Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2) (52 page)

This now meant she would run out of suit power before she lacked air. The power in the building, from the solar panel, would help her in some way, but suit heating tended to eat up watts,
despite the insulation. Var returned her attention to the corpse, but realized she would have to unearth more of it to get to the utility belt where any super-caps might be found.

She stood up and started digging again.

Earth

Serene glared at the images on her screen. When she had told Ruger and Scotonis that they must hurry to Argus Station because it seemed some sort of inertia-less drive was
being developed there, she had felt like a fraud. She felt like a fraud now, and long moments of introspection occurring while she watched this video clip, again and again, had presented her with
an uncomfortable result. She had found a reason to influence events far away from her, and she
had
influenced them, because she could – because she simply enjoyed exercising power.
Those were her prime reasons for telling them that they must not change course. The possibility that this Jasper Rhine could develop an inertia-less drive aboard Argus had been remote, theoretical,
producing a reason to throw her weight around but no reason for alarm.

But now she
was
alarmed. This was a game changer.

She abruptly changed the view and gazed at a massive modern factory complex shimmering in South African heat haze. Over to one side, a shanty town had been bulldozed aside, its debris forming a
small mountain range, and in the cleared area new buildings were going up fast. Amidst them was something that looked like a sports stadium, but only if those sports involved games with particle
accelerators, fusion reactors and giant silos filled with liquid mercury. Professor Calder had already taken a huge bite out of his budget.

Serene’s gaze now strayed to a flashing icon at the bottom of her screen. Calder had received her latest message and was ready to speak to her. She instinctively wanted to keep him
waiting, but felt the situation was too critical to waste time on playing minor power games.

‘Professor?’ she said, responding at once.

‘Ma’am,’ he replied with a respectful dip of his head.

‘You’ve been analysing the video and data feeds from the
Scourge
,’ she said. ‘You’ve seen that there is indeed an inertia-less drive aboard Argus. How far
along are you?’

‘My initial tests look promising,’ he replied, ‘but building such a drive will have to be conducted offworld. In a way they were lucky, because they had the structure in which
to build a wide enough vortex ring, and they already had the required EM field-generating capability.’

‘How long?’

‘We could begin building some elements of the drive at once,’ he replied. ‘How long thereafter it would take to get ourselves a working drive just depends upon how much in the
way of resources you are prepared to dedicate to this.’

Serene gazed at him steadily for a moment, but he showed no signs of getting nervous about that scrutiny, so she continued, ‘If the Argus Station escapes, and retains its ability to travel
as fast as it has, all Earth’s offworld stations, factories and satellites will be at risk.’

‘Agreed.’

‘That damned thing could attack with little or no warning, and we know it now has some lethal weaponry. We certainly have weapons up there that could damage it, but this means they will
have to be permanently manned and ready to respond instantly.’

‘That is presupposing it uses its weapons,’ Calder noted.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It doesn’t even need its weapons,’ he explained. ‘You saw what happened to the asteroid it struck?’

‘I saw.’

‘The warp-bubble interface creates tidal forces you would generally only find near to a fast-spinning black hole. If they solve their obvious navigational problems, all they would need to
do is plot a course right through any orbital installations, and afterwards there would be nothing left.’

It was at this moment that Serene understood for the first time the meaning of the words ‘cold sweat’. That reaction, however, made her tighten her control on herself.

‘At present,’ she said carefully, ‘we have three ships being constructed – I mean the new-design Mars Travellers. They will be redesigned to your specifications so that
they can incorporate this drive, and weapons. All your requirements will be met, at once.’

‘What do you mean, ma’am?’

‘I mean, Professor Calder, I am promoting you to a special position. I am giving you control of all offworld industries, and I am allowing you the power to demand from on-world industries
anything you require. I am therefore, in effect, putting all of Earth’s resources at your disposal.’

He just stared at her, saying nothing, obviously shaken alert at last.

She continued, ‘Aboard Argus Station they managed to build a workable drive during their journey to the Asteroid Belt. With the resources at your disposal I expect you to achieve the same
result much more quickly.’

Finally he managed to speak. ‘I . . . I can’t organize all this by myself.’

‘Expert teams are on their way to you right now,’ Serene replied. ‘You tell them what you want, and they will organize it. Anyone you require is yours.’

‘So long as they do what I say,’ he risked.

‘They will – or they will die. I do not expect you to fail me, Professor Calder.’ Enough of the stick, now a bit more carrot. ‘And, should you succeed, you will receive
anything it is within my power to give, for the rest of your life.’

‘Ma’am.’ He dipped his head again, this time in serious acknowledgement.

‘That’s all for now,’ she said, and cut the connection.

Threats, she felt, were easy to make and to carry through; promises were equally as easy to make, and as easy to forget. Just like the promises she had made to this character, Rhone, out there
on Mars.

Argus

Alex’s chances of getting caught had just increased a hundredfold, but if he had stayed a moment longer in that claustrophobic little room he felt sure he would have
ended up eating a bullet. There had seemed no point in going on. There he was, again, hiding like a rat in the walls, struggling to get supplies just to keep himself alive. No purpose achievable,
reality frustrating him, nothing from the
Scourge
but the instruction to keep his head down and await orders. And then it had seemed as if he was going insane.

The weird vibrations from the surrounding metalwork had registered first. They were horribly unpleasant, imparting to his entire body a feeling like ‘restless leg syndrome’ –
something he had suffered from during one particularly long hospital stay in the past. Then even his surroundings began to distort. The walls seemed to become concave when he looked at them
directly but, as he turned away, they stretched in the other direction towards some seemingly infinite point. Odd sounds issued from his suit radio, so that he had to keep turning it off to find
some relief, and it was during one of these occasions that the whole room shuddered, as if something had crashed into it or the station itself, and so, finally, he decided to investigate.

The room he had since occupied lay in what had been intended to be a residential section. It was also where Messina’s forces first gathered when they had attacked. Here he had found oxygen
bottles, a scattering of ammo clips and, best of all, a ration pack before concealing himself away as instructed. The corridor outside his hideaway looked no different, and those distortions were
no longer evident, yet, when he reached out and touched the wall, that horrible vibration was still present, if less strong than before. He moved further along, intent on heading out of the end of
this section to reach a point where he could get a view into the station, down beside Arcoplex One. But only as he reached his destination and carefully made his way out into the station’s
framework superstructure did he think to pause and extend his external aerial lead to a nearby beam, and again turn on his suit radio.

A haze of static and a high-pitched whining filled his suit helmet, but out of it, just discernible, came a voice:

‘. . . please reply . . . Come on, Alex, we need to talk to you. This is the Sc . . . calling A . . . please rep . . .’

‘Alex here,’ he said at once.

‘We’ve got . . .’

Alex quickly turned on his visor display and sorted through the various menus to find the one for the radio. Since it was being boosted through that same board from the thruster, he might not be
able to do anything, but he was sure there was some facility available for cleaning up signals. Soon he found the relevant menu and discovered he could indeed do something, and the words came
clearer, though a sound occurring behind them seemed to keep drilling into his spine.

‘This is Captain Scotonis of the
Scourge
here,’ said a new voice. ‘We’re not far away from you but, as you might have gathered, we’ve got a
problem.’

‘I’ve gathered nothing,’ said Alex. ‘I’ve been hiding, remember.’

‘Ah . . . yes.’

‘Why are
you
talking to me?’ Alex asked. ‘It’s normally that Ruger guy.’

‘He’s a little inconvenienced now,’ the captain replied, ‘and we’re running out of time. Alex, that structure in the outer ring of the station is some sort of space
drive. It moved the entire station six hundred thousand kilometres in just eight seconds, but crashed it into an asteroid. There seems to be little damage and, from the readings we’re
getting, it seems that drive is powering up again. If they use it again we’re never going to get to you.’

‘What?’ Alex could think of nothing else to say.

‘We need you to knock it out, Alex. I can’t stress enough how important it is that you do so. If they manage to get it running again, Messina will forever be a slave and you’ll
end up either captured and killed.’

‘Space drive?’ Alex echoed.

‘An inertia-less drive.’

Alex just had to accept it, because this explanation fitted the facts much better than anything he had so far heard from the tactical team. He turned himself round so he was facing out towards
the rim, and through the superstructure there he could just about see the newly built ring – this space drive. It somehow looked incredibly substantial now, as if the station structure all
around it was made of balsa and the thing itself was fashioned of blued steel.

‘Any advice on how I stop it?’

‘Do you have explosives?

‘Only ceramic ammo.’

‘That might be enough if you can put enough bullets into it. You have to try. Alternatively, I’m sure you’ve been trained to . . . improvise.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Alex. ‘I’ll call you when I have some news.’

He pulled the aerial wire away from the beam and wound it back into the pouch containing the booster board. Bullets might well be enough, as Scotonis had suggested. The thing bore some
resemblance to a particle accelerator and doubtless numerous holes through the surrounding coils and into the accelerator pipe itself should seriously fuck with whatever it was doing. Then there
were also the power-supply cables. The schematic Alexandra had already pulled up showed the main feed running in over by the endcap of Arcoplex One, with control optics leading to both Tech Central
and the EM field transformer room – a definite weak spot. But first the bullets. He began to make his way through the superstructure towards the ring itself.

As he started to get a clearer view of the device, Alex did not lose that impression of substantiality, and the image of it hung heavy in his mind, almost too heavy, making his head ache with
the load. He decided to get right on top of it before opening fire, since that way he would be able to target whatever aspect looked the most critical. However, even as he drew closer to the thing
the sensation he was getting through his handholds grew ever more unpleasant. Upon reaching the base of one of the big beams that supported the device, he paused, just holding himself in position
by hooking the sight of his rifle on the metal. Even so, that weird vibration travelled up through the weapon and into his arms, which were now aching as if they had been beaten. His recently
healed leg had also begun to smart, and the pain in it there was growing steadily. He couldn’t pause, had to move in.

Alex again hung his rifle across his back and scrambled along the beam. The intensity of the pain increased until it felt as if he was being electrocuted through his hands. Abruptly he propelled
himself from the beam towards the device, but the pain continued to grow even though he was touching nothing. As he drew closer to the heavy coils and skeins of wiring, his visor display suddenly
began flashing a ‘systems failure’ alert and the smell of burning infiltrated his helmet. In an instant he realized what the problem was: being this close to such a mass of powered-up
coils was inducing currents in the wiring of his suit. This could kill him.

He prepared to propel himself away but, when he was a metre from the thing, his descent abruptly slowed as if he was dropping into an invisible marsh. He bent his legs and then shoved hard
against . . . nothing. It was enough to send him sailing away again, though slowly. He unstrapped his rifle and turned himself so that he could aim it back towards the device. Smoke now filled his
suit helmet and he could hear a sizzling from the vicinity of his chest. He opened fire, spraying a full eighty-round clip along the length of the device, the dampened recoil making little
difference to his progress away, then automatically loaded another clip before assessing the damage.

Nothing, no damage at all – but he could see objects bobbing about around the device like disturbed wasps, and realized he was seeing the bullets he had fired. As he watched them, they all
lined up along the length of the device, then, led by the bullets at one end of that line, they began spiralling around it. Alex finally caught hold of a beam and drew himself to a halt, snapping
his hand away immediately afterwards. This made no sense. Certainly the problems with his suit could be attributed to magnetic fields, and maybe a similar effect had worked on the metal within his
suit to prevent him landing on the device itself, but what the hell was doing that with his bullets? They were made of ceramic, so could not be affected by magnetism.