Polity 2 - Hilldiggers (42 page)

“Combine just stopped holding off,” Reyshank observed.

Orduval glanced over his shoulder to observe a thick pall of smoke rising from some distant point of the city. Within that oily blackness a hot bar of light stirred, reaching down from the sky. He recognised the effect of a microwave beam heating the smoke rising from the base, and no doubt from the burning corpses it contained. He felt sick and, as they continued up the street, wondered just how bad things were getting elsewhere. Support for either Combine or Fleet was variable among the planetary political units, but also among revolutionary and protest groups. With the two main Sudorian factions now in open conflict it struck him that their society might soon fall apart. Only the GDS wardens seemed capable of holding things together, yet here they were retreating.

When they finally reached an area where the damage seemed somewhat less, Reyshank broke into a ground car.

“You come with me,” he pointed to Orduval, “and you three.” He indicated Trausheim and two other wardens. “The rest of you head over to Bleak Street and link up with Jarden.”

The next minute, Orduval was sitting between two wardens in the rear of the car as it pulled away. To his right he glimpsed the maglev tram tracks between suburban houses, then the road drew adjacent to it as they left the city behind. Glancing back, he saw the bloody eye of the setting sun peering at him through columns of smoke, and here and there flickered the muzzle flashes of automatic weapons.

High in the sky burned other fires, and sadly they weren't stars.

McCrooger

After sliding for some time in and out of unconsciousness and the land of nightmares, I woke feeling relatively better; that is, I did not feel myself only a short pace from entering the underworld. Rhodane had re-secured the straps across me before she departed, but this time I managed to undo them without any trouble and, pushing myself upright on the bed, felt no urge to vomit.

One additional shove sent me drifting towards the door, which opened easily—obviously some repairs had been made. Pulling myself out into the corridor, I noticed a pronounced drift towards the floor, which told me the spin section must be slowly getting up to speed again. I moved along the corridor in bounds that grew steadily shorter, only halting when the jarring of my feet against the floor reminded me of the fragility of my bones. Meanwhile, the gradually increasing spin seemed to be trying to drag the meat from my skeleton. My injured arm began to ache, as soon did many other parts of me. After a little while, when it seemed the spin had stabilised, I moved on, and finally reached the area best described as the Bridge, and entered it through another one of those fleshy doors.

Inside, Brumallians sat in organic control stations that seemed melded around them. These in turn encircled a concave floor that I knew to be a view screen with facility for semi-holographic projection. Rhodane leant out of her own station to observe me as I entered, then eased herself out and walked over. She wore a headset that looked like a horseshoe crab impacting with the side of her head.

“Would it be foolish to ask how you're feeling?” she enquired.

“I feel like someone has beaten me from head to foot with rocks, but, as you can see, I'm standing, so that's a plus. What's the situation now?”

With one hand clasped against her headset she gestured over to the dish screen. The screen itself darkened and stars resolved, and then from the surface of it a hilldigger rose before me, flickering as waves of interference occasionally erased it. “They gave up some hours ago. We were worried they were going to head for Brumal next, since the hilldigger's next logical target would be our launch site. However, its course is now away from Brumal, out towards another hilldigger that didn't join the rest of the Fleet.”

“And Sudoria?”

Again a wave of her hand, and now Sudoria rose before us, the dish screen itself cupping the glare of the sun. The planet itself remained constant, but views of the stations surrounding it kept flickering in and out of existence, though I did get one brief glimpse of something disappearing in a ball of flame. “Fleet jamming is lighter here and we can now open communications with Combine. I was going to come and get you.” She again waved at the display and Sudoria disappeared, to be replaced this time with a blank grey floating screen. “Now let's talk to Combine.”

Yishna

Surprisingly, Defence Platform One had remained intact even though severely damaged by the missile hits from Blatant. On one of her screens she observed the last of the repair teams and GDS investigators leaving it, to take cover aboard a better-defended satellite. The ruined platform was only partially covered by others located at three compass points, though completely lacking in cover at the fourth point, where Twelve, which was also being evacuated, still lay under construction. It occurred to her that the positioning of Dravenik's hilldigger Blatant near Platform One, and the ensuing events, had not just been an excuse for this conflict, but a preparation for it too. For Combine's defences had been weaker there, and Blatant's return strike against Platform One had weakened them further.

“First impacts in twenty seconds,” said Gneiss over general address.

Yishna finally latched down her suit helmet, then sat tense in her chair, tightly gripping the arms. Twenty seconds later, space above Sudoria filled with incandescent explosions and vapour trails as projectiles struck defence buoys or were intercepted by beam weapons. Glittering menisci occasionally flashed into existence as projectiles struck station energy shields. Though projectiles were targeted at stations all around the planet, the main attack was, of course, concentrated almost a quarter of an orbit away, over the cross formation of five defence platforms with the wrecked Platform One at its centre.

Yishna watched the contrails and explosions rapidly draw closer over One and Twelve. The first strike on One cut straight through the massive wrecked disc and punched a column of fire down towards atmosphere, where it began to dissipate in a glowing cloud. Further hits kept tilting and straightening the platform, relative to the planet. Chunks of it came away and trails of debris burnt down towards Sudoria. The platform began to slowly come apart just as Twelve now began to receive its first strikes.

Yishna released her grip on the arms of her chair then pulled up displays fed from Combine Tactical. She could easily discern her brother's initial plan of attack and, of course, Tactical had anticipated it too. A cruiser was already moving into position below Platform Two, ready to move in below the gap Harald was creating and then fill it with defence buoys. She quickly switched back to the display showing her that specific area, then abruptly froze when Corisanthe Main jolted underneath her. She waited anxiously for the howl of breach alarms and then the application of one of the Emergency Ozark Protocols, all of which, because of her meddling, would result in an ejection of the containment cylinders. After a moment she realised she was holding her breath, and let it out slowly as the quadrant guns began grumbling. That had been a close one, obviously slamming into the energy shields, and the station staggering under the blow like a knight taking the impact of a mace on his more rudimentary shield.

She sipped flavoured water from the spigot inside her helmet to moisten her arid mouth, wondering what Harald's objective could be once he had made a hole in Combine's defences. Tactical had come up with many suggestions, most of them involving the steady destruction of the platforms one by one. To Yishna this seemed quite likely, yet somehow inelegant. She grimaced, returning her attention to her displays, just in time to see Platform Twelve's shield now go down.

Antimunitions from the beleaguered platform filled space above it with explosions, which, like an insect swarm, drew closer to the platform, then three strikes occurred simultaneously all on one side. The platform tipped ninety degrees, and began to drift. A glancing strike on what was its underside set it spinning like a coin. Checking Combine Tactical, Yishna saw that the fusillade was now over. Platform Twelve had not been destroyed, but for the present it was useless. Spying a couple of inter-station shuttles heading over towards it, she wondered if there would be anyone still alive inside to rescue, and a bitter nausea filled her. She then noted the cruiser, a 1,000-foot-long armoured tongue, begin edging out from under the aegis of Platform Two.

Platform One was now just a spreading mass of glowing wreckage sliding slowly towards atmospheric burn-up. Far below this, a disc-shaped cloud extended over the area where one of the projectiles had penetrated down to ground level. Being deep in a desert region, there were hopefully few casualties involved.

The cruiser finally began to fire buoys up at a slant, wave upon wave of golden beads all heading towards one targeted region of space. Cutting the view now to Platform Two, Yishna there observed guns and missile racks swinging over to point in the same direction. Obviously the next strike was already on its way. Abruptly her screen flickered off, then on again, to show her Gneiss on a private channel. The Director looked wired, even slightly unstable. Yishna had never seen him like this before.

“Yishna, how goes it?”

“We're as prepared as we can be. That's all I can say.”

“Then it's time for you to turn your attention to other matters.”

“Those being?”

“You are still Orbital Combine's representative in matters concerning the Polity and the Consul Assessor.”

“Aren't such matters rather irrelevant at the moment?”

“One would have thought so, but we have just been contacted by someone supposedly approaching on a Brumallian ship—which we cannot yet trace—who claims to be the Consul Assessor. You will deal with this as you see fit, Yishna, because right at the moment I've enough problems.” His image winked out, but a holding graphic up in one corner of her screen gave Yishna a link to the exterior com channel. She hesitated before reaching up to touch it. Could this be some new devious plot of Harald's? Abruptly she stabbed the graphic with her finger, and sat back.

The figure appearing on the screen before her she quickly recognised as David McCrooger, but not the same seemingly indestructible individual she had met. In some ways the look of him reminded her of Orduval, for he seemed to be ravaged by some terrible illness. She quickly began to assess what she was seeing. This could easily be a false image, of course, but why make him look so diminished? She answered her own question: because that changed image of him would be the more believable one. So, apparently he was aboard a Brumallian ship? Maybe her brother had laid hands on one and was trying to use it to penetrate Combine defences ...

“Yishna Strone,” said the image before her.

“And you would have me believe you are the Consul Assessor?”

“Yes, I would—and as a matter of urgency.”

“When responding to urgency it's easy to make mistakes.”

He stared at her, then gave a tired smile. “I could repeat verbatim all the conversations we had last time we met, and you could then assume they were recorded by Fleet personnel. So what can I say now to convince you?”

“Well, let's start with those same conversations, shall we?”

He looked to one side. “I recall you asking me what would be our policy on imprisoned sentients, should we intercede here, and the question seemed rather important to you. I explained to you how amnesty is granted in the case of corrupt totalitarian regimes, though those guilty of capital crimes would be checked for socio- or psychopathic tendencies.” Now looking at her directly, he went on, “I finished by telling you that intercession was unlikely. I wonder if I truly answered your real question, because though humans are sentient, not all sentients are human.”

Was it him? “Director Gneiss tells me you claim to be now aboard a Brumallian ship, yet we can detect no such vessel within transmission range.”

“We've used Polity technology to conceal the ship.” For a long moment he gazed at her expectantly.

“We?”

“Myself, the Brumallian crew—and your sister.”

The screen view expanded to encompass Rhodane. Yishna felt a tightness in her chest, and suddenly did not know how to react to this.

“Why...what are you doing here?” she demanded of her sibling.

Rhodane replied, “Well, currently we're busy dodging both incoming projectiles from Fleet and defensive fire from Combine. As you can imagine, Yishna, revealing our position now is not something we feel inclined to hazard, since Combine automated defences would zero in on us immediately. What we want is for you to give us a safe corridor down to the surface of Sudoria.”

“Why?”

“Firstly, to deliver me safely to my destination,” said McCrooger, “and secondly, so I can deliver to your Parliament some crucial evidence of Fleet's recent manipulation of events.”

“I think we're already past the point where such evidence might be considered to have any relevance.”

“Relevance to Sudorians,” he replied.

“So you would like Combine to allow a Brumallian ship safe passage down to the surface of Sudoria—something that never happened throughout the War nor since?”

“The simple answer is yes,” insisted McCrooger.

“We wouldn't be able to do so without consulting Parliament, and I suspect their answer will depend on the quality of the evidence you offer. We need to see it first, and assess it.” Yishna leant forwards to check the tactical readouts. Another fusillade was on its way in, its main focus on Platform Two, but with enough strays elsewhere to take out any undefended ship. “It should be possible for us to give you a corridor to Corisanthe III—Oversight Committee permitting.”

McCrooger shook his head. “That's not an option. Your side is the main opponent of Fleet, so allowing you access to the evidence we bring would destroy its veracity.”

“Then I remain reluctant to let you through. This could be merely Brumallian opportunism. That ship of yours could be carrying fusion or biological weapons—just what we built our defence platforms to prevent reaching the planet's surface.”