suspect.’
‘So it amuses you to exact such a petty vengeance.’ Messina’s every word was laden with contempt.
‘No,’ said Saul, ‘it would suit me better to feed you, and every delegate here, feet first into a digester while still alive. And that might yet become an option. For now, I am going to leave two of my spiderguns here to ensure you follow my instructions. Please don’t try anything foolish, since that would only result in a horrible mess any survivors would have to clear up.’ He finally turned to Hannah. ‘Let’s go.’
As she followed him, two spiderguns overtook them and headed off at high speed. Glancing back, she found just one of their fellows keeping pace behind – the two Saul had left still amidst the crowd back there.
‘Where are they going?’ she asked.
‘To confront Messina’s troops,’ he explained. ‘It’s time for them to acknowledge the new regime here.’
When Saul delivered his terse instruction to the commander of Messina’s troops, whilst the two spiderguns he had sent ahead strode amidst them, he felt almost disappointed by their immediate submission. But, then, fifteen of the fifty or so survivors were stretcher cases, whilst another twenty were walking wounded. They quickly abandoned their weapons and began heading for a tubeway into the station, from where they would go to join Langstrom’s men in the barracks, and its hospital.
Saul felt a void within him as, with one of the spiderguns still dogging his and Hannah’s footsteps, he approached the airlock into Arcoplex One. He had not been sucked into Malden’s revolution, he had finally got himself up to Argus Station and here defeated Smith, and as a bonus he had decapitated Earth’s government. He had won, yet still that emptiness remained.
Depression? No, he checked the balance of his neurochemicals and they were fine. He checked his own blood: his blood sugar was low because he needed to eat, and various toxins were present, but this could not be the cause of his present malaise, for it was purely intellectual. He dismissed it, suppressed it, then focused his attention on the odd fact that he
‘There is something you didn’t tell me, isn’t there, Hannah?’ he said, glancing at her.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, looking slightly panic-stricken.
‘Something about the organic interface?’
‘I . . .’
‘Let me put it this way: just a moment ago I wondered, because of the way I feel, if I was chemically depressed. Then I checked, which rather tells me that I am now hooking in to my autonomous nervous system.’
‘The interface,’ said Hannah, as they waited for the spider-gun to proceed through the airlock ahead of them, ‘it’s not a static organism.’
As the airlock cycled, Saul glanced back at the other two spiderguns herding the captives towards the same endcap. Then, with negligent ease, he cracked the coding of transmissions passing between the captives. Messina was busy firing off orders and demands for assessments to all about him, though the replies came mainly from a couple of delegates who had risen high in the Inspectorate hierarchy before joining the Committee. The Chairman was demanding an escape – with a few inevitable losses, surely they could reach a different docking pillar and board another space plane? He was currently being informed that, even only one spidergun was watching them, such an attempt would be suicidal.
‘Smith was stronger than me, to begin with, then weaker,’ Saul said, mentally instructing the airlock to open ahead of them now that the spidergun was through. ‘My integration process with Janus is still far from complete, but even so, that should not result in me being able to connect this way to my autonomous nervous system.’
‘The interface is growing.’
He nodded as he entered the airlock ahead of her, and whilst they stood inside, waiting for it to pressurize, he mulled over the implications. Only when they were back inside the arcoplex did he speak again.
‘Malden’s was static,’ he said.
‘Yes . . .’
‘Mine, however, is growing a neural matrix throughout my brain.’ He paused. ‘What is the organism based upon?’
‘Your own DNA,’ she replied.
He turned and stared at her. ‘So no rejection problems.’
She nodded. ‘It uses your own neural stem cells and grows its matrix from them. After just one day, the connectivity between your organic brain and the hardware in your skull was about the same as Malden’s. Now it should be about twice that.’
‘When does it stop growing?’
‘Only when it matches up to the demand you place on the hardware. If you make further demands of it, the matrix will grow further to accommodate that.’
It struck him as more than likely that such bioware was not on general release. If it had been, then Smith would have acquired it.
‘It’s a prototype, then,’ he stated.
As they propelled themselves up towards the arcoplex spindle, then back along it towards the asteroid-side endcap, Saul quickly tracked down a number of key individuals inside the station. Robert Le Roque, the Technical Controller of the station, remained in a cell and seemed unhurt, and by checking records Saul discovered that he had not been subjected to inducement. Commander Langstrom was currently in the crowded barracks hospital, his knee undergoing a scan. This hospital itself was presently overrun by casualties.
‘Langstrom,’ Saul addressed him through the hospital intercom, ‘I want you to collect Le Roque from the cell block and both of you to be in Tech Central within ten minutes.’
A similar summons soon had other necessary staff heading up from their cabins to the control room. Chang and
