‘You’ll see,’ he said.
‘I want to see, too,’ said Braddock, glancing at Saul with something akin to admiration.
They entered Tech Central to the sound of hammering from within the adjacent toilet.
‘Be quiet!’ Braddock bellowed.
A couple of surprised exclamations issued from within, and the noise ceased. Saul peered through the two cams in there to see a man and two women clad in the cheap standard garments of technicians. Then he turned to study the rest of Tech Central as he began finessing his control of every system that originated from here, and still remained within his compass.
This room was just like the one he had seized control of in the cell complex at Inspectorate HQ London. It bore some resemblance to a flight-control room, with outward-slanting windows running around most of the exterior, but in this case overlooking the asteroid and the full extent of the station wheel radiating all about them. Below the windows lay a range of consoles and screens, which also ran around those walls lacking windows. Saul moved over to a work station with three much larger screens mounted above it. He pulled himself down into a swivel chair and rested his blood pressure-feed on the console. The console was laden with controls he didn’t need because, by just using his mind, he now brought up a repeating series of views on the middle screen, including a close-up of the fire raging down on Earth, and a more distant shot of the whole spaceport.
‘Minsk,’ he murmured.
‘You used the lasers?’ Braddock frowned. ‘I thought they had only anti-personnel capacity?’
‘A rifle, too, is an anti-personnel weapon, but it’s amazing what happens when you fire a tracer bullet into a petrol tank.’
‘Point taken,’ Braddock conceded.
‘Now these.’ Saul gestured, as on all three screens he pulled up views, through the sat cams, of the space planes approaching.
‘And you can’t use the lasers against them,’ said Hannah, pulling up a swivel chair beside him, and sitting astride it with her forearms resting on the back.
‘No, they wouldn’t be able to penetrate.’
‘So you’ve no usable weapons out there now?’
‘On the contrary,’ replied Saul, an idea taking shape in his mind, ‘I have a number of satellites at my disposal.’
‘But you said Smith—’
Saul held up his hand to silence her. ‘Please, I need to think.’
It was all about trajectories. The less atmospheric pressure around the planes, as they continued rising, the more dependent they became upon steering jets rather than ailerons and wing-repositioning, and the less manoeuvrable they thus became. The two satellites were still within range and remained under his control, while his defence against Smith’s perpetual probing attacks was steadily growing stronger and almost self-maintaining. He pulled up some nice close-shot pictures of each on two of the three screens and set the cameras to tracking them whilst maintaining a view of the approaching planes on the third screen. ‘What are you doing now?’ Hannah asked.
‘It’s nice that they’re bringing those planes up in such a tight formation,’ he noted.
She shot a look of puzzlement at Braddock, who brought his two fists together with a thwack, and then grinned. Then she nodded in understanding.
‘Now I need to disarm Smith,’ continued Saul.
He opened fire from the other satellites under his control upon the ones that Smith controlled. Smith was quick to reply, and their incandescent battle must have been clearly visible from Earth, as lasers repeatedly targeted fellow satellites. But the whole thing was taking longer than Saul had expected, and on checking stored schematic he discovered that all these satellites were protected externally by a layer of ceramic tiles.
The contest centred at first on the two satellites located over Minsk, but then it spread. Three hundred satellites in all were disabled within the first six minutes – ten times the timespan involved if they had not been protected by those tiles – so that massive areas of the globe dropped out of coverage.
Smith’s expected attempt at communication came through shortly after the first satellites went down, but Saul ignored it. The man probably hoped to dissuade Saul from such a mutually destructive battle. Only when those satellites that Saul wanted disabled were out of action did he cease his attacks, whereupon Smith’s attacks ceased a fraction of a second later. Now, of course, Smith had nothing left within range of Argus – or of those two satellites down below.
Saul began calculating vectors in his head, loading engine-thrust calculations, and even then using the steering jets on the satellites to turn them, whilst simultaneously starting up their engines so as to set them on a rough vector he could correct later … four seconds later. The two satellites now shed their panels, folding and twisting away like discarded Christmas decorations.
They were now well on their way, but Saul maintained his mental link to the steering thrusters, so he could still make instant adjustments.
‘Twenty-three minutes,’ he noted. ‘Long before then, either Smith will warn them or they’ll figure out what’s going on and start evasive manoeuvres.’
Just then a scraping sound issued from the toilet, as someone tried to force the door open.
‘Let them out, Braddock,’ he said, ‘then bring them over here.’
Braddock nodded, without questioning the order, and headed over to the toilet door. A panel beside it contained a motion detector to open it automatically whenever anyone approached. That was until he had put a single shot through it, after the three prisoners were inside. Now he just landed a boot against the door and burst it open inwards. Someone yelled in pain and Saul glimpsed the man tumbling backwards holding his head.
