Owner 03 - Jupiter War (8 page)

She untied her robe and dropped it over the arm of the comfortable recliner provided for her up here, stretched out her arms to enjoy the Italian sun on her naked body, then gazed out across the neat groves of olive, orange and lemon trees towards the nearby fence. A shepherd was picking its way through the trees, this monstrous spidery machine of polished chrome and white plastic permanently on patrol there, while in the branches of some of the trees roosted birds like hawks but fashioned out of razors.

Some clear danger must have driven Captain Scotonis to undock his ship from the station while the assault force continued its attack. Perhaps he had decided to put some distance between himself and it, so as to deploy his main weapons again. That was really all that made sense, according to Tactical. Afterwards, as he realized that he and his crew were dying, some homing instinct must have kicked in for him to put the ship on course back to Earth. It would have been good to find out for sure, but the
Scourge
was no longer responding. Of course the crew were beyond making any response, but something must have happened aboard to damage computer systems – perhaps an explosion – and now the ship was completely silent.

In reality, Serene was glad no one on board remained alive to stand as a reminder of her failure out there. Sometime hence, when the ship came back within reach, it could quietly be taken to dock, the bodies cleared out and a new crew put aboard, then it could return to service. However, there were so many people who knew of her failure, and it took all of her self-control not to erase them, just as the crew of the
Scourge
had been erased. She wanted them gone. She wanted a fresh start: a new approach. Unfortunately, those same people were too useful and too deeply involved in her present major off-Earth projects. Serene shook her head in pique, sat down in her recliner, raised the back, then took off her sunglasses and closed her eyes.

Professor Calder was one of them. He was out there now at the old Mars Traveller orbital factory complex, building her an Alcubierre drive which, in just a few weeks, would be ready for testing. Unlike the wider population of Earth, he and thousands working for him knew all – except for the Scour-related details – of what had happened out at the Asteroid Belt, but she couldn’t kill them, or him. Serene shrugged:
whatever
. Getting rid of Calder would be stupid, and she had to admit that news of his further progress out there had gone some way towards lifting her malaise. Anyway, even people on Earth knew the truth. Previous ETV stories about the
Scourge
’s successful destruction of the Argus Station were undermined by their distrust of any proclamation from government, along with the present irritating resurrection of the Subnet and its images, somehow obtained directly from the Hubble, of Argus Station sitting in orbit over Mars. And there were limits on how many people she could kill before inefficiencies started kicking in.

The story now being spread among those who knew for sure that Argus still existed was that Saul had used computer penetration to defeat the troops, and had then killed Scotonis and his crew by clipping the
Scourge
with Argus’s Alcubierre warp. It was a story close enough to the truth to be maintained.

‘Your coffee, ma’am,’ said Sack.

Serene glanced round as her crocodile-skin bodyguard stepped out with a silver coffee pot, cream jug and sugar bowl on a silver tray. He strode over to her and dipped to place the tray on the pedestal table beside her. While he poured, and then stepped back, as previously instructed, she watched him. She now knew that he had no one, no relationship, and she studied his face for some sign of a reaction to her nakedness. She was just considering ordering him to take up the pot of sun cream on the floor beside the pedestal table, wondering what keroskin hands might feel like on her body, when her PA leader Elkin and two aides stepped out and stood there with attentive patience.

‘I was told to inform you that your new aero is ready, ma’am,’ Sack added.

The machine was a behemoth: twenty-four fans run on separate hydrogen Wankel engines, laminated impact armour, auto-defences, a helium bubblemetal structure also incorporating helium closed-cell gas bags so that, even if every engine was destroyed, it would still float to the ground rather than drop like a brick.

Serene added cream and sugar to her cup and stirred. ‘Then perhaps, after this morning’s meeting, it’s time for me to take it for a spin.’ She paused with the spoon held up as she considered. ‘I think we’ll go to Madagascar to see how things are turning out there.’

ETV had broadcast news of a terrible outbreak of the Scour on that huge island – one that had completely depopulated it. Now the only humans to be found there were in the clear-up teams steadily stripping away the island’s layer of concrete, carbocrete and steel – the environmental scum humans always generated. It had been, Serene felt, a rather impulsive decision of hers to activate the Scour in every ID implant there, but the results were pleasing. A chameleon and four plant species, all thought to be extinct, had been rediscovered.

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Sack moved back and Elkin moved forward.

A lusciously sexual woman, wearing a primly loose-cut suit to try and hide her curves, she carried a single notescreen keyed to Serene’s voice and functioning on predictive search so Elkin could provide facts and figures in an instant. The two aides were both pretty, blond men who possessed cerebral hardware just a few iterations below that of the seven comlifers guarding the computer systems of Earth. They were twins and the product of a genetic tweak for intelligence that Serene knew had proved successful in the past, two further examples of which were also aboard Argus Station. Through them Serene’s orders would be acted upon instantly. They were a perfect choice, though Serene wondered how much their pretty appearance had affected Elkin’s decision to employ them.

‘I take it the teleconference room will be ready’ – Serene checked her watch – ‘in twenty minutes, as I specified, and that all those I summoned to be here in person have now arrived?’

‘All but Delegates DeLambert and Chayter, who have simultaneously been delayed by scramjet faults,’ replied Elkin, with no need to check her screen.

Serene nodded, aware that the two delegates mentioned had allowed political manoeuvring to get in the way of the efficient running of their regions, and had thus dropped low in production stats.

‘Have them killed, at once,’ she instructed. ‘And tell their queued replacements to link in via teleconference.’

Elkin nodded to the aide on her right, who merely blinked. The order had instantly been relayed and, even at that moment, two strangulation collars would be closing. Delegation certainly had its usefulness, since Serene had not even needed to put down her coffee cup. She took a sip, contemplating further tasks she intended to delegate.

‘Now give me a precis of the expert assessment requested on Project Push,’ she instructed.

‘With the resources in place, Calder can meet all the offworld targets,’ Elkin began. ‘As you have already divined, the problem is in getting those resources in place. Societal Asset’s living standards will drop, while the general working week will have to be increased to one hundred hours. Those with critical placements will need to work longer still and will need support. However, robot manufacturing and our mining operations have sufficient redundancy already. Calder has already pushed high-tech manufacturing up to spec too.’ Elkin paused, looking uncomfortable.

‘Go on,’ Serene prompted.

‘It can therefore be achieved, unless we have another outbreak of the Scour in some critical area.’

‘I see, well, let’s just hope that doesn’t happen.’ Serene waved the thought away. ‘What suggestions have been made?’

‘We could increase production of military-grade stimulants and make them available to the working population, and also offer further achievement bonuses.’

‘The stimulants are a good idea, but we already offer bonuses.’

‘A suggestion has been that we offer things difficult for many SAs to buy via increased community credit,’ said Elkin, thus ensuring that Serene knew the suggestion did not come from her. ‘It has been suggested that bonuses could include removal of strangulation collars, actual cash for black-market purchases and higher placements in queues for advanced medicine.’

Serene nodded, finished her coffee, then poured herself another cup. ‘So, does anyone offer any guarantees that, with such bonuses, my targets will be met any sooner?’

‘No, ma’am, these are just suggestions based on mass psychological assessments of the SA population.’

‘So, even without such bonuses, we will still have the core stations expanded and fully weaponized within two months, and three working space battleships ready in six months?’

‘That is the expert assessment.’

‘Very well,’ said Serene, ‘we’ll offer the extra bonuses. We need to be ready as quickly as possible. Set things in motion – I want my delegates and other administrators able to respond immediately after I’ve made my announcement to them.’

Elkin now glanced at the aide on her right, who also blinked as he issued the orders that would effectively put the entire planet on a war footing. It was, after all, completely necessary to get those ships and Earth’s defences ready, and
yesterday
if that were possible. With this new drive of his, and what it could do to any object it came into contact with, Alan Saul had now become an even greater danger than before. Moreover, she still needed Earth’s Gene Bank back, and she still needed him visibly punished for his sins. Alan Saul had to die; therefore she needed the means to kill him.

Serene paused reflectively. For such a large change in the very structure of how Earth operated, she felt the need to announce all this to her delegates, and over ETV to the world population at large. She wanted the orders to be less impersonal, wanted the world to know the importance of this, but it also occurred to her that her taking such drastic measures in response to Saul might be perceived as a sign of fear.

‘Sack –’ Serene beckoned him over – ‘get that new aero ready. We’re going to Madagascar after I’ve got this nonsense out of the way. I could do with a bit of a break and then, afterwards, we’ll take a tour on the way back to ensure our delegates are working diligently.’ And maybe, during that trip, those hands . . .

News of her visit to the big island would spread – and so would her apparently nonchalant attitude to the immediate follow-up to her recent orders. Also the future threat of her maybe turning up unexpectedly right on a delegate’s doorstep would prove motivational. Anyway, she felt that it might be a good idea to get a complete assessment of the Madagascar situation before she tried something a bit more ambitious, like, for example, Scouring the human scum from somewhere else equally containable – Indonesia, perhaps. Of course that would all have to wait until after all the human scum still out there had served her purposes.

Mars

‘He’s given them orders to capture us,’ said Saul, ‘and if they can’t do that, then to kill us. Since they’re armed and we are not, I think the former would be more likely.’

Yes, he was keeping something from her, but this was no game. For a moment, earlier, she had sensed a cold distance in him. He had some sort of surprise in the offing, something that was going to turn things their way, but it seemed likely to be something nasty and he wasn’t sure how she would respond. Now he was coldly factual again, and Var felt she knew what the surprise was going to be. He was going to kill them.

‘They’ll be here within twenty minutes,’ she said.

‘Certainly,’ he agreed.

She was damned if she was going to ask him again how he intended to respond. She’d been thinking about this all the way from the underground base, and now realized there could be only one answer. When the
Scourge
had engaged Argus Station, it had been fired upon. The Argus Station was now somewhere above them and probably had workable weapons aboard that he controlled. He must intend to hit the approaching four from orbit, thus reducing the odds against the two of them, but then?

Var turned from him to watch the ATV pull to a halt beside those proceeding on foot, and the three of them climbing inside. All of them wore vacuum combat suits obviously salvaged from Ricard’s men, and all were armed with assault rifles. She grimaced, not liking the idea of seeing the ATV destroyed, even though it would be of little use where she hoped to end up. Then she too found herself a rock, and sat down.

‘There,’ he said, pointing towards the base airstrip.

Three dots resolved in the sky, grew larger, soon becoming identifiable as an object like a football coming down with two in-series parachutes attached to a line behind. Just a few metres from the ground, right at the far end of the airstrip, it shed its two chutes then hit and bounced. As it bounced for a second time, its outer layer of airbags was already deflating and thus absorbed even more of the shock of its ensuing impacts. Soon it was rolling, soggily, a great cloudy trail of dust behind it, finally coming to halt right up against one of the two fuel silos as its air bags continued deflating.

‘Good shot,’ said Var, the skin on her back crawling. Was it pure luck that the fuel drop tank had come down precisely where required? Or had Saul been able to make such a precise atmosphere insertion and adjustments, on its way down, to put it there? If it was the latter explanation, then he had just done something no one else had managed throughout the history of orbital drops on Mars. She shivered, then shrugged – no, just a lucky shot.

The gas bags finished deflating, and were sucked away into their compartments to deposit a cylindrical tank on the ground. A hemispherical heat shield on the end of it detached and fell away, exposing gleaming equipment underneath – by the looks of the tangle this probably comprised all the pumping gear and hoses. Var transferred her gaze back to the ATV. It was about ten minutes away now – about halfway between the base and the butte.

‘Isn’t it about time you took your shot?’ she asked casually. ‘What will you use, a railgun missile or a laser? Or did that maser work out?’