Ken MacLeod - The Star Fraction

The Star Fraction

Fall Revolution Book 1

Ken MacLeod

For Carol

KenMacLeod graduated with a BSc in Zoology from Glasgow University in 1976.Following research in biomechanics at Brunei University he worked in a varietyof manual and clerical jobs whilst completing an M.Phil thesis. He previouslyworked as a computer analyst/ programmer in Edinburgh, but is now a full-timewriter. He lives in West Lothian with his wife and children. His first novel,The Star Fraction, was runner-up for the Arthur C. Clarke award, and he hassince written two more books - The Stone Canal and The CassiniDivision.

Thanksto Carol, Sharon and Michael for more than I can say; to Iain Banks, Ron Binns,Mairi Ann Cullen and Nick Fielding for reading early drafts; to Mic Cheethamand John Jarrold for pushing me into two more drafts, as well as for being agood agent and a good editor, respectively.

Allof these knew they were helping me with the book. Those who didn't know includeChris Tame, Brian Micklethwait, Mike Holmes, Tim Starr and Leighton Anderson,all of whom at different times guided me through the pleasures and perils ofLibertaria, that fair country of the mind. If at any time I got lost there, itwasn't their fault.

Andfinally an extra thank you to Iain for his endless encouragement andenthusiasm, and for help with Locoscript (and Dissembler).

Smoking Gunman

It was hot on the roof. Above, thesky was fast-forward: zeppelin fleets of cloud alternating with ragged anarchicflags of black. Bright stars, mil- and comsats, meteors, junk. Moh Kohncrouched behind the parapet and scanned the band of trees half a klick beyondthe campus perimeter. Glades down, the dark was a different shade of day. Heheld the gun loose, swung it smoothly, moved around to keep cool. Thebuilding's thermals gave him all the cover he could expect, enough to baffleglades or IR-eyes that far away.

'Gaia,it's hot,' he muttered.

'Thirty-oneCelsius,' said the gun.

Heliked hearing the gun. It gave him a wired feeling. Only a screensightread-out, but he heard it with his eyes like Sign.

'What'llit be tonight? Cranks or creeps?'

'Beginningsearch.'

'Stop.'He didn't want it racking its memory for an educated guess; he wanted itlooking. As he was, all the time, for the two major threats to his clients:those who considered anything smarter than a pocket calculator a threat to thehuman race, and those who considered anything with a central nervous system anhonorary member of it.

He'dbeen scanning the concrete apron, the perimeter wall, the trees for threehours, since 21.00. Relief was due in two. And then he wouldn't just beoff-shift, he'd be off-active, with a whole week to recover. After sevennights of staring into the darkness, edgy with rumours, jumpy with hoaxes andfalse alarms, he needed it.

Musicand laughter and noise eddied between the buildings behind him, sometimes loudwhen the speeding air above sent a blast down to ground-level, sometimes - asnow, in the hot stillness - faint. He wanted to be at that party. If noattack came this watch

...dammit, even if there did. All he had to do was not take incoming fire.Shelling it out was something else, and it wouldn't be the first time he'ddissolved the grey-ghostly nightfight memories and the false colours of coolingblood in drinking and dancing and especially in sex - the great specific, theantithesis and antidote for violence - to the same night's end.

Somethingmoved. Kohn chilled instantly, focusing on a point to his left, where he'd seen... There it was again, where the bushes fingered out from the trees. Advance cover.He keyed the weapon's inertial memory and made a quick sweep, stepping thenightsight up X3. Nothing else visible. Perhaps this was the main push. Heturned back and the gun checked his hand at the place it had marked.

Andthere they were. Two, three - zoom, key to track - four, crouching andscurrying. Two with rifles, the others lugging a pack. The best-straight-lineof their zigzag rush arrowed the Alexsander Institute. The ai block.

Cranks,then. No compunction.

'Doit for Big Blue,' he told the gun. He made himself as small as possible behindthe parapet, holding the gun awkwardly above it, and aimed by the screensightimage patched to his glades. His trigger finger pressed Enter. The weapon tookover; it aimed him. In a second the head-up image showed four bodies,sprawled, stapled down like X- and Y-chromosomes.

'Targetsstunned.'

Whatwas it on about? Kohn checked the scrolling read-out. The gun had fired fivehigh-velocity slugs of sup - skin-contact liquid pentothal. It had put the cranks to sleep. He could havesworn he'd switched to metal rounds.

'hed detected. Timer functioning.Reads: 8.05 ... 8.04 ... 8.03 ..

'CallSecurity!'

'Alreadycopied.'

Kohnlooked over the parapet. Two figures in hard-suits were running across thegrass towards the unconscious raiders. He thumbed the Security channel.

'LookoutFive to Ready One, do you copy?'

('7-5I.')

('Yes,yes.')

'ReadyOne to Lookout. Receiving.'

'They'vegot a time-bomb with them. Could be booby-trapped.'

Theystopped so fast he lost sight of them for a moment. Then an unsteady voicesaid, 'Hostiles are alive, repeat alive. Our standing instructions'

'Fuckthem? Kohn screamed. He calmed himself. 'Sorry, Ready One. My contract saysI override. Get yourselves clear. No dead heroes on my call-out. Shit, it couldbe dangerous even from there, if it's a daisy-cutter ... Hey, can you give me adownlink to the uxb system?'

'Whathardware, you got up there, Moh?'

'Enough,'Moh said, grinning. The guard took a small apparatus from his backpack and setit on the grass. Kohn adjusted the gun's receiver dishlet, hearing the pingof the laser interface. The screensight reformatted.

'OK,you got line-of-sight tight beam, user access.' The guards sprinted for cover.

NormallyKohn couldn't have entered this system in a million years, but there's neverbeen any way around the old quis custodiet (et cetera) questions.Especially when the custodes are in the union.

Fumbling,he keyed numbers into the stock. The gun was picking up electronic spilloverfrom the bomb's circuitry (no great feat; ai- abolitionists didn't really go for high tech) and bouncingit via the security guard's commset to British Telecom's on-line bomb-disposalexpert system.

'2.20.'Then: 'No interactive countermeasures possible. Recommend mechanical force.'

'What?'

Ina distant tower, something like this:

if (message-understood)

then; /* do nothing */

else do;

call re-phrase;

end;

'shoot the clock off!' relayed the gun, in biggreen letters.

'Oh.All right.'

Thegun lined itself up. Kohn fired. The screen cleared and reverted to normal. Thegun was on its own now.

'Status?'

'Noactivity.'

Hecould see that for himself. The pack containing the bomb had jerked as thebullet passed through it So had one of the bodies.

Kohnfelt sick. Ten minutes earlier he'd been annoyed that these people weren'tdead. No one, not even his true conscience, would blame him, but the twistedcode of combatant ethics revolted at pre-stunned slaughter. He stood, andlooked down at the prone figures, tiny now. The one he'd hit had an arm wound;at the limits of resolution he could see blood oozing rhythmically...

Therefore,not dead. Relief flooded his brain. He talked into the chin mike, requestingmedicals for the injured hostile. What about the others? Campus Security wantedto know.

'Putthem in the bank,' Kohn said. 'Credit our account.'