station had shifted, Cookson was retargeting the
station’s weapons. Clay tried to sit back and relax, but found he couldn’t. Really, he decided, he had too much intelligence and imagination to be a soldier. It was bad enough having to
fight in a place where there was air to breathe, but here?

Next a sonorous thrumming that penetrated bone-deep filled the ship. The first time the railguns fired, Clay must have still been unconscious, for he had never heard or felt this sensation
before. But he just knew this had to be their sound.

‘They’re returning fire again,’ Cookson noted, ‘but their targeting is off.’

Even so, the
Scourge
shuddered again, and somewhere another klaxon started howling. Contrails flared into being all across the top of the station, until it was nearly lost to visibility
behind a curiously regular pattern like some epiphyte made of fire, but this only lasted until the next nuclear detonation, which swept it all away before going on to peel hull plates off Argus
like a scaling knife. Shortly after this, fire began to glare from inside it, and vapour belched from the newly torn holes.

‘That’s one of them,’ said Cookson and, even as he spoke, another explosion erupted from the station, hurling black chunks of machinery up on a column of fire. ‘And
that’s the other,’ he added.

‘Trove,’ prompted Scotonis.

‘Twenty minutes,’ she replied.

The surge of the engines shoved Clay deeper into his chair, then tried to throw him out of it sideways.

‘Liang,’ said Scotonis, ‘twenty minutes. Get in position.’

‘Already clearing first teams in Section One,’ replied Commander Liang.

Troops were crammed into the tube leading to the airlocks. Clay searched for further views, and saw that, even while the tube was full of soldiers, they were still on the move. Soon he found an
exterior cam showing them spilling out on the hull of the
Scourge
like ants boiling from their nest. There they had strung out ropes connected to the hull and were using them to secure
themselves. They struck Clay as overly exposed out there, but were those inside the ship any safer?

On Argus Station, detonations were still blooming like brief hot stars, and sending chunks of debris tumbling away. Cookson was now destroying their collision lasers, Clay realized, and maybe
any other anti-personnel weapons scattered about the surface. It seemed all very easy and going perfectly to plan, which was worrying.

‘Nothing more from the railguns,’ said Cookson. ‘That means they have to be down.’

‘As things stand, between the first two strike points looks good,’ observed Liang, who must have been studying a head-up display. ‘We assault the station internally through
them while a third team goes over the hull to take Tech Central.’

The station was now looming huge on the multi-screen as Trove announced, ‘Ten minutes, docking anchors primed.’

Next Cookson observed, ‘I’m getting an energy spike. There’s something—’

All the hardware around Clay blanked and a hot flu-like sensation passed through his body. Immediately on top of this came a numb terror, as he expected the fire he had seen aboard
Galahad’s aero to descend on him now.