Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2) (64 page)

‘The
Scourge
is gone!’ exclaimed one of the soldiers.

‘We’ve moved,’ said Langstrom, his voice sounding unsteady.

Further than you can imagine, my friend.

Recalculation now and instant understanding of why his earlier calculations were out. The drive nailed reality, but reality still moved at the pace of galactic drift. He input that in his new
calculations, and knew it would be right, then started up the drive again, felt the solar system grow small, felt an arrogance of inestimable power, and suppressed it in an instant. The warp took
Argus again, as he listened to Le Roque issuing instructions, watched erstwhile killer robots working frenetically to weld up cracks and insert structural members, spraying impact foam, gluing,
riveting, tightening bolts. It would have to be enough, because every second counted when it might be one’s last breath.

Time passed – a ridiculously small amount of it when divided up over the hundreds of thousands of kilometres involved. The seconds counted away, then the microseconds, and Saul again shut
down the drive. Argus groaned as the stars came back. Saul lifted his fingertips from the console, glanced over towards the windows where, bright and clear and disappointingly brown, the so-called
red planet Mars hung in void.

He headed for the door.

Earth

Her palmtop opened with a breathy sigh, and just a short search through the menus brought up the program Serene required. It wasn’t that she needed to use her
palmtop – the programs she was accessing were available to her in the equipment surrounding her – but it seemed somehow right. Using this method reminded her of that first time when she
sent out the signals from the communications room in Aldeburgh to extinguish a large and useless portion of the human race. The palmtop updated its lists as it also updated other software. Two
options were now provided for her. She clicked on the list labelled ‘
Scourge
’ and gazed at it contemplatively. She could kill with the Scour, or she could send the signal to
constrict over two thousand strangulation collars

I am calm. I am very calm.

She tried to ignore the shaking of her hands and the ball of something hot and black that seemed to be growing in her stomach. Transferring her gaze to the main screen that stood amid her garden
vegetation – whose condition was now much improved – she contemplated the two scenes it displayed. One showed the
Scourge
, presently under power and on a route taking it out of
the Asteroid Belt; the other showed Mars, with Argus Station in orbit about it. Her finger hovered over the send button on her palmtop then she carefully withdrew it.

Why had the
Scourge
separated from the station? Why did they run away?

She was not sure she wanted to take the time necessary to find out why. They had failed out there – they had failed miserably. She returned her gaze to her palmtop, swallowed dryly, and
accepted that she wanted to kill someone. Clay Ruger was already history, but plenty of others remained for her to select from: Commander Liang, Captain Scotonis . . .

What?

The list of ID codes was updating again, each steadily acquiring a tick beside it. No, she hadn’t pressed send; she hadn’t followed through with her instinct for vengeance. What was
this? The ticks indicated that those people the codes identified had been sent the signal that would flood their bodies with the Scour, and therefore they would be dying even now. Her immediate
thought was that there must have been some sort of software failure; that, as the program opened, it had automatically sent the signal. But that made no sense, since the software she was using was
multiply backed-up and mirrored, perpetually ran self-diagnostics, and would close down at any hint of either a hardware or software failure.

Angry and frustrated, she began running checks and it soon became apparent that she had not sent the signal, nor had it been inadvertently sent in any other way. But the status of those ID codes
was being updated from the latest transmission from the
Scourge
. She now turned to that and began frantically searching for some explanation, and soon it became clear. Soon everything
started to make sense.

Someone had accessed the
Scourge
’s personnel files and downloaded all their ID codes. Someone had done this via a console located in the troop section, after the troops themselves
had departed. One of the crew? That seemed entirely possible since now, reviewing the data from the
Scourge
, she saw that there were many gaps in it. Most of the ship cams were offline, so
she could not see a recorded view of whoever had accessed that console. It also became apparent that the inducer network had been shut down . . .

Something appeared suddenly on her screen: the blank square indicating a video file. Where had that come from? From the
Scourge
data – meaning something loaded it even as the ID
codes were being downloaded. A worm of apprehension crawled up Serene’s spine. She quickly ensured that all the latest
Scourge
data had been downloaded to her palmtop, then shut off
its modem and put it to one side. She then picked up a console and accessed the hardware all around her, ordering it to ignore any signal from her palmtop – just in case something started up
the modem again. Next she focused on the original data download from the
Scourge
. She sent a copy to hard storage, isolated that same storage and deleted the original. To be utterly safe,
she cut the power to the hard drive it had been stored on. Then she picked up the palmtop again, and proceeded to play the video file.

‘Hello, Serene Galahad,’ said Alan Saul, gazing at her with demonic pink eyes. ‘I know it is you that is seeing this since, for it to load, you had to open up your Scour
initiation software, and I doubt you trust anyone else with even the knowledge that it exists. By now the ID code status of your personnel currently aboard the
Scourge
, and aboard my
station, is updating and, even as you listen to this, you will know that they are all either dead or dying.’ He paused for a moment, maybe in reflection, though she could read nothing in his
expression.

‘Perhaps you should now consider how the weapon you created is double-edged,’ he continued. ‘However, that is not why I am now contacting you. In your arrogance and psychosis,
you might find it difficult to accept that I have no interest in you or what you are currently doing on Earth. Your best course now is to ignore me, because I will go away. If you do not take such
a course, then I will be forced to take more of an interest in you, and that is something you will definitely not enjoy. That is all.’

His image froze, but it still seemed like he was watching her. After a second, Serene realized she was panting, then with a yell she hurled her palmtop away. It crashed against the low
balustrade of the bridge and dropped into the pond.

‘Fuck you!’ she screamed. Then, when Sack appeared, she snarled, ‘Fuck off.’

Sack quickly retreated.

Serene stood up and began pacing. The
Scourge
’s assault had failed and now there was no one left to punish. How dare he kill her people? How dare he take that away from her? She
kicked over the nearest plant pot, then reached down and tore a Japanese shrub out of another one and threw it away, tramped over other plants to reach her main screen and kicked it over. She had
to do something. She had to do something now.

‘Sack!’ she shrieked, and went striding over the bridge.

Sack appeared reluctantly and gazed at her in silence. She gestured over her shoulder.

‘Get rid of it! Get rid of it all!’

‘Ma’am?’

‘The garden, you imbecile! Get rid of the fucking garden! Burn the fucking thing!’

She strode for the elevator and climbed inside. Someone was going to pay for this; someone was going to pay for this right away. Saul was the one she wanted most, but he lay too far out of her
reach, for now. As the elevator rose she felt slightly better to be doing something at least, even if it was just relocating herself to Messina’s old office.

Time for another Madagascar.

She had previously been considering further candidates such as Crete, Indonesia, Sri Lanka . . . No, screw the islands. Something bigger; it was time to think big.

Maybe get continental.

Argus

Hannah clung on to the edge of the surgical table, even though no force actually threatened to dislodge her. When it stopped and that deep sonorous note ceased sounding,
and it no longer felt as if some malevolent god was trying to crowbar up reality, there came a short silent pause before the station structure all around her began making worrying complaints.

‘Saul’s moved us,’ she observed.

‘Yes, he has,’ replied Le Roque tiredly through her fone. ‘The
Scourge
separated from us a short while ago, and doubtless he wants us well out of range of its
weapons.’

Hannah unclamped her hands from the table and glanced through the viewing window into her laboratory. There were still many patients to be tended, but she could see that her earlier request to
Le Roque had been answered and that the military medic Yanis Raiman had arrived to relieve her. She now returned to the subject she and Le Roque had been discussing just before the Rhine drive
engaged.

‘So you’re intending to spin up this arcoplex,’ she said. ‘What about the damage? What about the potential for breaches around the penetration locks?’ As she spoke,
she continued sealing the ugly wounds in her latest patient – almost relishing the distraction of this task.

‘The robots are all over it,’ replied Le Roque. ‘The penetration locks should hold but, as a precaution, I’ve had all adjacent bulkhead doors closed. They shouldn’t
be a problem.’

Even as he said it, Hannah felt herself shifting to one side as the arcoplex slowly started to spin again. All around, the clonks and groans and the occasional squeals signifying stressed metal
increased. Some of the noise would be from equipment or debris in motion – a noise that would intensify as any floating objects began falling to the floor. Doubtless she could hear corpses in
motion too, perhaps even globules of blood dropping out of the air. The thought sickened her, but what seemed worse was that there had been no real alternative.

‘You’re starting them
all
up?’ Hannah enquired, with a nod to her new assistants as she stepped away from the patient and began peeling off her surgical gloves, her mind
firmly clamping down on her emotions.

‘We need to, for air quality,’ explained Le Roque. ‘Too much debris is floating about and it’s blocking the air-filtration systems.

‘Well, as long as you’re sure,’ she said doubtfully.

‘I’m as sure as . . . Shit!’

‘What’s the problem?’ Was something going wrong already?

After a long and worrying delay, Le Roque replied, ‘I just took a look out through exterior cams. We’re in orbit around Mars.’

Weight – or rather a simulacrum of it – began bearing down on her leg and it started to ache. Dumbfounded, Hannah halted her slow progress towards the surgeons’ clean lock. She
didn’t know how to respond to this information, but something inside her did as she felt the familiar surge of a panic attack rising up from her chest. On the one hand, the feeling was
horrible but, on the other, she now had sure knowledge that these spasms only assaulted her when she wasn’t in any real danger. It was almost a reassurance.

‘Mars,’ she repeated numbly.

‘Which causes further stresses on the station,’ said Le Roque. ‘I need to get back to work.’

‘Okay,’ Hannah replied, cutting the connection.

In the clean lock she stripped, stowed her surgical whites and stepped into the shower. Now that most of the emergency cases were at least stable, it was time to start reinstituting cleanliness
protocols. As far as she knew there had never been any case of a superbug taking hold here, but that did not mean they would be immune. By the time she walked back out into the laboratory, another
patient was being wheeled in through the patient’s clean lock, and Raiman was waiting his turn to enter the surgery and take charge.

‘All yours,’ she said, moving on.

Brigitta was still in the laboratory, carefully examining her hand, sealed in its transparent form cast. Hannah had managed to reattach her fingers temporarily, so they had a blood supply, but
some lengthy work remained to repair the tendons, ligaments and nerves.

‘Where’s Angela?’ Hannah asked.

Brigitta waved her other hand jerkily. ‘Doing what she can.’

Angela’s wound had not actually been from a bullet, but from a fragment of one. It hadn’t hit the bone, and it had not been deep so was easily repaired.

‘He’s all right?’ Brigitta asked, indicating Raiman with a nod of her head.

‘Probably better than me at this sort of stuff,’ Hannah replied. ‘He is a military doctor, after all.’ Hannah touched Brigitta’s shoulder, then made her way to the
door, stepping between wounded who had all been provided with analgesic patches and temporary dressings. She had headed fifty metres towards the elevators that led out of the arcoplex before she
realized where she was going.

‘Just one more thing, Le Roque,’ she said through her fone. ‘Where is Alan now?’

‘Docking Pillar Two,’ he replied shortly.

Hannah wanted to ask more, but the technical director sounded busy and hassled. She cut the connection and moved on. Near to the rim-side elevator she stepped into a suiting room, half-expecting
to find nothing available there, but surprised to find a full range of suits. This was probably Le Roque’s work, too – he certainly knew how to get things organized quickly. She donned
a VC suit, headed for the elevator and made her way out of the arcoplex.

Inside the ring-side bearing installation for Arcoplex Two, Hannah entered a building that had probably been intended as some sort of communal area. Absolutely nothing yet marred the spacious
bare floor, but its location and the view from the panoramic windows seemed to indicate such future use. She moved over to a window and gazed down, past the rotating curve of the arcoplex into the
station itself. The carnage there was horrifying.