The Line of Polity (3 page)

"Skellor's a top-flight biophysicist, highly rated even by an AI like Earth Central, but his methods have always been dubious to say the least. It was rumoured he was using human subjects in some of his experiments, but insufficient evidence was found for any kind of prosecution... or whacking as you so charmingly put it. I think EC was reluctant to act against him because of the possible huge benefits deriving from his research. Now the Separatists have him it's a different matter. He was screwing around with nanotechnology and biological systems — and it doesn't take much imagination to work out what our home-grown terrorists might do with such tech."

"Well, best we resolve the issue," said Gant, unshouldering his multigun and swiftly tapping a new program into its side console.

"
Whacking
Skellor is not an option yet," Cormac told him. "We still don't know if he was kidnapped or went willingly."

"Gotcha," said Gant, clicking the three barrels of his multigun round by one turn, before swapping magazines. He glanced at Scar. "Night work," he explained. The dracoman likewise adjusted his weapon.

"What setting?" Cormac asked.

"Rail," said Gant.

Cormac nodded before moving on. Rather than firing bright pulses of ionized aluminium dust, their guns would now be firing tipped iron slugs; whether those tips were ceramal, hollow, or mercury was a matter of choice. He of course had his own preferred armament. He initiated the shuriken holster strapped on his wrist, and the weapon gave a buzz of anticipation — something he suspected was not in the user's manual. He then drew his thin-gun and wondered just how many Separatists he would kill tonight.

It seemed that his work for Earth Central Security consisted mainly of such killing. Expanding into space the human race brought with it all the traditional troubles of old Earth, and it seemed that all who had once been labelled 'terrorist' now called themselves 'Separatists' as if that would provide their nefarious activities with some cachet. In Cormac's experience they only really wanted wealth and power — as always. This swiftly became evident on any world that seceded from the AI governance of the Polity when, usually, the inhabitants started screaming for the Polity AIs to be brought back in.

"Gant, I want you to spot the tower for me," Cormac said, glancing at the Golem.

Gant grimaced, peered at his own weapon, then shrugged. "Never really aligned it," he said.

With Golem eyes, he had no need of a laser sight.

Cormac turned to Scar. "I take it the sight on your weapon is aligned?"

"It is," Scar grated.

"Well,
you
can spot the tower for us."

Scar gave a sharp nod in reply. Cormac felt that the mask of his suit probably disguised the dracoman's characteristic gnathic grin.

Hot darkness swamped the blue twilight, however through his intensifier it seemed almost daylight to Cormac, but with an odd lack of shadows. In this weird gloaming, the perimeter of the autolaser tower soon became evident. Thinking of other perimeters he had known, Cormac involuntarily glanced over at the dracoman. Scar was obviously fascinated by a curving line of hollowed-by-fire corpses of calloraptors. It was fast becoming apparent to Cormac where the dracoman's interests lay.

Beyond the tower, three geodesic domes had been erected amongst a scattering of low barrack-like buildings, and beyond these the other perimeter towers were just visible. At the centre of this encampment stood a complicated scaffold. It held something canted above the ground so it was possible to see it was a huge flattened spiral of reddish metal, wavering behind distortions like heat haze. The frame cast up by the intensifier had narrowed and centred on one of the domes. Cormac signalled a halt and pointed to the centre of the encampment.

"That thing in the scaffold has to be your target. Skellor is in the dome on the far left," he explained, before squatting down and turning on his suit's comlink. "Tomalon, do you still have a position on us?" he asked.

"I do," came the reply. "You're about two hundred metres in from the edge of the 'ware effect. By my scanning, all that lies beyond you is empty saltpan."

"Scar," said Cormac, nodding to the dracoman, "is going to send his multigun code to you, then range-spot an autolaser tower. On my signal I want you to take it out."

"Understood," replied Tomalon.

"Is the shuttle in position?" Cormac asked.

"In position, yes. It can be with you in five minutes."

"Well, you'll have to wait until we lose that 'ware. There's no telling what else they have in there. Even these autolaser towers are pretty sophisticated, and they're only for the local wildlife. Also, I want Skellor secured before things get... frantic."

"I do know what I'm doing," growled Tomalon.

Cormac supposed he must: you didn't get to be the Captain of a ship like the
Occam Razor
without having some grasp of combat realities. He glanced at his two companions.

"Ready?"

Both Gant and Scar gave him affirmative nods.

"Well, let's get in there then," Cormac said.

Scar raised his multigun and aimed at the tower. He did not fire, but merely held the laser sight on-target and transmitted the required information from his gun up to the ship.

"Acquired," Tomalon told them.

"Hit it," said Cormac.

As painful seconds dragged out, Cormac hunkered down, realizing because of the delay that Tomalon must have fired a kinetic missile rather than one of the
Occam's
beam weapons. He was proved right when fire stabbed down through the tower and it lifted up on a blast. The air-rending sound of the explosion rolled out to them as the tower came apart on the expanding surface of a ball of fire — and disappeared. Globules of molten metal pattered on the ground fifty metres ahead of them, and a dust cloud rolled past them as they rose and ran towards the encampment.

Gant and Scar immediately outdistanced Cormac, as they sped towards the strange object in the centre of the encampment. Now, people were coming out of one of the barracks buildings. Two explosions followed — grenades tossed by Gant — and a man was running and screaming, with most of his suit ripped away. Someone else was turning and pointing a weapon. Observing the shock-absorbing side cylinders and the cable leading down to a belt-mounted power supply, Cormac realized they were using rail-guns here too, though of primitive design. He fired once and that same someone went over on his back, with vapour jetting from his head. Then Cormac was at the wall of the dome. Not far away he could hear the stuttering fire of Separatist weapons, and the sonic cracking of Gant's and Scar's weapons in reply. Over com he could hear Scar growling with enjoyment. To his right: three people running towards him. Something was punching a line of cavities from the plascrete wall of the dome. He drew Shuriken and hurled it. The throwing star shot away, with its chainglass blades opening out in bloody welcome — through one attacker then another, both of them keeling over, a limb hitting the ground here, blood jetting and vaporizing; then, on its return, the third man losing his head before even knowing his companions were dead. From its holster Cormac sent new instructions: a program he had keyed in earlier. Shuriken swooped away from its three dead victims, then hit the wall of the dome with a circular-saw scream. While it was providing this distraction, Cormac used a smart key on the airlock. As he entered, it was to the welcoming light of the explosion that toppled the 'ware device from its supporting scaffold. And Gant's "All yours, Tomalon," coming over com.

A moment's pause as the lock cycled. When the inner door opened Cormac went through, keeping low, and dived to one side, rolled and came up in a crouch, with his thin-gun aimed and ready. To his right, two men and a woman were struggling into environment suits, to the sound of Shuriken's cutting.

"On the floor!"

One of the men started groping for something at his belt, before toppling over with a hole burned in through the bridge of his nose and out through the back of his head. The woman's eyes flicked towards something on Cormac's left. Turn. Someone on a gantry positioned round a silo, aiming a rifle at him. Four shots slammed the marksman back against the silo, then he followed the rifle to the ground.

"I said on the floor!"

The remaining man and the woman obeyed, and Cormac hit the recall on his shuriken holster. The screaming noise stopped and suddenly Shuriken was hovering above him. From behind it came a thin whistling of pressure differential, through the slot it had cut. Checking a readout at the lower edge of his vision, Cormac saw that the atmospheric pressure here was higher than that outside, so there would be no danger just yet of cyanide poisoning for anyone going unsuited in this dome. He keyed another program from the holster menu, and Shuriken advanced to hang threateningly over the prostrate man and woman.

"If you try to get up, you die," he said, coldly.

The two of them stared up at Shuriken, and showed no inclination to move from where they lay. Meanwhile Cormac scanned around to pick up Skellor's trace just beyond the silo. He ran to the edge of the silo and peered past one of the pipes running down the side of it. A plascrete wall cut across in front of him. Inset in this was a wide observation window, and what appeared to be another airlock. Judging by the equipment he could see through the window, the room beyond was a laboratory, so the lock was probably a clean-lock. Checking to either side as he passed the silo, Cormac slammed into the plascrete wall before peering round through the window again. The room was bright and aseptic. Esoteric equipment cluttered workbenches. Cormac identified a nanoscope, a huge surgical robot, cryostasis vessels, and a surgical table holding what appeared to be the corpse of a calloraptor. Cormac slapped a contact charge against the window and stepped away. The charge blew, and its metal disc went clattering across the floor. The glass remained intact until the decoder molecule began unravelling the tough chain molecules of the glass. After a minute the entire window collapsed into powder, and Cormac leapt through.

"Skellor!"

Cormac hesitated before moving beyond the corpse, as now he saw that he had been mistaken in thinking it a calloraptor. He had never seen anything quite like it: greyish veins seemed raised up from the inside, and had a slightly metallic hue; the face was also distorted — much more flattened than a calloraptor's and of a simian appearance — and the forearms were bigger, the claws more like hands. It had also, obviously, been able to walk more upright, and in its ocular hollows gleamed a line of pinhead eyes. He recognized that there was much of calloraptor in this corpse and also something of human being, and surmised that this creature must be the result of some experiment of Skellor's. He moved on and scanned his surroundings further.

There.

Skellor stepped out from behind the insectile chrome nightmare of the surgical robot. The hologram Cormac had studied earlier had not shown a particularly distinguished-looking individual: he was short, muscular, with brown hair and brown eyes. Fanatical as Skellor was about his
work,
he had apparently never bothered with cosmetic alteration, nor any form of augmentation. The latter situation, Cormac now saw, had changed: a crystalline aug curved from the man's right temple, down behind his right ear, and terminated in three crystalline rods that entered the base of his neck. Recognizing just what this device was, Cormac felt inclined to put numerous holes in him right there and then. He restrained himself.

"Cormac, Earth Central Security. I've come to get you out," he said, going for the less confrontational option.

Skellor snorted a laugh, then shook his head. "You're outside your jurisdiction here," he said.

"You're a Polity citizen and you were kidnapped. That puts anywhere you are found inside Polity jurisdiction," Cormac replied.

"Wrong, citizen, I am here of my own free will, and you are over the Line. But I don't suppose that'll make any difference to your actions. The arrogance of ECS has always been unassailable — hence their insistence on hindering my work."

"If I recall the file correctly, the hindrance was regarding your choice of experimental subjects, not of the work itself. The Polity does not prevent research into anything so long as it doesn't impinge upon another individual's rights."

Skellor gestured to a nearby bench, upon which rested a completely sealed chainglass cylinder supported in a ceramal framework that seemed excessive for the task. Inside the cylinder lay a scattering of pinkish coralline objects.

"Perhaps you should ask your superiors about research into items such as those," Skellor said, "should you survive."

As Skellor turned away, something slammed into Cormac's back and bore him to the floor. Cormac shifted as he went down and fired three shots from under his armpit into the assailant behind him. The only response was a grating hiss — then he was hurtling through the air to crash down onto the equipment lying on one of the benches. The creature from the surgical table. After rolling from the bench, Cormac put three shots into the sharp double keel of its chest. The creature opened its three-cornered mouth and hissed again, as something pinkish welled up to fill the holes the shots had made — and it just kept advancing. This time Cormac shot it in the head, putting out some of those pinhead eyes, which paused it for all of a second or two before it caught hold of the bench, and hurled it to one side. Just then, there came a low sucking boom, and a wind suddenly dragged across the laboratory, towing pieces of cellophane and paper. Dome breach — a large one this time. Cormac leapt over the next bench, turned and concentrated his fire on one of the creature's leg joints. Four shots should have blown away enough of its knees to sever its lower leg, yet the limb clung on as rapidly expanding strands of the pinkish substance filled the gaping wounds.

"Right, point taken," muttered Cormac, slapping the recall on his shuriken holster. Shuriken arrived as Cormac was backed up against the wall of the dome, emptying the last of his thin-gun's charge. It took the creature's head off on the first pass, hesitated when it just remained standing, then — with two hatcheting thumps — cut its torso in half at chest level, then curved back through to take away its legs.