Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

bridge. He entered and hit the control closing the airtight door. In here, he was surrounded by impact armour and breach-foam layers within the walls, similar to those located in every essential bulkhead throughout the ship.

He swung his gaze across the partially completed furnishings, and then headed over to a large and comfortable acceleration chair positioned before a multi-screen which looked like a minimalist sculpture fashioned out of one huge curving sheet of black glass. He sat down, strapped himself in, flipped over the chair-arm console and set both the screen and bridge communication running. Images appeared of the views currently available to the bridge crew, and one more showing them all seated and watching the action on their multi-screen.

‘What’s the situation?’ Clay asked.

‘Tell him, Cookson,’ said Scotonis.

Gunnery Officer Cookson eyed his captain askance, then said, ‘We’ve railed out five test shots, and from them located some of their weaponry, but of course they’re not too happy about that.’

Another image now: a close view of Argus Station. Above it streaks of fire appeared, like white contrails, before deforming and fading down to orange, then to red, and finally disappearing. Targeting frames next appeared all over the station like a sudden pox.

‘We’ve precisely located the two railguns Alex detailed, and will shortly be opening fire on them. But first we’re going to fuck up their targeting.’

‘How?’ asked Clay.

‘You will see shortly,’ said Scotonis. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, we have work to do.’

Clay grimaced at that, then, using his console, he first opened up the command channels so that he could hear all the exchanges between command staff, then began calling up other views and additional data. In the troops’ quarters things had changed drastically. Large areas of the accommodation had been collapsed so as to leave three long hexagonal compartments where now the troops were massing with all their equipment. They were all suited up and carrying weapons, and those behind the primary assault teams were already heading out into a newly connected tube leading to the main exterior airlock, carrying the various sections of vacuum-warfare penetration locks.

‘Detonation in five,’ Cookson announced. ‘Four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . and now.’

The image of Argus Station whited out, then came back with a ball of fire expanding above it. The image fizzed, breaking into squares – the EM radiation pulse delivered by the blast. As this ball of fire inflated, it grew diffuse but even so, when its perimeter hit the station, the effect was visible. The whole massive structure tilted, and debris was blown away like chaff from a plate.

‘Reacquiring,’ said Scotonis.

Clay did not need to ask what had happened. They’d detonated a nuke close to the station to interfere with electronics and now, since the station had shifted, Cookson was retargeting the station’s weapons. Clay tried to sit back and relax, but found he couldn’t. Really, he decided, he had too much intelligence and imagination to be a soldier. It was bad enough having to fight in a place where there was air to breathe, but here?

Next a sonorous thrumming that penetrated bone-deep filled the ship. The first time the railguns fired, Clay must have still been unconscious, for he had never heard or felt this sensation before. But he just knew this had to be their sound.

‘They’re returning fire again,’ Cookson noted, ‘but their targeting is off.’

Even so, the Scourge shuddered again, and somewhere another klaxon started howling. Contrails flared into being all across the top of the station, until it was nearly lost to visibility behind a curiously regular pattern like some epiphyte made of fire, but this only lasted until the next nuclear detonation, which swept it all away before going on to peel hull plates off Argus like a scaling knife. Shortly after this, fire began to glare from inside it, and vapour belched from the newly torn holes.

‘That’s one of them,’ said Cookson and, even as he spoke, another explosion erupted from the station, hurling black chunks of machinery up on a column of fire. ‘And that’s the other,’ he added.

‘Trove,’ prompted Scotonis.

‘Twenty minutes,’ she replied.

The surge of the engines shoved Clay deeper into his chair, then tried to throw him out of it sideways.

‘Liang,’ said Scotonis, ‘twenty minutes. Get in position.’

‘Already clearing first teams in Section One,’ replied Commander Liang.

Troops were crammed into the tube leading to the airlocks. Clay searched for further views, and saw that, even while the tube was full of soldiers, they were still on the move. Soon he found an exterior cam showing them spilling out on the hull of the Scourge like ants boiling from their nest. There they had strung out ropes connected to the hull and were using them to secure themselves. They struck Clay as overly exposed out there, but were those inside the ship any safer?

On Argus Station, detonations were still blooming like brief hot stars, and sending chunks of debris tumbling away. Cookson was now destroying their collision lasers, Clay realized, and maybe any other anti-personnel weapons scattered about the surface. It seemed all very easy and going perfectly to plan, which was worrying.

‘Nothing more from the railguns,’ said Cookson. ‘That means they have to be down.’

‘As things stand, between the first two strike points looks good,’ observed Liang, who must have been studying a head-up display. ‘We assault the station internally through them while a third team goes over the hull to take Tech Central.’