It was dark now and, checking the time, Var saw that in another couple of hours the automatic broadcast to Argus would recommence. She did not have to be there for it to happen, but maybe there had since been a reply. She returned to work, heaving regolith blocks away from the pile around where she had found the severed pipes. In this rubble she found a picture flimsy still displaying its last image – a bull elephant standing at the edge of a waterhole, some odd fragment of someone’s life, maybe their fantasies. It was an image that made her feel horribly uneasy and which she instantly skimmed away into the darkness, though she did not know why.
By the time she found the other ends of the pipes, which had been crushed right down to the floor, she was feeling utterly weary. Checking the time, she saw that her broadcast had recommenced as of an hour before, and she decided that now was the time to check for any response. Afterwards she would come back out here, for what was the point in squandering her remaining time on sleep?
Var trudged back over to the building, where, even though she could see the message icon flashing on the screen, she calmly took her time in sitting down. After a long contemplative pause, she finally summoned up the nerve to open the message, but in frustration saw it was an audio file, and she had to run an optic from her suit to the console to hear it. Then her brother spoke to her.
Var listened to it twice, then once more to be sure. Damn, the inertia-less drive had worked. The science of the impossible had been made real and the human dream of starships had just turned into reality. And here she was, dying on Mars. Alan had given her hope, but that lasted only as long as she didn’t really apply her mind. Then reality bit in. Even if Argus Station survived the Scourge’s attack on it, and shot across at improbable speed to orbit round Mars, the gravity well would still separate it from her, and the Argus Station did not possess Martian-format space planes. Then hope resurged. Maybe they could use something to drop her some oxygen here. All that would be required was some sort of re-entry capsule and a parachute . . .
She shook her head, because it all seemed too implausible. They were probably fighting their own battle for survival out there, so putting together some way of enabling her to survive would be the last thing on their agenda.
Var stared at the screen, contemplating the grim reality of her situation. Nevertheless there was still a little hope, no matter how small. She edited the message she was sending, adding that she had found some extra air, and telling her brother precisely how long she had left. Then she stood up abruptly, headed outside again, fully aware of how hope could be a dangerous thing.
19
Plasma Weapons
It can be argued that that the billions of Euros spent on trying to develop plasma weapons would not have been expended but for these weapons lodging themselves in the public consciousness, first through science-fiction films, then during the boom in computer games of the twenty-first century. The great problems in propelling plasma at a given target have always been air pressure and power. The second of these, for portable devices, was overcome by the development of high-energy density power storage like nano-film batteries and super- and ultra-capacitors, but the first – air pressure – has always remained a problem. Firing plasma through atmosphere to hit a specific target is like firing a jet of water through the sea: it breaks up, loses coherence, and the ratio between distance and energy requirement has always been an exponential one. To some extent this was overcome by laser-guided electric discharges, remote magnetic lenses and tunnelling acoustic shockwaves, all of which resulted in a portable plasma weapon . . . mounted on a tank. But, in the end, one must sometimes go back to the first purpose of the weapon, which is to kill and destroy, and the plasma-firing tank is substantially less effective in this respect than one firing depleted-uranium Hyex shells – and substantially more expensive.
Argus
‘Sometimes there’s just no other option,’ said a voice behind Hannah.
She turned to see that the Saberhagen twins had joined her group, and felt a sudden deep gratitude for their presence. Hannah herself carried a standard Kalashtech assault rifle, but the twins both carried somewhat complicated-looking weapons that they must have fashioned themselves, along with coils of superconducting cable terminating in standard bayonet power plugs. She had seen a lot of this in Arcoplex Two as the defence efforts became more organized, some clever people having been preparing for just such an occasion.
‘What’s he doing?’ Brigitta asked, nodding along the corridor to where Jasper Rhine had a floor plate up and was concealing something underneath.
‘Booby traps,’ Hannah replied. ‘His Casimir batteries have a high-energy density, so inject a little nitric acid and they go off like grenades.’
‘How does he intend to detonate them at the right time?’ asked Angela, with clinical interest.
By now Rhine had replaced the floor plate. He stood up to press some minuscule object against the wall, before returning towards them with a big bag slung over one shoulder.
‘That’s the clever bit,’ replied Hannah. ‘They’re not activated now, but they will be after we’ve all taken our positions. Once activated, they respond to nearby movement.’
‘But you have a danger of chain reactions – one goes off and they could all go off?’ suggested Brigitta.
‘Not so,’ said Rhine, pausing beside them. ‘All the time and resources spent in developing the machinery of oppression was not wasted.’ He gave a crazy smile and headed off.
‘HAD cells,’ Hannah explained, pointing towards a small metal button on the wall. ‘Human activity detectors were developed to save having readerguns perpetually powered-up. They operate at low power and contain shape-identification software. In a readergun, upon detecting the human shape, they send the signal for the gun to power up. Here the signal is picked up by a micro-relay that opens the acid bottle.’
‘Neat,’ Brigitta opined. ‘But is it enough?’
Hannah didn’t want to reply. She had spoken with Saul and he had been quite blunt: they were outnumbered and unless he could find an efficient way to use his own particular talents, they would inevitably lose. And, as he had told Langstrom, the defenders would now be fighting not to win but to buy time. She just hoped Saul had found some way for them to survive this, and was ashamed to admit to herself that she did not care how savage it might be.
‘Let’s hope so,’ she allowed, studying the rest of her group.
Her assistant James was among them, along with four other lab assistants and two robotics engineers. The latter two, and also two of the lab assistants, carried Kalashtechs like herself and James. One of the lab assistants was just a girl, and it would have been nice to tell her to go away and hide herself, but in the end, if they lost here, she would be treated no better by their attackers than any of the adults. The remaining two lab assistants held a sidearm each, while one carried a handheld missile-launcher and the other carried a tube of the ring-shaped magazines this weapon used.