She shifted the microsurgery unit away from the gurney, then headed over to the drug dispensary. There she tapped her requirements into a touch screen, and waited while it buzzed and hummed to itself. Shortly a drawer emerged, holding three loaded syringes: one containing a counter-agent for his anaesthetic, the second a mix of sugars, anti-shocks, viral and bacterial applications, the third a wide-spectrum stimulant package. She injected just the counter-agent and waited.
Saul lay utterly still for a short while, then suddenly jerked, his left hand rising to touch the wound in his side. He opened his eyes and licked his lips, then slowly sat upright, using his arms to lever himself up. Just as well, because straining his stomach muscles didn’t seem like a great idea right then. For a moment Hannah assumed that the chilly distance of his expression was due to the drugs, then she realized that he was back inside the station’s computer network.
‘The pain . . . has gone,’ he slurred. ‘And I can see again.’
See?
He reached up and probed his forehead, closed his eyes and for a moment fell utterly still. Then abruptly his eyes reopened.
‘Unbelievable,’ he said, the slur vanishing from his tone.
‘What is?’ demanded Braddock from behind the glass, before peering suspiciously at the door behind him, cradling his machine pistol even closer.
‘The Argus satellite system,’ Saul explained, shaking his head slowly. ‘There are seven thousand satellites in all, of which only ten per cent are functional. I’ve just managed to achieve a limited penetration, but that’s enough to interpret how it’s intended to run.’
Saul carefully swung his legs off the gurney, then didn’t appear strong enough to proceed any further, besides which, the pressure feed was still plugged into his arm.
‘How, then?’ Hannah asked, as she uncapped each in turn of the remaining two syringes.
‘All queued up and ready for mass slaughter,’ he continued. ‘But in the typically fucked-up way of any operation run by government.’
‘How fucked up?’ asked Braddock.
‘The satellites can pick up ID implant signals and target individuals, but what criminal or revolutionary ever sticks to the same identity?’
‘True enough.’
‘So they tried recognition systems.’ Saul glanced across at him. ‘The satellites all possess high-definition cameras capable of reading the writing on a cigarette packet from orbit. The images they obtain can then be run through complex recognition systems – the aim being to target selected individuals.’
‘Yeah, and so?
‘A slight problem is that such recognition systems are keyed to a human’s face, not to the top of his head.’
‘You’re shitting me.’
Hannah held her syringes ready. ‘So that means the Committee’s dream of being able to identify and eliminate single insurgents from orbit is still very much a dream?’
‘It is, but governments never let go of a bad idea.’
Saul finally pushed himself away from the gurney, standing up for a moment, still wobbly. In Earth gravity, he would already have been flat on the floor. Hannah stepped forward to squeeze the larger syringe into the pressure feed plugged into his forearm. Then she swabbed his biceps before injecting the smaller syringe, containing stimulants. Saul watched this procedure with a kind of impatient detachment.
‘So what’re they using now?’ Braddock asked.
‘A rather less specific option called DAS.’
As the stimulants began slowly kicking in, Saul straightened up and began to look marginally more alert. He gazed around the surgery, eyed the blood pooled on the gurney for a moment, then turned back to meet Hannah’s gaze. He gave a nod of acknowledgement. ‘Thanks.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ she replied. ‘It wasn’t exactly brain surgery.’
He managed a grin, but it seemed an expression delivered by rote.
‘Is that portable?’ He was pointing at the pressure feed – a device positioned on the side of the gurney, into which square blood packs were plugged like ink refills.
Hannah detached the object from the gurney and held it up.
‘We need to get into Tech Central itself.’ He reached out for the pressure feed, took it and tucked it under his arm.
Exiting the aseptic surgery was less of a problem than actually getting into it, though a little screen did flash up a warning about them taking contaminated clothing outside. After she had helped him pull on a pair of disposeralls, cutting through one sleeve so as to feed the pipes through, Hannah overrode this warning and they moved outside to join Braddock. Now Saul was mobile she could see how the sugars and stimulants were kicking in faster and how he propelled himself purposefully towards the door. But on gecko boots, Braddock got there ahead of him, opened the door and helped Saul to make his way through.
This display of oversolicitousness annoyed Hannah. She understood how their lives now depended on Saul, but there seemed more underlying Braddock’s behaviour than that. It seemed the soldier had found someone new to serve.
Once in the corridor outside, Braddock asked impatiently, ‘What the fuck is DAS?’
‘Defned Area Suppression,’ Saul replied, flicking his gaze towards the robot that had carried him here. ‘The entire planet has been segmented up into a grid whose smallest area measures about a kilometre square. Feed a
