The Departure

the pile of guns, then past Peach and Langstrom as the two moved aside. Saul did not bother to watch them further. If they tried to attack him, they would be dead in an instant, and he didn’t want to show he was nervous that they might try. Soon they were out of sight, and by now Saul could see the exit airlock from the Political Office up ahead.

‘Why?’ Hannah asked.

‘They need to be certain Caesar is dead,’ Saul replied, ‘before they can feel safe in obeying his replacement.’

‘I’m betting you have assembled enough image data of your own already.’

‘True enough, but the sooner I start issuing orders accompanied by implicit threats, the sooner it will be that I can issue orders without any need for threats at all.’

Hannah nodded. ‘Yes, you need to firmly establish your rule here, which must extend beyond just the power to kill at whim.’

‘Because if I don’t do so quickly,’ Saul continued, ‘there’s going to be a lot more killing.’ Then after a pause he added, ‘And then I might just get bored with the whole idea of keeping anyone alive.’

As they approached the airlock – presently closing behind a large troop of soldiers – he studied her reaction.

She shrugged. ‘I can see how it would become a trial to you.’

As he suspected, his last words had come to her as no surprise at all. She fully expected him to stop playing games, and resort instead to the much easier option of mass slaughter. He had already decided not to follow that easier route and, of course, the avoid-killing-people test was about to get much harder now that he intended paying a visit to Chairman Alessandro Messina and the remaining delegates of the Committee – people whose own experience of mass slaughter made him look like an amateur.

But, no, that would be Hannah’s test. It would be her choice.

20

I’m Killing You for Your Freedom!

Freedom as an absolute does not exist since there are always constraints: genetic predetermination, surrounding environment, the society in which you live and, in the end, everything. Freedom is always a matter of degree: you cannot wish for the freedom to flap your arms and fly so long as gravity exists, nor can you wish for the freedom to breathe water. You are of course free to try both, but the results of such endeavours are not within your power. This is the big problem with freedom when it is taken up by some political ideology, for those who rely on the term are often trying to adjust the parameters of reality, and they simply cannot. And, when the revolutionary cries that he is fighting for ‘freedom’, be sure to go running away from him just as fast as you can, for you can be damned certain he’s fighting for the freedom to tell you what to do.

Antares Base

Var gazed at the telescopic ladder now extended to the ceiling of the reactor room, its base clamped to one of the pillars supporting the reactor itself. Perched at the top of it, Lopomac was using a piton gun to drive the spikes into the bonded regolith of the ceiling, immediately around the big, recessed, double-door hatch situated up there. Because of its position, dividing internal air off from the atmosphere of Mars itself, this particular hatch’s sensors did not extend to locking it down if they detected changes in the air mix, though it was locked down by the pressure differential. Its purpose had been to provide an opening through which to lower reactor components by crane. Var calculated that Ricard would know nothing about that.

‘When they blow the door leading into here, they won’t burst in spraying gunfire or tossing grenades,’ she said. ‘I’m guessing Ricard will send them in with plastic ammo only.’

‘That’s a comfort,’ muttered Carol fatly.

She had just spooled out the control box, on its cable, from a multiple hoist: a device that could accommodate both forklift and crane attachments. Pressing one button made the device extend its wheels down, thus lifting its body from the floor, and by further manipulation of the controls, Carol sent it over towards the closed bulkhead door. She then brought the forklift tines right up against metal, forcing the door back on its seal, then lowered the machine back down to the floor, scraping glittering scratches on the door. Next to be sent over was a mobile tool chest, followed by chunks of reactor shielding to jam between the hoist and the door itself.

Var knew that Ricard’s men would eventually get through. They would first use the least force possible to breach the door’s seal, in the hope that, once pressures were equalized, they could just open it manually. Probably ceramic bullets would be fired at an angle through the bubblemetal, to reduce the chances of them hitting the reactor. They wouldn’t want to risk major damage here but, on finding the door firmly jammed, they would have to use something more substantial – probably a grenade. This would hopefully take them the extra vital minutes that Var needed.

‘They’re coming,’ she warned, now watching on her laptop screen as a crawler headed over from Hex One and entered the pool of light cast by the exterior lights of Hex Three.

Carol looked round, her face white.

‘You done there yet?’ Var called up to Lopomac as a haze of releasing fluid drifted down from where he had positioned himself, hanging directly underneath the hatch on a rope strung between two pitons.

‘It should open,’ he declared, now dropping a coil of rope attached to one of the array of pitons he had driven into the bonded regolith surrounding the hatch. ‘The motors are receiving power and the hydraulics don’t seem jammed.’

‘Okay Carol,’ said Var, waving her towards the rope.

Carol headed over, pulling on her suit helmet, already wearing her harness and electric climbing motor. Var pulled on her own harness then donned her helmet, Bluetoothing the laptop to her visor display before closing it and putting it into her hip pouch. Carol ascended to the hatch along with Lopomac, who had moved to another section of rope, and positioned herself just below the seam of the double-door hatch. Var walked across, undid the clamps holding the ladder in place, released its telescopic lock and collapsed it. She carried it over to jam it against the bulkhead door too, so that an enforcer spotting a telescopic ladder in here would assume its purpose was to add to the obstacles preventing him and his fellows getting in. Returning to the rope, she attached her own climbing