‘Okay,’ said Hannah, ‘Alan managed to take a few seconds out of his busy schedule to organize our defence here.’ They smiled in response; even before Saul had been shot, it had become a standing joke that if he took any more than a few microseconds to think about something, then he was giving it deep and intense thought. ‘The area we have to defend extends from the end of that corridor’ – she pointed to where Rhine had been laying his booby traps – ‘through to the rear of the factory.’ She pointed the other way, along the corridor, to where it flared then terminated against a pair of wide concertinaed doors that opened on to the robotics factory. Then she began walking towards them.
Reaching the doors, she stabbed a finger against the panel to one side of them. They began sliding open to reveal the factory floor of Robotics within. All the machines were shut down now, after that mad rush to get as many robots as possible finished ready in time for the attack.
‘So what have you brought to the party?’ Hannah asked, indicating Brigitta’s unusual weapon with a nod.
Brigitta held the object up. ‘When we thought they could become a threat, we began making something we thought might be useful against the proctors. These comprise arc-heat helium in a Tesla bottle which is fired with what we’ve dubbed caps. They maintain the Tesla bottle around the plasma for about twenty metres, but we’ve only got ten shots each.’
Hannah gaped at the woman. ‘What?’
‘The bottle caps melt in excess of that range, which tends to make the effect even nastier,’ continued Brigitta blithely. ‘At twenty metres, the bolt discharge throws molten metal about too.’
‘So let me get this straight: in your spare time you’ve managed to knock together a couple of plasma rifles?’ said Hannah sharply. ‘As I recollect, the Committee only got as far as reducing them in size so that a tank could carry them, then gave up.’
Brigitta winced. ‘They’re not plasma rifles as such, because the plasma would dissipate over just a few metres, without the caps.’
‘A small point, don’t you think?’ Hannah observed. She was about to ask further questions, but a sound that had been hitherto just a background hum now rose into complete audibility. Hannah recognized the sound of small-arms fire impacting on the outside of the arcoplex, along with the occasional ominous rumble of explosions. The latter worried her more, because the sound must be transmitting through the station’s structure – since vacuum lay outside the arcoplex – and that meant the battle had drawn very close.
‘Let’s get ourselves in position,’ she said.
‘Where do we go?’ asked James.
Hannah repressed the urge to snap at him while pointing out that she wasn’t a soldier, so how did she know? However, none of them was a soldier and she was effectively in charge of this group, therefore it was her responsibility. She needed to think about this with the dry analytical mind of a scientist. The plasma rifles she just could not assess, so decided one should be up here by the doors and one down on the factory floor. The missile-launcher should be up here, too, since the damage it would cause, considering their future survival, would be best wrought outside the factory. Kalashtechs then scattered about the factory, maybe?
‘They’re inside,’ announced one of the robotics engineers, his expression horrified.
Hannah nodded. The sounds had indeed changed, becoming a lot more immediate, the explosions much less muffled and far more vicious.
‘Okay, this is where you go,’ she began.
It took ten minutes to get them all in position, and she felt she had done her best. Perhaps it would have worked out okay if only the attackers had concentrated their assault through the main corridor. They didn’t.
The proctor pulled him from his shoulder and pushed him down. He felt grass underneath his palms, could smell Earth and, unbelievably, he could hear birds tweeting.
‘The birds are distressed,’ declared a wholly terrifying and unhuman voice, ‘they don’t like it when their environment changes so drastically. It is noteworthy how simple creatures will become distressed by such changes.’
Alex pushed himself up, his hands still clenching the grass to stop himself drifting off the ground. He then rose to his knees and looked around. He was in the Arboretum, greenery all around him as if he was clinging to the rim of a well full of it. Trees, shrubs and other plants were familiar to him, on some deeper level, even though he had never seen them in such profusion on Earth. The combination of that atavistic familiarity and being enclosed in a cylinder like this completely screwed his perspective. He had been here once before and hadn’t liked it then. It apparently took people a long time to get fully used to this place.
‘Why am I alive?’ he asked.
The proctor was standing just a few metres away, clad in a survival suit specially altered to fit its huge frame. It was leaning on a long staff made from a scaffolding pole, though it seemed evident, by touch controls on the pole’s surface, that something had been added to the inside.
‘Walk with me,’ it said, its voice seeming to reach down to twist something right inside him.
Alex just stared at the creature’s leathery visored face. The thing spoke perfectly understandable human words, which were yet somehow terrifying. After a moment he managed to summon up the nerve to say, ‘Gecko boots don’t work so well on grass.’
‘Use your toes, foolish man,’ the proctor replied.
Alex grimaced and set about removing his VC suit boots. He then carefully stood up, clenching his toes in the grass. The proctor gave him a short nod and strode away, seemingly unaffected by the lack of anything holding it to the ground. Alex followed, tentatively at first but then with growing confidence. Occasionally he caught hold of a shrub to keep him stable, then did that more cautiously after grabbing at the thorny dark green foliage of a wild rootstock lemon shrub. Within a few minutes they reached one of the section dividers within the Arboretum. Here was where equipment and agricultural chemicals were stored. Beyond this lay a section tiered with concentric floors loaded with hydroponics tanks.
The proctor marched across diamond-pattern metal flooring to a door, its feet still sticking firmly. Alex assumed that the gecko soles of its survival suit allowed this, but then remembered his own recent observation. Gecko soles became swiftly clogged with detritus if used on the kind of natural ground they had just crossed. The proctor must be using some other means to keep itself in place – one Alex couldn’t fathom. He waited until it opened the door and began to step through before launching himself across the intervening metal, catching the door handle and pulling himself through. The thing didn’t even turn round, didn’t seem at all concerned that he might be trying to attack it. Alex now pulled his boots back on, then followed the proctor further inside.
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he probed. ‘Why am I alive?’ He meanwhile kept his head dipped, tensing up as if the reply might cause him pain.
‘We go this way,’ the proctor merely replied, striding for metal stairs that zigged and zagged towards the axis of the Arboretum cylinder.
Alex contained his frustration and considered what he should do next. He wasn’t stupid enough to think he had a chance of escaping this creature, but at some point it might well leave him, then he could get involved in the fighting – the sounds of which were rapidly impinging. The proctor led him into a storage room where, in an area cleared amidst towers of plastic crates, an armed group of station residents – most of whom worked here, judging by their dress – were holding some kind of meeting.