Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

‘Ammo,’ Alex replied succinctly.

He was about to step forward when her hand clamped on his shoulder and she abruptly jerked him back towards the wall adjacent to the door. He turned suddenly, grabbing her wrist and twisting, thinking for a moment that she was attacking him. Then he saw it, released his hold and squeezed back against the wall beside her.

In vacuum, it came through the door with eerie silence for something so large. Alex recognized it at once as the same design of construction robot that Saul had originally hijacked during his assault against Smith. The thing looked like a giant steel ant, pairs of limbs terminating in flat gecko-pad feet extending from its two rear sections; its front section, arrayed with glassy sensors, was raised up with two limbs extending from it, both sporting numerous cutters and manipulators. In one of these it was carrying a roll of material, which, when it reached the corpses, it shook open to reveal as a large netting bag. Steadily it set to work, picking up a woman in a VC suit and swiftly divesting her of her garment. The suit went straight into the bag, the woman onto the other heap.

‘Out of here,’ muttered Alex, and soon they were moving away from there just as fast as they could.

‘What is that thing doing?’ Alexandra asked.

‘Maybe they’ve decided those VC suits are going to be needed,’ Alex replied, trying to be pragmatic but, in his heart, failing. ‘Come on, let’s speed it up now.’

It took them two hours to reach the exterior of Docking Pillar Two, climbing an access tube for maintenance robots leading out of the rim and up between some fuel silos. Alex found it difficult to shake off the sense of doom that had descended on him since they saw the corpses and, from Alexandra’s monosyllabic replies to anything he said, he knew she felt the same. He gazed out at the stars, trying to develop a better mood from the sight of them, but all he could think was how very far from Earth they were.

Directly above them, Messina’s space plane occupied one entire docking face. Each such face could take two of the normal space planes, but the Imperator was much larger. Simply inverting themselves, they walked up the pillar until they reached the plane’s nose, circumvented this and then walked up along one side of it.

‘Access would have been easier from inside,’ said Alex, ‘but the cams are still operating in there and, even if there’s no human watching, recognition software is sure to be.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Alexandra grunted.

He continued, ‘My guess is that someone is watching and that there will be guards inside. Because I’m betting there are some on the station who have contemplated stealing a plane and escaping.’

‘They won’t know about the hibernation equipment here,’ said Alexandra, gesturing to the plane beside them.

‘Here.’ Alex paused beside a large bulge on the hull, reached out and took hold of a recessed handle and began turning it. ‘No,’ he went on, ‘no one is likely to know about that but, as you grow in experience, Alexandra, you learn not to underestimate the power of human stupidity.’

After turning the handle five times, he pulled out a ten-centimetre-deep plug of nanotube carbon to reveal a simple keypad. He input the required code and stepped back.

‘I bet there are those who, given the chance,’ he said, ‘are prepared to steal a plane and fly off to meet the Scourge, expecting to be picked up and eventually taken home. Scotonis would simply ignore them and continue his pursuit of this station, so they would die aboard their escape craft.’

The bulge rose a little, then slid aside to reveal an airlock. Here another keypad required a code to open the outer door, whereupon they both squeezed inside the narrow space for the lock to pressurize, before stepping on into the space plane itself.

‘The air’s good,’ said Alex, sliding his visor aside.

The Imperator was luxuriously appointed. They had stepped into the section containing the rows of acceleration chairs, but even these were considerably more comfortable than any found aboard a normal plane, for each was even provided with its own mini-bar, swing-over table, screen and entertainment console. The real luxury, however, was in the suite of rooms lying beyond. Alex glanced without interest at a cocktail bar, a fully appointed kitchen, the massage parlour and the zero-G bathroom with its high-tech appliances making it possible for Messina to enjoy a jacuzzi without drowning. Upon passing through the door into Technical and Tacks, both he and Alexandra had to stop and scrape off the layer of fluff that their gecko-boot soles had picked up from the thick carpet. Shortly afterwards Alexandra came to stand before a console and screen.

‘This is more like it,’ she said, sounding a lot happier as she unhitched her pack of equipment, which she had not wanted to leave behind, and shoved it down beside the chair. Unlike the gear inside her pack, this console possessed the full complement of military software, including penetration and sabotage programs. She sat, cracked her knuckles, booted up the console, and was soon into Argus’s system. Alex moved away, and began searching the plane for food, water and ammunition. Soon he returned to her with sealed packs of soldier’s rations.

‘That all?’ she asked.

‘That’s all. All the Chairman’s stocks have been taken – all the luggage too.’

‘Figures.’ Like him, she ate with slow care, aware of what such rich food could do to them after so long without.

‘I’m seeing no sign that they’re moving the Gene Bank samples, and the data remains as widely distributed as it was before,’ she told him.

‘Make absolutely sure of that,’ he replied, ‘then check to see if there’s any sign that they’ve been preparing a space plane.’ He moved off, hoping to find something more than the small box of ration packs he had shoved inside his backpack. Checking the kitchen, he