The Departure (35 page)

“So we’re fucked,” replied Braddock, equally blunt.

She quickly stripped off her spacesuit and undersuit, hardly noticing Braddock’s embarrassment as he turned away. She then propelled herself through into the surgeon’s lock, quickly donning surgeon’s whites and forgoing the decontamination process. Now in utterly familiar surroundings, she connected up a pressurized blood feed to her patient, before administering a general anaesthetic through it. While Saul was relaxing into unconsciousness, she began sifting through the tools she required, picking up a wound ring of the appropriate size.

“We need him awake again as quickly as possible,” warned Braddock, from the other side of the isolation window, having obviously located the intercom. “If Smith discovers he’s out of it, his people will be down on us in a second.”

“No, really?” said Hannah, sarcastically.

She stripped away the dressing to expose the weeping hole in Saul’s side, then folded up the wound ring and inserted it into the gash, before opening it out to leave a neat round hole into his body, out of which oozed black, jelly-like blood. Next she swung over the microsurgery unit and positioned its slow-worm head in the mouth of the wound. The head pushed its way in, tentatively exploring inside the patient’s body, suction pipes slurping as they cleared out yet more congealing blood or leaking fluids, while sensors mapped out the internal damage to its screen, for her inspection.

The knife had penetrated his side, slicing straight through his liver and pancreas, and, just missing the splenic artery, had twisted upwards and into the lobe of one lung. The comprehensive damage ended only a couple of centimetres from his heart, but, even so, the lesser vena cava had been nicked. Starting with that vein, Hannah began repairing the damage, working the microsurgery head gradually back out, cauterizing and gluing on its way. Most of this repair work could be left to automatic programming now the damage was mapped into the machine’s processor, but she did pause it a couple of times to inspect the situation more closely. This was all wrong, she soon realized. Some of the damage within Saul had already begun to heal up, and checking his bloodwork, she found it flooded with unassigned stem cells and other elements she just did not recognize. And she felt renewed awe of the man he had once been.

The work continued until the slow-worm head slipped obscenely out of the wound carrying the wound ring with it. Micro-manipulators then drew it closed, the astringent smell of wound glue arose, then a brief sound like that of a fingernail being run along the teeth of a comb as the surgical head stitched in a neat row of staples just to make doubly sure.

“I’m done now,” said Hannah.

“That was quick,” remarked Braddock.

“Left untended, a normal person would probably have died quickly,” she explained flatly as she folded the microsurgery head back down into its sterilizer. “He was already beginning to heal up.”

“Heal up?” Braddock echoed, puzzled.

“His predecessor’s nano-viral fix.”

“Nano-viral fix?” asked Braddock. “Predecessor?”

“It’s a long story,” she replied.

“Right,” Braddock snarled, obviously annoyed. “So what happens now?”

“You think I know?” Hannah spat back.

She shifted the microsurgery unit away from the gurney, then headed over to the drug dispensary. There she tapped her requirements into a touch screen, and waited while it buzzed and hummed to itself. Shortly a drawer emerged, holding three loaded syringes: one containing a counter-agent for his anaesthetic, the second a mix of sugars, antishocks, viral and bacterial applications, the third a wide-spectrum stimulant package. She injected just the counter-agent and waited.

Saul lay utterly still for a short while, then suddenly jerked, his left hand rising to touch the wound in his side. He opened his eyes and licked his lips, then slowly sat upright, using his arms to lever himself up. Just as well, because straining his stomach muscles didn’t seem like a great idea right then. For a moment Hannah assumed that the chilly distance of his expression was due to the drugs, then she realized that he was back inside the station’s computer network.

“The pain…has gone,” he slurred. “And I can see again.”

See?

He reached up and probed his forehead, closed his eyes and for a moment fell utterly still. Then abruptly his eyes reopened.

“Unbelievable,” he said, the slur vanishing from his tone.

“What is?” demanded Braddock from behind the glass, before peering suspiciously at the door behind him, cradling his machine pistol even closer.

“The Argus satellite system,” Saul explained, shaking his head slowly. “There are seven thousand satellites in all, of which only ten per cent are functional. I’ve just managed to achieve a limited penetration, but that’s enough to interpret how it’s intended to run.”

Saul carefully swung his legs off the gurney, then didn’t appear strong enough to proceed any further, besides which, the pressure feed was still plugged into his arm.

“How, then?” Hannah asked, as she uncapped each in turn of the remaining two syringes.

“All queued up and ready for mass slaughter,” he continued. “But in the typically fucked-up way of any operation run by government.”

“How fucked up?” asked Braddock.

“The satellites can pick up ID implant signals and target individuals, but what criminal or revolutionary ever sticks to the same identity?”

“True enough.”

“So they tried recognition systems.” Saul glanced across at him. “The satellites all possess high-definition cameras capable of reading the writing on a cigarette packet from orbit. The images they obtain can then be run through complex recognition systems—the aim being to target selected individuals.”

“Yeah, and so?

“A slight problem is that such recognition systems are keyed to a human’s face, not to the top of his head.”

“You’re shitting me.”

Hannah held her syringes ready. “So that means the Committee’s dream of being able to identify and eliminate single insurgents from orbit is still very much a dream?”

“It is, but governments never let go of a bad idea.”

Saul finally pushed himself away from the gurney, standing up for a moment, still wobbly. In Earth gravity, he would already have been flat on the floor. Hannah stepped forward to squeeze the larger syringe into the pressure feed plugged into his forearm. Then she swabbed his biceps before injecting the smaller syringe, containing stimulants. Saul watched this procedure with a kind of impatient detachment.

“So what’re they using now?” Braddock asked.

“A rather less specific option called DAS.”

As the stimulants began slowly kicking in, Saul straightened up and began to look marginally more alert. He gazed around the surgery, eyed the blood pooled on the gurney for a moment, then turned back to meet Hannah’s gaze. He gave a nod of acknowledgement. “Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it,” she replied. “It wasn’t exactly brain surgery.”

He managed a grin, but it seemed an expression delivered by rote.

“Is that portable?” He was pointing at the pressure feed—a device positioned on the side of the gurney, into which square blood packs were plugged like ink refills.

Hannah detached the object from the gurney and held it up.

“We need to get into Tech Central itself.” He reached out for the pressure feed, took it and tucked it under his arm.

Exiting the aseptic surgery was less of a problem than actually getting into it, though a little screen did flash up a warning about them taking contaminated clothing outside. After she had helped him pull on a pair of disposeralls, cutting through one sleeve so as to feed the pipes through, Hannah overrode this warning and they moved outside to join Braddock. Now that Saul was mobile she could see how the sugars and stimulants were kicking in faster and how he propelled himself purposefully towards the door. But on gecko boots, Braddock got there ahead of him, opened the door and helped Saul to make his way through.

This display of oversolicitousness annoyed Hannah. She understood how their lives now depended on Saul, but there seemed more underlying Braddock’s behaviour than that. It seemed the soldier had found someone new to serve.

Once in the corridor outside, Braddock asked impatiently, “What the fuck is DAS?”

“Defined Area Suppression,” Saul replied, flicking his gaze towards the robot that had carried him here. “The entire planet has been segmented into a grid whose smallest area measures about a kilometre square. Feed a square number of the grid into the system, and the satellites will burn anyone found inside it. Even now, data is being uploaded from the surface to define those places on Earth that are being sectored: five square kilometres here, seven there, and ten over there. In fact, sectoring has been worked on the basis of the grid already present in the computer system here—which means they’ve been planning to depopulate those sectors for some time.”

Hannah absorbed this in silence and looked away. She wasn’t sure why he felt the need to repeatedly drive home the murderousness of the Committee. Perhaps to justify the actions he himself intended to take?

Saul turned to Braddock. “Agricultural land is also covered, as are large areas of the sea, since government vessels broadcast their position on a particular frequency and won’t be targeted. Someone has also been feeding in masses of data related to tenement and office blocks, houses, reservoirs, universities, schools, specific streets…basically any area or structure that can be comprehensively ‘defined.’” He almost spat the last word. “I guess this ensures that the Inspectorate can more easily call in a strike.” He paused, his gaze swinging back to Hannah. “They’ve gone one step up on the pain inducers. With this system up and running, the next riot would end quickly—and that
burning pain
would be real.”

She could see his anger, which seemed to flare out of his red eyes. She might have felt that such
human
emotion should make him appear to be more human, but it seemed to expose something unhuman in him, instead. Noise behind, then, and she glanced over her shoulder to see the construction robot back up on its feet, turning round in the corridor and heading away.

“What happened with Smith?” she asked.

“I think he is definitely stronger than me, but I managed to catch him by surprise.”

“But then he surprised you?”

“Yes.” Saul pressed a hand against his side.

“Can you defeat him?”

“I don’t know. I stuck his own knife back in him, and he ran.”

“That’s not the answer I was looking for.”

“It’s the only one I can give.”

14

SCRAP MARS

A question that has often been raised is: “What interest does the Committee have in Mars?” To which the answer has to be that in the beginning it had no interest at all. The early Mars missions were part of a project jointly pursued by the Asian Coalition and Pan Europa; an affirmation of the ties that eventually led to the creation of the Committee itself. However, as the Committee increased in power, some of the delegates initiated a sequence of moves to scrap the Mars project—one such being arguably the reason why the first base, in Valles Marineris, failed. However, more far-sighted Committee members kept the whole project going because, utilizing data produced by assessment and focus groups, they came to the conclusion that the Mars missions could ultimately lead to a tightening of their control over Earth. The project’s infrastructure would enable them to obtain crucial metals from the asteroid belt, which in turn could provide the basis for a space-based industry large enough to construct the Argus satellite network. Beyond this, they had little interest in the red planet, though one discussion point was mooted: if travelling to Mars became an easy option, it might become useful as a prison planet.

ANTARES BASE

“I see,” said Ricard, “that you now have entered Hydroponics, which is one of the most critical areas on this base. Doubtless you have also murdered my two men stationed there. Be assured that by threatening our food supply, you cannot hold the people of this base to ransom.”

“Speaking for the crowd again,” observed Var.

They looted the two corpses but, disappointingly, this provided them with only two machine pistols and five clips of plastic ammunition. It seemed that even Ricard hadn’t thought it wise to arm guards located inside Hydroponics with weapons and ammo capable of penetrating the geodesic dome.

“He’ll be sending his men soon,” Lopomac warned.

“He can’t send all of them.”

The public-address speaker system now emitted a feedback whine, and Ricard started speaking again, but this time without the echo in the background. Obviously he was now addressing them directly, rather than including the whole base.

“So, Var, what will you do now?” he began. “I have six highly trained Inspectorate personnel here with me, and I’ve provided them with antipersonnel grenades, and Kalashtek assault rifles, along with a crate of ceramic ammunition. I also have all the rest of the base personnel locked up in the Community Room, many of whom are friends and associates of yours.”

Var noticed the com icon flashing down in one corner of her visor. Ricard wanted to talk to her privately, but what really was there to say?

“He’s in Hex One, right now,” observed Carol.

“He must have loaded up a crawler and taken it round,” suggested Lopomac.

Var had perhaps underestimated Ricard, having expected him to stay hidden in the safety of Hex Three.

Ricard continued, “By my estimation, you yourselves must possess some weapons—mostly plastic ammunition and, I see from the base manifest, maybe one seismic charge. You have two choices now. One is that you rebalance the atmosphere in Hydroponics, then, once the bulkhead doors can be opened, you come at us through the adjoining wing—where my men will be waiting for you. Your only alternative is to exit via an airlock and try to gain access in some other way. However, the second shepherd is waiting outside for you, and it is now adjusted for shredding rather than capture mode. You might even get lucky with the one seismic charge you possess, but I doubt that, since our robot is now broadcasting local EM interference so that any radio detonation signal simply won’t work.”