Polity 2 - Hilldiggers (50 page)

“How long until we reach Corisanthe Main?” I asked, just to try and break their focus upon each other, and not because I particularly wanted to know. I could already feel the damned place looming, and the perception-distorting effects within the ship had not so much intensified as taken on a weird symbolic meaning.

Rhodane turned towards me. “We'll be in low orbit within an hour, then we must take Yishna's vessel to shuttle us across—though Director Gneiss has agreed for us to come, he will not allow a Brumallian ship to dock with the station.”

“You think he bought it, completely?” I wondered.

It was Yishna's turn to reply. “He would be a fool to believe our only purpose is to bring along that evidence. I think he let us come because he is curious about you.” She paused for a moment, her gaze twitching back towards Rhodane. “Director Gneiss follows the rules, but for his very own reasons.”

Rhodane grimaced, shook herself, then began propelling herself along the corridor. Orduval joined us on the way, and soon we reached the large chamber where Yishna's craft awaited. Slog and Flog were waiting there too, the evidence chest hanging in the air between them. They looked agitated, knowing what we were going to do next, but unable to come with us. At least they weren't suited up for Sudorian temperatures, so it looked like they had grudgingly accepted the Director's order.

I considered what we were about to embark upon. Yishna's alteration of the Emergency Ozark Protocols would result in all the cylinders being ejected even if there was a breach in only one of them. The fact that all four would be ejected simultaneously demonstrated even more how powerfully she had been manipulated than just the fact of her altering the protocols at all. To me this indicated that the Worm realised that once any single one of those protocols was used, it would be in danger, so that was then time for it to leave, all four parts of it together.

While Yishna opened the shuttle's hatch I gripped hold of a glassy handle protruding from one wall and pulled the pendant from my shirt. It had changed now, taking on again the form of a tiger, but one made of wax that had been placed too close to a fire.

“Tigger,” I said, “are you able to reply?”

Momentarily something shimmered in the air, then blinked out.

“Tigger, if we succeed, the cylinders will be beyond the station shields within twenty minutes. It should then be evident which canister has been breached. You need to hit that one first, and the rest of them after. Only total destruction of that creature will break its grip on these people.”

“I ...” again that flickering in mid-air, followed by the brief appearance of two amber eyes “... can do this.”

It wasn't really enough. I pushed myself away from the wall and down to where Rhodane and Orduval were conversing in subdued tones. At my approach, Rhodane smilingly reached out to briefly rest her hand against the side of Orduval's face, before she turned to face me.

“Still not enough of a response from Tigger,” I stated flatly.

She nodded agreement. “Enabling a ship to feel pain was considered, by consensus, to be an incentive, since it prevented the ships making decisions without first considering all the repercussions. I would have thought Polity AIs able to handle pain.”

I shook my head. After my few recent intermittent communications with Tigger, I'd learnt exactly what had happened. “It's not the pain, but the repetition of it Tigger is having trouble breaking out of. The two AIs are interlinked, and that's causing a feedback loop.”

“I will have to remain behind,” Rhodane glanced at Yishna, “though I would rather have come with you, just to make sure. Yishna understands what needs to be done, but I wonder if the Worm may understand what she is doing and somehow intervene?”

It would have been nice if, after having things carefully explained to them, the Brumallian crew could be relied upon to do what needed to be done from this end, but they weren't in full consensus—being understandably reluctant to fire upon Combine—so it wouldn't get done without one wilful half-Brumallian to remain behind and push them towards the consensus we required. It had only been her input into the small consensus aboard the ship that had enabled us to bring it up here in the first place.

“Can you be sure you'll be able to fire those weapons when the time comes?” I asked. “The crew seems to be still having trouble with the ship's controls.”

“Your drone's melding with this ship's AI caused that. I'll be able to get round it so long as neither AI chooses to interfere.”

“They won't,” I said, with more certainty than I felt.

Orduval and Yishna—after a rather silly tug-of-war, followed by Rhodane's intervention—managed to take the chest away from Flog and Slog and convey it over to the hatch. They climbed inside with it, and I followed. The two of them took the main seats, while I strapped myself into one of the two fold-down passenger seats right behind them. A scraping and rattling ensued and beyond the front screen I observed the vine-like growths that held the vessel in place parting and sliding away. Within the shuttle the temperature, already higher than in the Brumallian ship, began to rise. My two companions shed their jackets, but I was wearing little I could remove. I soon began sweating and wondered if I could stand yet another temperature change, since down there on the planet I'd come close to fainting, and once back on the Brumallian ship again had begun shivering and even noticed my hands turning a nice shade of frosty white.

“The bay is now clear,” came Rhodane's voice, from the console immediately in front of Yishna, whereupon she and Orduval strapped themselves in. After a moment there came a roaring, and I could see bits of organic detritus blowing past the screen. Then the craft tilted and was soon tumbling out into vacuum. Thrusters corrected attitude; a steady increase in acceleration pushed me back against the bulkhead. Were we all just being used as puppets, seemingly unable to comprehend our minimal chances of success? IF21 shifted violently inside me. I coughed, spat blood, and held on tight.

Some time later Yishna said, “Here comes our escort.” I glimpsed the flare of steering thrusters, their light bursting over the screen, followed by some kind of globular craft swinging past, then descending out of sight. Shortly afterwards the immense station Corisanthe Main ascended into view and grew ever larger. Now I had seen ships in the Polity that were larger than that station, but this thing hung in my perception with a mass that seemed to extend beyond the skin of reality. I knew that, like the mass of a planet distorting spacetime about it to extend its influence well beyond, this huge station sat at the heart of those perceptual distortions that influenced the minds of all Sudorians. Eventually we flew past one of the Ozark Cylinders, and I felt a shiver of apprehension while gazing at that featureless tube.

“We'll have to move fast once we're in,” said Yishna. “I'll lead the way up to Centre Cross. The automatics should register the presence of three of us here aboard, as required, but after that there'll still be more security to get through.”

“You are sure you can do this?” asked Orduval, turning to inspect her closely.

She returned his gaze, her expression bland, her emotions rigidly under control. “There are only two people in the Sudorian system who could penetrate that security.”

Ah, you yourself—and Harald.

“That's not what I asked,” said Orduval.

“I can do it,” Yishna replied, her expression now twisted into an amalgam of pain and anger. “I've been a puppet all my life, and today that ends.” She returned her attention to the screen.

We slid into a narrow bay, where I could see machined parts moving like the internal components of some engine, and hear automatic clamping systems crashing all around us. The sickening lurch of artificial gravity dragged me down, and it felt as if something might be tearing loose below my breastbone. Something else clonked to one side and I heard the explosive roar of air entering an evacuated space—an airlock had attached. I unstrapped and moved back into the small rear cargo space, where the evidence chest lay secured beside some other large object underneath a concealing tarpaulin. Where one corner of this covering had been pushed aside I observed whorled metal studded with crystalline dots like sensor heads, and guessed this was the same object Yishna had so nearly detonated aboard the Brumallian ship.

Stepping out behind me Yishna and Orduval picked up the chest, while I opened the craft's hatch and heaved myself out into a segmented airlock tube that expanded in girth to meet a door larger than the hatch I'd just departed. The controls were simple enough—I'd seen the same on the Fleet ship that originally brought me into this system. I opened it and stepped through.

“Welcome, Consul Assessor,” said the individual standing before me.

I gave him a short bow and said, “Thank you for allowing me to come.”

He was wearing a spacesuit, though with the helmet off and fixed to his belt. So were the two guards standing behind him, but with disc carbines slung in front of them. The primitive utile area we were in smelt of machine oil and hot electronics, and seemed to be used generally as a store for boxes of spare parts—some of them with the lids hinged back to reveal their foamite-wrapped contents. The area was missing a wall on one side and it was possible to see into part of the station's structure, and from there emerged a constant whining and thumping of hydraulics, the metronomic booming of weapons fire, a cacophony of voices, and the familiar grumbling of engines and generators. I scanned up, looking for cameras, but spotted none. I had to wait on Yishna, for she would decide where exactly we must make our first move. I privately wondered if she could manage even that.

“Dalepan,” Yishna acknowledged the man.

“Yishna,” he responded, then to us all, “I hope you will understand that, under present circumstances, there are certain security procedures I must strictly adhere to?”

“Why, is there a problem?” Yishna quipped.

“Consul Assessor, please excuse this.” Dalepan waved one of the guards forward.

I extended my arms sideways. “I have a weapon here.” I nodded down. “No security breach was intended—it was a gift from Chairman Duras.”

The guard halted for a moment, and eyed me, then turned back to Dalepan for guidance. Dalepan nodded once and the guard came forward to search me, relieving me of the weapon I had mentioned. Next he searched Yishna and Orduval, but found nothing at all on them.

“Now the chest,” said Dalepan.

Yishna frowned, then after a moment's hesitation she squatted down beside our ostensible reason for being here. “You'll understand that this chest contains sensitive information.”

Here, then.

From her control baton she sent the code to the lock, while one guard stood watchfully over her. As the lid popped she immediately reached inside. It was smoothly done. The stun-bead shotgun she pulled out had a wide matt-black barrel, and it made a sound like a hammer hitting a lead sheet. The first guard flew up off his feet and hit the rear airlock door. Standing up, she fired twice more, flinging down the other guard, and then Dalepan. She gazed at him for a long moment as impact anaesthetic beads rattled and rolled about the floor, then she shook herself as if the sight had momentarily hypnotised her.

“Okay.” She stooped and removed from the chest a small knapsack that she slung over one shoulder, then shoved the shotgun back into the chest and closed the lid. “Let's get moving.”

Orduval went over to check the three downed men.

“They're fine,” he said. “In the asylum I saw some of the more violent patients being knocked unconscious by these. They'll be out for an hour or so, and if they're lucky they won't suffer concussion.”

Yishna dragged the first guard away from blocking the door, opened it and stepped through. I retrieved my automatic—put it down to a sentimental attachment—and followed her, with Orduval at my heel. We moved on along a wide corridor, encountered a group of personnel moving a lev-pad loaded with munitions, passed open doors through which we could see other staff working on some kind of generator.

“Where are your suits?” someone shouted after us.

“We've only just got here,” Yishna replied, turning.

“Yishna Strone,” said another, then peered at me curiously. “Would you like me to fetch you some suits?”

“No need,” replied Yishna, hurrying on.

We entered another of those curious revolving lifts the Sudorians seemed so fond of and, copying Yishna, I strapped myself down in one of the four seats of the buggy. When we were all in place, it ascended at what to me felt to be about two gravities. I was slick with sweat once the buggy halted and, even though our arrival point was nil gee, I experienced problems propelling myself after the other two.

Centre Cross was impressive, pretty similar to the interior construction of one of our larger Polity ships. I could see people at work in large cabin-like structures poised at the end of multiple jointed cranes. Cables snaked everywhere and equipment was scattered all about. Yishna pointed out one of four caged shafts leading up from the lift nexus to one of the four quadrants of the station, where presumably lay the entrance to one of the cylinders.

“Let me go first.” Orduval led the way into this caged tube.

Yishna eyed me. “Can you manage this?”

“I'd best go ahead of you.”

She waved me on distractedly while opening her knapsack and checking its contents. Inside I knew there was some computer hardware, a selection of cables and the Sudorian equivalent of a limpet mine. As I began pulling myself up after Orduval, I found it increasingly difficult to breathe, as if I was pulling myself through a hundred-per-cent-humidity jungle. Luckily, once moving, I needed to make only a few corrections to my course. I decided then I would slow myself very carefully near the end, since my brittle bones might not withstand an abrupt impact.

“Faster!” Yishna suddenly shouted from behind me.

Orduval accelerated, but then came a vicious smacking and clattering sound from ahead of him, pieces of metal spanging off the cage tube, sparks scattering through the air and fizzing out like welding spatters. He grabbed a nearby bar and jerked himself to a halt. I clipped him in passing and myself entered the impact zone, somehow passing through it unscathed. The firing ceased and Orduval then Yishna quickly propelled themselves after me. Glancing up I saw armed figures in spacesuits descending towards us. We had reached the airlock door leading into the cylinder, where Yishna first input a code using her baton, then abruptly used some other tool to lever up the panel over the electrical locking mechanism.