‘Out,’ Braddock ordered the three of them.
The two women pushed their way out first. Both had cropped blonde hair, probably because keeping long hair clean up here was nigh an impossibility, and they were of very similar appearance. They looked remarkably young to Saul, seeming little more than teenagers, but that merely meant they might have been using anti-ageing drugs. He checked personnel files stored in Tech Central itself and discovered that they were twins. Angela and Brigitta Saberhagen were very bright twins who had been born in Berlin twenty years ago, then turned into societal assets from the moment they started dismantling computers at the age of five. The man was bearded, balding and running to fat. Despite the clean technician’s clothing, his hands were ingrained with dirt, and Saul found that somehow reassuring. His name was Girondel Chang, home city Nanking in China, but he certainly didn’t look at all Chinese. Braddock ushered them over and mustered them in a line, but far enough away that he could still bring any one of them down if they decided to attack Saul.
‘Do you have any survival gear in or near here?’ Saul asked them, even though he already knew precisely what was available.
The twins merely looked at each other, and it was their bearded companion who replied, ‘Emergency survival suits in the lockers.’ He nodded towards a column of locker hatches that rose up one wall.
‘Well, get yourselves suited up, then,’ Saul instructed, ‘and fetch two extra suits out for myself and Hannah – Braddock here is fine in his spacesuit.’ He paused for a second. ‘My name is Alan Saul.’ He had used their names deliberately, to humanize them, to help transform them from nameless terrorists into real people.
‘We already know your name,’ said Brigitta, the twin who, from her record, he had known would speak first. She turned to study the screens, perhaps instantly understanding the need for survival suits.
Saul nodded to Braddock, and the soldier herded them towards the lockers, where they retrieved baggy survival suits that could easily be pulled on over their clothing. Here and there, wherever views were obtainable, he saw other station personnel already opening similar lockers and donning similar suits. They all clearly knew what was coming. However, there didn’t seem to be enough suits to go around, and in some areas people were already fighting over them.
‘What do you want of them?’ Hannah whispered.
‘I’ve got limited control of some sections of the station computer network, and I can also program some of the robots, but even if we manage to deal with Smith, I still cannot become omnipresent and omnipotent.’ He glanced at her. ‘If I gain full control here, I’ll be needing people, so I may as well start recruiting them now.’ It was a lie, of course. If he gained full control here, he could easily keep the place running with just the robots. But what to do with the humans then? Slaughter them all?
‘That’s good to hear.’
‘I don’t think there’s any need for sarcasm, at this point, do you?’
‘Actually, I think there’s a very great need for it.’ She eyed him carefully.
‘Keeping me grounded, Hannah?’
‘I try, but perhaps it’s already a bit late for that.’
He smiled tightly, but let that go.
The three staff returned with Braddock, but had yet to pull up their hoods and seal their visors. Hannah got up and accepted the two suits Chang had draped over one arm. The barrel of Braddock’s gun rested against the back of the man’s neck while Hannah was so close. Saul gestured to three chairs over to his right – the ones he knew they had occupied previously.
‘I want you three to oversee the safety of whatever station residents you can contact,’ he told them. ‘Direct them towards any survival and spacesuits still available. You can perhaps also send some of them to better- protected areas, or put them in EVA vehicles. You have about forty minutes for that. No need to bother about station security staff, as it seems they’ve quite enough vacuum gear available to them.’
‘If we do what you say, we’ll end up in adjustment cells,’ protested Brigitta.
He shook his head. ‘You can, of course, refuse to help your fellows,’ he said. ‘In which case the adjustment you face will come from the barrel of Braddock’s gun. Make up your minds.’
After a short, almost embarrassed, pause, Chang announced, ‘Those in Arcoplex One will be in the most danger, since they’re not trained personnel.’
Saul eyed him steadily, and began frantically accessing station data. What he found there surprised him immensely. When Janus had originally gathered data regarding this station, the population was about a thousand; now it seemed to have climbed to four thousand. The numbers of the workforce, along with security and political monitoring personnel, had initially doubled, then a surge of a further two thousand had arrived. Most of these newcomers were located in Arcoplex One, and as he checked the relevant data the true situation began to emerge. The Committee, or some part of it, had already begun the process of relocating here. Delegates now occupied the arcoplex cylinder – including names he recognized – along with political staff, all their families, and others whose presence here he suspected was due simply to powerful people they knew. But all of these he would have to deal with later.
‘Whatever,’ he said, expressionless. ‘Just try and keep
He carefully turned his chair away from them as more chatter suddenly started becoming accessible to him. It seemed that the security hole Smith had recently closed had reopened in the barracks where Langstrom was located. This had to be some sort of trap, surely, involving deliberate misinformation.
‘We have more serious challenges to respond to right now,’ said Smith. ‘We can discuss your rather minor problem once we have nullified the current power instability here within the station.’
‘Well, there we have a problem. I want to discuss this now,’ replied Langstrom.
Three other soldiers were with him and, checking records, Saul noted that they were all sergeants. They all wore the pale-blue uniforms of Inspectorate enforcers, but specially adapted for the near-weightless environment. No one here was clad like an Earth-bound enforcer as the net broadcasts had shown – those broadcasts were either seriously outdated or had simply been falsified. Checking further, Saul began to discern the true shape of the hierarchy here.
Smith and his Inspectorate execs were the arm of government in overall command of security, political oversight, and ensuring that everyone did what they were told and thought what they were ordered to think.
