Half a gravity of thrust cut horizontally through Tech Central, and her chair shot backwards to crash into a console. Glancing aside, she saw the nearest technician actually pinned against the window above his console. Others were thrown from their seats, chairs and people all falling in the same direction, though Smith managed to stay put, clinging to his console like a drowning man grabbing a piece of floating timber. All of Tech Central seemed to tilt right over onto its edge, so that what had once been the floor now rose vertically like a wall.
With a surge of horror, Hannah realized what Saul was doing. Having recognized the hopelessness of their position, he must now be following through on Malden’s plan. The space station would burn on its way down, and Tech Central would be scoured off the asteroid by re-entry fire. She gazed back up towards the main screens, just as Smith lost his grip and tumbled back across the control room, crashing down somewhere over to her right. The first screen just showed the glare of fusion flame, the image feed breaking up into squares as the camera sourcing it began to fail. The middle screen had blanked completely, whilst the remaining screen still focused on Messina’s invading forces.
In the time it took Hannah to realize that the half-gravity currently jamming her up against one side of Tech Central would be affecting all the troops outside too, the first of them went flying past outside. She turned her head to track his progress, as he began leaving a vapour trail, before disappearing in light too bright to gaze at directly. He must have been one of Langstrom’s men, for they were closest.
Returning her attention to the screens, she watched the fate of Messina’s forces. Many of them kept slamming into beams between the lattice walls, others bounced out into space, away from the station. There must have been screaming, and if Hannah had been tuned in to a radio channel she might have heard it. Then came the rumbling of multiple impacts all around.
‘Oh my God!’ someone cried, as a soldier from outside slammed into a forward window, his split glove issuing vapour as he slid across it, smearing blood, then dropped out of sight.
It was raining soldiers. Men and women who had been preparing for an attack in practically zero gravity now found that what had once been a long gap they needed to propel themselves across had turned instead into a drop of two kilometres. Trying to grab hold of vacuum, yet more figures hurtled past Tech Central, many of them jetting air from torn VC suits. Equipment rained past, too: heavy guns, circular shields, packs of ammunition. It lasted for just a minute, but by the time it ended, most of the attackers and many of the defenders had simply vanished, burning up inside that bright light that lay behind.
‘You have achieved your aims,’ said Smith, out loud. He stood upright, parallel with what was once the floor, his feet on a window and his gaze now fixed on the same screens Hannah had been watching.
He continued, ‘It would perhaps be wise for you now to shut down the Traveller engine which, it appears, I cannot gain access to.’
‘I have not entirely achieved my aims,’ Saul replied through the intercom.
‘At its present vector,’ said Smith, ‘Argus Station might eventually crash into the Moon, but if you shut down the engine now, we should be able to reinsert ourselves into orbital position just by using the steering thrusters.’
‘In actual fact I can no more shut the engine down than can you. It will follow its firing program,’ said Saul. ‘You’re also wrong on two other points: first the station will not crash into the Moon, but in twenty-four hours it will slingshot round it, putting it on an optimum course for Mars; and, second, I have no intention of letting you or Chairman Messina get anywhere near Earth ever again.’
Hannah felt some relief that Saul wasn’t intent on crashing the station into Earth, but otherwise, had their situation improved? Though many invading troops had been incinerated out there, some would have survived, and would still be armed – and against them, there was only him.
Saul unplugged the optic from his temple. The interference caused by the EM output of the fusion engine reached even as far as the space dock, but he overcame it easily by running programs to clean up the data and by double-layering the code he sent. After ensuring that their programming was capable of handling the half-gravity, he summoned three of the spiderguns, whilst dispatching the other two down towards Tech Central. Viewing through their sensors, he observed survivors clinging to the intersecting beams within the station ring, but now there were only a few of them. Messina’s force had for the most part been approaching the station core sheltering behind those discs, so had necessarily distanced themselves from the structural beams, and that had killed them. A larger proportion of Langstrom’s force had survived, having built armoured hides about junctures of beams. Saul estimated he had killed about three hundred and fifty of Messina’s force in all, which left about fifty; and about seventy of Langstrom’s, leaving only thirty to forty. That was a massive slaughter, but he felt as much concern for them as they would have felt for him. He even considered instructing the robots to kill the rest of them, but relented.
First he successfully penetrated Langstrom’s military com, which involved working through some tangled coding, then – already in the com network Messina’s troops were using – he broadcast a message to both sides.
‘Those of you that can hear me,’ he said, ‘should be aware that I am now in control of the spiderguns. You will first abandon all your weapons then, as acceleration cuts, as it will do in three minutes, Messina’s remaining troops must withdraw towards the station ring, whilst Smith’s force will head back to their barracks. Failure to obey these instructions means I will be forced to use the spiderguns. That is all for now.’
He immediately picked up on numerous minor communications: soldiers trying to find their commanders, others pleading for medics, many others complaining that they were in no state to go anywhere. Then arrived com traffic from Messina’s space plane, as some general instructed the troops to ‘maintain their positions’ and ‘retain their weapons’. At which point Saul decided it was time to butt in.
‘So you are actually instructing all your men to commit suicide,’ he said, making sure that his words – and any replies – would be heard by all the troops outside.
‘Who is this?’ demanded the general.
‘I think I have been here before,’ snapped Saul, ‘and I’ve no patience with it any more. Here is the position: Argus Station is presently set on a course away from Earth, and while it is under acceleration, all your space planes will remain locked down. I have destroyed the majority of your force and I now control your spiderguns. If your troops do not withdraw immediately as instructed, I will send the robots to kill them all. After that, I’m coming for you personally. I can detect that some of the nerve gas is still available, and a little bit of that released inside your plane should conclude this matter.’
‘This is Alessandro Messina speaking.’ The Chairman’s voice was instantly recognizable from so many broadcasts back on Earth. ‘And you, I take it, are Alan Saul?’
‘I certainly am,’ said Saul, rather distractedly.
The two robots Saul had sent off to Tech Central still had half a kilometre to go. When some of Langstrom’s men opened fire on them, their reply was brief and wholly destructive: five human beings converted into flying chunks of flesh interspersed with shreds of VC suits, all raining down on the asteroid beneath. This fusillade had also turned their gun to unrecognizable scrap, but now Smith was moving hundreds of station robots in between the pair of spiderguns and their destination.