Nemesis (57 page)

Mark relaxed. The logical explanation was that Sam had Ash in a coma, though how he’d achieved such a feat remotely he had no idea.

‘Ash’s codes are still active,’ he said. ‘He can’t be dead.’

‘Worry about that cowardly shit later,’ said Zoe. ‘What else do you see? Where’s Sam?’

‘Somewhere I can’t find him,’ said Mark. ‘Which might mean anywhere on the ship I don’t have eyes, or not on the ship at all.’

‘First thing we do when we get back up there,’ said Zoe, her voice quavering with rage, ‘is to rip out that fucking sector security lockout.’

Mark scanned the helm, looking for clues to Sam’s location, and found a live link from their comms array to the black box of the science section. It was feeding data directly from Carter’s only orbital weapons platform.

‘He’s on board,’ said Mark with satisfaction. ‘I can see the feed he’s running. He’s somewhere in Science.’

‘Perfect,’ said Zoe. ‘That sonofabitch thinks he’s so fucking clever. Let’s see how well he does when someone else has the edge.’

Zoe typed madly on her touchboard, her ruined feet apparently forgotten.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Tapping Massimo’s system using those executive codes,’ she said. ‘I’m pinging his orbital support sats and priming two messenger drones.’

‘I thought you said there was no point trying to send any?’ said Mark.

‘That’s right. There isn’t. But Sam doesn’t know that we know that. And he doesn’t know that we know that he’s watching us. Yet.’

Torture had brought out a kind of fierce intelligence in Zoe that Mark could only marvel at. He was glad he was on her good side right now.

While Mark watched, Zoe fired off a messenger drone towards New Panama with no message in it. She kicked in a set of preprogrammed evasives and he watched it twist and flicker towards the out-system in a wake of hard-boiled gravity waves. Sam, or someone on Carter, leapt on it. A cloud of pursuit drones flashed after it within a second of launch. Zoe chose that moment to fire her second drone, this time pointed at the weapons platform.

‘Put a warp drive on anything and it’s a bomb,’ she said. ‘A big fucking bomb.’

By the time Sam’s weapons had retargeted to compensate for the distraction, it was too late. The second drone collided with the platform in a flash.

The robot’s cabin momentarily filled with blinding light. The whole desert briefly went white.

‘Holy shit,’ said Mark. ‘We’re all going to need an hour in the rad tank after that.’

‘Yeah, and I’m going to need some new feet. Now freeze out the comms from the
Gulliver
to New Luxor,’ she said. ‘With luck, the colonists will think Sam has given up on them. He deserves it.’

Mark broke the link with a smile.

‘Now use that iron grip on the ship that Monet gave you,’ she said. ‘Block Sam’s overrides and cut that fucker out of helm-control permanently.’

‘Done,’ said Mark. Sam was caught like a rat in a trap. He couldn’t leave the
Gulliver
, couldn’t take it anywhere and couldn’t tell anyone what was going on, either.

Zoe sagged back into her couch. ‘The immediate threat is neutralised and we have a clear path to the spaceport. This is where you come in, flyboy. We should put the pedal to the metal before the colonists decide to stop us leaving. Can you do that?’

Mark nodded and started the robot back towards the bottom of the river valley.

‘Sure. This thing isn’t fast, but it’s what we’ve got. The biggest problem is there’s only one way up to that plateau and it’s straight up the river valley, which means going through the middle of New Luxor.’

‘Awesome,’ said Zoe. ‘I didn’t like the place anyway. Let’s give it a facelift. And by the way, thank you.’ Her expression melted for a moment, revealing an aching chasm of vulnerability behind her mask. ‘Really, thank you. Never thought I’d need rescuing. Never wanted to.’ Tears crept to the corners of her eyes.

‘You just rescued both of us from a nuke,’ said Mark. ‘Let’s rescue each other.’

She smiled – a little desperately, perhaps, but there was hope behind the smile. Mark started to choke up.

‘And could you find me some more gel-packs?’ she added. ‘If my feet get any worse I’m going to start screaming again.’

‘On it,’ said Mark.

As the robot raced over the border to the New Luxor claim, a warning appeared in Mark’s sensorium, followed by a sequence of urgent messages from Government Tower. Some young bureaucrat’s angry face appeared in a message window.

‘Unregistered Flag vehicle,’ he said. ‘In light of recent hostilities, we are forced to treat your robot’s approach as an invasion. Retreat to your legal claim limit or risk defensive action.’

Mark turned to the closest camera and replied brightly, ‘Hey there, New Luxor border control!’ He couldn’t imagine what he must look like in his scorched and blood-spattered paper smock, with hair full of sealant foam. Scary, hopefully. ‘You shot down my messenger drone! I believe that kind of thing is illegal. And I’m an IPSO Fleet captain, by the way, which means that every attempt to block me will be treated as obstructing an officer in the line of diplomatic duty. And now I’d like to leave your shitty little planet. So I’d appreciate it if you got the hell out of my way.’

‘You can be sure they won’t,’ said Zoe. ‘Sam will have them believing your escape is a death sentence.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Mark.

He brought all of the robot’s forty-eight welding laser stations online and pumped submind attention into their processor cores. When New Luxor fired a volley of police-issue stun-missiles at him, he carved them out of the air. They fell from the sky like dead flies and crumpled under his treads. They weren’t likely to stop a full-sized tower-constructorbot in any case.

Mark reached the end of the valley where a fan of densely packed rock radiated out from the old riverbed. The colonists had paved over part of it with a highway zigzagging back and forth up to the canyon where Government Tower stood. He brought the robot to a halt and moved its upper arms around, testing its balance. He wished he wasn’t driving something built like the lovechild of an old-style rocket gantry and a Hindu god. Anything with a lower centre of gravity or fewer moving parts would have been easier.

‘Why did you stop?’ said Zoe.

‘This thing is enormous,’ said Mark. ‘Plus it’s designed for the flat, which that valley isn’t. We can take out their missiles, no problem, but the wrong kind of gradient will knock us on our ass, and this robot doesn’t have escape pods.’

‘I thought you were the best pilot in human space?’ said Zoe with a wry look.

Mark smiled at her. ‘I am. Buckle up. Put those feet of yours somewhere safe and stable.’

She shifted on her couch, bracing herself.

Mark swung all six of the robot’s arms forward, compensating for the weight distribution with exquisite care as the robot crept up the slope. Its gantries groaned. Metal shrieked and protested all around them. If the colony wanted to take them out, now would be the time to do it. He prayed that they were too stupid to realise this was their moment.

It took what felt like for ever to reach the bottom edge of the town, but for some reason the colonists didn’t attack. Maybe they hadn’t yet figured out just how vulnerable the constructorbot was. Finally, nothing lay between them and New Luxor but a short stretch of printrock and dust.

‘If anyone’s in those buildings,’ Mark said, ‘I’m about to ruin their day.’

The behemoth powered straight for the colony’s outlying domes.

‘Can we drive over those?’ said Zoe. ‘Or will they topple us?’

‘We can’t go around them,’ said Mark. ‘There’s not enough room between the edge of town and that canyon wall. I guess there’s only one way to find out.’

The fragile habitats crumpled and popped beneath Mark’s treads. Gouts of air puffed outwards carrying fountains of sealant. It was, he thought, rather like walking through a waist-deep bath of foam. The ill-kempt parks and transit rails vanished under his wheels.

He kept a link open to the civic network as he pulverised downtown, checking for biomarkers. To his relief, New Luxor had already been evacuated. The only things fleeing from his approach were robots. He exhaled inwardly with relief. While he was ready to fight to get home, he didn’t relish the thought of more murder. The day had already featured enough of that for a lifetime.

A new warning message from the new Luxor government arrived. The same bureaucrat appeared, his eyes dark with rage, sweat on his forehead.

‘Come no further or you will be resisted,’ he snarled into the camera. ‘We’re ready for you now. Don’t test us.’

At the same time, at the far end of the valley, three huge silhouettes hoved into view – a triptych of erector-set kaiju. Mark suddenly understood why they’d let him get up the slope without shooting. New Luxor had broken out its own construction robots, no doubt left over from the Government Tower project. Apparently they wanted a fight. This time, though, they’d picked the right weapon.

‘You’re kidding,’ said Mark.

‘You will not be allowed to approach the spaceport,’ said the bureaucrat. ‘Power down your vehicle and prepare to be arrested.’

‘Not a chance,’ said Mark. ‘Let’s do this.’

17.4: ANN

Ann snapped awake. She lay in their alcove hiding place, face up in the water. The pain in her gut had vanished. She glanced down and found only clear, unbroken skin where her injury had been. Her ship-suit had disappeared and in its place were hundreds of tiny noodle-like rootlets attached to her flesh. They broke when she moved, coming apart like bits of vermicelli.

She looked around frantically and saw Will lying nearby amid another tangle of threads so fine and dense that they appeared almost solid. There had to be millions of them. In fact, Ann couldn’t quite tell where Will started and the roots ended. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. Either way, she had to assume he’d done something to fix her up. She felt stronger and fresher than she had in years.

Ann’s best guess was that Will had found a way to co-opt the biotech in the tunnel walls. An extraordinary achievement, even for him. She reached over to wake him.

[
Stop.
]

Ann froze. It was Will’s voice, but it hadn’t come from his mouth. Instead, it sounded as if it was coming from everywhere. Her skin prickled. She looked around at the tunnel walls for the origin of the sound. It certainly hadn’t come from her implants. So far as she could tell, they were all dead.

[
I’m inside you,
] said Will.

‘
What?
’

[
I’m about to explain,
] said Will, [
but it’s going to hurt, I’m afraid. You need to understand quickly.
]

‘Wait—’ said Ann.

Knowledge poured into her mind like lava through a paper cup. She screamed aloud and slipped back into the water. A second later, she understood. She sat blankly for a while and then wept. A part of Will existed inside her now, intimately entwined – less than a person but more than a SAP. It was the emergent product of a trillion shorthand copies of his mind woven into her body. She’d become a roboteer. She was everything Will had once been and more.

She crouched over and retched at the sense of violation. Despite the gift, a part of her felt sure she’d be better off dead. The privacy of her own mind was gone for ever – mingled with his in some kind of involuntary union. She shivered.

But this wasn’t about her. Not any more. The old Ann had died from a bullet wound. The new one existed for a specific purpose. According to Will’s download, she had thirty days to save the world. Which, allowing for travel time, meant she needed to have done it a couple of days ago.

‘What about you?’ she whispered. ‘What will happen?’

[
I’m fighting the Nems,
] said Will. [
Things are about to get complicated. If I succeed, I’ll fix all this. In the meantime, I apologise for putting myself in your head. The Earth needs saving.
]

‘Understood,’ said Ann. ‘I don’t like it, but I get it.’

She stood, gingerly testing her new limbs. They felt just like the old ones, if a little stronger and more relaxed. She certainly didn’t feel superhuman. She clambered out of the alcove and slid awkwardly down the side of the tunnel to the floor, landing on her behind with a bump. The pain shooting up her spine felt entirely mundane. Ann fought back a wave of self-pity. She’d lost the sanctity of her mind but apparently retained a full capacity for painful humiliation. Great. She started walking.

Not far from their hiding place she found the remains of a firefight. Not the one she’d been wounded in, but a subsequent, bloodier affair between the League and the Nems. Bodies littered the tunnel. Some were human; others had been human once.

Ann stared down at the Nem-altered corpses and took deep breaths. Gone were the kludgy machine hacks. These bodies had been reworked with something like a Spatial’s killtech. She could see it under the skin. Orange growths branched out from the new nervous system to dot their limbs and faces with stiff tangerine bristles. The eyes had been replaced with moist, open organs packed with dozens of tiny lenses. She fought back nausea.

The mutants were dissolving, she noticed. On many of the dead, the extra parts had already turned to mush and begun to slough off onto the tunnel floor.

[
That’s my work,
] said Will. [
You shouldn’t have any problems on the way to the science station now.
]

Ann surveyed the battlefield and felt a kind of empty horror. Events had taken on a significance and a level of impersonal violence that her mind didn’t want to accept.

You knew this was coming
, she reminded herself. Even if the League plan had worked, things would have got ugly.
You signed up for this.

A tinny voice sounded somewhere nearby, breaking her reverie.

‘… ou hear me?’

She froze and looked about until she spotted an active comms unit attached to an overturned scramblerbot with half of its processors ripped out. She righted the vehicle and found the unit clipped to a rider-handle.