‘Var here has already demonstrated extreme ruthlessness,’ said Kaskan. ‘She’ll surely be able to convince Ricard, then it’ll be a straight fight.’
Var suddenly understood what he was doing.
‘No, Kaskan!’
But he had already opened the airlock and stepped inside.
‘I loved Gisender,’ he called back to them. ‘You’ve no idea how much.’
He closed the inner airlock door.
Argus Station
The jagged lights were gone from his eyes, and his head no longer pounded, but that might be as much due to the drugs Hannah had fed him as anything else. Whatever, he must use every second he remained functional.
At that moment, Smith did not seem to be active, perhaps himself lying drugged in some surgical facility, and currently beyond Saul’s ability to locate him. However, already the Committee was responding, and four space planes had been launched from Minsk. They had to be dealt with so, as carefully and as quietly as possible, Saul returned his attention to the systems in Tech Central that controlled the laser satellites. Very quickly he discovered that their security had already been breached. The set-up originally required at least five members of the Committee acting jointly to bring the system online, and then input the targets. But Smith had created a back door for himself so that he could take full control, which showed how in recent times he’d been working to his own advantage only. Checking status next, Saul discovered that only 10 per cent of the network was ready to use but, even so, that was nearly seven hundred satellites, each of them fusion-powered and firing a multi-megawatt laser capable of incinerating a single human being right down on the surface.
He could do a lot of damage, but only for so long as he retained control.
As Saul moved slowly down the corridor, catching at wall handles to propel himself along, even the adhesive quality of his sticky soles seemed too strong in his present weakened state. Nevertheless he concentrated beyond his own body, slowly infiltrating the satellite control system through the same back door that Smith had created. He studied the limitation to what he could achieve before alerting Smith to his intrusion – not a lot really: just run computer diagnostics and power-source tests. Using the latter test routine, he sent the requisite instructions to power up the seven hundred available satellites. Readings at once started climbing, as fusion reactors dumped their loads into advanced super-capacitor storage, and Saul knew that within a few minutes the satellites would start signalling their readiness to him – and, unfortunately, to Smith.
Saul couldn’t use the satellite weapons to stop the space planes already heading up here. Two of them had gone into SCRAM, and there was no point in trying to laser them, since their carbon nanofibre hulls were designed to disperse point temperatures and comfortably withstand temperatures that would melt steel. But he could certainly prevent further planes launching.
‘You okay with this?’ Hannah asked him, as they reached the cageway at the very end of the corridor.
Saul looked up. Of course he was – after all, he weighed nothing here.
‘I think I can manage,’ he said, reaching out to one of the struts.
Just then, something else came to his attention. Message traffic from Earth, and from the approaching space planes, was being responded to by people aboard the station itself. As he slowly propelled himself up towards Tech Central, he ran traces that discovered these replies were coming from partially isolated computers scattered throughout.
Smith.
In a structure called the Political Office, situated down between Arcoplexes One and Two, Smith – obviously yet to visit the infirmary – sat strapped in a seat with a blood-soaked dressing taped across his bare chest. Other Inspectorate staff were busy communicating from various small security offices, while Commander Langstrom was speaking from the security force’s barracks. Right then, Saul couldn’t break the code used for the actual transmissions but, whilst the transmissions were coded, Smith stupidly hadn’t blocked Saul’s access to station microphones and cameras, so it was still possible for him to listen to any audible exchange. This gave him pause for thought. It was surely such a basic requirement to ensure secure communications, yet it seemed his erstwhile interrogator had neglected to do so. Perhaps, while Smith had underestimated Saul, Saul had equally overestimated Smith?
Saul netted all the conversations at once, and processed the resulting audio data. Langstrom was giving a pretty good assessment of the situation on the station and received orders to back up the assault troops, once they arrived. Smith was meanwhile notifying someone on Earth that he intended to arrest and adjust Langstrom once this was all over, since, as Smith had noted before, Langstrom had been showing signs of incorrect thinking. Checking data relating to this Saul discovered that, as Political Director, Smith was also in overall charge of the adjustment cells located aboard the station. Saul hadn’t so far picked up on the fact that they operated such facilities here.
‘What about the robots?’ Langstrom asked.
Saul understood the man’s concerns, because just then he took a look into the barracks’ hospital, where medics were still struggling to repair the damage resulting from hand-to-hydraulic-claw combat. It wasn’t pretty, and the surgical facilities available weren’t quite so good as those Saul had recently used. He now realized that he had occupied the kind of surgery reserved for the upper echelons, who were rated ‘more equal than others’.
Apparently the answer to the robot problem was the PA50 TB, and further research identified the ‘Pulse Action 50 Tank Buster’. This was an electromagnetic weapon developed to knock out the electronics of modern tanks, and like many such weapons had been sidelined when the Committee decided the only people left to fight would be armed merely with bricks and Molotov cocktails.
‘Langstrom,’ Saul spoke directly to the man, through his fone, ‘here’s an audio file you might like to listen to.’ He then sent him a nice clear recording of Smith’s earlier conversation about future ‘adjustment’ – then turned his attention elsewhere, as satellite after satellite reported readiness to fire.
‘Trouble on the way,’ he informed Hannah and Braddock.
‘What kind?’ Braddock asked.
‘Four space planes loaded with troops in vacuum combat gear.’ Saul finally brought himself to a halt at the top of the cage-way, and stepped out into the short corridor beyond. ‘They’re also bringing EM weapons capable of knocking out the robots. Should be quite a party.’
‘You seem rather unconcerned?’ Hannah ventured.
‘I am concerned,’ he replied, ‘but I’m also busy.’
Now alerted by the readiness signal received from the satellites, Smith tilted his head for a moment, obviously rapidly processing data, then peered up at the camera Saul had pointing towards him. Feed from that particular cam blanked out, and, a moment later, Smith began closing the gap in his security. Saul immediately launched an attack on the Political Office, trying to infiltrate it, but Smith hit back and Saul found himself fighting a savage informational battle, striving to hold open his control channel to the satellites, while constantly rewriting code.
Only two of the ten per cent of functional satellites were positioned geostat in range of Minsk. Saul fought for control of them all, but focused primarily on retaining control of just those two, ready to sacrifice the others.
Saul was in a position to sector the critical areas of the spaceport and unleash the laser weapons, spreading burning corpses across the carbocrete. But that wouldn’t stop the next two nearly fully loaded space planes from taking off, and he had no way of punching through their hulls to get to the troops inside. He deliberately sacrificed control of the anthropic targeting programs of the lasers to Smith, which left the man juggling with a huge mass of additional data, and meanwhile identified installations and support equipment down at Minsk, then began selecting specific targets, and planning the most effective firing pattern. Next he routed a firing order to all satellites, allowing Smith to take nearly half of them away from him, simply to ensure control of the critical two.