Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

found that it had been totally stripped, too, not even spices remaining. When he finally entered the armoury, just behind the plane’s cockpit, he didn’t even feel any disappointment, for he had expected it to be as empty as he found it. He returned to stand behind Alexandra.

‘Something else is going on,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why, but they’re preparing one of the smelting plants for refining a huge amount of mercury ore.’ Schematics began coming up on the screen.

‘Where would they get the ore?’ he asked. Then he realized: ‘An asteroid.’

‘But why?’ she asked, now frantically searching.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, seeing a system of pipes being highlighted in red.

‘They intend to pipe it in . . . but that’s odd.’ She checked back through schematics, tracing something, then abruptly sat back. ‘It’s that thing the robots are building – it runs below the smelting-plant dock and there’s some sort of junction there. They’re going to pipe the mercury inside it, and there are plans here to connect the ring up with the station’s astrogation system. It makes no sense at all.’

All at once it made perfect sense to Alex. ‘That’s no tube transport system . . .’

Just then, as they gazed at the screen, the soft thump of an airlock door opening was all too audible. Alex looked back the way he had come, from the armoury, to where the main tube airlock entered the docking pillar. Something came through fast, hit the ceiling above the door and bounced down to thump heavily against the floor, where it drove its piton feet straight into the metal.

‘Drop your weapons.’

The voice speaking through the new arrival was recognizable as Langstrom’s. Alex knew they were done, but in that same instant he knew for certain that his partner would not obey his earlier instructions.

‘No!’ he managed, just as Alexandra skidded her chair backwards, snatching up her weapon and raising it. Her weapon thundered, firing a full clip of ceramic ammunition at this jury-rigged mobile readergun. Alex himself staggered back towards the door as the robot replied with a brief burring sound, bright light flashing from its turret. Blood and chunks of flesh sprayed out from the back of Alexandra’s VC suit, and bonelessly she slammed into Alex, knocking him further back into the room behind.

Alex pushed himself away from her, glimpsed the robot now tilted over, the legs on one side of it blown away. With his rifle still strapped across his back, he threw himself aside as its weapon burred again. One shot clipped his oxygen pack and another caught his shin and spun him round, but he fell out of its line of sight. He dragged himself along by handfuls of soft carpet, propelling himself onwards.

Those who had sent this robot in probably did not know about the secret airlock. He finally reached it, dragged himself inside, slapped a repair patch over the bloody wreckage of his leg, then watched breach foam boil out round that, even as the airlock evacuated. Next he pulled himself out into vacuum, and somehow just kept going.

For fifty minutes everyone hung on as the steering thrusters flipped Argus over and stabilized it. Half an hour after this, the big Mars Traveller engine fired up, and Hannah had something more than just her sticky boots to secure her to the floor of Tech Central. It was a weird feeling, and it reminded her of the boost out from the Moon’s orbit and the relief she had felt then, the knowledge that they were moving away from Earth and the Committee. However, despite that memory, she knew that now the same sensation was bringing the reach of the Committee – albeit a rather changed version – closer and closer. As they now decelerated towards the edge of the Asteroid Belt, the Scourge would be rapidly gaining on them. They would have, at best, a month moored to asteroid HJI457 before it was fully upon them. Le Roque and Langstrom were thoroughly aware of this, too, and she could see it in their faces.

‘A space drive,’ said Le Roque, gazing disbelievingly at the images relayed to his three big screens from the interior of the rim.

The course correction, which had occurred just after she discovered what the station robots were building in the outer rim, had started Le Roque asking questions. The correction looked as if it had been in the system queue ever since they left the Moon behind them, but Le Roque declared otherwise. When it became evident that Saul was not regaining consciousness, he had checked everything so as to ascertain their status, ensuring there were no surprises awaiting him, and he had seen no course correction in the queue then. It seemed that Saul was giving orders from his sleep, and slipping them in under anything else put in after he entered that state. This present deceleration was a case in point. Le Roque had also found out about the work that Leeran and Pike were doing in one of the station’s smelting plants, and by then Hannah knew she could keep it from him no longer.

‘We can’t allow this to be generally known,’ she explained. ‘We might have taken out one of Messina’s clones, but the other one might still be able to send information straight back to the Scourge.’

‘The woman we shot had a pack of jury-rigged com equipment with her, which was probably what they were using,’ said Langstrom. ‘And the man was shot in the leg, so he is more likely to be struggling to survive rather than trying to find a way to communicate with the Scourge.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Hannah. ‘We have to keep this under wraps. This is our edge, and this is what will enable us to survive.’

‘If it works,’ said Langstrom gloomily, turning to eye the proctor Paul, who, after Hannah had ordered Tech Central cleared, was the only other being present.

‘It can work, Commander Langstrom,’ the proctor assured him. ‘All that is in doubt is whether it can be made to work in time. The extent of the damage we will receive upon entering the Asteroid Belt can only be calculated within limited parameters that range right up to the complete destruction of this station.’

‘Oh, happy day,’ said Langstrom. ‘So how did the Mars Traveller VI avoid damage when it went there for the Argus asteroid?’