The Line of Polity (42 page)

"They'll hold for maybe two days. After that, Lellan and her traitors will have control."

"We could use the fleet to bombard them from orbit," Loman suggested.

Aberil shook his head. "Much as the idea appeals, that would mean our effectively losing the surface of the planet. The only weapons the fleet possesses for direct bombardment from orbit are atomics, and Lellan's forces are already well into the croplands and getting near to the city and spaceport." He hesitated. "Though, should circumstances permit..."

Loman walked to one of the long overstuffed sofas and sank down upon it. "Then what do you suggest, brother?" he asked.

Aberil replied, "Our soldiers have spent time enough in
Charity,
training for Amoloran's ridiculous schemes. Their purpose has always been military landing and limited ground warfare. So let's use them for that."

"There will be objections," said Loman. "Many would call this a police action and beneath the dignity of soldiers who were essentially trained to attack the Polity."

"Then by their objections they will reveal themselves as showing loyalty to a dead Hierarch rather than to yourself — and to God. The soldiers themselves will not object, and they are the most important factor. Other objectors — perhaps some of the officers coming from the high families — can visit the steamers should they feel their objection strongly enough. But I suspect they won't."

Loman studied his brother as he stood with his hands slack at his sides, and his expression and entire mien without animation. "Very well," said Loman, "I gave you the title First Commander, and now you will use it. Get your men out of
Charity
and down to the surface. Use them to destroy our enemies." Sending to the doors again Loman had them already opening behind his brother. The fleeting expression that crossed Aberil's face was almost like pain, as he turned abruptly and departed. Loman watched the doors close again, and once more reached out across the realms of the
Gift
and wondered how closely he could grasp control of them and make them his own, as he had done in this physical realm.

With something of bemusement, Thorn sat himself down in the rim of a huge balloon tyre belonging to one of the ATVs, and removed the helmet of his uniform, dropping it over the barrel of the pulse-rifle he had already propped against the tyre. The infantry — mustering to follow the four tanks once this nearby tunnel was ready — were similarly armed and uniformed as himself. Thorn was reminded of like occasions in his past, even before his Sparkind days, and before he had removed his uniform and sloughed away some of the apparent clean morality of straight face-to-face combat. Within him was the temptation to just go with these men and women, to shrug at responsibility and just obey orders, but he could not do that. His Sparkind training and his subsequent training as an ECS agent had made him, surprisingly, more moral, and more inclined to look for the really dirty jobs to do. It had also been his experience that they were never too difficult to find.

"Agent Thorn, reply please."

The voice from the helmet was tinny, but recognizably that of Polas, the man in the rebels' operations room. Thorn again donned the helmet, levering its side-shield, with contained transceiver and other military tech, down into position.

"Thorn here," he spoke into the mike just to one side of his mouth.

"I've sent those co-ordinates you required. They'll be in there as message number six. All other messages relate to the ground attack."

"Okay," said Thorn, reaching up and pressing one of the touch-pads on the side-shield. With a low whir, a rose-tinted visor slid down from the rim of the helmet. On one side of this, a menu was displayed in the glass.

"Cursor," Thorn said, and a red dot appeared at the centre of his vision, and tracked with the subsequent movement of his eyes. Looking to the menu he selected
Messages,
and kept one eye closed until the dot flashed into a cross. Upon opening his eye, ten messages were displayed, but rather than go to the one Polas had sent he opened some others at random. The message 'Medtech personnel are reminded that ajectant will be available from the manufactories now being set up in PA fourteen, and that all ATV ambulances must carry at least four cartons for distribution amongst the surface workers' he thought was in amusing counterpoint to 'Second and third hand-assault weapons are now available in PA twelve — these are for distribution amongst those field workers prepared to fight.' It seemed that the cargo being unloaded from
Lyric II had
brought succour and death in equal proportions. He now went to message six: 'Lander came down at these co-ordinates'. Thorn ignored the co-ordinates and went straight to the
Go to Map
prompt below it. The craft had come down in the wilderness two hundred kilometres from this particular cavern, and though the map was detailed, the contour lines, colours, and biblical names gave him no idea of what might lie between him and it.

"Trooper Thorn," said a grating voice.

"Off," said Thorn, and the visor snapped back up into his helmet. He looked up at the old Golem, Fethan, behind whom stood the girl Eldene. Both of them wore the same combat gear as himself. He noted that the girl's fingers were white on her pulse-rifle, as if she was frightened that someone might take it away from her. Thorn doubted this — he had already seen kindergarten infantry troops younger than her.

"That's something I haven't been called in a while," said Thorn at last.

"Something you
were
called, though," said Fethan.

Thorn stood up from the rim of the balloon tyre and inspected him. That Fethan was a machine had been evident from the first — him being the only one of Lellan's party not requiring breathing apparatus — but Thorn was now beginning to wonder just what sort of machine Fethan really was. He did not move with that seemingly obdurate disconnection from his surroundings that was the hallmark of all Golem — even the newer ones. Sometimes it was difficult to spot them but Thorn was trained to it and had been used to working with such constructs for much of his life. Fethan, though, moved with more
connection
to his surroundings — as if he knew what it was to have to breathe, to feel his own heartbeat, to know real pain and real pleasure, and not some emulation of it.

"What are you?" Thorn asked abruptly.

Fethan grinned, exposing the gap in his front teeth.

He held up two fingers. "I'll give you two guesses."

Thorn considered what those two guesses should be. "Either you're a memplant loading to a Golem shell, or you're a cyborg. I would guess at the latter."

"Correct first time," said Fethan, lowering his hand.

"Then," said Thorn hesitantly, "you have been around for a while. I don't think anyone has gone cyborg for the last hundred years."

"Maybe," Fethan replied, obviously reluctant to volunteer further information about his own history. "Now, tell me, you're going to find out what's going on with this lander Dragon was carrying, ain't you?"

"I had considered that," said Thorn cautiously.

Fethan stepped close to one side of Thorn and slapped a hand down onto the thick foamed-neoprene tyre of the ATV.

"Then we'll be needing one of these," he said.

"I don't think Lellan would appreciate one of these vehicles being taken and, incidentally, what's your interest?"

"Lellan's interest, in fact. She took to heart your comments about Dragon, and she wants to be certain it's dead. I'm to head out there to make sure. And where Dragon came down is not far from where that craft came down. Two birds with one stone you might say."

"Yeah, you might," Thorn replied.

The autogun tower opened up with a staccato rattling, and Proctor Molat swore unremittingly after jumping up startled and banging his bald pate on the corner of his office cupboard. It took him a moment to realize just what he was hearing, as the last time those guns had fired had been during a test, so long ago, Molat recollected, that he still had thick black hair on his head. Flipping up his breather mask he rounded his desk — his feelings about leaving the stack of paperwork there, and the reasons for leaving it, somewhat ambivalent — yanked open the sealed door, and stepped out into the grey day. Only to have that day turned terribly bright when the autogun tower disintegrated in a ball of light.

"
Muster!Muster!
" commander Lurn bellowed over aug channels. "
We are under attack!
"

Proctor Molat grimaced at that: how incredibly observant of Lurn. He glanced over to where some soldiers were setting up a gun on the embankment to the right of the burning tower, and observed aerofans spiralling up into the air in the eastern section of the compound, shortly followed by Lurn's two carriers. Arms fire crackled in the air, and other explosions blossomed in the compound as Lurn's forces ran for the embankments, whilst his own armoured vehicles trundled from garages they should have abandoned, in Molat's opinion, as soon as the laser arrays had been destroyed.

"
Molat here,
" he said over the Proctor's channel. "
That you up there, Voten?
"

"
It is, sir,
" replied his lieutenant.

"
What do you see?
"

"
Four heavily armoured tanks coming in from the east.
"

Molat flinched as a wall blew nearby, and something that might once have been a soldier bounced across the ground. Attempting to retain some dignity, he continued walking to where he had last left his own aerofan. Climbing inside it and initiating the lift control, he went on, "
What kind of armament? Anything we haven't got?
"

"
All looks fairly standard to me,
" replied Voten.

Within a few seconds, Molat was high enough to see for himself. He watched one of the tanks spin on its wide treads and spit out a missile that blasted a hole through the earthen embankment, incidentally burying one of Lurn's armoured cars and the small field-gun it was towing. It had always been Molat's worry that when the rebels finally did do something big, it would be with advanced Polity weapons. He was considering how little different was the armament on these tanks from that of Lurn's own forces, when a pulse-cannon opened up from the lead tank down there. To his right he saw one of Lurn's carriers tilt in the air as one corner of it blew away, then slewed sideways and down to obliterate a barracks building. The blue fire continued to stab upwards, and with merciless accuracy began to nail aerofan after aerofan.

Molat hit rapid descent and watched in horror as the fire tracked across towards himself. There was a flash, a sound that seemed to tear his eardrums, and he was clinging to the rail as his aerofan plummeted, tilted sideways, the motor making a horrible whickering noise as of a horse being led to slaughter, and the fans setting up a teeth-rattling vibration as they went off balance. Black smoke was pouring from under the cowling, and the coils were spitting out tendrils of St Elmo's fire. He glimpsed a tank right underneath him, then mud, something belching black smoke, then flute grass. It wasn't instinct that made him jump, just the sure knowledge, from long experience of flying those unstable machines, that either a motor or a fan was about to fly apart.

There seemed to him only half a second before he crashed through flute grass, hit the ground, and penetrated the surface. Up to his waist in the mud below the rhizomes, he glanced back just in time to see his aerofan arc up and suddenly slam down nearby. He was congratulating himself on having survived, when one of the abandoned craft's fans went completely out of balance and disintegrated. Something smashed Molat in the back of his head, almost hauling him out of the ground again before depositing him face-first back into it.

"Any activity?" asked Lellan.

Studying the screen showing a picture transmitted by the probe they had initially sent up to observe Dragon, Polas very quickly and coldly replied, "Fleet ships just out from
Charity
and taking on landing craft and troops."

Lellan allowed herself to feel some relief — perhaps, she thought, this was the relief of the condemned upon discovering it would be the cage rather than the spring pinning over the flute-grass rhizomes. Had that fleet come direct to the planet, without stopping to take ground forces and the means to get them down to the surface, she knew that they would have been in for nuclear bombardment. Such a possibility remained, but it was now just that little bit more remote.

"Did you get that, John?" she asked.

From
Lyric II
, it was Jarvellis who replied, "John's already on his way, Lellan. I'd comlink you through to him, but I know he doesn't like any more of a distraction than having me speaking to him."

"Just so long as he does what is required," said Lellan.

"Have you known him to do any less?" Jarvellis asked.

"Very well," Lellan went on, "what about the transmitter?"

"The U-space transmitter is up and running, and you can patch through at any time. What do you want to do: send your megafile?"

"Yes — send it now."

"Okay, it's on its way," Jarvellis replied. "What about the realtime broadcasts?"

"As soon as you get a reply on the megafile, liaise with Polas and go to realtime. Polity AIs will know what's going on and how best to deal with the information. The ballot we won't get up until the compounds have been taken, but we'll send that as soon as possible."

Lellan cut the connection. There had been no real decision to make: the file documenting two hundred years of Theocracy atrocities, with its depositions and sealed tamper-proof holocordings, would go first, to give News Services and Polity AIs something to get their metaphorical teeth into. The viewing time of that file was something in the region of five thousand hours, but it seemed likely that the first viewers of it — being Polity AIs — would not take so long. Then, as soon as it had been safely received, the rebels would go realtime and ask outright for Polity intervention — their request reinforced by the ballot. But that was for the future; right now she had a battle to organize. She turned her attention back to the screens before her.