Disappointment punched her in the gut, but her internal organism wouldn’t stop. She brushed everything clear of the compressed-air bottle, exposed the top of it completely. The screw-in assembly had been torn out of its thread, leaving the dark eye of a hole. She stared at it, unable to accept what she was seeing. She turned and searched around until she found a length of reinforcing rod she had cast aside earlier, returned to the bottle and inserted it into the hole. It went right down inside the bottle and she rattled it around, a tinny sound carrying to her ears through the thin air. Then she dropped the rod into the bottle and stepped back, reality catching up.
Weariness hit her hard as she climbed out of the excavation. Her head-up display showed that she had maybe two hours left now, and her likelihood of finding anything to extend her time beyond that was minimal. Stepping away from rubble to dusty ground, Var considered going back into the intact building and leaving some message for her brother, but could not see the point. She walked over to a nearby boulder, slumped down and rested her back against it.
Time to die, now.
21
Technology Makes You Free!
The attitude of Committee delegates to technology was always an ambivalent one. They wanted medical technology advanced just as fast as possible so that they could stay healthy and live for as long as possible, but did not want it on general release because that would inevitably exacerbate the world’s population problem. They wanted expert computer systems through which to administrate the world, yet artificial intelligence terrified them for it might displace them. They wanted fast and reliable robots operating in their factories and their Inspectorate, but desired utter control over the experts that built and programmed them. They wanted all the benefits that technology could give, because technology is power, and they wanted that power only for themselves. They micromanaged, controlled and suppressed technology so that, in the end, that product of human genius, intended to free people from the exigencies of the world around them, instead enslaved them.
Argus
The shuddering that ran through the station, as if it had been hit by a gigantic club, was slowly diminishing. Gazing up through one of the few intact windows of Tech Central, Saul watched the cause of it: the Scourge steadily retreating. Why it had pulled away was debatable, because it began to leave only shortly after he had transmitted the codes to the implants of every soldier and every crewmember of that ship, and it struck him as unlikely that they could so quickly have realized what was about to happen.
‘Nearly done,’ said Langstrom over radio, ‘but it’ll take hours to repressurize.’
Langstrom and his soldiers had found replacement windows in a nearby storeroom and were now installing the last of them. This wasn’t Saul’s greatest concern. If everything worked out as expected, then all those aboard the Scourge should be dying or already dead. But the fact that the ship had left so early inclined him to think that maybe something else was going on. He could no longer assume that they were all dead, and it was quite possible that the ship would become a severe danger. For soon it would be able to deploy its weapons again and, quite likely, any survivors aboard it would not be firing merely disabling shots.
‘Judd, tell me you’re ready,’ said Saul, as he turned away, carefully stepping over a corpse, then nudging a second floating carcase out of his path as he came to stand before the newly installed controls.
‘Repairs are complete,’ the proctor replied.
Saul peered into the transformer room and noted how its occupants were clearing up any free-floating detritus. However, Judd was not among them. Searching further, Saul found the proctor standing, surrounded by corpses, in a nearby corridor. Obviously Judd had found it necessary to deal with an attack occurring there too.
He now surveyed the rest of the station. A lot of damage was evident and, though firing up the Rhine drive did not result in acceleration stresses, once it closed down, the station would be subject to gravitational stresses – he hoped. He checked the drive itself and found it undamaged and completely up to speed, as it had been for an hour or more now. Mentally taking control of the consoles ranged in front of him, he began routing his way round some damage to control optics, inputting his own astrogation calculations and conclusions. Then, with a much smaller part of his mind, he started to check on people he primarily cared about.
‘Le Roque,’ he said.
Technical Director Le Roque was in what had once been the Political Office. Saul located him crouching over the corpse of Girondel Chang, and felt a twinge of regret. Le Roque looked up, his expression grim. Reviewing cam data, Saul saw what had happened there. Le Roque and others had been defending the place from multiple penetration-lock attacks but had been unsuccessful. Many of them were killed and the remainder taken prisoner. Chang, along with four others, was killed while their guards were dying from the Scour and began firing their weapons in panic.
‘What is it?’ Le Roque asked.
‘I need the station as secure as you can get it, and as fast as you can,’ Saul replied. ‘Use your secondary control room there to do so.’
‘I’ll need to assess the damage.’
‘We’ve no time – the Scourge has detached itself from the station and could fire on us at any moment. Just do the best you can.’ Meanwhile Saul issued instructions to his robots, sending them to cover those places he considered weak. He was ordering them to make repairs even as human blood dried on their metal skins.
Le Roque stood up wearily and began summoning people to help him as he headed off. Saul felt cruel at pressuring him right then, for he knew, from the records, that Chang and some of the others who had died alongside him were Le Roque’s friends. But, then, their whole situation was cruel, and spending time being sensitive might get them all killed.
Hannah he found in the surgery attached to her laboratory. She was operating on someone who seemed to have been shot an unfeasible number of times to be still alive. Saul decided not to distract her.
In the main laboratory, Brigitta, Angela and others – all of whom appeared to be wounded themselves – were working on the walking wounded or else doing what they could for others more seriously wounded, just to keep them alive until they could go under the knife. Throughout Arcoplex Two, groups were collecting the wounded, but mostly people were just loitering about, looking stunned, or nursing their own wounds. It looked like a slaughterhouse in there, but there were few places on board that did not look similar. The enemy attack had taken a terrible toll.
It took Saul just an instant to count the living and discover exactly what that toll was. Upon its arrival here at the Asteroid Belt, the station had had a population of just over two thousand. Now it contained over three and a half thousand, but nearly two and a half thousand of those were corpses. Nine hundred station personnel had died. Eleven hundred and sixty still remained alive, though how long about fifty of them would survive was debatable.