Naked God: Flight
Chapter 01
Jay Hilton was sound asleep when
every electrophorescent strip in the paediatric ward sprang up to full
intensity. The simple dream of her mother broke apart like a stained-glass
statue shattered by a powerful gust of sharp white light; colourful splinters
tumbling off into the glare.
Jay blinked heavily against the
rush of light, raising her head in confusion. The familiar scenery of the ward
hardened around her. She felt so tired. It certainly wasn’t morning yet. A huge
yawn forced her mouth open. All around her the other children were waking up in
bleary-eyed mystification. Holomorph stickers began reacting to the light,
translucent cartoon images rising up to perform their mischievous antics.
Animatic dolls cooed sympathetically as children clutched at them for
reassurance. Then the doors at the far end of the ward slid open, and the
nurses came hurrying in.
One look at the brittle smiles on
their faces was all Jay needed. Something was badly wrong. Her heart shivered.
Surely not the possessed? Not here?
The nurses began ushering children
out of their beds, and along the central aisle towards the doors. Complaints
and questions were firmly ignored.
“It’s a fire drill,” the senior
staff nurse called out. “Come along, quickly, now. I want you out of here and
into the lifts. Pronto. Pronto.” He clapped his hands loudly.
Jay shoved the thin duvet back, and
scuttled down off the bed. Her long cotton nightie was tangled round her knees,
which took a moment to straighten. She was about to join the others charging
along the aisle when she caught the flickers of motion and light outside the
window. Every morning since she’d arrived, Jay had sat in front of that window,
gazing solemnly out at Mirchusko and its giddy green cloudscape. She’d never
seen speckles of light swarming out there before.
Danger.
The silent mental word was spoken
so quickly Jay almost didn’t catch it. Though the feel of Haile was
unmistakable. She looked round, expecting to see the Kiint ambling down the
aisle towards her. But there was only the rank of flustered nurses propelling
children along.
Knowing full well she wasn’t doing
what she was supposed to, Jay padded over to the big window, and pressed her
nose against it. A slim band of tiny blue-white stars had looped itself round
Tranquillity. They were all moving, contracting around the habitat. She could
see now that they weren’t really stars, they were lengthening. Flames.
Brilliant, tiny flames. Hundreds of them.
My friend. My friend. Lifeloss
anguish.
Now that was definitely Haile, and intimating
plenty of distress. Jay took a step back from the window, seeing misty grey
swirls where her face and hands had pressed against it. “What’s the matter?”
she asked the empty air.
A cascade of new flames burst into
existence outside the habitat. Expanding knots blossoming seemingly at random
across space. Jay gasped at the sight. There were thousands of them,
interlacing and expanding. It was so pretty.
Friend. Friend.
Evacuation procedure initiated.
Jay frowned. The second mental
voice came as a faint echo. She thought it was one of the adult Kiint, possibly
Lieria. Jay had only encountered Haile’s parents a few times. They were awfully
intimidating, though they’d been nice enough to her.
Designation. Two.
No. The adult responded forcefully. Forbidden.
Designation.
You may not, child. Sorrow felt
for all human suffering. But obedience required.
No. Friend. My friend.
Designation. Two. Confirmed.
Jay had never felt Haile so
determined before. It was kind of scary. “Please?” she asked nervously. “What’s
happening?”
A torrent of light burst through
the window. It was as if a sun had risen over Mirchusko’s horizon. All of space
was alive with brilliant efflorescences.
The adult Kiint said: Evacuation
enacted.
Designated.
Jay felt a wash of guilty triumph
rushing out from her friend. She wanted to reach out and comfort Haile, who she
knew from the adult’s reaction was in Big Trouble over something. Instead, she
concentrated on forming a beaming smile at the heart of her own mind, hoping
Haile would pick it up. Then the air around her was crawling as if she was
caught in a breeze.
“Jay!” one of the nurses called.
“Come along sweetie, you . . .”
The light around Jay was fading
fast, along with the sounds of the ward. She could just hear the nurse’s gasp
of astonishment. The breeze abruptly turned into a small gale, whipping her
nightie around and making her bristly hair stand on end. Some kind of grey fog
was forming around her, a perfectly spherical bubble of the stuff, with her at
the centre. Except she couldn’t feel any dampness in the air. It darkened
rapidly, reducing the ward to weak spectral outlines. Then the boundary
expanded at a speed so frightening that Jay screamed. The boundary vanished,
and with it any sign of the ward. She was alone in space devoid of stars. And
falling.
Jay put her hands to her head and
screamed again, as hard as she possibly could. It didn’t put a stop to any of
the horror. She paused to suck down a huge breath. That was when the boundary
reappeared out on the edge of nowhere. Hurtling towards her so fast from every
direction that she knew the impact would squash her flat. She jammed her eyes
shut. “MUMMY!”
Something like a stiff feather
tickled the soles of her feet, and she was abruptly standing on solid ground.
Jay windmilled her arms for balance, pitching forward. She landed hard on some
kind of cool floor, her eyes still tight shut. The air she gulped down was
warmer than it had been in the ward, and a lot more humid. Funny smell. Rosy
light was playing over her eyelids.
Still crouched on all fours, Jay
risked a quick peep as she gathered herself to scream again. The sight which
greeted her was so incredible that the breath stalled in her throat. “Oh gosh,”
was all she eventually managed to squeak.
Joshua initiated the ZTT jump with
little enthusiasm. His downcast mood was one which he shared with all the Lady
Mac’s crew and passengers—at least, those who weren’t in zero-tau. To have
achieved so much, only to have their final triumph snatched away.
Except . . . Once the initial shock
of discovering that Tranquillity had vanished from its orbit had subsided, he
wasn’t frightened. Not for Ione, or his child. Tranquillity hadn’t been
destroyed, there was at least that comfort. Which logically meant the habitat
had been possessed and snatched out of the universe.
He didn’t believe it.
But his intuition was hardly
infallible. Perhaps he simply didn’t want to believe it. Tranquillity was home.
The emotional investment he had in the habitat and its precious contents was
enormous. Tell anyone that everything they ever treasured has been erased, and
the reaction is always the same. Whatever. His vacillation made him as
miserable as the rest of the ship, just for a different reason.
“Jump confirmed,” he said. “Samuel,
you’re on.”
Lady Mac had jumped into one of Trafalgar’s designated
emergence zones, a hundred thousand kilometres above Avon. Her transponder was
already blaring out her flight authority codes. Somehow Joshua didn’t think
that would quite be enough. Not when you barged in unexpected on the
Confederation’s primary military base in the middle of a crisis like this one.
“I’ve got distortion fields
focusing on us,” Dahybi said drolly. “Five of them, I think.”
The flight computer alerted Joshua
that targeting radars were locking on to the hull. When he accessed the sensors
rising out of their recesses, he found three voidhawks and two frigates on
interception courses. Trafalgar’s strategic defence command was directing a
barrage of questions at him. He glanced over at the Edenist as he started to
datavise a response. Samuel was lying prone on his acceleration couch, eyes
closed as he conversed with other Edenists in the asteroid.
Sarha grinned round phlegmatically.
“How many medals do you think they’ll give us apiece?”
“Uh oh,” Liol grunted. “However
many it is, we might be getting them posthumously. I think one of the frigates
has just realised our antimatter drive is ever so slightly highly radioactive.”
“Great,” she grumbled.
Monica Foulkes didn’t like the
sound of that; as far as the Confederation Navy was aware, it was only
Organization ships who were using antimatter. She hadn’t wanted to take Mzu
back to Tranquillity, and she certainly hadn’t wanted to wind up at Trafalgar.
But in the discussion which followed their discovery of Tranquillity’s
disappearance, she didn’t exactly have the casting vote. The original agreement
between herself and Samuel had just about disintegrated when they rendezvoused
with the Beezling.
Then Calvert had insisted on the
First Admiral being the final arbitrator of what was to be done with Mzu, Adul,
and himself. Samuel had agreed. And she couldn’t produce any rational argument
against it. Silently, she acknowledged that maybe the only true defence against
more Alchemists being built was a unified embargo covenant between the major
powers. After all, such an agreement almost worked for antimatter.
Not that such angst counted for
much right now. Like ninety per cent of her mission to date, the critical
deciding factor was outside her control. All she could do was stick close to
Mzu, and make sure the prime requirement of technology transfer wasn’t
violated. Though by allowing it to be deployed against the Organization, she’d
probably screwed that up too. Her debrief was shaping up to be a bitch.
Monica frowned over at Samuel, who
was still silent, his brow creased up in concentration. She added a little
prayer of her own to all the unheard babble of communication whirling around Lady
Mac for the Navy to exercise some enlightenment and tolerance.
Trafalgar’s strategic defence
command told Joshua to hold his altitude, but refused to grant any approach
vector until his status was established. The Navy’s emergence zone patrol ships
approached to within a cautious hundred kilometres, and took up a three-dimensional
diamond observation formation. Targeting radars remained locked on.
Admiral Lalwani herself talked to
Samuel, unable to restrain her incredulity as he explained what had happened.
Given that the Lady Macbeth contained not only Mzu and others who understood
the Alchemist’s principals, but a quantity of antimatter as well, the final
decision on allowing the ship to dock belonged to the First Admiral himself. It
took twenty minutes to arrive, but Joshua eventually received a flight vector
from strategic defence command. They were allocated a docking bay in the
asteroid’s northern spaceport.
“And Joshua,” Samuel said
earnestly. “Don’t deviate from it. Please.”
Joshua winked, knowing it was being
seen by the hundreds of Edenists who were borrowing the agent’s eyes to monitor
Lady Mac’s bridge. “What, Lagrange Calvert, fly off line?”
The flight to Trafalgar took eighty
minutes. The number of antimatter technology specialists waiting for them in
the docking bay was almost as great as the number of marines. On top of that
were a large complement of uniformed CNIS officers.
They weren’t stormed, exactly. No
personal weapons were actually taken out of their holsters. Though once the
airlock tube was sealed and pressurized, Lady Mac’s crew had little to
do except hand over the powerdown codes to a Navy maintenance team. Zero-tau
pods were opened, and the various bewildered occupants Joshua had accumulated
during his pursuit of the Alchemist were ushered off the ship. After a very thorough
body scan, the polite, steel-faced CNIS officers escorted everyone to a secure
barracks deep inside the asteroid. Joshua wound up in a suite that would have
done a four-star hotel credit. Ashly and Liol were sharing it with him.
“Well now,” Liol said as the door
closed behind them. “Guilty of carrying antimatter, flung in prison by secret
police who’ve never heard of civil rights, and after we’re dead, Al Capone is
going to invite us to have a quiet word.” He opened the cherrywood cocktail bar
and smiled at the impressive selection of bottles inside. “It can’t get any
worse.”
“You forgot Tranquillity being
vanquished,” Ashly chided. Liol waved a bottle in apology.
Joshua slumped down into a soft
black leather chair in the middle of the lounge. “It might not get worse for
you. Just remember, I know what the Alchemist does, and how. They can’t afford
to let me go.”
“You might know what it does,”
Ashly said. “But with respect, Captain, I don’t think you would be much help to
anyone seeking the technical details necessary to construct another.”
“One hint is all it takes,” Joshua
muttered. “One careless comment that’ll point researchers in the right
direction.”
“Stop worrying, Josh. The
Confederation passed that point a long time ago. Besides, the Navy owes us
big-time, and the Edenists, and the Kulu Kingdom. We pulled their arses out of
the fire. You’ll fly Lady Mac again.”
“Know what I’d do if I was the
First Admiral? Put me into a zero-tau pod for the rest of time.”
“I won’t let them do that to my
little brother.”
Joshua put his hands behind his
head, and smiled up at Liol. “The second thing I’d do, would be to put you in
the pod next to mine.”
Planets sparkled in the twilight
sky. Jay could see at least fifteen of them strung out along a curving line.
The nearest one appeared a bit smaller than the Earth’s moon. She thought that
was just because it was a long way off. In every other respect it was similar
to any of the Confederation’s terra-compatible planets, with deep blue oceans
and emerald continents, the whole globe wrapped in thick tatters of white
cloud. The only difference was the lights; cities larger than some of Earth’s
old nations gleamed with magisterial splendour. Entire weather patterns of
cloud smeared across the nightside diffused the urban radiance, soaking the
oceans in a perpetual pearl gloaming.
Jay sat back on her heels, staring
up delightedly at the magical sky. A high wall ringed the area she was in. She
guessed that the line of planets extended beyond those she could see, but the
wall blocked her view of the horizon. A star with a necklace of inhabited
planets! Thousands would be needed to make up such a circle. None of Jay’s
didactic memories about solar systems mentioned one with so many planets, not
even if you counted gas-giant moons.
Friend Jay. Safe. Gleefulness at
survival.
Jay blinked, and lowered her gaze.
Haile was trying to run towards her. As always when the baby Kiint got
overexcited her legs lost most of their coordination. She came very close to
tripping with every other step. The sight of her lolloping about chaotically
made Jay smile. It faded as she began to take in the scene behind her friend.
She was in some kind of circular
arena two hundred metres across, with an ebony marble-like floor. The wall
surrounding it was thirty metres high, sealed with a transparent dome. There
were horizontal gashes at regular intervals along the vertical surface, windows
into brightly lit rooms that seemed to be furnished with large cubes of primary
colours. Adult Kiint were moving round inside, although an awful lot of them
had stopped what they were doing to look directly at her.
Haile thundered up; half-formed
tractamorphic tentacles waving round excitedly. Jay grabbed on to a couple of
them, feeling them palpitate wildly inside her fingers.
“Haile! Was that you who did this?”
Two adult Kiint were walking across
the arena floor towards her. Jay recognized them as Nang and Lieria. Beyond
them, a black star erupted out of thin air. In less than a heartbeat it had
expanded to a sphere fifteen metres in diameter, its lower quarter merging with
the floor. The surface immediately dissolved to reveal another adult Kiint. Jay
stared at the process in fascination. A ZTT jump, but without a starship. She
focused hard on her primer-level didactic memory of the Kiint.
I did, Haile confessed. Her tractamorphic flesh
writhed in agitation, so Jay just squeezed tighter, offering reassurance. Only
us were designated to evacuate the all around at lifeloss moment. I included
you in designation, against parental proscription. Much shame. Puzzlement. Haile
turned her head to face her parents. Query lifeloss act approval? Many nice
friends in the all around.
We do not approve.
Jay flicked a nervous gaze at the
two adults, and pressed herself closer against Haile. Nang formshifted his
tractamorphic appendage into a flat tentacle, which he laid across his
daughter’s back. The juvenile Kiint visibly calmed at the gesture of affection.
Jay thought there was a mental exchange of some kind involved, too, sensing a
hint of compassion and serenity.
Why did we not help? Haile asked.
We must never interfere in the
primary events of other species during their evolution towards Omega
comprehension. You must learn and obey this law above all else. However, it
does not prevent us from grieving at their tragedy.
Jay felt the last bit was included
for her benefit. “Don’t be angry with Haile,” she said solemnly. “I would have
done the same for her. And I didn’t want to die.”
Lieria reached out a tentacle tip,
and touched Jay’s shoulder. I thank you for the friendship you have shown
Haile. In our hearts we are glad you are with us, for you will be completely
safe here. I am sorry we could not do more for your friends. But our law cannot
be broken.
A sudden sensation of bleak horror
threatened to engulf Jay. “Did Tranquillity really get blown up?” she wailed.
We do not know. It was under a
concerted attack when we left. However, Ione Saldana may have surrendered.
There is a high possibility the habitat and its population survived.
“We left,” Jay whispered wondrously
to herself. There were eight adult Kiint standing on the arena floor now, all
the researchers from Tranquillity’s Laymil project. “Where are we?” She glanced
up at the dusky sky again, and that awesome constellation.
This is our home star system.
You are the first true human to visit.
“But . . .” Flashes of didactic
memory tumbled through her brain. She looked up at those enticing, bright
planets again. “This isn’t Jobis.”
Nang and Lieria looked at each
other in what was almost an awkward pause.
No, Jobis is just one of our
science mission outposts. It is not in this galaxy.
Jay burst into tears.
Right from the start of the
possession crisis the Jovian Consensus had acknowledged that it was a prime
target. Its colossal industrial facilities were inevitably destined to produce
a torrent of munitions, bolstering the reserve stocks of Adamist navies which
thanks to budgetary considerations were not all they should be. The response of
the Yosemite Consensus to the Capone Organization had already shown what Edenism
was capable of achieving along those lines, and that was with a mere thirty
habitats. Jupiter had the resources of four thousand two hundred and fifty at
its disposal.
Requests for materiel support
started almost as soon as Trafalgar issued its first warning about the nature
of the threat which the Confederation was facing. Ambassadors requested and
pleaded and called in every favour they thought Edenism owed them to secure a
place in production schedules. Payment for the weapons involved loan agreements
and fuseodollar transfers on a scale which could have purchased entire
stage-four star systems.
On top of that, it was Edenism
which was providing the critical support for the Mortonridge Liberation in the
form of serjeant constructs to act as foot soldiers. It was the one utterly
pivotal psychological campaign waged against the possessed, proving to the
Confederation at large that they could be beaten.
Fortunately, the practical aspects
of assaulting one or more habitats were extremely difficult. Jupiter already
had a superb Strategic Defence network; and among the possessed only the
Organization had a fleet which could hope to mount any sort of large-scale
offensive, and the distance between Earth and New California almost certainly
precluded that. However, the possibility of a lone ship carrying antimatter on
a fanatical suicide flight was a strong one. And then there was the remote
possibility that Capone would acquire the Alchemist and use it against them.
Although Consensus didn’t know how the doomsday device worked, a ship certainly
had to jump in to deploy it, which in theory gave the Edenists an interception
window to destroy the device before it was deployed.
Preparations to solidify their
defences had begun immediately. Fully one third of the armaments coming out of
the industrial stations were incorporated into a massively expanded SD
architecture. The 550,000-km orbital band containing the habitats was the most
heavily protected, with the number of SD platforms doubled, and seeded with
seven hundred thousand combat wasps to act as mines. A further million combat
wasps were arranged in concentric shells around the massive planet out to the
orbit of Callisto. Flotillas of multi-spectrum sensor satellites were dispersed
among them, searching for any anomaly, however small, which pricked the potent
energy storms churning through space around the gas-giant.
Over fifteen thousand heavily armed
patrol voidhawks complemented the static defences; circling the volatile
cloudscape in elliptical, high-inclination orbits, ready to interdict any
remotely suspicious incoming molecule. The fact that so many voidhawks had been
taken off civil cargo flights was actually causing a tiny rise in the price of
He3, the first for over two hundred and sixty years.
Consensus considered the economic
repercussions to be a worthwhile trade for the security such invulnerable
defences provided. No ship, robot, or inert kinetic projectile could get within
three million kilometres of Jupiter unless specifically permitted to do so.
Even a lone maniac would
acknowledge an attempted attack would be the ultimate in futility.
The gravity fluctuation which
appeared five hundred and sixty thousand kilometres above Jupiter’s equator was
detected instantaneously. It registered as an inordinately powerful twist of
space-time in the distortion fields of the closest three hundred voidhawks. The
intensity was so great that the gravitonic detectors in local SD sensor array
had to be hurriedly recalibrated in order to acquire an accurate fix. Visually
it appeared as a ruby star, the gravity field lensing Jupiter’s light in every
direction. Surrounding dust motes and solar wind particles were sucked in, a
cascade of pico-meteorites fizzing brilliant yellow.
Consensus went to condition-one
alert status. The sheer strength of the space warp ruled out any conventional
starship emergence. And the location was provocatively close to the habitats, a
hundred thousand kilometres from the nearest designated emergence zone.
Affinity commands from Consensus were loaded into the combat wasps drifting
inertly among the habitats. Three thousand fusion drives flared briefly,
aligning the lethal drones on their new target. The patrol voidhawks formed a
sub-Consensus of their own, designating approach vectors and swallow manoeuvres
to englobe the invader.
The warp area expanded out to
several hundred metres, alarming individual Edenists, though Consensus itself
absorbed the fact calmly. It was already far larger than any conceivable
voidhawk or blackhawk wormhole terminus. Then it began to flatten out into a
perfectly circular two-dimensional fissure in space-time, and the real
expansion sequence began. Within five seconds it was over eleven kilometres in
diameter. Consensus quickly and concisely reformed its response pattern.
Approaching voidhawks performed frantic fifteen-gee parabolas, curving clear
then swallowing away. An extra eight thousand combat wasps burst into life,
hurtling in towards the Herculean alien menace.
After another three seconds the
fissure reached twenty kilometres in diameter, and stabilized. One side
collapsed inwards, exposing the wormhole’s throat. Three small specks zoomed
out of the centre. Oenone and the other two voidhawks screamed their
identity into the general affinity band, and implored: HOLD YOUR FIRE!
For the first time in its five
hundred and twenty-one year history, the Jovian Consensus experienced the
emotion of shock. Even then, its response wasn’t entirely blunted. Specialist
perceptual thought routines confirmed the three voidhawks remained unpossessed.
A five-second lockdown was loaded into the combat wasps.
What is happening? Consensus demanded.
Syrinx simply couldn’t resist it. We
have a visitor, she replied gleefully. Her entire crew was laughing
cheerfully around her on the bridge.
The counter-rotating spaceport was
the first part to emerge from the gigantic wormhole terminus. A silver-white
disk four and a half kilometres in diameter, docking bay lights glittering like
small towns huddled at the base of metal valleys, red and green strobes winking
bright around the rim. Its slender spindle slid up after it, appearing to pull
the dark rust-red polyp endcap along.
That was when the other starships
began to rampage out of the terminus; voidhawks, blackhawks, and Confederation
Navy vessels streaking off in all directions. Jupiter’s SD sensors and patrol
voidhawk distortion fields tracked them urgently. Consensus fired guidance
updates at the incoming combat wasps, determinedly vectoring them away from the
unruly incursion.
The habitat’s main cylinder started
to coast up out of the terminus, a prodigious seventeen kilometres in diameter.
After the first thirty-two kilometres were clear, its central band of
starscrapers emerged, hundreds of thousands of windows agleam with the radiance
of lazy afternoon sunlight. Their bases just cleared the rim of the wormhole.
There were no more starships to come after that, only the rest of the cylinder.
When the emergence was complete, the wormhole irised shut and space returned to
its natural state. The flotilla of patrol voidhawks thronging round detected a
capacious distortion field folding back into the broad collar of polyp around
the base of the habitat’s southern endcap that formed the bed of its
circumfluous sea.
Consensus directed a phenomenally
restrained burst of curiosity at the newcomer.
Greetings, chorused Tranquillity and Ione Saldana. There
was a distinct timbre of smugness in the hail.
Dariat did the one thing which he
had never expected to do again. He opened his eyes and looked around. His own
eyes in his own body; fat unpleasant thing that it was, clad in his usual
grubby toga.
The sight which greeted him was
familiar: one of Valisk’s innumerable shallow valleys out among the pink grass
plains. If he wasn’t completely mistaken, it was the same patch of ground
Anastasia’s tribe had occupied the day she died.
“This is the final afterlife?” he
asked aloud.
It couldn’t be. There was an
elusive memory, the same befuddlement as a dream leaves upon waking. Of a
sundering, of being torn out of . . .
He had fused with Rubra, the two of
them becoming one, vanquishing the foe by shunting Valisk to a realm, or
dimension, or state, that the two of them grasped was intrinsically adverse to
the possessing souls. Perhaps they had even created the new location by simply
willing it to be. And then time went awry.
He gave his surroundings a more
considered examination. It was Valisk, all right. The circumfluous sea was
about four kilometres away, its clusters of atolls easily recognizable. When he
turned the other way, he could see a fat black scar running down two-thirds of
the northern endcap.
The light tube was dimmer than it
should be, even accounting for the loss of some plasma. It proffered a kind of
twilight, but grey rather than the magnificent golden sunset Dariat had
experienced every day of his life. The grass plain echoed that malaised
atmosphere, it was uneasily torpid. Its resident insects had curled up into
dormancy; birds and rodents slunk back reticently to their nests, even the
flowers had shrugged off their natural gloss.
Dariat bent down to pick an
enervated poppy. And his chubby hand passed clean through the stem. He stared
at it in astonishment, for the first time seeing that he was faintly
translucent.
Shock finally liberated comprehension.
A location hostile to possessors, one which would exorcise them from their
enslaved hosts, denying them their energistic power. That was the destination
he and Rubra had committed the habitat to.
“Oh, Thoale, you utter bastard. I’m
a ghost.”
For nearly ten hours the lift
capsule had skimmed down the tower linking Supra-Brazil asteroid with the
Govcentral state after which it was named, a smooth, silent ride. The only clue
to how fast the lift capsules travelled (three thousand kilometres per hour) would
come when they passed each other. But as they clung to rails on the exterior of
the tower, and the only windows gave a direct view outward, such events
remained out of sight to their passengers. Deliberately so; watching another
capsule hurtling towards you at a combined speed of six thousand kilometres per
hour was considered an absolute psychological no-go zone by the tower
operators.
Just before it entered the upper
fringes of the atmosphere, the lift capsule decelerated to subsonic velocity.
It reached the stratosphere as dawn broke over South America. On Earth that was
no longer an invigorating sight; all the passengers saw was an unbroken
murky-grey cloud layer which covered most of the continent and a third of the
South Atlantic. Only when the lift capsule was ten kilometres above the
frothing upper layer could Quinn see the army of individual streamers from
which the gigantic cyclone was composed, flowing around each other at perilous
velocities. The seething mass was as compressed as any gas-giant storm band,
but infinitely drabber.
They descended into the slashing
tendrils of cirrus, and the windows immediately reverberated from the barrage
of fist-sized raindrops. There was nothing else to see after that, just
formless smears of grey. A minute before they reached the ground station, the
windows went black as the lift capsule entered the sheath which guarded the
bottom of the tower from the worst violence of the planet’s rabid weather.
Digits on the Royale Class lounge’s
touchdown counter reached zero, an event marked by only the slightest tremble
as latch clamps closed round the base of the lift capsule. The magnetic rail
disengaged, and a transporter rolled it clear of the tower, leaving the
reception berth clear for the next capsule. Airlock hatches popped open,
revealing long extendable corridors leading into the arrivals complex where
treble the usual numbers of customs, immigration, and security officers waited
to scan the passengers. Quinn sighed in mild resignation. He’d quite enjoyed
the trip down, mellowing out with all the facilities the Royale Class lounge
could provide. A welcome period of contemplation, assisted by the Norfolk Tears
he’d been drinking.
He had arrived at Earth with one
goal: conquest. Now at least he had some notions how to go about subduing the
planet for his Lord. The kind of exponential brute force approach the possessed
had used up to now just wasn’t an option on Earth. The arcologies were too
isolated for that. It was curious, but the more Quinn thought about it, the
more he realized that Earth was a representation of the Confederation in
miniature. Its vast population centres kept separate by an amok nature almost
as lethal as the interstellar void. Seeds of his revolution would have to be
planted very carefully indeed. If Govcentral security ever suspected an
outbreak of possession, the arcology in question would be quarantined. And
Quinn knew that even with his energistic powers there would be nothing he could
do to escape once the vac-trains had been shut down.
Most of the other passengers had
disembarked, and the chief stewardess was glancing in Quinn’s direction. He
rose up from his deep leather seat, stretching the tiredness from his limbs.
There was absolutely no way he’d ever get past the immigration desk, let alone
security.
He walked towards the airlock
hatch, and summoned the energistic power, mentally moulding it into the now
familiar pattern. It crawled over his body, needle spears of static penetrating
every cell. A swift groan was the only indication he showed of the grotesquery
he experienced passing through the gateway into the ghost realm. His heart
stopped, his breathing ceased, and the world about him lost its glimmer of
substance. The solidity of walls and floors was still present, but ephemeral. Irrelevant
if he really pressed.
The chief stewardess watched the
last passenger step into the airlock, and turned back to the bar. Secured below
the counter were several bottles of the complimentary Norfolk Tears and other
expensive spirits and liqueurs which her team had opened. They were careful
never to leave much, at most a third, before opening a new bottle. But a third
of these drinks was an expensive commodity.
She began inventorying all these
bottles as empty in her stock control block. The team would split them later,
filling their personal flasks, and take them home. As long as they didn’t get
too greedy the company supervisor would let it pass. Her block’s datavise
turned to nonsense. She gave it an annoyed glare, and automatically rapped it
against the bar. That was when the lights started to flicker. Puzzled now, she
frowned up at the ceiling. Electrical systems were failing all over the lounge.
The AV pillar projection behind the bar had crashed into rainbow squiggles, the
airlock hatch activators were whining loudly, though the hatch itself wasn’t
moving.
“What—?” she grumbled. Power loss
was just about impossible in the lift capsules. Every component had multiple
redundancy backups. She was about to call the lift capsule’s operations officer
when the lights steadied, and her stock control block came back on line.
“Bloody typical,” she grunted. It still bothered her badly. If things could go
wrong on the ground, they could certainly go wrong half way up the tower.
She gave the waiting bottles a forlorn
glance, knowing she was giving them up if she logged an official powerdown
incident report. The company inspectorate authority would swarm all over the
lift capsule. She carefully erased the inventory file she’d started, and
datavised the lounge processor for a channel to the operations officer.
The call never got placed. Instead
she received a priority datavise from the arrivals complex security office
ordering her to remain exactly where she was. Outside, an alarm siren started
its high-pitched urgent wailing. The sound made her jump, in eleven years of
riding the tower she’d only ever heard it during practice drills.
The siren’s clamour sounded muffled
to Quinn. He’d watched the airlock lights quiver, and sensed the delicate
electronic patterns of nearby processors storm wildly as he pushed himself
through the gateway. There was nothing he could do about it. It took all of his
concentration to marshal his energistic power into the correct pattern. Now it
seemed that pattern had an above-average giveaway effect on nearby
electronics—though nothing had happened when he’d slipped out of the ghost
realm into the Royale Class lounge at the start of the descent. Of course, he
wasn’t exerting himself then, quite the opposite, he’d actually been reining in
the power.
Ah well, something to remember.
Thick security doors were rumbling
across the end of the corridor, trapping stragglers among the passengers. Quinn
walked past them, and reached the door. It put up a token resistance as he
pushed himself through, as if it were nothing more than a vertical sheet of
water.
The arrivals complex on the other
side was made up from a series of grandiose multi-level reception halls,
stitched together by wave stairs and open-shaft lifts. It could cope with
seventy passenger lift capsules disembarking at once; a capacity which had been
operating at barely twenty-five per cent since the start of the crisis. As
Quinn made his way out from the sealed admission chamber at the end of the
corridor, his first impression was that the air-conditioning grilles were
pumping out adrenaline gas.
Down below on the main concourse, a
huge flock of people was running for cover. They didn’t know where they were
going, the exits were all closed, but they knew where they didn’t want to be,
and that was anywhere near a lift capsule that was crammed full of possessed.
They were damn sure there was no other reason for a security alert of such
magnitude.
Up on Quinn’s level, badly hyped
security guards in bulky kinetic armour were racing for the admission chamber.
Officers were screaming orders. All the passengers from the lift capsule were
being rounded up at gunpoint and being made to assume the position. Anyone who
protested was given a sharp jab with a shock rod. Three stunned bodies were
already sprawled on the floor, twitching helplessly. It encouraged healthy
cooperation among the remainder.
Quinn went over to the rank of
guards who were forming a semicircle around the door to the admission chamber.
Eighteen of the stubby rifles were lined up on it. He walked round one guard to
get a closer look at the weapon. The guard shivered slightly, as if a chilly
breeze was finding its way through the joint overlaps of her armour. Her weapon
was some kind of machine pistol. Quinn knew enough about munitions to recognise
it as employing chemical bullets. There were several grenades hanging from her
belt.
Even though God’s Brother had
granted him a much greater energistic strength than the average possessed, he
would be very hard pressed to defend himself against all eighteen of them
firing at him. Earth was obviously taking the threat of possession very
seriously indeed.
A new group of people had arrived
to move methodically among the whimpering passengers. They weren’t in uniforms,
just ordinary blue business suits, but the security officers deferred to them.
Quinn could sense their thoughts, very calm and focused in comparison to
everyone else. Intelligence operatives, most likely.
Quinn decided not to wait and find
out. He retreated from the semicircle of guards as an officer was ordering them
to open the admission chamber door. The wave stair down to the main concourse
had been switched off; so he climbed the frozen steps of silicon two at a time.
People huddled round the barricaded
exits felt his passage as a swift ripple of cool air, gone almost as it
started. On the plaza outside, more squads of security guards were setting up;
two groups were busy mounting heavy-calibre Bradfield rifles on tripods. Quinn
shook his head in a kind of bemused admiration, then carefully walked round
them. The long row of lifts down to the vac-train station was still working,
though there were few people left on the arrivals complex storey to use them.
He hopped in to one with a group of frightened-looking business executives just
back from a trip to Cavius city on the moon.
The lift took them a kilometre and
a half straight down, opening into a circular chamber three hundred metres
across. The station’s floor was divided up by concentric rows of turnstiles,
channelling passengers into the cluster of wave stairs occupying the centre.
Information columns of jet-black glass formed a picket line around the outside,
knots of fluorescent icons twirling around them like electronic fish. Lines of
holographic symbols slithered through the air overhead, weaving sinuously
around each other as they guided passengers to the wave stair which led down to
their platform.
Quinn sauntered idly round the
outside of the information columns for a while, watching the contortions of the
holograms overhead. The bustling crowd (all averting their eyes from each
other), the confined walls and ceiling, wheezing air conditioners pouring out
gritty air, small mechanoids being kicked as they attempted to clean up
rubbish—he welcomed them all back into his life. Even though he was going to
destroy this world and despoil its people, for a brief interlude it remained
the old home. His satisfaction came to a cold halt; the name EDMONTON, in
vibrant red letters, trickled over his head, riding along a curving convey of
translucent blue arrowheads towards one of the wave stairs. The vac-train was
departing in eleven minutes.
It was so tempting. Banneth, at
last. To see that face stricken with fear, then suffering—for a long long time,
the suffering—before the final ignominy of empty-headed imbecility. There were
so many stages of torment to inflict on Banneth, so much he wanted to do to her
now he had the power; intricate, malicious applications of pain, psychological
as well as physical. But the needs of God’s Brother came first, even before the
near-sexual urgings of his own serpent beast. Quinn turned away from the
glowing invitation in disgust, and went to find a vac-train which would take
him direct to New York.
People were starting to congregate
around the windows of the bars and fast-food outlets which made up the
perimeter wall of the station. Kids stared with intrigued expressions at the
images coming at them from newschannel AV projectors, while adults achieved the
blank-faced other-whereness which showed they were receiving sensevises. As he
passed a pasta stall, Quinn caught a brief glimpse of the image inside a
holoscreen above the sweating cook. Jupiter’s cloudscape formed an effervescent
ginger backdrop to a habitat; dozens of spaceships were swirling round it in
what could almost be read as a state of high excitement.
It wasn’t relevant to him, so he
walked on.
Ione had gone straight to De
Beauvoir palace after Tranquillity emerged above Jupiter, coordinating the
habitat’s maintenance crews and making a public sensevise to reassure people
and tell them what to do. The formal reception room was a more appropriate
setting for such a broadcast than her private apartment. Now with the immediate
crisis over, she was snuggled back in the big chair behind her desk and using
Tranquillity’s sensitive cells to observe the last of the voidhawks assigned to
implement the aid response settle on its docking ledge pedestal. A procession
of vehicles trundled over the polyp towards it, cargo flatbed lorries and
heavy-lift trucks eager to unload the large fusion generator clamped awkwardly
in the voidhawk’s cargo cradles.
The generator had come from one of
the industrial stations of the nearest Edenist habitat, Lycoris; hurriedly
ferried over by Consensus as soon as Tranquillity’s status was established.
There were currently fifteen technical crews working on similar generators
around the docking ledge, powering them up and wiring them in to the habitat’s
power grid.
When she sank her mentality deeper
into the neural strata and the autonomic monitor routines which operated there,
Ione could feel the electricity flowing back into the starscrapers through the
organic conductors, their mechanical systems gradually coming back on line. The
habitat’s girdling city had been in emergency powerdown mode since the swallow
manoeuvre, along with other non-essential functions. Grandfather Michael’s
precautions hadn’t been perfect after all. She grinned to herself; pretty damn
good, though. And even without the Jovian Consensus on hand to help with all
its resources, they had the smaller fusion generators in the non-rotating
spaceport.
We would have been okay.
Of course we would, Tranquillity said. It managed a mildly
chastising tone, surprised at her doubt.
Obviously, nobody had fully thought
through the implications of the swallow manoeuvre for Tranquillity. When it
entered the wormhole, the hundreds of induction cables radiating out from the
endcap rims had been sliced off, eliminating nearly all of the habitat’s
natural energy generation capability. It would take their extrusion glands
several months to grow new ones out to full length.
By which time they might have to
move again.
Let’s not worry about that right
now, Tranquillity said. We’re
in the safest orbit in the Confederation; even I was surprised by the amount of
fire-power Consensus has amassed here to protect itself. Be content.
I wasn’t complaining.
Nor are our inhabitants.
Ione felt her attention being
focused inside the shell.
It was party time in Tranquillity.
The whole population had come up out of the starscrapers to wait in the
parkland around the lobbies until the electricity was restored. Elderly
plutocrats sat on the grass next to students, waitresses shared the queue to
the toilets with corporate presidents, Laymil project researchers mingled with
society vacuumheads. Everybody had grabbed a bottle on the way out of their
apartment, and the galaxy’s biggest mass picnic had erupted spontaneously. Dawn
was now five hours late, but the moonlight silver light-tube only enhanced the
ambience. People drank, and ran stim programs, and laughed with their neighbour
as they told and retold their personal tale of
combat-wasp-swarms-I-have-seen-hurtling-towards-me. They thanked God but
principally Ione Saldana for rescuing them, and declared their undying love for
her, that goddamn beautiful, brilliant, canny, gorgeous girl in whose habitat
they were blessed to live. And, hey, Capone; how does it feel, loser? Your
almighty Confederation-challenging fleet screwed by a single non-military habitat;
everything you could throw at us, and we beat you. Still happy you came back to
the wonders of this century?
The residents from the two
starscrapers closest to De Beauvoir palace walked over the vales and round the
spinnies to pay their respects and voice their gratitude. A huge crowd was
singing and chanting outside the gates, calling, pleading for their heroine to
appear.
Ione slid the focus over them,
smiling when she saw Dominique and Clement in the throng, as well as a wildly
drunk Kempster Getchell. There were others she knew, too, directors and
managers of multistellar companies and finance institutions, all swept along
with the tide of emotion. Red-faced, exhilarated, and calling her name with
hoarse throats. She let the focus float back to Clement.
Invite him in, Tranquillity urged warmly.
Maybe.
Survival of dangerous events is
a sexual trigger for humans. You should indulge your instincts. He will make
you happy, and you deserve that more than anything.
Romantically put.
Romance has nothing to do with
this. Enjoy the release he will bring.
What about you? You performed
the swallow manoeuvre.
When you are happy, I am happy.
She laughed out loud. “Oh what the
hell, why not.”
That is good. But I think you
will have to make a public appearance first. This crowd is good-natured, but
quite determined to thank you.
Yes. She sobered. But there is one last official
duty.
Indeed. Tranquillity’s tone matched her disposition.
Ione felt the mental conversation
widen to incorporate the Jovian Consensus. Armira, the Kiint ambassador to
Jupiter, was formally invited to converse with them.
Our swallow manoeuvre has
produced an unexpected event, Ione
said. We are hopeful that you can clarify it for us.
Armira injected a sensation of
stately amusement into the affinity band. I would suggest, Ione Saldana and
Tranquillity, that your entire swallow manoeuvre was an unexpected event.
It certainly surprised the Kiint
we were host to, she said. They all left, very suddenly.
I see. Armira’s thoughts hardened, denying them any
hint of his emotional content.
Tranquillity replayed the memory it
had from the time of the attack, showing all the Kiint vanishing inside event
horizons.
What you have seen demonstrated
is an old ability, Armira
responded dispassionately. We developed the emergency exodus facility during
the era when we were engaged in interstellar travel. It is merely a
sophisticated application of your distortion field systems. My colleagues
helping with your Laymil research project would have used it instinctively when
they believed they were threatened.
We’re sure they would, Consensus said. And who can blame them?
That’s not the point. The fact that you have this ability is most enlightening
to us. We have always regarded as somewhat fanciful your claim that your race’s
interest in star travel is now over. Although the fact that you had no
starships added undeniable weight to the argument. Now we have seen your
personal teleport ability, the original claim is exposed as a complete fallacy.
We do not have the same level of
interest in travelling to different worlds that you do, Armira said.
Of course not. Our starships are
principally concerned with commercial and colonization flights, and an
unfortunate amount of military activity. Your technological level would preclude
anything as simple as commercial activity. We also believe that you are
peaceful, although you must have considerable knowledge of advanced weapons.
That leaves colonization and exploration.
A correct analysis.
Are you still conducting these
activities?
To some degree.
Why did you not tell us this,
why have you hidden your true abilities behind a claim of mysticism and
disinterest?
You know the answer to that, Armira said. Humans discovered the Jiciro
race three hundred years ago; yet you have still not initiated contact and
revealed yourselves to them. Their technology and culture is at a very
primitive level, and you know what will happen if they are exposed to the
Confederation. All that they have will be supplanted by what they will
interpret as futuristic items of convenience, they will cease to develop
anything for themselves. Who knows what achievements would be lost to the
universe?
That argument does not pertain
here, Consensus said. The
Jiciro do not know what the stars are, nor that solid matter is composed of
atoms. We do. We acknowledge that our technology is inferior to yours. But
equally you know that one day we will achieve your current level. You are
denying us knowledge we already know exists, and you have done so twice, in
this field and in your understanding of the beyond. This is not an act of
fellowship; we have opened ourselves to you in honesty and friendship, we have
not hidden our flaws from you; yet you have clearly not reciprocated. Our
conclusion is that you are simply studying us. We would now like to know why.
As sentient entities we have that right.
Study is a pejorative term. We
learn of you, as you do us. Admittedly that process is imbalanced, but given
our respective natures, that is inevitable. As to bestowing our technology;
that would be interference of the grandest order. If you want something,
achieve it for yourselves.
Same argument you gave us
concerning the beyond, Ione
remarked testily.
Of course, Armira said. Tell me, Ione Saldana, what
would your reaction have been if a xenoc race announced that you had an
immortal soul, and proved it, and then went on to demonstrate that the beyond
awaited, though as Laton said, only for some? Would you have greeted such a
revelation with thanks?
No, I don’t suppose I would.
We know that our introduction to
the concept of the beyond was accidental, Consensus said. Something happened on Lalonde which allowed the souls
to come back and possess the living. Something extraneous. This calamity has
been inflicted upon us. Surely such circumstances permit you to intervene?
There was a long pause. We will
not intervene in this case, Armira said. For two reasons. Whatever
happened on Lalonde happened because you went there. There is more to
travelling between stars and exploring the universe than the physical act.
You are saying we must accept
responsibility for our actions.
Yes, inevitably.
Very well, with reservations we
accept that judgement. Though, please appreciate, we do not like it. What is
the second reason?
Understand, there is a faction
among my people who have argued that we should intervene in your favour. The
possibility was rejected because what we have learned of you so far indicates
that your race will come through this time successfully. Edenists especially
have the social maturity to face that which follows.
I’m not an Edenist, Ione said. What about me, and all the other
Adamists, the majority of our race? Are you going to stand back as we perish
and fall into the beyond? Does the survival of an elite few, the sophisticates
and the intellectuals, justify discarding the rest? Humans have never practised
eugenics, we regard it as an abomination, and rightly so. If that’s the price
of racial improvement, we’re not willing to pay it.
If I am any judge, you too will
triumph, Ione Saldana.
Nice to know. But what about all
the others?
Fate will determine what
happens. I can say no more other than to restate our official response: the
answer lies within yourselves.
That is not much of a comfort, Consensus remarked.
I understand your frustration.
My one piece of advice is that you should not share what you have learned about
my race with the Adamists. Believing we have a solution, and that piety alone
will extract it from us, would weaken their incentive to find that answer.
We will consider your
suggestion, Consensus said. But
Edenism will not voluntarily face the rest of eternity without our cousins.
Ultimately, we are one race, however diverse.
I acknowledge your integrity.
I have a final question, Ione said. Where is Jay Hilton? She was
taken from Tranquillity at the same time as your researchers. Why?
Armira’s thoughts softened, shading
as close to embarrassment as Ione had ever known a Kiint to come. That was
an error, the ambassador said. And I apologise unreservedly for it. However,
you should know the error was made in good faith. A young Kiint included Jay
Hilton in the emergency exodus against parental guidance. She was simply trying
to save her friend.
Haile! Ione laughed delightedly. You wicked girl.
I believe she has been severely
reprimanded for the incident.
I hope not, Ione said indignantly. She’s only a baby.
Quite.
Well, you can bring Jay back
now; Tranquillity isn’t as vulnerable as you thought.
I apologise again, but Jay
Hilton cannot be returned to you at this time.
Why not?
In effect, she has seen too
much. I assure you that she is perfectly safe, and we will of course return her
to you immediately once your current situation is resolved.
The walls of the prison cell were
made from some kind of dull-grey composite, not quite cool enough to be metal,
but just as hard. Louise had touched them once before sinking down onto the
single cot and hugging her legs, knees tucked up under her chin. The gravity
was about half that of Norfolk, better than Phobos, at least; though the air
was cooler than it had been on the Jamrana. She spent some time
wondering about Endron, the old systems specialist from the Far Realm, thinking
he might have betrayed them and alerted High York’s authorities, then decided
it really didn’t matter. Her one worry now was that she’d been separated from
Gen; her sister would be very frightened by what was happening.
And I got her into this mess.
Mother will kill me.
Except Mother was in no position to
do anything. Louise hugged herself tighter, fighting the way her lips kept
trembling.
The door slid open, and two female
police officers stepped in. Louise assumed they were police, they wore pale
blue uniforms with Govcentral’s bronze emblem on their shoulders, depicting a
world where continents shaped as hands gripped together.
“Okay, Kavanagh,” said the one with
sergeant stripes. “Let’s go.”
Louise straightened her legs,
looking cautiously from one to the other. “Where?”
“Interview.”
“I’d just shove you out the bloody
airlock, it’s up to me,” said the other. “Trying to sneak one of those bastards
in here. Bitch.”
“Leave it,” the sergeant ordered.
“I wasn’t . . .” Louise started.
She pursed her lips helplessly. It was so complicated, and heaven only knew how
many laws she’d broken on the way to High York.
They marched her down a short
corridor and into another room. It made her think of hospitals. White walls,
everything clean, a table in the middle that was more like a laboratory bench,
cheap waiting room chairs, various processor blocks in a tall rack in one
corner, more lying on the table. Brent Roi was sitting behind the table; he’d
taken off the customs uniform he’d worn to greet the Jamrana, now he was
in the same blue suit as the officers escorting her. He waved her into the
chair facing him.
Louise sat, hunching her shoulders
exactly the way she was always scolding Gen for doing. She waited for a minute
with downcast eyes, then glanced up. Brent Roi was giving her a level stare.
“You’re not a possessed,” he said.
“The tests prove that.”
Louise pulled nervously at the
black one-piece overall she’d been given, the memory of those tests vivid in
her mind. Seven armed guards had been pointing their machine guns at her as the
technicians ordered her to strip. They’d put her inside sensor loops, pressed
hand-held scanners against her, taken samples. It was a million times worse
than any medical examination. Afterwards, the only thing she’d been allowed to
keep was the medical nanonic package round her wrist.
“That’s good,” she said in a tiny
voice.
“So how did he blackmail you?”
“Who?”
“The possessed guy calling himself
Fletcher Christian.”
“Um. He didn’t blackmail me, he was
looking after us.”
“So you rolled over and let him
fuck you in return for protection against the other possessed?”
“No.”
Brent Roi shrugged. “He preferred
your little sister?”
“No! Fletcher is a decent man. You
shouldn’t say such things.”
“Then what the hell are you doing
here, Louise? Why did you try and infiltrate a possessed into the O’Neill
Halo?”
“I wasn’t. It’s not like that. We
came here to warn you.”
“Warn who?”
“Earth. Govcentral. There’s
somebody coming here. Somebody terrible.”
“Yeah?” Brent Roi raised a
sceptical eyebrow. “Who’s that then?”
“He’s called Quinn Dexter. I’ve met
him, he’s worse than any normal possessed. Much worse.”
“In what way?”
“More powerful. And he’s full of
hate. Fletcher says there’s something wrong about him, he’s different somehow.”
“Ah, the expert on possession.
Well, if anyone is going to know, it’ll be him.”
Louise frowned, unsure why the
official was being so difficult. “We came here to warn you,” she insisted.
“Dexter said he was coming to Earth. He wants revenge on someone called
Banneth. You have to guard all the spaceports, and make sure he doesn’t get
down to the surface. It would be a disaster. He’ll start the possession down
there.”
“And why do you care?”
“I told you. I’ve met him. I know
what he’s like.”
“Worse than ordinary possessed; yet
you seemed to have survived. How did you manage that, Louise?”
“We were helped.”
“By Fletcher?”
“No . . . I don’t know who it was.”
“All right, so you escaped this
fate worse than death, and you came here to warn us.”
“Yes.”
“How did you get off Norfolk,
Louise?”
“I bought tickets on a starship.”
“I see. And you took Fletcher
Christian with you. Were you worried there were possessed among the starship
crew?”
“No. That was one place I was sure
there wouldn’t be any possessed.”
“So although you knew there were no
possessed on board, you still took Christian with you as protection. Was that
your idea, or his?”
“I . . . It . . . He was with us.
He’d been with us since we left home.”
“Where is home, Louise?”
“Cricklade manor. But Dexter came
and possessed everyone. That’s when we fled to Norwich.”
“Ah yes, Norfolk’s capital. So you
brought Christian with you to Norwich. Then when that started to fall to the
possessed, you thought you’d better get offplanet, right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know Christian was a
possessed when you bought the tickets?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And when you bought them, did you
also know Dexter wanted to come to Earth?”
“No, that was after.”
“So was it dear old samaritan
Fletcher Christian who suggested coming here to warn us?”
“Yes.”
“And you agreed to help him?”
“Yes.”
“So where were you going to go
originally, before Fletcher Christian made you change your mind and come here?”
“Tranquillity.”
Brent Roi nodded in apparent
fascination. “That’s a rather strange place for a young lady from Norfolk’s
landowner class to go. What made you choose that habitat?”
“My fiancé lives there. If anyone
can protect us, he can.”
“And who is your fiancé, Louise?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Joshua
Calvert.”
“Joshua Cal . . . You mean Lagrange
Calvert?”
“No, Joshua.”
“The captain of the Lady Macbeth?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“Let’s say, the name rings a bell.”
He sat back and folded his arms, regarding Louise with a strangely mystified
expression.
“Can I see Genevieve now?” she
asked timidly. No one had actually said she was under arrest yet. She felt a
lot more confident now the policeman had actually listened to her story.
“In a little while, possibly. We
just have to review the information you’ve provided us with.”
“You do believe me about Quinn
Dexter, don’t you? You must make sure he doesn’t get down to Earth.”
“Oh, I assure you, we will do
everything we can to make sure he doesn’t get through our security procedures.”
“Thank you.” She glanced awkwardly
at the two female officers standing on either side of her chair. “What’s going
to happen to Fletcher?”
“I don’t know, Louise, that’s not
my department. But I imagine they’ll attempt to flush him out of the body he’s
stolen.”
“Oh.” She stared at the floor.
“Do you think they’re wrong to try
that, Louise?”
“No. I suppose not.” The words were
troubling to speak; the truth, but not what was right. None of what had
happened was right.
“Good.” Brent Roi signalled her
escort. “We’ll talk again in a little while.” When the door closed behind her,
he couldn’t help a grimace of pure disbelief.
“What do you think?” his supervisor
datavised.
“I have never heard someone sprout
quite so much bullshit in a single interview before,” Brent Roi replied.
“Either she’s a retard, or we’re up against a new type of possessed
infiltration.”
“She’s not a retard.”
“Then what the hell is she? Nobody
is that dumb, it’s not possible.”
“I don’t believe she’s dumb,
either. Our problem is, we’re so used to dealing with horrendous complexities
of subterfuge, we never recognise the simple truth when we see it.”
“Oh come on, you don’t actually
believe that story?”
“She is, as you said, from the
Norfolk landowner class; that doesn’t exactly prepare her for the role of
galactic master criminal. And she is travelling with her sister.”
“That’s just cover.”
“Brent, you are depressingly
cynical.”
“Yes, sir.” He held on to his
exasperation, it never made the slightest impression on his supervisor. The
anonymous entity who had guided the last twenty years of his life lacked many
ordinary human responses. There were times when Brent Roi wondered if he was
actually dealing with a xenoc. Not that there was much he could do about that
now; whatever branch of whatever agency the supervisor belonged to, it was
undoubtedly a considerable power within Govcentral. His own smooth, accelerated
promotion through the Halo police force was proof of that.
“There are factors of Miss
Kavanagh’s story which my colleagues and I find uniquely interesting.”
“Which factors?” Brent asked.
“You know better than that.”
“All right. What do you want me to
do with her?”
“Endron has confirmed the Phobos
events to the Martian police, however we must establish exactly what happened
to Kavanagh on Norfolk. Initiate a direct memory retrieval procedure.”
Over the last five hundred years,
the whole concept of Downtown had acquired a new-ish and distinctly literal
meaning in New York; naturally enough, so did Uptown. One thing, though, would
never change; the arcology still jealously guarded its right to boast the
tallest individual building on the planet. While the odd couple of decades per
century might see the title stolen away by upstart rivals in Europe or Asia,
the trophy always came home eventually.
The arcology now sprawled across
more than four thousand square kilometres, housing (officially) three hundred
million people. With New Manhattan at the epicentre, fifteen crystalline domes,
twenty kilometres in diameter, were clumped together in a semicircle along the
eastern seaboard, sheltering entire districts of ordinary skyscrapers (defined
as buildings under one kilometre high) from the pummelling heat and winds.
Where the domes intersected, gigantic conical megatowers soared up into the
contused sky. More than anything, these colossi conformed to the old concept of
“arcology” as a single city-in-a-building. They had apartments, shopping malls,
factories, offices, design bureaus, stadiums, universities, parks, police
stations, council chambers, hospitals, restaurants, bars, and spaces for every
other human activity of the Twenty-seventh Century. Thousands of their
inhabitants were born, lived, and died inside them without ever once leaving.
At five and a half kilometres tall,
the Reagan was the current global champion, its kilometre-wide base resting on
the bedrock where the town of Ridgewood had stood in the times before the
armada storms. An apartment on any of its upper fifty floors cost fifteen
million fuseodollars apiece, and the last one was sold twelve years before they
were built. Their occupants, the new breed of Uptowners, enjoyed a view as
spectacular as it was possible to have on Earth. Although impenetrably dense
cloud swathed the arcology for a minimum of two days out of every seven; when
it was clear the hot air was very clear indeed. Far below them, under the
transparent hexagonal sheets which comprised the roof of the domes, the tide of
life ebbed and flowed for their amusement. By day, an exotic hustle as
kaleidoscope rivers of vehicles flowed along the elevated 3D web of roads and
rails; by night, a shimmering tapestry of neon pixels.
Surrounding the Reagan, streets and
skyscrapers fanned out in a radial of deep carbon-concrete canyons, like buttress
roots climbing up to support the main tower. The lower levels of these canyons
were badly cluttered, where the skyscraper bases were twice as broad as their
peaks, and the elevated roads formed a complex intersecting grid for the first
hundred and fifty metres above the ground. High expressways throwing off
curving slip roads at each junction down to the local traffic lanes; broad
freight-only flyovers shaking from the eighty-tonne autotrucks grumbling along
them twenty-four hours a day, winding like snakes into tunnels which led to
sub-basement loading yards; metro transit carriages gliding along a mesh of
rails so labyrinthine that only an AI could run the network. Rents were cheap
near the ground, where there was little light but plenty of noise, and the
heavy air gusting between dirty vertical walls had been breathed a hundred
times before. Entropy in the arcology meant a downward drift. Everything that
was worn-out, obsolete, demode, economically redundant—down it came to settle
on the ground, where it could descend no further. People as well as objects.
Limpet-like structures proliferated
among the crisscross of road support girders bridging the gap between the
skyscrapers, shanty igloos woven from salvaged plastic and carbotanium
composite, multiplying over the decades until they clotted into their own
light-killing roof. Under them, leeched to the streets themselves, were the
market stalls and fast-food counters; a souk economy of fifth-hand cast-offs
and date-expired sachets shuffled from family to family in an eternal round
robin. Crime here was petty and incestuous, gangs ruled their turf, pushers
ruled the gangs. Police made token patrols in the day, and went off-shift as
the unseen sun sank below the rim of the domes above.
This was Downtown. It was
everywhere, but always beneath the feet of ordinary citizens, invisible. Quinn
adored it. The people who dwelt here were almost in the ghost realm already;
nothing they did ever affected the real world.
He walked up out of the subway onto
a gloomy street jammed with canopied stalls and wheel-less vans, all with their
skirt of goods guarded by vigilant owners. Graffiti struggled with patches of
pale mould for space on the skyscraper walls. There were few windows, and those
were merely armoured slits revealing little of the mangy shops and bars inside.
Metallic thunder from the roads above was as permanent as the air which carried
it.
Several looks were quickly thrown
Quinn’s way before eyes were averted for fear of association. He smiled to
himself as he strode confidently among the stalls. As if his attitude wasn’t
enough to mark him out as an interloper, he had clothed himself in his
jet-black priest robe again.
It was the simplest way. He wanted
to find the sect, but he’d never been to New York before. Everybody in Downtown
knew about the sect, this was their prime recruiting ground. There would be a
coven close by, there always was. He just needed someone who knew the location.
Sure enough, he hadn’t got seventy
metres from the subway when they saw him. A pair of waster kids busy laughing
as they pissed on the woman they’d just beaten unconscious. Her two-year-old
kid lay on the sidewalk bawling as blood and urine pooled round its feet. The
victim’s bag had been ripped apart, scattering its pitiful contents on the
ground around her. They put Quinn in mind of Jackson Gael; late-adolescence,
with pumped bodies, their muscle shape defined by some exercise but mostly
tailored-hormones. One of them wore a T-shirt with the slogan: CHEMICAL WARFARE
MACHINE. The other was more body-proud, favouring a naked torso.
He was the one who saw Quinn first,
grunted in amazement, and nudged his partner. They sealed their flies and
sauntered over.
Quinn slowly pushed his hood down.
Hyper-sensitive to trouble, the street was de-populating rapidly. Pedestrians,
already nervous from the mugging, slipped away behind the forest of support
pillars. Market stall shutters were slammed down.
The two waster kids stopped in
front of Quinn, who grinned in welcome. “I haven’t had sex for ages,” Quinn
said. He looked straight at the one wearing the T-shirt. “So I think I’ll fuck
you first tonight.”
The waster kid snarled, and threw a
punch with all the strength his inflated muscles could manage. Quinn remained
perfectly still. The fist struck his jaw, just to the left of his chin. There
was a crunch which could easily be heard above the traffic’s clamour. The
waster kid bellowed, first in shock, then in agony. His whole body shook as he
slowly pulled his hand back. Every knuckle was broken, as if he had punched
solid stone. He cradled it with frightened tenderness, whimpering.
“I’d like to say take me to your
leader,” Quinn said, as if he hadn’t even noticed the punch. “But organising
yourselves takes brains. So I guess I’m out of luck.”
The second waster kid had paled,
shaking his head and taking a couple of steps backward.
“Don’t run,” Quinn said, his voice
sharp.
The waster kid paused for a second,
then turned and bolted. His jeans burst into flames. He screamed, stumbling to
a halt, and flailing wildly at the burning fabric. His hands ignited. The shock
silenced him for a second as he held them up disbelievingly in front of his
face. Then he screamed again, and kept on screaming, staggering about
drunkenly. He crashed into one of the flimsy stalls which crumpled, folding
about him. The fire was burning deeper into his flesh now, spreading along his
arms, and up onto his torso. His screaming became weaker as he bucked about in
the smouldering wreckage.
The T-shirted kid raced over to
him. But all he could do was look down in a horror of indecision as the flames
grew hotter.
“For Christ’s sake,” he wailed at
Quinn. “Stop it. Stop it!”
Quinn laughed. “Your first lesson
is that God’s Brother cannot be stopped.”
The body was motionless and silent
now, a black glistening husk at the centre of the flames. Quinn put a hand on
the shoulder of the sobbing waster kid at his side. “It hurts you, doesn’t it?
Watching this?”
“Hurts! Hurts? You bastard.” Even
with a face screwed up from pain and rage, he didn’t dare try to twist free
from Quinn’s hand.
“I have a question,” Quinn said.
“And I’ve chosen you to answer it for me.” His hand moved down, caressing the
waster kid’s chest before it reached his crotch. He tightened his fingers round
the kid’s balls, aroused by the fear he was inflicting.
“Yes, God, yes. Anything,” the kid
snivelled. His eyes were closed, denying what he could of this nightmare.
“Where is the nearest coven of the
Light Bringer sect?”
Even with the pain and dread
scrambling his thoughts, the waster kid managed to stammer: “This dome,
district seventeen, eighty-thirty street. They got a centre somewhere along
there.”
“Good. You see, you’ve learnt
obedience, already. That’s very smart of you. I’m almost impressed. Now there’s
only one lesson left.”
The waster kid quailed. “What?”
“To love me.”
The coven’s headquarters had chewed
its way, maggot-fashion, into the corner of the Hauck skyscraper on
eighty-thirty street. What had once been a simple lattice of cube rooms,
arranged by mathematics rather than art, was now a jumbled warren of darkened
chambers. Acolytes had knocked holes in some walls, nailed up barricades in the
corridors, pulled down ceilings, sealed off stairwells; drones shaping their
nest to the design of the magus. From the outside it looked the same, a row of
typically shabby Downtown shops along the street, selling goods cheaper than
anywhere else—they could afford to, everything was stolen by the acolytes. But
above the shops, the slim windows were blacked out, and according to the
building management processors, the rooms unoccupied, and therefore not liable
to pay rent.
Inside, the coven members buzzed
about industriously twenty-four hours a day. Looked at from a strictly
corporate viewpoint, which was how magus Garth always regarded his coven, it
was quite a prosperous operation. Ordinary acolytes, the real sewer-bottom shit
of the human race, were sent out boosting from the upper levels; bringing back
a constant supply of consumer goodies that were either used by the sect or sold
off in the coven-front shops and affiliated street market stalls. Sergeant
acolytes were deployed primarily as enforcers to keep the others in line, but
also to run a more sophisticated distribution net among the dome’s lower-middle
classes; competing (violently) with ordinary pushers out in the bars and clubs.
Senior acolytes, the ones who actually had a working brain cell, were given
didactic memory courses and employed running the pirate factory equipment,
bootlegging MF albums, black sensevise programs, and AV activant software; as
well as synthesizing an impressive pharmacopoeia of drugs, hormones, and
proscribed viral vectors.
In addition to these varied retail
enterprises, the coven still engaged in the more traditional activities of
crime syndicates. Although sensevise technology had essentially eliminated a
lot of prostitution outside of Downtown, that still left protection rackets,
extortion, clean water theft, blackmail, kidnapping, data theft, game-rigging,
civic-service fraud, power theft, embezzlement, and vehicle theft, among
others.
The coven performed all of them
with gusto, if not finesse. Magus Garth was satisfied with their work. They
hadn’t missed their monthly target in over three years, making the required
financial offering to New York’s high magus over in dome two. His only worry
was that the High Magus could realize how lucrative the coven was, and demand a
higher offering. Increased payments would cut into Garth’s personal profits,
the eight per cent he’d been skimming every month for the last five years.
There were times when Garth
wondered why nobody had noticed. But then, looking at sergeant acolyte Wener,
maybe he shouldn’t be all that surprised. Wener was in his thirties, a big man,
but rounded rather than wedge-shaped like most of the acolytes. He had a thick
beard, dark hair sprouting from his face in almost simian proportions. His head
was in keeping with the rest of his body, though Garth suspected the bone
thickness would be a lot greater than average. An overhanging forehead and
jutting chin gave him a permanently sullen, resentful expression—appropriately
enough. You couldn’t geneer that quality, it was a demonstration that the
incest taboo was finally starting to lose force among Downtown residents.
Fifteen years in the sect, and Wener was as far up the hierarchy as he’d ever
get.
“They got Tod, and Jay-Dee,” Wener
said. He smiled at the memory. “Tod went down swinging. Hit a couple of cops
before they shot him with a fucking nervejam. They started kicking him then. I
got out.”
“How come they spotted you?” Garth
asked. He’d sent Wener and five others out to steam a mall. Simple enough, two
of you bang into a civilian, cut a bag strap, slice trouser pocket fabric. Any
protest: you get crushed by a circle of aggressive faces and tough young bodies
looking for an excuse to hurt you as bad as they can.
Wener shifted some flesh around on
top of his shoulders, his way of shrugging. “Dunno. Cops maybe saw what was
going down.”
“Ah, fuck it.” Garth knew. They’d
hit a streak and stayed too long, allowed the mall patrols to realize what was
happening. “Did Tod and Jay-Dee have anything on them?”
“Credit disks.”
“Shit.” That was it. The cops would
send them straight down to the Justice Hall, walk them past a judge whose
assistant’s assistant would access the case file and slap them with an
Involuntary Transportation sentence. Two more loyal followers lost to some
asshole colony. Though Garth had heard that the quarantine was even affecting
colony starship flights. Ivet holding pens at every orbital tower station were
getting heavily overcrowded, the news companies were hot with rumours of riots.
Wener was shoving his hands in his
pockets, pulling out credit disks and other civilian crap: fleks, jewellery,
palm-sized blocks . . . “I got this. The steam wasn’t a total zero.” He spilt
the haul on Garth’s desk, and gave the magus a hopeful look.
“Okay, Wener. But you’ve got to be
more careful in the future. Fuck it, God’s Brother doesn’t like failure.”
“Yes, magus.”
“All right, get the hell out of my
sight before I give you to Hot Spot for a night.”
Wener lumbered out of the sanctum,
and closed the door. Garth datavised the room’s management processor to turn up
the lights. Candles and shadowy gloom were the sect’s habitual trappings. When
acolytes were summoned before him, the study conformed to that: a sombre cave
lit by a few spluttering red candles in iron candelabrums, its walls invisible.
Powerful beams shone down out of
the ceiling, revealing a richly furnished den; drinks cabinet filled with a
good selection of bottles, an extensive AV and sensevise flek library,
new-marque Kulu Corporation desktop processor (genuine—not a bootleg), some of
the weirder art stuff that was impossible to fence. A homage to his own greed,
and devoutness. If you see something you want: take it.
“Kerry!” he yelled.
She came in from his private
apartment, butt naked. He hadn’t allowed her to wear clothes since the day her
brother brought her in. Best-looking girl the coven had acquired in ages. A few
tweaks with cosmetic adaptation packages, pandering to his personal tastes, and
she was visual perfection.
“Get my fifth invocation robes,” he
told her. “Hurry up. I’ve got the initiation in ten minutes.”
She bobbed her head apprehensively,
and retreated back into the apartment. Garth started picking up the junk Wener
had left, reading the flek labels, datavising the blocks for a menu. A gentle
gust of cool air wafted across his face. The candles flickered. It broke his
concentration for a moment. Air conditioner screwed up again.
There was nothing of any interest
among Wener’s haul, no blackmail levers; some of the fleks were company files,
but a quick check found no commercially sensitive items. He was indifferent
about that. Data was the other offering the coven made to the High Magus, and
that on a weekly basis. A gift that never brought any return, other than the
invisible umbrella of political protection the sect extended to its senior
members. So Garth played along, considering it his insurance premium. The
reports were more than a simple summary of what was happening inside the coven;
the High Magus insisted on knowing what action was going down on the street,
every street.
Years of being out on the street at
the hard edge had taught Garth the value of good intelligence, but this was
like a fetish with the High Magus.
Kerry returned with his robes. The
fifth invocation set were appropriately flamboyant, black and purple,
embroidered with scarlet pentagrams and nonsense runes. But they were a symbol
of authority, and the sect was very strict about internal discipline. Kerry
helped him into them, then hung a gold chain with an inverted cross round his
neck. When he looked into a mirror he was satisfied with what he saw. The body
might be sagging slightly these days, but he used weapon implants rather than
straight physical violence to assert himself now; while the shaven skull and
eyes recessed by cosmetic adaptation packages gave him a suitably ominous
appearance.
The temple was at the centre of the
headquarters, a cavity three stories high. Straight rows of severed steel
reinforcement struts poking out of the walls showed where the floors and
ceilings used to be. A broad pentagon containing an inverted cross was painted
across the rear wall. It was illuminated from below by a triple row of skull
candles, great gobs of wax in upturned craniums. Stars, demons, and runes
formed a constellation around it, although they were fading under layers of
soot. The altar was a long carbon-concrete slab, ripped from the sidewalk
outside, and mounted on jagged pillars of carbotanium. Impressively solid, if
nothing else. There was a black brazier on top of it, lithe blue flames
slithering out of the trash bricks it was filled with, sending up a plume of
sweet-stinking smoke. A pair of tall serpent-shaped candle sticks flanked it.
Ten iron hoops, sunk into the carbon concrete, trailed lengths of chain which
ended in manacles.
Just over half of the coven’s
acolytes were waiting obediently when Garth arrived. Standing in rows, wearing
their grey robes, with coloured belts denoting seniority. Garth would have
preferred more. But they were stretched pretty thin right now. A turf dispute
with a gang operating out of ninety-ten street had resulted in several clashes.
The gang lord was doubtless thinking it would all be settled with a boundary
agreement. Garth was going to cure him of that illusion. God’s Brother did not
negotiate. Acolytes had the gang under observation, building up a picture of
their entire operation. It wasn’t something the gang understood or could ever
emulate, they didn’t have the discipline or the drive. Their only motivation
was to claw in enough money to pay for their own stim fixes.
That was what made the sect
different; serving God’s Brother so rewarding.
In another week Garth would unlock
the weapons stash and launch a raid. The High Magus had already arranged for
him to take delivery of sequestration nanonics; that would be the fate of the
gang’s leadership, turned into biological mechanoids. Any attractive youths
would be used as bluesense meat after the acolytes had enjoyed their victory
orgy. And, inevitably, there would be a sacrifice.
The acolytes bowed to Garth, who
went to stand in front of the altar. Five initiates were shackled to it. Three
boys and two girls, lured in by the promises and the treachery of friends. One
of the boys stood defiantly straight, determined to show he could take whatever
the initiation threw at him so he could claim his place, the other two were
just surly and subdued. Garth had ordered one of the girls to be tranked after
he’d spoken to her earlier. She’d virtually been abducted by an acolyte angry
at losing her to an outside rival, and was likely to go into a mental melt-down
if she wasn’t eased in to her new life; she had strong ambitions to better
herself and rise out of Downtown.
Garth held up his arms, and made
the sign of the inverted cross. “With flesh we bond in the night,” he intoned.
The acolytes started a low,
mournful chanting, swaying softly in unison.
“Pain we love,” Garth told them.
“Pain frees the serpent beast. Pain shows us what we are. Your servants, Lord.”
He was almost in a trance state as
he spoke the words, he’d said them so many times before. So many initiations.
The coven had a high turnover, arrests, stim burnouts, fights. But never drop
outs.
Indoctrination and discipline
helped, but his main weapon of control was belief. Belief in your own vileness,
and knowing there was no shame in it. Wanting things to get worse, to destroy
and hurt and ruin. The easy way forward . . . once you give in to your true
self, your serpent beast. All that started right here, with the ceremony.
It was a deliberate release of sex
and violence, an empowerment of the most base instincts, permitting little
resistance. So easy to join, so natural to immerse yourself in the frenzy
around you. Indulge the need to belong, to be the same as your brethren family.
An act which gave the existing acolytes that fraternity.
As to the initiates, they passed
through the eye of the needle. Fear kept them in place at first, fear of
knowing how exquisitely ugly the sect really was, how they would be dealt with
if they disobeyed or attempted to leave. Then the cycle would turn, and there
would be another initiation. Only this time it would be them showing their
devotion to God’s Brother, revelling in the unchaining of their serpent beast.
Doing as they had been done by, and enraptured by the accomplishment.
Whoever had designed the ritual,
Garth thought, had really understood basic conditioning psychology. Such
elemental barbarism was the only possible way to exert any kind of control over
a Downtown savage. And there was no other sort of resident here.
“In darkness we see You, Lord,”
Garth recited. “In darkness we live. In darkness we wait for the true Night
that You will bring us. Into that Night we will follow You.” He lowered his
arms.
“We will follow You,” the acolytes
echoed. Their rustling voices had become hot with expectation.
“When You light the true path of
salvation at the end of the world, we will follow You.”
“We will follow You.”
“When Your legions fall upon the
angels of the false lord, we will follow You.”
“We will follow You.”
“When the time . . .”
“That time is now,” a single clear
voice announced.
The acolytes grunted in surprise,
while Garth spluttered to a halt, more astonished than outraged at the
interruption. They all knew how important he considered the sect’s ceremonies,
how intolerant of sacrilege. Only true believers can inspire belief in others.
“Who said that?” he demanded.
A figure walked forward from the
back of the temple, clad in a midnight-black robe. The opening at the front of
the hood seemed to absorb all light, there was no hint of the head it
contained. “I am your new messiah, and I have come among you to bring our Lord’s
Night to this planet.”
Garth tried to use his retinal
implants to see into the hood, but they couldn’t detect any light in there,
even infrared was useless. Then his neural nanonics reported innumerable
program crashes. He yelled: “Shit!” and thrust his left hand out at the robed
figure, index finger extended. The fire command to his microdart launcher never
arrived.
“Join with me,” Quinn ordered. “Or
I will find more worthy owners for your bodies.”
One of the acolytes launched
herself at Quinn, booted foot swinging for his kneecap. Two others were right
behind her, fists drawn back.
Quinn raised an arm, his sleeve
falling to reveal an albino hand with grizzled claw fingers. Three thin
streamers of white fire lashed out from the talons, searingly bright in the
gloomy, smoke-heavy air. They struck his attackers, who were flung backwards as
if they’d been hit by a shotgun blast.
Garth grabbed one of the serpent
candlesticks, and swung it wildly, aiming to smash it down on Quinn’s head. Not
even a possessed would be able to survive a mashed brain, the invading soul
would be forced out. Air thickened around the candlestick, slowing its momentum
until it halted ten centimetres above the apex of Quinn’s hood. The serpent’s
head, which held the candle, hissed and closed its mouth, biting the rod of wax
in half.
“Swamp him!” Garth shouted. “He
can’t defeat all of us. Sacrifice yourself, for God’s Brother.”
A few of the acolytes edged closer
to Quinn, but most stayed where they were. The candlestick began to glow along
its entire length. Pain stabbed into Garth’s hands. He could hear his skin
sizzling. Squirts of greasy smoke puffed out. But he couldn’t let go; his
fingers wouldn’t move. He saw them blister and blacken; bubbling juices ran
down his wrists.
“Kill him,” he cried. “Kill. Kill.”
His burning hands made him scream out in agony.
Quinn leant towards him. “Why?” he
asked. “This is the time of God’s Brother. He sent me here to lead you. Obey
me.”
Garth fell to his knees, arms
shaking, charred hands still clenched round the gleaming candlestick. “You’re a
possessed.”
“I was a possessed. I returned. My
belief in Him freed me.”
“You’ll possess all of us,” the
magus hissed.
“Some of you. But that is what the
sect prays for. An army of the damned; loyal followers of our darkest Lord.” He
turned to the acolytes and held up his hands. For the first time his face was
visible within, pale and deadly intent. “The waiting is over. I have come, and
I bring you victory for eternity. No more pathetic squabbling over black stimulants,
no more wasting your life mugging geriatric farts. His true work waits to be
done. I know how to bring Night to this planet. Kneel before me, become true
warriors of darkness, and together we will rain stone upon this land until it
bleeds and dies.”
Garth screamed again. All that was
left now of his fingers were black bones soldered to the candlestick. “Kill
him, shitbrains!” he roared. “Smash the fucker into bedrock, curse you.” But
through eyes blurred with tears he could see the acolytes slowly sinking to the
floor in front of Quinn. It was like a wave effect, spreading across the
temple. Wener was the closest to Quinn, his simple face alive with admiration
and excitement. “I’m with you,” the lumbering acolyte yelled. “Let me kill
people for you. I want to kill everyone, kill the whole world. I hate them. I
hate them real bad.”
Garth groaned in mortification.
They believed him! Believed the shit was a real messenger from God’s Brother.
Quinn closed his eyes and smiled in
joy as he gloried in their adulation. Finally, he was back among his own. “We
will show the Light Bringer we are the worthy ones,” he promised them. “I will
guide you over an ocean of blood to His Empire. And from there we will hear the
false lord weeping at the end of the universe.”
The acolytes cheered and laughed
rapturously. This was what they craved; no more of the magus’s tactical
restraint, at last they could unleash violence and horror without end, begin
the war against the light, their promised destiny.
Quinn turned and glanced down at
magus Garth. “You: fuckbrain. Grovel, lick the shit off my feet, and I’ll allow
you to join the crusade as a whore for the soldiers.”
The candlestick clattered to the
ground, with the roast remains of Garth’s hands still attached. He bared his
teeth at the deranged possessor standing over him. “I serve my Lord alone. You
can go to hell.”
“Been there,” Quinn said urbanely.
“Done that. Come back.” His hand descended on Garth’s head as if in anointment.
“But you will be of use to me. Your body, anyway.” His needle-sharp talons
pierced the skin.
The magus discovered that the pain
of losing his hands was merely the overture to a very long and quite
excruciating symphony.
Chapter 02
It was designated Bureau Seven,
which somewhat inevitably for a government organization was acronymed down to
B7. To anyone with Govcentral alpha-rated clearance, it was listed as one of
the hundreds of bland committees which made up the management hierarchy of the
Govcentral Internal Security Directorate. Officially its function was Policy
Integration and Resource Allocation, a vital coordination role. The more senior
GISD Bureaus produced their requirements for information and actions, and it
was B7’s job to make sure none of the new objectives clashed with current
operations before they designated local arcology offices with carrying out the
project and assigned funds. If there was any anomaly to be found with B7, it
was that such an important and sensitive responsibility did not have a
political appointee assigned to run it. Certainly the chiefs of Bureaus 1
through 6 changed with every new administration, reflecting fresh political
priorities; and several hundred minor posts among the lower Bureaus were also
up for grabs as a loyalty reward to the new President’s retinue. Again, no
junior positions were available in B7.
So B7 carried on as it always had,
isolated and insular. In fact, just how insular would have come as a great
shock to any outsider who investigated the nature of its members—that is, a
shock in the brief period left to them before being quietly terminated.
Although the antithesis of
democracy themselves, they did take the job of guarding the republic of Earth
extremely seriously. Possession was the one threat which actually had the
potential not just to overthrow but actually eliminate Govcentral, a prospect
which hadn’t arisen for nearly four hundred and fifty years, since the
population pressures of the Great Dispersal.
Possession, therefore, was the
reason why a full meeting of all sixteen members had been convened for the
first time in twelve years. Their sensenviron conference had a standard format,
a white infinity-walled room with an oval table in the centre seating their
generated representations. There was no seniority among them, each had his or
her separate area of responsibility, the majority of which were designated
purely on geographical terms, although there were supervisors for GISD’s
divisions dealing in military intelligence.
An omnidirectional projection hung
over the table, showing a warehouse on Norfolk which was burning with unnatural
ferocity. Several museum-piece fire engines were racing towards it, along with
men in khaki uniforms.
“It would appear the Kavanagh girl
is telling the truth,” said the Central American supervisor.
“I never doubted it,” Western
Europe replied.
“She’s certainly not possessed,”
said Military Intelligence. “Not now, anyway. But she’d still have those
memories if she had been.”
“If she’d been possessed, she would
have admitted it,” Western Europe said indolently. “You’re building in
complications for us.”
“Do you want a full personality
debrief to confirm her authenticity?” Southern Africa asked.
“I don’t think we should,” Western
Europe said. He absorbed the mildly polite expressions of surprise the
representations around the table were directing at him.
“Care to share with us?” Southern
Pacific asked archly.
Western Europe looked at the
Military Intelligence supervisor. “I believe we have crossover from the Mount’s
Delta?”
Military Intelligence gave a
perfunctory nod. “Yes. We confirmed that the starship was carrying two people
when it docked at Supra-Brazil. One of them slaughtered the other in an
extravagantly gory fashion right after docking was completed, the body was
literally exploded. All that we can tell you about the victim is that he was
male. We still don’t know who he was, there’s certainly no correlating DNA
profile stored in our memory cores. I’ve requested that all governments we’re
in contact with run a search through their records, but I don’t hold out much
hope.”
“Why not?” Southern Pacific asked.
“The Mount’s Delta came from
Nyvan; he was probably one of their citizens. None of their nations remain
intact.”
“Not relevant, anyway,” said
Western Europe.
“Agreed,” Military Intelligence
said. “Once we’d stripped down the Mount’s Delta, we ran extremely
thorough forensic tests on the life support capsule and its environmental
systems. Analysis on the faecal residue left in the waste cycle mechanism
identified the other occupant’s DNA for us. And this is where the story gets
interesting, because we have a very positive match on his DNA.” Military
Intelligence datavised the sensevise’s controlling processor, and the image
above the table changed. Now it showed an image taken from Louise Kavanagh’s
brain a few minutes before the warehouse was fired; a young man with a pale,
stern face, dressed in a jet-black robe. The viewing angle was such that he
looked down on the members of B7 with a derisory sneer. “Quinn Dexter. He was
an Ivet shipped to Lalonde last year, sentenced for resisting arrest, the
police thought he was running an illegal package into Edmonton. He was as it
happens. Sequestration nanonics.”
“Oh Christ,” Central America
muttered.
“The Kavanagh girl confirms he was
on Norfolk, and both she and Fletcher Christian strongly suspect he was the one
who took over the frigate Tantu. Following that, the Tantu made
one unsuccessful attempt to penetrate Earth defences, and immediately withdrew,
damaging itself in the process.”
Western Europe datavised the
sensenviron management processor, and the image above the table changed again.
“Dexter got to Nyvan. One of the surviving asteroids confirmed that the Tantu
docked at Jesup asteroid. That’s when their real troubles started. Ships
from Jesup planted the nukes in the abandoned asteroids.” He pointed at the
image of Nyvan which had replaced Dexter. It was a world like nothing
previously seen in the galaxy, as if a ball of lava had congealed in space, a
crinkled black surface crust riddled with contorted fissures of radiant red
light. The two atmospheric aspects were in constant conflict, supernatural and
supernature boiling against each other with harrowing aggression.
“Dexter was there on Lalonde at
incident one, according to Laton and our Edenist friends,” Western Europe said
remorselessly. “He was on Norfolk, which we now recognize as the major
distribution source of infection. He was at Nyvan which has elevated the crisis
to a completely new stage; as far as we can tell one which has proved as
hostile to the possessed as it is to the ordinary population. And now we are
certain he arrived here at Supra-Brazil.” He looked directly at the South
America supervisor.
“There was an alert at the Brazil
tower station fifteen hours after the Mount’s Delta arrived,” South
America said tonelessly. “Just after its descent, one of the lift capsules
suffered exactly the kind of electronic glitches known to be inflicted by the
possessed. We had the entire arrivals complex sealed and surrounded within
ninety seconds. Nothing. No sign of any possessed.”
“But you think he’s here?” East
Europe pressed.
South America smiled without
humour. “We know he is. After the alert, we hauled in everyone who came down on
the lift capsule, passengers and crew. This is what we got from several neural
nanonics memory cells.” Nyvan faded away to show a slightly fuzzy
two-dimensional picture, indicating a low-grade recording. The figure in the
Royale Class lounge wearing a blue-silk suit, and slumped comfortably in a deep
chair was undoubtedly Dexter.
“Merciful Allah,” North Pacific
exclaimed. “We’ll have to shut down the vac-trains. It’s our one advantage. I
don’t care how good he is at eluding our sensors, the little shit can’t walk a
thousand kilometres along a vacuum tunnel. Isolate the bastard, and hit him
with an SD platform strike.”
“I believe even we would have
trouble shutting down the vac-trains,” South Pacific said significantly. “Not
without questions being asked.”
“I don’t mean we should issue the
order,” North Pacific snapped. “Feed the information up to B3, and make the
President’s office authorize it.”
“If the public find out there’s a
possessed on Earth, there will be absolute pandemonium,” North Africa said.
“Even we would have trouble retaining control over the arcologies.”
“Better than being possessed,”
North America said. “Because that’s what he’ll do to the arcology populations
if we don’t stop him. Even we would be in danger.”
“I think his objective is more
complex than that,” Western Europe said. “We know what he did to Nyvan, I think
we can assume he wants to do the same thing here.”
“Not a chance,” Military
Intelligence said. “Even if he could sneak around up in the Halo, which I
doubt, he’d never acquire enough nukes to split an asteroid open. You can’t
remove one of those beauts from storage without anyone knowing.”
“Maybe, but there’s something else.
Kavanagh and Fletcher Christian both say that Dexter is here to hunt down
Banneth and have his revenge on her. I checked Dexter’s file; he used to be a
sect member in Edmonton. Banneth was his magus.”
“So what?” asked North Pacific.
“You know what those crazy brute sect members do to each other when the lights
go off. I’m not surprised he wants to beat the crap out of Banneth.”
“You’re missing the point,” Western
Europe said patiently. “Why would the soul possessing Quinn Dexter’s body care
about Dexter’s old magus?” He looked questioningly round the table. “We’re
dealing with something new, here, something different. An ordinary person who
has somehow gained the same powers of the possessed, if not superior ones. His
goals are not going to be the same as theirs, this craving they have to flee
the universe.”
North America caught it first.
“Shit. He used to be a sect member.”
“And presumably remains so,”
Western Europe agreed. “He was still performing their ceremony on Lalonde; that
was incident one, after all. Dexter is a true believer in the Light Bringer
teachings.”
“You think he’s come back to find
his God?”
“It’s not a god he worships, it’s
the devil. But no, he’s not here to find him. My people ran a psychological
profile simulation; what they got indicates he’s come back to prepare the way
for his Lord, the Light Bringer, who glories in war and chaos. He’ll try to
unleash as much mayhem and destruction on both us and the possessed as it’s
possible to do. Nyvan was just the warm up. The real game is going to be played
out down here.”
“Well that settles it then,” North
Pacific said. “We have to close the vac-trains. It’ll mean losing an entire
arcology to him; but we can save the rest.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic,” Western
Europe said. “Dexter is a problem; a novel one, granted. He’s different, and
more powerful than all the others B7 has faced over the centuries. But that’s
what we are here for, ultimately, to solve problems which would defeat
conventional government action. We simply have to locate a weakness and use
it.”
“An invisible megalomaniac as
powerful as a minor god has a weakness?” North Pacific said. “Allah preserve
us, I should like to hear what it is.”
“The Kavanagh girl has escaped him
twice. Both times it was due to the intervention of an unknown possessed. We
have an ally.”
“On Norfolk! Which has bloody
vanished.”
“Nevertheless, Dexter does not
command total support from the possessed. He is not invincible. And we have
what should be a decisive advantage over him.”
“Which is?”
“We know about him. He knows
nothing about us. That can be exploited to trap him.”
“Ah yes,” the Halo supervisor said
contentedly. “Now I understand the reluctance for a personality debrief on the
Kavanagh girl.”
“Well I don’t,” South America
declared querulously.
“Personality debrief requires a
much more invasive procedure,” Western Europe said. “At the moment Kavanagh is
not aware of what has happened to her. That means we can use her ignorance to
get very close to Dexter.”
“Close to . . .” South Pacific
trailed off. “My God, you want to use her as a lightning conductor.”
“Exactly. At the moment we have one
chance for proximity, and that’s Banneth. Unfortunately there is only a limited
degree of preparation we can make with her. The possessed, and therefore
presumably Dexter, can sense the emotional content of the minds around them. We
have to proceed with extreme caution if he is to be lured into a termination
option. If he learns someone is hunting him, we could lose several arcologies,
if not more. Moving the Kavanagh girl back into the game doubles our chances of
engineering an encounter with him.”
“That’s goddamn risky,” North
America said.
“No, I like it,” Halo said. “It has
subtlety; that’s more us than closing down the vac-trains and using SD fire to
incinerate entire arcology domes.”
“Oh heaven preserve we should let
our standard of style drop when the whole fucking world is about to go down the
can,” South Pacific groused.
“Does anyone have a substantial
objection?” Western Europe enquired.
“Your operation,” North Pacific
said hotly. “Your responsibility.”
“Responsibility?” Australia chided
lightly.
There were several smiles around
the table as North Pacific glowered.
“Naturally I accept the consequences,”
Western Europe purred volubly.
“You’re always such an arrogant
little shit when you’re this age, aren’t you?” North Pacific said.
Western Europe just laughed.
The three Confederation Navy
marines were polite, insistent, and resolutely uncommunicative. They escorted
Joshua the entire length of Trafalgar. Which, he thought, was a hopeful sign;
he was being taken away from the CNIS section. A day and a half of interviews
with sour-faced CNIS investigators, cooperating like a good citizen. None of his
questions answered in return. Certainly no access to a lawyer—one of the
investigators had given him a filthy look when he half-jokingly asked for legal
aid. Net processors wouldn’t respond to his datavises. He didn’t know where the
rest of his crew was. Didn’t know what was happening to Lady Mac. And
could make a pretty good guess what kind of report Monica and Samuel were
concocting.
From the tube carriage station a
lift took them up to a floor which was plainly officer country. A wide
corridor, good carpet, discreet lighting, holograms of famous Naval events (few
he recognized), intent men and women looping from office to office, none of
them under the rank of senior lieutenant. Joshua was led into a reception room
with two captains sitting at desks. One of them stood, and saluted the marines.
“We’ll take him from here.”
“What is this?” Joshua asked. It
definitely wasn’t a firing squad on the other side of the ornate double doors
in front of him, and hopefully not a courtroom either.
“The First Admiral will see you
now,” the captain said.
“Er,” Joshua said lamely. “Okay,
then.”
The large circular office had a
window overlooking the asteroid’s biosphere. It was night outside, the
solartubes reduced to a misty oyster glimmer revealing little of the landscape.
Big holoscreens on the walls were flashing up external sensor images of Avon
and the asteroid’s spaceports. Joshua looked for Lady Mac among the
docking bays, but couldn’t find her.
The captain beside him saluted.
“Captain Calvert, sir.”
Joshua locked eyes with the man
sitting behind the big teak desk in front of him, receiving a mildly intrigued
gaze from Samual Aleksandrovich.
“So,” the First Admiral said.
“Lagrange Calvert. You fly some very tight manoeuvres, Captain.”
Joshua narrowed his eyes, unsure just
how much irony was being applied here. “I just do what comes naturally.”
“Indeed you do. I accessed that
section of your file, also.” The First Admiral smiled at some internal joke,
and waved a hand. “Please sit down, Captain.”
A blue-steel chair swelled up out
of the floor in front of the desk. Alkad Mzu was sitting in the one next to it,
body held rigid, staring ahead. On the other side of her, Monica and Samuel had
relaxed back into their own chairs. The First Admiral introduced the demure
Edenist woman beside them as Admiral Lalwani, the CNIS chief. Joshua responded
with a very nervous twitch of greeting.
“I think I had better start by
saying the Confederation Navy would like to thank you for your part in the
Nyvan affair, and solving the Alchemist problem for us,” the First Admiral
said. “I do not like to dwell on the consequences had the Capone Organization
acquired it.”
“I’m not under arrest?”
“No.”
Joshua let out a hefty breath of
relief. “Jesus!” He grinned at Monica, who responded with a laconic smile.
“Er, so can I go now?” he asked
without much hope.
“Not quite,” Lalwani said. “You’re
one of the few people who knows how the Alchemist works,” she told him.
Joshua did his best not to glance
at Mzu. “A very brief description.”
“Of the principles,” Mzu said.
“And I believe you told Samuel and
agent Foulkes that you would submit to internal exile in Tranquillity so no one
else could obtain the information,” Lalwani said.
“Did I? No.”
Monica pantomimed deep thought.
“Your exact words were: I’ll stay in Tranquillity if we survive this, but I
have to know.”
“And you said you’d stay there with
me,” Joshua snapped back. He scowled at her. “Ever heard of Hiroshima?”
“The first time an atomic bomb was
used on Earth,” Lalwani said.
“Yeah. At the time the only real
secret about an atom bomb was the fact that it was possible to build one that
worked. Once it got used, that secret was out.”
“The relevance being?”
“Anyone who visits the location
where we deployed Alchemist and sees the result, is going to be able to figure
out those precious principles of yours. After that, it’s just a question of
engineering. Besides, the possessed won’t build another. They’re not geared
around that kind of action.”
“Capone’s Organization might be
able to,” Monica said. “They certainly thought they could, remember? They
wanted Mzu at any price, incarnate or just her soul. And who’s going to know
where the Alchemist was used unless you and your crew tell them?”
“Jesus, what do you people want
from me?”
“Very little,” said the First Admiral.
“I think we’ve established to everyone’s satisfaction that you’re trustworthy.”
He grinned at Joshua’s sour expression. “Despite what that may do to your
reputation. So I’m just going to ask you to agree to a few ground rules. You do
not discuss the Alchemist with anyone. And I mean anyone.”
“Easy enough.”
“For the duration of our current
crisis you do not put yourself in a position where you will encounter the
possessed.”
“I’ve already encountered them
twice, I don’t intend to do it again.”
“That effectively means you will
not fly anywhere outside the Sol system. Once you get home, you stay there.”
“Right.” Joshua frowned. “You want
me to go to Sol?”
“Yes. You will take Dr Mzu and the Beezling
survivors there. As you pointed out with your Hiroshima analogy, we cannot
push the information genie back into the lamp, but we can certainly initiate
damage limitation. The relevant governments have agreed that Dr Mzu can be
returned to a neutral nation, where she will not communicate any details of the
Alchemist to anyone. The doctor has consented to that.”
“They’ll get it eventually,” Joshua
said softly. “No matter what agreements they sign, governments will try to
build Alchemists.”
“No doubt,” Samual Aleksandrovich
said. “But such problems are for the future. And that is going to be a very
different place to today, is it not, Captain?”
“If we solve today, then, yeah.
It’ll be different. Even today is different than yesterday.”
“So. Lagrange Calvert has become a
philosopher?”
“Haven’t we all, knowing what we do
now?”
The First Admiral nodded
reluctantly. “Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing. Somebody has to find a
solution. The more there are of us searching, the quicker it will be revealed.”
“That’s a lot of faith you have
there, Admiral.”
“Of course. If I didn’t have faith
in the human race, I would have no right to sit in this chair.”
Joshua gave him a strong look. The
First Admiral wasn’t quite what he’d envisaged, the gung-ho military archetype.
That made him more confident for the future. Slightly. “Okay, so where do you
want me to take the doc in the Sol system, exactly?”
Samual Aleksandrovich smiled
broadly. “Ah yes, this is one piece of news I shall enjoy imparting.”
Friend Jay, please cry not.
Haile’s voice was no stronger than
the memory of a dream. Jay had closed up her mind as tight as her eyelids. She
just lay on the floor, all curled up, sobbing at . . . everything. Ever since
that terrible day on Lalonde when the Ivets went mad, she and Mummy had been
torn further and further apart. First the cramped house on the savannah. Then
Tranquillity, where she’d heard rumours of the possessed taking Lalonde out of
the universe—even though the paediatric ward staff had been careful about
allowing the refugee kids access to any news. Now this, flying like an angel to
another galaxy. Where she’d never get back from. And she’d never see Mummy ever
again. Everyone she knew was either dead, or about to be possessed. She wailed
louder, so much it hurt her throat.
The back of her head was full of
warm whispers, pushing to be let in.
Jay, please restrain yourself.
She is developing cyclic trauma
psychosis.
We should impose a thalamic
regulator routine.
Humans respond better to
chemical suppressers.
Certainty?
Ambiguous context.
Referral to Corpus.
Tractamorphic flesh was slithering
round her, rubbing gently. She shook at the touch of it.
Then there was a sharp regular
clicking sound, tac tac tac, like heels on the cool hard floor. Human
heels.
“What in seven heavens’ name do you
lot think you’re doing?” a woman’s voice asked sharply. “Give the poor dear
some air, for goodness sake. Come on, get back. Right back. Move out the way.”
There followed the distinctive sound of a human hand being slapped against a
Kiint hide.
Jay stopped crying.
“Move! You too, you little terror.”
That causes painfulness, Haile protested.
“Then learn to move quicker.”
Jay smeared some of the tears from
her eyes, and peered up just in time to see someone’s finger and thumb pinching
the crater ridge of skin around Haile’s ear, hauling her aside. The baby
Kiint’s legs were getting all twisted round as she skittled hurriedly out of
the way.
The owner of the hand smiled down
at Jay. “Well well, sweetie, haven’t you just caused a stir? And whatever are
all these tears for? I suppose you had a bit of shock when they jumped you
here. Don’t blame you. That stupid leaping through the darkness stunt used to
give me the chronic heebie-jeebies every time. I’ll take a Model-T over that
any day. Now there was a really gracious method of transport. Would you like a
hanky, wipe your face a bit?”
“Uh,” Jay said. She’d never seen a
woman quite so old before; her brown Mediterranean skin was deeply wrinkled,
and her back curved slightly, giving her shoulders a permanent hunch. The dress
she wore had come straight out from a history text, lemon-yellow cotton printed
with tiny white flowers, complemented by a wide belt and lace collar and cuffs.
Thin snow-white hair had been permed into a neat beret; and a double loop of
large pearls round her neck chittered softly with every movement. It was as if
she’d turned age into a statement of pride. But her green eyes were vividly
alert.
A frilly lace handkerchief was
pulled from her sleeve, and proffered to Jay.
“Thank you,” Jay gulped. She took
the hanky, and blew into it heavily. The huge adult Kiint had all backed off,
standing several paces behind the small woman, keeping close together in a
mutual support group. Haile was pressed against Lieria, who had formshifted a
tractamorphic arm to stroke her daughter soothingly.
“So now, sweetie, why don’t you
start by telling me your name.”
“Jay Hilton.”
“Jay.” The woman’s jowls bobbled,
as if she was sucking on a particularly hard mint. “That’s nice. Well, Jay, I’m
Tracy Dean.”
“Hello. Um, you are real, aren’t
you?”
Tracy laughed. “Oh yes, sweetie,
I’m genuine flesh and blood, all right. And before you ask why I’m here, this
is my home now. But we’ll save the explanations until tomorrow. Because they’re
very long and complicated, and you’re tired and upset. You need to get some sleep
now.”
“I don’t want to sleep,” Jay
stammered. “Everybody in Tranquillity’s dead, and I’m here. And I want Mummy.
And she’s gone.”
“Oh, Jay, no, sweetie.” Tracy knelt
beside the little girl, and hugged her tight. Jay was sniffling again, ready to
burst into tears. “Nobody’s dead. Tranquillity swallowed away clean before any
of the combat wasps reached it. These silly oafs got it all wrong and panicked.
Aren’t they stupid?”
“Tranquillity’s alive?”
“Yes.”
“And Ione, and Father Horst, and
everybody?”
“Yes, all safe and sound.
Tranquillity is orbiting Jupiter right this minute. That surprised everybody,
let me tell you.”
“But . . . how did it do that?”
“We’re not quite sure yet, but it
must have an awful lot of energy patterning cells tucked away somewhere inside
it.” She gave Jay a sly grin, and winked. “Tricky people, those Saldanas. And
very clever with it, thankfully.”
Jay managed an experimental smile.
“That’s better. Now, let’s see
about finding you that bed for the night.” Tracy rose to her feet, holding Jay’s
hand.
Jay used her free hand to wipe the
handkerchief across her face as she scrambled to her feet. “Oh right.”
Actually, she thought that talk of explanations sounded quite fascinating now.
There was so much about this place she wanted to know. It would be worth
staying awake for.
You now have betterness, query? Haile asked anxiously.
Jay nodded enthusiastically at her
friend. “Much better.”
That is good.
I will assume complete Jay
Hilton guardian responsibility now.
Jay cocked her head to give Tracy Dean
a sideways look. How could she use the Kiint mental voice?
Confirm, Nang said. The words Jay could hear in her head
speeded up then, becoming a half-imagined birdsong, but suffused with feeling.
We will venture wide together, Haile said. See new things. There is
muchness here to see.
“Tomorrow, maybe,” Tracy said. “We
have to get Jay settled in here first.”
Jay shrugged at her friend.
“Now then, Jay, we’re going to jump
out of here. It’ll be the same as before, but this time you know it’s
happening, and I’ll be with you the whole time. All right?”
“Couldn’t we just walk, or use a
groundcar, or something?”
Tracy smiled sympathetically. “Not
really, sweetie.” She pointed up at the planets arching over the dark sky. “My
home is on one of those.”
“Oh. But I will be seeing Haile
while I’m here, won’t I?” Jay raised her hand and waved at her friend. Haile
formshifted the tip on one of her tractamorphic arms into a human hand, and
wriggled the fingers.
We will build the castles of
sand again.
“Close your eyes,” Tracy said.
“It’s easier that way.” Her arm went round Jay’s shoulder. “Are you ready?”
This time it wasn’t so bad. There
was that quick breeze ruffling her nightie again, and despite having her eyes
shut her stomach was telling her very urgently that she was falling again. A
squeak crept out of her lips in spite of her best efforts.
“It’s all right sweetie, we’re here
now. You can open your eyes again.”
The breeze had vanished, its
departure signalling a whole symphony of fresh sound. Hot sunlight tingled her
skin; when she breathed in she could taste salt.
Jay opened her eyes. There was a
beach in front of her, one which made the little cove on Tranquillity seem
quite pallid by comparison. The powder-fine sand was snow-white, stretching out
on either side of her for as far as she could see. Wonderfully clear turquoise
water lapped against it, languid waves rolling in from a reef several hundred
metres out. A beautiful three-masted yacht of some golden wood was anchored
half-way between the shore and the reef, undeniably human in design.
Jay grinned at it, then shielded
her eyes with a hand and looked round. She was standing on a circle of the same
ebony material as before, but this time there was no encircling wall or
watching Kiint. The only artefact was a bright orange cylinder, as tall as she
was, standing next to the edge. Scatterings of sand were drifting onto the
circle.
Behind her, a thick barricade of
trees and bushes lined the rear of the beach. Long creeper tendrils had
slithered out of them over the hard-packed sand, knitting together in a tough
lacework that sprouted blue and pink palm-sized flowers. The only noise was the
waves and some kind of honking in the distance, almost like a flock of geese.
When she searched the cloudless sky, she could see several birds flapping and
gliding about in the distance. The arch of planets was a line of silver disks
twinkling away into the horizon.
“Where are we now?” Jay asked.
“Home.” Tracy’s face managed to
produce even more wrinkles as she sniffed distastefully. “Not that anywhere is
really home after spending two thousand years swanning loyally round Earth and
the Confederation planets.”
Jay stared at her in astonishment.
“You’re two thousand years old?”
“That’s right, sweetie. Why, don’t
I look it?”
Jay blushed. “Well . . .”
Tracy laughed, and took hold of her
hand. “Come along, let’s find you that bed. I’ll think I’ll put you in my guest
quarters. That’ll be simplest. Never thought I’d ever get to use them.”
They walked off the ebony circle.
Up ahead of them, Jay could see some figures lazing on the beach, while others
were swimming in the sea. Their strokes were slow and controlled. She realized
they were all as old as Tracy. Now Jay was paying attention, she could make out
several chalets lurking in the vegetation behind the beach. They were strung
out on either side of a white stone building with a red tile roof and a
sizeable, well-manicured garden; it looked like some terribly exclusive
clubhouse. Still more old people were sitting at iron tables on the lawns,
reading, playing what looked like a board game, or just staring out to sea.
Mauve-coloured globes, the size of a head, were floating through the air,
moving sleekly from table to table. If they found an empty glass or plate they
would absorb it straight through their surface. In many cases they would
extrude a replacement; the new glasses were full, and the plates piled with
sandwiches or biscuit-type snacks.
Jay walked along obediently at
Tracy’s side, her head swivelling about as she took in the amazing new sights.
As they approached the big building, people looked their way and smiled
encouragingly, nodding, waving.
“Why are they doing that?” Jay
asked. All the excitement and fright had worn off now she knew she was safe,
leaving her very tired.
Tracy chuckled. “Having you here is
the biggest event that’s happened to this place for a long time. Probably
ever.”
Tracy led her towards one of the
chalets; a simple wooden structure with a veranda running along the front, on
which stood big clay pots full of colourful plants. Jay could only think of the
pretty little houses of the Juliffe villages on the day she and her mother had
started sailing upriver to Aberdale. She sighed at the recollection. The
universe had become very strange since then.
Tracy patted her gently. “Almost
there, sweetie.” They started up the steps to the veranda.
“Hi there,” a man’s voice called
brightly.
Tracy groaned impatiently.
“Richard, leave her alone. The poor little dear’s dead on her feet.”
A young man in scarlet shorts and a
white T-shirt was jogging barefoot across the sands towards them. He was tall
with an athletic figure, his long blond hair tied back into a ponytail by a
flamboyant leather lace. He pouted at the rebuke, then winked playfully at Jay.
“Oh, come on, Trace; just paying my respects to a fellow escapee. Hello, Jay,
my name’s Richard Keaton.” He gave a bow, and stuck his hand out.
Jay smiled uncertainly at him, and
put out her own hand. He shook it formally. His whole attitude put her in mind
of Joshua Calvert, which was comforting. “Did you jump out of Tranquillity as
well?” she asked.
“Heavens, no, nothing like that. I
was on Nyvan when someone tried to drop a dirty great lump of metal on me.
Thought it best I slipped away when no one was looking.”
“Oh.”
“I know everything is real weird
for you right now, so I just wanted you to have this.” He produced a doll
resembling some kind of animal, a flattish humanoid figure made from badly worn
out brown-gold velvet; its mouth and nose were just lines of black stitching,
and its eyes were amber glass. One semicircular ear had been torn off, allowing
tufts of yellowing stuffing to peek out of the gash.
Jay gave the battered old thing a
suspicious look, it wasn’t anything like the animatic dolls back in
Tranquillity’s paediatric ward. In fact, it looked even more primitive than any
toy on Lalonde. Which was pretty hard to believe. “Thank you,” she said
awkwardly as he proffered it. “What is it?”
“This is Prince Dell, my old Teddy
Bear. Which dates me. But friends like this were all the rage on Earth when I
was young. He’s the ancestor of all those animatic dolls you kids have these
days. If you hold him close at night he keeps troubles away from your dreams.
But you have to keep cuddling him tight for him to be able to do that properly.
Something to do with earth magic and contact; funny stuff like that. He used to
sleep with me until I was a lot older than you. I thought he might be able to
help you tonight.”
He sounded so serious and hopeful
that Jay took the bear from him and examined it closely. Prince Dell really was
very tatty, but she could just picture him in the embrace of a sleeping boy
with blond hair. The boy was smiling blissfully.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll hold
on to him tonight. Thank you very much.” It seemed a bit silly, but it was kind
of him to be so considerate.
Richard Keaton smiled gladly.
“That’s good. The Prince hasn’t had much to do for a long time. He’ll be happy
to have a new friend. Make sure you treat him nicely, he’s a bit delicate now,
poor thing.”
“I will,” Jay promised. “Are you
really old, as well?”
“Older than most people you’ve ever
met, but nothing like as antique as good old Trace, here.”
“Huh,” Tracy sniffed critically.
“If you’re quite finished.”
Richard rolled his eyes for Jay’s
benefit. “Sweet dreams, Jay. I’ll see you tomorrow, we’ve got lots to talk
about.”
“Richard,” Tracy asked reluctantly.
“Did Calvert do it?”
A huge smile flashed over his face.
“Oh yeah. He did it. The Alchemist is neutralized. Just as well, it was a brute
of a weapon.”
“Typical. If they’d just devote ten
per cent of their military budget and all that ingenuity into developing their
social conditions.”
“Preaching to the converted!”
“Are you talking about Joshua?” Jay
asked. “What’s he done?”
“Something very good,” Richard
said.
“Amazingly,” Tracy muttered dryly.
“But . . .”
“Tomorrow, sweetie,” Tracy said
firmly. “Along with everything else. I promise. Right now, you’re going to bed.
Enough delaying tactics.”
Richard waved, and walked away. Jay
held Prince Dell against her tummy as Tracy’s hand pressed into her back,
propelling her up the steps and into the chalet. She glanced down at the
ancient bear again. His dull glass eyes stared right back at her, it was an
incredibly melancholic expression.
The first hellhawk came flashing
out of its wormhole terminus twelve thousand kilometres from Monterey asteroid.
New California’s gravitonic detector warning satellites immediately datavised
an alert to the naval tactical operations centre. The high pitched audio alarm
startled Emmet Mordden, who was the duty officer in the large chamber. At the
time he was sitting with his feet up on the commander’s console, reading
through a four-hundred-sheet hard copy guide of a Quantumsoft accountancy
program in preparation for his next upgrade to the Treasury computers. With
most of the Organization fleet away at Tranquillity, and the planet reasonably
stable right now, it was a quiet duty, just right to catch up on his technical
work.
Emmet’s feet hit the floor as the
AI responsible for threat analysis squirted a mass of symbols and vectors up on
one of the huge wall-mounted holoscreens. In front of him, the equally
surprised SD network operators scrambled to interpret what was happening. There
weren’t many of them among the eight rows of consoles in the centre, nothing
like the full complement which the Organization had needed at the height of the
Edenist harassment campaign. Right now, spaceflight traffic was at a minimum,
and the contingent of Valisk hellhawks on planetary defence duty had done a
superb job of clearing Edenist stealth mines and spy globes from space around
the planet.
“What is it?” Emmet asked
automatically; by which time another three wormholes had opened. The
precariously-stacked pile of hard copy avalanched off his console as he
determinedly cleared his keyboard ready to respond.
The AI had acquired X-ray laser
lock on for the first four targets, and was requesting fire authority. Another
ten wormholes were opening. Jull von Holger, who acted as the go-between for
the Valisk hellhawks and the operations centre, leapt to his feet, shouting:
“Don’t shoot!” He waved his arms frantically. “They’re ours! They’re our
hellhawks.”
Emmet hesitated, his fingers
hovering over the keys. According to his console displays, over eighty
wormholes had now opened to disgorge bitek starships. “What the fuck do they
think they’re doing busting in on us like that? Why aren’t they with the
fleet?” Suspicion flowered among his thoughts; and he didn’t care that von
Holger could sense it. Hellhawks were dangerously powerful craft, and with the
fleet away they could make real trouble. He’d never really trusted Kiera
Salter.
Jull von Holger’s face went through
a wild panoply of emotion-derived contortions as he conducted fast affinity
conversations with the unexpected arrivals. “They’re not from the fleet.
They’ve come here directly from Valisk.” He halted for a moment, shocked. “It’s
gone. Valisk has gone. We lost to that little prat Dariat.”
“Holy shit,” Hudson Proctor gasped.
Kiera stuck her head round the
bathroom door as the beautician tried to wrap her sopping wet hair in a huge
fluffy purple towel. The Quayle suite in the Monterey Hilton was a temple to
opulence and personal luxury. As Rubra had denied everyone access to the Valisk
starscrapers, along with their apartment bathrooms, Kiera had simply groomed
herself with energistic power alone. She had forgotten what it was to sprawl in
a Jacuzzi with a selector that could blend in any of a dozen exotic salts. And
as for having her hair styled properly rather than forcing it into shape . . .
“What?” she snapped in annoyance;
though the beacon-bright dismay in her associate’s mind tempered any real fury
at being interrupted.
“The hellhawks are here,” he said.
“All of them. They’ve come from Valisk. It’s . . .” He flinched in trepidation.
Delivering bad news to Kiera was always a desperately negative career move.
Just because she had the kind of teenage-sweetheart looks which could (and had)
suckered in non-possessed kids from right across the Confederation didn’t mean
her behaviour matched. Quite the opposite—she took a perverse enjoyment from
that, too. “Bonney chased after Dariat, apparently. There was a big fight in
one of the starscrapers. Plenty of our people got flung back into the beyond.
Then she forced him to ally with Rubra, or something.”
“What happened?”
“They, er—Valisk’s gone. The two of
them took the habitat out of the universe.”
Kiera stared at him, little wisps
of steam starting to lick out of her hair. She’d always bitterly regretted that
Marie Skibbow didn’t have some kind of affinity faculty; its absence had always
put her at a slight disadvantage in Valisk. But she’d coped, the entire
worldlet and its formidable starships had belonged to her. She’d been a power
to contend with. Even Capone had sought out her help. Now—
Kiera gave the non-possessed
beautician girl a blank-eyed glance. “Get lost.”
“Ma’am.” The girl curtseyed, and
almost sprinted for the suite’s double doors on the other side of the lounge.
Kiera allowed herself a muted
scream of fury when the doors closed. “That fucking Dariat! I knew it! I
fucking knew he was a disaster waiting to happen.”
“We’re still in charge of the
hellhawks,” Hudson Proctor said. “That gives us a big chunk of Capone’s action;
and the Organization is in charge of a couple of star systems, with more on the
way. It’s not such a loss. If we’d been inside the habitat it would be one hell
of a lot worse.”
“If I’d been inside, it would never
have happened,” she snapped back. Her hair was abruptly dry, and her robe
blurred, running like hot wax until it became a sharp mauve business suit.
“Control,” she murmured almost to herself. “That’s the key here.”
Hudson Proctor could sense her
focusing on him, both her eyes and her mind.
“Are you with me?” she asked. “Or
are you going to ask good old Al if you can sign on as one of his lieutenants?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because if I can’t keep control of
the hellhawks, I’m nothing to the Organization.” She smiled thinly. “You and I
would have to start right back at the beginning again. With the hellhawks
obeying us, we’ll still be players.”
He glanced out of the big window,
searching space for a sight of the bitek starships. “We’ve got no hold on them
any more,” he said dejectedly. “Without the affinity-capable bodies stored in
Valisk, there’s no way they’ll do as they’re ordered. And there aren’t any more
of Rubra’s family left for us to replace them with. We’ve lost.”
Kiera shook her head impatiently.
Considering she’d coopted the ex-general to her council for his ability to
think tactically, he was doing a remarkably poor job of it. But then, maybe a
politician’s instinct was naturally quicker at finding an opponent’s weakness.
“There’s one thing left which they can’t do for themselves.”
“And that is?”
“Eat. The only sources of their
nutrient fluid which they’ll be able to use are on Organization-held asteroids.
Without food, even bitek organisms will wither and die. And we know our
energistic power can’t magic up genuine food.”
“Then Capone will control them.”
“No.” Kiera could sense his anxiety
at the prospect of losing his status, and knew she could rely on him. She
closed her eyes, focusing on assignments for the small number of her people
she’d brought with her to Monterey. “Which is the most reliable hellhawk we’ve
got on planetary defence?”
“Reliable?”
“Loyal, idiot. To me.”
“That’ll probably be Etchells in
the Stryla. He’s a regular little Nazi, always complaining hellhawks
never see enough battle action. Doesn’t get on too well with the others, either.”
“Perfect. Call him back to
Monterey’s docking ledges and go on board. I want you to visit every
Organization asteroid in this system with a nutrient fluid production system.
And blow it to shit.”
Hudson gave her an astounded look,
trepidation replacing the earlier anxiety. “The asteroids?”
“No, shithead! Just the production
systems. You don’t even have to dock, just use an X-ray laser. That’ll leave
Monterey as their only supply point.” She smiled happily. “The Organization has
enough to do right now without the burden of maintaining all that complicated
machinery. I think I’ll go down there right now with our experts, and relieve
them.”
It wasn’t dawn which arose over the
wolds, in as much as there was no sun to slide above the horizon any more, but
none the less the darkened sky grew radiant in homage to Norfolk’s lost diurnal
rhythm. Luca Comar felt it developing because he was a part of making it
happen. By coming to this place he had freed himself from the clamour of the
souls lost within the beyond, their tormented screams and angry pleas. In
exchange he had gained an awareness of community.
Born at the tail end of the
Twenty-first Century he’d grown up in the Amsterdam arcology. It was a time
when people still clung to the hope that the planet could be healed, their
superb technology employed to turn the clock back to the nevertime of halcyon
pastoral days. In his youth, Luca dreamed of the land returned to immense
parkland vistas with proud white and gold cities straddling the horizon. A
child brought up by some of the last hippies on Earth, his formative years were
spent loving the knowledge that togetherness was all. Then he turned eighteen,
and for the first time in his existence reality had bitten, and bitten hard; he
had to get a job, and an apartment, and pay taxes. Not nice. He resented it
until the day his body died.
So now he had stolen a new body,
and with the strange powers that theft had bestowed, he’d joined with the
others of this planet to create their own Gaia. Unity of life was a pervasive,
shroud-like presence wrapping itself around the planet, replacing the
regimented order of the universe as their provider. Because the new inhabitants
of Norfolk wished there to be a dawn, there was one. And as they equally
desired night, so the light was banished. He contributed a little of himself to
this Gaia, some of his wishes, some of his strength, a constant avowal of
thanks to this new phase of his existence.
Luca sat on the edge of the huge
bed in the master bedroom to watch the light strengthen outside Cricklade; a
silver warmth shining down from the sky, its uniformity leaving few shadows.
With it came the sense of anticipation, a new day to be treasured because of
the opportunity it might bring.
A dull dawn, bland and boring,
just as the days have become. We used to have two suns, and revelled in the
contrast of colours they brought, the battle of shadows. They had energy and
majesty, they inspired. But this, this . . .
The woman on the bed beside Luca
stretched and rolled over, resting her chin in her hand and smiling up at him.
“Morning,” she purred.
He grinned back. Lucy was good
company, sharing a lot of his enthusiasms, as well as a wicked sense of humour.
A tall woman, great figure, thick chestnut hair worn long, barely into her
mid-twenties. He never asked how much of her appearance was hers, and how much
belonged to her host. The age of your host had swiftly become taboo. He liked
to think himself modern enough so that bedding a ninety-year-old wouldn’t
bother him, age and looks being different concepts here. He still didn’t ask,
though. The solid image was good enough.
An image so close to Marjorie it
verges on the idolatrous. Did this Lucy see that in my heart?
Luca yawned widely. “I’d better get
going. We have to inspect the mill this morning, and I need to know how much
seed corn we’ve actually got left in the silos over in the estate’s western
farms. I don’t believe what the residents are telling me. It doesn’t correspond
with what Grant knows.”
Lucy pulled a dour face. “One week
in heaven, and the four horsemen are already giving us the eye.”
“Alas, this is not heaven, I’m
afraid.”
“And don’t I know it. Fancy having
to work for a living when you’re dead. God, the indignity.”
“The wages of sin, lady. We did
have one hell of a party to start with, after all.”
She flopped back down on the bed,
tongue poised tautly on her upper lip. “Sure did. You know I was quite
repressed back when I was alive first time around. Sexually, that is.”
“Hallelujah, it’s a miracle cure.”
She gave a husky chuckle, then
sobered. “I’m supposed to be helping out in the kitchen today. Cooking the
workers lunch, then taking it out to the fields for them. Bugger, it’s like
some kind of Amish festival. And how come we’re reverting to gender
stereotypes?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s us girls that are doing all
the cooking.”
“Not all of you.”
“The majority. You should work out
a better rota for us.”
“Why me?”
“You seem to be taking charge
around here. Quite the little baron.”
“Okay, I designate you to draw up a
proper equitable rota.” He stuck his tongue out at her. “You should be good at
secretarial work.”
The pillow hit him on the side of
his head, nearly knocking him off the bed. He caught the next one, and put it
out of her reach. “I didn’t do it deliberately,” he said seriously. “People
tell me what they can do, and I shove them at the first matching job. We need
to get a list of occupations and skills sorted out.”
She moaned. “Bureaucracy in heaven,
that’s worse than sexism.”
“Just think yourself lucky we
haven’t got round to introducing taxes yet.” He started searching round for his
trousers. Luckily, the Manor had entire wardrobes of Grant Kavanagh’s
high-quality clothes. They weren’t quite Luca’s style, but at least they fitted
perfectly. And the outdoor gear was hard-wearing, too. It saved him from having
to dream up new stuff. That was harder here, in this realm. Imagined items took
a long time to form, but when they did, they had more substance, and persevered
longer. Concentrate hard enough and long enough on changing something, and the
change would become permanent, requiring no more attention.
But that was inert objects:
clothes, stone, wood, even chunks of machinery (not electronics), they could
all be fashioned by the mind. Which was fortunate; Norfolk’s low-technology
infrastructure could be repaired with relative ease. Physical appearance, too,
could be governed by a wish, flesh gradually morphing into a new
form—inevitably firmer and younger. The majority of possessed were intent on
reverting to their original features. As seen through a rose-tinted mirror,
Luca suspected. Having quite so many beautiful people emerge in one place
together was statistically implausible.
Not that vanity was their real
problem. The one intractable difficulty of this new life was food. Energistic
power simply could not conjure any into existence; no matter how creative or
insistent you were. Oh, you could cover a plate with a mountain of caviar; but
cancel the illusion and the glistening black mass would relapse into a pile of
leaves, or whatever raw material you were trying to bend to your will.
Irony or mockery, Luca couldn’t
quite decide what their deliverance had led them to. But whichever it was,
eternity tilling the fields was better than eternity in the beyond. He finished
dressing, and gave Lucy an expectant, slightly chiding look.
“All right,” she grumbled. “I’m
getting up. I’ll pull my communal weight.”
He kissed her. “Catch you later.”
Lucy waited until the door shut
behind him, then pulled the sheets back over her head.
Most of the manor’s residents were
already awake and bustling about. Luca said a dozen good-mornings as he made
his way downstairs. As he walked along the grand corridors, the state of the
building gradually registered. Windows left ajar, allowing the nightly
sprinkling of rain to stain the carpets and furniture; open doors showed him
glimpses of rooms with clothes strewn everywhere, remnants of meals on plates,
grey mould growing out of mugs, sheets unwashed since the start of Norfolk’s
possession. It wasn’t apathy, exactly, more like teenage carelessness—the
belief that mum will always be around to clean up after you.
Bloody squalor junkies. Wouldn’t
have happened in my day, by damn.
There were over thirty people
having their breakfast in Cricklade’s dining hall, which now served as the
community’s canteen. The big chamber was three stories high, with a wooden
ceiling supported by skilfully carved rafters. Cascade chandeliers hung on
strong chains; their light globes were inoperative, but they bounced plenty of
the sky’s ambient light around the hall, illuminating the elaborate
Earth-woodland frescos painted between every window. A thick blue and cream
coloured Chinese carpet silenced Luca’s boots as he walked over to the counter
and helped himself to scrambled egg from an iron baking dish.
The plate he used was chipped, the
silver cutlery was tarnished, and the polish on the huge central table was
scuffed and scratched. He nodded to his companions as he sat, holding back any
criticism. Focus on priorities, he told himself. Things were up and running at
a basic level, that’s what counts. The food was plain but adequate; not
rationed exactly, but carefully controlled. They were all reverting to a more
civilized state of behaviour.
For a while after Quinn left, Cricklade’s
new residents had joyfully discarded the sect’s loathsome teachings which the
monster had imposed, and dived into a continual orgy of sex and
overconsumption. It was a reaction to the beyond; deliberately immersing
themselves in complete sensory-glut. Nothing mattered except feeling, and
taste, and smell. Luca had eaten and drunk his way through the manor’s
extensive cuisine supplies, shagged countless girls with supermodel looks,
flung himself into ludicrously dangerous games, persecuted and hounded the
non-possessed. Then, with painful slowness, the morning after had finally
dawned, bringing the burden of responsibility and even a degree of decency.
It was the day when the bathroom
shower nozzle squirted raw sewage over him that Luca started to gather up
likeminded people and set about restoring the estate to working order. Pure
hedonistic anarchy, it turned out, was not a sustainable environment.
Luca saw Susannah emerge from the
door leading to the kitchen. His every movement suddenly became very cautious.
She was carrying a fresh bowl of steaming tomatoes, which she plonked down on
the self-service counter.
As he had applied himself to
getting the farming side of the estate functional again, so she had taken on
the manor itself. She was making a good job of providing meals and keeping the
place rolling along (even though it wasn’t maintained as it had been in the old
days). Appropriately enough, for Susannah was possessing Marjorie Kavanagh’s
body. Naturally, there had been little room for physical improvement; she’d
discarded about a decade, and shortened her extravagant landowner hair
considerably, but the essential figure and features remained the same.
She picked up an empty bowl and
walked back to the kitchen. Their eyes met, and she gave him a slightly
confused smile before she disappeared back through the door.
Luca swallowed the mush of egg in
his mouth before he choked on it. There had been so much he wanted to cram into
that moment. So much to say. And their troubled thoughts had resonated
together. She knew what he knew, and he knew . . .
Ridiculous!
Hardly. She belongs with us.
Ridiculous because Susannah had
found someone: Austin. They were happy together. And I have Lucy. For
convenience. For sex. Not for love.
Luca forked up the last of his
eggs, and washed them down with some tea. Impatience boiled through him. I need
to be out there, get those damn slackers cracking.
He found Johan sitting at the other
end of the table, with the single slice of toast and glass of orange which was
his whole meal. “You ready yet?” he asked curtly.
Johan’s rounded face registered an
ancient expression of suffering, creasing up into lines so ingrained they must
have been there since birth. There was a glint of sweat on his brow. “Yes, sir;
I’m fit for another day.”
Luca could have mouthed the ritual
reply in tandem. Johan was possessing Mr Butterworth. The physical
transformation from a lumbering, chubby sixty-year-old to virile
twenty-something youth was almost complete, though some of the old estate manager’s
original characteristics seemed to defy modification.
“Come on then, let’s be going.”
He strode out of the hall,
directing sharp glances at several of the men around the table as he went.
Johan was already rising to his feet to scurry after Luca. Those who had
received the visual warning crammed food in their mouths and stood hurriedly,
anxious not to be left behind.
Luca had a dozen of them follow him
into the stables, where they started to saddle up their horses. The estate’s
rugged farm ranger vehicles were still functional, but nobody was using them
right now. The electricity grid had been damaged during the wild times, and
only a couple of possessed in Stoke County owned up to having the knowledge to
repair it. Progress was slow; the small amount of power coming from the
geothermal cables was reserved for tractors.
It took Luca a couple of minutes to
saddle up his horse; buckles and straps fastened into place without needing to
think—Grant’s knowledge. Then he led the piebald mare out into the courtyard,
past the burnt out ruins of the other stable block. Most of the horses Louise
had set free during the fire had come back; they still had over half of the
manor’s superb herd left.
He had to ride slower than he
liked, allowing the others to keep up. But the freedom of the wolds made up for
it. All as it should be. Almost.
Individual farms huddled in the lee
of the shallow valleys, stolid stone houses seeking protection against
Norfolk’s arctic winters; they were scattered about the estate almost at random.
Their fields had all been ploughed now, and the tractors were out drilling the
second crop. Luca had gone round the storage warehouses himself, selecting the
stock of barley, wheat, maize, oats, a dozen varieties of beans, vegetables.
Some fields had already started to sprout, dusting the rich dark soil with a
gossamer haze of luxuriant emerald. It was going to be a good yield, the
nightly rain they conjured up would ensure that.
He was thankful that most of the
disruption to the estate had been superficial. It just needed a firm guiding
hand to get everything back on track.
As they approached Colsterworth,
the farms were closer together, fields forming a continual quilt. Luca led his
team round the outskirts. The streets were busy, clotted by the town’s
residents as they strove for activity and normality. Nearly all of them
recognized Luca as he rode past. His influence wasn’t quite so great here,
though it was his objectives which had been adopted. The town had elected
itself a council of sorts, who acknowledged Luca had the right goals in
restarting the county’s basic infrastructure. A majority of the townsfolk went
along with the council, repairing the water pump house and the sewage treatment
plant, clearing the burnt carriages and carts from the streets, even attempting
to repair the telephone system. But the council’s real power came from food
distribution, over which it had a monopoly, loyalists mounting a round the
clock guard on the warehouses.
Luca spurred his horse over the
canal bridge, a wood and iron arch in the Victorian tradition. The structure
was another of the council’s repair projects, lengths of genuine fresh timber
had been dovetailed into the original seasoned planking; energistic power had
been utilised to reform the iron girders that had been smashed and twisted
(somehow they couldn’t quite match the blue paint colour, so the new sections
were clearly visible).
The Moulin de Hurley was on the
other bank, a big mill house which supplied nearly a quarter of Kesteven island
with flour. It had dark-red brick walls cut by tall iron-rimmed windows; one
end was built over a small stream, which churned excitedly out of a brick arch
before emptying into the canal at the end of the wharf. A series of tree-lined
reservoir ponds were staggered up the gentle curve of the valley which rose
away behind the building.
There was a team appointed by the
council to help him waiting by the Moulin’s gates. Their leader, Marcella Rye,
was standing right underneath the metal archway supporting an ornate letter K.
Which gave Luca a warm sensation of contentment. After all, he owned the mill.
No! The Kavanaghs. The Kavanaghs owned it. Used to own it.
Luca greeted Marcella
enthusiastically, hoping the flush of bonhomie would prevent her from sensing
his agitation at the lapse. “I think it’ll be relatively easy to get this up
and running again,” he said expansively. “The water powers the large grinder
mechanism, and there’s a geothermal cable to run the smaller machines. It
should still be producing electricity.”
“Glad to hear it. The storage sheds
were ransacked, of course,” she pointed at a cluster of large outbuildings.
Their big wooden doors had been wrenched open; splintered and scorched, they
now hung at a precarious angle. “But once the food was gone, nobody bothered
with the place.”
“Fine, as long as there’s no . . .”
Luca broke off, sensing the whirl of alarm in Johan’s thoughts. He turned just
in time to see the man stumble, his legs giving way to pitch him onto his
knees. “What’s—?”
Johan’s youthful outline was
wavering as he pressed his fists against his forehead; his whole face was
contorted in an agony of concentration.
Luca knelt beside him. “Shit, what
is it?”
“Nothing,” Johan hissed. “Nothing.
I’m okay, just dizzy that’s all.” Sweat was glistening all over his face and
hands. “Heat from the ride got to me. I’ll be fine.” He clambered to his feet,
wheezing heavily.
Luca gave him a confused glance,
not understanding at all. How could anyone be ill in a realm in which a single
thought had the power of creation? Johan must be severely hung over; a body
wasn’t flawlessly obedient to the mind’s wishes here. They still had to eat,
after all. But his deputy didn’t normally go in for heroic benders.
Marcella was frowning at them,
uncertain. Johan gave a forced I’m fine nod. “We’d best go in,” he said.
Nobody had been in the mill since
the day Quinn Dexter had arrived in town. It was cool inside; the power was
off, and the tall smoked-glass windows filtered the daylight down to a listless
pearl. Luca led the party along the dispenser line. Large, boxy stainless steel
machines stood silent above curving conveyer belts.
“Initial grinding is done at the
far end,” he lectured. “Then these machines blend and refine the flour, and bag
it. We used to produce twelve different types in here: plain, self-raising,
granary, savoury, strong white—you name it. Sent them all over the island.”
“Very homely,” Marcella drawled.
Luca let it ride. “I can release
new stocks of grain from the estate warehouses. But—” He went over to one of
the hulking machines, and tugged a five pound bag from the feed mechanism below
the hopper nozzle; it was made of thick paper, with the Moulin’s red and green
water wheel logo printed on the front. “Our first problem is going to be
finding a new stock of these to package the flour in. They used to come from a
company in Boston.”
“So? Just think them up.”
Luca wondered how she’d wound up
with this assignment. Refused to sleep with the council leader? “Even if we
only produce white flour for the bakeries, and package it in sacks, you’re
looking at a couple of hundred a day,” he explained patiently. “Then you need
flour for pastry and cakes, which people will want to bake at home. That’s
several thousand bags a day. They’d all have to be thought up individually.”
“All right, so what do you
suggest?”
“Actually, we were hoping you might
like to come up with a solution. After all, we’re supplying the expertise to
get the mill going again, and providing you with grain.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No thanks needed. This isn’t a
Communist society, we’re not giving it away. You’ll have to pay for it.”
“It’s as much ours as it is yours.”
Her voice had risen until it was almost an indignant squeal.
“Possession is nine-tenths of the
law.” He grinned mirthlessly. “Ask your host.” His mind detected his people
were sharing his amusement; even Johan’s thoughts were lighter. The townies
were highly uncomfortable with the facts being presented.
Marcella regarded him with blatant
mistrust. “How do you propose we pay?”
“Some kind of ledger, I suppose.
Work owed to us. After all, we’re the ones growing the food for you.”
“And we’re running the mill for
you, and transporting the stuff all over the county.”
“Good. That’s a start then isn’t
it? I’m sure there’ll be other useful industries in Colsterworth, too. Our
tractors and field machinery will need spares. Now all we need is a decent
exchange rate.”
“I’m going to have to go back to
the council with this.”
“Naturally.” Luca had reached the
wall separating the dispenser line from the chamber housing the main grinder.
There were several large electrical distribution boxes forming their own mosaic
over the bricks. Each one had an amber light glowing brightly on the front. He
started pressing the trip buttons in a confident sequence. The broad tube
lights overhead flickered as they came alight, sending down a blue-white
radiance almost brighter than the sky outside. Luca smiled in satisfaction at
his mental prowess. The circuitry for governing this old island was mapped out
in his mind now, percolating up from his host.
His modest feeling of contentment
faded, absorbed by a new body of emotion slipping over his perceptual horizon.
Around him, the others were reacting in the same fashion. All of them turned
instinctively to face the same outer wall, as if trying to stare through the
bricks. A group of people were approaching Colsterworth. Dark thoughts sliding
through Norfolk’s atmosphere of the mind like threatening storm clouds.
“I think we’d better go take a
look,” Luca said. There were no dissenters.
They used the railway to get about
over the island, adapting one of the utilitarian commuter trains which had
trundled between the island’s towns. A steam-powered ironclad fortress now
clanked and hissed its way along the rails, hauling a couple of Orient Express
carriages behind it. Several sets of what looked like twin recoilless ack-ack
guns had been mounted at both ends of the train, while the barrel of a big tank
cannon pointed along the top of the boiler, emerging from the combination turret/driver’s
cabin.
Just outside Colsterworth, where
the rail went over the canal before it got to the station, Luca and Marcella
stood side by side on the embankment at the head of their combined teams. More
people were emerging from the town, bolstering their numbers. Antibodies
responding to an incursive virus, Luca thought. And they were right to do so.
People here were made to wear their hearts on their sleeves, visible to
everyone else. It saved a lot of bullshitting around. Plain for all to see,
those coming down the track were set on just one thing.
The train let out a long annoyed
whistle, sending a fountain of steam rocketing up into the sky. Metallic
screeches and janglings came pouring out of the engine when its riders realized
how committed the townie blockaders were. Its pistons pounded away, reversing
the wheel spin.
Luca and Marcella stood their
ground as it howled forwards. A thought-smile flashed between them, and they
stared down at the tracks, concentrating. The rails just in front of their feet
creaked once, then split cleanly. Bolts holding them to the timber sleepers
shot into the air, and the rails started to curl up, rolling into huge spirals.
Flame spewed out of the train’s wheels. The riders had to exert a lot of
energistic strength to halt its momentum. It stopped a couple of yards short of
the coils. Billows of angry steam jetted out of valves all along the underside,
water splattered down onto the tracks. A thick iron door banged open on the
side of the driver’s cabin. Bruce Spanton jumped down.
He was dressed in anti-hero black
leathers, impenetrable sunglasses pressed tight against his face. Heavy boots
crunched on the gravel chippings of the embankment as he stalked towards the
huddled townsfolk. A holster with a gold-plated Uzi slapped his leg with every
step.
“Hello,” Luca muttered, “Somebody
watched way too many bad cable movies when they were younger.”
Marcella subdued a grin as the
ersatz Bad Guy halted in front of them.
“You,” Bruce Spanton growled.
“You’re in my way, friend. You must feel lucky to try a move like that.”
“What do you boys want here?” Luca
asked wearily. The bad vibes emanating from Spanton and the others in the train
weren’t entirely forged. Not everyone on Norfolk had calmed down after
returning from the beyond.
“Me and the guys, just passing
through,” Spanton said challengingly. “No law against that, here, is there?”
“No law, but plenty of wishes,”
Luca said. “This county doesn’t want you. I’m sure you’ll respect that majority
opinion.”
“Tough shit. You got us. What you
gonna do, call the cops?”
A big silver Western sheriff’s
badge mushroomed on the front of Marcella’s tunic. “I am the police in
Colsterworth.”
“Listen,” Bruce Spanton said.
“We’re just here to check out the town. Have us a bit of fun. Stock up on some
food, grab some Norfolk Tears. Then tomorrow we’ll be gone. We don’t want no
trouble; it’s not as if we want to stay here. Crappy dump like this, not our
scene. Know what I mean?”
“And how are you going to pay for
your food?” Marcella asked. Luca did his best not to turn and frown at her.
“Pay for it?” Spanton yelled in
astonishment. “What the fuck are you scoring, sister? We don’t pay for anything
any more. That got left behind along with all the rest of the lawyers and shit
we had to put up with back there.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Luca
said. “It’s our food. Not yours.”
“It’s not yours, shithead. It
belongs to everyone.”
“We’ve got it. You don’t. It’s
ours. That simple enough for you?”
“Fuck you. We’ve got to eat. We’ve
got a right to eat.”
“I remember you now,” Luca said.
“You were one of Dexter’s people. Real devout arse licker. Do you miss him?”
Bruce Spanton stabbed a finger at
Luca. “I’m going to remember you, shithead. And you’re going to wish I fucking
hadn’t.”
“Learn the rules when you go abroad,”
Luca said forcefully. “And then live by them. Now either you climb back on your
pathetic little cartoon mean machine and leave. Or, you stay and find yourself
a useful job, and earn a living like everybody else. Because we’re not in the
business of supporting worthless parasite scum like you.”
“Get a jo . . .” disbelief and rage
made Bruce Spanton splutter to a halt. “What the hell is this?”
“For you, exactly that: Hell. Now
get out of our county before we run you out.” Luca heard several cheers from
behind him.
The sound made Bruce Spanton look
up. He glanced round the crowd, sensing their mood, the belligerence and
resentment focusing on him. “You fuckers are crazy. You know that? Crazy! We’ve
just escaped from all this shit. And you’re trying to bring it back.”
“All we’re doing is building
ourselves a life as best we can,” Luca said. “Join in, or fuck off.”
“Oh we’ll be back,” Bruce Spanton
said, tight lipped. “You’ll see. And people will join us, not you. Know why?
Because it’s easier.” He stomped off back to the train.
Marcella grinned at his back. “We
won. We showed the bastards, eh? Not such a bad combination, you and me. We
won’t be seeing them again.”
“This is a small island on a small
planet,” Luca said, more troubled than he wanted to be by Spanton’s parting
shot.
Chapter 03
Sinon’s serjeant body had been
divested of its last medical package just five hours before the Catalpa flew
out of its wormhole terminus above Ombey. The voidhawk’s crew toroid was
overcrowded, carrying thirty-five of the hulking serjeants and their
five-strong biomedical supervisory team in addition to the usual crew. Heavy
dull-rust coloured bodies stood almost shoulder to shoulder as they performed
lumbering callisthenics all around the central corridor, discovering for themselves
the parameters of their new physiques.
There was no fatigue in the fashion
of a genuinely human body, the tiredness and tingling aches. Instead blood
sugar depletion and muscle tissue stress registered as mental warning tones
within the neural array housing the controlling personality. Sinon thought they
must be similar to a neural nanonic display, but grey and characterless rather
than the full-spectrum iconographic programs which Adamists enjoyed.
Interpreting them was simple enough, thankfully.
He was actually quite satisfied
with the body he now possessed (even though it was unable to smile at that
particular irony for him). The deep scars of the serjeant’s assembly surgery
were almost healed. What minimal restriction they imposed on his movements would
be gone within a few more days. Even his sensorium was up to the standard of an
Edenist body. Michael Saldana certainly hadn’t skimped on the design of the
bitek construct’s genetic sequence.
Acclimatisation to his new
circumstances had twinned a growing confidence throughout the flight. A
psychological boost similar to a patient recovering from his injuries as more
and more of the medical packages became redundant. In this case shared with all
the other serjeant personalities who were going through identical emotional
uplifts, the general affinity band merging their emerging gratification into
synergistic optimism.
Despite a total lack of hormonal
glands, Sinon was hot for the Mortonridge Liberation campaign to begin. He
asked the Catalpa to share the view provided by its sensor blisters as
the wormhole terminus closed behind them. The external image surged into his
mind; featuring Ombey as a silver and blue crescent a hundred and twenty
thousand kilometres ahead. Several settled asteroids swung along high orbits,
grubby brown specks muffled by a fluctuating swirl of silver stardust as their
industrial stations deflected spears of raw sunlight. Larger, more regular
motes of light swarmed around Catalpa, its cousins emerging from their
termini and accelerating in towards the planet.
This particular squadron was
comprised of just over three hundred of the bitek starships. It wasn’t even the
first to arrive at the Kingdom principality today. The Royal Navy’s strategic
defence centre on Guyana had combined its flight management operations and
sensors with civil traffic control to guide the torrent of arriving starships
into parking orbits.
The voidhawks headed down towards
the planet, merging into a long line as they spiralled into alignment over the
equator. They shared the five hundred kilometre orbit with their cousins and
Adamist starships from every star system officially allied to the Kingdom.
Military and civil transports unloaded their cargo pods into fleets of flyers
and spaceplanes; Confederation Navy assault cruisers had brought an entire
battalion of marines, and even the voidhawks were eager to see the huge Kulu
Royal Navy Aquilae-class starships.
After reaching low orbit, the Catalpa
had to wait a further eight hours before its spaceplane received clearance
to ferry the first batch of serjeants down to Fort Forward. Sinon was on it as
the night-shadowed ocean fled past underneath the glowing fuselage. Their
little craft had aerobraked down to mach five when Xingu’s western coastline
rose over the horizon ahead. The red cloud was just visible to the sensors, a
slice of curving red light, as if the fissure between land and sky had been
rendered in gleaming neon. Then their altitude dropped, and it sank away.
They must know we’re here, Choma said. With ten thousand spaceship
flights hyperbooming across the ocean every day, they’ll hear us arriving if
nothing else. In the Twenty-fifth Century, Choma had been an
astroengineering export manager based at Jupiter. Although he’d readily
admitted to the other serjeant personalities that his personal knowledge-base
of obsolete deep space startracker sensors was not very relevant to the
Liberation, his main interest was strategy games, combined with the odd bit of
role-playing. For himself and his fellow quirky enthusiasts, the kind of
simulation arenas available to Edenists through perceptual reality environments
were anathema. They wanted authentic mud, forests, rock faces, redoubts, heavy
backpacks, heat, costumes, horse riding, marches, aching joints, flagons of
ale, making love in the long grass, and songs around the campsite. To the
amusement of the other inhabitants, they would take over vast tracts of habitat
parkland for their contests; it was quite a faddish activity at the time. All
of which made Choma the closest thing Sinon’s squad had to an experienced
soldier.
A lot of the old strategy game
players had come out of the multiplicity to animate serjeant bodies. Slightly
surprisingly, very few ex-intelligence agency operatives had joined them, the
people whose genuine field operations experience would really have been
valuable.
Very likely, Sinon agreed. Dariat demonstrated his
perceptive ability to the Kohistan Consensus; no doubt the combined faculty of
the Mortonridge possessed will provide them with some foreknowledge.
That and the ring of starships
overhead. The convoys aren’t exactly unobtrusive.
But they are obscured by the red
cloud.
Don’t count on it.
Does that worry you? Sinon asked.
Not really. Surprise was never
going to be our strategic high-ground. Best we could hope for is the scale of
the Liberation being a nasty shock to Ekelund and her troops.
I wish I had experience of the
combat situations we will be facing rather than theoretical memories.
I expect that experience is
going to be one thing you’ll be collecting plenty of, in a very short timespan.
The Catalpa’s spaceplane
landed at Fort Forward’s new spaceport, racing along one of the three
prefabricated runways laid out in parallel. Another was touching down
forty-five seconds behind it; that managed to spark a Judeo of concern in
Sinon’s mind. Even with an AI in charge of slotting the traffic together,
margins were being stretched. Ion field flyers were landing and launching
vertically from pads on the other side of the spaceport’s control tower at a
much faster rate than the runways could handle spaceplanes.
For the moment, the spaceport’s
principal concern was to offload cargo and send it on to Fort Forward. The
hangars were frantically busy, heavy-lift mechanoids and humans combining to keep
the flow of pods going; any delay here would have a knock on effect right back
up to orbit. Nearly all of the Liberation’s ground vehicles were assigned to
carry cargo. Passenger vehicles were still up in orbit.
Sinon and the others were given a
static charge test by Royal Marines as they got to the bottom of the
spaceplane’s stairs. That it was perfunctory was understandable, but Sinon was
satisfied to see they did test everybody. As soon as they were cleared the
spaceplane taxied away, joining a queue of similar craft waiting to take off.
Another one rolled into place, extending its airstair. The Marine squad moved
forward again.
An Edenist liaison officer they
never even saw told them that they were going to have to get to Fort Forward on
foot. They were part of a long line of serjeants and marines marching along a
road of freshly unrolled micro-mesh composite next to the new six-lane
motorway. After they got underway, Sinon realized that it wasn’t only
Confederation Marines who made up the human contingent of the Liberation’s
ground forces. He walked over to a boosted mercenary taller than himself. The
mercenary’s brown skin had exactly the same texture as leather, long buttress
ropes of muscle were clumped round the neck, supporting a nearly-globular skull
armoured with silicolithium like an all-over helmet. In place of a nose and
mouth, there was an oval cage grill at the front, and the saucer eyes were set
very wide apart, giving little overlap, normal apart from the blue-green
irises, which appeared to be multifaceted.
When Sinon asked, she said her name
was Elana Duncan. “Excuse me for inquiring,” he said. “But what exactly are you
doing here?”
“I’m a volunteer,” Elana Duncan
replied with an overtly feminine voice. “We’re part of the occupation force.
You guys take the ground from those bastards, we’ll hold on to it for you.
That’s the plan. Listen up, I know you Edenists don’t approve of my kind. But
there aren’t enough marines to secure the whole of Mortonridge, so you’ve got
to use us. That, and I had some friends on Lalonde.”
“I don’t disapprove. If anything
I’m rather glad there’s someone here who has actually been under fire before. I
wish I had.”
“Yeah? Now, see, that’s what I
don’t get. You’re cannon fodder, and you know you’re cannon fodder. But it
doesn’t bother you. Me, I know I’m taking a gamble, that’s a life-choice I made
a long time ago.”
“It doesn’t bother me, because I’m
not human, just a very sophisticated bitek automaton. I don’t have a brain,
just a collection of processors.”
“But you got a personality,
dontcha?”
“This is only an edited copy of
me.”
“Ha. You must be very confident
about that. A life is a life, after all.” She broke off, and tipped her head
back, neck muscles flexing like heavy deltoids. “Now there’s a sight which makes
all this worthwhile. You can’t beat those old warships for blunt spectacle.”
A CK500-090 Thunderbird spaceplane
was coming in to land. The giant delta-wing craft was at least twice the size
of any of the civil cargo spaceplanes using the runways. Air thundered
turbulently in its wake as it slipped round to line up on its approach path,
large sections of the trailing edges bending with slow agility to alter the
wing camber. Then a bewildering number of hatches were sliding open all across
its fuselage belly; twelve sets of undercarriage bogies dropped down. The
Thunderbird hit the runway with a roar louder than a sonic boom. Chemical
rockets in the nose fired to slow it, dirty ablation smoke was pouring out of
all ninety-six brake drums.
“God damn,” Elana Duncan murmured.
“I never thought I’d ever see an operation like this, never mind be a part of
it. A real live land army on the move. I’m centuries after my time, you know, I
belong back in the Nineteen and Twentieth Centuries, marching on Moscow with
Napoleon, or struggling across Spain. I was born for war, Sinon.”
“That’s stupid. You know you have a
soul now. You shouldn’t be risking it like this. You have invented a crusade
for yourself to follow rather than achieve anything as an individual. That is
wrong.”
“It’s my soul, and in a way I’m no
different to Edenists.”
Sinon felt a rush of real surprise.
“How so?”
“I’m perfectly adjusted to what I
am. The fact that my goals are different to those of your society doesn’t
matter. You know what I think? Edenists don’t get caught in the beyond because
you’re cool enough under pressure to figure your way out. Well, me too, pal.
Laton said there was a way out. I believe him. The Kiint found it. Just knowing
that it’s possible is my ticket to exit. I’ll be happy searching because I know
it’s not pointless, I won’t suffer like those dumbasses that wound up trapped.
They’re losers, they gave up. Not me. That’s why I’m signed up on this mad
Liberation idea, it’s just part of getting ready for the big battle. Good training,
is all.”
She gave his shoulder an avuncular
pat with a hand whose fingers had been replaced by three big claws, and marched
off.
That’s an excess of fatalism, Choma remarked. What a strange psychology.
She is content, Sinon answered. I wish her well in that.
A large quantity of love had been
invested in constructing the farmhouse. Even the Kulu aristocracy with their
expensive showy buildings employed modern materials in their fabric. And
Mortonridge was a designated rapid growth area, with government subsidies to
help develop the farms. A resolutely middle-class province. Their buildings
were substantial, but cheap: assembled from combinations of carbon concrete,
uniform-strength pulpwood planks, bricks made from grains of clay cemented by
geneered bacteria, spongesteel structural girders, bonded silicon glass. For
all their standardisation, such basic components afforded a wealth of diversity
to architects.
But this was unmistakable and
original. Beautifully crude. A house of stone, quarried with an industrial
fission blade from a local outcrop; large cubes making the walls thick enough
to repel the equatorial heat and keep the rooms cool without air conditioning.
The floor and roof beams were harandrid timbers, sturdy lengths dovetailed and
pegged together as only a master carpenter could manage. Inside, they’d been
left uncovered, the gaps between filled with reed and plaster, then
whitewashed. It was as historic as any of the illusions favoured by the
possessed, not that anyone could mistake something so solid for an ephemeral
aspiration.
There was a barn attached at the
end, also stone, forming one side of the farmyard. Its big wooden doors were
swinging open in the breeze the day the Karmic Crusader pulled up outside.
Stephanie Ash had been tired and fed up by the time they pulled off the main
road and drove along the unmarked dirt track. Investigating it had been Moyo’s
idea.
“The road must lead somewhere,” he
insisted. “This land was settled recently. Nothing’s had time to fall into
disuse yet.”
She hadn’t bothered to argue with
him. They’d driven a long way down the M6 after handing the children over, a
journey which meant having to pass back through Annette Ekelund’s army. This
time they’d been pointedly ignored by the troops billeted in Chainbridge. After
that they’d zigzagged from coast to coast looking for a refuge, somewhere
self-sufficient where they could rest up and wait for the grand events beyond
Mortonridge to play themselves out. But the towns in the northern section of
the peninsula were still occupied, though there was a steady drift out to
farms. They were unwelcome there; the possessed were learning to guard their
food stocks. Every unoccupied farm they’d visited had been ransacked for food
and livestock. It was a monotonous trend, and finding a functional power supply
to recharge the Karmic Crusader was becoming more difficult.
After the joy and accomplishment of
evacuating the children, the comedown to excluded refugee status was hard.
Stephanie hadn’t exactly lost faith, but the narrow road was no different to
any of the dozens they’d driven down the last few days. Hope rebutted
unfailingly each time.
The road took the bus through a
small forest of aboriginal trees, then dipped into a shallow, lightly-wooded
valley which meandered extravagantly. A stream bubbled along the lush grassy
floor, its speed revealing they were actually travelling up at quite an angle.
After four kilometres, the valley ended by opening out into a nearly circular
basin. It was so regular, Stephanie suspected it was an ancient impact crater.
A lacework of silver brooks threaded their way down the sides, feeding a lake
at the centre, which was the origin of the valley’s stream. The farmhouse stood
above the shore, separated from the rippling water by a neatly trimmed lawn.
Behind it, someone had converted the north-facing walls of the basin into
stepped terraces, making a perfect sun-trap. The levels were cultivated with
dozens of terrestrial fruit and vegetable plants; from citrus tree groves to
lettuce, avocados to rhubarb. Almost all the aboriginal vegetation had been
removed; even the south side looked as if it was covered in terrestrial grass.
Goats and sheep were wandering around grazing peacefully.
They all piled out of the Karmic
Crusader, smiling like entranced children.
“There’s nobody here,” Rana said.
“Can you sense it? This whole place is empty.”
“Oh goodness,” Tina exclaimed
nervously. She took the last step off the bus’s stairs, her scarlet stilettos
sinking awkwardly into the road’s loose-packed gravel surface. “Do you really
think so? This is simply paradise. It’s just what we all deserve after
everything we’ve done for others. I couldn’t bear us being thrown out by
someone else claiming they were here first. It would be excruciating.”
“There are no vehicles left,”
McPhee grunted. “The owners probably received the Kingdom’s warning and cleared
out before Ekelund’s people arrived in these parts.”
“Lucky for them,” Rana said.
“More so for us,” Moyo said. “It’s
absolutely bloody perfect.”
“I think the irrigation system is
screwed,” McPhee said. He was shielding his eyes with a hand as he squinted up
at the terraces. “There, see? There must be channels to divert the brooks so
that each level receives a decent supply. But it’s spilling over like a
waterfall. The plants will drown.”
“No they won’t,” Franklin Quigly
said. “It’s not broken. The power’s off, and there’s no one here to manage it.
That’s all. We could get it fixed inside of a day. That’s if we’re staying.”
They all turned to look at
Stephanie. She was amused rather than gratified by the compliment. “Oh I think
so.” She smiled at her ragged little band. “We’re not going to find anywhere
better.”
They spent the rest of the day
wandering round the farmhouse and the terraces. The basin was an intensive-cultivation
market garden; there were no cereal crops on any of the terraces. There were
signs of a hurried departure all through the building, drawers pulled out,
clothes spilled on the shiny floorboards, a tap left running, two old suitcases
abandoned half-packed in one of the bedrooms. But there was a lot of basic
foodstuffs left in the pantry, flour, jams, jellied fruit, eggs, whole cheeses;
a big freezer was filled with fish and joints of meat. Whoever the farm
belonged to, they didn’t believe in modern sachets and readymade meals.
Tina took one look inside the
kitchen with its simple array of shining copper pots and pans, and sniffed with
emphatic disapproval. “You can take the worship of all things rustic too far,
you know.”
“It’s appropriate to what we are
now,” Stephanie told her. “The consumer convenience society cannot exist in our
universe.”
“Well just don’t expect me to give
up silk stockings, darling.”
Moyo, Rana, and McPhee scrambled up
to the top of the basin to a small building they assumed was a pumphouse for
the irrigation system. Stephanie and the rest started clearing out the
farmhouse. By the third day, they’d got the terrace irrigation equipment
working again. Not perfectly, their presence still glitched some of the
management processors; but there was a manual back-up control panel in the
pumphouse. Even the clouds’ gloomy claret illumination had grudgingly
brightened as they established themselves and began exterting their influence.
It wasn’t the pure sunlight which shone upon towns and larger groups of
possessed, but the plants gleefully absorbed the increased rain of photons, and
perked up accordingly.
A week later Stephanie had every
right to be content as she walked out into the relatively cool air of early
morning. The right, but not the reality. She opened the iron-framed French
doors which led out to the lawn, and stepped barefoot onto the dewy grass.
As usual the red clouds tossed
through the sky above, their massive braids strumming the air until it groaned
in protest. This time, though, a subtler resonance was carried by the rancorous
vapour. It couldn’t be heard, it merely preyed on the mind like a troublesome
dream.
She walked down to the shore of the
lake, her head turning slowly from side to side as she scanned the sky, questing
for some kind of hint. Anything. The nettling sensation had been building for
many days now. Whatever the origin, it was too far away for her senses to
distinguish, skulking below the horizon like a malevolent moon.
“So you like feel the cosmic blues
sounding out, too?” Cochrane said ruefully.
Stephanie jumped, she hadn’t
noticed him approach. The bells on the ancient hippy’s velvet flares were
silent as he trod lightly over the grass. An exceptionally large reefer hung
from the corner of his mouth. It smelt different than usual, not nearly as
sweet.
He caught her puzzlement, and his
beard parted to show a smug grin. Fingers with many rings plucked the brown
tube from his mouth, and held it vertically. “Guess what I found growing on
some forgotten terrace? This Mr Taxpaying Johnny Appleseed we’ve taken over
from here wasn’t quite as straight as his fellow Rotarians believed. Know what
this is? Only like genuine nicotiana. And as illegal as hell around these
parts. Man but it feels good, first real drag I’ve had in centuries.”
Stephanie smiled indulgently as he
stuck it back in his mouth. Indulgent was all you could be with Cochrane. Moyo
was coming out of the farmhouse, his mind darkened with concern.
“You know it’s here, too, don’t
you?” she asked sadly. “This must be what Ekelund meant when she told me the
Saldana Princess was preparing.”
“And Lieutenant Anver,” Moyo
muttered.
“The earth can feel war’s coming,
that blood’s going to be spilt. How very . . . biblical; bad vibes in the
aether. I’d so hoped Ekelund was wrong, that she was just trying to justify
maintaining her army by claiming phantom enemies were waiting on the other side
of the hill.”
“No way,” Cochrane said. “The bad
dude cavalry’s like mounting up. They’ll charge us soon, guns blazing.”
“Why us?” Stephanie asked. “Why
this planet? We said we wouldn’t threaten them. We promised, and we kept it.”
Moyo put his arm round her. “Being
here is a threat to them.”
“But it’s so stupid. I just want to
be left alone, I want time to come to terms with what’s happened. That’s all.
We’ve got this beautiful farm, and we’re making it work without hurting
anybody. It’s good here. We can support ourselves, and have enough time left
over to think. That doesn’t make us a threat or a danger to the Confederation. If
we were allowed to carry on we might be able to make some progress towards an
answer for this mess.”
“I wish we could be left alone,”
Moyo told her sadly. “I wish they’d listen to us. But they won’t. I know what
it’ll be like out there now. Common sense and reason won’t matter. Forcing us
out of Mortonridge is a political goal. Once the Saldanas and other
Confederation leaders have declared it, they won’t be able to pull back. We’re
in the path of a proverbial irresistible force.”
“Perhaps if I went back up to the
firebreak and spoke to them. They know me. They might listen.”
Alarm at what she was saying made
Moyo tighten his grip around her. “No. I don’t want you doing anything crazy
like that. Besides, they wouldn’t listen. Not them. They’d smile politely for a
while, then shove you into zero-tau. I couldn’t stand that, I’ve only just
found you.”
She rested her head against him,
quietly thankful for his devotion. He’d been there for her since the very first
day. More than a lover, a constant source of strength.
“You can’t go,” Cochrane said. “Not
you. These cats would like fall apart without you to guide them. We need you
here, man. You’re our den mother.”
“But we won’t last long if we stay
here, and the Princess sends her army to find us.”
“A little more time is better than
the big zippo. And who knows what our karma’s got mapped out for us before the
jackboots kick our door down.”
“You’re not normally the optimist,”
Stephanie teased.
“Face it babe, I’m not normally
alive. That kinda warps your outlook, dig? You gotta have faith these days,
man. Some cool happening will come along to like blow our minds away.”
“Groovy,” Moyo deadpanned.
“All right, you win,” Stephanie
assured them. “No noble sacrifices on my part. I’ll stay here.”
“Maybe they’ll never come,” Moyo
said. “Maybe Ekelund will defeat them.”
“Not a chance,” Stephanie said.
“She’s good, and she’s mean, which is everything it takes. But she’s not that
good. Just stop and feel the weight of them building up out there. Ekelund will
cause them a whole load of grief when the invasion starts, but she won’t stop
them.”
“What will you do then, when they
reach the farm? Will you fight?”
“I don’t think so. I might lash
out, that’s human nature. But fight? No. What about you? You said you would,
once.”
“That was back when I thought it
might do some good. I suppose I’ve grown up since then.”
“But it’s still not fair,” she
complained bitterly. “I adore this taste of life. I think going back to the
beyond will be worse now. Next time, we’ll know that it doesn’t have to be
permanent, even though it probably will be. It would have been far better if
we’d been spared knowing. Why is the universe persecuting us like this?”
“It’s karma, man,” Cochrane said.
“Bad karma.”
“I thought karma was paying for
your actions. I never hurt anyone badly enough for this.”
“Original sin,” Moyo said. “Nasty
concept.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “Both of
you. If I know anything now, it’s that our religions are lies. Horrid, dirty
lies. I don’t believe in God, or destiny, not any more. There has to be a
natural explanation for all this, a cosmological reason.” She sank into Moyo’s
embrace, too tired even for anger. “But I’m not smart enough to work it out. I
don’t think any of us are. We’re just going to have to wait until someone
clever finds it for us. Damn, I hate that. Why can’t I be good at the big
things?”
Moyo kissed her brow. “There are
forty kids on the other side of the firebreak who are mighty glad you achieved
what you did. I wouldn’t call that a small thing.”
Cochrane blew a smoke ring in the
direction of the oppressive presence beyond the firebreak. “Anyhow, nobody’s
served us an eviction order on these bodies yet. The evil Kingdom’s warlords
have got to like catch us first. I’m going to make chasing after me tragically
expensive to the taxpayers. That always pisses them off bigtime.”
We really should be doing this
in a perceptual reality, Sinon
moaned. I mean: actual physical training. It’s barbaric. I’m amazed Ralph
Hiltch hasn’t assigned us a crusty old drill sergeant to knock us into shape.
We’ve got the right scenario.
That morning, the serjeants had
been driven out to a training ground ten kilometres east of Fort Forward, a
rugged stretch of land with clumps of trees and mock-up buildings. It was one
of twenty-five new training zones, their basic facilities thrown up as quickly
as Fort Forward itself. Royal Marine engineers were busy constructing another
ten.
Choma half-ignored Sinon’s
diatribe, concentrating on the bungalow in front of them. The rest of the squad
were spread out round the dilapidated building in a semicircle, learning to
cling to whatever cover was available. Stupid really, he thought, considering
the possessed can sense us from hundreds of metres. But it added to the feeling
of authenticity. The point which Sinon was missing.
Suddenly, one of the small bushes
fifty metres away shimmered silver, and metamorphosed into a green-skinned
hominoid with bug-eyes. Balls of white light shot away from his pointing hand.
The two serjeants swivelled smoothly, lining their machine guns up on the
apparition.
Ours, they told the rest of the squad. Sinon squeezed
the trigger down with his right index finger, while his left hand twisted the
gun’s side grip, selecting the fire rate. The small chemical projectile cases
reverberated loudly as they fired, smothering all other sounds. Ripples of
static shivered over the end of the barrel as the pellets hammered into their
target.
The static gun was the weapon which
the Kingdom had developed to arm the serjeants for the Liberation. A simple
enough derivative of an ordinary machine gun, the principal modification was to
the bullet. Inert kinetic tips had been replaced by spherical pellets which
carried a static charge. Their shape reduced their velocity from ordinary
bullets (and their accuracy), though they could still inflict a lethal amount
of damage on a human target, while their electrical discharge played havoc with
the energistic ability of a possessed. Every pellet carried the same level of
charge, but the variable rate of fire would allow the serjeants to cope with
the different strengths of the individual possessed they encountered; and as
the gun’s mechanism was mechanical, the possessed couldn’t glitch it—in theory.
It took three seconds of
concentrated fire on the green monster before it stopped flinging white light
back at Sinon and Choma. The image collapsed into an ordinary human male, who
pitched forward. A holographic projector lens glinted in the bush behind it.
You were too slow to respond to
the target’s strength, their
supervisor told them, in a genuine combat situation his white fire would
have disabled the pair of you. And, Sinon . . .
Yes?
Work on improving your aim, that
entire first burst you fired was wide.
Acknowledged, Sinon informed the supervisor curtly. He
adopted singular engagement mode to talk to Choma. Wide shooting, indeed! I
was simply bringing the gun round onto the target. Approaching fire can be a
large psychological inhibitor.
Certainly can, Choma replied with strict neutrality. He was
scanning the land ahead, alert for new dangers. It would be just like the
training ground controllers to hit them immediately again.
I think I am beginning to
comprehend the gun’s parameters, Sinon declared. My thought routines are assimilating its handling
characteristics at an autonomic level.
Choma risked a mildly exasperated
glance at his squad mate. That’s the whole point of this training. We can
hardly accept a tutorial thought routine from a habitat, now can we? The
Consensus didn’t even know about static guns when we left Saturn. Besides, I
always said the best lessons are the ones you learn the hard way.
You and your atavistic Olympiad
philosophy. No wonder it fell out of fashion by the time I was born.
But you’re getting the hang of
it, aren’t you?
I suppose so.
Good. Now come on, we’d better
advance to the building or we’ll wind up on latrine duty.
At least the serjeant’s lips and
throat allowed Sinon to sigh plaintively. Very well.
Princess Kirsten had switched her
retinal implants to full resolution so that she could watch the squads
advancing over various sections of the training ground. There was a old saying
running loose in her mind, as if one file was continually leaking from a memory
cell: I don’t know about the enemy, but by God they frighten me. This was the
first time she’d ever encountered the big bitek constructs outside of a
sensevise. Their size and mien combined to make them both impressive and
imposing; she was now rather glad Ralph Hiltch had the courage to suggest using
them. At the time she’d been only too happy deferring the final choice to
Allie. The family does so lack the bravery to make really important decisions,
thank God he still has the guts. It was the same even when we were kids, we all
waited for his pronouncement.
Several hundred of the dark figures
were currently crawling, slithering, and in some cases running through the
undergrowth, bushes, and long grass while colourful holographic images popped
into existence to waylay them. The sound of gunfire rattled through the air; it
was a noise she was becoming very familiar with.
“They’re making good progress,”
Ralph Hiltch said. He was standing beside the Princess on the roof of the
training ground’s management centre, which gave them an uninterrupted view over
the rumpled section of land which the Liberation army had annexed. Their
respective entourages were arranged behind them, officers and cabinet ministers
forming an edgy phalanx. “It only takes two sessions on average to train up a
serjeant. The support troops need a little longer. Don’t get me wrong, those
marines are excellent troops; I don’t just mean the Kingdom’s, our allies have
sent their best, and the mercs are formidable at the best of times. It’s just
that they’re all way too reliant on their neural nanonic programs for fire
control and tactics, so we really discourage their usage. If a possessed does
break through the front line, that’s the first piece of equipment that’s going
to glitch.”
“How many serjeants are ready?”
Kirsten asked.
“About two hundred and eighty thousand.
We’re training them up at the rate of thirty thousand a day. And there’s
another five training grounds opening each day. I’d like the rate increased,
but even with the Confederation Navy brigades, I’ve only got a limited number
of engineering corps; I have to balance their assignments. Completing the
accommodation sections of Fort Forward is my priority.”
“It would appear as though you have
everything under control.”
“Simple enough, we just tell the AI
what we want, and it designates for us. This is the first time in history a
land army commander doesn’t have to worry unduly about logistics.”
“Providing a possessed doesn’t get
near the AI.”
“Unlikely, ma’am; believe me,
unlikely. And even that’s in our contingency file.”
“Good, I’d hate us to become overconfident.
So when do you think you’ll be able to begin the Liberation?”
“Ideally, I’d like to wait another
three weeks.” He acknowledged the Princess’s raised eyebrow with a grudging
smile. They’d spent the best part of two hours that morning under the gaze of
rover reporters, inspecting the tremendous flow of materiel and personnel
surging through Fort Forward’s spaceport. To most people it looked as if they
already had the military resources to invade a couple of planets. “Our greatest
stretch is going to be the opening assault. We have to ring the entire
peninsula, and it’s got to be one very solid noose, we can’t risk anything
less. That’ll have to be achieved with inexperienced troops and untested
equipment. The more time spent preparing, the greater chance we have for
success.”
“I’m aware of that, Ralph. But you
were talking about balance a moment ago.” She glanced back at Leonard DeVille,
who responded with a reluctant twitch. “Expectations are running rather high,
and not just here on Ombey. We’ve demanded and received a colossal amount of
support from our political allies and the Confederation Navy. I don’t need to
remind you what the King said.”
“No ma’am.” His last meeting with
Alastair II, the time when he’d received his commission needed no file. The
King had been adamant about the factors at play, the cost of external support,
and the public weight of anticipation and belief.
Success. That was what everyone
wanted, and expected him to deliver, on many fronts. And I have to give them
that. This was all my idea. And my fault.
Unlike the Princess, Ralph didn’t
have the luxury of glancing round his people for signs of support. He could
well imagine Janne Palmer’s opinion—she’d be right too.
“We can begin preliminary
deployment in another three days,” he said. “That way we’ll be able to start
the actual Liberation in eight days’ time.”
“All right, Ralph. You have another
eight days’ grace. No more.”
“Yes ma’am. Thank you.”
“Have you actually managed to test
one of the static guns on a possessed yet?”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am, no.”
“Isn’t that taking a bit of a
chance? Surely you need to know their effectiveness, if any?”
“They’ll either work, or not; and
we don’t want to give Ekelund’s people any advance warning just in case they
can devise a counter. We’ll know if they’re any use within seconds of our first
encounter. If they don’t, then the ground troops will revert to ordinary light
arms. I just hope to God they don’t have to, we’ll inflict a hell of a lot of
damage on the bodies we’re trying to recover. But the theory’s perfect, and the
machinery’s all so beautifully simple as well. Cathal and Dean dreamed up the
concept. It should have been obvious from the start. I should have come up with
it.”
“I think you’ve worked enough
miracles, Ralph. All the family wants from you now is a mundane little
victory.”
He nodded his thanks, and stared
out over the training ground again. It was changeover time, hundreds of
grubby-red serjeants were on the move, along with a good number of ordinary
troops. Though ordinary was a relative term when referring to the boosted
mercenaries.
“One question,” Leonard DeVille
said; he sounded apologetic, if not terribly sincere about it. “I know this
isn’t quite what you want to hear right now, Ralph. But you have allocated room
for the rover reporters to observe the action during the assault, haven’t you?
The AI does know that’s a requirement?”
Ralph grinned. This time he gave
Palmer a direct look before locking eyes with the Home Office Minister. The
Princess was diplomatically focused on the returning serjeants.
“Oh yes. We’re putting them right
in the front line for you. You’ll get sensevises every bit as hot as the one
Kelly Tirrel produced on Lalonde. This is going to be one very public war.”
Chainbridge was different now. When
Annette Ekelund had first arrived here, she’d transformed it into a simple
headquarters and garrison town. Close enough to the firebreak to deploy her
irregulars if the Kingdom sent any of its threatened “punishment” squads over
to snatch possessed. Far enough away so that it was outside the range of any
inquisitive sensors—incidentally making it reasonably safe from SD fire. So
she’d gathered her followers to her, and allowed them their illusion of
freedom. A genuine rabble army, with a licence to carouse and cavort for ninety
per cent of the time, with just a few of her orders to follow the morning
after. Something to do, something vaguely exciting and heroic-seeming, gave
them a sense of identity and purpose. For that, they stayed together.
It made them into a unit for her,
however unwieldy and unreliable. That was when Chainbridge resembled a
provincial town under occupation by foreign troops with unlimited expense
accounts. Not a bad analogy. There were parties and dances every evening, and
other people began to hang around, if for no other reason than the army made
damn sure they had full access to Mortonridge’s dwindling food supplies. It was
a happy town kept in good order, Annette even established the hub of
Mortonridge’s downgraded communication net in the old town hall, which was
commandeered as her command post. The net allowed her to retain a certain
degree of control over the peninsula, keeping her in touch with the councils
she’d left in charge of the towns her forces had taken over. There wasn’t much
she could do to enforce her rule, short of complete overkill and send in a
brigade of her troops, but in the main she’d created a small society which
worked. That was before any of the inhabitants really believed that the Kingdom
would break its word and invade with the express intention of ripping body from
usurping soul.
Now Chainbridge’s parties had
ended. The few inhabited buildings had lost their ornate appearance in favour
of a bleakly oppressive, fortress-like solidity. Non-combatants, the good-timers
and hangers on, had left, drifting away into the countryside. The town was
preparing for war.
From her office window in the town
hall, she could look down on the large cobbled square below. The fountains were
off, their basins dry and duned by clumps of litter. Vehicles were parked in
neat ranks under the rows of leghorn trees that circled the outer edge of the
square. They were mostly manual-drive cars and four-wheel drive farm rovers, as
per her instructions. None of them wore any kind of illusory image. Engineers
were working on several of them, readying them for the coming ordeal.
Annette came back to the long table
where her ten senior officers were sitting. Delvan and Milne had taken the
chairs on either side of hers; the two people she relied on the most. Delvan
claimed to have been an officer in the First World War; while Milne had been an
engineer’s mate during Earth’s steamship era, which made him a wizard with all
things mechanical, though he freely admitted to knowing very little about electronics.
Beyond them, sat Soi Hon, who was a veteran of early-Twenty-first Century bush
wars, an ecological agitator, he called himself. Annette gathered his battles
hadn’t been fought along national lines, but rather corporate ones. Whatever he
wanted to describe himself as, his tactical know-how in the situation they
faced was invaluable. The rest of them were just divisional commanders, gaining
the loyalty of their troops through personality or reputation. Just how much
loyalty, was a moot point.
“What are today’s figures?” Annette
asked.
“Nearly forty deserted last night,”
Delvan said. “Little shits. In my day they would have been shot for that kind
of cowardice.”
“Fortunately, we’re not in your
day,” Soi Hon said. “When I fought the desecrators who stole my land I had
legions of the people who did what they had to because our cause was just. We
needed no military police and prisons to enforce the orders of our commanders
then, nor do we here. If in their hearts people do not want to fight, then forcing
them will not make them good soldiers.”
“God is on the side of the big
battalions,” Delvan sneered. “Owning your claptrap nobility doesn’t guarantee
victory.”
“We are not going to win.” Soi Hon
smiled peacefully. “You do understand that, don’t you?”
“We’ll have a damn good try, and to
hell with your defeatist talk. I’m surprised you didn’t leave with the rest of
them.”
“I think that’ll do,” Annette said.
“Delvan, you know Soi Hon is right, you’ve felt what the Kingdom is gathering
to fling against us. The King would never commit his forces against us unless
he was convinced of the outcome. And he has the backing of the Edenists, who
even more than he, won’t engage in a foolhardy venture. This is a showpiece
war; they intend to demonstrate to the Confederation’s general public that we
are beatable. They cannot afford to lose, no matter what it costs them.”
“So what the hell do you want us to
do, then?” Delvan asked.
“Make that cost exorbitant,” Soi
Hon said. “Such people always assign a value to everything in monetary terms.
We might not be able to defeat them on Mortonridge, but we can certainly
prevent any further Liberation campaigns after this one.”
“Their troops will have reporters
with them,” Annette said. “They’ll want to showcase their triumphs. This war
will be fought on two fronts, the physical one here, and the emotional one
broadcast by the media across the Confederation. That is the important one, the
one we have to win. Those reporters must be shown the terrifying price of
opposing us. I believe Milne has been making some preparations.”
“Not doing so bad on that front,
lass,” Milne said. He sucked on a big clay pipe for emphasis, every inch the
solid reliable NCO. “I’ve been training up a few lads, teaching them tricks of
trade, like. We can’t use electrical circuits, of course, not our type. So
we’ve gone back to basics. I’ve come up with a nice little mix of chemicals for
an explosive; we’re shoving it into booby traps as fast as we can make ’em.”
“What kind of booby traps?” Delvan
asked.
“Anti-personnel mines, ground
vehicle snares, primed buildings, spiked pits; that kind of thing. Soi’s been
showing us what he used to rig up when he was fighting. Right tricky stuff, it
is, too. All with mechanical triggers, so their sensors won’t pick them up,
even if they can get them working under the red cloud. I’d say we’re due to
give Hiltch’s boys a load of grief once they cross the firebreak. We’ve also
rigged bridges to blow, as well as the major junction flyovers along the M6.
That ought to slow the buggers down.”
“All very good,” Delvan said. “But
with respect, I don’t think a few scraps of rubble will make much difference to
their transport. I remember the tanks we used to have, great big brutes, they
were. But by heaven they could crunch across almost every surface; and the
engineers have had seven centuries to improve on that.”
“Ruining the road junctions might
not make a huge impact, but it will certainly have some effect,” Soi Hon said
impassively. “We know how large this Liberation army is, even in these times
that makes it unwieldy. They will use the M6, if not for front line troops,
then certainly for their supplies and auxiliaries. If we delay them even by an
hour a day, we add to the cost. Slowing them down will also give us time to
respond and retaliate. It is a good tactic.”
“Okay, I’m not arguing with you.
But these booby traps and blown bridges are a passive response. Come on man,
what’ve you got that’ll allow us to attack them?”
“My lads have found quite a few
light engineering factories and the like in Chainbridge,” Milne said. “The
machine tools still work if you switch ’em to manual. Right now, I’ve got ’em
churning out parts for a high velocity hunting rifle. I don’t know what the
hell that sparky machine gun is that the souls have seen Hiltch’s boys
practising with. But I reckon my rifle’s got an easy twice the range of ’em.”
“They’ll be wearing armour,” Delvan
warned.
“Aye, I know that. But Soi’s told
me about kinetic enhanced impact bullets. Our armourers are doing their best to
produce them, you’ll have a decent stock in another few days. We’ll be able to
inflict a lot of damage with them, you see if we don’t.”
“Thanks, Milne,” Annette said.
“You’ve done a great job, considering what you’ve had to work with, and what
we’re facing.”
Milne cocked his pipe at her.
“We’ll put up a good account of ourselves, lass, no worries.”
“I’m sure.” She gazed round at the
rest of her commanders. There was a good range of emotions distributed among
them, from clear nerves to stupid over-confidence. “Now we know roughly what
our own capabilities are, we need to start working out how we’re going to
deploy. Delvan, you’re probably the best strategist we have . . .”
“Butt-headed traditionalist,” Soi
Hon muttered sotto voce.
Annette raised a warning eyebrow and
the old guerrilla made a conciliatory shrug. “What is Hiltch likely to do?” she
asked.
“Two things,” Delvan said, ignoring
Soi. “Firstly, their initial assault is going to be a lulu. He’ll throw
everything he’s got at us, on as many fronts as he can afford to open. We’ll be
facing massive troop incursions, this wretched space warship bombardment,
aircraft carpet bombing, artillery. The aim is to demoralise us right from the
start, make it quite clear from the scale of the Liberation that we’ll lose, drumming
it home in a fashion we can’t possibly ignore. I’d recommend that we actually
pull back a little way from the borders of the peninsula; don’t give him an
easy target. Leave it to Milne’s booby traps to snarl up his timetable, and
stall any immediate visible success he wants to lay on for the reporters.”
“Okay, I can cope with that. What’s
his second likely objective?”
“His target missions. If he’s got
any sense, he’ll go for our population centres first. Our power declines with
our numbers, which will make his mopping up operation a damn sight easier.”
“Population centres,” Annette
exclaimed in annoyance. “What population centres? People are deserting the
towns in droves. The councils are reporting we’re now down to less than half
the numbers we had in urban areas when we took over Mortonridge. They’re like
our deserters, heading for the hills. Right now we’re spread over this land
thinner than a pigeon’s fart.”
“It’s not the hills they’re after,”
Soi said, his soft tone a rebuke. “It’s the farms. Which was only to be
expected. You are well aware of the food situation across the peninsula. Had
your efforts been directed at developing our civil infrastructure instead of
our military base, it would be a different story.”
“Is that a criticism?”
His gentle laugh was infuriating,
mockingly superior. “A plea for industrialisation, from me? Please! I regard
the land and the people as integral. Nature provides us with our true state. It
is our towns and cities with their machines and hunger, which have birthed the
corruption that has contaminated human society for millennia. The defence of
people who chose to live with the land is paramount.”
“Okay, thanks for the party
manifesto. But it doesn’t alter what I said. We haven’t got that many
population centres to lure Hiltch’s forces into ambush.”
“We will have. I suspect Delvan is
correct when he says Hiltch will want to open with a grand gesture. That should
work in our favour. As always when a land is invaded, its people pull together.
They’ll see that as individuals they can offer no resistance to the Liberation
forces, and they’ll flee their isolation in search of group sanctuary. We will
gather ourselves together as a people again. Then the battle will be joined in
full.”
Annette’s growing smile was a
physical demonstration of the satisfaction spreading through her thoughts.
“Remember Stephanie Ash, what I told her about having to decide whose side she
was on? That self-righteous cow just stood there smiling politely the whole
time, knowing her world view was the real thing and that I’d come round to her
way of thinking in the end. Looks like I’ll have the last laugh after all—even
if it is only a short one. Damn, I’m going to enjoy that almost as much as I am
bollixing up my dear old friend Ralph’s campaign.”
“You really think we’ll be able to
start recruiting into the regiments again?” Delvan asked Soi Hon.
“Can you think of nothing but your
own position and power? It is not the regiments which will inflict the worst
casualties, but the united people. Group ten of us together, and the
destructive potential of our energistic power is an order of magnitude greater
than any artillery the Liberation forces can bring to bear.”
“Which is less than one per cent of
the lowest powered maser on a Strategic Defence platform, and that’s before we
get into the heavy duty systems like their X-ray lasers,” Annette said, tired
of their bickering. “It’s not our numbers which matter, but our ability to
communicate and organise. That’s what we have to safeguard until the last of us
is shoved into zero-tau.”
“I agree,” Delvan said. “The whole
war is going to be an extremely fluid situation from the start. Lightning
strikes, hit the bastards and run, are what we should be planning for.”
“Exactly, that’s where I expect you
two to combine for me. Your overall strategy, Delvan, combined with Soi’s
tactics. It’s a lethal alliance, the equivalent of the Kingdom and the
Edenists.”
“An inspired comparison,” Soi
chuckled.
“My pleasure. All right, let’s
start looking at the map, and see who we’re going to send where.”
It was Emmet Mordden, again, who
was on duty in the operations centre when the Organization fleet started to
emerge above New California. The hellhawks were first, their wormholes opening
more or less in the official emergence zone, a hundred thousand kilometres
above Monterey. That gave them some warning that the Adamist craft were en
route. Emmet quickly called in five more operatives to monitor their rag-tag
arrival. They certainly aimed for the emergence zone, but with possessed officers
on board aiming and hitting were increasingly separate concepts. Event horizons
started to inflate across a vast section of space around the planet; the only
thing regular about them was the timing. One every twenty seconds.
The big flight trajectory
holoscreens ringing the centre had to change perspective several times,
clicking down through their magnification to encompass space right out to
Requa, New California’s fourth moonlet. Black icons started to erupt across the
screen as if it was being struck by dirty rain.
The AI began to absorb the swarm of
information datavised in from the SD sensor platforms, and started plotting the
starships’ erratic trajectories. Multiple vector lines sprang up on every
console display. The operators studied them urgently, opening communication
circuits to verify the ships were still under Organization control. Emmet got
so carried along by the pandemonium of the first few minutes it took a while
before he began to realize something was badly wrong with the whole episode.
Firstly, they were too early, Admiral Kolhammer’s task force couldn’t possibly
have arrived at Tranquillity yet. Secondly, there were too many ships. Even if
the ambush had been a massive success, some ships would have been lost. Of all
Capone’s lieutenants, he had the most pragmatic view of just how effective the
fleet ships were.
Those two ugly facts were just
beginning to register, when he sensed the dismay bubbling up among Jull von
Holger’s thoughts, as the hellhawk liaison man communicated with his
colleagues.
“What the hell is it?” Emmet
demanded. “Why are they back here? Did they lose, chicken out, or what?”
Jull von Holger shook his head in
bewilderment, most reluctant to be the messenger of bad news. “No. No, they
didn’t lose. Their target . . . Tranquillity jumped away.”
Emmet frowned at him.
“Look, just call Luigi, okay. I
don’t understand it myself.”
Emmet gave him a long dissatisfied
look, then turned to his own console. He ordered it to find the Salvatore’s
transponder, and open a channel to the flagship. “What’s going on?” he asked
when a fuzzy picture of Luigi Balsamo appeared in the corner of his display.
“She tricked us,” Luigi shouted
angrily. “That Saldana bitch ran away. Christ knows how she managed it, but the
whole thing vanished down a wormhole. Nobody told us a habitat could do that.
You never warned us, did you? You’re supposed to be the Organization’s
technical whiz kid. Why the fuck didn’t you say something?”
“About what? What do you mean it
went down a wormhole? What went down a wormhole?”
“Why don’t you listen,
shitbrain? The habitat! The habitat vanished in front of us!”
Emmet stared at the image, refusing
to believe what he’d heard. “I’m calling Al,” he said eventually.
It was the first time Luigi had
ever been intimidated by the big double doors of the Nixon suite. There were a
couple of soldiers on duty outside, wearing their standard fawn-brown
double-breasted suits, big square-jawed guys with a dark rasp of stubble,
glossy Thompson machine guns held prominently. He could sense several people
milling about inside, their familiar thoughts dull and unhappy as they waited
for him. He thought of all the punishments and reprimands he’d attended in his
own capacity as one of the Organization’s elite lieutenants. The omens weren’t
good.
One of the soldiers opened the
doors, a superior in-the-know grin on his face. He didn’t say anything, just
made a mocking gesture of welcome. Luigi resisted the urge to smash his face to
pulp, and walked in.
“What the fuck happened?” Al
bellowed.
Luigi glanced round at the
semicircle of erstwhile friends as the doors closed behind him. Patricia was
there, as was Silvano, Jezzibella, Emmet, Mickey, and that little bitch Kiera.
All of them going with the tide that was sweeping him away to drown.
“We were given some very bad
information.” He looked pointedly at Patricia. “Perez sold us a dummy. And you
bought it.”
“He didn’t,” she snapped. “He
possessed one of the First Admiral’s top aids in Trafalgar. Kolhammer was
heading straight for Tranquillity.”
“And we would have got him, too. If
somebody had just warned me. I mean, Jesus H Christ, an entire goddamn habitat
flitting off. Do you have any idea how big that thing was?”
“Who cares?” Al said. “The habitat
wasn’t your main target. You were there to blow up Kolhammer’s ships.”
“The only way we could do that was
if we’d captured the habitat first,” Luigi said angrily. “Don’t try blaming all
this on me. I did everything you asked.”
“Who the fuck else am I going to
blame?” Al asked. “You were there, it was your responsibility.”
“Nobody has ever heard of a habitat
that can do that before,” Luigi ground out. “Nobody.” He shoved an accusatory
finger at Jezzibella. “Right?”
For whatever reason, Jezzibella had
assumed her impish adolescent girl persona, red ribbons tying her hair into
ponytails, a white blouse and grey pleated skirt not really covering her body.
She pouted, a gesture which was almost obscenely provocative. It was an act
which various judges had been asked to ban when she performed it live on tour.
“Right. But I’m hardly an expert on energy patterning systems, now am I?”
“Christ almighty. Emmet?” It was
almost a plea.
“It is unprecedented,” Emmet said
with some sympathy.
“And you.” Luigi glared at Kiera.
“You lived in a habitat. You knew all about how they work, why didn’t you tell
us?” The attack didn’t quite kick up the response he expected. A flash of icy
anger twisted Kiera’s thoughts, while Al simply sneered scornfully.
“Valisk was not capable of
performing a swallow manoeuvre,” she said. “As far as we know, only
Tranquillity has that ability. Certainly none of the Edenist habitats can. I
don’t know about the other three independent habitats.”
“Didn’t stop Valisk from vanishing,
though, did it,” Al muttered snidely.
Silvano gave an over-loud laugh,
while Jezzibella smiled demurely at Kiera’s discomfort. Luigi looked from one
to the other in puzzlement. “Okay, so are we agreed? It was a shitty situation,
sure. But there was nothing I could do about it. That Saldana girl took
everyone by surprise.”
“You were the fleet’s commander,”
Al said. “I gave you that job because I thought you were smart, man, that you
had some flare and imagination. A guy with a few qualities, know what I mean?
If all I want is some putz who expects a slap on the back every time he does
what he’s told I would have given the job to Bernhard Alsop. I expected more
from you, Luigi, a lot more.”
“Like what? I mean, come on here,
tell me, Al, just what the hell would you have done?
“Stopped it from flying out. Don’t
you get it, Luigi? You were my man on the ground. I was goddamn depending on
you to bring the Organization through this okay. Instead, I’m left with shit
all over my face. Once you saw what was happening you should have zeroed the
place.”
“Christ, why won’t any of you listen?
I was fucking trying to zero it, Al. That’s what spooked Saldana; that’s what
made her scoot the hell out of there. I’d got nearly five thousand of those war
rockets chasing after her faster than a coyote with a hornet up its ass, and
she got clean away. There was nothing we could do. We were damn lucky to
cut free ourselves. The explosions from all those war rockets did some damage,
too, we were . . .”
“Wooha there,” Al held up a hand.
“What explosions? You just said the combat wasps never touched Tranquillity.”
“Yeah, but most of them detonated
when they hit the wormhole entrance. I don’t understand none too well; the
technical boys, they say it’s like a solid barrier, but it’s made out of
nothing. Beats me. Anyway, the first ones started to go off, and . . . hell,
you know how powerful antimatter is, they set off the others. The whole lot
went off like a string of goddamn firecrackers.”
“All of them? Five thousand
antimatter-powered combat wasps?”
“That’s right. Like I said, we were
lucky to get out alive.”
“Sure you were.” Al’s voice had
dropped to a dangerous monotone. “You’re alive, and I’m out one planet which we
postponed invading, I’m down a Confederation Navy task force you were supposed
to ambush, and I’ve also got to replace five thousand combat wasps fuelled up
by the goddamn rarest substance in the whole fucking universe. Jeez, I’m real
glad you’re back. Seeing you here smiling away in once piece makes me feel
absolutely fucking peachy. You piece of shit! Do you have any idea how
badly you’ve screwed up?”
“It wasn’t my fault!”
“Oh absolutely. You’re right. No
way are you to blame for this. And you know what? I bet I know who it was.
Yeah. Yeah, now I think about it, I know. It was me. That’s right, me. I’m to
blame. I’m the asshole here. I made the biggest fucking mistake of my life when
I put you in charge.”
“Yeah? Well I didn’t hear you
whining none when I came back from Arnstat. Remember that day? I delivered a
whole fucking planet on a fucking plate for you, Al. You gave me the keys for
the city back then. Parties, girls, you even made Avvy track down a genuine
copy of the Clark Gable Gone with the Wind for me. Nothing. Nothing was
too much trouble. I was loyal to you, then, and I’m loyal to you now. I don’t
deserve any of this. All you lost was a few lousy rockets and some fancy fuel.
I put my life on the line for you, Al. And we all know how goddamn precious
that is now, don’t we? Well, do you know what? I don’t deserve to be
treated like this. It ain’t right.”
Al scowled, looking round the other
lieutenants. They all kept their faces blank, of course, but their minds were
boiling. Annoyance and doubt were the predominant emotions. He guessed his own
mind would show the same. He was fucking furious with Luigi, it was the first
defeat the Organization had been dealt, the news boys would crow about it clear
over the Confederation. His image would take a terrible battering, and as Jez
always said: image was everything in the modern world. The aura of the
Organization’s invincibility would be hit badly. Yet at the same time, Luigi
was right, he had done his best, right from the start when they’d all walked
into City Hall in the ballsiest escapade this side of the Trojan horse.
“By rights, I ought to fucking fry
you, Luigi,” Al said darkly. “We’ve been set back weeks thanks to what happened
at Tranquillity. I’ve got to find another planet to invade, I’ve got to wait
until we’ve built up a decent new stock of antimatter, the reporters will hang
me out to dry, everyone’s confidence is busted. But I’m not going to. And the
only reason I’m not going to is because you came back here like a man. You
ain’t afraid to admit you made a mistake.”
There was a new flash of anger in
Luigi’s mind at that. Al waited, mildly intrigued, but it was never voiced. He
materialised a Havana, and took a comfortable drag before saying: “So I’ll make
you an offer. You can stay with the Organization, but I’m going to bust you
right back down to the bottom of the ladder again. You’re a private zero class,
Luigi. I know the other guys’ll go hard on you for a while, but you stay loyal,
you keep your nose clean, and you can work your way back up again. I can’t be
no fairer than that.”
Luigi gawped at Al, struggling with
disbelief at what he’d just heard while a strangled choke growled up from his
throat. His mind was telegraphing the notion of outright rebellion. Al fixed
him with the look, all humour eradicated. “You won’t like the
alternative.”
“All right, Al,” Luigi said slowly.
“I can live with that. But I’m telling you, I’ll be back in charge of the fleet
inside of six months.”
Al guffawed, and clapped Luigi’s
arm. “That’s my boy. I knew I made the right decision with you.” Luigi managed
a brief smile, and turned to walk out of the room. Al slumped his shoulders
when the doors shut. “Guess that’s one guy we’ve lost for good.”
Jezzibella rubbed his arm in
sympathy. “You did the right thing, baby. It was honourable. He did fuck up
something chronic.”
“I wouldn’t have been so generous,”
Kiera said. “You shouldn’t show so much kindness. People will see it as a
weakness.”
“You’re dealing with people, not
mechanoids,” Jezzibella said blankly. “You have to make allowances for the odd
mistake. If you shoot every waiter who spills a cup of coffee over your skirt,
you wind up with a self service bar.”
Kiera smiled condescendingly at
her. “What you’ll actually wind up with is a group of highly efficient waiters
who can do the job effectively.”
“You mean, like the way your team
handled things on Valisk?”
“All teams need an effective
leader.”
Al was tempted to let them go for
it—nothing like a good catfight. But one bust-up among his senior lieutenants
was enough for today. So instead, he said: “Speaking of which, Kiera, are the
hellhawks going to keep flying for me?”
“Of course they will, Al. I’ve been
busy setting up my new flight coordination office in one of the docking ledge
departure lounges. Close to the action, as it were. They’ll do what I tell them
to.”
“Uh huh.” He didn’t like the
implications of that sweetly spoken assurance any more than the unpleasant note
of victory rippling through her mind. And judging by the sudden suspicion
colouring Jez’s thoughts, neither did she.
It was one of those absurd left
right, left right sideways shuffles that seemingly automatically occurs when
two people try to get out of each other’s way simultaneously which finally blew
Beth’s temper. She’d come out of the washroom at one end of the Mindori’s
life support module to find Jed standing outside waiting to use it. He
immediately dropped his head so he didn’t have to look at her and danced to one
side. A move she instinctively matched. They dodged about for a couple of
seconds.
The next thing Jed knew was a hand
grasping his collar, and hauling him into the washroom. Bright mock sunbeams
poured through the smoked-glass portholes, producing large white ovals on the
polished wood floor. Archaic brass plumbing gleamed and sparkled all around the
small compartment. Jed’s knee banged painfully on the rim of the enamel bath as
Beth smoothly slewed his weight round like some kind of ice skater act. The
door slammed shut, the lock snicked and he was shoved flat against the
wall. “Listen ball-brain,” she snarled, “I was not shagging him. Okay?”
He risked a sneer, praying she
wasn’t still carrying the nervejam stick. “Yeah? So what were you doing in bed
with him?”
“Sleeping.” She saw the new
expression of derision forming on his face, and twisted his sweatshirt fabric
just a fraction tighter. “Sleeping,” she repeated forcefully. “Jeeze, mate, the
guy’s brain is totally zonked. It took a time to get him quietened down, that’s
all. I dozed off. Big deal. If you hadn’t stormed out so bloody fast you would
have seen I still had all my clobber on.”
“That’s it?”
“What the hell do you expect? The
pair of us were working our way through a kama sutra recording? Is that what
you think of me? That I’m going to leap into bed with the first geriatric I
meet?”
Jed knew his answer to that
question was going to be critical, and possibly close to fatal if he got it
wrong. “No,” he insisted, willing himself to believe it totally. Voice only
would never be good enough. He often suspected Beth had some kind of advanced
telepathic ability. “I don’t think that of you at all. Um . . . you’ve got more
class that that. I always said so.”
“Hummm.” Her grip on his sweatshirt
loosened slightly. “You mean you were always miffed I didn’t let you shag me.”
“That’s not it!” he protested.
“Really?”
Jed thought that jibe was best
ignored in its entirety. “What do you make of this delay?” he asked.
“Bit odd. I don’t understand why we
didn’t dock with Valisk before we went on another rendezvous. I mean, we were
already there in the Srinagar system, least that’s what I thought.”
“Yeah. I didn’t see Valisk, though,
just some gas giant. Then the ship swallowed away again. I thought I was going
to die. We were there.”
“Choi-Ho and Maxim said this new
rendezvous was major-league important when I asked them. They clammed up pretty
smart when I asked them where it was, though. You think that’s important?”
“Course it’s important. Question
is, why?”
“We might have to dodge some navy
patrols to make the new rendezvous. That’ll be risky.”
“So why not tell us?”
“There’s a lot of kids on board.
Could be they don’t want to worry them.”
“Makes sense.”
“But you don’t reckon?”
“Dunno. It’s funny, you know. We
busted our balls to get a flight. Everything we had got left behind, our
families, friends, everything. But I didn’t have any doubts. Now we’re as good
as there . . . I don’t know, it’s just such a big thing. Maybe I’m a bit
scared. What about you?”
Beth gave him a careful look,
unsure just how much she should reveal. He really had invested a lot in the
ideal of Valisk and all it promised. “Jed, I know Gerald’s a bit flaky, but he
told me something.”
“A bit flaky.”
“Jed! He said Kiera is actually
called Marie, that she’s his daughter. He reckons that Valisk is no different
to any other place the possessed have taken over.”
“Crap,” he said angrily. “That’s
total crap. Look, Beth. We know Kiera is a possessor, she’s never hidden that.
But she’s only borrowing that girl’s body. She said things like that won’t
matter after Valisk leaves the universe. She can take on her own form again.”
“Yes, but, Jed . . . His daughter.”
“Just a weird coincidence, that’s
all. Mind, it explains why the old fart is so crazy.”
She nodded reluctantly. “Maybe. But
then again it wouldn’t do any harm to start thinking the unthinkable, would
it?”
He took hold of both her arms, just
above the elbows. “We’ll be all right,” he said intently. “You’ve accessed
Kiera’s recording enough times. You know she’s telling us the truth. This is
like wedding night nerves.”
She gave his hands a curious
glance; normally she would have instantly shaken free from such a grip. But
this flight was not an ordinary time. “Yeah. Thanks, mate.” She gave him a
timid smile.
Jed returned an equally uncertain
flutter. He started to slowly lean forward, bringing his face down towards
hers. Her lips parted slightly. He closed his eyes. Then a finger was resting
on his chin.
“Not here,” Beth said. “Not in a
dunny.”
Beth actually let him hold her hand
as they walked along the life support module’s central corridor. Somehow it
didn’t seem to matter so much now. Back on Koblat it would have meant everyone
knowing: Beth and Jed, Jed and Beth. The boys would have smiled and whooped and
given Jed the thumbs up. “Well done mate. Scored with an ice maiden, nice one.
So what does she look like with her kit off? Are they big tits? Is she any good
at it? Has she gone down on you yet?” While the girls would have clustered
round her and asked if he’d said he loved her. Does he devote enough time to
you? Are you going to apply for an apartment together?
It was a horrendous cycle spinning
around her, a compendium of everything she hated about Koblat. The loss of any
purpose to life. Surrendering to the company and signing on as another of its
cheaply produced multi-function biological tools. She knew several girls on her
corridor level who were grandmothers at twenty-eight.
Their weakness had given her the
strength to strive for at least the hope of something more, to resist almost
intolerable peer pressure. Star of her education stream, exceptionally
receptive to each didactic memory she received. Applying for every college
scholarship and exchange programme she could locate in the asteroid’s memory
cores. Enduring the jeers and whispers. But it had been hard hard hard. Then
along came Kiera, who offered a way out from all that awful pressure. A life
that was different and kind. And Beth had believed, because Kiera was the same
sort of age, and empowered, and taking control of her own destiny. And because
. . . it was easy. For the first time ever.
They stopped outside the cabin
she’d been sharing with Gerald, and Jed kissed her before she could turn the handle.
Not a very good kiss, he almost missed her lips, and definitely no tongue like
there was in all the low-rated blue sensevise recordings she’d accessed. His
anxious expression almost made her laugh, as if he was expecting her to deck
him one. Which, she admitted, she probably would have done three weeks ago if
he’d come on fresh with her. She got the door open, and they stumbled inside,
not bothering with the lights. Jed kissed her again. A better attempt, this
time. When he finished, she asked: “Will you think of her?”
“Who?” he asked in confusion.
“You know, her, Kiera. Will you
think of her when you’re doing it with me?”
“No!” Although there was enough of
a quaver in his voice to reveal the truth. To her, if no one else. She knew him
well enough, growing up together for ten years. It was almost too close.
He had become—not obsessed, that
wasn’t strong enough—captivated by Kiera and that exquisite beguiling beauty of
hers. In dismay Beth knew it wouldn’t be her face he saw when he closed his
eyes in ecstasy, not her body he would feel below his fingers. For some reason,
despite the humiliation, she didn’t really care. After all, she had her own
reasons for this. She twined a forearm behind his head, and pulled him down to
kiss her again. The lights came on. Beth gasped in surprise, and twisted to
look at the bunk, expecting to see Gerald there. It was empty, the blankets
rumpled.
There was a melodic chime from the
dresser, and the small mirror above it shimmered with colour. A man’s face
appeared on it; he was middle aged, with a Mediterranean complexion and a long
chin which pulled his lips downwards, making him appear permanently unhappy.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But
I think you’ll find what I have to say quite important.”
Jed had stiffened the second he
appeared, quickly pulling his hands away from Beth. She tried not to show how
annoyed she was by that; she’d just made the decision—what did he have
to be guilty about?
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Rocio Condra; I am the soul
possessing this hellhawk.”
“Oh brother,” she murmured. Jed
managed to blush even deeper.
“I was listening to your
conversation in the washroom. I believe we can help each other.”
Beth smiled weakly. “If you’re
powerful enough to do that, how can we possibly help you? You can do anything.”
“My energistic power gives me a
great deal of influence over the local environment, I agree. But there are some
things which remain beyond me. Listening to you, for example, I had to use a
bitek processor; there’s one in every section of the Mindori’s life
support module.”
“If you’ve heard everything we’ve
talked about, then you know about Gerald and Marie,” Beth said.
“Indeed. That is why I chose you to
make my offer to. You already know everything is not what it seems.”
Jed peered at Rocio’s image. “What
offer?”
“The end requirements haven’t yet
been finalized. However, if all goes well, I expect I shall require you to
perform some physical tasks for me. Nothing too difficult. Just venture into a
few places I obviously cannot reach.”
“Such as?”
“That is not yet apparent. We will
have to advance this partnership one step at a time. As a gesture of goodwill,
I am prepared to impart some information to you. If, based on what you hear,
you then wish to continue with this relationship, we can move forward
together.”
Beth gave Jed a puzzled glance, not
surprised to find he was equally mystified. “Go on,” she said. “We’ll listen.”
“I am about to swallow into the New
California system. We will probably dock at Monterey asteroid, the headquarters
of the Capone Organization.”
“No way!” Jed cried.
“There never was a new rendezvous,
was there?” Beth asked, somehow unsurprised by the revelation.
“No,” Rocio said. “We did not dock
at Valisk because it is no longer in this universe. There was a battle for
control between different factions of possessed inside. The victors
subsequently removed it.”
Jed took a couple of paces
backwards, and sank down onto the bunk. His face was fragile with dismay.
“Gone?”
“I’m afraid so. And I am genuinely
sorry. I know how much hope you had for your future there. Unfortunately, that
hope was extremely misplaced.”
“How?” Beth asked through clenched
teeth.
“There never was any Deadnight, not
really. Kiera Salter simply wanted fresh bodies to possess so that she could
expand the habitat’s population base. Had you disembarked there, you would have
been tortured until you surrendered yourselves to possession.”
“Oh Jeeze,” Beth whispered. “And
Monterey? What’s going to happen to us at Monterey?”
“Much the same, I expect. The
Organization does retain professional non-possessed who have specialist fields
of expertise. Are you highly qualified in any subject?”
“Us?” Beth barked in consternation.
“You’ve gotta be bloody joking, mate. The only thing we know how to do proper
is mess up. Every bloody time.” She was afraid she was going to start crying.
“I see,” Rocio said. “Well, in
return for your help, I am prepared to hide you on board when we dock at
Monterey.”
“What sort of help?” Jed asked.
Beth wheeled round to glare at him.
“Does it bloody matter! Yes we’ll help. As much as you want.”
Rocio’s image gave a dry smile. “As
I said, my requirements will not be fully established until I have analysed the
local situation. It may be that I don’t require you to do anything. For the
moment, I shall simply hold you in reserve.”
“Why?” Beth asked. “You’re part of
them. You’re a possessor. What do you want us for?”
“Because I am not part of them. We
are not all the same. I was being coerced into helping Kiera. Now I must find
out what has happened to the other hellhawks, and decide what to do next. In
order to do that, I must keep every conceivable option open. Having allies who
are in no position to betray me will provide an excellent advantage.”
“All right,” Beth said. “What do we
have to do?”
“I will swallow into the New
California system in another thirty minutes. Even if Kiera and the other
hellhawks have left there, the passengers will have to be disembarked. For now,
the pair of you must be hidden. I believe I have a place which will put you
outside the perception range of Choi-Ho and Maxim Payne.”
“What perception range?” Jed asked.
“All possessed are able to sense
the thoughts of other people. The range varies between individuals, of course.”
“You mean they know what I’m
thinking?” he hooted.
“No. But they are aware of your
presence, and with that your emotions. However, such perception through solid
matter is difficult; I believe the fluid in some of my tanks will shield you.
We just have to get you at the centre of a suitably large cluster.”
“There had better be room for five
of us in this nest of yours,” Beth said sprightly.
“I only require two people.”
“Tough, mate. You get yourself a
bargain package with us. Gerald and the girls come too.”
“I don’t need them.”
She gave his image a cold smile. “Must
have been dead a long time, huh? To forget what it’s like to have other people,
friends, responsibilities. What? You think we’d leave them behind for Capone. A
couple of kids? Come on!”
“The Organization is unlikely to
possess the girls. They pride themselves in being altruistic and charitable.”
“Good for them. But it doesn’t make
any difference. You get all five of us, or none at all.”
“That’s right,” Jed said, coming up
to stand beside her. “Gari’s my sister. I’m not leaving her with Capone.”
Rocio sighed heavily. “Very well.
But only those three. If you have a flock of second cousins on board, they will
have to take their chances with the Organization.”
“No second cousins. What do you
want us to do?”
It took a lot of nerve to saunter
idly into the Mindori’s main lounge with a bland expression on his face,
knowing what he did. Jed felt he carried it off rather well; his visits to the
Blue Fountain in search of sympathetic starship crews had provided a good
rehearsal for brazening out awkward moments. There was a big press of Deadnight
kids in the lounge, more than usual as the extended flight finally approached
its end. All of them gazing eagerly out of the big forward-looking window at
the silver-on-black starfield.
Jed let his eyes flick round quickly,
confirming Choi-Ho and Maxim Payne weren’t anywhere about. Rocio had assured
him they were both in their cabin, but he didn’t entirely trust everything the
hellhawk’s soul said.
In this instance, Rocio hadn’t
lied. The two possessed were nowhere to be seen. Jed walked confidently across
the lounge to one of the fitted cupboards on the far side. Its narrow slatted
doors were made from rosewood, with small brass handles moulded to resemble
rose buds. As he put his hand round the cool metal, it turned to black plastic
below his fingers. A narrow display panel appeared briefly to one side, framing
a block of grey alphanumerics which flickered too fast to be read. He waited
until he heard a discreet click then pulled gently. The door opened a
fraction, and he moved closer, covering his actions.
Rocio had told him the bitek
processor blocks were on the third shelf from the top. The thin gap allowed him
to confirm the slim rectangular units were waiting there. It was obviously some
kind of general equipment storage cupboard; he could see tool kits, and test
blocks, and sensor modules, as well as several devices he couldn’t fathom at
all. A rack on the fourth shelf contained five compact laser pistols.
He froze.
It was probably Rocio’s final
assessment of his suitability. If he could turn his back on the weapons he
would be resolute enough to be of use to the hellhawk. If he knew anything
about this nebulous deal, whatever help Rocio wanted, it would not be small,
not when the exchange price was his own life. But a weapon would offer some
security, however feeble. And Beth had her nervejam stick.
Knowing his heated thoughts would
be betraying his guilt to Rocio in a way no clandestine visual observation ever
could, Jed reached calmly for a pistol, then slid his hand smoothly up to one
of the processor blocks. He tucked both of them neatly into his inside jacket
pocket, and shut the cupboard door again. The electronic lock vanished
instantly beneath a slick ripple of wood grain which lapped over it.
Walking back out of the lounge was
the worst part. Some little part of Jed’s brain was yelling at him to warn
them. All of a sudden, he hated them. Sweetly trusting kids, their eyes happy
and shining as they gawped out at the enchanting vista of interstellar space.
All that hope suffusing unseen, yet cloying, into the air as they waited for
the window to reveal their own special nirvana waiting for them at the end of
the next wormhole.
Fools! Blind, stupid, and
ridiculously ingenuous. The hatred clarified then. He was looking at multiple
reflections of himself.
Beth got Gerald to come along with
her, which he did unquestioningly. Jed brought Gari and Navar, who were
intensely curious, twittering together as they walked down the length of the
corridor. Their curiosity turned to hard-edged scepticism as Jed knocked softly
on the washroom door.
“You told us this was important,”
Navar said accusingly.
“It is,” he assured her. Something
in his tone stalled the scornful sniff she was preparing as a retort.
Beth unlocked the washroom door and
slid it open. Jed checked the corridor to make sure no one was watching. With
only fifteen minutes to go until the swallow manoeuvre, all the other
Deadnights were crowding round the observation ports in the forward cabins. The
two girls gave Gerald a confused look as they all crowded into the confined
space of the cabin. In turn, Gerald barely noticed them. Jed took the bitek
processor block from his pocket. One surface shimmered with a moiré holographic
pattern, then cleared to show Rocio’s face.
“Well done, Jed,” he said.
“Bluffing it out is often the best option.”
“Yeah, all right, now what?”
“Who’s that?” Navar asked.
“We’ll explain later,” Beth said.
“Right now, we’ve got to get into position ready for when the ship docks.” She
said it to the girls, although she was actually studying Gerald intently. He
was in one of his passive moods, unperturbed by what was happening. She just
prayed he stayed that way while they were hidden away.
“Aren’t we getting off at Valisk?”
Gari asked her big brother in a forlorn voice.
“No, doll, sorry. We’re not even
docking with Valisk.”
“Why not?”
“Guess we got lied to.” The bitter
sorrow in his voice silenced her.
“You will need to clear the floor,”
Rocio instructed.
Beth and the two girls climbed into
the bath, while Gerald sat on the toilet lid. Jed pressed himself back against
the door. The floorboards faded away; rich honey colour bleaching to a sanitary
grey-green, resilient texture becoming the uncompromising hardness of
silicolithium composite. Some residual evidence of the wood illusion remained,
little ridges where the planks had lain, dark flecks in the surface a pallid
mimicry of the grain pattern. In the centre of the floor was an inspection
hatch, with recessed metal locking clips at each corner.
“Turn the clips ninety degrees
clockwise, then pull them up,” Rocio said.
Jed knelt down and did as he was
told. When the clips were free, the hatch rose ten centimetres with a swift
hiss of air. He swung it aside. There was a narrow metal crawl way below it, bordered
by foam-insulated pipes and bundled cables. Beth activated the lightstick she’d
brought along, and held it over the hatch. There was a horizontal T-junction a
couple of metres down.
“You will go first, Beth,” Rocio
said, “and light the way. I will supply directions. Jed, you must close the
hatch behind you.”
Reluctantly, with the girls pouting
and scowling, they all climbed down into the crawl way. Jed tugged the hatch
back into place after him, nearly catching his fingers as it guillotined shut.
When it was in place, the washroom floor silently and fastidiously sealed over
with elegant floorboards again.
Chapter 04
Dariat wandered along the valley,
not really paying much attention to anything. Only the memories pulled at him,
bittersweet recollections guiding him towards the sacred places he hadn’t dared
visit in the flesh for thirty years, not even when he’d roamed through Valisk
to avoid Bonney and Kiera.
The wide pool, apparently carved
into the grey-brown polyp-rock by the stream’s enthusiastic flow, nature at its
most pleasing. Where tufts of soft pink grass lined the edges, strains of
violet and amber moss sprawled over the scattering of boulders, and long fronds
of water reeds swayed lazily in the current.
The flat expanse of land between
the slope of the valley and an ox-bow loop in the stream. An animal track wound
through it, curving round invisible obstacles as it led down to a shallow beach
where the herds could drink. Apart from that it was untouched, the pink grass
which currently dominated the plains was thick and lush here, its tiny
mushroom-shaped spoor fringes poised on the verge of ripeness. Nobody had
camped here for years, despite its eminent suitability. None of the Starbridge
tribes had ever returned. Not after . . .
Here. He walked to one side of the
empty tract, the taller stalks of grass swishing straight through his
translucent legs. Yes, this was the place. Anastasia’s tepee had been pitched
here. A sturdy, colourful contraption. Strong enough to take her weight when
she tied the rope round her neck. Was the pink grass slightly thinner here? A
rough circle where the pyre had been. Her tribe sending her and her few
belongings on their way to the Realms (every possession except one, the Thoale
stones, which he had kept safe these thirty years). Her body dispersed in fire
and smoke, freeing the soul from any final ties with the physical universe.
How had they known? Those
simple, backward people. Yet their lives contained such astonishing truth. They
more than anyone would be prepared for the beyond. Anastasia wouldn’t have
suffered in the same way as the lost souls he’d encountered during his own
fleeting time there. Not her.
Dariat sat on the grass, his toga
crumpling around chubby limbs, though never really chafing. If any of her
essence had indeed lingered here, it was long gone now. So now what? He looked
up at the light tube, which had become even dimmer than before. The air was
cooler, too, nothing like Valisk’s usual balmy medium. He was rather surprised
that phenomenon registered. How could a ghost sense temperature? But then most
aspects of his present state were a mystery.
Dariat?
He shook his head. Hearing things.
Just to be certain, he looked around. Nobody, alive or spectral, was in sight.
An interesting point though. Would I be able to see another ghost?
Dariat. You are there. We feel
you. Answer us.
The voice was like affinity, but
much softer. A whisper into the back of his mind. Oh great, a ghost being
haunted by another ghost. Thank you again, Thoale. That could only ever happen
to me.
Who is this? he asked.
We are Valisk now. Part of us is
you.
What is this? What are you?
We are the habitat personality,
the combination of yourself and Rubra.
That’s crazy. You cannot be me.
But we are. Your memories and
personality fused to Rubra’s within the neural strata. Remember? The change to
us, to the neural strata’s thought routines, was corporeal and permanent. We
remain intact. You, however, were a possessing soul, you were torn out by the
habitat’s shift to this realm.
A realm hostile to the
possessed, he said
rancorously.
Exactly.
Don’t I know it. I’m a ghost.
That’s what the shift did to me. A bloody ghost.
How intriguing. We cannot see
you.
I’m in the valley.
Ah.
Dariat could feel the understanding
within the personality. It knew which valley he meant. A true affinity.
Can we have access to your
sensorium, please. It will allow us to analyse the situation properly.
He couldn’t think of a reasonable
objection, even though the idea sat uncomfortably. After thirty years of
self-imposed mental isolation, sharing came hard. Even with an entity that
claimed to be derived from himself.
Very well, he griped. He allowed the affinity link to
widen, showing the personality the world through his eyes—or at least what he
imagined to be his eyes.
As requested, he looked at his own
body for the personality, walked about, demonstrated how he had no material
presence.
Yet you persist in interpreting
yourself as having human form, the
personality said. How strange.
Force of habit, I guess.
More likely to be subconscious
reassurance. The pattern is your basic foundation, the origin of quintessential
identity. Retention of that is probably critical to your continuation as a
valid entity. In other words, you’re very set in your ways. But then we know
that already, don’t we.
I don’t believe I’m that
self-destructive. So if you wouldn’t mind cancelling the insults for a few
decades.
As you wish. After all, we do
know how to cut the deepest.
Dariat could almost laugh at the
impression of déjà vu which the exchange conjured up. He and Rubra had spent
days of this same verbal fencing while he was possessing Horgan’s body. Was
there a reason you wanted to talk to me? Or did you just want to say hello?
This realm is not hostile to
souls alone. It is also affecting our viability right down to the atomic level.
Large sections of the neural strata have ceased to function, nor are such areas
static, they flow through the strata at random, requiring persistent
monitoring. Such failures threaten even our homogenised presence. We have to
run constant storage replication routines to ensure our core identity is not
erased.
That’s tough, but unless the
failure occurs everywhere simultaneously, you’ll be safe.
As may be. But the overall
efficiency of our cells is much reduced. The sensitive cell clusters cannot
perceive as clearly as before; organ capability is degrading to alarming
levels. Muscle membrane response is sluggish. Electrical generation is almost
zero. All principal mechanical and electrical systems have shut down. The
communication net and most processors are malfunctioning. If this situation
continues, we will not be able to retain a working biosphere for more than ten
days, a fortnight at most.
I hate to sound negative at a
time like this, but what do you expect me to do about it?
The remaining population must be
organized to assist us. There are holding procedures which can be enacted to
prevent further deterioration.
Physical ones. You’ll have to
ask the living, not me.
We are attempting to. However,
those who have been de-possessed are currently in an extremely disorientated
state. Even those we have affinity contact with are unresponsive. As well as
undergoing severe psychological trauma, their physiological condition has
deteriorated.
So?
There are nearly three hundred
of our relatives still in zero-tau. Your idea, remember? Kiera was holding them
ready as an incentive for the hellhawk possessors. If they were to be taken
out, we would have a functional work force ready to help, one that has a good
proportion of qualified technicians among it.
Good idea . . . Wait, how come
their zero-tau pods are working when everything else has failed?
The zero-tau systems are
self-contained and made from military-grade components, they are also located
in the deep caverns. We assumed that combination affords them some protection
from whatever is affecting us.
If all you’ve got to do is flick
one switch, why not just use a servitor?
Their physiological situation is
even worse than the humans. All the animals in the habitat seem to be suffering
from a strong form of sleeping sickness. Our affinity instructions cannot rouse
them.
Does that include all the xenoc
species?
Yes. Their biochemistry is
essentially similar to terrestrial creatures. If our cells are affected, so are
theirs.
Okay. Any idea what the problem
is? Something like the energistic glitch which the possessed gave out?
Unlikely. It is probably a
fundamental property of this realm. We are speculating that the quantum values
of this continuum are substantially different from our universe. After all, we
did select it to have a detrimental effect on the energy pattern which is a
possessing soul. Consequently, we must assume that mass-energy properties here
have been altered, that is bound to affect atomic characteristics. But until we
can run a full analysis on our quantum state, we cannot offer further
speculation.
Ever considered that the devil
simply doesn’t allow electricity in this particular part of hell?
Your thought is our thought. We
prefer to concentrate on the rational. That allows us to construct a hypothesis
which will ultimately allow us to salvage this shitty situation.
Yeah, I can live with that. So
what is it that you want me to do?
See if you can talk to someone
called Tolton. He will switch off the zero-tau pods for us.
Why? Who is he?
A street poet, so he claims. He
was one of the inhabitants we managed to keep out of Bonney’s clutches.
Does he have affinity?
No. But legend has it that
humans can see ghosts.
Shit, you’re grasping at straws.
You have an alternative?
Ghosts can get tired. This
unwelcome discovery made itself quite clear as Dariat trudged over the
grassland towards the ring of starscraper lobbies in the middle of the habitat.
But then if you have imaginary muscles, they are put under quite a strain
carrying your imaginary body across long distances, especially when that body
had Dariat’s bulk.
This is bloody unfair, he declared to the personality. When souls
come back from the beyond, they all see themselves as physically perfect
twenty-five-year-olds.
That’s simple vanity.
I wish I was vain.
Valisk’s parkland was also becoming
less attractive. Now he had hiked out of the valley, the vivid pink grass which
cloaked the southern half of the cylinder was grading down to a musky-grey, an
effect he equated to a city smog wrapping itself round the landscape. It
couldn’t be blamed entirely on the diminished illumination; the slim core of
plasma in the axial light tube was still a valiant neon blue. Instead it seemed
to be part of the overall lack of vitality which was such an obvious feature of
this realm. The xenoc plant appeared to be past its peak, as if its spore
fringes had already ripened and now it was heading back into dormancy.
None of the insects which usually
chirped and flittered among the plains had roused themselves. A few times, he
came across field mice and their xenoc analogues, who were sleeping fitfully.
They’d just curled up where they were, not making any attempt to return to
their nests or warrens.
Ordinary chemical reactions must
still be working, he
suggested. If they weren’t, then everything would be dead.
Yes. Although from what we’re
seeing and experiencing, they must also be inhibited to some degree.
Dariat trudged on. The
spiral-springs of grass made the going hard, causing resistance as his legs
passed through them. It was though he was walking along a stream bed where the
water was coming half-way up his shins. As his complaints became crabbier, the
personality guided him towards one of the narrow animal tracks.
After half an hour of easier
walking, and pondering his circumstances, he said: You told me that your
electrical generation was almost zero.
Yes.
But not absolute?
No.
So the habitat must be in some
kind of magnetic field if the induction cables are producing a current.
Logically, yes.
But?
Some induction cables are
producing a current, the majority are not. And those that are, do so
sporadically. Buggered if we can work out what’s going on, boy. Besides, we
can’t locate any magnetic field outside. There’s nothing we can see that could
be producing one.
What is out there?
Very little.
Dariat felt the personality
gathering the erratic images from clusters of sensitive cells speckling the
external polyp shell, and formatting them into a coherent visualisation for
him. The amount of concentration it took for the personality to fulfil what
used to be a profoundly simple task surprised and worried him.
There were no planets. No moons. No
stars. No galaxies. Only a murky void.
The eeriest impression he received
from the expanded affinity bond was the way Valisk appeared to be in flight.
Certainly he was aware of movement of some kind, though it was purely
subliminal, impossible to define. The huge cylinder appeared to be gliding
through a nebula. Not one recognizable from their universe. This was composed
from extraordinarily subtle layers of ebony mist, shifting so slowly they were
immensely difficult to distinguish. Had he been seeing it with his own eyes, he
would have put it down to overstressed retinas. But there were discernible
strands of the smoky substance out there; sparser than atmospheric cloud,
denser than whorls of interstellar gas.
Abruptly, a fracture of hoary light
shimmered far behind the hub of Valisk’s southern endcap, a luminous serpent
slithering around the insubstantial billows. Rough tatters of gritty vapour
detonated into emerald and turquoise phosphorescence as it twirled past them.
The phenomenon was gone inside a second.
Was that lightning? Dariat asked in astonishment.
We have no idea. However, we
can’t detect any static charge building on our shell. So it probably wasn’t
electrically based.
Have you seen it before?
That was the third time.
Bloody hell. How far away was
it?
That is impossible to determine.
We are trying to correlate parallax data from the external sensitive cells.
Unfortunately, lack of distinct identifiable reference points within the cloud
formations is hampering our endeavour.
You’re beginning to sound like
an Edenist. Take a guess.
We believe we can see about two
hundred kilometres altogether.
Shit. That’s all?
Yes.
Anything could be out there,
behind that stuff.
You’re beginning to catch on,
boy.
Can you tell if we’re moving? I
got the impression we were. But it could just be the way that cloud stuff is
shifting round out there.
We have the same notion, but
that’s all it ever can be. Without a valid reference point, it is impossible to
tell. Certainly we’re not under acceleration, which would eliminate the
possibility we’re falling through a gravity field . . . if this realm has gravity,
of course.
Okay, how about searching round
with a radar? Have you tried that? There are plenty of arrays in the
counter-rotating spaceport.
The spaceport has radar, it also
has several Adamist starships, and over a hundred remote maintenance drones
which could be adapted into sensor probes. None of which are functioning right
now, boy. We really do need to bring our relatives out of zero-tau.
Yeah yeah. I’m getting there as
quick as I can. You know what, I don’t think fusing with my thought routines
has made that big an impression on you, has it?
According to the personality,
Tolton was in the parkland outside the Gonchraov starscraper lobby. Dariat
didn’t get there on the first attempt. He encountered the other ghosts before
he arrived.
The pink grassland gradually gave
way to terrestrial grass and trees a couple of kilometres from the starscraper
lobbies. It was a lush manicured jungle which boiled round the habitat’s
midsection, with gravel tracks winding round the thicker clumps of trees and
vines. Big stone slabs formed primitive bridges over the rambling brooks, their
support boulders grasped by thick coils of flowering creepers. Petals were
drooping sadly as Dariat walked over them. As he drew closer to the lobby, he
started to encounter the first of the servitor animal corpses, most of them
torn by burnt scars, the impact of white fire. Then he noticed the decaying
remains of several of their human victims lying in the undergrowth.
Dariat found the sight inordinately
depressing. A nasty reminder of the relentless struggle which Rubra and Kiera
had fought for dominance of the habitat. “And who won?” he asked morbidly.
He cleared another of the Neolithic
bridges. The trees were thinning out now, becoming more ornate and taller as
jungle gave way to parkland. There were flashes of movement in front of him
coupled with murmurs of conversation, which made him suddenly self-conscious.
Was he going to have to jump up and down waving his arms and shouting to get
the living to notice him?
Just as he was psyching himself up
for the dismaying inevitable, the little group caught sight of him. There were
three men and two women. Their clothes should have clued him in. The eldest man
was wearing a very long, foppish coat of yellow velvet with ruffled lace down
the front; one of the women had forced her large fleshy frame into a black
leather dominatrix uniform, complete with whip; her mousy middle-aged companion
was in a baggy woollen overcoat, so deliberately dowdy it was a human stealth
covering; of the remaining two men, one was barely out of his teens, a black
youth with panther muscles shown off by a slim red waistcoat; while the other
was in his thirties, covered by a baggy mechanics overall. They made a highly
improbable combination, even for Valisk’s residents.
Dariat stopped in surprise and with
some gratification, raising a hand in moderate greeting. “Hello there. Glad you
can see me. My name’s Dariat.”
They stared at him, already unhappy
expressions displaced by belligerent suspicion.
“You the one Bonney had everyone
chasing?” the black guy asked.
Dariat grinned modestly. “That’s
me.”
“Motherfucker. You did this to us!”
he screamed. “I had a body. I had my life back. You fucked that. You fucked me.
You ruined everything. Everything! You brought us here, you and that shit
living in the walls.”
Comprehension dawned for Dariat. He
could see the faint outlines of branches through the man. “You’re a ghost,” he
exclaimed.
“All of us are,” the dominatrix
said. “Thanks to you.”
“Oh shit,” he whispered in
consternation.
There are other ghosts? the personality asked. The affinity band was
awash with interest.
What does it bloody look like!
The dominatrix took a step towards
him; her whip flicked out, cracking loudly. She grinned viciously. “I haven’t
had a chance to use this properly for a long time, dearie. That’s a shame,
because I know how to use it real bad.”
“Gonna get you plenty of chance to
catch up now,” the black guy purred to her.
Dariat stood his ground shakily.
“You can’t blame me for this. I’m one of you.”
“Yeah,” said the mechanic. “And
this time you can’t get away.” He drew a heavy spanner from his leg pocket.
They must all be here, the personality said. All the possessing
souls.
Just great.
“Can we hurt him?” the mousy woman
asked.
“Let’s find out,” the dominatrix
replied.
“Wait!” Dariat implored. “We need
to work together to get the habitat out of this place. Don’t you understand?
It’s collapsing around us, everything’s breaking down. We’ll be trapped here.”
The black guy bared his teeth wide.
“We needed you to work with us to beat the habitat back in the real universe.”
Dariat flinched. He turned and ran.
They gave chase immediately. That they’d catch him was never in doubt. He was
appallingly overweight, and he’d just finished a nine kilometre hike. The whip
slashed against the back of his left calf. He wailed, not just from the sharp
sting, but from the fact it could sting.
They whooped and cheered behind
him, delighted by the knowledge they could inflict injury, pain. Dariat
staggered over the end of the bridge, and took a few unsteady steps towards the
thicker part of jungle. The whip struck him again, flaying his shoulder and
cheek, accompanied by the dominatrix’s gleeful laugh. Then the lean black guy
caught up with him, and jumped high, kicking him in the small of the back.
Dariat went flying, landing flat on
his stomach, arms and legs spread wide. Not a single blade of grass even bent
as he struck the ground; his bloated body seemed to be lying on a median height
of stalks, while longer stems poked straight through him.
The beating began. Feet kicked
savagely into his flanks, his legs, neck. The whip whistled down again and
again, landing on his spine each time. Then the mechanic stood on his
shoulders, and brought the spanner down on his skull. The battering became
rhythmic, horrifyingly relentless. Dariat cried out at every terrifying impact.
There was pain, in abundance there was pain, but no blood, nor damage, nor
bruising or broken bones. The blaze of hurt had its origin in a concussion of
hatred and fury. Each blow reinforcing, emphasising how much they wanted him
ruined.
His cries grew fainter, though they
were just as insistent, and tainted with increasing anguish. The spanner, and
the whip, and the boots, and the fists began to sink into him, puncturing his
intangible boundary. He was sinking deeper into the grass, the hammering
propelling his belly into the soil. Coldness swept into him, a wave racing on
ahead of the solid surface with which he was merging. His shape was lacking
definition now, its outline becoming less substantial. Even his thoughts began
to lose their intensity.
Nothing could stop them. Nothing he
said. Nothing he begged. Nothing he could pay. None of his prayers. Nothing. He
had to endure it all. Not knowing what the outcome would be; terrifyingly, not
knowing what it could be.
They let him be, eventually. After
how much time not one of them knew. As much as it took to satisfy their hunger
for vengeance. To dull the enjoyment of sadism. To experiment with the novel
methods of brutality available to ghosts. There wasn’t much of his presence
left when they finished. A gauzy patch of pearl luminescence loitering amid the
grass, the back of his toga barely bobbing above the surface of the soil. Limbs
and head were buried.
Laughing, they walked away.
Amid the coldness, darkness, and
apathy, a few strands of thought clung together. A weak filigree of suffering
and woe. Everything he was. Very little, really.
Tolton had a brief knowledge of
scenes like this. Secondhand knowledge, old and stale, memories of tales told
to him by the denizens of the lowest floors of the starscrapers. Tales of
covert combat operations, of squads that had been hit by superior firepower,
waiting to be evac-ed out of the front line. Their bloody, battered casualties
wound up in places like this, a field hospital triage. It was the latest
development in the saga of the habitat population’s misfortunes. Lately,
studying the parkland had become a form of instant archaeology. Evolving stages
of residence were laid out in concentric circles, plain to see.
In the beginning was the
starscraper lobby, a pleasing rotunda of stone and glass, blending into the
superbly maintained parkland. Then with the arrival of possession, the lobby
had been smashed up during one of the innumerable firefights between Kiera’s
followers and Rubra, and a shanty town had sprung up in a ring around it. Tiny
Tudor cottages had stood next to Arabian tents, which were pitched alongside
shiny Winnebagoes; the richness of imagination on display was splendid. That
was before Valisk departed the universe.
After that, the illusion of
solidity had melted away like pillars of salt in the rain, exposing rickety
shacks assembled from scraps of plastic and metal. They leant together
precariously, one stacked against another to provide a highly dubious
stability. The narrow strips of grass between were reduced to slippery runnels
of mud, often used as open sewers.
So now the survivors of Valisk’s
latest change in fortune had moved again, repelled from the hovels of their
erstwhile possessors, they were simply sprawling uncaringly across the
surrounding grass. They lacked the energy and willpower to do anything else.
Some lay on their backs, some had curled up, some were sitting against trees,
some stumbled about aimlessly. That wasn’t so bad, Tolton thought, after what
they’d been through a period of stupefaction was understandable. It was the
sound which was getting to him. Wails of distress and muffled sobbing mingling
together to poison the air with harrowing dismay. Five thousand people having a
bad dream in unison.
And just like a bad dream, you
couldn’t wake them from it. To begin with, when he’d emerged from his hiding
place, he’d moved from one to another. Offering words of sympathy, a comforting
arm around the shoulder. He’d persisted valiantly for a couple of hours like
that, before finally acknowledging how quite pathetically pointless it all was.
Somehow, they would have to get over the psychological trauma by themselves.
It wasn’t going to be easy, not
with the ghosts as an ever-present reminder of their ordeal. The ex-possessors
were still slinking furtively through the outlying trees of the nearby jungle.
For whatever reason, once they’d been expelled from their host bodies, they
wouldn’t leave. Immediately after Valisk’s strange transformation they had
clung longingly to their victims, following them with perverted devotion as
they crawled about shaking and vomiting in reaction to their release. Then as
people had gradually started to recover their wits and take notice, the anger
had surfaced. It was that massive deluge of communal hatred which had forced
the ghosts to retreat, rather than the shouts of abuse and threats of
vengeance.
They’d fled into the refuge of the
jungle around the parkland, almost bewildered by the response they’d spawned.
But they hadn’t gone far. Tolton could see them thronging out there amid the
funereal trees, their eerie pale radiance casting diaphanous shadows which
twisted fluidly amid the branches and trunks.
But the ghosts never went any
further than the trees. It was as if the greater depths of the darkling habitat
frightened them, too. That was the aspect of this whole affair which worried
Tolton the most.
His own wanderings were almost as
aimless as anyone in the throes of recovery. Like them, he didn’t relish the
idea of venturing through the shanty town, he also considered it prudent not to
fraternise with the ghosts. Though somewhere at the back of his mind was some
ancient piece of folklore about ghosts never actually killing anybody.
Whichever pre-history warlock came up with that prophecy had obviously never
encountered these particular ghosts.
So he kept moving, avoiding
eye-contact, searching for . . . well, he’d know what when he saw it.
Ironically, the thing he missed most was Rubra, and the wealth of knowledge
which came with that contact. But the processor block he’d used to stay in
touch with the habitat personality had crashed as soon as the change happened.
Since then he’d tried using several other blocks. None of them worked, at most
he got a trickle of static. He didn’t have enough (any, actually) technical
knowledge to understand why.
Nor did he understand the change
which the habitat had undergone, only the result, the mass exorcism. He assumed
it had been imposed by some friendly ally. Except Valisk didn’t have any
allies. And Rubra had never dropped any hint that this might happen, not in all
the weeks he’d kept Tolton hidden from the possessed. There was nothing for it
but to keep moving for the delusion of purpose it bestowed, and wait for
developments. Whatever they might be.
“Please.” The woman’s voice was
little more than a whisper, but it was focused enough to make Tolton hesitate
and try to see who was speaking.
“Please, I need some help. Please.”
The speaker was in her late middle-age, huddled up against a tree. He walked
over to her, avoiding a couple of people who were stretched out, almost
comatose, on the grass.
Details were difficult in this
leaden twilight. She was wrapped in a large tartan blanket, clutching it to her
chest like a shawl. Long unkempt hair partially obscured her face, glossy
titian roots contrasted sharply with the dirty faded chestnut of the tresses.
The features glimpsed through the tangle were delicate, a pert button nose and
long cheekbones, implausibly artistic eyebrows. Her skin seemed very tight,
almost stretched, as if to emphasise the curves.
“What’s wrong?” Tolton asked
gently, cursing himself for the stupidity of the question. As he knelt beside
her, the light tube’s meagre nimbus glimmered on the tears dribbling down her
cheeks.
“I hurt,” she said. “Now she’s
gone, I hurt so badly.”
“It’ll go. I promise, time will
wash it away.”
“She slept with hundreds of men,”
the woman cried wretchedly. “Hundreds. Women, too. I felt the heat in her, she
loved it, all of it. That slut, that utter slut. She made my body do things
with those animals. Awful, vile things. Things no decent person would ever do.”
He tried to take one of her hands,
but she snatched it away, turning from him. “It wasn’t you,” he said. “You
didn’t do any of those things.”
“How can you say that? It was done
to me. I felt it all, every minute of it. This is my body. Mine! My flesh and
blood. She took that from me. She soiled me, ruined me. I’m so corrupt I’m not
even human any more.”
“I’m sorry, really I am. But you
have to learn not to think like that. If you do, you’re letting her win. You’ve
got to put that behind you. It’s over, and you’ve won. She’s been exorcised,
she’s nothing but a neurotic wisp of light. That’s all she’ll ever be now. I’d
call that a victory, wouldn’t you?”
“But I hurt,” she persisted. Her
voice dropped to a confessional tone. “How can I forget when I hurt?”
“Look, there are treatments, memory
suppressers, all sorts of cures. Just as soon as we get the power turned back
on, you can . . .”
“Not my mind! Not just that.” She
had begun to plead. “It’s my body, my body which hurts.”
Tolton started to get a very bad
feeling about where the conversation was heading. The woman was shaking persistently,
and he was sure some of the moisture glistening on her face had to be
perspiration. He flicked an edgy glance back at her unnatural roots. “Where,
exactly, does it hurt?”
“My face,” she mumbled. “My face
aches. It’s not me anymore. I couldn’t see me when she looked in a mirror.”
“They all did that, all imagined
themselves to look ridiculously young and pretty. It’s an illusion, that’s
all.”
“No. It became real. I’m not me,
not now. She even took my identity away from me. And . . .” Her voice started
trembling. “My shape. She stole my body, and still that wasn’t enough. Look,
look what she’s done to me.”
Moving so slowly that Tolton wanted
to do it for her, she drew the folds of the blanket apart. For the first time,
he actually wished there was less light. To begin with it looked as though
someone had badly bungled a cosmetic package adaptation. Her breasts were
grossly misshapen. Then he realized that was caused by large bulbs of flesh
clinging to the upper surface like skin-coloured leeches. Each one almost
doubled the size of the breast, the weight pulling them down heavily. The
natural tissue was almost squashed from view.
The worst part of it was, they
obviously weren’t grafts or implants; whatever the tissue was, it had swollen
out of the natural mammary gland. Below them, her abdomen was held anorexically
flat by a broad oval slab of unyielding skin. It was as though she’d developed
a thick callous across the whole area, fake musculature marked out by faint
translucent lines.
“See?” the woman asked, staring
down at her exposed chest in abject misery. “Bigger breasts and a flat belly.
She really wanted bigger breasts. That was her wish. They’d be more useful to
her, more fun, more spectacular. And she could make wishes come true.”
“God preserve us,” Tolton murmured
in horror. He didn’t know much about human illnesses, but there were some
scraps of relevant information flashing up out of his childhood’s basic medical
didactic memories. Cancer tumours. Almost a lost disease. Geneering had made
human bodies massively resistant to the ancient bane. And for the few isolated
instances when it did occur, medical nanonics could penetrate and eradicate the
sick cells within hours.
“I used to be a nurse,” the woman
said, as she ashamedly covered herself with the blanket again. “They’re
runaways. My breasts are the largest growths, but I must have the same kind of
malignant eruptions at every change she instituted.”
“What can I do?” he asked hoarsely.
“I need medical nanonic packages.
Do you know how to program them?”
“No. I don’t even have neural
nanonics. I’m a poet, that’s all.”
“Then, please, find me some. My
neural nanonics aren’t working either, but a processor block might do instead.”
“I . . . Yes, of course.” It would
mean a trip into the lifeless, lightless starscraper to find some, but his
discomfort at that prospect was nothing compared to her suffering. Somehow, he
managed to keep a neutral expression on his face as he stood up, even though he
was pretty certain a medical nanonic package wouldn’t work in this weird
environment. But it might, it just might. And if that slender chance existed,
then he would bring one for her, no matter what.
He cast round the dismal sight of
people strewn about, holding themselves and moaning. The really terrifying
doubt engulfed him then. Suppose the anguish wasn’t all psychological? Every
possessed he’d seen had changed their appearance to some degree. Suppose every
change had borne a malignancy, even a small one.
“Oh fucking hell, Rubra. Where are
you? We need help.”
As always, there was no warning
when the cell door opened. Louise wasn’t even sure when it had swung back. She
was curled up on the bunk, dozing, only semi-aware of her surroundings. Quite
how long she’d been in this state, she didn’t know. Somehow, her time sense had
got all fouled up. She remembered the interview with Brent Roi, his sarcasm and
unconcealed contempt. Then she’d come back here. Then . . . She’d come back
here hours ago. Well, a long time had passed . . . She thought.
I must have fallen asleep.
Which was hard to believe; the
colossal worry of the situation had kept her mind feverishly active.
The usual two female police
officers appeared in the doorway. Louise blinked up at their wavering outlines,
and tried to right herself. Bright lights flashed painfully behind her eyes;
she had to clamp her mouth shut against the sudden burst of nausea.
What is wrong with me?
“Woo there, steady on.” One of the
police officers was sitting on the bed beside her, holding her up.
Louise shook uncontrollably, cold
sweat beading on her skin. Her reaction calmed slightly, though it was still
terribly hard to concentrate.
“One minute,” the woman said. “Let
me reprogram your medical package. Try to take some deeper breaths, okay?”
That was simple enough. She gulped down
some air, her chest juddering. Another couple of breaths. Her rogue body seemed
to be calming. “Wha . . . What?” she panted.
“Anxiety attack,” said the
policewoman. “We see a lot of them in here. That and worse things.”
Louise nodded urgently, an attempt
to convince herself that’s all it was. No big deal. Nothing badly amiss. The
baby’s fine—the medical package would insure that. Just stay calm.
“Okay. I’m okay now. Thank you.”
She proffered a small smile at the police officer, only to be greeted with blank-faced
indifference.
“Let’s go, then,” said the officer
standing by the door.
Louise girded herself, and slowly
stood on slightly unsteady legs. “Where are we going?”
“Parole Office.” She sounded
disgusted.
“Where’s Genevieve? Where’s my
sister?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Come on.”
Louise was almost shoved out into
the corridor. She was improving by the minute, although the headache lingered
longer than anything else. A small patch of skin at the back of her skull
tingled, as if she’d been stung. Her fingers stroked it absently. Anxiety
attack? She hadn’t known there was such a thing before. But given everything
she currently had to think about, such a malaise was more than likely.
They got into a lift which had to
be heading down. The gravity field had risen to almost normal when they got
out. This part of the asteroid was different to the cells and interview rooms
she’d been kept in until now. Definitely government offices, the standardized
furniture and eternally polite personnel with their never-smiling faces were
evidence of that. She took a little cheer from the fact these corridors and
glimpsed rooms weren’t as crushingly bleak as the upper level. Her status had
changed for the better. Slightly.
The police officers showed her into
a room with a narrow window looking out over High York’s biosphere cavern. Not
much to see, it was dawn, or dusk, Louise didn’t know which. The grassland and
trees soaking up the gold-orange light were a brighter, more welcoming green
than the cavern in Phobos. Two curving settees had been set up facing each
other in the middle of the floor, bracketing an oval table. Genevieve slouched
on one of them, hands stuffed into the pockets of her shipsuit, feet swinging
just off the floor, looking out of the window. Her expression was a mongrel
cross between sullen resentment and utter boredom.
“Gen.” Louise’s voice nearly
cracked.
Genevieve raced across the room and
thudded into her. They hugged each other tightly. “They wouldn’t tell me where
you were!” Genevive protested loudly. “They wouldn’t let me see you. They
wouldn’t say what was happening.”
Louise stroked her sister’s hair.
“I’m here now.”
“It’s been forever. Days!”
“No, no. It just seems like that.”
“Days,” Genevieve insisted.
Louise managed a slightly uncertain
smile; wanting for herself the reassurance she was attempting to project. “Have
they been questioning you?”
“Yes,” Genevieve mumbled morosely.
“They kept on and on about what happened in Norwich. I told them a hundred
times.”
“Me too.”
“Everybody must be really stupid on
Earth. They don’t understand anything unless you’ve explained it five times.”
Louise wanted to laugh at the
childish derision in Gen’s voice, pitched just perfectly to infuriate any
adult.
“And they took my games block away.
That’s stealing, that is.”
“I haven’t seen any of my stuff
either.”
“The food’s horrid. I suppose
they’re too thick to cook it properly. And I haven’t had any clean clothes.”
“Well, I’ll see what I can do.”
Brent Roi hurried into the room,
and dismissed the two waiting police officers with a casual wave. “Okay,
ladies, take a seat.”
Louise flashed him a resentful
look.
“Please?” he entreated without
noticeable sincerity.
Holding hands, the sisters sat on
the settee opposite him. “Are we under arrest?” Louise asked.
“No.”
“Then you believe what I told you?”
“To my amazement, I find sections
of your story contain the odd nugget of truth.”
Louise frowned. This attitude was
completely different to the one he’d shown her during the interview. Not that
he was repenting, more like he’d been proved right instead of her.
“So you’ll watch out for Quinn
Dexter?”
“Most assuredly.”
Genevieve shuddered. “I hate him.”
“That’s all that truly matters,”
Louise said. “He must never be allowed to get down to Earth. If you believe me,
then I’ve won.”
Brent Roi shifted uncomfortably.
“Okay, we’ve been trying to decide what to do with the pair of you. Which I can
tell you is not an easy thing, given what you were attempting. You thought you
were doing the right thing, bringing Christian here. But believe me, from the
legal side of things, you are about as wrong as it’s possible to be. The Halo
police commissioner has spent two days being advised by some of our best legal
experts on what the hell to do with you, which hasn’t improved his temper any.
Ordinarily we’d just walk you past a warm judge and fly you off to a penal
colony. There’d be no problem obtaining a guilty verdict.” He gazed at
Genevieve. “Not even your age would get you off.”
Genevieve pushed her shoulders up
against her neck, and glowered at him.
“However, there are mitigating
circumstances, and these are strange times. Lucky for you, that gives the Halo
police force a large amount of discretion right now.”
“So?” Louise asked calmly. For
whatever reason she wasn’t afraid; if they were due to face a trial none of
this would be happening.
“So. Pretty obviously: we don’t
want you up here after what you’ve done; plus you don’t have the basic
technical knowledge necessary to live in an asteroid settlement, which makes
you a liability. Unfortunately, there’s an interstellar quarantine in force
right now, which means we can’t send you off to Tranquillity where your fiancé
can take care of you. That just leaves us with one option: Earth. You have
money, you can afford to stay there for the duration of the crisis.”
Louise glanced at Genevieve, who
squashed her lips together with a dismissive lack of interest.
“I’m not going to object,” Louise
said.
“I couldn’t care less if you did,”
Brent Roi told her. “You have no say in this at all. As well as deporting you,
I am officially issuing you with a police caution. You have engaged in an
illegal act with the potential of endangering High York, and this will be
entered into Govcentral’s criminal data memory store with a suspended action
designation. Should you at any time in the future be found committing another
criminal act of any nature within Govcentral’s domain this case will be
reactivated and used in your prosecution. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” Louise whispered.
“You cause us one more problem, and
they’ll throw you out of the arcology and lock the door behind you.”
“What about Fletcher?” Genevieve
asked.
“What about him?” Brent Roi said.
“Is he coming down to Earth with
us?”
“No, Gen,” Louise said. “He’s not.”
She tried to keep the sorrow from her voice. Fletcher had helped her and Gen
through so much, she still couldn’t think of him as a possessor, one of the
enemy. The last image she had was of him being led out of the big airlock
chamber where they’d been detained. A smile of forlorn encouragement on his
face, directed at her. Even in defeat, he didn’t lose his nobility.
“Your big sister’s right,” Brent
Roi told Genevieve. “Stop thinking about Fletcher.”
“Have you killed him?”
“Tough to do. He’s already dead.”
“Have you?”
“At the moment he’s being very
cooperative. He’s telling us about the beyond, and helping the physics team
understand the nature of his energistic power. Once we’ve learned all we can,
then he’ll be put into zero-tau. End of story.”
“Can we see him before we go?”
Louise asked.
“No.”
The two female police officers
escorted Louise and Genevieve directly up to the counter-rotating spaceport.
They were given a standard class berth on the Scher, an inter-orbit
passenger ship. The interstellar quarantine hadn’t yet bitten into the
prodigious Earth, Halo, Moon economic triad; outsystem exports made up barely
fifteen per cent of their trade. Civil flights between the three were running
close to their usual levels.
They arrived at the departure
lounge twelve minutes before the ship was scheduled to leave. The police
returned their luggage and passports, with Earth immigration clearance loaded
in; they also got their processor blocks back. Finally, they handed Louise her
Jovian Bank credit disk.
Louise had her suspicions that the
whole procedure was deliberately being rushed to keep them off-balance and
complacent. Not that she knew how to kick up a fuss. But there was probably
some part of their treatment which a good lawyer could find fault with. She
didn’t really care. Scher’s life support capsule had the same lengthy
cylindrical layout as the Jamrana, except that every deck was full of
chairs. A sour stewardess showed them brusquely to their seats, strapped them
in, and left to chase other passengers.
“I wanted to change,” Genevieve
complained. She was pulling dubiously at her shipsuit. “I haven’t washed for
ages. It’s all clammy.”
“We’ll be able to change when we
get to the tower station, I expect.”
“Which tower station? Where are we
going?”
“I don’t know.” Louise glanced at
the stewardess, who was chiding an elderly woman’s attempts to fasten her seat
straps. “I think we’ll just have to wait and find out.”
“Then what? What do we do when we
get there?”
“I’m not sure. Let me think for a
minute, all right?”
Louise squirmed her shoulders,
letting her muscles relax. Freefall always made her body tense up as it tried
to assume more natural gravity-evolved postures. Thankfully, the cabin chairs
were almost flat, preventing her from getting stomach twinges.
What to do next hadn’t bothered her
much while she’d been in custody. Convincing Brent Roi about Dexter was her
only concern. Now that had been accomplished, or seemed to be. She still
couldn’t quite believe he had taken her warnings particularly seriously; they’d
been released far too quickly for that. Dismissed, almost.
The authorities had Fletcher in
custody, and he was cooperating with them about possession. That was their true
prize, she thought. They were confident their security procedures would spot
Dexter. She wasn’t. Not at all. And she’d made one solemn promise to Fletcher,
which covered exactly this situation.
If I can’t help him physically, at
least I can honour my promise. If our positions were reversed, he would.
Banneth, I said I’d find and warn Banneth. Yes. And I will. The sudden
resolution did a lot to warm her again.
Then she was aware of a strangely
rhythmic buzzing sound, and blinked her eyes open. Genevieve had activated her
processor block; its AV projector lens was shining a conical fan of light
directly on her face. Frayed serpents of pastel colour stroked her cheeks and
nose, glistening on a mouth parted in an enraptured smile. Her fingers skated
with fast dextrous motions over the block’s surface, sketching eccentric
ideograms.
I’m really going to have to do
something about this obsession, Louise thought, it can’t be healthy.
The stewardess was shouting at a
man cradling a crying child. Tackling Gen was probably best delayed until they
reached Earth.
It wasn’t rugged determination, or
even victorious self-confidence which brought him back. Instead, came the slow,
dreadful comprehension that this awful limbo wouldn’t end if he did nothing.
Dariat’s thoughts hung amid vast
clusters of soil molecules, membranous twists of nebula dust webbing the space
between stars, insipid, enervated. Completely unable to evaporate, to fade away
into blissful non-existence. Instead, they hummed with chilly misery as they
conducted pain-soaked memories round and around on a never ending circuit,
humiliation and fear undimmed by time and repetition.
Worse than the beyond. At least in
the beyond, there were other souls, memories you could raid to bring an echo of
sensation. Here there was only yourself; a soul buried alive. Nothing to
comfort you but your own life. Screaming from the pain of the blows which battered
him down might have stopped, but the internal scream of self-loathing could
never cease. Not incarcerated here. He didn’t want to go back, not to the dimly
sensed light and air above, the vicious brutality of the ghosts waiting there.
Every time he emerged, they would pummel him down again. That was what all of
them wanted. He would go through the same suffering again and again. Yet he
couldn’t stay here, either.
Dariat moved. He thought of
himself, visualised pushing his bulky body up through the soil, as if he was
doing some kind of appalling fitness-fad exercise. It wasn’t anything like that
easy. Imagination couldn’t power him as before. Something had happened to him,
weakening him. The vitality he owned, even as a ghost, had been leeched out by
the matter with which he was entwined.
Fantasy muscles trembled as he
strained. Finally, along his back, sensation was returning in a paltry trickle.
A warmth, but not on his skin. Inside, just below the surface.
It inspired greed, a hunger for
more. Nothing else mattered, the warmth was revitalising, a font of life. It
lent to his strength, and he began to rise faster through the soil, sucking in
more warmth as he went. Soon, his face cleared the ground, and he was moving at
an almost normal speed. Extricating himself from the soil meant discovering
just how cold he was. Dariat stood up, teeth chattering, arms crossed over his
chest, hugging tight as his hands tried to rub some heat into icy flesh. Only
his feet were warm, though that was a relative term.
The grass around his sandals was a
sickly yellow-brown, dead and drooping. Each blade was covered in a delicate
sprinkle of hoarfrost. They made up a roughly oval patch about two metres long.
Body-shaped, in fact. He stared at it, completely bewildered.
Damn, I’m cold!
Dariat? That you, boy?
Yes, it’s me. One question—he didn’t really want to ask, but
had to know. How long was I . . . out for?
It’s been seventeen hours.
Seventeen years was a figure he
could have believed in quite easily. Is that all?
Yes. What happened?
They beat me into the ground.
Literally. It was . . . Bad. Real bad.
Then why didn’t you come out
earlier?
You won’t understand.
Did you kill the grass?
I don’t know. I suppose so.
How? We thought you didn’t
interact with solid matter.
Don’t ask me. There was a kind
of warmth as I came out. Or maybe it was just hatred which killed the grass,
concentrated hatred. That’s what they were giving off; Thoale be damned, but
they hated me. I’m cold now. He
scanned round, searching through the tree trunks for any sign of the other
ghosts. After a moment, he walked away from the patch of dead grass, spooked by
the place. The opposite of consecrated ground.
Movement felt good, it was making
his legs warm up. When he glanced down, he saw a line of frosted footsteps in
the grass trailing back to the burial patch. But he was definitely getting
warmer. He started walking again, a meagre lick of heat seeping up from his
legs to his torso. It would take a long time to dispel the chill, but he was
sure it would happen eventually.
The starscraper is the other
way, the personality said.
I know. That’s why I’m going
back to the valley. I’ll be safe there.
For a while.
I’m not risking another
encounter.
You have to. Look, forewarned is
forearmed. Just take it carefully. If you see any ghosts waiting ahead of you,
go around them.
I’m not doing it.
You have to. Our internal status
is still decaying. We must have those descendants out of zero-tau. What good
will a dead habitat do you? You know they’re the only chance of salvation any
of us have. You know that. You just showed us how bad entombment here is; that
could become permanent if we don’t get clear.
Shit! He stopped, standing with his fists clenched.
Tendrils of frost slithered out from under his soles to wilt the grass.
It’s common sense, Dariat. You
won’t be giving in to Rubra just by agreeing.
That’s not—
Ha. Remember what we are.
All right! Bastards. Where’s
Tolton?
Tolton had found the lightstick in
an emergency equipment locker in the starscraper’s lobby. It gave out a
lustreless purple-tinged glow, and that emerged at a pitiful percentage of its
designated output wattage. But after forty minutes, his eyes had acclimatised
well. Navigating down through the interior of the starscraper posed few
physical problems. Resolution, however, was a different matter. In his other
hand he carried a fire axe from the same locker as the lightstick, it hardly
inspired confidence.
Beyond the bubble of radiance which
enveloped him, it was very dark indeed. And silent with it. No light shone in
through any of the windows; there wasn’t even a dripping tap to break the
monotony of his timorous footsteps. Three times since he’d been down here, the
electrophorescent cells had burst into life. Some arcane random surge of power
sending shoals of photons skidding along the vestibules and stairwells. The
first time it happened, he’d been petrified. The zips of light appeared from
nowhere, racing towards him at high speed. By the time he yelled out and
started to cower down, they were already gone, behind him and vanishing round
some corner. He didn’t react much better the next two times, either.
He told himself that he should be
relieved that some aspect of Rubra and the habitat was still functioning,
however erratically. It wasn’t much reassurance; that the stars had vanished
from view had been a profound shock. He’d already decided he wasn’t going to
share that knowledge with the other residents for a while. What he couldn’t
understand was, where were they? His panicky mind was constantly filling the
blank space outside the windows with dreadful imaginings. It wasn’t much of a
leap to have whatever skulked outside getting in to glide among the opaque
shadows of the empty starscraper. Grouping together and conspiring, flowing
after him.
The muscle membrane door at the
bottom of the stairwell was partially expanded, its edges trembling slightly.
He cautiously stuck the lightstick through the gap, and peered round at the
fifth floor vestibule. The high ceilings and broad curving archways that were the
mise-en-scène of Valisk’s starscrapers had always seemed fairly illustrious
before; bitek’s inalienable majesty. That was back when they were bathed in
light and warmth twenty-four hours a day. Now they clustered threateningly
round the small area of illumination he projected, swaying with every slight
motion of the lightstick.
Tolton waited for a moment, nerving
himself to step out. This floor was mainly taken up by commercial offices. Most
of the mechanical doorways had frozen shut. He walked along, reading the
plaques on each one. The eighth belonged to an osteopath specialising in sports
injuries. There ought to be some kind of medical nanonics inside. The emergency
lock panel was on the top of the frame. He broke it open with the blunt end of
the axe, exposing the handle inside. Now the power was off, or at least
disabled, the electronic bolts had disengaged. A couple of turns on the handle
released the lock entirely, and he prised the door open.
Typical waiting room: not quite
expensive chairs, soft drinks dispenser, reproduction artwork, and lush potted
plants. The large circular window looked out at nothing, a black mirror. Tolton
saw his own reflection staring back, with a fat man in a grubby robe standing
behind him. He yelped in shock, and dropped the lightstick. Flat planes of
light and shadow lurched around him. He turned, raising the axe up ready to
swipe down on his adversary. Almost overbalancing from the wild motion.
The fat man was waving his arms
frantically, shouting. Tolton could hear nothing more than a gentle murmur of
air. He gripped the axe tightly as it wobbled about over his head, ready for
the slightest sign of antagonism. None came. In fact, there probably couldn’t
ever be any. Tolton could just see the door through the fat man. A ghost. That
didn’t make him any happier.
The ghost had put his hands on his
hips, face screwed up in some exasperation. He was saying something slowly and
loudly, an adult talking to an idiot child. Again, there was that bantam
ruffling of air. Tolton frowned; it corresponded to the movements of the fat
ghost’s jaw.
In the end, communication became a
derivative of lip reading. There was never quite enough sound (if that’s what
it truly was) to form whole words, rather the faint syllables clued him in.
“Your axe is the wrong way round.”
“Uh.” Tolton glanced up. The blade
was pointing backwards. He shifted it round, then sheepishly lowered it. “Who
are you?”
“My name’s Dariat.”
“You’re wasting your time following
me, you can’t possess me.”
“I don’t want to. I’m here to give
you a message.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. The habitat personality wants
you to switch off some zero-tau pods.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“We’re in affinity contact.”
“But you’re a . . .”
“Ghost. Yes, I had noticed.
Although I think a revenant is a term more applicable in my case.”
“A what?”
“The personality never warned me
you were this stupid.”
“I am not . . .” Tolton’s outrage
spluttered to a halt. He started to laugh.
Dariat gave the alleged street poet
a mildly annoyed glare. “Now what?”
“I’ve had some weird shit dumped on
me in my time, but I think arguing with a ghost over my IQ has got to be the
greatest.”
Dariat felt his lips move up in a
grin. “Got a point there.”
“Thank you, my man.”
“So, are you going to help?”
“Of course. Will turning off the
pods be of any use?”
“Yeah. That mad bitch Kiera was
holding a whole load of my illustrious relatives in stasis. They should be able
to get things up and running again.”
“Then we can get out of . . .”
Tolton took another look at the window. “Where are we, exactly?”
“I’m not sure you can call this a
place, more like a different state of being. It exists to be hostile to the
possessed. Unfortunately, there are a few unexpected side effects.”
“You sound as though you’re talking
from a position of knowledge; which I frankly find hard to believe.”
“I played a part in bringing us
here,” Dariat admitted. “I’m not completely sure of the details, though.”
“I see. Well, we’d better get
started, then.” He picked up the lightstick. “Ah, wait. I promised a woman I’d
try and find some medical nanonic packages for her. She really does need them.”
“There’s some in the osteopath’s
storage cabinet, through there.” Dariat pointed.
“You really are in touch with
Rubra, aren’t you.”
“He’s changed a bit, but, yes.”
“Then I’m curious. Why did the two
of you choose me for this task?”
“His decision. But most of the
other corporeal residents got whacked out when they were de-possessed. You saw
them up in the park. They’re no good for anything right now. You’re the best
we’ve got left.”
“Oh, bloody hell.”
When they emerged up into the
decrepit lobby, Tolton sat down and tried to get a processor block to work.
He’d never had a didactic memory imprint covering their operations and program
parameters. Never needed one; all he used them for was recording and playing AV
fleks, and communications, plus a few simple commands for medical nanonics
(mainly concerned with morning-after blood detoxification).
Dariat started to advise on how to
alter the operating program format, essentially dumbing down the unit. Even he
had to consult with the personality about which subroutines to delete. Between
the three of them, it took twenty minutes to get the little unit on line with a
reliable performance level.
Another fifteen minutes of running
diagnostics (far slower than usual), and they knew what medical nanonics could
achieve in such an antagonistic environment. It wasn’t good news; the filaments
which wove into and manipulated human flesh were sophisticated molecular
strings, with correspondingly high-order management routines. They could bond
the lips of wounds together, and infuse doses of stored biochemicals. But
fighting a tumour by eliminating individual cancer cells was no longer
possible.
We can’t waste any more time on
this, the personality
protested.
Tolton was hunched up over the
block. Dariat waved a hand under his face—the only way to catch his attention.
Out here in the park the poet found it even harder to hear him; though Dariat
suspected his “voice” was actually some kind of weak telepathy.
“It’ll have to do,” Dariat said.
Tolton frowned down once again at
the horribly confusing mass of icons eddying across the block’s screen. “Will
they be able to cure her?”
“No. The tumours can’t be reversed,
but the packages should be able to contain them until we get back to the real
universe.”
“All right. I suppose that’ll do.”
Dariat managed to feel mildly
guilty at the sadness in Tolton’s voice. The way the street poet could become
so anxious and devoted to a stranger he’d only spent five minutes with was
touching.
They walked through the moat of
decaying shacks and into the surrounding ring of human misery. The loathing
directed at Dariat by those that saw him was profound enough to sting. He, a
creature now purely of thought, was buffeted by the emanation of raw emotion;
his own substance refined against him. It wasn’t as strong as the blows
inflicted by his fellow ghosts, but the cumulative effect was disturbingly
debilitating. When he’d sneaked into the lobby he hadn’t attracted such attention,
a few glances of sullen resentment at most. But then, he realized, he was still
suffering from the effects of the entombment, he’d been weaker, less
substantial.
Now, the jeering and catcalls which
chased him were building to a crescendo as more and more people realized what
the commotion was about and joined in. He started staggering about, groaning at
the pain.
“What is it?” Tolton asked.
Dariat shook his head. There was
real fear building in him now. If he stumbled and fell here, victim to this wave
of hatred, he might never be able to surface from the soil again. At every
attempt he would be pressed back by the throng of people above him, dancing on
his living grave.
“Going,” he grunted. “Got to go.”
He pressed his hands over his ears (fat lot of good that it did) and tottered
as fast as he could out towards the shadowy trees beyond. “I’ll wait for you.
Come when you’ve finished.”
Tolton watched in dismay as the
ghost scurried away; becoming all too aware of the animosity which was now
focusing on him. Head down, he hurried away in the direction he thought he’d
left the woman.
She was still there, propped up
against the tree. Dull eyes looked up at him, suffused with dread, hope denied.
It was the only part of her which betrayed any emotion. Her stretched-tight
face seemed incapable of displaying the slightest expression. “What was the
noise about?” she mumbled.
“I think there was a ghost around
here.”
“Did they kill it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think you
can kill ghosts.”
“Holy water. Use holy water.”
Tolton knelt down, and gently eased her clutching hands from the blanket. This
time when it parted he was determined not to grimace. It was hard. He placed
the nanonic medical packages on her breasts and belly the way Dariat had said,
and used the block to activate the pre-loaded programs. The packages stirred
slightly as they started to knit with her skin.
She let out a soft sigh, embodying
both relief and happiness.
“It’ll be all right,” he told her.
“They’ll stop the cancer now.”
Her eyes had closed. “I don’t
believe you. But it’s nice of you to say it.”
“I mean it.”
“Holy water; that’ll burn the
bastards.”
“I’ll remember.”
Tolton found Dariat skulking among
the fringes of the trees. The ghost couldn’t keep still, nervously searching
round for signs of anyone approaching.
“Don’t fret, man. The others don’t
care about you so long as you stay away from them.”
“I intend to,” Dariat grumbled.
“Come on, we’ve got a way to go.”
He started walking.
Tolton shrugged, and started after
him.
“How was the woman?” Dariat asked.
“Perky. She wanted to sprinkle you
with holy water.”
“Silly cow,” he snorted with
derisive amusement. “That’s for vampires.”
Kiera had decreed that the zero-tau
pods should be put in the deep chambers around the base of the northern endcap.
The polyp in that section was a honeycomb of caverns and tunnels; the chambers
used almost exclusively by the astronautics industry to support the docking
ledge infrastructure. Stores, workshops, and fabrication plants all dedicated
to supplying Magellanic Itg’s blackhawk fleet. It was a logical place to use.
The equipment was already close to hand. There wasn’t as much danger from
Rubra’s insurgency in the big, unsophisticated caverns as there was in the
starscrapers. And if they wanted them set up anywhere else, they’d be facing a
troublesome relocation job.
As soon as Dariat told him where
the zero-tau pods were, Tolton tried to use one of the rentcop jeeps abandoned
around the starscraper lobby. It crawled along barely at walking pace. Stopped.
Started. Crawled some more. Stopped.
They walked the whole way to the
base of the northern endcap. Several times during the day Tolton caught Dariat
studying the path behind them, and asked what he was trying to see.
“Footprints,” the fat ghost
replied.
Tolton decided that after what he’d
been through, Dariat was entitled to a reasonable degree of neurotic paranoia.
The lightstick grew steadily brighter as they ventured into the cavern levels.
Indicator lights began winking on some chunks of machinery. After a while, when
they were deep inside the habitat shell, the electrophorescent strips were
glowing; not as bright as before, but they remained steady.
Tolton switched the lightstick off.
“You know, I even feel better down here.”
Dariat didn’t answer. He was aware
of the difference himself. An atmosphere reminiscent of those heady days thirty
years ago, endless bright summer days when being alive was such a blessing. The
personality was right, the otherworldliness of this continuum hadn’t fully
penetrated down here. Things worked as they were supposed to.
We might manage to salvage
something from this yet.
They found the zero-tau pods in a
lengthy cavern. At some time, there had been machinery or shelving pinned to
the wall; small metal brackets still protruded from the dark-amber polyp. Deep
scratches told of their recent, hurried removal. Now the cavern was empty
except for the row of interstellar-black sarcophagi running the length of the
floor. Each of them had been taken from a blackhawk, the crudely severed fittings
were proof of that. Thick cables had been grafted on to the interface panels,
wiring them into clumps of spherical high-density power cells.
“Where do I start?” Tolton asked.
The processor block he was carrying
bleeped before Dariat could begin the usual prolonged process of exaggerated
enunciation. “It doesn’t matter. Pick one.”
“Hey,” Tolton grinned. “You’re
back.”
“Rumours of my demise have been
greatly exaggerated.”
Oh, please, Dariat said.
What’s the matter with you?
We’re back on track. Rejoice.
Dariat was abruptly party to a
resurgence of optimism, the sense of a hibernating animal approaching winter’s
end. Holding his scepticism in check, he watched Tolton go over to the closest
zero-tau pod. The personality issued a couple of simple instructions, and
Tolton pecked at a keyboard.
Erentz completed her cower as the
scene above her switched. One instant a Chinese warlord with a cruel smile,
promising that the next thing she would know was the torture leading up to
possession, the next a moderately overweight, wide-eyed man with a good ten
days’ worth of grubby stubble was peering anxiously down at her. The light was
dimmer, too. The wail which she’d started before the pod was activated,
continued, rising in pitch.
It’s all right. Calm yourself.
Erentz paused, gathering her
breath. Rubra? The mental voice which had chivvied her along since
before she could remember felt different slightly.
Almost. But don’t worry. The
possessed have gone. You’re safe.
There was a background emotion
which sparked a small doubt. But the obvious apprehension and concern of the
man staring down at her was a strange, fast-acting tonic. He definitely wasn’t
possessed.
“Hello,” Tolton said, desperate for
some kind of response from the startled young woman.
She nodded slowly, and raised
herself gingerly into a sitting position. It didn’t help that the first thing
she saw was Dariat hanging back by the cavern entrance. She emitted a
frightened gasp.
I’m on your side, Dariat told her, earning a twitchy laugh in
response.
What is happening here? she demanded.
The personality began to fill her
in. Acceptance of her new situation came amid a rush of relief. Erentz, like
all the others released from zero-tau, relied on Rubra to provide a substantial
part of their confidence. That he was the one who’d beaten the possessed was a
heady boost for them. Fifteen minutes saw the last of the zero-tau pods
deactivated. Dariat and Tolton were sidelined to slightly peeved observers as
the brigade of Rubra’s descendants quickly and efficiently set about releasing
their cousins. After that, when they’d come down off the hype, the habitat
personality began marshalling them into groups and giving them assignments.
First priority was given to
igniting the various fusion generators dotted about the spaceport. They made
two attempts to initiate fusion, both of which failed. Microfusion generators,
they soon found, worked well in the deep caverns; so they began the arduous
process of manoeuvring starship auxiliary tokamaks through the spaceport and
down the endcap. When the first one came on-line operating at thirty-eight per
cent efficiency, they knew they really did stand a chance.
Schedules were drawn up to install
another dozen in the caverns, feeding their energy into the habitat’s organic
conductors. After two days’ unstinting effort, the light-tube began to blaze
with early-morning intensity. Noonday brightness was beyond them, but the
resumption of near-normal light provided a huge psychological kick for every
resident (curiously, that also included the ostracised ghosts). In tandem, the
habitat’s huge organs began to function again, ingesting and revitalising the
myriad fluids and gases utilised within the polyp.
Confidence guaranteed, the
personality and its team set about investigating their continuum. Equipment was
ransacked from physics labs and Magellanic Itg research centres, and taken down
to the caverns where it was powered up. Crude space probes were prepared from
the MSVs, sprouting simple sensor arrays. Outside that hot hive core of
activity, the rest of the residents slowly began to gather themselves together
mentally and physically. Although that promised to be possibly the longest
journey of all.
But after a week, Valisk had
regained a considerable amount of its most desired commodity: hope.
There was a broad grin smeared
across Joshua’s face during the entire approach manoeuvre; sometimes it came
from admiration, sometimes plain affection. He knew he must look utterly dopy.
Simply didn’t care. Lady Mac’s external sensor array was feeding his
neural nanonics a panoramic view of Jupiter’s snarled pink and white
cloudscape. Tranquillity formed a sharp midnight-black silhouette sailing
across the storms.
The massive habitat looked
completely undamaged; although its counter-rotating spaceport was darker than
usual. The docking bays, normally the focus of frantic time-pressure
maintenance efforts, were shut down and lightless, leaving the curving ebony
hulls of Adamist starships half-hidden in their eclipsed metal craters. Only
the navigation and warning strobes were still flashing indomitably around the
edges of the big silver-white disc.
“It’s really here,” Ashly said in a
stunned voice from across the bridge. “That’s, that’s . . .”
“Outrageous?” Beaulieu suggested.
“Damn right it is,” Dhabi said.
“Nothing that big can be a starship. Nothing.”
Sarha laughed quietly. “Face it,
people; we’re living in interesting times.”
Joshua was glad that the Mzu, her
compatriots, and the agency operatives were all down in capsule D’s lounge.
After everything they’d been through, for the crew to show such bewilderment
now was almost an admission of weakness, as if they couldn’t cope with the
rigours of starflight after all.
Jovian flight management authority
datavised their final approach vector, and Joshua reduced the fusion drives to
a third of a gee as they crossed the invisible boundary where Tranquillity’s
traffic control centre took over guidance responsibility. Their escort of five
voidhawks matched the manoeuvre with consummate elegance; unwilling to show anything
other than perfection to Lagrange Calvert, a tribute to the modest debt Edenism
owed him for Aethra.
If only they knew, Samuel said. They’d be flying parabolas of
joy.
The Jovian sub-Consensus which
dealt with classified security matters acknowledged the sentiment with an
ironic frisson. Given our culture’s fundamental nature, the restriction of
knowledge is always a curious paradox to us, it said. However, in the
case of the Alchemist, it is fully justified. Every Edenist does not need to
know specific details, hence the requirement for my existence. And your job.
Ah yes, my job.
You are tired of it.
Very. As soon as the Lady Macbeth had emerged
above Jupiter, Samuel had been conversing with the security sub-Consensus. It
was the reason there had been relatively little fuss made about their arrival.
First Admiral Aleksandrovich’s decision had quickly been accepted by Consensus
and Tranquillity.
After that, Samuel had immersed his
mentality with Consensus, allowing his worries and tension to dissipate among
his fellows. Sympathy for Edenists was so much more than a simple expression of
compassion; with affinity he could feel it reaching into his mind, warmth and
light dispelling the accumulation of icy shadows that were fear’s legacy. No
longer alone. Floating in a buoyant sea of welcome understanding. His thoughts
began to flow in more regular patterns, and with that state achieved his body
quietened. A sense of wellbeing claimed him; sharing himself with Consensus,
entwined with the billions living contentedly above Jupiter, sporting with the
voidhawks, he became whole again.
Yet this is the time we need you
most, sub-Consensus replied. You
have proved how valuable you are. Your skills are essential to this crisis.
I know. And if I’m needed for
another assignment, I’ll go. But I think after this, it’s time I found a new
career. Fifty-eight years of one thing is enough, even for a low-stress job.
We understand. There is no
immediate field assignment awaiting you. We would like you to resume the
observation of Dr Mzu for the time being.
I think that’s a formality now.
Yes. But it will help to have
you there in person. You have proved your worth to Monica Foulkes, she trusts
you, and it is her report that will influence the Duke more than anything, and
through him, the King. In this affair we must reassure the Kingdom we are
playing fair.
Of course. Our alliance is a
remarkable achievement, even in these circumstances.
Quite.
I’ll stay with Mzu.
Thank you.
Samuel used his affinity to stay in
communication with the voidhawk escort, so he could borrow the image of Jupiter
from their sensor blisters. It was a much more satisfying view than the AV
projection of Lady Macbeth’s sensor array. He watched their approach to
Tranquillity, awed by the giant habitat, and not a little disconcerted by its
star-jumping capability. It was so strange seeing it here, a familiar place, in
a familiar location; but the two didn’t belong together. He smiled at his own
discomfort.
“You look happy,” Monica said
gruffly.
They had taken acceleration couches
slightly apart from Mzu and the Beezling survivors; the two groups still
not quite trusting each other. During the flight they’d been formal and polite,
nothing more.
Samuel waved at the lounge’s AV
pillar with its moiré sparkle, which was also showing the approach. “I rather
like the idea of thwarting Capone in such a fashion. A habitat that can perform
a swallow manoeuvre! Who’d have thought it? Well, a Saldana did, obviously. I
doubt many others would.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Monica said.
“You were happy the moment we arrived here, and you’ve been getting happier
ever since. I’ve been watching you.”
“Coming home is always comforting.”
“It’s more than that, it’s like
you’ve mellowed out.”
“I have. Communion with my people
and Consensus always does that. It’s a valuable psychological relief. I don’t
relish being apart from it for so long.”
“Oh God, here we go again, more
propaganda.”
Samuel laughed. They might not have
affinity, but he knew her well enough by now that it almost didn’t make any
difference. A pleasant revelation when dealing with an Adamist, let alone an
ESA operative. “I’m not trying to convert you, I’m just saying it’s good for
me. As you noticed.”
Monica grunted. “You ask me, it’s a
weakness. You’re dependent, and that can’t be good in our profession. People
should be capable of acting by themselves without any hang ups. If I get wound
up, I just run a stim program.”
“Ah yes, the natural human method
of dealing with stress.”
“No worse than yours. Faster and
cleaner, too.”
“There are many ways of being
human.”
Monica stole a glance over at Mzu
and Adul, still resentful at what they’d all been through. “Inhuman, as well.”
“I think she’s realized her folly.
That’s good. It’s a sign of maturity to learn from one’s mistakes, especially
after living with them for so long. She may yet make a positive contribution to
our society.”
“Maybe. But as far as I’m
concerned, she’ll need watching till the day she dies. And even then I’d be
none too sure, she’s that tricky. I still think the First Admiral was wrong, we
should have zero-taued the lot of them.”
“Well rest easy; I’ve already told
Consensus I’ll continue watching over her. I’m too old and jaded for another
active assignment. Once this crisis is concluded I’ll move on to something else.
I always rather fancied wine growing; fine wine, of course. The kind of vintage
that would satisfy the real oenophile. After all, I’ve tasted enough rubbish
while I’ve travelled round the Confederation. Some of our habitats have superb
vineyards, you know.”
Monica gave him a single surprised
look, then snorted in amusement. “Exactly who are you trying to fool?”
It certainly wasn’t a hero’s
welcome. Only Collins bothered to report that the Lady Macbeth had
docked, and they did it in a tone which suggested Joshua was slinking back
home.
Five serjeants greeted Mzu and the Beezling
survivors, escorting them to their new quarters. They weren’t under arrest,
Tranquillity explained, speaking through the constructs; but it laid down the
guidelines for their residence quite austerely. A few friends were waiting for
the crew in the bay’s reception compartment. Dahybi and Beaulieu vanished off
with them, heading for a bar. Sarha and Ashly took a commuter lift together.
Two deputy managers from the Pringle Hotel greeted Shea and Kole, ushering them
away to their rooms.
That left Joshua with Liol to take
care of. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do about that. They were still
orbiting round each other, though it was a closer orbit now. A hotel was out,
too cold, Liol was family after all. He just wished they’d managed to sort out
the problem of Lady Mac and Liol’s gung-ho claim. Though his brother had
definitely become more conciliatory as the flight progressed. A good sign. It
looked as though Liol would have to share his apartment. Well, at least he’d
understand bachelor mess.
But as soon as Joshua air-swam out
from their airlock tube, Ione was in front of him, toes pressed with ballerina
grace on the compartment’s stikpad. Doubts about Liol vanished. She was wearing
a simple maroon polka-dot summer dress, ruffed gold-blond hair floating
daintily. It made her seem girlish and elegant all at once. The sight of her
like that summoned up memories warmer than any neural nanonics catalogued
recollections could ever be.
She grinned knavishly, and held out
both hands. Joshua caught hold and let her gently secure him. They kissed, a
tingle lost somewhere between just good friends and old lovers. “Well done,”
she whispered.
“Thanks, I . . .” He frowned when
he saw who was waiting behind her. Dominique: dressed in a tight sleeveless
black leather T-shirt that was tucked into white sports shorts. All curves and
blatant athleticism. As overt as Ione was demure.
“Joshua, darling!” Dominique
squealed happily. “My God, you look so divine in a shipsuit. So well packaged.
What can those naughty designers have been thinking of?”
“Er, hello, Dominique.”
“Hello?” She pouted with tragic
disappointment. “Come here, gorgeous.”
Arms that were disproportionately
strong wrapped round him. Wide lips descended happily, a tongue wriggling into
his mouth. Hair and pheromones tickled his nose, making him want to sneeze.
He was too embarrassed to resist.
Then she stiffened suddenly. “Oh wow, there’s two of you.”
The embrace was broken. Dominique
stared hungrily behind him, long fronds of blond hair writhing about.
“Um, this is my brother,” Joshua
mumbled.
Liol gave her a languid grin, and
bowed. It was a good manoeuvre considering he wasn’t anchored to a stikpad.
“Liol Calvert, Josh’s bigger brother.”
“Bigger.” Dominique’s eyes
reflected slivers of light like coquettish diamonds.
In some way he couldn’t quite work
out, Joshua was no longer between the two of them.
“Welcome to Tranquillity,”
Dominique purred.
Liol took a hand gently and kissed
her knuckles. “Nice to be here. It looks spectacular so far.”
A small groan of dismay rumbled up
from Joshua’s throat.
“There’s plenty more to see, and it
gets a whole lot better.” Dominique’s voice became so husky it was almost bass.
“If you want to risk it, that is.”
“I’m just a simple boy from a
provincial asteroid; of course I’m looking forward to the delights of the big
bad habitat.”
“Oh, we have several bad things
you’ll never find in your asteroid.”
“I can believe it.”
She crooked a finger in front of
his nose. “This way.”
The two of them levitated out of
the hatch together.
“Humm.” Ione smiled with sly
contentment. “Eight seconds total; that’s pretty fast even for Dominique.”
Joshua looked back from the hatch
to her amused blue eyes. He realized they were alone. “Oh, very neat,” he
remarked admiringly.
“Let’s just say, I had a
premonition they might hit it off.”
“She’ll eat him alive. You know
that, don’t you?”
“You never complained.”
“How did you know about him?”
“While you were on your approach
flight I was busy assimilating memories from the serjeants. The two that are
left, anyway. You had a hell of a time.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll do all right, you and Liol.
Just a bit too similar for comfort at the start, that’s all.”
“Could be.” He squirmed
uncomfortably.
She rested a hand on each shoulder,
smiling softly. “But not identical.”
There was nothing much said while
they rode the commuter lift down the spaceport spindle. Just looks and smiles.
Shared knowledge of what was to come when they got back to her apartment. Coming
from shared relief that they’d both survived, and maybe wanting a return to
times past for the reassurance that would bring. It wouldn’t be the same, but
it would still be familiar. It wasn’t until they got into a tube carriage that
they kissed properly. Joshua reached up to stroke her cheek.
“Your hand,” she exclaimed. A whole
rush of noxious memories were bubbling forth: the corridor in Ayacucho, Joshua
on all fours in the slush, his hand blackened and charred, the two girls
clinging together, whimpering, and the furious arab snarling then horrified as
the serjeant opened fire. The roar of bullets and stink of hot blood. Not a
sensevise she’d accessed, remote and vaguely unreal; she’d been a genuine
witness to the actual event and always would be.
Joshua took his hand away from her
face as she gave it a concerned look. A medical nanonic package had formed a
thin glove to cover his fingers and palm. “I’m okay. The navy medics matched
and grafted some muscle tissue; they’ve had a lot of practice with this kind of
injury. It’ll be okay in another week.”
“Good.” She kissed the tip of his
nose.
“You’re worried about a couple of
fingers; I was scared shitless about Tranquillity. Jesus, Ione, you’ve no idea
what it was like finding you gone. I thought you’d been possessed just like
Valisk.”
Her broad freckled face crinkled
with mild bafflement. “Humm, interesting. I get surprised by other people being
surprised. All right, it could have been possession. But you of all people
should have worked it out. I as good as told you.”
“When?”
“The very first night we met. I
said that grandfather Michael believed that we would eventually encounter
whatever the Laymil had come up against. Of course, back then everyone thought
it was an external threat, which was a reasonable enough assumption.
Unfortunately, that also meant that Tranquillity was likely to be the first to
confront it. Either we’d find it among the Ruin Ring, or it would return to
Mirchusko, the last place it had visited. Grandfather knew we probably wouldn’t
be able to beat it with conventional weapons, he hoped we’d discover what it
was so we could develop some kind of defence in time. But just in case . . .”
“He wanted to be able to run,”
Joshua concluded.
“Yes. So he ordered a modification
to the habitat’s genome.”
“And nobody realized? Jesus.”
“Why should they? There’s a ring of
energy patterning cells around the shell, at the end of the circumfluous sea.
If you look at the habitat from the outside, the ridge containing the water is
actually a kilometre wider than the sea itself. But who’s going to measure?”
“Hidden in plain view.”
“Quite. Michael didn’t see any
reason to advertise the fact. Our royal cousins know . . . I assume, anyway.
The files are stored in the Apollo Palace archives. It gives us the ability to
jump away from trouble, a long way away. I chose Jupiter this time, because we
considered Jupiter safe. But ultimately Tranquillity could jump across the
galaxy in thousand light-year swallows, and the possessed would never be able
to follow us. And if the crisis gets that bad, I’ll do it.”
“Now I get it. That’s how you knew
the Udat’s wormhole vector.”
“Yes.”
When the tube carriage arrived at
Ione’s apartment Joshua was feeling comfort as much as excitement. Neither of
them took the lead, asking or pressing the other, they simply went to the
bedroom because it was what the moment had ordained. They both slipped out of
their clothes, admiring each other. Almost dreamily, Joshua tasted her breasts
again, regretting how long it had been. Both of them showed off the old skills,
knowing precisely what to do to each other’s flesh to invigorate and arouse.
Only once, when she knelt in front
of him, did Ione speak. “Don’t use your nanonics,” she whispered. Her tongue
licked along his cock, teeth closing delicately on one ball. “Not this time.
This should be natural.”
He agreed, complying, making the
encounter raw, and relishing every second of their performance. It was new. The
big jelly-mattress bed was the same, so were the positions they accomplished.
This time, though, they had honesty, openly celebrating the physical power they
exerted over each other. It was as emotionally satisfying as it was sensually
rewarding.
Afterwards they spent the night
sleeping in each other’s arms, snuggled up like childhood siblings. The
loitering contentment made breakfast a civilized meal. They wrapped themselves
in huge house robes to sit at a big old oak table in a room mocked up to
resemble a conservatory. Palms, ferns, and delecostas grew out of moss-coated
clay pots, their multiplying stems interlaced with broad iron trellises to
produce verdant walls. The illusion was almost perfect but for the small
neon-bright fish swimming past on the other side of the glass.
House chimps served them scrambled
parizzat eggs, with English tea and thick-cut toast. While they ate, they
accessed various news broadcasts from Earth and the O’Neill Halo, following the
Confederation’s response to Capone, the build up of forces for the Mortonridge
Liberation, rumours of the possessed spreading among the asteroids, appearing
in star systems previously thought clean.
“Quarantine busters,” Ione said
sharply at the item on Koblat being taken out of the universe. “The idiots in
those asteroids are still letting them dock. At this rate the Assembly will
have to shut down interplanetary flights as well.”
Joshua looked away from the AV
projection. “It won’t make any difference.”
“It will! They have to be
isolated.”
He sighed, regretful at how easily
the mood had gone. Forgetting everything for a day had been so comfortable.
“You don’t understand. It’s like saying you’ll be safe if Tranquillity jumps
across the galaxy where the possessed can’t find you. Don’t you see, they’ll
always find you. They are what you become. You, me, everyone.”
“Not everyone, Joshua. Laton
mentioned some kind of journey through the afterworld, he didn’t believe he’d
be trapped in the beyond. The Kiint have as good as admitted we don’t all wind
up there.”
“Good, build on that. Find out
why.”
“How?” She gave him a measured
look. “This isn’t like you.”
“I think it is. I think it took
that possessed to make me realize.”
“You mean that Arab in Ayacucho?”
“Yeah. No kidding, Ione, I was
staring death and what comes after right in the face. Bound to make you stop
and wonder. You can’t solve everything with direct action. That’s what makes
this Mortonridge Liberation so ridiculous.”
“Don’t I know it. That whole
miserable campaign is nothing more than a propaganda exercise.”
“Yeah. Though I expect the people
they do de-possess will be grateful enough.”
“Joshua! You can’t have it both
ways.”
He grinned at her over the rim of a
huge tea cup. “We’re going to have to, though, aren’t we? There has to be some
solution to satisfy both sides.”
“Right,” she said cautiously.
Chapter 05
In any given month, there would be
between two and seven armada storms rampaging across Earth’s surface, a
relentless assault they’d persevered with for over five hundred years. Like so
many things, their name had become everyday currency. Few knew or cared about
its origin.
It had begun with chaos theory: the
soundbite assertion that one butterfly flapping its wings in a South American
rain forest would start a hurricane in Hong Kong. Then in the Twenty-first
Century came cheap fusion, and mass industrialisation; entire continents elevated
themselves to Western-style levels of consumerism within two decades. Billions
of people found themselves with the credit to buy a multitude of household
appliances, cars, exotic holidays; they moved into new, better, bigger homes,
adopting lifestyles which amplified their energy consumption by orders of
magnitude. Hungry to service their purchasing power, companies built cities of
new factories. Consumer and producer alike pumped out vast quantities of waste
heat, agitating the atmosphere beyond the worst-case scenarios of most computer
models.
It was after the then largest storm
in history raged across the Eastern Pacific in early 2071 that a tabloid
newscable presenter said it must have taken a whole armada of butterflies
flapping their wings to start such a brute. The name stuck.
The storm which had swept up from
mid-Atlantic to swamp New York was ferocious even by the standards of the
Twenty-seventh Century. Its progress had been under observation for hours by
the arcology’s anxious weather defence engineers. When it did arrive, their
response systems were already on line. It looked as though a ragged smear of
night was sliding across the sky. The clouds were so thick and dense no light
could boil throughout to illuminate their underbelly—until the lightning began.
Then the rotund tufts could sometimes be distinguished, streaked with leaden
grey strata as they undulated overhead at menacing speed. The energy levels
contained within would prove fatal for any unprotected building. Consequently,
the ability to deflect or withstand the storms was the prime requirement of any
design brought before the New York civil engineering review board for a
building permit. It was the one criterion which could never be corroded by
backhanders or political pressure.
The tip of every megatower was
crowned with high-wattage lasers, whose beams were powerful enough to puncture
the heart of the heavy clouds. They etched out straight channels of ionized
air, cajoling the lightning to discharge directly into the superconductor grids
masking the tower structure. Every tower blazed like a conical solar flare
above the dome residents, spitting out residual globules of violet plasma.
Amid them fell the rain. Fist-sized
drops hurled out by a furious wind to hammer against the domes. Molecular
binding force generators were switched on to reinforce the transparent hexagons
against a kinetic fusillade which had the force to abrade raw steel.
The noise from this barrage of
elements drummed through the dome to shake the gridwork of carbotanium struts
supporting the metro transit rails. Most above-ground traffic had shut down.
Right across the arcology, emergency crews were on full standby. Even the
shield of lasers and superconductors were no guarantee against power spikes in
such conditions. In such times, sensible people went home or to bars, and
waited until sharp slivers of pewter light started to carve up the clouds,
signalling the end of the deluge. A time when fear was heightened. When more
primitive thoughts were brought to the fore.
A good time. Useful.
Quinn looked up at the old building
which was home to the High Magus of New York.
Under cover of the storm, sect
members were piling out of the vans behind him. Only ten possessed so far: a
manageable number for what he had in mind. The rest, the acolytes and
initiates, followed obediently, in awe of the apostles of evil who now
commanded them.
Faith, Quinn mused, was a strange
power. They had committed their lives to the sect, never questioning its
gospels. Yet in all of that time, they had the reassurance of routine, the
notion that God’s Brother would never actually manifest himself. The bedrock of
every religion, that your God is a promise, never to be encountered in this
life, this universe.
Now the souls were returning,
owning the power to commit dark miracles. The acolytes had fallen into
stupefaction rather than terror, the last doubt vanquished. Condemned as the
vilest outcasts, they now knew they’d been right all along. That they were
going to win. Whatever they were ordered to do, they complied unquestioningly.
Quinn motioned the first team
forward. Led by Wener, the three eager acolytes scampered down a set of steps
at the base of the wall, and clustered round the disused basement door at the
bottom. A codebuster block was applied, then a programmable silicon probe was
worked expertly into the crack between the door and the frame. The silicon
flexed its way under the ageing manual bolts, then began to reformat its shape,
pushing them back. Within thirty seconds, the way in was open. No alarms, and
no give away use of energistic power.
Quinn stepped through.
The difference between the
headquarters and the dingy centre on Eighty-Thirty street surprised even Quinn.
At first he even thought he might have the wrong place, but Dobbie, who now
possessed magus Garth’s body, reassured him this was indeed where they should
be. The corridors and chambers were an inverse mirror of the Vatican’s
splendour. Rich fittings and extravagant artwork, but sybaritic rather than
warmly exquisite, celebrating depravity and pain.
“Fuck, look at this place,” Wener
muttered as they marched down one of the corridors. Sculptures took bestiality
as their theme, featuring both mythical and xenoc creatures, while paintings
showed the saintly and revered from history being violated and sacrificed on
the altars of the Light Bringer.
“You should take a good look,”
Quinn said. “It’s yours. Those hours ripping off citizens and pushing illegals
on the street, that paid for all this. You live in shit, so the High Magus can
live like a Christian bishop. Nice, isn’t it.”
Wener and the other acolytes
glowered round at the perverse grandeur, envious and angry. They split up, as
arranged. One of the possessed leading each group of acolytes, securing the
exits and strategic areas, the weapons cache. Quinn went straight for the High
Magus. Three times, he encountered acolytes and priests scurrying along the
corridors. They were all given the same simple choice: Follow me, or be
possessed.
They took one look at the black robe,
listening to the voice whispering out of the seemingly empty hood, and
capitulated. One of them even gave a mad little laugh of relief, a strong sense
of vindication flooding his mind.
The High Magus was taking a bath
when Quinn strode into his quarters. It could have been the penthouse of some
multistellar corporation president, certainly there was little evidence of
idolatrous worship amongst the opulence. Much to Wener’s disappointment he
didn’t even have naked servant girls to wash him. Slimline domestic mechanoids
stood quietly among the white and blue furnishings. His one concession to
turpitude appeared to be the goblet he was drinking a seventeen-year-old red
wine out of, its vulvic influences impossible to ignore. Islands of lime-green
bubbles drifted round his round frame, giving off a scent of sweet pine.
He was already frowning as Quinn
glided over the gold-flecked marble to the sunken bath, presumably forewarned
by the failure of his neural nanonics. His eyes widened at the invasion, then
narrowed as the eccentric delegation stared down at him.
“You’re a possessed,” he said
directly to Quinn.
There was no panic in the mind of
the High Magus, which surprised Quinn, if anything the old man appeared
curious. “No, I am the Messiah of our Lord.”
“Really?”
The mocking irony of the tone
caused the hem of Quinn’s robe to stir. “You will obey me, or I will have your
fat shit body possessed by someone more worthy.”
“More compliant, you mean.”
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I have no intention of fucking
with you or anyone else.”
Quinn was puzzled by this whole
exchange. The original calmness he could sense in the High Magus was slowly
replaced by weariness. The High Magus took another sip of the wine.
“I’m here to bring Night to the
Earth as Our Lord bids,” Quinn said.
“He bids nothing of the
sort, you pathetic little prick.”
Quinn’s ashen face materialized to
thrust out of his hood.
The High Magus laughed out loud at
the shock and anger he saw there, and committed suicide. Without any noise or
hysterics, his body froze, then slowly slithered down the side of the bath. It
rolled to one side, and floated inertly on the surface, white bloated rims of
fat bobbing among the green bubbles. The wine goblet sank, a red stain marking
where it had vanished.
“What are you doing?” Quinn shouted
at the departing soul. He sensed a final sneer as the retreating wisps of
energy evaporated amid dimensional folds. His claw hands shot out of the
voluminous sleeves, as if to pull the essence of the High Magus back to face
judgement. “Shit!” he gasped. The magus must have been demented. Nobody. Nobody
went into the beyond, not now they knew for sure what awaited them there.
“Asshole,” Wener grunted. Along
with the other acolytes, he was perturbed by the death. Trying not to show it.
Quinn knelt down at the side of the
bath, searching the corpse with eyes and eldritch senses for the mechanism of
its demise. There were the usual weapons implants, he could perceive those all
right, hard splinters among the softer grain of organic matter, even the neural
nanonics were discernible. But Quinn’s energistic power had nullified them.
What then? What instrument could effect an instantaneous and painless suicide?
And more curiously, why was the High Magus equipped with it?
He straightened slowly, retracting
his head and arms back within his cloak’s veil of night. “It doesn’t matter,”
he told his agitated followers. “God’s Brother knows how to deal with traitors,
the beyond is not a refuge for those who fail Him.”
A dozen heads nodded in eager
acceptance before him. “Now go and bring them to me,” he said.
The acolytes scattered to do his
bidding. They rounded up everyone in the headquarters, and herded them into the
temple. It was a vaulting chamber nestled at the core of the Leicester, a
baroque fabrication of gilded pillars and crude cut stone blocks. Six giant
pentagons were etched on the curving ceiling, emitting a dull crimson glow. The
grumble of the storm was just audible, a bass reverberation sneaking through
the Leicester to give the floor a faint vibration.
Quinn stood beside the altar as the
captives were ushered up to him one at a time. Every time, he repeated the
simple choice of futures: follow me, or be possessed. Merely claiming you would
submit was no use. Quinn interrogated their innermost beliefs and fears before
passing his final decree. He wasn’t surprised by how many failed. Inevitably,
this far up the sect hierarchy, they had grown soft. Still evil, still
exploiting the soldiers below them, but not for the right reasons. Maintaining their
own status and comforts had evolved into their dominant urge, not a willingness
to further the cause of the Light Bringer. Traitors.
He made them suffer for their
crime. Over thirty were chained to the altar and vanquished. By now he had
become proficient in opening a fissure back into the beyond; but more
importantly he’d learned how to impose his own presence around the opening,
valiantly guarding the gateway from the unworthy. Even in their utter
desperation for escape, many souls turned aside from such a custodian. Those
who did emerge conformed to Quinn’s ideal. Nearly all of them had been sect
members while they were alive.
He gathered them together after the
ceremony, explaining what God’s Brother had decided for them. “We need more
than one arcology to bring Night to this world,” he told them. “So I’m leaving
you this one for yourselves. Don’t piss this opportunity away. I want you to
take it over, but carefully, not like the way the possessed do on other
planets, even Capone. Those dickheads just rush up and head butt every town
they come across. And each time, the cops swoop down and pick them off. This
time it’s gonna be different. You’ve got the acolytes worshipping the ground
you shit on. Use them. Moving around is what lets those fucking AIs sniff you
out. You mess with processors and power cables just by being near them. So
don’t go near them. Stay in the sect centres and get the acolytes to bring
people to you.”
“Which people?” Dobbie asked. “I
understand how we don’t gotta move about. But, shit, Quinn, there’s over three
hundred million people in New York. The acolytes can’t bring them all to us.”
“They can bring the ones that
count, the police captains and technical guys, the ones gonna cause you grief.
Or at least knock them out, stop them from reporting that you’ve arrived in
town. That’s all I want from you right now. Get yourselves established. There’s
a sect centre in every dome, take them over and hole up there for a while. Live
like a fucking king, I’m not saying don’t enjoy yourself. But I want you ready,
I want you to build up a coven of possessed in each dome. Loyal ones, you all
know how fucking important discipline is. We’re going strategic. Learn where
the major fusion generators are, hunt down the fresh water stations, and the
sewage plants, see which intersections the transport system depends on, track
down critical nodes in the communication net. The acolytes will know all this
crap, or they can find out. Then when I give the word, you smash each of those
sites into lava. You paralyse the whole fucking arcology with terrorism, bring
it to its knees. That way the cops won’t be able to organize any resistance
when we emerge to claim glory for Him. You come out into the open and start
possessing others, and you turn them loose. Nobody can run, there’s nowhere to
go, no outside. Possessed always win on asteroids, this is no different, just
bigger, is all.”
“The new possessed, they won’t
worship God’s Brother,” someone said. “We can choose a few who will to start
with, but if we turn them loose, there’s no way millions of them is going to do
like we say.”
“Of course not,” Quinn said. “Not
at first, anyway. They have to be forced into this, like I did to Nyvan.
Haven’t you worked it out yet? What’s going to happen to an arcology with three
hundred million possessed living in it?”
“Nothing,” Dobbie said in
puzzlement. “It won’t work.”
“Right,” Quinn purred. “Nothing’s
going to work. I’m going to visit as many arcologies as I can, and I’m going to
seed all of them with possessed. And they’re all going to collapse, because
energistic power breaks the machinery. The domes won’t be able to hold off the
weather any more, there isn’t going to be any food, or water. Nothing. Not even
forty billion possessed wishing at once are going to be able to change that.
They’ll shift Earth into another realm, but it still won’t make any difference.
Just being somewhere else isn’t going to put food on the table, won’t restart
the machines. That’s when it will happen. The revelation that they have
nowhere else to turn. Our Lord will have won their minds.” He lifted his hands,
and allowed a pallid smile to show from his hood. “Forty billion possessors,
and the forty billion they possess. Eighty billion souls screaming into the
Night for help. Don’t you see? It’s a cry so strong, so full of anguish and
fear, that it will bring Him. Finally, He will emerge from the Night, bringing
light to those who have come to love Him.” Quinn laughed at the astonishment on
their faces, and dark delight in their minds.
“How long?” Dobbie asked avidly.
“How long we gotta wait?”
“A month, maybe. It’ll take me a
while to visit all the arcologies. But I’ll penetrate them all in the end. Wait
for my word.” The silhouette of his robe began to fade. Outlines of the
furniture behind him started to show through. Then he was gone. A cold breeze
drifted across the chamber, perturbing the shallow gasps of consternation that
echoed from the dismayed disciples.
The Mindori approached
Monterey at a steady half gee acceleration. Two hundred kilometres ahead, the
asteroid’s features were resolving, crumpled dust-grey rock speared by metallic
spires and panels. It was surrounded by a swarm of pearl-white specks that
flashed and glinted in the tenacious sunlight. The Organization fleet: over six
hundred Adamist warships floating in attendance while small service craft
flitted among them. Each one a unique knot in Rocio Condra’s distortion field.
Gliding among them were the more
subtle interference patterns of other distortion fields. Valisk’s hellhawks
were here. Rocio called out in welcome. Those who bothered to acknowledge his
arrival were subdued. The emotional content simmering within most of his
fellows was one of grudging acceptance. Rocio accepted it reluctantly. It was
what he’d been expecting.
Glad to see you found your way
back to us, Hudson Proctor
said. What have you got?
The affinity link provided Rocio an
opening to the man’s eyes. He was in one of the docking ledge lounges,
overlooking the pedestals where several hellhawks were perched. The room had
been altered into an executive-style office. Kiera Salter was sitting at a
broad desk, her head coming up to give him a hard, enquiring stare.
Deadnight kids, Rocio said. I haven’t told them Valisk has
gone.
Good, good.
“The Organization hasn’t got any
real use for that kind of waster trash,” Kiera said as Hudson repeated his
silent conversation. “Dock here and disembark them. They’ll be dealt with
appropriately.”
And what about us? Rocio asked mildly. What do the hellhawks do
now?
“I’ll have you assigned to fleet
support duties,” Kiera said impassively. “Capone is preparing another invasion.
The hellhawks are becoming essential to ensure viability.”
I don’t wish to fly combat
duties any more, thank you. This starship is proving an excellent host for my
soul, I have no intention of endangering it, especially now that you have no
reserve body for me to inherit.
Kiera’s answering smile portrayed
regret. It wasn’t an emotion Hudson relayed via affinity, keeping the exchange
scrupulously neutral.
“I’m afraid we’re effectively on a
war footing,” Kiera said. “Which means, that wasn’t a request.”
Are you trying to order me?
“I’m offering you one simple
choice. You do as I tell you, or you fuck off back to the Edenists right now.
You know why that is? Because we’re the only two who can feed you. I am now in
full command of the only possessed-owned nutrient supply in this star system.
Me, not Capone and the Organization, me. If you want to prevent that excellent
host of yours from expiring from malnutrition, you do exactly what I ask, and
in return you’ll be permitted to dock and ingest as much of that goo as you can
hold. No one else can provide you with that, non-possessed asteroids will blow
you away with their SD platforms before you get within a hundred kilometres.
Only the Edenists can supply you. And they’ve got their price, too, as I’m sure
they’ve told you. If you cooperate with them, it’ll be to help understand the
nature of the interface with the beyond. They’ll find out how to banish us. You
and I will both be zapped back into that infernal oblivion. So decide, Rocio;
where your loyalty lies, who you’re going to fly for. I’m not asking for you
and me to be friends, I want to know if you’ll obey, that’s all. And you will
tell me now.”
Rocio opened his affinity to
converse with the other hellhawks. Is this what she holds over us?
Yes, they answered. There is no third alternative
that we can see.
This is monstrous. I’m happy
with this form. I don’t want to risk it in Capone’s egotistical conquests.
Then protect it, you pitiful
bastard, Etchells said. Stop
whining and fight for what you believe in. Some of you are so pathetic, you
don’t deserve what you’ve got.
Rocio remembered Etchells, always
eager to intercept the voidhawks observing Valisk. When Capone had first
approached Kiera for help, he’d been excited and anxious to become involved in
the conflict.
Piss off, you fascist bigot.
A coward, and a way with words, Etchells retorted. No wonder you’re so
insecure.
Rocio closed his affinity with the
offensive hellhawk. I’ll dock at Monterey and offload the passengers, he
told Hudson and Kiera. What kind of fleet support are you proposing?
Kiera’s smile lacked grace. “While
the fleet is here, all hellhawks are on a rota to interdict the spy globes and
stealthed bombs. The voidhawks have just about given up that nonsense, but
they’re still probing our defences, so we have to remain vigilant. Apart from
that, there’s also some communication duties, VIP flights and collecting cargo
from asteroids. Nothing too demanding.”
And when Capone finds a new
planet to invade?
“You fly escort for the fleet, and
then you help them eliminate the target world’s Strategic Defence network.”
Very well. I will be docking in
another eight minutes, please have a pedestal ready to receive me. Rocio abandoned Hudson Proctor’s mind, and
analysed what had been said. The situation was almost what he’d been expecting.
Controlling the supply of nutrient fluid was the only practical way of binding
the hellhawks to the Organization. What he hadn’t predicted was Kiera still
being in charge. She’d obviously come to the same conclusion about coercion.
A few queries to a couple of
friendlier hellhawks, and he found that Etchells had visited most of the
asteroid settlements in the New California system, blasting their nutrient
production machinery. Kiera had ordered the flight, and Hudson had been on
board to make sure everything ran smoothly. Kiera and the Organization were
still separate. She was using her control over the hellhawks to maintain her
status as a power player. Scheming little bitch. And it would be the hellhawks
who paid for that status.
Rocio’s ersatz beak parted
slightly. Even though he couldn’t manage a modestly contented smile any more,
the intent was there. Forced obedience always generated discontent. Allies
wouldn’t be hard to find. He abandoned his favoured bird-image just as he
slipped round Monterey’s counter-rotating spaceport. The Mindori settled
its hull on one of the docking ledge pedestals, and gratefully received the hose
nozzles probing its underbelly. Muscle membranes contracted round the seal
rings, and the thick nutrient fluid pulsed its way up into the nearly-depleted
reserve bladders. The whole process served to emphasise just how vulnerable the
giant bitek starship was. After such a long flight, Rocio was enduring a strong
subconscious pressure to ingest again, and he had absolutely no control over
the substance pumped along the pipes. Kiera could be giving him anything, from
water to an elaborate poison. It tasted fine, to his limited internal sense and
filter glands, but he could never be quite sure. His plight was intolerable. So
what? he asked himself, bitterly. Blackmail always was.
The rebellion began at once. Rocio
ordered his bitek processor array to open a channel into the asteroid’s
communication network. Access to any defence-critical system was denied; the
Organization had protected its electronic architecture as thoroughly as the New
California defence force it had usurped. However, that left a lot of civil
memory cores and sensors to access. He began to analyse what information he was
permitted, and hooked in to various cameras to look round.
A large bus trundled over the rock
ledge, its flaccid elephant-trunk airlock tube snuggling up to the Mindori’s
life support section. Inside the hellhawk, the Deadnight kids raced through
their cabins, snatching up their bags. A long, agitated queue formed outside
the main airlock hatch. Choi-Ho and Maxim Payne stood at the end, smiling
placidly.
When the hatch swung open amid a
hiss of white vapour, the kids let out a collective gasp of delight. Kiera
herself was waiting for them. Gorgeous body clad in a small scarlet dress, hair
tumbling over her honey-coloured shoulders. And that mesmerising smile every
bit as bright in real life as it was in the recording. They filed past her in a
numb daze, eyes wide with awe as she said hello to each and every one of them.
All she got was a few mumbled words in return.
“That was easy enough,” she said to
Choi-Ho and Maxim at the end. “We had a couple of flights end in riots when
they realized they weren’t at Valisk. For no-hopers, they can be vicious little
shits. There was a lot of damage, and it’s hard getting replacement components
for these life support modules.”
“So what do we do now?” Maxim
asked.
“I always need good officers. Or
you can join the Organization if you like. Capone is keen to recruit soldiers
to enforce his rule down on the planet. You’ll be on the cutting edge of his
empire,” she said sweetly.
“I’m good at what I do now,”
Choi-Ho said levelly. Maxim quickly agreed.
Kiera observed their minds. There
was a tang of resentment, of course, there always was. But they’d capitulated.
“All right, you’re in. Now let’s get these loser brats into the asteroid. They
won’t be suspicious if we stay with them.”
She was right. Her presence alone
was enough to fool the besotted Deadnights, none of them ever questioning why
the bus windows were blanked out. It wasn’t until they walked through the next
set of airlocks that suspicions started to bubble up. They were all from
asteroid settlements, and the equipment here was very similar to what they
thought they’d left behind. Habitats were supposed to be different, devoid of
this many mechanical contrivances. With the elder ones slightly puzzled now,
they trooped into the main arrivals hall. The Organization gangsters were
waiting. It only took two acts of violence against the bravest rebels to quell
any further resistance. They were quickly segregated and classified according
to the charts Leroy and Emmet had provided.
Amid a welter of tearful and
frightened crying, individuals were hauled off into the corridors. As the
Organization was still very male dominated, the older boys were all taken down
to Patricia Mangano and imminent possession by new soldiers. With them went the
less attractive girls. Prettier girls were dispatched to the brothel where they
would service the Organization’s soldiers and non-possessed followers. The
children (and definition was difficult, puberty plus a couple of years appeared
to be the deciding factor) were flown down to the planet, where Leroy paraded
them in front of the rover reporters, claiming their salvation from Deadnight
as more humanitarian charity on Al’s behalf. The distorted image of a weeping
seventeen-year-old girl being shoved along by a machine-gun toting gangster in
a brown pinstripe suit vanished from the processor block’s screen in a hail of
static.
“I can’t find any further working
cameras in that section,” Rocio announced. “Would you like me to return to the
arrivals hall?”
Jed had to work hard against his
tightening throat muscles. “No. That’s enough.” When the hellhawk possessor had
shown them the first pictures snatched from cameras, Jed had wanted to scramble
out of their cramped refuge. Kiera was actually on board! A mere thirty metres
away from him. He’d suddenly wondered what the hell he was doing, crouched
painfully between cold, condensation-smeared tanks with loops of grimy cable
wiping his forehead. The sight of her brought back all the old rapture. And she
was smiling. Kiera would make the angels envious of her beauty and compassion.
Then he heard bonkers Gerald
reciting: “Monster, monster, monster, monster,” like it was some kind of freaky
spell.
Beth was rubbing the old fart’s
arm, all full of sympathy, saying, “It’s okay, you’ll get her back, you will.”
Jed wanted to shout out how barmy
the pair of them were. But by then the last of the Deadnights were in the bus,
and Kiera’s smile was gone. In its place was a hideously alien expression of
contempt verging on cruelty. The words which came from her lips were cold and
harsh. Rocio had been telling the truth.
Despite the evidence, that lost
part of Jed’s heart had wanted to believe in his divine saviour and her
promises of a better world. Now he knew that was gone. Worse than that, it had
never existed. Even Digger had been right. Bloody Digger, for Christ’s sake! He
was just a dumb stupid waster kid trying to score the ultimate escape trip from
Koblat. If Beth and the girls hadn’t been in there with him, he knew he would
have burst into tears. For Jed, not even the scenes in the arrivals hall were
as horrific as that final moment when Kiera’s smile vanished.
By the time Rocio Condra’s face
reappeared on the block, the girls were sniffling quietly, arms around each
other. Beth made no attempt to hide the tears meandering down her cheeks.
Gerald had shrunk back into his usual uncommunicative self.
“I’m sorry,” Rocio said. “But I did
suspect that something like this was going to happen. If it’s of any comfort, I
am in a similar position.”
“Similar?” Beth grunted. “Comfort?
I knew some of those girls, damn you. How can you compare what they’re going to
go through with what you’ve got to do? That’s not patronising, that’s
sickening.”
“They are being forced to
prostitute themselves with men in order to survive. I have to risk my life and
that of my host in hostile combat conditions if I wish to continue my existence
in this universe. Yes, I have to say there is similarity, whether you see it or
not.”
Beth glared at the processor block
through her misery. She’d never felt so low before, not even when those men had
grabbed her that time when she met Gerald.
“So now what?” Jed asked dolefully.
“I’m not certain,” Rocio answered.
“Obviously, we must find a new source of nutrient fluid for myself and those
hellhawks that share my beliefs. I shall have to gather a lot more information
before that option opens itself.”
“Do we have to stay in here the
whole time?”
“No, of course not. There is no one
inside the life support section, you may come out now.”
It took a hot, aggravating five
minutes to wriggle free from the confines of the cramped under-floor service
ducts. Jed was the first to extricate himself from the hatch in the washroom
floor. He quickly helped the others free. They wandered out into the central
corridor, glancing about anxiously, not quite believing Rocio when he said they
were alone.
They stood in the big forward
lounge, looking out of the long window at the docking ledge. The row of
pedestals stretched away, gradually curving above them, silver mushrooms
sprouting from the grizzled rock, each one bathed in a pool of yellow light.
But for three other docked hellhawks suckling their nutrient fluid from the
hoses, it could have been a post-industrial wasteland. Some technicians were
working on the cargo cradles of one craft, but apart from that, nothing moved.
“So we just wait,” Beth said,
flopping down into a settee.
Jed pressed his nose to the
transparency, trying to see the rock wall at the back of the ledge. “Guess so.”
“I’m hungry,” Gari complained.
“Then go eat,” Jed said. “I’m not
going to stop you.”
“Come with us.”
He turned from the window, seeing
his sister’s apprehensive expression, and smiled reassuringly. “Sure, kid, no
problem.”
The galley was one compartment
Rocio hadn’t tried to modify with his energistic imagination, leaving the
contemporary metal and composite surfaces undisturbed. However, they’d plainly
been pillaged by some passing barbarian army. A cascade of empty sachets were
littering the floor, stuck in place by treacle-like liquids. Storage cabinet
doors swung open, revealing empty spaces. The timer on an induction oven
bleeped away relentlessly.
A ten minute search turned up five
cans of drinking chocolate, a sachet of unhydrated oatmeal cakes, and a serve-3
pizza with extra anchovies.
Jed surveyed the cache with dismay.
“Oh Jeeze, there’s nothing left to eat.” He knew what that meant, one of them
would have to sneak into the asteroid to find some supplies. Zero guesses who’d
get picked for that doozy.
Jay woke up in a wonderfully soft
bed, wrapped inside a smooth cocoon of clean cotton sheets smelling faintly of
lavender. It was that warm drowsy state which always followed a really long,
deep sleep. She squirmed round a little, enjoying the contentment of being
utterly at peace. Some small object had managed to wedge itself under her
shoulder, harder than the luxurious pillow. Her hand closed round it, pulling
it out. Coarse fur tickled her fingers. Frowning, squinting she held up the . .
. doll. Tatty old thing. She smiled cosily, and put Prince Dell down beside
her. Snuggling into the mattress.
Her eyes flipped wide open. A fog
of hoary light was curving round a pair of plain navy-blue curtains. It
illuminated a neat wooden room, with its sloping ceiling supported by a
scaffold of naked A-frame beams. The tight-fitting wall boards had all been
painted a silky green, bedecked with picture frames that were mainly landscape
watercolours, though there were several sepia photos of people in history-text
clothes. A glazed pedestal washbasin with brass taps stood in the corner, a
towel hanging beside it. There was a wicker chair at the foot of the bed, with
a pair of fat cushions crammed into it. The sound of waves rolling gently onto
a beach could just be heard in the background.
Jay flung back the sheet and
slithered down off the bed. Her feet touched a warm carpet, and she padded over
to the window. She lifted a corner of the curtain, then pulled it wide open.
The beach was outside; a fringe of grass blending into white sands, followed by
gorgeous turquoise water stretching out to a mild horizon haze. A clear azure
sky rose from the other side of the haze, cut in half by that incredible
curving line of brilliant silver-white planets. She laughed in amazed delight.
It was real, really real.
The bedroom’s door opened into the
chalet’s hallway. Jay ran along it, out onto the veranda. The hem of her
nightie flapped around bare feet, Prince Dell was clutched in one hand. Outside,
the heat and salty humidity gusted over her along with the intense sunlight.
She flew down the steps and onto the grass, dancing round and whooping. The
sand was hot enough to make her jump up and down before retreating back onto
the grass. She gave the glittering water an exasperated look. How lovely it
would have been to dive right in. Haile was going to adore this place.
“Good morning to you, young Jay
Hilton.”
Jay jumped, and turned round. One
of the purple globes she remembered from last night was floating half a metre
above her head. Her nose wrinkled up in bemusement. It seemed to be the victim
of a talented graffiti artist who’d inflicted two black and white cartoon eyes
rimmed with black-line eyebrows; more black lines defined a pug nose, while the
mouth was a single curve sealed by smile commas. “What are you?” she asked.
“Well, wadda ya’know, my name’s
Mickey. I’m a universal provider. But I’m a special one, coz I’m all yours.”
The mouth jerked up and down in time with its voice.
“Oh yeah?” Jay asked suspiciously.
That silly face was far too happy for her liking. “What does a universal
provider do, then?”
“Why, I provide, of course.”
“You’re a machine.”
“Guess so,” it said with goofy
pleasure.
“I see. So what do you provide?”
“Whatever you want. Any material
object, including food.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re tiny, what
if I wanted a . . . a vac-train carriage.”
“Why would you want one of those?”
Jay sneered at it smugly. “I just
want one. I’m proving a point.”
The face lines squiggled their way
into an expression of dozy obedience. “Oh. Okey-dokey, then. It’s going to take
about quarter of an hour to put it together.”
“Sure,” Jay sneered.
“Hey! That’s got lots of
complicated parts inside, you know.”
“Right.”
“If you’d asked for something
simple, I could provide straight away.”
“All right. I want the Diana statue
from the Paris arcology. That’s just a lump of carved rock.”
“Easy peasy.”
“Uh—” Jay managed to grunt.
Mickey zipped out over the beach,
too fast for her to follow. She swivelled, just in time to see it inflating
equally fast. At ten metres in diameter, its ridiculous face was suddenly not
so pleasant and harmless as it loomed above her. A pair of shoes began to ooze
through the bottom. They were as long as Jay was tall. Mickey started to rise
up, exposing legs, waist, torso . . .
The full fifteen metre height of
the granite statue gazed out serenely across the Kiint ocean. Pigeon droppings
scarred its shoulders. Above Diana’s head, Mickey shrank back to its usual size
and floated back down to Jay. Its mouth line shifted up into feline
gratification.
“What have you done?” Jay yelled.
“Provided the statue. Wossamatter,
wrong one?”
“No! Yes!” She glanced frantically
along the beach. There were figures moving round outside the other chalets and
big white clubhouse, but fortunately none of them seemed to have noticed. Yet.
“Get rid of it!”
“Oh. Charming.” Mickey inflated out
again. Its hurt pout ominous on such a scale. The statue was swallowed whole.
The only memorial: a pair of giant footprints in the sand.
“You’re mad,” Jay accused as it
shrank once again. “Utterly mad. They should switch you off.”
“For what?” it wailed.
“For doing that.”
“Just doing what I’m told,” it
grumbled. “I suppose you want to cancel the vac-train as well, now?”
“Yes!”
“You should make up your mind. No
wonder they won’t hand over my kind of technology to the Confederation. Think
of all the statues you’d leave lying round the place.”
“How do you do it,” she asked
sharply. “How do you work? I bet you’ve never even been to Earth, how do you
know what Diana’s statue looked like?”
Mickey’s voice dropped back down to
normal. “The Kiint have this whopping great central library, see. There’s no
end of stuff stored in there, including your art encyclopaedias. All I’ve gotta
do is find the template memory.”
“And you make it inside you?”
“Small things, no problem. I’m your
man, just shout. The bigger stuff, that’s gotta be put together in a place like
a high-speed factory. Then when it’s done and polished they just ship it in
through me. Simplisimo.”
“All right. Next question, who
decided to give you that silly voice?”
“Whaddya mean, silly? It’s
magnifico.”
“Well, you don’t talk like an
adult, do you?”
“Ha, hark who’s talking. I’ll have
you know, I’m an appropriate companion personality for a girl your age, young
missy. We spent all night ransacking that library to see what I should be like.
You got any idea what it’s like watching eight million hours of Disney AVs?”
“Thank you for being so
considerate, I’m sure.”
“What I’m here for. We’re partners,
you and me.” Mickey’s smile perked up again.
Jay folded her arms and fixed it
with a stare. “Okay, partner; I want you to provide me with a starship.”
“Is this another of those point
thingies?”
“Could be. I don’t care what type
of starship it is; but I want it to be one I can pilot by myself, and it has to
have the range to get me back to the Confederation galaxy.”
Mickey’s eyes blinked slowly, as if
lethargic shutters were coming down. “Sorry, Jay,” it said quietly. “No can do.
I would if I could, honest, but the boss says no.”
“Not much of a companion, are you.”
“How about a chocolate and almond
ice cream instead? Big yummie time!”
“Instead of a starship. I don’t
think so.”
“Aww, go on. You know you want to.”
“Not before breakfast, thank you.”
She turned her back on it.
“Okay. I know, how about a
megalithic strawberry milkshake, with oodles and oodles of . . .”
“Shut up. And you’re not called
Mickey, either. So don’t pretend you are.” Jay smiled at the silence; imagining
it must be contorting its sketched face into hurt dismay. Her name was being
called from the chalet.
Tracy Dean stood on the veranda,
waving hopefully. She was dressed in a pale lemon dress with a lace collar, its
design obsolete but still stylish. Jay walked back, aware that the provider
machine was following. “The face wasn’t a good idea, was it?” Tracy said with
dry amusement after Jay climbed the steps to the veranda. “Didn’t think so. Not
for someone who’s seen all you have. But it was worth a try.” She sighed.
“Program discontinued. There, it’s just an ordinary provider, now. And it won’t
talk stupid anymore, either.”
Jay glanced up at the purple
sphere, which was now completely featureless. “I don’t mean to be awkward.”
“I know, sweetie. Now come and sit
down. I’ve got some breakfast for you.”
A white linen tablecloth had been
spread over a small table beside the weather-worn railings. It had Spanish
pottery bowls with cereal and fruit, one jug of milk, and another of orange
juice. There was also a teapot with a battered old strainer.
“Twinings Ceylon tea,” Tracy said
happily as they sat down. “Best you can have for breakfast in my opinion. I
became completely addicted to it in the late Nineteenth Century, so I brought
some back with me once. Now the providers can synthesise the leaves for me. I’d
like to be all snobbish and say that I can tell it’s not the same, but I can’t.
We’ll let it brew for a while, shall we?”
“Yes,” Jay said earnestly. “If you
like.” There was something deliciously fascinating about this old woman who had
Father Horst’s compassion and Powel Manani’s determination.
“Have you never brewed tea in a pot
before, young Jay?”
“No. Mummy always bought it in
sachets.”
“Oh dear me. There are some things
which the march of progress doesn’t improve, you know.”
Jay poured some milk over the
cereal bowl, deciding not to ask about the strange-shaped flakes. One thing at
a time. “Do the Kiint live on all these planets?”
“Ah, yes. I did promise I’d explain
things today, didn’t I, sweetie?”
“Yes!”
“Such impatience. Where to start,
though?” Tracy sprinkled some sugar onto her grapefruit, and sank a silver
spoon into the soft fruit. “Yes, the Kiint live on all these planets. They
built them, you know. Not all at once, but they have been civilized for a very
long time. One planet couldn’t possibly accommodate them all any more, just
like there are too many humans to live on Earth nowadays. So they learned how
to extract matter from their sun and condense it. Quite an achievement,
actually, even with their technology. The arc is one of the wonders of this
galaxy. Not just physically, culturally, too. All the species who’ve achieved
FTL starflight visit here eventually. Some that haven’t, too. It’s the greatest
information exchange centre we know of. And the Kiint know of a few, believe
me.”
“The provider said there was a big
library here.”
“It was being modest. You see, when
you’ve got the technology to take care of your every physical requirement,
there’s not much else you can do but develop your knowledge base. So that’s
what they do. And it’s a big universe to get to know. It keeps them occupied,
and fulfils life’s basic requirement.”
“What’s that?”
“To live is to experience, and
experience is living. I had a lovely little chuckle when the first Kiint
ambassador from Jobis told the Confederation they had no interest in
starflight. Travel broadens the mind, and heavens do they travel. They have
this quite magical society, you see, they spend their whole time developing
their intellects. The best way I can put it for you, is that wisdom is their
equivalent of money, that’s what they pursue and hoard. I’m generalising, of
course. A population as large as theirs is bound to have dissidents. Nothing
like our Edenist Serpents, of course; their disagreements are mostly
philosophical. But there are a few Kiint who turn their backs on their own
kind. There’s even a couple of planets in the arc they can go to where they’re
free of the central society.
“Whatever faction they come from,
they’re all very noble by our standards. And I’ll admit it leaves them superbly
prepared to face transcendence when their bodies die. But to be honest, that
kind of existence is rather boring for humans. I don’t think we’ll ever go
quite so far down that road. Different mental wiring, thankfully. We’re too impatient
and quarrelsome. Bless us.”
“So you are really human then?”
“Oh yes, sweetie. I’m human. All of
us living here are.”
“But why are you here?”
“We work for the Kiint, helping
them to record human history. All of us take little unobtrusive jobs where we
can get a good view of events. In the old days it was as servants of lords and
kings, or joining up with nomads. Then when the industrial age started up we
moved into the media companies. We weren’t front line investigative reporters,
we were the office mundanes; but it meant we had access to an avalanche of
information most of which never made it into the official history books. It was
perfect for us; and we still mostly work in the information industries today.
I’ll show you how to use the AV projector later if you want, every broadcast
humans make goes into the arc’s library. That always tickled me, if those
desperate marketing departments only knew just how wide an audience they really
have.”
“Are the Kiint really that
interested in us?”
“Us, the Tyrathca, the Laymil,
xenocs you’ve never heard of. They’re fascinated by sentience, you see. They’ve
witnessed so many self-aware races dwindle away to nothing, or self-destruct.
That kind of loss is tragic for the races which succeed and prosper.
Everybody’s different, you see, sweetie. Life alone is precious, but conscious
thought is the greatest gift the universe offers. So they try and study any
entities they find; that way if they don’t survive their knowledge won’t be
entirely lost to the rest of us.”
“How did you end up working for
them?”
“The Kiint found Earth when they
were exploring that galaxy about two and a half thousand years ago. They took
DNA specimens from a few people. We were cloned from that base, with a few
alterations.”
“Like what?” Jay asked eagerly.
This was a wonderful story, so many secrets.
“We don’t age so quickly,
obviously; and we’ve got a version of affinity; little things like that.”
“Gosh. And you’ve been on Earth
since you were born?”
“Since I grew up, yes. We had to be
educated the Kiint way first. Their prime rule in dealing with other species,
especially primitive ones, is zero intervention. They were worried that we
might become too sympathetic and go native. If we did that, we’d introduce
ideas that were wrong for that era; I mean, think what would have happened if
the Spanish Armada was equipped with anti-ship missiles. That’s why they made
us sterile, too; it should help us remain impartial.”
“That’s horrid!”
Tracy smiled blankly at the
horizon. “There are compensations. Oh sweetie, if you’d seen a fraction of what
I have. The Imperial Chinese dynasties at their height. Easter Islanders
carving their statues. Knights of armour battling for their tiny kingdoms. The
Inca cities rising out of jungles. I was a servant girl at Runnymede when King
John signed the Magna Carta. Then lived as a grandee noblewoman while Europe
was invigorated by the Renaissance. I waved from the harbour when Columbus set
sail across the Atlantic; and spat as Nazi tanks rolled into Europe. Then
thirty years later I stood on Cocoa Beach and cried when Apollo 11 took
off for the moon, I was so proud of what we’d achieved. And there I was in the
spaceplane which brought Richard Saldana down to Kulu. You have no idea how
blessed my life has been. I know everything, everything, humans are capable of.
We are a good species. Not the best, not by Kiint standards, but so much better
than most. And wonderfully unique.” She sniffed loudly, and dabbed a
handkerchief on her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” Jay said quietly.
“Please.”
“I’m sorry. Just having you here,
knowing what you could accomplish if you have the chance, makes this hurt so
much harder. It’s so bloody unfair.”
“What do you mean?” Jay asked.
Seeing the old woman so upset was making her nervous. “Aren’t the Kiint going
to let me go home?”
“It’s not that.” Tracy smiled
bravely, and patted Jay’s hand. “It’s what kind of home that’ll be left for
you. This shouldn’t have happened, you see. Discovering energistic states and
what they mean normally comes a lot later in a society’s development. It’s a
huge adjustment for anybody to make. Human-type psychologies need a lot of
preparation for that kind of truth, a generation at least. And that’s when
they’re more sociologically advanced than the Confederation. This breakthrough was
a complete accident. I’m terrified the human race won’t get through this, not
intact. We all are, all the Kiint observers want to help, to point the
researchers in the right direction if nothing else. Our original conditioning
isn’t strong enough to restrict those sort of feelings.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Even if they allowed us, I’d be no
use. I’ve been part of all our history, Jay. I’ve seen us evolve from dirty
savages into a civilization that has spread among the stars. More than anybody
I know what we could grow into if we just had the chance. And I have the
experience to intervene without anyone ever knowing they’d been guided. But at
the most crucial time of our social evolution, when that experience is utterly vital,
I’ve got to stay here.”
“Why?” Jay pleaded.
Tracy’s frail shoulders trembled
from repressed emotion. “Oh sweetie, haven’t you worked out what this dreadful
place is yet? It’s a bloody retirement home.”
The view arrived suddenly. For over
twenty minutes Louise had been sitting in one of the lounge’s big chairs, its
webbing holding her in the deep hollow of cushioning. Her belly muscles were
beginning to strain as they were obliged to hold her in a curving posture. Then
she felt a slight trembling in the decking as the lift capsule was shunted onto
the tower rail. A tone sounded. Thirty seconds later they flashed out of the
Skyhigh Kijabe asteroid. There was a quick impression of soured-white metal
mountains, but they quickly shrank from sight overhead. Gentle gravity relieved
her muscles, and the webbing slackened.
Earth shone with a mild opalescent
light below her. It was midday in Africa, at the base of the tower, and the
clouds were charging in from the oceans on either side. There seemed to be a
lot more of them than there had been on Norfolk, although the Far Realm had
been orbiting at a much lower altitude. That might account for it. Louise
couldn’t be bothered to find the correct meteorology files in her processor
block, and run a comparison program. The sight was there to enjoy not analyse.
She could actually see the giant white spirals spinning slowly as they battered
against each other. It must be a pretty impressive speed for the movement to be
visible from such a height.
Genevieve switched her webbing off,
and glided over to the lounge window, pressing herself against it. “It’s
beautiful,” she said. Her face was flushed as she smiled back at Louise. “I
thought Earth was all rotten.”
Louise glanced about, slightly
worried by what the other passengers would think of the little girl’s remark.
With the quarantine, most of them must be from Earth or the Halo. But nobody
was even looking at her. In fact, it seemed as though they were deliberately
not looking. She went over to stand beside Gen. “I guess that’s as wrong as
everything else in the school books.”
The Halo was visible against the
stars, a huge slender thread of stippled light curving behind the planet, like
the most tenuous of a gas-giant’s rings. For five hundred and sixty-five years,
companies and finance consortiums had been knocking asteroids into Earth orbit.
The process was standardized now; first the large-scale mining of mineral
resources, hollowing out the habitation caverns, then the gradual build up of
industrial manufacturing stations as the initial resources were depleted and
the population switched to a more sophisticated economy. There were nearly
fifteen thousand inhabited asteroids already drifting along in their common
cislunar orbit, and new rocks were arriving at the rate of thirty-five a year.
Tens of thousands of inter-orbit craft swooped between the spinning rocks,
fusion exhausts tangling together in a single scintilating nimbus. Every
asteroid formed a tiny bulge in the loop, wrapped behind a delicate haze of
industrial stations.
Louise gazed at the ephemeral
testament to astroengineering commerce. More fragile than the bridge of heaven
in Norfolk’s midsummer sky, but at the same time, more imposing. The vista
inspired a great deal of confidence. Earth was strong, much stronger than she’d
realized; it sprang from a wealth which she knew she would never truly
comprehend.
If we’re safe anywhere, we’re safe
here. She put her arm round Genevieve. For once, contented.
Below the majesty of the Halo,
Earth was almost quiescent by comparison. Only the coastlines of North and
South America hinted at the equal amount of human activity and industry on the
ancient planet. They remained in darkness, awaiting the dawn terminator sliding
over the Atlantic; but the night didn’t prevent her from seeing where people
were. Arcologies blazed across the land like volcanoes of sunlight.
“Are they the cities?” Genevieve
asked excitedly.
“I think so, yes.”
“Gosh! Why is the water that
colour?”
Louise switched her attention away
from the massive patches of illumination. The ocean was a peculiar shade of
grey green, not at all like the balmy turquoise of Norfolk’s seas when they
were under Duke’s stringent white glare.
“I’m not sure. It doesn’t look very
clean, does it? I suppose that must be the pollution we hear about.”
A small contrite cough just behind
them made both girls start. It was the first time anyone apart from the
stewards had even acknowledged they existed. When they turned round they found
themselves facing a small man in a dark purple business suit. He’d already got
some thin wrinkles on his cheeks, though he didn’t seem particularly old.
Louise was surprised by his height, she was actually an inch taller than him,
and he had a very broad forehead, as if his hair wouldn’t grow properly along
the top of it.
“I know this is rude,” he said
quietly. “But I believe you’re from outsystem?”
Louise wondered what had given them
away. She’d bought the pair of them new clothes in Skyhigh Kijabe, one-piece
garments like shipsuits but more elaborate, with pronounced pockets and cuffs.
Other women were wearing the fashion; so she’d hoped they would blend in.
“Yes,” Louise said. “From Norfolk,
actually.”
“Ah. I’m afraid I’ve never tasted
Norfolk Tears. Too expensive, even with my salary. I was most sorry to hear
about its loss.”
“Thank you.” Louise kept her face
blank, the way she’d learned to do whenever Daddy started shouting.
The man introduced himself as Aubry
Earle. “So this is your first visit to Earth?” he asked.
“Yes,” Genevieve said. “We want to
go to Tranquillity, but we can’t find a flight.”
“I see. Then this is all new to
you?”
“Some of it,” Louise said. She
wasn’t quite sure what Aubry wanted. He didn’t seem the type to befriend a pair
of young girls. Not from altruism, anyway.
“Then allow me to explain what you
are seeing. The oceans aren’t polluted, at least not seriously; there was an
extensive effort to clean them up at the end of the Twenty-first Century. Their
present colouring comes from algae blooms. It’s a geneered variety that floats
on the top. I think it looks awful, myself.”
“But it’s everywhere,” Genevieve
said.
“Alas, yes. That’s our carbon sink
these days. Earth’s lungs, if you like. It performs the job once done by
forests and grasslands. The surface vegetation is not what it used to be, so
Govcentral introduced the algae to prevent us from suffocating ourselves.
Actually, it’s a far more successful example of terraforming than Mars. Though
I would never be so undiplomatic as to say that to a Lunar citizen. We now have
less carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than at any time in the last eight
hundred years. You’ll be breathing remarkably clean air when you arrive.”
“So why do you all live in the
arcologies?” Louise asked.
“Heat,” Aubry said sadly. “Do you
know how much heat a modern industrial civilization of over forty billion
people generates?” He gestured down at the globe. “That much. Enough to melt
the polar ice and quicken the clouds. We’ve taken all the preventative measures
we can, of course. That was the original spur to build the orbital towers, to
prevent spaceplanes aerobraking and shedding even more heat into the air. But
however economic we are, we can’t dissipate it at a rate that’ll turn the clock
back. The old ocean currents have shut down, there’s no ozone layer at all. And
that kind of ecological retro-engineering is beyond even our ability. We’re
stuck with the current environment, unfortunately.”
“Is it very bad?” Genevieve asked.
What he’d described sounded worse than the beyond, though she thought the man
didn’t sound terribly upset by the cataclysm.
He smiled fondly at the planet.
“Best damn world in the Confederation. Though I expect everyone says that about
their homeworld. Am I right?”
“I like Norfolk,” Louise said.
“Of course you do. But if I might
make an observation, this is going to be noisier than anything you’ve
experienced before.”
“I know that.”
“Good. Take care down there. People
aren’t likely to help you. That’s our culture, you see.”
Louise gave him a sideways look.
“Do you mean they don’t like foreigners?”
“Oh no. Nothing like that. It’s not
racism. Not overtly, anyway. On Earth everybody is a foreigner to their
neighbour. It’s because we’re all squashed up so tight. Privacy is a cherished
commodity. In public places, people don’t chat to strangers, they avoid eye
contact. It’s because that’s the way they want to be treated. I’m really
breaking taboos by talking to you. I doubt any of the other passengers will.
But I’ve been outsystem myself, I know how strange it all is for you.”
“Nobody’s going to talk to us?”
Genevieve asked apprehensively.
“Not as readily as I.”
“That’s fine with me,” Louise said.
She couldn’t quite bring herself to trust Aubry Earle. At the back of her mind
was the worry that he would volunteer to become their guide. It had been bad
enough in Norwich when she’d depended on Aunt Celina; Roberto was family. Earle
was a stranger, one prepared to drop Earth’s customs in public when it suited
him. She gave him a detached smile, and led an unprotesting Gen away from the
window. The lift capsule had ten decks, and her standard-class ticket allowed
her into four of them. They managed to avoid Earle for the rest of the flight.
Though she realized he was telling the truth about privacy. Nobody else talked
to them.
The isolation might have been
safer, but it made the ten hour trip incredibly boring. They spent a long time
watching the view through the window as Earth grew larger, and talking idly.
Louise even managed to sleep for the last three hours, curling up in one of the
big chairs.
She woke to Gen shaking her
shoulder. “They just announced we’re about to reach the atmosphere,” her sister
said.
Louise combed some strands of hair
from her face, and sat up. Other passengers who’d been dozing were now stirring
themselves. She took the hair clip off as she reorganized her mane, then
fastened it up again. First priority when they were down must be to get it
washed. The last time she’d managed properly was back on Phobos. Maybe it was
time for a cut, a short style that was more manageable. Though the usual
arguments still applied: she’d invested so much time keeping it in condition,
cutting it was almost a confession of defeat. Of course, back at Cricklade
she’d had the time to groom herself every day, and had a maid to help.
Whatever did I do all day back
then?
“Louise?” Genevieve asked
cautiously.
She raised an eyebrow at the girl’s
tone. “What?”
“Promise you won’t get mad if I
ask?”
“I won’t get mad.”
“It’s just that you haven’t said
yet.”
“Said what?”
“Where we’re going after we touch
down.”
“Oh.” Louise was completely
stumped. She hadn’t even thought about their destination. Getting away from
High York and Brent Roi had been her absolute priority. What she needed to do
was find somewhere to stay so she could think about what to do next. And
without consulting her block there was really only one city name from her
ethnic history classes which she was certain would still exist. “London,” she
told Genevieve. “We’re going to London.”
The African orbital tower had been
the first to be built, a technological achievement declared the equal of the
FTL drive by the Govcentral committees and politicians who’d authorized it.
Typical self-aggrandising hyperbole, but acknowledged to be a reasonable
comparison none the less. As Aubry Earle had said, it was intended to replace
spaceplanes and the enormously detrimental effect they were having on Earth’s
distressed atmosphere. By 2180 when the tower was finally commissioned (eight
years late), the Great Dispersal was in full swing, and the volume of
spaceplane traffic had become so injurious to the atmosphere that
meteorologists were worrying about elevating the armada storms to an even
greater level of ferocity.
The question became academic. Once
the tower was on line, its cargo capacity exceeded thirty per cent of the
world’s spaceplane fleet. Upgrades were being planned before the first lift
capsule ran all the way up to Skyhigh Kijabe. Four hundred and thirty years
later, the original slender tower of monocarbon fibre was now nothing more than
a support element threading up the centre of the African Tower. A thick grey
pillar dwindling off up to infinity, immune to the most punishing winds the
armada storms could fling at it. The outer surface was lined with forty-seven
magnetic rails, the structure’s maximum. It was now cheaper to build new towers
than expand it any further.
The lower five kilometres were the
fattest section, providing an outer sheath of tunnels to protect the lift
capsules from the winds, enabling the tower to remain operational in all but
the absolutely worst weather conditions. Exactly where the tower ended and the
Mount Kenya station started was no longer certain. With a daily cargo
throughput potential of two hundred thousand tonnes, and up to seventy-five
thousand passengers, the capsule handling infrastructure had moulded itself
tumescently around the base, a mountain in its own right. Eighty vac-train
tunnels intersected in the bedrock underneath it, making it the most important
transport nucleus on the continent.
To keep the passengers flowing
smoothly, there were eighteen separate arrival Halls. All of them followed the
same basic layout, a long marble-floored concourse with the exit doors from
customs and immigration rooms on one side, and lifts on the other, leading to
the subterranean vac-train platforms. Even if an arriving passenger knew
exactly which lift cluster they wanted, they first had to negotiate a
formidable barricade of retail stalls selling everything from socks to luxury
apartments. Keeping track of one individual (or a pair) amid the perpetual
scrum occupying the floor wasn’t easy, not even with modern equipment.
B7 left nothing to chance. A
hundred and twenty GSDI field operatives had been pulled off their current
assignments to provide saturation coverage. Fifty were allocated to Hall Nine,
where the Kavanagh sisters were due to disembark, their movements coordinated
by an AI that was hooked into every security sensor in the building. Another
fifty were already on their way to London within minutes of Louise saying that
was her intended goal. Twenty had been held in reserve in case of cockups,
misdirection, or good old fashioned acts of God.
The arrangements had caused more
arguments among B7; all of the supervisors remained extremely proprietorial
when it came to their respective territories. Southern Africa, in whose domain
the Mount Kenya station fell, disputed Western Europe’s claim that he should
take personal command of the surveillance. Western Europe counterclaimed that
as the tower station was just a brief stopover for the sisters, and the whole
operation was his anyway, he should have the necessary authority. The other B7
supervisors knew Southern Africa, renowned for the tedious minutiae of
procedure worship, was just going through the motions.
Western Europe was given his way
over the tower station, as well as gaining concessions to steer the operation
through whichever territory the Kavanaghs roamed in their search for Banneth.
Southern Africa acceded to the
decision, and withdrew testily from the sensenviron conference. Smiling quietly
at his inevitable victory, Western Europe datavised the AI for a full linkage.
With the station layout unfolding in his mind, he began to designate positions
to the agents. Tied in with that was the lift capsule’s arrival time, and the
departure times of each scheduled vac-train. The AI computed every possible
travel permutation, plotting the routes which the sisters would have to walk
across the concourse. It even took into account the types of stalls which might
catch their eye. Satisfied the agents were placed to cover every contingency,
Western Europe stoked the logs on his fire, and settled back into a leather
armchair with a brandy to wait.
It was probably the ultimate
tribute to the fieldcraft of the GSDI agents that after all fifty of them took
up position in Hall Nine, Simon Bradshaw didn’t notice them, not even with his
hyper instinct for the way of things on the concourse. Simon was twenty-three
years old, though he could easily pass for fifteen. Selected hormone courses
kept him short and skinny, with soft ebony skin. His large eyes were moist
brown, which people mistook for mournful. Their endearing appeal had salvaged
him from trouble countless times in the twelve years he’d been strutting the
concourses of the Mount Kenya station. Local floor patrol cops had his profile
loaded in their neural nanonics, along with hundreds of other regular sneak
opportunists. Simon used cosmetic packages every fortnight or so, altering his
peripheral features, though his size remained constant. It was the act you had
to vary to prevent the cops from putting a comparison program into primary
mode. Some days dress smart and act little boy lost, dress casual and act
street tough, dress neutral act neutral, pay a cousin to lend you their
five-year-old daughter and come over as a protective big brother. But never
ever dress poor. Poor people had no business in the station, even the stall
vendors had neat franchise uniforms below their shiny franchise smiles.
Today Simon was actually in a
franchise uniform himself: the scarlet and sapphire tunic of Cuppamaica, the
coffee café. Being unobtrusive by being mundane. Nobody was suspicious of
station workers. He saw the two girls as soon as they emerged through the
customs and immigration archway. It was like they had a hologram advert flashing
over their heads saying: EASY. He couldn’t ever remember seeing such obvious
offworlders before. Both of them gawping round at the cavernous Hall, delighted
and amazed by the place. The little one giggled, pointing up at the transit
informatives, baubles of light charging about overhead like insane dragonflies,
shepherding passengers towards the right channels.
Simon was off immediately, coming
away from the noodle stall he’d been slouching against as if powered by a
nuclear pulse. Moving at a fast walk, the luggage cab buzzing incessantly at
his heels as its small motors strained to keep up. He was desperately trying
not to run, the urgency was so hot. His principal worry now was if the others
of his profession saw them. It would be like a feeding frenzy.
Louise couldn’t bring her legs to
move. Her fellow passengers had swept her and Genevieve out of customs,
carrying her along for a few yards before her surroundings exerted a grip on
her nerves. The arrivals Hall was awesome, a stadium of coloured crystal and
marble, saturated with noise and light. There must surely have been more people
thronging across its floor than lived in the whole of Kesteven island. Like
her, they all had luggage cabs chasing after them, adding to the bedlam. The
squat oblong box had been supplied by the line company operating the lift
capsule. Her bags had been dumped inside by the retrieval clerk, who’d promptly
handed her a circular card. The cab, he promised, would follow her everywhere
as long as she kept the card with her. It was also the key to open it again
when they got down to their vac-train platform. “After that you’re on your
own,” he said. “Don’t try and take it on the carriage. That’s MKS property,
that is.”
Louise swore she wouldn’t. “How do
we get to London?” Gen asked in a daunted tone. Louise glanced up at the mad
swarms of photons above them. They were balls of tightly packed writing, or
numbers. Logically, it must be travel information of some kind. She just didn’t
know how to read it.
“Ticket office,” she gulped.
“They’ll tell us. We’ll have to buy a ticket for London anyway.”
Genevieve turned a complete circle,
trying to scan the Hall through the melee of bodies and luggage cabs. “Where’s
the ticket office?”
Louise pulled the processor block
out of her shoulder purse. “I’ll find it,” she said with determination. It was
just a question of accessing a local net processor and loading a search
program. An operation she’d practised a hundred times with the tutorial.
Watching the graphics assemble themselves in the display as she conjured up a
welcome feeling of satisfaction.
I’ve got a problem and I’m solving
it. By myself, and for myself. I’m not dependent.
She grinned happily at Gen as the
search program interrogated the station information processors. “We’re actually
on Earth.” She said it as though she’d only just realized. Which, in a strange
way, she had.
“Yes,” Genevieve grinned back. Then
she scowled as a scrawny youth in a red and blue uniform barged into her.
“Hey!”
He mumbled a grudging apology,
side-stepped round the luggage cab and walked away.
The block bleeped to announce it
had located the vac-train ticket dispensers for Hall Nine. There were
seventy-eight of them. Without showing any ire, Louise started to redefine the
search parameters.
Easy, easy, easy. Simon
wanted to yell it out. That jostle with the little kid was the modern
equivalent of the shell game. Visually confusing as their respective luggage
cabs crossed paths, and allowing his grabber to intercept their tag card code
at the same time. He fought the impulse to turn round and check the new luggage
cab at his feet. Those girls were in for a hell of a shock when they got to
their platform and found only a pile of beefbap wrappers inside it.
Simon headed for the stalls at a
brisk pace. There was a staff lift at the middle. Route down to a quieter
level, where he could examine his prize. He was ten metres from the front line
of stalls when he was aware of two people closing on him. It wasn’t an
accidental path, either, they were coming at him with all the purpose of combat
wasps. Running wasn’t going to do any good, he knew that. He pressed the
release button on the grabber hidden in his palm. The girls’ luggage cab
swerved away, no longer following him. Now, if he could just dump the grabber
in a waste bin. No proof.
Shit. How could his luck turn like
this?
One of the cops (or whoever) went
after the luggage cab. Simon hunted round for a bin. Anywhere there was a fast
food bar. He ducked round the first stall, making one last check on his
pursuers. That was why he never saw the third (or fourth and fifth, for that
matter) GISD agent until the woman bumped right into him. He did feel, briefly,
a small sting on his chest. Exactly the same place she was now taking her hand
away from. His guts suddenly turned very cold, then that sensation faded to
nothing.
Simon looked down at his chest in
puzzlement just as his legs faltered, dropping him to his knees. He’d heard of
weapons like this, so slim they never left a mark as they punctured your skin;
but inside it was like an EE grenade going off. The world was going quiet and
dim around him. High above, the woman watched him with a faint sneer of
satisfaction on her lips.
“For a couple of bags?” Simon
coughed incredulously. But she’d already turned, walking away with a calm he
could almost respect. A real pro. Then he was somehow aware of himself
finishing the fall to the floor. Blood rushed out of his gaping mouth. After
that, the darkness rushed up to drown him. Darkness, but not total night. The
world was only the slightest of distances away. And he wasn’t alone in
observing it from outside. The lost souls converged upon him to devour the font
of keen anguish that was his mind.
“That way,” Louise said brightly.
The block’s little screen was showing a floor layout, which she thought she’d
aligned right.
With Genevieve skipping along at
her side she negotiated the obstacle course of stalls. They slowed down to
window shop the things on display, not really understanding half of them. She
also thought there must be a subtle trick to negotiating the crowd which was
eluding her. Twice on the way to the dispenser, people banged into her. It
wasn’t as though she didn’t look where she was going.
The block had told her there was
neither a ticket office, nor an information desk. A result which made her
acknowledge she was still thinking along Norfolk lines. All the information she
needed was in the station electronics, it just needed the right questions to
extract it.
A vac-train journey to London cost
twenty-five fuseodollars (fifteen for Gen); a train left every twelve minutes
from platform thirty-two; lifts G to J served that level. Once she knew that,
even the transit informatives whirling past overhead began to make a kind of
sense.
Western Europe accessed an agent’s
sensevise to watch the sisters puzzle out the ticket dispenser. Enhanced
retinas zoomed in on Genevieve, who had started clapping excitedly when a
ticket dropped out of the slot.
“Don’t they have ticket dispensers
on Norfolk, for heaven’s sake?” the Halo supervisor asked querulously. He had
maintained executive control over the observation team during the Kavanaghs’
trip from High York down to the Mount Kenya station, anxious that nothing
should mar the hand over. Now, curiosity had impelled him to tarry. Having
initiated a few unorthodox missions in his time, he was nevertheless impressed
with Western Europe’s chutzpa in dealing with Dexter.
Western Europe smiled at the
sensevise overlay of Halo, who appeared to be leaning against the marble
fireplace, sipping a brandy. “I doubt it. Some cheery-faced old man in a glass
booth would be more their style. Haven’t you accessed any recent sensevises of
Norfolk? Actually, just any sensevises of the place would do. It hasn’t changed
much since the founding.”
“Damn backward planet. It’s like
the medieval section of a themepark. Those English-ethnic morons abused the
whole Great Dispersal ethos with that folly.”
“Not really. The ruling Landowner
class introduced a stability we’re still striving for, and without one per cent
of the bloodshed we employ to keep a lid on things down here. In a way, I envy
all those pastoral planets.”
“But not enough to emigrate.”
“That’s a very cheap shot. Quite
beneath you. We’re as much products of our environment as the Kavanaghs are of
theirs. And at least they’re free to leave.”
“Leave yes. Survive in the real
world, no.” He indicated the observation operation’s status display. It wasn’t
a pleasing tally. Five people had been eliminated by the guardian blanket of
GISD agents—pickpockets, sneak thieves, a scam jockey—as the sisters made their
way across the concourse. Extermination was the quick, no arguments, solution.
It was also going to cause an uproar with the local police when the bodies were
discovered. “At this rate, you’re going to wind up slaughtering more people
than Dexter has to protect them.”
“I always thought station security
should be sharper,” Western Europe said casually. “What kind of advert is it
for Govcentral when visitors get ripped off within ten minutes of their arrival
on the good old homeworld?”
“Most don’t.”
“Those girls aren’t most. Don’t
worry, they’ll be safer when they reach London and book into a hotel.”
Halo studied Western Europe’s
handsome young face, amused by the mild expression of preoccupation to be found
there. “You fancy Louise.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I know your taste in women as well
as you know my preferences. She’s exactly your type.”
Western Europe swirled the brandy
round his three-hundred-year-old snifter, not looking up at the smug overlay
image. “I admit there’s something really rather appealing about Louise.
Naiveté, one supposes. It does always attract, especially when coupled with
youthful physical beauty. Earth girls are so . . . in your face. She has
breeding, manners, and dignity. Also something the natives here lack.”
“That’s not naiveté, it’s pure
ignorance.”
“Don’t be so uncharitable. You’d be
equally adrift on Norfolk. I doubt you could ride to the hunt in pursuit of the
cunning hax.”
“Why would anybody, let alone me,
want to go to Norfolk?”
Western Europe tilted the snifter
back and swallowed the last of the brandy. “Exactly the answer one expects from
someone as jaded and decadent as you. I worry that one day this whole planet
will think like us. Why do we bother protecting them?”
“We don’t,” Halo chuckled. “Your
memory transfer must have glitched. We protect ourselves. Earth merely is our
citadel.”
Chapter 06
It was as if space had succumbed to
a bleak midwinter. Monterey was moving into conjunction with New California,
sinking deeper through the penumbra towards the eclipse. Looking through the
Nixon suite’s big windows, Al could see the shadows above him expanding into
black pools of nothingness. The asteroid’s crumpled rock surface was slowly
melting from view. Only the small lights decorating the thermal exchange panels
and communication rigs gave him any indication that it hadn’t been removed from
the universe entirely. Equally, the Organization fleet gathered outside was now
invisible save for navigation strobes and the occasional spectral gust of blue
ions fired from a thruster.
Beneath his feet, New California
slid across the brilliant starscape, a gold-green corona crowning an empty
circle. From this altitude, there were no city lights, no delicate web of
lustrous freeways gripping the continents. Nothing, in fact, to show that the
Organization existed at all.
Jezzibella’s arms crept round his
chest, while her chin came to rest on his shoulder. A mild forest-morning
perfume seeped into the air. “No sign of red clouds,” she said encouragingly.
He lifted one hand to his lips, and
kissed the knuckles. “No. I guess that means I’m still numero uno about here.”
“Of course you are.”
“You wouldn’t fucking think so the
beefs everyone’s got. Not just what they say, either. What they think counts
for a whole lot.”
“They’ll be all right once the
fleet’s in action again.”
“Sure,” he snorted. “And when’s
that gonna be, huh? Fucking Luigi, I shoulda popped him properly, screwing up
like that. It’s gonna take another twenty—thirty days to build up our antimatter
stocks to anything like a load we can risk another invasion with. So Emmet
says. That means six weeks minimum I know. Goddamn! I’m losing it, Jez. I’m
fucking losing it.”
Her grip tightened. “Don’t be
silly. You were bound to have setbacks.”
“I can’t afford one. Not now.
Morale’s going to shit out there. You’ve heard what Leroy said. Possessed crew
are going down to the surface for funtime and ain’t coming back. They think I’m
gonna lose control of the planet and they’ll be better off down there when it
happens.”
“So get Silvano to tighten up.”
“Maybe. You can only be so tough,
you know?”
“You sure you can’t bring the next
invasion forward?”
“No.”
“Then we need something else to
keep the soldiers and lieutenants occupied and committed.”
He turned to face her. She was
wearing one of those whore’s dresses again, just tiny little strips of pale
yellow fabric up the front (he had ties wider than that), and a teensy skirt.
So much skin tantalisingly revealed; it made him want to tug it off. As if he’d
never seen her in the buff before. But then she was always alluring in some new
fashion, a mirror hall chameleon.
A sensational piece of ass, no
doubt about it. But the way she kept on coming up with ideas for him (just like
her never-ending mystique) had become vaguely unnerving of late. It was like
he’d become dependent, or something.
“Like what?” he asked flatly.
Jezzibella pouted. “I don’t know.
Something which doesn’t need the whole fleet, but’ll still be effective. Not a
propaganda exercise like Kursk; we need to hurt the Confederation.”
“Kingsley Pryor’s gonna do that.”
“He might. Although that’s a very
long shot, remember?”
“Okay, okay.” Al wished up one of
his prime Havanas, and took a drag. Even they seemed to have lost some of their
bite recently. “So how do we use some itsy piece of the fleet to piss the
Feds?”
“Dunno. Guess you’d better go call
Emmet in; see what he can come up with. That’s strictly his field.” She gave
him a slow wink and sauntered off to the bedroom.
“Where the hell are you going?” he
demanded.
A hand waved dismissively. “This
dress is for your eyes only, baby. I know how hot you get when other people see
what I’ve got to offer. And you need to have a clear head when you’re talking
to Emmet.”
He sighed as the tall doors closed
behind her. Right again.
When Emmet Mordden arrived fifteen
minutes later, Al had returned to the window. There was very little light in
the big lounge, just some red jewels glimmering high up on the white and gold
walls. With Monterey now fully into the umbra, the window was little more than
a slate grey rectangle, with Al’s ebony silhouette in the middle. His youthful
face was illuminated by a diminutive orange glimmer coming from the Havana.
Emmet tried not to show too much
annoyance at the cigar smoke clogging the room. The Hilton’s conditioners never
managed to eliminate the cloying smell, and using energistic power to ward it
off was too much like overkill. It might just offend Al, too.
Al raised a hand in
acknowledgement, but didn’t turn away from the window with its empty view.
“Can’t see anything out there today,” he said quietly. “No planet, no sun.”
“They’re still there, Al.”
“Yeah yeah. And now is when you
tell me I got responsibilities to them.”
“I’m not going to tell you that,
Al. You know the way it is.”
“Know what, and don’t tell Jez
this, I’d trade in the whole shebang for a trip home to Chicago. I used to have
a house in Prairie Avenue. You know? Like, for my family. It was a nice street
in a decent neighbourhood, full of regular guys, trees, good lighting. There
was never any trouble there. That’s where I want to be, Emmet, I wanna be able
to walk down Prairie Avenue and open my own front door again. That’s all. I
just wanna go home.”
“Earth ain’t like it used to be,
Al. And it hasn’t changed for the best. Take it from me, you wouldn’t recognize
it now.”
“I don’t want it now, Emmet. I want
to go home. Capeesh?”
“Sure, Al.”
“That sound crazy to you?”
“I had a girl before. It was a good
thing back then, you know.”
“Right. See, I had this idea. I
remember there was this Limy guy, Wells, I think his name was. I never read any
of his books, mind. But he wrote about things that are happening today in this
crazy world, about Mars men invading and a time machine. Boy, if he’s come
back, I bet he’s having a ball right now. So . . . I just wondered; he was
thinking stuff like that, a time machine, back in the Twentieth Century, and
the Confederation eggheads, they can build these starships today. Did they ever
try to make a time machine?”
“No, Al. Zero-tau can carry
ordinary people into the future, but there’s no way back. The big theory guys,
they say it can’t be done. Not in practice. Sorry.”
Al nodded contemplatively. “That’s
okay, Emmet. Thought I’d ask.”
“Was that all, Al?”
“Shit no.” Al smiled reluctantly,
and turned from the window. “How’s it going out there?”
“We’re holding our own, especially
down on the planet. Haven’t had to use an SD strike for three days now. Some of
the lieutenants have even caught a couple of AWOL starship crew. They’re
getting shipped back up here tonight. Patricia’s going to deal with. She’s
talking about setting an example.”
“Good. Maybe now those bastards
will learn there ain’t no get-out clause when you sign up with me.”
“The voidhawks have stopped dumping
their stealth bombs and spyglobes on the fleet. Kiera’s hellhawks have done a
good job clearing them out.”
“Huh.” Al opened the liquor
cabinet, and poured himself a shot of bourbon. The stuff was imported from a
planet called Nashville. He couldn’t believe they’d called a whole goddamn
planet after that hick dirt-town. Their booze had a kick, though.
“You remember she moved her people
into the rooms along the docking ledge?” Emmet said. “I know why she did it,
now. They’ve knocked out all the machinery which makes the nutrient fluid for
the hellhawks. And not just here in Monterey, all over the system, too. The Stryla
visited all the asteroids we run, and layered their nutrient machinery. Her
people are guarding the only one left working. If the hellhawks don’t do as
they’re told, they don’t get fed. They don’t eat, they die. It’s that simple.”
“Neat,” Al said. “Let me guess, if
we try to muscle in on the last machine, it gets zapped.”
“Looks like it. They’ve let slip
that it’s booby trapped. I’d hate to risk it.”
“As long as the hellhawks do what I
want, she can stay. Barricading herself in like that is dumb. It makes her even
more dependent on me for status. She has to support me, she’s not important to
anyone else.”
“I’ve put a couple of people on
surveying what’s left of the machinery she smashed up. We might be able to put
a working unit back together eventually, but it’ll take time.”
“Time is something which is giving
me a fucking headache, Emmet. And I ain’t talking about Wells’s machine here. I
need to get the fleet back into action, soonest.”
“But, Al—” he stopped as Al held up
a hand.
“I know. We can’t launch no
invasion right now. Not enough antimatter. There’s gotta be something else they
can do. I’m being honest with you here, Emmet, the boys are so antsy, they’ll
mutiny if we keep them kicking their heels in port much longer.”
“I suppose you could launch some
fast strike raids. Let people know we’ve still got some punch.”
“Strike on what? Just blowing
things up for the sake of it, ain’t my style. We have to give the fleet a
purpose.”
“There’s the Mortonridge
Liberation. The Confederation’s been beaming propaganda about that to every
city on New California, telling us how we’re bound to lose eventually. If we
hit some of their supply convoys we’d be helping the possessed on Ombey.”
“Yeah,” Al said. The notion didn’t
really appeal, too few visible returns. “What I’m looking for is something
that’ll cause a shitload of trouble for the Confederation each time. Knocking
out a couple of ships ain’t going to do that.”
“Well . . . This is just an idea,
Al. I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing you’re looking for. It depends on
how many planets you want to rule over.”
“The Organization has to keep up
its momentum to exist. Ruling planets is only a part of that. So talk to me,
Emmet.”
Kiera could see eight hellhawks out
on the ledge below her. They were all sitting on their pedestals, ingesting
nutrient fluid. A rotor had been drawn up so the whole flock could feed on the
ten metallic mushrooms which remained functional. Studying the huge creatures,
so powerful yet utterly dependent, Kiera couldn’t avoid the religious analogy.
They were like a devout congregation coming to receive mass from their
priestess. Each of them abased themselves before her, and if the correct
obeisance was performed, they received her blessing in return, and were allowed
to live.
The Kerachel swept in above
the ledge, appearing so swiftly out of the umbra it might have just swallowed
in. A pointed lozenge-shape, a hundred metres long, it hardly hesitated as it
found its designated pedestal and sank down. Knowing that even though it
couldn’t see her expression, it could sense her thoughts, she smiled arrogantly
down upon it. “Any problems?” she asked casually.
“Monterey’s command centre
monitored its patrol flight,” Hudson Proctor replied. “No deviations. Eight
suspect objects destroyed.”
“Well done,” she murmured. A hand
waved languid permission to start.
Hudson Proctor picked up a handset,
and began speaking into it. Two hundred metres below the departure lounge, her
loyal little team opened a valve, and the precious fluid surged along a pipe
out to the pedestal. A feeling of contentment strummed the air like background
music as Kerachel began sucking in its food. Kiera could feel the
hellhawk’s mood, it mellowed her own.
There were eighty-seven hellhawks
based at Monterey now. A formidable flotilla by anyone’s standards. Securing
them for herself had absorbed all her efforts over the last few days. Now it
was time to start thinking ahead again. Her position here was actually a lot
stronger than it had been at Valisk. If the habitat was a fiefdom, then New
California was a kingdom in comparison. One which Capone appeared singularly
inept at maintaining. The main reason she’d established herself so easily in the
docking ledges was the apathy spreading through Monterey. Nobody thought to
question her.
That simply wouldn’t do. In
building his Organization, Capone had grasped an instinctive truth. People,
possessed or otherwise, needed structure and order in their lives. It was one
of the reasons they fell into line so easily, familiarity was a welcome
comrade. Give them the kind of nirvana which existed (though she had strong
suspicions about that) in the realm where planets shifted to, and the
population would sink into a wretched, lotus-eating state. The Siamese twin of
unending indulgent leisure. If she was honest to herself, she was terrified of
the immortality she’d been given. Life would change beyond comprehension, and
that was going to be very hard indeed. For an adaptation of that magnitude, she
would no longer be herself.
And that, I will not permit.
She enjoyed what she was and what
she’d got, the drives and needs. Like this, at least she remained recognizably
human. That identity was worth preserving. Worth fighting for.
Capone wouldn’t do it. He was weak,
controlled by that ingenious trollop Jezzibella, by a non-possessed.
In the Organization, a method of
enforcing control over an entire planetary population had been perfected. If
she was in charge, it could be used to implement her policies. The possessed
would learn to live with their phobia of open skies. In return they would have
the normal human existence they craved. There would be no dangerous
metamorphosis into an alien state of being. She would remain whole. Herself.
A twitch of motion broke her
contemplation. Someone was walking along the docking ledge, someone in a bulky
orange and white spacesuit with a globular helmet. Compared to modern SSI
suits, the thing was ridiculously old-fashioned. The only reason for wearing
one was if you didn’t have neural nanonics.
“Are there any engineering crews on
the ledge?” Kiera asked. She couldn’t see any hellhawks receiving maintenance
right now.
“A couple,” Hudson Proctor
answered. “The Foica is being loaded with combat wasps, and Varrad’s
main fusion generator needs work on its heat dump panels.”
“Oh. Where . . .”
“Kiera.” Hudson held up the handset
in trepidation. “Capone’s calling all his senior lieutenants. It’s an invite to
some kind of glam party this evening.”
“Really?” She gave the spacesuited
figure one last glance. “And I haven’t a thing to wear. But if our Great and
Glorious Leader has summoned me, I’d better not disappoint him.”
Back on Koblat, they called these
spacesuits ballcrushers. Jed had worn one before for an emergency evacuation
drill, and now he was remembering why. Putting it on was easy enough; when they
got it out of the locker it was a flaccid sack three times too large for his
frame. He’d wriggled into it, standing with arms outstretched and legs apart so
the baggy fabric could hang unobstructed off each limb. Then Beth had activated
the wristpad control, and the fabric contracted like an all-over tourniquet.
Now every part of his body was being squeezed tight. It was the same principle
as an SII suit, preventing any loose bubbles of air becoming trapped between
his skin and the suit. If a suit contained any sort of gas, it would inflate
like a rigid balloon as soon as he stepped out into a vacuum.
This way, he could move about
almost unrestricted. Providing he ignored the sharp pincer sensation besetting
his crotch at every motion. Not an entirely easy thing to disregard.
But apart from that, the suit was
functioning smoothly. He wished his heart would do the same. According to the
hazy purple icons projected onto the inside of his helmet, the suit’s integral
thermal shunt strips were conducting away a lot of heat. Nerves and an
adrenaline high were making the blood pound away in his arteries. His tension
wasn’t helped by the rank of huge hellhawks he was walking along. He knew they
could sense his thoughts and all the guilt cluttering up his skull, which made
the torment even worse. A bad case of feedback. Bubbles of plastic and dark
metal clung to the underbellies of the bitek starships like mechanical
excrescences. Weapons and sensors. He was sure every one of them was tracking
him.
“Jed, you’re getting worse,” Rocio
told him.
“How can you tell?”
“Why are you whispering? You are
using a legitimate spacesuit radio frequency. If the Organization is monitoring
this, which I doubt, they still have to decrypt the signal, which I also doubt
their ability to do. As far as they are concerned you are just one of Kiera’s
people, while she will think you belong to the Organization. That’s the beauty
of this in-fighting, nobody knows what anyone else is doing around here.”
“Sorry,” Jed said contritely into
the helmet mike.
“I’m monitoring your body
functions, and your heartrate is still climbing.”
That brought a shudder which
rippled up from Jed’s legs to make his chest quiver. “Oh Jeeze. I’ll come
back.”
“No no, you’re doing fine. Only
another three hundred metres to the airlock.”
“But the hellhawks are going to
know!”
“Only if you don’t take
precautions. I think it’s time we used a little chemical help here.”
“I didn’t bring any. We weren’t
supposed to need that in Valisk.”
“I don’t mean your underclass
narcotics. The suit medical module will provide what you need.”
Jed hadn’t even known the suit had
any medical modules. Following Rocio’s instructions, he tapped out a series of
orders on the wristpad. The air in the helmet changed slightly, becoming
cooler, and smelling of mint. For such a small suffusion, its effect was swift.
The cold massaged its way in through Jed’s muscles, bringing a nearly-orgasmic
sigh from his throat. It was a hit stronger than anything he’d ever scored in
Koblat. His mind was being methodically purged of fright by this balmy tide of
wellbeing. He held up his arms, expecting to see all his anxiety streaming out
of his fingertips like liquid light.
“Not bad,” he declared.
“How much did you infuse?” Rocio
asked.
The hellhawk’s voice came across as
brittle and irritating. “What you said,” Jed retorted in a fashion which
demonstrated quite plainly who was occupying the lead role. A couple of the
physiology icons were flashing a rather pleasing pink in front of him. Like
pretty little flower buds opening, he thought.
“All right, Jed, let’s keep going,
shall we?”
“Sure thing, mate.”
He started walking forwards again.
Even the twinge in his groin was less of an issue now. That medical suffusion
was good shit. The hellhawks had stopped radiating their intimidation. With his
mind chilling he started to see them in a different context; grounded on their
pedestals, sucking desperately at their drink. Not so much different to himself
and the girls. He acquired a more confident stride as he passed the last two.
Rocio’s voice started issuing
directions again, guiding him in towards the airlock. Tall spires of machinery
ran up the rock cliff at the back of the ledge, sprouting pipes in a crazed
dendritic formation. Several small fountains of thin vapour were jetting out
horizontally from junctions and micrometeorite punctures; their presence a
testament to Monterey’s floundering maintenance programme. Windows were set
into the drab, sheered rock; long panoramic rectangles fronting departure
lounges and engineering management offices. All but two were dark, reflecting
weak outlines of the floodlit hellhawks. The remaining pair revealed nothing but
vague shadows moving behind their frosted anti-glare shielding.
Maintenance vehicles, cargo trucks,
and crew buses had been left scattered along the base of the cliff. Jed made
his way through the maze they formed, thankful of the cover. The airlocks waited
for him beyond, unlit tunnels leading into the asteroid. Conduits that would
take him directly to the nest of the most feared possessed in the
Confederation. His trepidation rose again as he approached them. He stopped on
the threshold of a personnel airlock, and used the wristpad again.
“Careful how much of that trauma
suppresser you inhale,” Rocio said lightly. “It’s strong stuff, they designed
it to keep you functional after an accident.”
“No worries,” Jed said earnestly.
“I can handle it.”
“Very well. There’s no one in the
area immediately behind the airlock. Time to go in.”
“Jed?” Beth’s voice sounded loud
and high in his helmet. “Jed, can you hear me?”
“Sure, doll.”
“Okay. We’re watching the screens,
too. Rocio is relaying images from the cameras inside, so we’ll look out for
you, mate. And he’s right about the medical module, go easy on it, huh? I want
to share some of that suffusion with you when you get back.”
Even in his tranquil state, Jed
interpreted that right. He went into the airlock feeling majestic.
He took his helmet off, and took a
breath of neutral air. It helped to clear his head a bit, not so much euphoria,
but none of the fright, either. Good enough. Rocio gave him a whole string of
directions to follow, and he started off cautiously down the corridor.
The store room for crew supplies
wasn’t far from the airlock, naturally enough. Rocio had been keeping a careful
watch on things, seeing what happened when other hellhawks came to dock.
Several of his bitek comrades still had crew on board. The combat wasps they
carried required activation codes, and following standard security procedures,
Kiera and Capone had split the codes between loyalists. No one person could
fire them. It was a significant point that she hadn’t asked Rocio to carry any.
Jed found the door Rocio nominated,
and pulled back the clamps. Cold air breezed out, turning his breath to foggy
streamers. Inside, the room was split into aisles by long free-standing
shelves. Despite the Organization’s claim that normalizing food production on
New California was a priority, there weren’t many packs left. Processing food
for the space industry was a specialist business; ideally, everything had to be
crumbs-free, taste-strengthened, and packaged in minimum volume. Leroy Octavius
had decided that restarting the kitchen facilities of the relevant companies
wasn’t cost effective. Consequently, fleet crews had been making do with old
stocks and standard pre-packed meals.
“What’s there?” Beth asked
impatiently. There were no cameras actually in the store room, Rocio had to go
on what he’d seen being taken in and out.
Jed walked down the aisles,
brushing the frost dust off various labels. “Plenty,” he muttered. Providing
you liked yoghurt, mint potatocakes, cheese and tomato flans (dehydrated in
sachets that looked like fat biscuits), blackcurrant and apple mousse
concentrate; complemented with hot-frozen cubes of broccoli, spinach, carrot,
and sprouts.
“Oh bugger.”
“What’s the matter?” Rocio asked.
“Nothing. The boxes are heavy,
that’s all. We’re going to have a real party when I get this lot back to the
ship.”
“Are there any chocolate oranges?”
Gari piped up.
“I’ll have a look, sweetheart,” Jed
lied. He went back out into the corridor to fetch a trolley which had been
abandoned just along from the store room. It ought to fit through the airlock,
which meant he could use that to transport everything back to the Mindori.
Then they’d all have to be carried up the stairs to the life support module’s
airlock. It was going to be a long hard day.
“Somebody coming,” Rocio announced
after Jed had got a dozen boxes out of the store room and onto the trolley.
Jed stopped dead, hugging a box of
compressed rye chips. “Who?” he hissed.
“Not sure. Camera image isn’t too
good. Small guy.”
“Where is he?” Jed dropped the box,
wincing at the sound.
“A hundred metres away. But heading
your way.”
“Oh Jeeze. Is he possessed?”
“Unknown.”
Jed shot across the storage room
and closed the door. Nothing he could do about the damning trolley outside,
though. His heart began yammering as he flattened himself against the wall
beside the door—as if that made a difference.
“Still coming,” Rocio announced
calmly. “Seventy metres now.”
Jed’s hand crept down to the
utility pocket on his hip. Fingers flicked the seal catch, and he dug inside.
His hand closed around the cold, reassuring grip of the laser pistol.
“Thirty metres. He’s coming to the
junction with your corridor.”
Don’t look at the bloody trolley,
Jed prayed. Christ, please don’t.
He drew the laser pistol out, and
studied the simple controls for a second. Switched modes to constant beam, full
power. Repeater was no good, a possessed would be able to screw with the
electrics inside while he was shooting. He was only going to have one chance.
“He’s in the corridor. I think he’s
seen the trolley. Stopping just outside.”
Jed closed his eyes, shaking badly.
A possessed would be able to sense his thoughts. They would all be hauled off
to face Capone. He would be tortured and Beth would get sent to the brothel.
I should have left the door open,
that way I could have sprung out and surprised them.
“Hello?” a voice called. It was
very high pitched, almost a girl.
“Is that them?” he whispered to his
suit mike.
“Yes. He’s examined the trolley.
Now by the door.”
The locking clamp moved, slowly
hinging back. Jed stared at it in dread, desperate for one last hit from the
suit’s medical module.
If the laser doesn’t work, I’ll
kill myself, he decided. Better that . . .
“Hello?” the high voice sounded
timid. “Is someone there?”
The door started to open.
“Hello?”
Jed shouted in fury, and jumped
from the wall. Holding the laser pistol in a double handed grip, he spun round
and fired out into the corridor. Webster Pryor was saved by two things: his own
diminutive height, and Jed’s quite abysmal aim.
The red strand of laserlight was
quite brilliant compared to the corridor lighting. It left Jed squinting
against the glare, trying to see what he was shooting at. Blue-white flames and
black smoke were squirting out of the corridor wall opposite, tracing a
meandering line in the composite. Then the smoke stopped, and a spray of molten
metal rained down. He was slicing through a conditioning duct.
He did—just—see a small man dive to
the floor at his feet as the laser slashed round in search of a target. There
was a yell of panic, and someone was screaming: “Don’t shoot me don’t shoot
me!” in a high pitched voice.
Jed yelled himself. Confused all to
hell what was happening. Tentatively, he took his finger off the laser’s
trigger. Metal creaked alarmingly as the duct sagged around the dripping gap in
its side. He looked down at the figure in the white jacket and black trousers
grovelling on the floor. “What in Christ’s name is going on? Who are you?”
A terrified face was looking up at
him. It wasn’t a bloke, just a kid. “Please don’t kill me,” Webster pleaded.
“Please. I don’t want to be one of them. They’re horrible.”
“What’s happening?” Rocio asked.
“Not sure,” Jed mumbled. He took a
look down the corridor. All clear.
“Was that a laser?”
“Yeah.” He aimed it down at
Webster. “Are you possessed?”
“No. Are you?”
“Course bloody not.”
“Well I didn’t know,” Webster
wailed.
“How did you get a weapon?” Rocio
asked.
“Shut up! Jeeze, give me a break. I
just got one, okay?”
Webster was frowning through his
tears. “What?”
“Nothing.” Jed hesitated, then put
the laser pistol back in his utility pocket. The kid looked harmless; though
the waiter’s jacket with its brass buttons which he wore, along with his
oil-slicked hair, was a little odd. But he was more scared than anything else.
“Who are you?”
The story came out in broken
sentences, punctuated by sobs. How Webster and his mother had been caught up in
Capone’s take-over. How they’d been held in one of the asteroid’s halls with
hundreds of other women and children. How some Organization woman came
searching them out from the rest. How he’d been separated from his mother and
put to work serving drinks and food for the gangster bosses and a peculiar,
very pretty, lady. How he kept hearing Capone and the lady mention his father’s
name, and then glance in his direction.
“What are you doing down here?” Jed
asked.
“They sent me for some food,”
Webster said. “The cook told me to find out if there were any swans left in
storage.”
“This is the spacecraft section,”
Jed said. “Didn’t you know?”
Webster sniffled loudly. “Yes. But
if I look everywhere, I could stay away from them for a while.”
“Right.” He straightened, and found
one of the small camera lenses. “What do we do?” he asked, flustered by the
boy’s tale.
“Get rid of him,” Rocio said
curtly.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s a complication. You’ve got
the laser pistol, haven’t you?”
Webster was looking up at him
passively, eyes red-rimmed from the tears. All mournful and beat; the way not
so long ago Jed had looked at Digger when the pain was at its worst.
“I can’t do that!” Jed exclaimed.
“What do you need, a note from your
mother? Listen to me, Jed, the second he steps within range of a possessed,
they’ll know something’s happened to him. Then they’ll come looking for you.
They’ll get you, and Beth, and the girls.”
“No way. I can’t. I just can’t. Not
even if I wanted to.”
“So what are you going to do
instead?”
“I don’t know! Beth? Beth, have you
been switched on to all this?”
“Yes, Jed,” she replied. “You’re
not to touch that boy. We’ve got plenty of food, now, so bring him back with
you. He can come with us.”
“Really?” Rocio enquired
disdainfully. “And where’s his spacesuit? How’s he supposed to get out to me?”
Jed looked at Webster, thoroughly
disconcerted. This whole situation was just getting worse and worse. “For
Christ’s sake, just get me out of this.”
“Stop being an arsehole,” Beth
snapped. “It’s bloody obvious, you’ll have to steal one of the vehicles.
There’s plenty of them about. I can see some of them docked to the airlocks
close to where you went in. Take one and drive it over to us.”
Jed wanted to curl up into a ball
and take a decent hit. A vehicle! In full view of this whole nest of possessed.
“Please Jed, come back,” Gari
entreated. “I don’t like it here without you.”
“All right, doll,” he said, too
bushed to kick up an argument. “On my way.” He rounded on Webster. “And you’d
better not be any trouble.”
“You’re going to take me away?” the
boy asked in wonder.
“Sort of, yeah.”
Jed didn’t bother about collecting
any more food from the shelves. He just started pushing the trolley, making
sure Webster was in sight the whole time.
Rocio reviewed the camera images
and schematic data available to him, and quickly devised a route to one of the
docking ledge vehicles. It meant the two of them taking a lift up to the lounge
level, which he didn’t like. But previewing enabled him to hurry them past the
sections where crews were still working without incident.
The vehicle he’d chosen for them
was a small taxi with a five-seater cab. Large enough to take the trolley, and
simple enough for Jed to drive. He was back at the Mindori three minutes
after disengaging from the airlock. It actually took him longer than that to
match the taxi’s docking tube with the starship’s life support module hatch.
Once the tube was locked and pressurized, Beth, Gari, and Navar came rushing in
to greet the returning hero. Beth put her hands on either side of his face and
gave him a long kiss. “I’m proud of you,” she said.
That wasn’t something she’d ever
told him before, and she didn’t hand out platitudes, either. Of course, today
had been full of not merely the unusual, but the positively weird. However, the
words left him warm and uncertain. The moment was only slightly spoilt when the
two younger girls started reading labels and found out what he’d brought back.
It had taken the Monterey Hilton’s
head chef over three hours to prepare the meal. A dozen or so senior
lieutenants and their partners had been invited to an evening with Al and
Jezzibella. Pasta with a sauce that was at least as good as they used to make
on Earth (supervised by Al), swan stuffed with fish, fresh vegetables boosted
up from the planet that afternoon, desserts heavy on chocolate and calories,
matured cheeses, the finest wines New California could produce, the fanciest
liqueurs. As well as the food, there was a five-piece band, and some showgirls
for later. Guests would also receive items of twenty-four carat jewellery
(genuine, not energistic baubles), personally selected by Al himself. The evening
was intended to be memorable. Nobody left Al Capone’s party without a smile on
their face. His reputation as a wild and exuberant host had to be preserved,
after all.
What Al didn’t know was that Leroy
had to be taken off Organization administration duties in order to make the
arrangements. He’d spent over an hour calling senior Organization personnel to
facilitate the ingredients and people necessary to make the party work. That
bothered the obese manager. The picture he and Emmet were getting from various
lieutenants and city bosses down on the surface was a smooth one, things
falling neatly into place, people doing as they were told. But not so long ago,
when the fleet left for Arnstat, Leroy had put together a grand ball in under a
week. A time when the planet and high-orbit asteroids had fought for the
privilege of supplying Al with the best of anything they had. This party was a
fraction of that scale and a multiple of the effort.
However, despite the grudging
donations, the Nixon suite’s dining room was an impressive and dramatic example
of lavishness when Leroy finally arrived, immaculate tuxedo straining around
his huge frame. One of the more lissom girls from the brothel was on his arm;
the pair of them a gross example of human glandular divergence. Heads turned to
look at him when they arrived together. Silent calculations were quickly
performed when a smiling Al greeted them, and handed the girl a diamond
necklace which even her cleavage couldn’t devour. No snide remarks were
ventured, though the mind-tones said it all.
Monterey was out of the umbra
again, heading into the light. Outside the broad window, New California’s green
and blue crescent gleamed warmly. It was a sumptuous atmosphere for the
pre-dinner drinks, and the atmosphere was suitably relaxed. Waiters circulated
with gold and silver trays of canapés, making sure no glass was ever in danger
of heading towards half empty. Conversation flowed, and Al circulated with
grace, showing no favouritism.
His mood didn’t even falter when
Kiera showed up an easy fifteen minutes after everyone else. She wore a
provocatively simple sleeveless summer dress of some thin mauve fabric, cut to
emphasise her figure. On a girl of her body’s age it would have been charmingly
guileless, on her it was a declaration of all-out fashion war against the other
females in the room. Only Jezzibella in the ever-classic little black cocktail
number looked snazzier. And by the bright cherub’s smile she used to welcome
Kiera, she knew it.
“Al, darling,” Kiera’s smile was
wide and sweltering as she kissed Al’s cheek. “Great party, thanks for the
invite.”
For a second, Al worried her teeth
might be going for his jugular. Her thoughts bristled with an icy superiority.
“Wouldn’t be the same without you,” he told her. Jeeze, and to think he’d once
considered her a possible lay. His wang would get so cold inside her, it’d snap
clean off.
The notion made him shiver. He
beckoned to one of the waiters. The guy must have been in his nineties, one of
those dignified old coots that were perfect as butlers. Young Webster should
have been doing this job, Al thought, it would have made for a cuter image. But
he hadn’t seen the boy all evening. The old man wobbled forwards obediently,
carrying a tray of black velvet with a shimmering sapphire cobweb necklace
resting on it.
“For me?” Kiera simpered. “Oh, how
lovely.”
Al took the necklace off the tray
and slowly fastened it round her neck, ignoring her lecherous smirk at his
proximity.
“It’s so nice to see you here,”
Jezzibella said, clinging to Al’s arm. “We weren’t sure if you could spare the
time.”
“I’ve always got time for Al.”
“That’s nice to hear. Keeping the
hellhawks in line must take up a big part of your day.”
“I don’t have any trouble coping.
They know I’m in charge of them.”
“Yeah, you got some interesting
moves, there,” Al said. “Emmet was full of praise for what you did. Said it was
smart. Coming from him, that’s quite a compliment. I’ll have to remember them
in case I’m ever in a similar situation.”
Kiera removed a champagne saucer
from one of the waiters, her gaze searched the room like a targeting laser
until she found Emmet. “You won’t be in a similar situation, Al. I’m covering
that flank for you. Very thoroughly.”
Jezzibella morphed into her
hero-worshipping early-teens persona. “Covering for Al?” her high girlish voice
piped.
“Yes. Who else?”
“Come on, Jez,” Al grinned in
mock-rebuke. “There ain’t no one else in the market for hellhawks, you know
that.”
“I do.” Jezzibella looked up
adoringly at him, and sighed.
“And without me, there’s no reason
for New California to keep supporting them,” Al said.
Kiera’s attention moved back from
Emmet. “Believe me, I’m very aware of everyone’s position. And their worth.”
“That’s nice,” Jezzibella said
blandly.
“Enjoy your drink, babe,” Al said,
and patted Kiera’s arm. “I got a small announcement to make before we sit down
to eat.” He marched over to Emmet, and signalled the head waiter to bang a
gong. The room fell silent, people picking up on the focused excitement in Al’s
mind. “This ain’t the usual kind of speech to make at table. I ain’t got no
stag jokes, for a start.”
Faithful smiles switched on all
around. Al took another sip of champagne—damn, but he wanted a shot of decent
bourbon. “All right, I ain’t gonna bullshit around with you. We got problems
with the fleet, on account of it ain’t got nowhere to go. You know how it is,
we gotta keep momentum going or the boys’ll go sour on us. That right,
Silvano?”
The brooding lieutenant nodded
scrupulously. “Some of the guys are getting close to the boil, sure, Al.
Nothing we can’t keep a lid on.”
“I don’t wanna keep no fucking lid
on nothing. We gotta give the bastards something to do while we build up stocks
of antimatter. We can’t take over no planet again, not for a while. So we’re
gonna hit the Confederation from another angle. That’s what I got for you,
something new. This way we cause them one fuck of a lot of damage, and don’t
get hurt ourselves. And we got Emmet here to thank for that.” He put his arm
round the Organization’s reluctant technology expert, and gave him a friendly
hug. “We’re gonna launch some raids on other planets, and break through their
space fort defences. Once we’ve done that, we can sling a whole load of our
guys down to the surface. Tell them, Emmet.”
“I’ve done some preliminary designs
for one-man atmospheric entry pods,” Emmet said in a tense voice. “They’re
based on standard escape boats, but they can descend in under fifteen minutes.
That’s high gees for whoever’s inside, but with our energistic strength it shouldn’t
be a problem. And they’re simple enough, that we shouldn’t screw up the
guidance electronics. All the fleet has to do is create a window in the SD
coverage long enough for them to get down. Once they’re on the ground, the good
old exponential curve comes into play.”
“Without the fleet firepower to
back them up, they’ll lose,” Dwight said bluntly. “The local cops will wipe
them out.”
“It depends on how together the
planet is, and how many soldiers we can shove down there,” Al said, untroubled.
“Emmet’s right about how fast we can expand. That’s gonna cause the governments
a shitload of grief.”
“But, Al, the Organization can’t
expand as fast as ordinary possessed. We’ve got to have time to let Harwood and
his guys vet the souls that’re coming back. Christ, we’ve had enough trouble
with loyalty on New California, let alone Arnstat. If we don’t have committed
lieutenants, the Organization’ll fall apart.”
“Who gives a shit?” Al laughed
round at the startled expressions. “Come on, you guys! Just how many goddamn
planets do you think we can run? Even the King of Kulu’s only got half a dozen.
If I gave all you dopeheads one apiece to be emperor of, that still leaves
hundreds of free ones left out there to screw with us. We gotta start levelling
the odds, here. I say shoot possessed down to the surface and let the fuckers
run loose. We can use all our hotheads from here, all the crap artists who
wanna take New California out of the universe, send them, get rid of the
assholes permanently. That way we’re solving two problems at once. Fewer
traitors here, and planets dropping out of the Confederation. You retards
grabbed what that’ll mean yet? It means less hassle for us. Every planet we hit
is gonna scream to the navy for the same kinda help Mortonridge is getting.
That’ll cost them plenty to provide. Money they can’t spend dicking with us.”
He looked round the room, knowing he’d won them over. Again. His face reddened
with the heat of victory, three tiny white lines proud on his cheek. That
reluctant admiration he’d kindled in them proving he was the man with the plan,
and the balls to see it through.
Al raised his glass high in
triumph. And it was like a room full of krauts doing their knee-jerk fascist
salute as the others held their own glasses up, fast. Jezzibella winked
impishly at him from behind the back row, while Kiera’s face was drawn as she
considered the implications.
“A toast. Goodbye to that goddamn
pain in the ass Confederation.”
The Mindori’s distortion
field expanded outwards in a specific pattern of swirls, generating ripples in
the fabric of space-time. They pushed against the hull, lifting it from the
pedestal in a simple, smooth motion. Inside the large forward lounge, none of
the six passengers noticed even a quiver in the apparent gravity field. They’d
just finished their meal of mashed turkey granules, which was the only meat
product Beth could hammer into a burger shape. Jed was ignoring the sullen
stares that were getting flashed his way. Turkey wasn’t so bad after it had
been grilled.
Gerald Skibbow looked up at the
lounge’s big screen as the edge of the docking ledge slipped towards them.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
Webster twitched in surprise, it
was the first time he’d heard Gerald speak. The others stared at him, slightly
nervous of what would follow. Even now, after all this time, he was still nutty
Gerald to them. Rocio had privately confided to Jed and Beth he couldn’t make
any sense of Gerald’s thoughts at all.
A small picture of Rocio’s face
appeared in one corner of the screen. “I’ve been given a patrol flight vector,”
he said. “It’s not a very demanding one, we’ll never be more than three million
kilometres from New California. I suspect it’s a trial to see if I do as I’m
told. I have just filled my reserve bladders with nutrient fluid, if I was
going to leave, now would be an obvious time.”
“Are you going to?” Beth asked.
“No. The only place to go is the
Edenist habitats and the Confederation. The price for their sanctuary would be
cooperating with their physicists. And that would ultimately lead to the defeat
of the possessed. I told you before, I need to find other options.”
“I don’t want to leave Monterey,”
Gerald said. The screen was now showing the asteroid’s counter-rotating
spaceport receding at a considerable speed. “Please go back and let me
disembark.”
“Can’t do that, Gerald, mate,” Beth
said. “Them possessed, they’d spot you inside Monterey in a flash. Give the
whole game away. We’d all wind up like Marie, that way, and they’d punish
Rocio, too.”
“I will assist you with Kiera in
whatever way I can,” Rocio said. “But first, I must establish myself as one of
her servile flock.”
Beth reached over and gripped
Gerald’s arm. “We can wait that long, eh?”
Gerald considered her words;
although he was sure his thoughts were taking longer to form these days. There
was a time when he could give an instant reply to any topic or question. That
Gerald existed only in his mind now, a memory that was hard to find and
difficult to see. “All right,” he said. It was a tough concession to make. To
have been so close to her. Just a few hundred metres. And now having to
leave, to abandon her. It would probably be days until they could return. Days
darling Marie would have to spend enduring the torment of that terrible woman’s
control. The notions of what she would get up to with her captive flesh were
horrible. Marie was a lovely little girl, so pretty. Always had lots of
boyfriends, which he’d tried not to get upset and protective over. Back on
Lalonde, sex seemed the only thing the possessed were interested in. And like
every father since the dawn of civilization, Marie’s sexuality was the one
thing Gerald never dared dwell upon.
It would be that, he admitted in
his dark heart. Night after night, Kiera would allow some man to run his hands
over her. Would laugh and groan at the abuse. Would demand hot physical
violations. Bodies writhing together in the darkness. Beautiful, strong bodies.
Gerald whimpered softly.
“You okay?” Beth asked. Beside her,
Jed was frowning.
“Fine,” Gerald whispered. His hands
were rubbing his perspiring forehead, trying to massage the pain inside. “I
just want to help her. And if I could just get to her, I know I could. Loren
said so, you see.”
“We’ll be back there in no time,
okay, no worries.”
He nodded lamely, returning to pick
at the food they’d given him. He had to get to Marie soon. He was sorry about
everyone else’s predicament, but what Marie was suffering was unspeakable. Next
time they landed at Monterey, he decided, it would be different. No details,
but definitely different.
Rocio was aware of Gerald’s ardent,
fractured anxiety sinking back under calmer emotions. That man’s mind was a
complete enigma. Not that Rocio actually wanted to be privy to such tortured
thoughts. Shame that he couldn’t convince Beth and Jed to stay on board by
themselves. This entourage of people were making his position more complicated.
Ideally, he’d like to winnow the numbers down again.
Now that he was clear of the
asteroid, he began to accelerate. Modifying the distortion field to generate
ever-more powerful ripples in space-time. He surfed them at seven gees, a
secondary manipulation alleviating the force around the life support section.
As the sense of freedom rose in tandem with his speed, he allowed his dreamform
to blossom. Dark wings slowly spread wide, sweeping eagerly, sending motes of
interplanetary dust swirling in his wake. He shook his neck, blinking huge red
eyes, flexing his talons. In this state, he was perfectly at one with himself
and life. It reaffirmed the conviction that Kiera’s hold over himself and his
comrades must be broken.
He began talking to the other
hellhawks, probing for emotional nuances. Building a pattern of those who
thought as he did. Of the seventy currently in the New California system, he
thought there were possibly nineteen he could count on for open support,
another ten would probably side with him if things looked favourable. Several
were playing it very coy, while eight or nine, led by Etchells and Cameron
Leung, revelled in the prospect of following the Organization fleet into glory.
Good enough odds.
Eight hours into his patrol, Hudson
Proctor delivered new instructions. There’s an interplanetary ship
decelerating towards New California, Kiera’s lieutenant said. Coming
straight in along the south pole, one and a half million kilometres out. We
think it’s come from the Almaden asteroid. Can you sense it?
Rocio expanded his distortion
field, probing where Proctor indicated. The ship slithered into his perception
as a tight kink of mass, alive with energy.
Got it, he acknowledged.
Intercept them, and order them
to return.
Are they hostile?
I doubt it. Probably just
another bunch of idiots who think they can live where they want instead of
where the Organization tells them.
Understood. And if they don’t
want to return?
Blow them to shit. Any
questions?
No.
Rocio changed the distortion field
again, concentrating it on a small area just ahead of his beak. Power surged
through his patterning cells, and the stress he was applying leapt towards
infinite. A wormhole interstice opened, and he shot through, emerging from the
terminus less than two seconds later. It folded neatly behind his tailfeathers,
returning local space-time to its usual consonance.
The interplanetary ship was three
kilometres away, a long silk-grey splinter of metal and composite. Standard
configuration of barrel-shaped life support module separated from the drive
section by a lattice tower. It was decelerating at two thirds of a gee,
blue-white fusion flame spearing cleanly from its exhaust. Rocio was also aware
of another wormhole terminus opening five thousand kilometres away. A hellhawk
slid out, deflating its distortion field immediately, and drifting inert. He
resisted the temptation to hail it. Shadowing him in such a fashion to monitor
his conduct was very unsubtle.
A radar pulse triggered the ship’s
transponder: according to the code it was called the Lucky Logorn. Rocio
matched velocities with it, and opened a short-range channel. “This is the
Organization ship Mindori,” he told them. “You’re approaching New
California’s Strategic Defence network without clearance. Please identify
yourself.”
“This is Deebank, I guess I’m the
captain around here. We haven’t been advertising our presence in case we
attracted those goddamn voidhawks. Sorry about that, didn’t mean to give you a
scare. We’d like clearance to rendezvous with a low orbit station.”
“Clearance refused. Return to your
asteroid.”
“Now just a goddamn minute, we’re
loyal members of the Organization here. What gives you the right to order us
about?”
Rocio activated a maser cannon on
his lower hull, and targeted one of the thermo-dump panels plumbed into Lucky
Logorn’s equipment bay. “One. I’m not ordering you, I’m relaying an
instruction from the Organization. Two.” He fired.
The blast of coherent maser
radiation thumped a half-metre hole into the middle of the thermo-dump panel.
Fluorescent orange shards spun away, their glimmer slowly fading to black.
“Fuck you,” Deebank shouted. “You
bastards can’t keep us out here forever.”
“Realign your drive. Now. My second
shot will be through your fusion tube. You’ll be left drifting out here. The
only thing you’ll have to occupy yourselves with is a sweepstake. Is your food
going to run out first? Or will it be the air? Then again, a voidhawk might
pick you up, and you get used as research lab beasts by the Confederation.”
“You piece of shit.”
“I’m waiting.” Rocio slid closer,
picking up the resentment and anger boiling through the eight people in the
life support section. There was bitter resignation in there, too.
Sure enough, the fusion drive plume
twitched round, sending Lucky Logorn on a shallow arc which would
ultimately see it heading back to Almaden. Cancelling so much delta-V was a
long, energy expensive business. It would take them hours.
“We’re going to remember you,”
Deebank promised. “Time will come when you need to join us. Don’t expect it to
be easy.”
“Join you where?” Rocio asked,
genuinely curious.
“On a planet, dick-for-brains.”
“Is that what this was all about?
Your fear of space?”
“What the hell did you think we
were doing? Invading?”
“I wasn’t told.”
“Okay. So now you understand, will
you let us through?”
“I can’t.”
“Bastard.”
Rocio played for the sympathy
angle, marshalling his thoughts into contrite concern. “I mean it. There’s
another hellhawk shadowing me, making sure I do what I’m told. They’re not
certain about my commitment to the cause, you see.”
“Hear that splashing sound? That’s
my heart bleeding.”
“Why doesn’t the Organization want
you on New California?”
“Because they need the products
Almaden makes in its industrial stations. The asteroid has plenty of
astroengineering companies who specialise in weapons systems. And we’re the
poor saps who have to terrorise non-possessed technicians into keeping them
running. You got any idea what that’s like? It’s a crock of shit. I was a
soldier when I was alive, I used to fight the kind of fascists who enslaved
people like this. I’m telling you, it ain’t right. It ain’t what I was brought
up to do. None of this is.”
“Then why stay in the
Organization?”
“If you ain’t for Capone, you’re
against him. That’s the way it works. He’s been real smart the way he’s set
things up. Those lieutenants of his will do anything to keep their position.
They put the screws on us, and we have to put the screws on the non-possessed.
If there’s any trouble, if we start to object, or get uppity, they just call on
the fleet for back up. Don’t they? You’re the enforcers, you make it all hang
together for him.”
“We have our own enforcer, she’s
called Kiera.”
“The Deadnight babe? No shit? I
wouldn’t mind submitting my poor body to some enforcement by her.” Laughter
rumbled across the gap between the ships.
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d
ever met her.”
“Tough bitch, huh?”
“The worst.”
“You don’t sound too happy about
that.”
“You and I are in the same
situation.”
“Yeah? So listen, maybe we can come
to some kind of arrangement? I mean, if we have to go back to Almaden, the
lieutenants are going to make us eat shit for pulling this stunt. Why don’t you
take us back to New California, let us off at a low orbit station, or if you’ve
got a spaceplane we could use that. If we get down there to the surface, we
stay. Believe me. There’d be no comeback.”
“Fine for you.”
“We’ll get you a body. A human one,
the very best there is. There’s millions of non-possessed left on the planet;
we’ll get one ready for possession and hold it for you. This way you get down
there without any of the risk we’ll be going through. Listen, you can sense I’m
telling the truth. Right?”
“Yes. But it doesn’t interest me.”
“What? Why not? Come on! It’s the
greatest deal in town.”
“Not for me. You people really hate
this empty universe, don’t you?”
“Oh, like you don’t? You were in
the beyond. You can hear the beyond. It’s always there, just one step away on
the other side from night. We have to get away from that.”
“I don’t.”
“Crap.”
“But I don’t. Really. Certainly I
can still hear the lost souls, but it’s not as if they can touch me. All they
are is a reminder of that nothingness. They’re not a threat themselves. Fear is
the only thing that drives you to escape. I’ve got over that. Mindori belongs
here in the emptiness, this is its perfect milieu. Having this construct as my
host has taught me not to be afraid. Perhaps it should be you who try and find
blackhawk and voidhawk bodies? Can you imagine that? It would solve everyone’s
problem, without all this conflict and violence. If after you die, you were to
be given a voidhawk body to possess. Enough could be grown for the lost souls,
I’m sure of it, given time and commitment. Then ultimately, space would become
filled with billions of us, the entire human race transformed into dark angels
flitting between the stars.”
“Hey, pal, know what? Possessing
that monster didn’t cure you, it made you take a swan dive over the edge.”
“Perhaps. But which of us is
content?”
“You got Kiera to worry about.
Remember? How come you don’t flap off into the sunset?”
“As you say, Kiera is a problem.”
“Right, so don’t come over all
superior.”
“I wasn’t. Your offer to deal
interests me. It may be possible to come to some arrangement. I have a notion,
but it’ll take some time to check the requirements. Once you’re back on
Almaden, I’ll look you up.”
Coming down to the gym in the
Hilton’s basement always stirred Kiera’s darker animal feelings. She rather
enjoyed her new role of laid back vamp, letting her eye wander over the young
men being put through their paces by a gruff Malone. Their apprehension was
pleasurable as they saw her watching, the nudges and worried glances. It wasn’t
that she’d never had affairs back on New Munich, she’d taken several lovers
during her marriage, both before and after her husband’s fall from grace. But
they’d all been insipid, cautious encounters. Most of the thrill had come from
the concept of having an affair, of cheating and not getting caught. The sex
had never been anything special.
Now though, she was free to explore
her sexuality to the full, with no one to disapprove or condemn. Part of her
allure came from being a woman in power, she was a challenge to any male; the
rest came from Marie Skibbow’s gorgeous body. It was the second factor which
brought her down here to the non-possessed. Possessed lovers, like poor old
Stanyon, were so artificial. Men inevitably gave themselves big penises, could
stay erect all night, had Greek-god bodies. Strutting clichés, that spoke
volumes about their weaknesses and insecurities.
She much preferred the youngsters
from the gym for the reality they provided. Unable to hide behind any mental or
physical illusion, sex with them was raw and primitive. Dominating them in bed,
without a single inhibition, was utterly delicious. And Marie herself had a
surprising amount of knowledge which Kiera could extract and experiment with.
Despised memories and skill gained during a long river journey spent
capitulating to an old man called Len Buchannan. Enduring the nightly
humiliation for one reason alone, the freedom which waited at the end of the
river. The girl had a single minded determination which Kiera quite admired. It
came close to her own. Even now, captive and tragic, inside her mental prison,
Marie clung to the notion of deliverance.
But how? Kiera wondered lightly.
Somehow. One day.
Not with me in command of you.
Nothing lasts forever. As you know.
Kiera dismissed the impudent girl
from her thoughts with a derisory mental sneer. Her gaze found a rather
delicious nineteen-year-old hammering his fists into a long leather punch bag.
The desperate aggression and sweating muscles were highly arousing. He knew she
was standing behind him, but refused to turn. Hoping if he avoided eye contact
she would pass by. She crooked a finger at Malone, who came over reluctantly.
“What’s his name?” she asked
huskily.
“Jamie.” The squat trainer’s
thoughts were full of contempt.
“Are you frightened of me, Jamie?”
He stopped punching, steadying the
bag. Gentle grey eyes stared at her levelly. “You, no. What you can do, yeah.”
She applauded languidly. “Very
good. Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you.” She glanced down at Malone. “I’ll
bring him back to you in the morning.”
Malone took his cap off, and spat
on the floor. “Whatever you say, Kiera.”
She walked right up to Jamie,
enjoying his discomfort at her proximity. “Oh dear, I’m not that bad am I?” she
murmured.
He was a head taller than her. When
he looked down, his eyes were drawn the rich tanned skin revealed by her mauve
summer dress. Embarrassment warred with other, more subtle emotions. Kiera
grinned in victory. At least something was going right tonight. Capone and his
damn sedition plans! She took his big hand in hers, and began to lead him out
of the gym like a giant puppy. Before she reached the double doors, they swung
open. Luigi barged through, carrying a pile of towels. He caught sight of
Kiera, and glared angrily. Commander of the fleet, now running trivial
demeaning errands for the nonentity Malone. The resentment twisting him up was
almost strong enough to manifest itself as pernicious violence; he was sure she
was here simply to witness his humiliation first hand. The boss’s new favourite
gloating over her ex-rival’s downfall.
“Luigi,” Kiera said brightly.
“Fancy seeing you here. How wonderful.”
“Piss off, bitch.” He elbowed past
her, scowling.
“After the towels, will you be
going down on your knees to tie up their shoes?”
Luigi twisted in mid step, and
marched back to her. He thrust his head forward so their noses were touching.
“You’re a whore. A very cheap whore. With only one thing to sell. When the
Organization has used up your hellhawks, you’ll be nothing. Best thing is, you
know it’s coming. Your bullshit ice empress routine doesn’t fool anyone. This
whole damn asteroid is laughing at you.”
“Of course it’s coming,” she said
serenely. “But they wouldn’t be used up if the fleet was commanded properly.”
Confusion marred his face and his
thoughts. “What?”
That uncertainty was enough for
Kiera. She patted Jamie’s heavily muscled forearm. “Why don’t you take those
heavy towels from Luigi, darling. It looks like I won’t be needing you tonight,
after all.”
Jamie peered over the pile of
towels unexpectedly dumped in his arms, watching the doors close behind Kiera
and Luigi. “I don’t get it,” he complained. Part of him had actually been quite
looking forward to the sex, despite what the others kept saying about the Deadnight
witch.
Malone patted the big lad’s
shoulder in a paternal fashion. “Don’t worry about it, my boy. You’re well off
out of that kind of scene.”
Given Dr Pierce Gilmore’s senior
position within the CNIS’s scientific staff, weapons analysis division, it was
inevitable that a large part of his nature tended towards the bureaucratic.
Precise and methodical in his work, he believed strongly in following
sanctioned procedures to the letter during his investigations. Such adherence
to protocol was something of a joke among his department’s junior staff, who
accused him of inflexibility and lack of imagination. He endured their
behind-his-back humour stoically, while politely and consistently refusing to
take short cuts and play up to wild hunches. To his credit, it was exactly the
kind of leadership the weapons division needed. Eternal patience is a prime
requisite in the dismantling of unknown weapons that have been designed
illegally (mostly under government patronage) and tend to incorporate elements
that actively discourage close examination. In the seven years he’d held his
post, the division’s safety record was exemplary.
Also to his credit, he didn’t
indulge in the usual internal empire building so beloved of government
employees, especially those who, like him, were essentially unaccountable. As a
result, his office was a modest one, roughly equivalent to the entitlement of a
middle manager in some multistellar company. There were few personal items,
some ornaments and desktop solid images; a shelf of Stanhopea orchids
flourishing under a slim solaris tube. The furniture was formal, a comfortable
reproduction of the flared darkwood Midwest-ethnic style he’d grown up with.
Broad holographic windows of Cheyenne’s heroically rugged countryside did
little to disguise the room’s actual location, buried deep inside Trafalgar. In
its favour, the electronic suite Gilmore had installed was a top-of-the range
Edenist processor array verging on AI status. Such a system helped facilitate
the twice weekly multi-disciplinary councils he chaired to investigate the
capabilities of the possessed.
This was the second time the team
heads had met since Jacqueline Couteur had made her bid for freedom in maximum
security court three, and the aftermath was still affecting everyone’s mood.
Professor Nowak, the quantum physicist, was first to arrive, helping himself to
some of the coffee from the percolator jug which Gilmore kept going full time.
Dr Hemmatu, the energy specialist, and Yusuf, the electronics chief, came in
together talking in low tones. They gave Gilmore a perfunctory nod and sat down
at the conference desk. Mattox was next, the neurology doctor keeping to
himself as usual, choosing a chair one along the desk from Yusuf. Euru
completed the group, sitting directly opposite Gilmore. In contrast to the rest
of them, the dark-skinned Edenist appeared almost indecently happy.
Gilmore had known his deputy long
enough to see it wasn’t just the usual contentment which all Edenists shared.
“You have something?” he enquired.
“A voidhawk has just arrived from
the Sinagra system. It was carrying an interesting recording.”
Hemmatu perked up. “From Valisk?”
The independent habitat had supplied a large amount of very useful data on the
behaviour of the possessed before it vanished.
“Yes, just before Rubra and Dariat
took it away,” Euru said, smiling broadly. He instructed his bitek processor
block to datavise the file to them.
The sensevise they received was a
strange one, lacking the resolution normally associated with full nerve channel
input. Conversions from Edenist habitat memories to a standard Adamist
electronic format were notoriously quirky, but this was something else again.
Nesting within its environment of pastel colours, tenuous scents, and mild
tactorials, Gilmore tried bravely to avoid using the connotation: spectral. He
failed dismally.
The memory was of Dariat, while he
bobbed about on the surface of some icy water inside a dark polyp-walled tube.
The cold was severe enough to penetrate even his energistic protection, judging
by the way it was numbing his appropriated limbs, and making him shiver. A
plump black woman clung to him, shaking violently inside her strange waistcoat
of cushions.
Did you gain any impression of
size? the Kohistan Consensus
asked Dariat.
Not really, a universe is a
universe. How big is this one?
Consensus received his quick
recollection of the beyond. His soul had become a feeble flicker of identity
adrift in a nowhere at one remove from reality. Nowhere full of similar souls;
all of them with the same craving, the sensations available on the other side.
The memory of someone else’s
memory: if the sensenviron of the Valisk starscraper waste tube was tenuous,
this was as insubstantial as a nearly-forgotten dream. The beyond, as far as
Dariat was concerned, lacked any physical sensation, all that betrayed its
presence was a transparent tapestry of emotions. Anguish and yearning flooded
through the realm Souls clustered round, desperately suckling at his memories
for the illusion of physical sensation they contained.
Confusion and fear reigned in
Dariat’s mind. He wanted to flee. He wanted to plunge into the glorious star of
sensation burning so bright as Kiera and Stanyon forced open a path into
Horgan’s body. The beyond withered behind him as he surged along the tear
through the barrier between planes of existence.
And how do you control the
energistic power? Consensus
asked.
Dariat gave them a visualization
(perfectly clear this time) of desire overlaying actuality. More handsome
features, thicker hair, brighter clothes. Like a hologram projection, but
backed up by energy oozing out of the beyond to shore it up, providing
solidity. Also, the destructive power, a mental thunderbolt, aimed and thrown
amid boiling passion. The rush of energy from the beyond increasing a
thousandfold, sizzling through the possessed body like an electric charge.
What about senses? This ESP
faculty you have? The world
around him altered, shifting to slippery shadows.
There were several more questions
and observations on the nature of Dariat’s state, which the rebel possessor did
his best to answer. In total, the recording amounted to over fifteen minutes.
“Wealth indeed,” Gilmore said when
it ended. “This kind of clarification is just what we need to pursue a
solution. It seemed to me as though Dariat actually had some freedom of
movement in the beyond. To my mind, that implies physical dimensions.”
“A strange sort of space,” Nowak
said. “From the way the souls were pressed close enough to overlap, there
appeared to be very little of it. I won’t call it a place, but it’s definitely
a unified area. It was almost a closed continuum, yet we know it exists in
parallel to our own universe, so it must have infinite depth. That’s damn close
to being paradoxical.” He shrugged, disturbed by his own reasoning.
“That perception ability Dariat
demonstrated interests me,” Euru commented. “The effect is remarkably similar
to a voidhawk’s mass perception sense.”
Gilmore looked across his desk to
the tall Edenist, inviting him to continue.
“I’d say the possessed must be
interpreting local energy resonances. Whatever type of energy they operate
within, we know it pervades our universe, even if we can’t distinguish it
ourselves yet.”
“If you’re right,” Nowak said,
“that’s a further indication that our universe is conjunctive with this beyond
realm, that there is no single interface point.”
“There has to be an identifiable
connection,” Euru said. “Dariat was clearly aware of the lost souls while he
occupied Horgan’s body. He could hear them—for want of a better phrase. They
were pleading with the possessors the whole time, asking to be given bodies.
Somewhere there is a connection, a conduit leading back there.”
Gilmore glanced round the desk to
see if anyone else wanted to pick up on the point. They were all silent,
concentrating on the implications Euru and Nowak raised. “I’ve been considering
that we might need to approach this from a different angle,” he said. “After
all, we’ve had a singular lack of success in trying to analyse the quantum
signature of the effect, perhaps we should concentrate less on the exact nature
of the beast, and more on what it does and implies.”
“In order to deal with it, we have
to identify it,” Yusuf said.
“I’m not advocating a brute force
and ignorance approach,” Gilmore replied. “But consider; when this crisis
started, we believed we were dealing with an outbreak of some energy virus. I
maintain that is essentially what we have here. Our souls are self-contained
patterns capable of existence and travel outside the matrix of our bodies.
Hemmatu, how would you say they are formed?”
The energy expert stroked his cheek
with long fingers, pondering the question. “Yes, I think I see what you’re
driving at. The beyond energy is apparently present in all matter, including
cells, although the quantity involved must necessarily be extremely tenuous.
Therefore as intelligence arises during life, it imprints itself into this
energy somehow.”
“Exactly,” Gilmore said. “The
thought patterns which arise in our neurone structure retain their cohesion
once the brain dies. That is our soul. There’s nothing spiritual or religious
about it, the entire concept is an entirely natural phenomenon, given the
nature of the universe.”
“I’m not sure about denying
religion,” Nowak said. “Being inescapably plugged into the universe at such a
fundamental level seems somewhat spiritually impressive to me. Being at one
with the cosmos, literally, makes us all part of God’s creation. Surely?”
Gilmore couldn’t quite work out if
he was joking. A lot of physicists took to religion as they struggled with the
unknowable boundaries of cosmology, almost as many as embraced atheism. “If we
could just put that aside for the moment, please?”
Nowak grinned, waving a hand
generously.
“What I’m getting at is that
something is responsible for retaining a soul’s cohesion. Something glues those
thoughts and memories together. When Syrinx interviewed Malva, she was told: ‘Life
begets souls.’ That it is ‘the pattern which sentience and self
awareness exerts on the energy within the biological body.’”
“So souls accrue from the reaction
of thoughts upon this energy,” Nowak said. “I’m not disputing the hypothesis.
But how can that help us?”
“Because it’s only us: humans.
Animals don’t have souls. Dariat and Laton never mentioned encountering them.”
“They never mentioned encountering
alien souls either,” Mattox said. “But according to the Kiint, they’re there.”
“It’s a big universe,” Nowak said.
“No,” Gilmore countered. “That
can’t apply. Only some souls are trapped in the section we know about, the area
near the boundary. Laton as good as confirmed that. After death, it’s possible
to embark on the great journey. Again, his words.”
Euru shook his head sadly. “I wish
I could believe him.”
“In this I agree with him, not that
it has much bearing on my principal contention.”
“Which is?” Mattox asked.
“I believe I know the glue which
holds souls together. It has to be sentience. Consider, an animal like a dog or
cat has its individuality as a biological entity, but no soul. Why not? It has
a neural structure, it has memories, it has thought processes operating inside
that neural structure. Yet when it dies, all that loses coherence. Without a
focus, a strong sense of identity, the pattern dissolves. There is no order.”
“The formless void,” Nowak muttered
in amusement.
Gilmore disregarded the jibe. “We
know a soul is a coherent entity, and both Couteur and Dariat have confirmed
there is a timeflow within the beyond. They suffer entropy just as we do. I am
convinced that makes them vulnerable.”
“How?” Mattox asked sharply.
“We can introduce change. Energy,
the actual substance of souls, cannot be destroyed, but it can certainly be
dissipated or broken up, returned to a primordial state.”
“Ah yes.” Hemmatu smiled in
admiration. “Now I follow your logic. Indeed, we have to reintroduce some chaos
into their lives.”
Euru gave Gilmore a shocked stare.
“Kill them?”
“Acquire the ability to kill them,”
Gilmore responded smoothly. “If they have the ability to leave the part or
state of the beyond where they are now, they must clearly be forced to do so.
The prospect of death, real final death, would provide them with the
spur to leave us alone.”
“How?” Euru asked. “What would be
the method?”
“A virus of the mind,” Gilmore
said. “A universal anti-memory that would spread through thought processes,
fracturing them as it went. The beauty of it is, the possessed are constantly
merging their thoughts with one another to fulfil their quest for sensation. En
masse, they are a mental superconductor.”
“You might just be on to something
here,” Hemmatu said. “Are there such things as anti-memory?”
“There are several weapons designed
to disable a target’s mental processes,” Mattox said. “Most of them are
chemical or biological agents. However, I do know of some that are based upon
didactic imprint memories. But so far my colleagues have only produced variants
that induce extreme psychotic disorders such as paranoia or schizophrenia.”
“That’s all we need,” Nowak
grunted. “Extra demented lost souls. They’re quite barmy enough as it is.”
Gilmore gave him a disapproving
glance. “Would an anti-memory be possible, theoretically?” he asked Mattox.
“I can’t think of any immediate
show-stoppers.”
“Surely it would just
self-destruct?” Yusuf said. “If it eradicates the mechanism of its own
conductivity, how can it sustain itself?”
“We’d need something that rides
just ahead of its own destruction wave,” Mattox said. “Again, it’s not a
theoretical impossibility.”
“Nobody said the concept wouldn’t
need considerable development work,” Gilmore said.
“And trials,” Euru said. His
handsome face was showing a considerable amount of unease. “Don’t forget that
phase. We would need a sentient being to experiment on. Probably several.”
“We have Couteur,” Gilmore
muttered. He acknowledged the Edenist’s silent censure. “Sorry: natural
thought. She caused us more than her fair share of trouble in court three.”
“I’m sure there will be bitek
neural systems adequate for the purpose,” Mattox said hurriedly. “We don’t have
to use humans at this stage.”
“Very well,” Gilmore said. “Unless
anyone has any objections, I’d like to prioritize this project. The First
Admiral has been placing considerable pressure on us for an overall solution
for some time. It’ll be a relief to report we might be able to finally go on the
offensive against the possessed.”
Edenist habitats gossiped among
themselves. The discovery first surprised, then amused Ione and Tranquillity.
But then their multiplicity personalities were made up from millions of people,
who like all the elderly were keen to see how their young relatives were doing
and spread the word among friends. The personalities were also integral to
Edenist culture, so naturally they took an avid interest in human affairs for
the reaction it would ultimately have upon themselves. The minutiae of
political, social, and economic behaviour from the Confederation at large was
absorbed, debated, and meditated upon. Knowledge was the right of all Edenists.
It was just the method of passing on the more miscellaneous chunks which was delightfully
quirky. Manifold sub-groups would form within every personality, with interests
as varied as classical literature to xenobiology; early industrial age steam
trains to Oort cloud formations. There was nothing formal, nothing ordained
about such clusterings of cognate mentalities. It was, simply, the way it was.
An informal anarchy.
Observing this, Tranquillity began
to consider itself the equivalent of some ageing uncle overseeing a brood of
unruly young cousins. Its own decorum generated a mild feeling of alienation
from its contemporaries (which Ione also found amusing). Only when the full
Jovian Consensus, with all its solemn nobility, arose from the gabbling minds,
was there a notion of kinship.
By the time Tranquillity did arrive
at Jupiter, there were literally millions of sub-groups convening within the
habitat personalities to consider every possible aspect of the possession
problem (essentially, Gilmore’s committee to the Nth degree). Eager to
participate in the search for a solution, Tranquillity contributed its memories
and conclusions of the crisis to date; information which was eagerly
disseminated and deliberated over. Among the groupings who surveyed all matters
religious, the most interesting development was the Kiint’s curiosity in the
Tyrathca’s Sleeping God. The question of what the Sleeping God might actually
be was passed to the cosmology groupings. They didn’t have much of an idea, so
they queried the xenopsychology field. In turn, they wondered if the enigma
would be better served by the xenocultural historians . . .
At which point, two very distinct
(and in their different ways, very important) mentalities among the collective
personalities became aware of the Sleeping God problem. The sub-Consensus for
security and Wing-Tsit Chong together decided the matter was best dealt with by
themselves and a few of their own specialists. In collaberation with Ione, of
course.
Joshua had a bad feeling about Ione
calling him to a conference without being told the reason. There were resonances
of being asked to go after Mzu coming into play. It got worse when she told him
it was to be convened in De Bouvoir Palace. That meant it was going to be
formal, official.
When he arrived at the small tube
station which served visitors to the Palace, Mzu was climbing the steps ahead
of him. He wanted to turn round and go back to supervising Lady Mac’s
refit. But at least this was as bad as it could possibly get. They made
laboured small talk as they walked along the dark-yellow stone path to the
classical building. Mzu didn’t know why she’d been invited, either.
A horde of servitor chimps were
scurrying about on either side of the path, along with specialist agronomy
servitors. All of them were busy repairing the once immaculate parkland. Grass
had been trampled into mud by thousands of dancing feet, topiary bushes were
knocked into odd shapes, with bottles sticking out of unusual crevices. But it
was the tomis shrubs which had taken the worst battering; with their blue and
gold trumpet-shaped flowers torn from broken branches to form a brown, slippery
mat across the path. The servitors were optimistically trying to repair them
with adroit pruning and staking; though the smaller ones were simply being
replaced. Vandalism on such a scale was unheard of in Tranquillity. Though
Joshua did have to smile at the pile of clothes which the chimps had gathered
up. It was mostly underwear.
A pair of serjeants were on guard
duty outside the basilica’s archway entrance. “The Lord of Ruin is expecting
you,” one intoned. It led them along the nave to the audience chamber.
Ione sat in her accustomed place
behind the crescent table in the centre. Long, flat streamers of light from the
towering windows intersected around her, giving her an almost saintly
portrayal. Joshua was hard pressed not to comment on the theatre of the moment
when she smiled a welcome, but he played the game and bowed solemnly. Mzu was
given a more punctilious nod of recognition. There were six high-backed chairs
set up along the convex side of the table, four of them already occupied.
Joshua knew Parker Higgens; Samuel was there as well; but he had to run a
search through his neural nanonics to name the Laymil project’s chief
astronomer, Kempster Getchell. The fourth turned to face him . . .
“You!”
“Hello, Joshua,” Syrinx said. The
possibility of a smile teased her lips.
“Oh,” Ione murmured in a
suspiciously sweet tone. “Do you two know each other?”
Joshua gave Ione a punitive look,
then went over to Syrinx and gave her a light kiss on the cheek. “I heard what
happened on Pernik. I’m glad you came through it all right.”
She touched the medical nanonic on
his hand. “I’m not the only one who’s come through, apparently.”
Joshua returned the smile, and sat
next to her.
“There’s a file I want you and Dr
Mzu to review before we start,” Ione told him.
The miserable scene of Coastuc-RT
swamped Joshua’s mind; with Waboto-YAU arguing through its translator, and the
two menacing soldier-caste Tyrathca standing close to Reza Malin. He’d avoided
accessing most of Kelly’s recordings when Collins released them. Lalonde was
one planet he didn’t want to return to by any method. The close presence of the
mercenary leader was a shortcut to emotions he’d rather leave dormant.
When the recording ended, he looked
up to see one of the long glass windows behind Ione had darkened. Instead of
emitting strong golden light, it now contained the image of an ancient Oriental
man sitting in an antique wheelchair.
“Wing-Tsit Chong will speak for the
Jovian Consensus today,” Ione announced.
“Right,” Joshua said. He loaded
that name into a search program, ready to run it through his memory files.
Syrinx leant across. “The founder
of Edenism,” she said softly. “Quite a major historical figure, in fact.”
“Name the inventor of the ZTT
drive,” Joshua retorted.
“Julian Wan normally gets the
credit. Although technically he was only the head of the New Kong asteroid’s
stardrive research team; a bureaucrat, basically.”
Joshua frowned in pique.
“Possibly the present would provide
us with a more suitable topic for discussion,” Wing-Tsit Chong chided gently.
“The Sleeping God throws up a
number of questions,” Ione said. “Very relevant questions, given the Tyrathca’s
psychology. They believed it would be able to help them against possessed
humans. And they don’t lie.”
“So far this entity or object has
made no appreciable impact upon our situation,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “Implying
three options. It is a myth, and the Tyrathca were either fooled or mistaken by
their encounter with it. It is not capable of assisting them. Or it does exist,
it is capable, and it has simply restrained itself, so far.”
“That third implication is the most
interesting,” Kempster said. “It’s an assumption that the Sleeping God is
sentient, or at lest self-aware; which rules out a celestial event.”
“I always concurred with the
artefact possibility myself,” Parker Higgens said. “The arkship Tyrathca would
surely recognize a celestial event for what it was. And celestial events don’t
keep watch. Waboto-YAU was quite insistent about that. The Sleeping God dreams
of the universe, it knows everything.”
“I concur,” Wing-Tsit Chong said.
“This entity has been assigned extraordinary perceptive powers by the Tyrathca.
Although we can assume the memories of Sireth-AFL’s family would become open to
degradation down the centuries, the major elements must retain their integrity.
Something very unusual is out there.”
“Have you asked the Kiint direct
what it is, and what their interest is?” Joshua asked.
“Yes. They claim a total lack of
knowledge on the subject. Ambassador Armira simply repeats Lieria’s claim that
they are interested in the full record of Kelly Tirrel’s sojourn on Lalonde so
they might understand the nature of human possession.”
“They might be telling the truth.”
“No,” Parker Higgens said
forcefully. “Not them. They’ve been lying to us since first contact. This is
more than coincidence. The Kiint are desperately interested. And I’d love to
beat them to it.”
“A race that can teleport?” Joshua
said light heartedly. The old director’s vehemence was out of character here.
“Even if the Kiint aren’t
interested,” Ione said swiftly, “we certainly are. The Tyrathca believe it to
be real and able to assist them. That alone justifies sending a mission to it.”
“Wait—” Joshua said. He couldn’t
believe he’d been so slow. “You want me to go after it, don’t you?”
“That’s why you’re here,” Ione
answered calmly. “I believe you said you wanted to make a contribution?”
“Yes, I did.” There was a residue
of reluctance in the acknowledgement. Some of the old bravado. I want to
originate the solution. Claim all the glory. Shades of the good old days.
He grinned at Ione, wondering if
she’d guessed what he was thinking. More than likely. But if there was a chance
this xenoc God might have an answer, he wanted in. He owed a lot of people the
effort. His dead crew. His unborn child. Louise and the rest of Norfolk. Even
himself, now he refused to avoid thinking of death and the mysteries that
inaugurated. Facing up to fate in such a fashion might be frightening, but it made
living a hell of a lot easier. And, to be honest with himself, so did the
prospect of flying again.
“And so, I believe, did Syrinx,”
Ione said. The voidhawk captain nodded admission.
“The Kiint stonewalled you, huh?”
Joshua asked.
“Malva was very polite about it,
but essentially, yes.”
Joshua settled back, gazing up at
the domed ceiling. “Let me see. If a Tyrathca arkship encountered this God,
then it has to be a long way off, a very long way. Not too much problem for a
voidhawk, but . . . ah, now I get it. The antimatter.” Lady Mac’s
inclusion was obvious now. Her delta-V reserve was currently five or six times
greater than most Adamist warships, making her an obvious candidate to surmount
the problem of galactic orbital mechanics. For starships, there’s a lot more
than just distance to the gulf between stars. Ultimately, it is velocity which
governs their design and finances.
Earth’s sun orbits the galactic
centre roughly once every two hundred and thirty million years, giving it an
approximate velocity of two hundred and twenty kilometres per second relative
to the core. Other stars, of course, have different orbital velocities,
depending on their distance from the core, so their velocities relative to each
other are also different. Voidhawks can cope with the variance by tailoring
their wormhole terminus to match a local star’s vector. It’s a manoeuvre which
uses up an inconvenient amount of energy from the patterning cells; however,
because they obtain their energy for free it doesn’t affect their commercial
performance except in terms of recharging time. But for Adamist starship
captains, that variance isn’t merely inconvenient, it’s a positive bane. The
ZTT jump might provide a short cut across the interstellar gulf, but it cannot
magically change inertia. A starship emerging from a jump has precisely the
same vector it had when it started. In order to rendezvous with the planet or
asteroid at its destination, its delta-V has to be altered to match. It’s a
tedious process which uses up plenty of fuel; in other words, it costs money.
And the further the stars are away from each other, the greater the velocity
difference. For most Adamist starships, a flight right across the longest axis
of Confederation space, a distance approaching nine hundred light-years, would
use up over ninety per cent of their reaction drive fuel. Several marques would
be incapable of the feat anyway. The limit is imposed because they all used
fusion drives.
Antimatter, of course, provided a
vastly superior delta-V. And the antimatter Lady Mac had taken on board
from the Beezling was still in her confinement chambers. The First
Admiral had given Samuel instructions for the secure military facilities at
Jupiter to dispose of it. One of the five specialist ships qualified to handle
the substance was still en route to Tranquillity.
“There is a high possibility that a
long flight will be required to bring this task to a fruitful conclusion,”
Wing-Tsit Chong said. “I congratulate you on your clarity of thought, young
Joshua.”
Syrinx and Ione swapped a glance.
“You’re going to let him use antimatter?” Mzu asked in surprise.
“A voidhawk and Adamist starship
are a good pairing for this kind of assignment,” Syrinx said. “Both of us have
strengths and weaknesses which complement the other. Providing the Adamist ship
can manage to keep up with a voidhawk, of course.”
“Outperform, or outsmart?” Joshua
asked civilly.
“All right,” Mzu said. “So why am I
here?”
“We believed you might be able to
help us analyse the nature of the Sleeping God,” Kempster Getchell said.
“Especially if it turns out to be a high-technology weapon rather than a
natural phenomenon, which is my field.”
Alkad glanced round at their faces,
depressed when she knew she should have been flattered. “I had one idea,” she
said. “Once. Thirty years ago.”
“One original insight,” Wing-Tsit
Chong said. “Which is one more than most people have had, or ever will have.
You have a mind which is capable of it. An ability which can innovate on such a
level is an asset we cannot overlook.”
“What about Foulkes?” Alkad asked
Samuel.
“If you agree to participate, I’ll
speak with her. The non-contact prohibition placed upon you does not apply in
this situation. You will be permitted to fly on this mission. However, I will
accompany you along with Monica.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. And please don’t
interpret our continued presence as approval for what you did. It so happens,
that there are sections of this mission which require the kind of ability which
Monica and I specialise in.”
“How very enigmatic. Very well, if
you think I’m the right person for the job, I’d be honoured to take part.”
“Good,” Ione said.
“But I’ll need Peter with me.”
“This isn’t a honeymoon cruise,”
Samuel told her, reproachfully.
“We worked as a team putting the
Alchemist together. It’s a synergistic relationship.”
“Somehow, I doubt that,” Ione said.
“But for argument’s sake, I’ll permit you to ask him if he wants to accompany
you.”
“So where were you thinking of
sending us?” Joshua asked.
“Regretfully, you will have to go
directly to the source,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “Which is one of the reasons
this mission is being assembled under the auspices of the Jovian security
sub-Consensus. A thorough search of xenology records both at Jupiter and Earth
have revealed absolutely no reference to the Sleeping God. The Tyrathca have
never mentioned it to us before.”
“The source? Oh Jesus, you mean
Hesperi-LN, the Tyrathca home planet?”
“Initially, yes. Waboto-YAU told us
that it was another arkship which encountered the Sleeping God, not Tanjuntic-RI.
Therefore, that arkship must have lasered the information to all the other
Tyrathca arkships in the exodus fleet. We must hope that a recording of that
message is still aboard Tanjuntic-RI. If you can find it, you may be able to
establish the approximate location of the encounter.”
“That could be a long way off,”
Joshua said. His neural nanonics started to access almanac and Tyrathca history
files from memory cells, running them through a navigation program. The result
rising into his mind in the form of gold and scarlet icons was both fascinating
and alarming. “Hesperi-LN isn’t their genuine home planet, remember. It’s just
the last colony world Tanjuntic-RI founded. Look, the original Tyrathca star,
Mastrit-PJ, the one they escaped from is on the other side of the Orion Nebula.
That puts it at least 1,600 light-years away. Now if we get real
unlucky, and the arkship which found the Sleeping God was going in the opposite
direction to Tanjuntic-RI, you’re talking twice as far.”
“We are aware of that,” Wing-Tsit
Chong said.
Joshua sighed with indubitable
regret. To take Lady Mac on such a voyage would have been awesome. “I’m
sorry, there isn’t that much antimatter left. I can’t take the old girl that
far.”
“We are aware of your starship’s
performance capabilities,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “However there is a supply of
antimatter which you will be able to use.”
“You keep some here at Jupiter?”
Joshua asked in what he figured was a casual voice.
“No,” Syrinx said. “A CNIS agent
called Erick Thakara located a production station which may be supplying
Capone.”
“Thakara—” Joshua’s search program
located the appropriate file; he locked eyes with Ione. “Really? That’s . . .
helpful.”
“With the 1st fleet somewhat
overstretched, the First Admiral’s staff have asked for Jupiter’s voidhawks to
tackle it,” Samuel said.
“Which they are preparing to do,”
Wing-Tsit Chong said. “However, before the station is finally annihilated, you
will be able to take on board as much antimatter as the Lady Macbeth’s
confinement systems can handle.”
“Three thousand light-years,”
Joshua murmured. “Jesus.”
“Meredith Saldana’s task force has
a large contingent of Confederation Navy marines assigned to it,” Ione said.
“They’ll secure the station for you once the personnel surrender to the voidhawk
squadron.”
“What if the station operatives
just suicide?” Joshua said. “They usually do when the Navy confronts them.”
“And take as many of us with them
as they can,” Syrinx whispered.
“They will be offered a penal
planet sentence instead of the usual death penalty,” Samuel said. “We can only
hope that proves attractive enough to them.”
“All right, but even if we load Lady
Mac with enough antimatter, the Tyrathca have ended communications with the
Confederation,” Joshua said. “Do you really think they’ll allow us to search
through Tanjuntic-RI’s electronic systems?”
“Probably not,” Samuel said. “But
as we don’t intend to ask their permission, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Chapter 07
You didn’t have to be attuned to
the land like a possessed to know it was about to happen. Most of Ombey’s
population was aware the time had come.
Day after day the news companies
had been broadcasting sensevises from rover reporters covering the build up of
Liberation forces. Everybody knew somebody who was connected to somebody who
was involved in some way; from hauling equipment out to Fort Forward to serving
drinks to Edenists in spaceport bars. Speculation on the current affairs
programmes was deliberately vague about specific dates and precise numbers,
even the communication net gossips were showing restraint in naming the day.
Hearsay aside, the evidence was pretty solid.
The type of cargoes raining down on
the planet had changed. Combat gear was slowly being replaced by heavy-duty
civil engineering equipment, ready to repair the expected damage to Mortonridge
and provide additional support infrastructure for the occupying forces. The
personnel arriving at Fort Forward were also subject to a shift in professions.
Just under a million serjeants had been sent from Jupiter, along with nearly a
quarter of a million marines and mercenaries from across the Confederation. The
Liberation army was essentially complete. So now it was the medical teams being
ferried down from orbit, civilian volunteers complementing entire mobile military
hospitals. Estimated casualty figures (both military and civilian) were
strictly classified. But everyone knew the twelve thousand medical staff were
going to suffer a heavy workload. Eighty voidhawks had already been assigned
evac duties, spreading the wounded around facilities in the Kingdom and its
allies.
Throughout the seventh day
following Princess Kirsten’s visit, Ralph Hiltch and his command staff studied
the figures and displays provided by the AI. The neuroiconic image which
accumulated in his mind kept expanding as more information was correlated. By
late afternoon, his conscious perception point seemed to be hanging below a
supergalaxy of multicoloured stars, which threatened to make him giddy as he
tried to examine it in all directions at once. Despite its coherence, what he
really wanted was more training time, more transport, more supplies, and
definitely more intelligence assessments of the terrain ahead. But essentially,
his army was as ready as it would ever be. He gave the order for final stage
deployment to begin.
Over half of the serjeants and
their back-up brigades had already left Fort Forward. The previous two days had
been spent mustering at their preliminary positions offshore. Nearly a hundred
islands around Mortonridge’s coast had been taken over as temporary depots;
from reefs which barely showed above the waves to resort atolls dotted with
luxury hotels. Where there were no convenient scraps of land, huge cargo ships
had been hurriedly converted into floating docks, and anchored thirty
kilometres from the shore.
For the first stage of the coastal
assault, the army was scheduled to use boats. They were actually going to storm
ashore, wading through the waves and up onto the sand, almost in homage to a
great many of the incarnations from the past they were facing. Ralph wasn’t
prepared to risk flying even the simplest of aircraft into the energistic
environment over Mortonridge, not until after they’d dealt with the red cloud
at least.
The remainder of the Liberation
ground forces emptied out of Fort Forward in massive convoys, spreading out
along the firebreak in thousands of multi-terrain vehicles. There was no
attempt at secrecy, no hugging the cover behind ridges and hills. The squads
drove through the encroaching twilight and into the night; the nimbus of their
massed headlight beams creeping like an anaemic dawn along the horizon
paralleling the firebreak.
Across Xingu, a civil curfew order
was enacted once again, with the police put on full alert. Although they were
fairly sure no possessed were left outside Mortonridge, the continent’s
authorities were taking Annette Ekelund’s threat of sabotage very seriously.
When dawn arrived, no civilian would be allowed out onto the streets. People
grumbled and groaned, and datavised protests to local news shows, remembering
what a nuisance the curfew had been last time. It was almost a bravado show of
defiance. In the main, they just settled back and accessed the show.
High above the planet, the
Strategic Defence centre on Guyana began coordinating the Royal Navy’s part of
the assault. Thrusters flared on low orbit weapons platforms, refining their
new orbits. A flotilla of three hundred voidhawks also began to accelerate,
synchronizing their distortion fields to rise away from the planet in a long
curve.
The psychic pressure mounting
against Mortonridge shifted from faint intimation to blatantly unmistakable.
To casual observation, Chainbridge
was still a busy town. When Annette Ekelund reached a slight ridge a couple of
kilometres from the outskirts, she stopped the sturdy country rover she was
driving and looked back over her shoulder. Hundreds of lighted windows shone
out across the lame farmland, burning steady against the flickering crimson
waves scattered down from the lumbering cloud roof. The buildings were warm,
too, warm enough to fool any perfunctory sensor scans into believing they were
occupied. But no one was left there, her command group was the last to leave.
“It’ll keep the blighters tied up
for a while,” Delvan assured her. He was sitting in the passenger seat beside
her, clad in his old khaki uniform, a discreet row of scarlet and gold ribbons
on his chest.
In the back seat, Soi Hon veiled a
sneer. He, too, had reverted to type: dark jungle fatigues and a felt
bush-ranger hat. “For at least a quarter of an hour.”
“Would you like to return to the
beyond fifteen minutes early?” Delvan enquired lightly.
“Any time we delay them is good
time,” Annette told the pair of them. She took the brake off, and accelerated
down the secondary road. They were heading for Cold Overton, a small village
eighty kilometres away. Their field command centre; picked virtually at random
by Soi Hon, central but not strategically so, adequate road links, surrounded
by thick forest. It was as good as any, not that they’d be staying long. Fluid
tactics was the key to this campaign.
Soi Hon clapped Delvan on the
shoulder. “And this is our time, eh? You and I both. Onward to death and
glory.”
“There is no glory here.” Delvan
spoke so quietly, the others could only just hear him against the bass grumble
of thunder.
“Don’t tell me you’re having second
thoughts?”
“I heard my men wailing at night,”
the old soldier replied emotionlessly. “The ones left out in No Man’s Land,
left behind to drown in puddles of their own blood; the ones that weren’t
vomiting their lungs up from that devilish gas. Screaming for us to help them,
more frightened at being alone than they were of being shot.”
“You Christians, you always take
life so personally. We’re here by accident, not design. Nothing is ordained,
you are only what you make of yourself. You can never go back, the past doesn’t
change. Stop thinking about it. The only part of history which matters is the
future.”
“It broke my heart, not being able
to help them. Good, decent men; boys a lot of them. I swore I’d never get
involved in such madness again. They called it total war. But it wasn’t, it was
total bloody murder. Insanity had become a disease, and we all caught it. Twice
in my lifetime my nation sent its youth out to die for a just cause, to protect
ourselves and our way of life.” He smiled frigidly at the eco warrior. “And now
here I am once again. Seven bloody centuries later. Seven hundred years, and
nothing has changed. Not one damn thing. I’m fighting to preserve myself and my
new life. A righteous war with me on the side of the angels, even though
they’ve become fallen angels. And I can already hear the screams, God help me.”
“All I hear is our victory song,”
Soi Hon said. “The voice of the land is louder and stronger than any human cry.
This is our place, we are at one with it. We belong here. We have a right to
exist in this universe.”
Delvan closed his eyes and tipped
his head back. “Lord forgive me I am such a fool. Here we all are, embarking on
a crusade to storm the very gates of Heaven Itself in our desperation. What a
monumental folly. I shall smite at the dark angels massed against us, crying
for death, for only in death will we ever find peace. Yet You have already
revealed that death is not our destiny, nor ever can be.”
“Wake up, old man. We’re not
fighting God, we’re fighting an unjust universe.”
For the first time since his return
from the beyond, Delvan smiled. “You think there’s a difference?”
The island was enchanting, its
botany and geology combining into the kind of synergistic idyll which was the
grail of Edenist habitat designers. Inland, there were craggy rocks hosting
long white waterfalls, and thick lush forests choked with sweet-scented
flowers. The shore comprised cove after cove, their pale gold sands gleaming
under the azure sky; except for one, where the offshore reef crumbled under the
foaming breakers to give the sands an exquisite fairydust coating of pink
coral. It appealed to humans on a primal level, urging them to slow down and spend
time just soaking in nature. As a reward for their worship, time itself would
expand and become almost meaningless.
Even in his current existence,
Sinon wished he was staying longer than their eighteen-hour stopover. Five
thousand serjeants had descended on this tiny jewel of land glinting in the
ocean, along with their equipment and support personnel. Marines were camped
ten to a room in the resort hotels; gardens and tennis courts had been
requisitioned as landing pads; and the coves were harbours for a hundred of the
regiment’s landing boats. All day, the boats had taken their turn to nuzzle the
shore, extending their forward ramps so that jeeps and light trucks could drive
on board. Now, in the evening, the serjeants were finally embarking.
Syrinx would like this place, Sinon told Choma. I must tell her about it. He
was two thirds of the way along a line of serjeants who were wading out to
their landing boat. There wasn’t enough room on this particular beach to berth
more than three boats at a time, so the other eleven were anchored a hundred
metres offshore. A column of serjeants snaked out to each one, making slow time
through the water. The big constructs were laden with backpacks, carrying their
weapons above their heads to stop them getting wet. Groups of Royal Marines
milled about on the bluff, watching the process. If all went well, they’d be
doing the same thing next morning.
Now there’s good healthy
optimism, Choma replied.
What do you mean?
I’ve been working out our
probable casualty rate. Would you like to know how many of our squad are likely
to survive the entire campaign?
Not particularly. I have no
intention of becoming a statistic.
Where have I heard that before?
In any case, it’s two. Two out of ten.
Thank you very much. Sinon reached the landing boat. It was an ugly,
rugged affair, one design serving the entire Liberation armada. A carbosilicon
hull mass produced over on Esparta, with power cells and an engine that could
have come from any of a dozen industrialized star systems allied to the
Kingdom. Hard-pressed navy engineers had plugged the standard components
together, completing several hundred each day. The three on the beach were
still being worked on by technicians.
Honesty is supposed to be our
culture’s strength, Choma
said, mildly irked by the negative reaction.
We’re a long way from Eden now. Sinon slung his rifle high on his shoulder, and
started climbing the ladder up the side of the boat. When he reached the top of
the gunnel he looked back to shore. The sun was sinking into the sea, leaving a
rosy haze line above the darkening water. Parodying that, on the opposite
horizon, the glow of the red cloud was visible, a narrow fracture separating
water and air.
Last chance, Sinon told himself.
The other serjeants were all climbing down into the boat, their mind-tones
subdued but still resolute. Rationally, he was buying the Confederation time to
find a genuine answer. And Consensus itself had approved this course of action.
He swung his legs over the rail, and put a hand down to help Choma. Come on,
let’s go storm the Dark Lord’s citadel.
The Royal Marine ion field flyer
was a lone spark of gold shimmering high in the night sky, brighter than any
star. It flew across the top of the Mortonridge peninsula, keeping parallel to
the firebreak, twenty-five kilometres to the north, and holding a steady
fifteen kilometre altitude.
Ralph Hiltch sat in the flyer’s
cabin as Cathal Fitzgerald piloted them above the northern end of the mountain
range which formed the peninsula’s spine. Eight hours of neural nanonics
enforced sleep had left him feeling fresh, but emotionally dead. His mind had
woken immune to the human consequences of the Liberation. Whether it was numb
from the torrent of information which had been bullying his brain for weeks, or
guilty at the enormity of what he’d organized, he wasn’t sure.
It meant that now he was hooked
into the flyer’s sensor suite, he could view the last stages of the deployment
with god-like dispassion. Which was probably for the best, he thought. Accepting
personal responsibility for every casualty would drive anyone insane within the
first two minutes. Even so, he’d wanted this one last overview. To convince
himself it was genuine if nothing else. The last insecurity, that all the data
and images he’d handled had been transformed to physical reality.
There could be doubt. The army
spread out below him, his army, was flowing over the black land in
streamers of fluid light, bending and curling round hills and valleys.
Individual vehicles expressed as twinkles of light, barely different to icons
blipping their way across a map. Except here there was no colour, just the
white headlight beams contrasting the funeral ground.
It was after midnight, and
two-thirds of the ground deployment was complete. Both flanks were established,
now there was only the centre to set up, the most difficult aspect. His main
spearhead was going to drive right along the M6, allowing the huge supply and
back-up convoys an easy ride. Using the motorway was a disturbingly obvious
strategy, but essential if they were to complete in a minimum timescale.
Ekelund would have sabotaged the
road, but bridges could be repaired, blockades shunted aside, and gorges
filled. The combat engineering corps were ready for that. At least the
possessed didn’t have air power. Though occasionally he had images of propeller
biplanes roaring overhead and strafing the jeeps. Victory rolls with the
pilot’s white silk scarf flapping jauntily in the slipstream. Stupid.
Ralph switched the suite’s focus to
the red cloud. Its edges were still arched down to the ground, sealing the
peninsula away from the rest of the planet. Dusky random wave shadows rolled
across the pulpy surface. He thought they might be more restless than usual,
though that could well be his imagination. Thankfully, there was no sign of
that peculiar oval formation which he’d seen once before. The one he absolutely
refused to call an eye. All he really wanted was one glimpse through; to
reassure himself the peninsula was still there, if nothing else. They’d had no
data of any kind from inside since the day Ekelund had brought the cloud down.
No links with the net could be established; no non-possessed had managed to
sneak out. A final sweep with the flyer’s sensors revealed nothing new.
“Take us back,” he told Cathal.
The flyer performed a fast turn,
curving round to line up on Fort Forward. Ahead of it, the giant Thunderbirds
continued to swoop down out of the western sky, delta heatshields glowing a
dull vermilion against the starfield backdrop. That aspect of the build up, at
least, remained unchanged. Cathal landed them inside the secure command
complex, along the southern side of the new city. Ralph trotted down the
airstair, ignoring the armed Marine escort which fell in around him. The
trappings of his position had ceased to register as special some time ago, just
another aspect of this extraordinary event.
Brigadier Palmer (the first person
Ralph had promoted) was waiting outside the door to the Ops Room. “Well?” she
asked, as they walked in.
“I didn’t see anyone waving a white
flag.”
“We’d know if they wanted to.” Like
a lot of people involved with the Liberation, especially those who’d been on
Mortonridge since the start, she considered herself to have a connection with
the possessed hidden behind the red cloud, an awareness of attitude. Ralph
wasn’t convinced, although he acknowledged the possessed exerted some kind of
psychic presence.
The Ops Room was a long rectangular
chamber with glass walls separating it from innumerable specialist planning
offices. Completing electronic systems integration and connecting their
architecture with Ombey’s military communication circuits was another triumph
for the overworked Royal Marine engineering corps, though its rushed nature was
evident in the bundled cables hanging between consoles and open ceiling panels,
air conditioning which was too chilly, and raw carbon-concrete corner pillars.
Its floor-space was taken up by cheap corporate-style desks holding consoles,
AV projectors, and communication gear. Right now, it was full to capacity; over
fifty officers from the Royal Navy were collaborating with an equal number of
Edenists; the next largest contingent was the Confederation Navy with twenty;
while the remainder were drawn from various participating allies.
They were going to be the
coordinators of the Liberation, the human analysis and liaison between the
ground forces and the controlling AI back in Pasto. A failsafe against the
maxim: No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Every one of them stood
up as Ralph Hiltch entered. That, he did notice. Together they had spent the
past few weeks planning this together, arguing, pleading, contributing ideas,
working miracles. They’d learned to cooperate and coordinate their fields of
expertise, putting aside old quarrels so they melded into a unified, dedicated
team. He was proud of them and what they’d accomplished.
Their show of respect rekindled
several of his suppressed emotions. “I’ll keep this short,” he told the hushed
chamber. “We can’t pretend this is going to solve the problem possession poses
to the Confederation, but it’s a damn sight more important than a propaganda
war, which is what some reporters have been calling it. We’re fighting to free
two million people, and we’re battling to bring hope into the lives of an awful
lot more. To me, that’s more than worthwhile, it’s essential. So let’s make our
contribution a good one.”
Amid scattered applause, he made
his way to his office at the far end. His desk gave him a view down the whole
length of the Ops Room, providing he craned his neck over the stack of
processor block peripherals connected to his main desktop console. While he was
datavising the array for strategic updates, his executive command group joined
him. As well as Janne Palmer who was the Chief of the occupying forces, there
was Acacia, the Edenist liaison, an elderly woman who had served as ambassador
to Ombey for five years. He’d also drafted in Diana Tiernan to act as the
army’s technical advisor, helping to filter the scientific reports on the
possessed which were flooding in from across the Confederation. Cathal
completed the gathering, still holding his post as Ralph’s assistant, but now
with the rank of lieutenant commander.
When the glass door slid shut,
isolating them from the noise from outside, Ralph requested a security level
one sensenviron conference. Princess Kirsten and Admiral Farquar joined them
around the white bubble room’s table. “The deployment’s going remarkably well,”
Ralph said. “All our principal front line divisions will be in place at
zero-hour.”
“My occupation troops are
effectively ready,” Janne said. “There are a few minor hitches, mostly
logistical. But given the amount of materiel involved, and the different
groupings we’re attempting to coordinate, I’m happy. We’re well within
estimated parameters. The AI should have the bugs knocked out by morning.”
“The serjeants are also ready,”
Acacia reported. “Again, there are some hitches, mainly with transport
equipment, but we are committed.”
“Admiral Farquar?” Kirsten asked.
“All space based assets are
functional. Platform orbits are synchronized, and the voidhawks are reaching
apogee. It looks good.”
“Very well,” Kirsten said. “God
help me for this, but they’ve left us with no alternative. General Hiltch, you
now have full command authority for Ombey’s military forces. Engage the enemy,
Ralph, evict them from my planet.”
Standard military doctrine was,
somewhat inevitably, fairly unimaginative. Every kind of tactic and
counter-tactic had been attempted, practised, and refined by generals,
warlords, and emperors down the centuries until there was little room for
mistake. So even though Mortonridge was unique from a philosophical standpoint,
it could be defined in military terms as a large scale hostage/siege scenario.
Given that assessment, the method of resolving it was clear cut.
Ralph wanted to isolate the
possessed in small groups. They were vulnerable like that, capable of being
overwhelmed. To achieve it, their communications should be broken, denying them
the ability to regroup and mount any kind of counter-attack. Harassment should
be constant, wearing them down. And, if possible, he wanted them deprived of
the cover provided by their red cloud. In summary: divide and conquer. An
ancient principle, but now aided by the kind of firepower which only modern
technology could provide.
Ombey had four and a half thousand
low orbit Strategic Defence platforms. Their orbital vectors were orchestrated
to provide a constant barrier above the surface, similar to the way electrons
pirouetted around their nucleus. For the Liberation, all that had changed. Navy
starships had taken over the low orbit protection duty, leaving the platforms
free for an altogether different task. Their elaborate inclinations had been
shifted, ion thrusters firing for hours at a time to clump them into flocks of
twenty-five. Now they formed a single chain around the planet, with an
inclination tilted at just a couple of degrees to the equator. One flock would
pass over Mortonridge every thirty seconds.
Sensor satellites had been
manoeuvred into the gaps between the platforms, ready to provide the Liberation
Forces with an unparalleled coverage of the peninsula once the red cloud had
been broken apart. Admiral Farquar used them to watch the dawn terminator
sliding over the ocean towards the lowering band of red cloud. Tactical
overlays showed him the positions of the landing boats heading in for the
beaches. Far overhead, the flotilla of voidhawks had passed apogee, and were
now hurtling downwards, accelerating at eight gees.
In one hour, dawn would reach
Mortonridge’s eastern seaboard. The Admiral datavised his command authority
code to Guyana’s SD control centre. “Fire,” he ordered.
Though they never knew it, the
Liberation forces very nearly won in the first ninety seconds. The initial
flock of SD platforms sent seventy-five electron beams slamming down through
the upper atmosphere to strike the red cloud. They were aimed along the
north/south axis of the peninsula, and defocused, so that at the point of
impact they were over fifty metres across. The intention wasn’t to pierce the
red cloud, just to pump it full of electrical energy, the possessed’s one known
Achilles Heel. Each beam began scanning from side to side, in gigantic ten
second sweeps that took them from coast to coast.
Then the second flock of platforms
slid up over the horizon and into range. Another seventy-five beams speared
down. There was a ten second overlap before the first flock was out of range.
Annette Ekelund let out a single
shriek of agony, and dropped helplessly to her knees. The pain was incredible.
A shaft of blue-star sunlight flung down from a height greater than heaven
lanced clean through her skull. It didn’t just burn her stolen brain, it set
fire to her very thoughts. That part of her spirit which communed so gladly
with the others on Mortonridge was the treacherous conductor. The part which
created the shield of cloud and gave them all a subliminal sense of community.
Her belief in whatever humanity has survived the incarceration of the beyond.
And now it was killing her.
She abandoned it in its entirety.
Her scream twisting from pain to wretchedness. All around her, the other souls
were shrinking away from each other, withdrawing into self. The last sob
burbled out from her lips, and she flopped limply onto her back. Her body was
freezing, shaking in shock. Delvan and Soi Hon were scrabbling in the dirt
somewhere nearby, she could hear their whimpers. She couldn’t see either of
them, the world had gone completely black.
Every possessed across the
Confederation was instantly aware of the strike. Pain and shock reverberated
through the beyond. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, they felt it.
Al Capone was underneath Jezzibella
when it happened, adopting a complicated position so that her breasts were
pushed into his face while he could still bend his knees for the leverage to
give her a damn good shafting. Her laugh was halfway between a giggle and a
moan when the mental impact knocked him with the force of a wild hockey puck.
He convulsed, shouting in pained panic.
Jezzibella cried out as his frantic
motion twisted her arm, nearly dislocating her shoulder. “Al! Fuck. That
fucking hurts, you fucking dickhead. I told you I don’t do that sado shit, fuck
you.”
Al grunted in confused dismay,
shaking his head to clear the weird dizziness foaming inside. He was so
disoriented, he fell off the side of the bed.
For the first time, Jezzibella
actually caught a glimpse of Brad Lovegrove’s natural features beneath the illusion.
Not too different to Al, they could almost be brothers. Her anger faded at the
sight of him grimacing, limbs twitching in disarray. “Al?”
“Fuck,” he gasped. “What the fuck
was that?”
“Al, you okay, baby? What
happened?”
“God damn! I don’t know.” He looked
round the bedroom, expecting to see some kind of bomb damage, G-men storming
through the door. . . . “I ain’t got a clue.”
For Jacqueline Couteur the
invisible shockwave almost proved fatal. Strapped onto the examination table in
the demon trap she couldn’t move when her muscles spasmed. Her vital signs
monitor alerted the staff to some kind of seizure, at which point her conscious
defence against the electric current they were shunting through her body began
to crumble. Fortunately, one of the more alert team members shut the power off
before she was genuinely electrocuted. It took her five or six minutes to
recover her normal antagonism, and prowess.
On patrol a million kilometres
above New California, Rocio Condra lost control of the distortion field,
letting it flare and contract wildly. The big hellhawk tumbled crazily, its
bird-form imploding in a cloud of dark scintillations. Gravity inside the
life-support cabin vanished along with the quaint steamship interior. Jed,
Beth, Gerald and the three kids suddenly found themselves in freefall. Then
gravity returned in a rush, far too strong, and in the wrong direction, making
one of the bulkhead walls the floor. The surface swatted them hard, then the
gravity failed again to send them flying across the cabin in a tangle of limbs
and screams. Stars gyrated savagely beyond the viewport. Another wash of
gravity sucked them down onto the ceiling.
In Quinn Dexter’s case, it was his
first setback on Earth. He had just arrived at Grand Central Station to take a
vac-train to Paris. Not the original station building on Manhattan, the island
itself was actually abandoned and flooded, but New Yorkers were sentimental
about such things. This was the third such edifice to carry the name. Buried
nearly a kilometre below the centre of dome five, it formed the hub of the
arcology’s intercontinental train network.
Once more he had secluded himself
within the ghost realm to avoid any risk of detection. That was when he began
to notice just how many ghosts haunted the station and other subterranean
sections of the vast arcology. Hundreds of them drifted mournfully amid the
unseeing streams of commuters. They were drab despondent figures, staring round
at the faces that rushed past. There was so much longing and desperation in
their expressions, as if every one of them was searching for some long lost
child. They were aware of Quinn, gazing at him in bewilderment as he strode
through the main concourse on his way to the platforms. In turn, he ignored
them, worthless creatures incapable of either aiding or hindering his crusade.
They really were as good as dead.
He was twenty metres short of the
wave elevator for platform fifty-two when the flashback from the Liberation
reached him. The impact wasn’t actually too great, he’d withstood far worse at
Banneth’s hands, it was the suddenness of it all which shocked him. Without
warning he was yelling as streaks of pain flared out from the centre of his
brain to infect his body. Edmund Rigby’s captive thoughts writhed in agony,
transfixed by the blast of torment.
Quinn panicked, frightened by the
unknown. Until this moment he believed he was virtually omnipotent. Now some
witchery was attacking him in a method he couldn’t fathom. Souls in the beyond
were screaming in terror. The ghosts around him began wailing, clasping their
hands together in prayer. His control over the energistic power faltered as his
thoughts dissolved into chaos.
Bud Johnson never saw where the guy
came from. One second he was hurrying to the wave elevator, on his way to catch
a San Antonio connection—the next, some man in a weird black robe was kneeling
on all fours on the polished marble floor at his feet. That was almost
impossible, everyone who grew up on Earth and lived in the arcologies had an
instinctive awareness of crowds, the illogical tides and currents of bodies
which flowed through them. He always knew where people were in relation to
himself, alert to any possible collision. Nobody could just appear.
Bud’s momentum kept his torso going
forwards, while his legs were completely blocked. He went flying, pivoting over
the man’s back to crash onto the cool marble. His wrist made a nasty snapping
sound, firing hot pain up his arm. And his neural nanonics did nothing.
Nothing! There were no axon blocks, no medical display. Bud let out a howl of
pain, blinking back tears as he looked up.
Those tears might have accounted
for two or three of the curious faces peering down at him. Pale and distressed,
wearing extremely odd hats. When he blinked the salty fluid clear, they’d gone.
He clutched at his injured wrist. “Sheesh, dear God, that hurts.” A murmur of
surprise rattled over his head, a strong contrast to the screams breaking out
across the rest of the station. No one seemed particularly concerned about him.
“Hey, my neural nanonics have
failed. Someone call me a medic. I think my wrist’s broken.”
The man he’d fallen over was now
rising to his feet. Bud was acutely conscious of the silence that had closed
around him, of people backing away. When he looked up, any thoughts of shouting
curses on the clumsy oaf vanished instantly. There was a face inside the large
hood, barely visible. Bud was suddenly very thankful for the robe’s shadows.
The expression of fury and malice projected by the features he could see was
quite bad enough. “Sorry,” he whispered.
Fingers closed around his heart. He
could actually feel them, individual joints hinging inwards, fingernails
digging into his atriums. The hand twisted savagely. Bud choked silently, his
arms flapping wildly. He was just aware of people closing in on him again. This
time, they registered concern. Too late, he tried to tell them, far too late.
The aloof devil turned casually and faded from his sight. Then so did the rest
of the world.
Quinn observed Bud’s soul snake
away from his corpse, vanishing into the beyond, adding his screams to the
beseeching myriad. There was a big commotion all around, people shoving and
jostling to get a good view of whatever was going down. Only a couple of them
had gasped as he returned himself to the ghost realm, fading out right in front
of them. At least he’d retained enough composure not to use the white fire. Not
that it mattered now. He’d been seen, and not just by people with glitched
neural nanonics; the station’s security sensors would have captured the event.
Govcentral knew he was here.
Tucked down in the central hold of
the landing boat, Sinon couldn’t physically see the rest of the squadron
closing on the shore. Affinity made it unnecessary; all the Edenist minds on
and orbiting Ombey were linked together, providing him with more information
than General Hiltch had available. He was aware of his personal position, as
well as that of his comrades, even the Liberation’s overall situation was
available to him. The voidhawk flotilla revealed the red cloud beneath them.
Huge lightning bolts were writhing across the upper surface as the SD platforms
continued their electron barrage. At the centre, along the spine of hills, the
glow was fading, allowing pools of darkness to ripple outward.
Along with all the other serjeants,
Sinon craned forwards for a look. The barrier of red cloud had grown steadily
through the night as the boats headed in for the beach. From ten kilometres
offshore, it stretched right across the water, solid and resolute like the wall
at the end of the world.
Small flickers of lightning arose
to dance along the bottom, slashing down into the waves. Steam plumes screwed
upwards from the discharges. Then the lightning streamers were coming together
into massive dazzling rivers, rising up, following the steep curve of the cloud
to arch inland. The red glow faded, taking less then five seconds to die
completely. Its disappearance startled Sinon and the other serjeants. The
victory was too sudden. This was not the epic struggle they’d been preparing
for. The crawling webs of lightning more than made up for the absence; blazing
bright right across the horizon.
You know, that is actually a
very big cloud, Sinon said.
The brilliant flashes were near-continuous now, keeping the dark mass
illuminated prominently.
You noticed that, Choma retorted.
Yes. Which could be a problem.
It was rather nicely contained while the possessed were using it as a shield.
As such, we tended to disregard its physical properties; it was, after all,
primarily a psychological barrier.
Psychological or not, we can’t
cruise straight through with all that electrical activity.
Choma wasn’t the only one to reach
that conclusion. They could already feel the boat slowing as the captain
reduced power to the engines. A precaution repeated simultaneously by the
entire armada.
“Recommendations?” Ralph asked.
“Shut down the SD assault,” Acacia
said. “The landing boats are already slowing. They can’t penetrate that kind of
lightning storm.”
“Diana?”
“I think so. If the red light is an
indication of the possessed’s control, then we’ve already routed them.”
“That’s a very big if,” Admiral
Farquar protested.
“We don’t have a lot of choice,”
the elderly technology advisor said. “The landing boats clearly can’t get
through, nor can the ground vehicles, for that matter. We have to let the
energy discharge itself naturally. If the red light returns when they’re
inside, we can resume the electron beam attack until the cloud itself starts to
break up.”
“Do it,” Ralph ordered. “Acacia,
get the serjeants as close as they can to the cloud, then as soon as the
lightning’s finished, I want them through.”
“Yes, General.”
“Diana, how long is it going to
take to dissipate that electricity?”
“A good question. We’re not sure
how deep or dense that cloud is.”
“Answer me.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. There are too
many variables.”
“Oh great. Acacia, is the lightning
going to affect the harpoons?”
“No. The cloud’s too low for that,
and they’re going too fast. Even if one took a direct hit from a lightning
bolt, the trajectory won’t be altered by more than a couple of metres at best.”
The voidhawk flotilla was only one
and a half thousand kilometres from the surface of Ombey. Mortonridge filled
their sensor blister coverage, changing from a red smear to a seething mass of
blue-white streamers, more alive than ever before. There was just time for one
last query.
We’re still go, Acacia assured them.
All three hundred voidhawks reached
the apex of their trajectory. Their bone-crushing eight-gee acceleration ended
briefly. Each one flung a swarm of five thousand kinetic harpoons from its
weapons cradles. Then power surged through their patterning cells again,
reversing the previous direction of the distortion field. The punishing
intensity was unchanged, still eight gees, pushing them desperately away from
the planet with its dangerous gravity field.
Far below, the delicate filigree of
shimmering lightning vanished beneath an incandescent corona as the upper
atmosphere ignited. The plasma wake left by one and a half million kinetic
harpoons had merged together into a single photonic shockwave. It hit the top
of the cloud, puncturing the churning grey vapour with such speed there was
little reaction. At first. Acacia was quite right, the cloud for all its bulk
and animosity could not deflect the harpoons from their programmed targets.
No human could draw up that list,
it was the AI in Pasto that ultimately designated their impact points. They
descended in clumps of three, giving a ninety-seven per cent probability of a
successful hit. Mortonridge’s communication net was the main target.
Urban legend dictated that modern
communication nets were annihilation proof. With hundreds of thousands of
independent switching nodes spread over an entire planet, and millions of cables
linking them, backed up by satellite relays, their anarchistic-homogeneous
nature made them immune to any kind of cataclysm. No matter how many nodes were
taken out, there was always an alternative route for the data. You’d have to
physically wipe out a planet before its data exchange was stalled.
But Mortonridge was finite, its net
isolated from the redundancy offered by the rest of the planet. The location of
every node was known to within half a metre. Unfortunately, ninety per cent of
them were proscribed, because they were inside a built up urban area. If
kinetic harpoons started dropping amid the buildings, resulting casualties
would be horrendous. That left the cables out in the open countryside. A lot of
them followed roads, nestled in utility conduits along the side of the carbon
concrete, but many more took off across the land, laid by mechanoids tunnelling
through forests and under rivers, with nothing on the surface to indicate their
existence.
Long-inactive files of their routes
had been accessed and analysed by the AI. Strike coordinates were designated,
with the proscription that there should be no habitable structure within three
quarters of a kilometre. Given the possessed’s considerable ability to defend
themselves on a physical level, it was considered a reasonable safe distance.
Stephanie Ash lay quivering on the
floor even after her mind had recoiled from the communion with other souls. The
loss hurt her more than any pain from the electron beam attack against the
cloud. That simple act of union had given her hope. As long as people went on
supporting each other, she knew, despite everything else, they remained human
to some small degree. Now even that fragile aspiration had been wrenched from
them.
“Stephanie?” Moyo called. His hand was
shaking her shoulder gently. “Stephanie, are you all right?”
The fear and concern in his voice
triggered her own guilt. “God, no.” She opened her eyes. The bedroom was lit
solely by a small bluish flame coming from his thumb. Outside the window,
blackness swarmed the whole world. “What did they do?” She could no longer
sense the psychic weight pressing against her from the other side of the
firebreak. Only the valley was apparent.
“I don’t know. But it’s not good.”
He helped her to her feet.
“Are the others all right?” She
could sense their minds, spread out through the farmhouse, embers of worry and
pain.
“Same as us, I guess.” A bright
flash from outside silenced him. They both went to the window and peered out.
Huge shafts of lightning skidded along the underbelly of the cloud.
Stephanie shivered uncomfortably.
What had successfully shielded them from the open sky was now an intimidatingly
large mass far too close overhead.
“We’re not in charge of it
anymore,” Moyo said. “We let go.”
“What’s going to happen to it?”
“It’ll rain, I guess.” He shot her
an anxious look. “And that’s a lot of cloud up there. We just kept adding to
it, like a baby’s security blanket.”
“Maybe we should get the animals
in.”
“Maybe we should get the hell out
of here. The Princess’s army will be coming.”
She smiled sadly. “There’s nowhere
to go. You know that.”
The frequency of the lightning had
increased dramatically by the time they rounded up Cochrane, Rana, and Franklin
to help chase after the chickens and lambs that normally ambled round inside
the farmyard. The first few big drops of water began to patter down.
Moyo stuck his hand out, palm up.
As if confirmation was really needed. “Told you,” he said smugly.
Stephanie turned her cardigan into
a slicker, even though she didn’t hold out much hope of staying dry. The drops
were larger than any she’d ever known. All the chickens were running through
the open gate, the lambs had already vanished into the atrocious night. She was
just about to suggest they didn’t bother trying to catch them when daylight
returned to Mortonridge.
Cochrane gaped up at the sky. The
clouds had turned into translucent veils of grey silk, allowing the light to
pour through. “Wow! Who switched the sun back on, man?” The bottom of the
clouds detonated into incandescent splinters, searing down through the air.
Vivid star-tips pulling down a hurricane cone of violet mist after them.
Stephanie had to shield her eyes, they were so bright.
“It’s the end of the world, kids,”
Cochrane cried gleefully.
All one and a half million harpoons
struck the ground within a five second period. A clump of them were targeted on
a cable four kilometres from the farm valley, their terrible velocity
translated into a single devastating blast of heat. The radiant orange flash
silhouetted the valley rim, lasting just long enough to reveal the debris plume
boiling upwards.
“Ho shit,” Cochrane grunted. “That
Mr Hiltch really doesn’t like us.”
“What were they?” Stephanie asked.
It seemed incredible that they were still in their bodies. Surely that kind of
violence would wipe them out?
“Some kind of orbital bombardment,”
Moyo said. “It must have been aimed at Ekelund’s troops.” He didn’t sound too
convinced.
“Aimed? It was everywhere.”
“Then why didn’t it hit us?” Rana
asked. Moyo just shrugged. That was when the roar of the impact reached them, a
drawn out rumble loud enough to swallow any words.
Stephanie covered her ears, and
looked up again. The cloud was in torment, its rumpled underbelly foaming
violently. Ghostly billows of luminescent purple air left behind by the
harpoons snaked around the tightly packed whorls; the two of them flowing
against each other, yet never merging, like liquids with different densities.
She frowned, blinking upwards as the light dimmed. A thick slate-grey haze was
emerging, oozing out of the cloud to swallow both the lightning and the
tattered sheets of ion vapour. It was expanding fast, darkening.
“Inside,” she said in a small voice
as the last echoes of the explosion reverberated across the valley. They all
turned to look at her. The big drops of rain had returned. A breeze arose to
stroke their clothes. “Get inside. It’s going to rain.”
They glanced up at the descending
haze, awed and fearful as understanding reached them.
“Nothing!” Annette screamed furiously
at the processor block. The primitive schematic displayed on its screen proved
it was functioning, yet nobody was answering her calls. “We’re cut off.”
Soi Hon studied the display on his
block. “All the lines are down, from what I can see,” he said.
“Don’t be absurd, you can’t knock
out an entire net,” Annette protested. Doubt stung. “It’s not possible.”
“I imagine that was the idea behind
the bombardment,” Soi Hon replied, unperturbed. “It was rather spectacular,
after all. They wouldn’t expend that much effort for no reason. And we didn’t
have the whole net functioning in the first place, only the critical links.”
“Damn it, how the hell am I going
to organize our resistance now?”
“Everyone has their original
orders, and they have no choice but to fight. All this means is that you are no
longer in charge of the possessed.”
Even his complacency soured at the
look she gave him.
“Oh really?” she asked dangerously.
The light began to fade outside.
Annette strode across to the big front window. She’d taken over a folksy
restaurant called the Black Bull in the middle of Cold Overton, giving her a
commanding position at the end of the broad main street. Fifty vehicles were
parked on the stone slabs of the market square outside, waiting for the troops
who’d taken refuge in the nearby shops and cafés. Milne and a few of his
engineers were walking about, inspecting the equipment. There didn’t seem to be
any damage, though several of the harpoons had fallen just outside the village.
“Soi,” she said. “Take a couple of
squads and check the roads. I want to know how quickly we can get out of here.”
“As you wish.” He nodded briskly,
and made for the door.
“There’s a big group of us in
Ketton,” she said, almost to herself. “That’s only ten kilometres west of here.
We’ll link up with them. Should be able to convince some civilians to join up,
too. After that we can move on to the next group.”
“We could use runners to carry
messages,” Delvan suggested. “That’s what we did back in my time.
Communications were always pretty damn poor close to the front.”
There was very little light left
now. Annette saw Milne and the others running. There was no fear in their
minds, just urgency. Raindrops splattered against the window. Within seconds
the whole of Main Street was awash. Gutters started to fill up, with small
whirlpools forming over the drains.
“I’ve never seen anything like that
before,” Soi Hon exclaimed, raising his voice against the noise. He was
standing in the open doorway, a waterproof poncho forming round his shoulders.
The drumming sound of the huge drops was easily as loud as the red cloud’s
thunder had been. “And we saw some storms round the Pacific in my day, believe
me.”
A rivulet of dirty water began to
seep in around his feet, trickling round the tables. Annette couldn’t see
anything outside now, the rain was battering heavily against the glass,
producing the kind of spume that normally topped ocean waves. Behind that,
there was only blackness.
Delvan moved up beside him to get a
better look. “Nobody’s going anywhere in this.”
“Yes,” Annette agreed shakily.
“You’d better wait.”
“How long, though?” Delvan
muttered. “We didn’t think about this when we drew the cloud over us.”
“Don’t worry,” Soi Hon said.
“Nobody’s going to do any fighting for a while. It’s just as bad for them. And
at least we’re inside.”
The landing boat surged forwards as
soon as the dazzling corona from the kinetic harpoons lit up the sky. Sinon
used the voidhawks’ vantage point to observe the giant splash of plasma sink
into the dark mantle of cloud.
It’s expanding, Acacia announced. Confirm that, we’re
tracking it.
Vast cyclonic spirals of cloud were
stirring across the upper surface. Washed by Ombey’s pale moonlight, the
movement appeared almost majestic. Primeval forces had awoken. Along the edges
of the cloud, gargantuan tornadoes began to spin away, careering off over the
sea.
The whole damn thing’s breaking
up, Choma said.
Sinon shared a shiver of
consternation with the other serjeants; not just in his boat. All of them were
facing the same onslaught. He stared out over the prow, watching mountains of
water on the move. A wind had risen from nowhere to blow straight at him.
We can’t turn back, Choma said. It’ll catch us on the open
water. Best head for shore.
Sinon’s hand patted his lifebelt,
seeking reassurance. The massif of cloud seemed to be hurtling towards them, a
light-absorbing void distending across the ocean.
Keep going, was the decision concurred by the rest of the
Edenists and General Hiltch’s command group. Every boat in the Liberation
armada rammed its engines to full, and met the stormfront head on.
It wasn’t rain they faced, not in
the ordinary sense. The deluge crashing down over them was like standing under
a waterfall. As the clouds rampaged overhead, so the waves rose, as if seeking
to bridge the gap. The landing boats were thrown around pitilessly. Sometimes
Sinon had to hold himself against a deck that was lifting over thirty degrees
to the vertical. The jeeps secured along the centre of the hold strained
against their restraint cables as their weight was flung about in directions
the designers had never anticipated. Bilge pumps were wailing plaintively, to
little effect. Sinon clung to a guard rail as the cold water mounted steadily
against his legs, sloshing between the hull walls. He was worried he’d get
tossed overboard. He was worried his newly assembled body would split along
surgical lines as he strained muscles and tendons to hold on. He worried that a
jeep would break free and crush him. He worried they wouldn’t reach the beach
before the rain and waves filled the hold and sunk them.
Not even sharing the anxiety in the
Edenist fashion did much to alleviate it. There was way too much distress
bubbling through the aether as the armada battled for shore. The Edenists in
secondary support roles, safe away from the megastorm, along with the voidhawks
and their crews overhead, did their best to offer what reassurance and comfort
they could to their beleaguered kinsmen. But they all felt the death toll
rising, compounding the alarm. Landing boats collapsed, pitched over,
individual serjeants lost their grip to drown amid the monster waves. Voidhawks
laboured tirelessly to absorb the fresh memories of the dying serjeant
personalities.
A nausea suppression program went
primary as an aghast Ralph watched the nightmare unfurling. Neatly tabulated
icons blinked up inside his mind, indicating the woeful progress the boats were
making. Some were even being driven backwards as the gales howled out from the
land. He did what he could. For all it was worth. Ordering the ground forces
along the firebreak to stay put and dig in. Putting the medical teams on
immediate standby. Designating search patrols for the aircraft, ready for the
time when it became feasible to fly.
Diana Tiernan and the AI couldn’t
give him any estimate when that would be. There was no way of knowing the true
weight of water powering the storm. Radar scans from the SD sensor satellites
to discover the depth and density were badly distorted by the tremendous
electrical discharges still churning madly over Mortonridge. All they could do
was wait.
“We couldn’t have known,” Janne
Palmer said. “Dealing with the possessed is one giant unknown.”
“We should have guessed,” Ralph
answered bitterly. “At least considered it.”
“Best information we had was that
the cloud was a couple of hundred metres thick,” Diana said. “That’s all it was
on Lalonde and every other planet they took over. But this blasted thing, it
must be kilometres deep. They must have sucked every gram of water from the
air. There may even be some kind of osmotic process involved, siphoning it up
out of the sea.”
“Damn those bastards,” Ralph spat.
“They are afraid,” Acacia said
calmly. “They built the thickest, highest wall they could to keep us out. It’s
human nature.”
Ralph couldn’t bring himself to
answer the Edenist. It was Acacia’s people who were taking the brunt of the
calamity. And it was his plan, his orders, which had put them there. Anything
he said would be pathetically inadequate.
Outside, the rain had reached Fort
Forward, and was doing its best to wash the city’s programmable silicon
structures into the nearby river. Fast rivulets were gouging the soil away from
their base anchors. Ops Room staff glanced round nervously as banshee winds
pummelled away at the walls. Fifty minutes after the kinetic harpoon barrage,
the landing boats started to reach the beaches.
“They’re coming through,” Acacia
said. The first strands of confidence were starting to emerge within the
combined Edenist psyche as serjeants exported the feeling of sand crunching
underfoot. Proof that success was possible, the sense of relief which
accompanied it. “It’s going to be okay, we’re going to make it.”
“Right,” Ralph croaked. One icon
gleamed darkly at the centre of his woeful thoughts: 3129. The number of dead
so far. And we’re the only ones shooting.
An immense wave smacked the landing
craft down on the beach with an almighty crunch. The blow sent Sinon skidding
back along the hold on his arse, limbs flailing. Water slowed his momentum quickly.
He came to rest in a jumble of other serjeants, all struggling to disentangle
themselves. The three at the bottom were completely immersed. Affinity was
supremely useful in coordinating their movements, like unpicking a three
dimensional puzzle.
They’d just got free when the next
wave clobbered the side of the landing boat. It lacked the brutality of the
previous one, simply shoving the hull further up the beach, and twisting them
at an angle.
Dry land! Choma cried triumphantly.
Well . . . land, anyway, Sinon acknowledged dutifully as he sloshed
forwards back up the hold. The rain here was even worse than out at sea.
Visibility was down to maybe fifteen metres, and that was with the boat’s
powerful lights shining down.
Sometimes, I think you have completely
the wrong attitude for this.
Sinon sent a smile image at his
friend. He carried on searching through the water for pieces of his kit lost
during the last portion of the voyage.
The squad began to assess their
position. Five had been injured seriously enough to disqualify them from the
campaign altogether. Several more had suffered minor cracking in their
exoskeletons, which the medical nanonics could cope with. (Surprisingly, the
medical nanonics were working reasonably well.) The beach they’d wound up on
was three kilometres south of their designated landing point, Billesdon. The
truck at the back of the hold was so badly flooded it’d require a complete
maintenance overhaul. The landing boat was wedged into the shingle, and would
need towing off at high tide before it could return to the resort island for
the marines.
On the plus side, the forward ramp
worked, allowing the three functional jeeps out. Most of their armament was
intact. All the other landing boats containing their regiment had made it ashore,
though they were spread out along the coast. After a brief discussion with
their Ops Room liaison, they agreed to make their way to Billesdon and regroup
there. According to their original plan, the back-up forces and supplies would
use the town’s harbour as their disembarkation point. But it still had to be
secured.
By the time the boat’s forward ramp
came down it was technically dawn. Hunched down in the almost nonexistent
shelter provided by the starboard hull, Sinon couldn’t notice any difference.
The only way he knew the jeeps were lumbering out was by using his affinity to
see out through the driver’s eyes.
Looks like we’re on, Choma said.
They rose to their feet, and
checked their kit one last time. Sinon’s squad took up position by the second jeep.
Intense headlight beams pierced ten metres through the deluge before the grey
water defeated them. It was slow going. Their feet sank deep into the saturated
shingle. Twice they had to push the jeep when its wide tyres dug themselves
into axle-high ruts.
The squad was totally dependent on
their guidance blocks. Satellite images taken before the possession provided
them with a high-resolution picture of the cove, and the single narrow track
leading away from it into the forest at the rear. Inertial guidance designated
their position to within ten centimetres. Supposedly. There was no way of
checking. Satellite sensors still couldn’t penetrate the cloud to give them a
verified location reference. They just had to hope the bitek processors hadn’t
been glitched since they loaded them back on the island.
Shingle gave way to tacky mud.
Laggard waves of the yellow slough were creeping down the beach from the land
behind. Clumps of grass and small bushes were being trawled along with it.
Great, Sinon said as he waded in. At this rate,
it’s going to take a week to get there. He was aware of other squads
encountering similar difficulties all along the coast.
We need to get to higher ground,
Choma said. His affinity
indicated a point on the guidance block image. That should give us better
terrain to traverse.
The squad concurred, and changed
direction slightly.
Any news on when this rain’s
going to end? Sinon queried
their liaison.
No.
Not even Cochrane could be bothered
to maintain the Karmic Crusader’s outlandish appearance. The rain was eroding
their spirits at the same rate it ate into the valley’s soil. Three hours so
far, without ever slackening.
Flares of lightning revealed what
it was doing to their beautiful circular valley. Water cascaded over the lip,
turning the orderly terraces into long curving waterfalls. At each stage it
grew muckier and more glutinous as it carried the rich cultivated black soil
with it. Avalanches of crops and sturdy young fruit trees were plunging down
the ever-steepening slopes to sink without trace into the expanding lake. The
lawn at the rear of the farmhouse was slowly submerged, bringing the water up
to the ornate iron-framed patio doors.
By that time they were already
loading the Karmic Crusader with their cases. Wind had ripped countless slates
from the roof, letting the rain in to soak through the ceiling plaster.
“Just bear in mind, there’s only
one road out of this valley,” McPhee said when the first rivulet came churning
down the stairs into the living room. “And that runs above the river. If we’re
going to get out of here, it’s got to be soon.”
Nobody had argued. They splashed
their way upstairs to pack while he and Cochrane brought the bus out of the
barn. Moyo was driving, keeping their speed to little more than walking pace.
The dirt track along the side of the winding valley was crumbling at an
alarming rate as sheets of filthy water poured down out of the trees above
them, foaming round trunks and raking out the tangled undergrowth. His mind
concentrated on giving the bus broader tyres in an attempt to gain some kind of
traction on the quagmire surface. It was difficult; he had to get Franklin and
McPhee to collaborate with him, meshing their thoughts together.
A tree crashed onto the track
twenty metres ahead of them, uprooted by the relentless water. Moyo stamped
down on the brakes, but the bus just kept slithering forwards. Not even the
full focus of his energistic ability could affect the motion. An untimely
reminder about his acute lack of omnipotence. He just managed to shout: “Hold
on to something,” before the bus’s front collision buffer hit the trunk. The
windscreen turned white, bulging inwards to absorb as much of the impact as it
could before finally disintegrating into a hail of tiny plastic spheres. A fat bulb
of twigs and spiky topaz leaves burst through the rent. Moyo tried to duck, but
the seat straps held him fast. Instinct took over, and a stupendous ball of
white fire engulfed the twigs. He screeched as his eyebrows smouldered and his
hair shrivelled into black frazzled ash. The skin on his face went dead.
Steam belched along the interior as
the Karmic Crusader juddered to a halt. Stephanie loosened her grip on the seat
back in front of her, leaving deep indentations in the composite. The floor was
tilted at quite an incline. What with the rain drumming on the roof, and the
water from the slope pouring round them she could only just distinguish the
stressed creaking coming from the bodywork. There was no way of telling what
was causing it. Even her eldritch sense was cluttered with confusing
shadowforms, the rain was equivalent to strong static interference.
Then water came gurgling eagerly
along the aisle, pushing a fringe of filthy scum ahead of it. It glided over
her shoes. She made an effort to banish the cloying steam, trying to make out
the gloomy interior.
“My eyes!” It was just a whisper,
but poignant enough to carry the length of the aisle. Everyone swung round
towards the front of the bus.
“Oh god, my eyes. My eyes. Help me!
My eyes!”
Stephanie had to hang on to the
overhead racks, swinging one hand in front of the other, to make her way
forwards. Moyo was still sitting in the driver’s seat, his body rigid. The
incinerated remains of the tree’s branch cluster loomed centimetres from his
face like some fabulously delicate charcoal sculpture. His hands were held
close to his cheeks, trembling from the fear of what he’d find if he actually
touched himself.
“It’s all right,” she said
automatically. Her mind played traitor, fright and revulsion at what she saw
surging to the surface of her thoughts. His skin had roasted away, taking most
of his nose and all of his eyelids with it. Blood was dribbling out of the
fissures between scabs of crisped corium layers. Both eyes had broiled, turning
septic yellow as creamy fluids percolated out in a mockery of tears.
“I can’t see,” he cried. “Why can’t
I see?”
She reached out and grasped both
his hands. “Shush. Please, darling. It’ll be all right. You just got scorched
by the flame, that’s all.”
“I can’t see!”
“Of course you can. You’ve got your
sixth sense until your eyes recover. You know I’m here, don’t you?”
“Yes. Don’t go.”
She put her arms round him. “I
won’t.” He began shaking violently. Cold sweat was prickling his undamaged
skin.
“He’s in shock,” Tina said. The
others were gathering round, as much as the cramped aisle would permit. Their
thoughts tempered by the sight of Moyo’s injuries.
“He’s all right,” Stephanie
insisted in a brittle tone.
“It’s very common with major burn
cases.”
Stephanie glared at her.
“Yo, man, give him a drag on this,”
Cochrane said. He held out a fat reefer, sickly sweet smoke seeping from its
glowing tip.
“Not now!” Stephanie hissed.
“Actually, yes, darling,” Tina
said. “For once the ape man’s right. It’s a mild sedative, which is just what
he needs right now.” Stephanie frowned suspiciously at the unaccustomed
authority in Tina’s voice. “I used to be a nurse,” the statuesque woman
continued, gathering in her black diamante shawl with a contemptuous dignity.
“Actually.”
Stephanie took the reefer, and
eased it gently into Moyo’s lips. He coughed weakly as he inhaled.
The bus groaned loudly. Its rear
end shifted a couple of metres, sending them all grabbing for support. McPhee
ducked his head to peer through the broken windscreen. “We’re not going
anywhere in this,” he said. “We’d better get out before we get washed away.”
“We can’t move him,” Stephanie
protested. “Not for a while.”
“The river’s nearly up level with
this track, and we’ve got at least another kilometre and a half to go before
we’re out of the valley.”
“Level? It can’t be. We were twenty
metres above the valley floor.”
The Karmic Crusader’s headlights
were out, so she sent a slender blade of white fire arching over the track. It
was as if the land had turned to water. She couldn’t actually see any ground,
slopes and hollows were all submerged under several centimetres of flowing
yellow-brown water. Just below the flattish section which marked the track, a
cavalcade of flotsam was sweeping along the valley. Mangled branches, smashed
trunks, and snarled up mats of vegetation were all cluttered together; their
smooth progress was ominous, nothing stood in their way. As she watched,
another of the trees from the slope above slid down past the bus, staying
vertical the whole time until it reached the river.
She didn’t like to think how many
more trees were poised just above them. “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s get
out of here.”
Cochrane retrieved his reefer.
“Feel better?” Moyo simply twitched. “Hey, no need for the downer. Just like
grow them back, man. It’s easy.”
Moyo’s answering laugh was
hysterical. “Imagine I can see? Oh yes, oh yes. It’s easy, it’s so fucking
easy.” He started to sob, tapping his fingertips delicately over his ruined
face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“You stopped the bus,” Stephanie
said. “You saved all of us. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“Not you!” he screamed.
“Him! I’m saying sorry to him. It’s his body, not mine. Look what I’ve done to
it. Not you. Oh god. Why did all this happen? Why couldn’t we all just die?”
“Get me the first-aid kit,” Tina
told Rana. “Now!”
Stephanie had her arm round Moyo’s
shoulder again, wishing there was some aspect of energistic power that could
manifest raw comfort. McPhee and Franklin tried opening the door. But it was
jammed solid, beyond even their enhanced physical strength’s ability to shift.
They looked at each other, gripped hands, and closed their eyes. A big circular
section of the front bodywork spun off into the bedlam outside. Rain spat down
the aisle like a damp shotgun blast. Rana struggled forwards with the first-aid
kit case, fiddling with the clips.
“This is no use,” Tina wailed. She
plucked out a nanonic package, face wrinkled in dismay. The thick green strip
dangled from her hand like so much wobbly rubber.
“Come on! There must be something
in it you can use,” Stephanie said.
Tina rummaged through. The case
contained several strips of nanonic package, diagnostic blocks—all useless.
Even the phials of biochemicals and drugs used infuser patches, the dosage regulated
by a diagnostic block. There was no non-technological method of getting the
medication into his bloodstream. She shook her head weakly. “Nothing.”
“Damn it—”
The bus groaned, shifting again.
“No more time,” McPhee said. “This is it. Out. Now.”
Cochrane clambered out of the hole,
splashing down on the track next to the fallen tree. Keeping his footing was
obviously difficult. The water came halfway up his shin. Rana followed him
down. Stephanie gripped the seat straps holding Moyo in, and forced them to rot
in her palms. She and Franklin hauled him up, and guided him through the hole.
Tina followed them through, letting out martyred squeals as she struggled to
find footholds.
“Lose those bloody heels, ye
moron,” McPhee yelled at her.
She glared back at him petulantly,
but her scarlet stilettos faded into ordinary pumps with flat soles. “Peasant.
A girl has to look her best at all times, you know.”
“This is real you stupid cow, not a
fucking disaster movie set. You’re no’ being filmed.”
She ignored him, and turned to help
Stephanie with Moyo. “Let’s try and bandage his face, at the very least,” she
said. “I’ll need some cloth.”
Stephanie tore a strip off the
bottom of her saturated cardigan. When she passed it over to Tina it had become
a dry, clean strip of white linen.
“I suppose that’ll be all right,”
Tina said dubiously. She started to wrap it round Moyo’s eyes, making sure the
stub remains of his nose were also covered. “Do try and think of your face as
being normal, darling. It’ll all grow back, then, you’ll see.”
Stephanie said nothing, she didn’t
doubt Moyo could repair the burns to his cheeks and forehead, but actually
growing eyeballs back . . .
Franklin landed with a heavy
splash, the last out of the bus. Nobody fancied trying to salvage their luggage.
The boot was at the rear, and not even energistic power would help much
clambering over the tree. Blasting the trunk to shreds would only send the bus
spinning over the edge.
They spent a couple of minutes
sorting themselves out. First priority was fending off the rain; their
collective imagination produced a transparent hemisphere, like a giant glass
umbrella floating in the air above them. Once that was established, they set
about drying off their clothes. There wasn’t anything they could do about the
water coursing across the track, so they gave themselves sturdy knee-high
wellingtons.
Thus protected, they set off down
the track, taking turns to guide and support a shivering Moyo. A bright globe
of ball lightning bobbed through the air ahead and slightly to the side of
them, hissing as raindrops lashed against it, but lighting the way and
hopefully giving them some warning of any more falling trees. Apart from that,
their only worry was making it out of the valley before the river rose up over
the track. The driving rain and roaring wind meant they never knew when another
tree slithered down the slope into the dark and battered Karmic Crusader,
sending it plunging into the engorged river.
Billesdon was a cheery little town,
tucked into the lee of a large granite headland on Mortonridge’s eastern coast.
Sheltered from the worst of the breakers to come rolling in off the ocean, it
was a natural harbour. District planners took advantage of that, quarrying the
abundant rock to build a long curving quay opposite the headland, enclosing a
wide deepwater basin with a modest beach at the back. The majority of boats
which used it were trawlers and sandrakers, their operators earning a good
living from Ombey’s plentiful fish and crustacean species. Even the local
seaweed was exported to restaurants across the peninsula.
It also proved a haven for pleasure
boats, with several sport fishing and yachting clubs setting up shop. With so
many boats to service, the marine engineering companies and supply industries
were quick to seize upon the commercial opportunities available and open
premises in the town. Houses, apartment blocks, shops, hotels, entertainment
halls, and industrial estates were thrown up all the way back along the shallow
valley behind the headland. Villas and groves began to blossom along the slopes
above, next to golf courses and holiday complexes.
Billesdon became the sort of town,
beautiful and economically successful, that was presented as the Kingdom’s
ideal, every citizen’s entitlement. Sinon’s squad reached the outskirts around
midday. A trivial glimmer of light was penetrating the clouds, giving the world
a lacklustre opacity. Visibility had risen to a few hundred yards.
Sinon wished it hadn’t bothered.
They were poised just outside the town, not far above the sea. Cover was
ostensibly provided by a spinney of fallen Fellots. None of the sturdy
aboriginal trees remained standing; their dense fan-shaped branches had
cushioned the way the trunks fell, leaving them at crazy angles. Rain kept
their upper sections clean from the cloying mud, giving the cerise bark a
glossy sheen. Choma was pressed up against a fat trunk at the edge of the
spinney, waving a sensor block slowly ahead of him. The whole squad hooked in
to the block’s bitek processor, examining the buildings ahead through a variety
of wavelengths.
Not even the money lavished on
Billesdon’s infrastructure had saved it from the rain. The terraces and groves
above had dissolved, sending waves of mud slithering down into the prim
streets, clogging the drains within minutes. Water raced along the roads and
pavements, submerging tarmac and grass alike before it poured over the quayside
wall. There were no boats left in the harbour; every single craft had been used
to evacuate the population before Ekelund’s invasion reached the coast. In
theory, that left the basin clear for the Liberation’s landing boats to bring
the occupation troops and support materiel ashore.
Seems deserted, Choma said.
Nothing moving, Sinon agreed, but infrared’s useless in all
this rain. There could be thousands of them tucked up nice and dry waiting for
us.
Look on the bright side, the
water should foul up that white fire of theirs.
Maybe, but that still leaves
them with a whole load of options to use against us.
That’s good, keep thinking like
that. Paranoia keeps you on your toes.
Thank you.
So what do you want to do now?
Simple. We’re going to have to
go in and check it out one house at a time.
Okay, that’s what I signed up
for.
They discussed it with the other
squads encircling the town. Search areas were designated, tactics coordinated,
blockades established on the main roads. Guyana was alerted that they were
going in, and readied the low orbit SD platforms to provide groundstrike
support if called for.
The outskirts ahead of Sinon were
modest houses overlooking the harbour, home to the fishing families. They had
large gardens, which had been completely washed away. Long tongues of
mud-slimed debris were stretched down the slope, with small streams running
down their centres where the water had gouged a channel into the sandy soil.
Cover between the spinney and the first house was nonexistent, so the squad
moved forwards with long gaps between each member. If the white fire did burst
down on them, it would never be able to reach more than one at a time.
Hopefully.
Sinon was third in the line. He
held his machine gun ready, crouched low to provide the smallest possible
target. Ever since they came ashore, he’d been thankful that his serjeant body
had an exoskeleton; the rain didn’t bother him as much as it would if he had
ordinary skin. Body armour had been considered and rejected, it had never been
any good against the white fire before. The one concession they all made were
shoes, a kind of sandal with deep-tread soles to give them traction.
Even so, it was hard to keep his
feet from slipping as he hurried forward through the mud. The first house was
ten metres ahead of him: a white box with long silvered windows and a large
first floor balcony at the rear. Water poured out of the sagging guttering,
diluting the slow-moving sludge that percolated round the base of the walls. He
kept sweeping the machine gun nozzle across the facing wall, alert for any sign
of motion from inside. Out in the open, wind was driving the rain straight at
him. Even his body was aware of how cold it was; not that it was affecting his
performance, not yet. Sensor blocks dangled from his belt, unused and redundant
as he urged himself on. His training was his one and only defence now.
Choma had already reached the house
ahead of him, ducking down to crawl under the windows. Sinon reached the back
wall, and started to follow his friend along the side of the house. It was
important to keep moving, not clump together. Palm fronds and limp knots of
grass wrapped themselves round his ankles, slowing him. When he reached the
largest window, he took one of the sensor blocks from his belt, and gingerly
pressed it to the pane. The block relayed a slightly misty image of the room
inside. A lounge, cosy, with worn furniture and framed family holograms on the
wall. Water was spraying out of the ceiling’s central light fitting; the floor
was invisible under a layer of mud which had pushed in from the hallway. An
infrared scan showed no hot-spots.
Clean downstairs, he said. And my ELINT block is clear. Looks
like nobody’s home.
We need to be sure, Choma replied. Check out the upper floor.
I’ll back you.
Sinon stood up, shouldering the
machine gun. He took out a fission blade and sliced through the window frame,
cutting out the lock. Raindrops sizzled on the glowing blade. The next two
serjeants in his squad had already reached the house when he slipped inside. He
pushed out a heavy breath from his lungs, the nearest he could get to a sigh.
Actually out of the rain. Its impact was diminished to a dull drum roll on the
roof. Choma splashed down into the thin mire beside him.
Hell, that’s better.
Affinity made Sinon aware of the
rest of the squad; two of them were in the neighbouring houses, while the rest
had started to spread out along the street. My ELINT’s still clear, he
said.
Choma looked up at the ceiling,
pointing his machine gun at it cautiously. Yes. I’m pretty sure there’s
nobody up there, but we’ve still got to check.
Sinon made his way out into the
hall, machine gun held ready. How can you be sure? You don’t know what’s up
there.
Instinct.
Crazy. He put his foot on the first step, sandal sole
making a squelching sound against the sodden carpet. We’ve barely got
imagination operating inside these neural arrays, let alone an intuitive
function.
Then I suggest you work one up
fast, you’re going to need it.
Sinon turned so he could cover the
landing as he ascended. Nothing moved except for the unending water, glistening
as it ran down walls, curdling across carpets and tile floors, dripping from
furniture. He reached the main bedroom, its door ajar. His foot kicked it hard,
dinting the wood. The door slammed back amid a shower of droplets. Choma was
right: it was empty. In every room, the signs of panicked departure. Drawers
ransacked, clothes scattered about.
Nobody here, Sinon reported to the squad when they cleared
the front bedroom. Other house searches across the town were also proving
negative as the squads moved in.
Ghost town, Choma said, chortling.
I think you could find a better
phrase. He looked down through
the window, seeing squad members scuttling along the road outside. They were
going against the flow of mud, their legs churning up deep eddies. Things were
trundling along the street, carried along by the relentless current. Bulges in
the smooth mud; there was no way of telling if they were stones or crumpled
twigs. All of them moved at the same speed.
He held up a sensor block, panning
it round in search of anomalous hot-spots. The image was overlapping his actual
field of view, which meant he was looking straight at the house on the other
side of the street when it exploded.
A serjeant had cut through the lock
on a side door and crept cautiously inside, machine gun held ready. The ground
floor must have been clear, because a second serjeant followed him in. Thirty
seconds later four explosions detonated simultaneously. They were carefully
placed, one at each corner of the house. Long flakes of concrete and lumps of
stone shot out of the billowing flame. The whole house trembled: then, its
crucial support destroyed, it collapsed vertically. Windows all along the
street blew out under the impact of the blast wave. Sinon just managed to twist
away in time, allowing his backpack to take the brunt of the flying shards.
The affinity bond boiled with hard,
frantic thoughts. Both serjeants in the house were hammered by the explosions,
their bodies wrecked. But the tough exoskeleton withstood the searing pressure
for a few moments, long enough for the controlling personalities to
instinctively begin the transfer. One of the orbiting voidhawks accepted their
thoughts; then the house descended on their already weakened skulls.
“Shit!” Sinon yelled. He was curled
up on the bedroom floor, aware of something being wrong with his left forearm.
When he brought it up to his face, the exoskeleton was cracked in a small star
pattern. Blood was seeping out of the centre. Rain lashed in through the empty
window, washing the crimson stain away.
Are you all right? Choma asked.
Yes . . . Yes, I think so. What
happened? He stood up, peering
down circumspectly onto the street. The mud and rain had swallowed almost all
the immediate signs of the explosion. There was no smoke, no dust cloud. Just a
pancake of rubble where the house had stood moments before. The tide of mud was
already frothing round it, bubbling eagerly into cracks.
Choma pointed his machine gun along
the street, radiating satisfaction that the squad had merged with the scenery.
He knew where they were, but they weren’t easily visible. Where are they?
Did anyone see where the white fire came from?
He was answered with a chorus of:
No’s.
I don’t think it was white fire,
Sinon said. He ordered his
block to replay the memory. The gouts of flame spearing out of each corner were
orange, and they came from inside the house.
Sabotage? Choma said.
Could be. They were perfectly
placed for demolition.
They were on their way down the
stairs when the second house exploded. It was on the far side of town, being
examined by one of the other squads. One serjeant was killed, another two were
injured beyond any field medic’s ability to patch up; they needed immediate
evacuation. The rest of Sinon’s squad stood back as he clambered up over the
mound of stone and girders which had been the house. When he was clear of the
mud he ran a sensor pad over the exposed rubble close to one of the corners.
The rain was washing the mess clean, but the chemical analysis still had enough
residual molecules to work with.
Not good, he announced. This wasn’t white fire.
There’s a definite trace of trinitrotoluene here.
Sod it! Choma exclaimed. The bastards have booby
trapped the whole town.
Parts of it. I doubt they’ve got
the resources to rig every building.
But you can bet they’ve done the
critical ones, as well as picking on houses at random, he said grudgingly. It’s what I would’ve
done.
If you’re right, we’re going to
have to treat each building as potentially hazardous. And we don’t even know
what the trigger is.
I doubt it’ll be electronic. Our
sensors would spot active processors, and the possessed wouldn’t be able to set
them up in the first place. We’ll have to get some of the marine engineers in
here to find out what kind of mechanism they’re employing.
Sinon’s response was lost amid a
burst of anguish within the communal affinity band. Both of them instinctively
turned to the west. The death of another two serjeants was all too clear. A
warehouse in a town called Holywell had just exploded.
It’s not just here, Choma said. Ekelund’s people have been busy.
Confirmation that most major towns
around the periphery of Mortonridge were booby trapped came in to the Ops Room
throughout the afternoon. Ralph sat in his office assessing the reports in a
state of weary disbelief. Progress schematics were being revised on a fifteen
minute basis by the AI. Their original timetable was constantly rearranged,
targets being pushed further and further back.
“Truly amazing,” he told Princess
Kirsten during the evening’s briefing. “We’re fifteen hours in, and already
twenty behind schedule.”
“Conditions are pretty foul under
there,” Admiral Farquar said. “I don’t see Ekelund’s people having a better
time of it.”
“How would we know? Fifteen hours,
and we haven’t had a single encounter with a live possessed. Christ, I mean I
know no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, but no one ever said
anything about it disintegrating before we even catch sight of them.”
“General Hiltch,” the Princess said
sharply. “I’d like you to give me some positive factors, please. Have all the
possessed simply vanished into this other realm they long for?”
“We don’t think so, no, ma’am.
Pulling back from the coast and the firebreak is a logical move. They obviously
worked it out in advance, hence the booby traps.”
“There’s circumstantial evidence that
they’re still in the centre of Mortonridge,” Diana said. “Our satellite sensor
scans are at their worst there. Radar and UV laser is beginning to break
through the fringes, but when we try to probe the centre we get the same kind
of hazing effect the possessed have always generated. QED, they’re still
there.”
“That’s something, I suppose.”
“I also think the worst of the rain
should be over by midday tomorrow. Results from the sensors we can rely on show
us the cloud is thinning out. A lot of it is simply blowing out to sea now
they’re no longer containing it. And of course, it’s falling, bigtime.”
“It certainly is,” Acacia said. She
shuddered at the on-the-ground impressions affinity had delivered to her.
“You’re going to have real problems with Mortonridge’s vegetation when this is
all over. I doubt there’s a tree standing on the whole peninsula. I didn’t know
rain like that could exist.”
“It can’t, normally,” Diana said.
“This whole meteorology situation is highly artificial. The dispersal will
influence the planet’s weather patterns for the rest of the year. However, it
certainly isn’t sustainable; as I said, the heaviest falls will be over by
midday tomorrow. After that, the serjeants will be able to make decent
progress.”
“Over open country, possibly,”
Ralph said. “But we’re going to have to vector in these booby traps.”
“Do we know what they are, yet?”
the Princess asked.
“The majority so far are good old
fashioned TNT,” Ralph told her. “Easily produced from the kind of chemicals
available in most of our urban zones. We managed to get some marine engineers
in to the afflicted towns to examine what they could. There’s no standard
trigger mechanism, naturally enough. The possessed are using everything from
trip wires to wired up door knobs. There’s just no quick way to deal with them.
The whole point of the front line serjeants is to clear every metre of ground
as they advance. Knowing you’re in danger just by walking in to a building is
going to be very stressful for the entire army, I’m afraid. Doing the job
properly is going to slow us down considerably.”
“So will the mud,” Janne said. “We
know where the roads are, but no one’s actually seen a solid surface yet.”
“Progress down the M6 is slow,”
Cathal confirmed. “The major bridges are out. We expected that, of course. But
the mechanoids are having a lot of trouble erecting the replacements the
convoys are carrying, they’re just not designed to operate in this kind of
environment.”
“That situation should ease off
tomorrow as well,” Diana said.
“The rain, yes; but the mud will
still be there.”
“We’re going to have to learn to
live with that, I’m afraid. It’s here for the duration.”
Did you know, the original
ethnic Eskimos on Earth had several dozen words for snow, Sinon said.
Really? Choma answered from the other side of the
winding ravine they were following.
Apparently so.
Excuse me for having my neural
array assembled in too much of a hurry, but I don’t quite see the relevance to
our current situation.
I just thought, it might be
appropriate if we had an equal number of names for mud.
Oh right. Yes. Let’s see, we
could have real crappy mud, bloody awful mud, pain in the ass mud, squeezes
inside your exoskeleton and squelches a lot mud, and then there’s always the
ultimate: drowning in mud.
You have a much higher emotional
context than the rest of us, don’t you? Your jest about neural array assembly
might be an unintentional truism.
You are what you bring to
yourself.
Quite. Sinon stepped over yet another fallen branch.
It was mid afternoon of the Liberation’s second day. All the serjeants had
received the revised schedule from the Fort Forward Ops Room, they were
expected to move across the land at about half the speed originally intended.
Very optimistic, Sinon thought.
It had taken until four o’clock in the
morning to secure Billesdon. Now they knew they were dealing with TNT, the
sensor blocks had been programmed to sniff it out. Given TNT’s relatively
unstable nature, there were usually enough molecules left floating round inside
the building to provide a positive detection. The damp didn’t help, but by and
large, the blocks protected them.
Sinon himself had found two houses
that were rigged. They’d learned to tie the blocks to the end of long poles,
and push them through windows and doors already forced open by the mud. Each
time, he’d designated the buildings, and they were left for the marine
engineers to send mechanoids in at some later time. They’d still lost another
eight serjeants before the town was cleared.
The landing boats had returned as a
feeble dawn broke; carrying their supplies, more jeeps, and the first of the
marines troops. The wind had calmed, although the rain was still as intense.
And the big harbour basin was now clotting up with mud, hampering their
manoeuvring as they docked. But by mid morning, the quayside was thick with
activity. A degree of confidence returned to the serjeants. They were getting
back on track. With the marines holding Billesdon, the whole battalion began to
deploy back out along the coast ready for the push inland.
True to Diana Tiernan’s prediction,
the rain did start to slacken by midday. Or at least, they convinced themselves
it had; the light perforating the clouds was noticeably brighter. It did
nothing to alleviate the misery of the mud. There had never been a landscape
like it on any terracompatible Confederation world. Rover reporters stood on
the edge of town, starkly silent as their enhanced retinas faithfully delivered
the devastation back to the millions of citizens accessing the Liberation. Only
the contours of the land remained stable, the mud had claimed everything else.
There were no fields, or meadows, or scrubland, just a slick piss-brown
coating, undulating and gurgling as it crept inexorably along. Mortonridge had
become a single quagmire, extending from the sea to the horizon. Sensors in
orbit showed the stain around the coast was already ten kilometres wide, and
still spreading incursive fingers hungrily into the calm turquoise ocean.
Along with the rest of his squad,
Sinon trudged through the forest, scrambling over the fallen trunks and their
even more troublesome roots. Nothing had been left standing upright, although
the tide of mud lacked the force to carry the trees with it. Superficially, the
area resembled a bayou, although here the fractured wood was razor sharp,
lacking the worn rottenness of plants growing in genuine swampland. Real bayous
didn’t have so many dead animals, either.
Like the vegetation, Mortonridge’s
indigenous creatures had taken a dreadful punishment. Birds and ground animals
had drowned in their millions. Their corpses too, were part of the loose
detritus carried along by the mud as it slid downwards into the ocean. Except
in the forest, where the branches and root webs acted like nets. They were
clustered round each tree, anonymous lumps, distending as they started to
decompose. Heavy bubbles swelled across them like clumps of inflatable fungus
as body gases forced a way out.
His battalion had been arranged in
a line eighty kilometres wide, centred around Billesdon and its flanks merging
with other battalions. This was the time when the army was stretched to its
absolute maximum, completely encircling the entire peninsula. The AI had spaced
the serjeants fifty metres apart right along the coast, planning on them yomping
forwards together in a giant contracting sweep manoeuvre. If a possessed did
try to hide out in the countryside they would never be more than twenty-five
metres away from one of the serjeants. A combination of eyesight, infrared, SD
satellite observation, and ELINT blocks ought to be able to locate them. Jeeps,
trucks and reserve squads trailed behind the front line in columns one
kilometre apart, ready to reinforce any section of the line that came under
heavy attack. Mustered behind them were the prisoner-handling details.
When the gigantic formation was
complete, the serjeants paused, reaffirming their commitment to the Liberation,
celebrating the unity and accomplishment. Mortonridge was sealed off ahead of
them, and now they were physically in place after all that had befallen,
success appeared tangible. Doubt was banished.
“Go,” Ralph ordered.
The pattern started to waver as
soon as the serjeants left the coast behind. Mountain roads and tracks had
vanished altogether. Valley floors were now deep rivers of mud. No vehicles
could plough through the broken remains of the forests. The AI began to guide
them round obstacles, always keeping the reserves within optimum distance of
the front line. Slowing some sections of the advance, directing extra serjeants
to expand the line over steep terrain.
They had their first encounter with
a possessed seventy-six minutes after they started. Sinon watched through
another set of eyes as the serjeant up near the firebreak fired its machine gun
at a heat corona coming from behind an upturned car. Sparkling bullets ripped
straight through the composite bodywork. Tendrils of enraged white fire curved
over the top in retaliation. Another serjeant opened fire. The entire line
halted, waiting to see what would happen.
For a moment there was no effect.
Then the white fire faded, turning translucent before the rain smothered it,
drops steaming as they fell through. A man staggered out from behind the
wrecked car, hands waving madly as the bullets thudded into him. Ripples of purple
light blazed out from every impact, swathing his body in a wondrous pyrotechnic
display. The serjeant upped the fire rate.
“Stop it!” the man screamed. He
crashed to his knees, hands batting feebly to ward off the machine gun. “Stop
it for fuck’s sake. I surrender, goddamn it.”
The serjeant eased off the trigger,
and walked forwards. “Lie down flat, put your hands behind your head. Do not
attempt to move or apply your energistic power.”
“Fuck you,” the man snarled through
clenched teeth. His body was shaking badly.
“Down. Now!”
“All right, all right.” He lowered
himself into the mud. “Mind if I don’t go any further? Even we can’t breathe
mud.”
The serjeant took its holding stick
from its belt, a dull silver cylinder half a metre long. It telescoped out to
two metres, and a pincer clamp at one end opened wide.
“What the hell . . . ?” the man
grunted as the serjeant closed the clamp round his neck.
“This restraint has a dead-man
function. If I let go, or I’m made to let go, it will fire ten thousand volts
into you. If you resist or refuse to obey any instruction, I will shove a
current into you and keep turning it up until your energistic ability is
neutralised. Do you understand?”
“You’re gonna die one day, you’re
going to join us.”
The serjeant switched on a two
hundred volt current.
“Jesus wept,” the man squealed.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes. Yes, fuck. Turn it off. Off!”
“Very well. You will now leave this
body.”
“Or what, asshole? If you zap me
too hard we both die. Me and my host.”
“If you do not leave of your own
volition, you will be placed in zero-tau.”
“Fuck. I can’t go back there.” He
started sobbing. “Don’t you understand? I can’t. Not there. Please. Please,
if you’ve got an ounce of humanity in you, don’t do this. I’m begging you.”
“I’m sorry. That is not an option.
Leave now.”
“I can’t.”
The serjeant pulled on the holding
stick, forcing the possessed to his feet. “This way.”
“What now?”
“Zero-tau.”
The cheering in the Ops Room was
deafening. Ralph actually grinned out at them from his office, the image of the
captured possessed being led away lingering in his mind. It might work, he
thought. It just might. He remembered walking out of Exnall, the girl crying
limply in his arms, Ekelund’s mocking laughter in the air.
“Enjoy your victory with the girl,”
she’d sneered. His only personal success in that entire frightful night.
“Two down,” Ralph whispered. “Two
million to go.”
The fish were dying. Stephanie
thought that the oddest thing. This rain should be their chance to take over
the whole world. Instead the ever-thickening mud was clogging up their gills,
preventing them from breathing. They lay on the surface, being pushed along by
the leisurely waves of water, their bodies flapping madly.
“We should like hollow out some
logs, man, use them as canoes. That’s what our ancestors used to do, and those
cats were like really in tune with nature,” Cochrane suggested when they
cleared the end of the valley.
They’d only just made it, the
sluggish river was leaking over the top of the track. At times it seemed as if
the whole surface of the valley was on the move. They stood above the gurgling
edge of the flow, and watched the gargantuan outpouring spread out to surge on
across the lowlands.
“Fat lot of use that would be,”
Franklin muttered grimly. “Everything’s heading down to the coast, and that’s
where they are. Besides,” he gestured round extravagantly at the denuded
valley. “What trees?”
“You are such a downer. I want some
wheels, man. I have like totally had it with tramping through this shit.”
“I thought cars were spawned by the
capitalist Establishment to promote our greed and distance us from nature,”
Rana said sweetly. “I’m sure I heard somebody say that recently.”
Cochrane kicked at the fish
flopping about round his feet. “Get off my back, prickly sister. Okay? I’m
thinking of Moyo. He can’t handle this.”
“Just . . . quiet,” Stephanie said.
Even she was waspish, fed up with the pettiness they were all displaying. The
ordeal of the bus and then the track had stretched everyone’s nerves. “How are
you?” she asked Moyo.
His face had returned to normal,
the illusion swallowing his bandage and shielding his scabbed tissue from
sight. Even his eyeballs appeared to dart about naturally. But he’d taken a lot
of cajoling and encouragement to walk along the track. His thoughts had
contracted, gathering round a centre of sullen self-pity. “I’ll be okay,” he
mumbled. “Just get me out of this rain. I hate it.”
“Amen to that,” Cochrane chirped.
Stephanie looked round the shabby
landscape. Visibility was still pretty ropy on the other side of their
protective umbrella, though it was definitely lighter now. It was hard to
believe this eternal featureless mire was the same vigorous green countryside
they’d travelled across in the Karmic Crusader. “Well we can’t go that way,” she
gestured at the cataract of muddy water rumbling away into the distance. “So I
guess we’ll have to stick to this side. Anyone remember roughly where the road
is?”
“Along there, I think,” McPhee
said. Neither voice or mind-tone suggested much confidence in the claim.
“There’s definitely a flat ledge. See? The carbon-concrete must have held up.”
“Till the foundation gets washed
out from under it,” Franklin said.
Stephanie couldn’t honestly see any
difference in the mud where he was pointing. “All right, we’ll go for it.”
“How far?” Tina demanded
querulously. “And how long will it take to get there?”
“Depends where you’re heading,
babe,” Cochrane said.
“Well I don’t know, do I? I
wouldn’t ask if I did.”
“Any kind of building will do,”
Stephanie said. “We can reinforce it against the weather ourselves. I just want
us out of this. We can think what to do next when we’re rested up. Come on.”
Stephanie gripped Moyo’s hand and began to walk in the direction the road was
supposed to be. Fish tails slapped pitifully at her wellingtons.
“Oh man, it don’t make no
difference what we decide. We know what’s like gonna happen.”
“Then stay here and let it,” Rana
told the miserable hippie. She started off after Stephanie.
“I didn’t say I was in a rush.” The
edge of the invisible shield moved towards Cochrane, and he scrambled after
them.
“There was a village called Ketton
on this road,” McPhee said. “I remember going through it before we turned off
up to the farm.”
“How far?” Tina asked, her voice
rising in hope.
Cochrane smiled happily. “Miles and
miles, it’ll probably take us like about ten—twenty days.”
A ferocious jet of white fire
squirted into the wall two metres above Sinon’s head. He flattened himself into
the mud below as paint ignited and carbon-concrete blistered.
Coming from the shops, seventy
metres right. It was hard to
see with all the smoke mingling with the rain, but his retinas had a long
purple after image scorched across them.
Got it, Kerrial answered.
The white fire expanded into a thin
circular sheet, rivulets trickled down, their tips wriggling purposefully
towards Sinon. “Shit.” If he stayed the fire would get him, if he moved he’d
lose the cover which the wall provided. And there must be several of them in
the shops; two other serjeants were under attack as well.
Eayres was a nothing village in the
guidance block’s memory. A cluster of houses clumped round a road junction, its
population mostly employed by the local marble quarry. Who would expect the
possessed to make a stand here? Expect the unexpected, Choma had chanted
happily when the white fireballs burst open amid the squad.
Sinon saw Kerrial swing himself
into position, bringing his machine gun to bear on the shops in the middle of
the village. Bullet craters slammed across the brickwork in front of him. Then
his body was being flung back, nerve channels shutting down. Blackness.
Kerrial’s memories arose from his neural array to be absorbed by an orbiting
voidhawk.
They’ve got guns! Sinon broadcast.
Yes, Choma said. I saw.
Where did they get them from?
This is the countryside, hunting
is a sport here. Besides, did you think we had a monopoly?
The white fire rivulets had reached
the ground. Steam roared up as they floated sinuously along the top of the mud
towards Sinon. He scrambled to his feet, and jumped forward. The white fire
behind him vanished. Another, brighter, spear lanced out of a shop’s fractured
window. He hit the mud, rolling desperately as he brought his grenade launcher
to bear.
You’ll kill them, Choma warned. Sinon’s right leg went dead as
the white fire engulfed it. He slamfired the launcher, hand pumping the
mechanism with cyborg intent.
Grenades thudded into the upper
floor of the shop, detonating instantly. The ceiling split open, hurling down a
torrent of rubble as the roof caved in. Three radiant lines of machine gun fire
poured through the ground floor windows and into the tumult inside. The white
fire evaporated into tiny violet wisps, splattering off Sinon’s leg. He
scrambled up, and pushed himself hard for the buildings dead ahead, dragging
his useless leg along. Crashing through the first door to land in a deserted
bar.
Clever, Choma said. I think that’s got them cold.
The white fire had gone out
everywhere. Serjeants converged on the little row of prim shops, walking
forwards steadily, firing their machine guns continually. The squad had
responded to the possessed like antibodies reacting to an incursive virus.
Flowing in towards the village from both sides, the reserve squad racing
forward. A miniature version of the noose contracting around Mortonridge. They
had it encircled within minutes. Then began their advance.
Seventeen of them walked through
the smoke that whirled along Main Street, impervious to the flames roaring out
of the buildings all around. Their gunfire was concentrated on the shops,
aiming their vivid bullets through any gap they could find. Weird lights
flickered inside, as if someone had activated a nightclub hologram rig. Steam
fountained out through windows and cracks in the wall.
“All right. Enough. Enough,
God damn it. We’re through.”
The ring of serjeants held their
places ten metres from the central shop, feet apart, juddering in time to the
roaring guns.
“ENOUGH. We surrender.” The machine
guns fell silent.
Lumps of stone stirred on the mound
of rubble which had been the shop’s upper floor, spinning down to splash into
the ubiquitous mire. Limbs began to emerge amid a welter of coughing. Six
possessed squirmed free, holding up their hands and blinking uncomfortably.
More serjeants moved forwards to clamp their necks with holding sticks.
Elana Duncan reached Eayres two
hours later. The fires were out by then, extinguished by the rain. She whistled
appreciatively as she climbed out of the truck, a sound violent enough to make
the marines wince. “Must have been a hell of a fight,” she said in envy. The
trucks had halted in the village’s main street. Over half of the buildings
around her had been flattened into small hillocks of debris; of those that
remained, few were left with roofs. Naked, heat-twisted girders skewered up
into the gloomy sky. Black soot stains smeared over entire walls were already
dissolving under the rain to reveal deep bullet pocks.
Marines began jumping down from the
other trucks in the convoy. It was a familiar routine by now. Urban zones,
whatever the size, were occupied by a garrison. They served as emergency
reserves and staging post; also a transitory field hospital a lot of the time.
The possessed weren’t giving up without a fight. The marine lieutenant in
charge started shouting orders, and the troops fanned out to secure the
perimeter. Elana and the other mercs began unloading their truck with the help
of five mud-caked mechanoids.
First off was a programmable
multipurpose silicon hall. An oval twenty-five metres long, with open archways
along the sides. It was a standard Kulu Royal Marine corps issue, designed for
tropical climates, with an overhang in anticipation of heavy showers, and
allowing a constant breeze to filter through. Ordinarily ideal for a place like
Mortonridge. Now, they were having to direct the mechanoids to bulldoze up a
base from soil and stone which they then sealed over with fast-set polymer. It
was the only way to keep the hall’s floor above mud level.
Once that was up, they started
moving the zero-tau pods in. A double file of serjeants marched down the main
street, escorting three possessed. Elana splashed out to greet them. She
enjoyed this part of her duty.
One of the possessed had given up,
a man in his late sixties. She’d seen that before. Filthy, torn clothes. Not
bothering to heal his wounds. Even the rain was allowed to soak him. The other
two were more typical. Dignity intact. Clothes immaculate, not a scratch on
them. The rain bounced off as if they had a frictionless coating. Elana gave
one of them a long look. A woman in a prim antique blue suit, white blouse with
a lace collar, and pearl necklace. Her hair was a solid bottle blonde coiffure
that could have been carved from rock for all the wind affected it. She gave
Elana a single distasteful glance, defiantly arrogant.
Elana nodded affably at the
serjeant guarding her, whose leg was wrapped in a medical package tube. “Humm,
she’s the third one of these today. And I thought that woman was unique.”
“Excuse me?” the serjeant asked.
“They enjoy historical figures.
I’ve been accessing my encylopedia’s history files ever since this campaign
started, trying to place them. Hitlers are quite popular, so’s Napoleon and
Richard Saldana, then there’s Cleopatra. Somebody called Ellen Ripley is a big
favourite with the women, too; but none of my search programs have managed to
track her down yet.”
The blue-suited woman looked dead
ahead, and smiled a secret smile.
“Okay,” Elana said. “Bring them
in.”
The mercenaries were hooking the
zero-tau pods up to their power cells, datavising diagnostics through the
management processors. Elana’s ELINT block gave a warning bleep. She rounded on
the three prisoners, pulling a high-voltage shockrod from her belt. Her voice
boomed out from her facial grille, echoing round the hall.
“Cut that out, shitbrains. You
lost, and this is the end of the line. Too late to argue about it now. The
serjeants might be too honourable and decent to fry your bodies, but I’m not.
And this is my part of the operation. Got that?” The ELINT block quietened.
“Good. Then we’ll get along just fine in your final minutes in this universe.
Any last minute cigarettes, you can indulge yourselves. Otherwise just keep
quiet.”
“I see you have found an occupation
which obviously suits you.”
“Huh?” She glanced down at serjeant
with the injured leg.
“We met at Fort Forward, just after
arriving. I am Sinon.”
Her three claws snapped together
with a loud click. “Oh yes, the cannon fodder guy. Sorry, you all look
alike to me.”
“We are identical.”
“Glad to see you survived. Though
God knows how you managed it. Trying to storm ashore through that weather was
the dumbest military decision since the Trojans took a shine to that horse.”
“I think you’re being unduly
cynical.”
“Don’t give me that crap. You must
have a decent dose of it too, if you’ve survived this long. Remember the oldest
military rule, my friend.”
“Never volunteer for anything?”
“Generals always fuck up bad.”
The first zero-tau pod opened.
Elana pointed her shock-rod at the blue-suited woman. “Okay, Prime Minister,
you first.” Sinon kept the holding stick round her neck as she backed in. Metal
manacles closed round her limbs, and Elana switched on a mild current. The
woman glared out, her face drawn back with the effort of fighting the
electricity.
“Just in case,” Elana told Sinon.
“We had a few try to break free once they finally realize their number’s up.
You can take the holding stick off now.” The clamp sprang open, and Sinon stood
clear. “You going to leave all nice and voluntarily?” Elana asked. The front of
the zero-tau pod was already swinging shut. The woman spat weakly. “Didn’t
think so. Not you.”
The zero-tau pod turned midnight
black. Elana heard a hiss of breath from one of the waiting possessed, but
didn’t say anything.
“How long do you leave them in
there?” Sinon asked.
“Cook them for about fifteen
minutes. Then we open up to see if they’re done. If not, it’s just back in for
progressively longer periods. I’ve had one hold out for about ten hours before,
but that was the limit.”
“That sounds suspiciously like
enjoyment to me.”
Elana waved the next possessed into
his pod. “Nothing suspicious about it. General Hiltch, God fuck him, says I’m
not allowed in the front line. So this is the second best duty as far as I’m
concerned. I don’t take marine discipline too good. Sitting with a bunch of
those pansy-asses in a place like this counting raindrops would have me thrown
off-planet inside of a day. So as I’m technologically competent, me and my
friends requested this placement. It works out fine. Army’s short of skilled
techs who can also handle the noise if the possessed start to panic: we fit the
bill. And this way I get to see the bastards booted out of their bodies. I know
it’s happening.”
The second possessed was put in a
zero-tau pod. He didn’t resist. Then the third zero-tau pod was activated.
Elana aimed the shock rod at the last possessed, the apathetic one. “Hey, cheer
up. This is your lucky day, looks like the reserves got called out. You’re on,
kid.” He gave her a broken look and grimaced. His features melted, shrinking
back to reveal a wizened face with anaemically pale skin.
“Catch him,” Elana yelled. The
man’s legs buckled. He pitched forward into her arms. “Thought that one might
quit,” she said in satisfaction.
Choma removed the holding stick’s
clamp from around his neck. Elana eased him down onto the floor, calling for
blankets and some pillows. “Damn it, we haven’t had time to unpack the medical
gear yet,” she said. “And we’re going to need it. Those bastards.”
“What’s the matter?” Sinon asked.
Elana’s claw sliced through the
man’s raggedy shirt, exposing his chest. There were strange ridges swelling out
of his skin, mimicking the lines of muscle a healthy twenty-year-old mesomorph
might have. When she prodded one with the tip of a claw, it sagged like a sack
of jelly.
“They always go for perfection,”
she explained to Sinon and Choma. “Assholes. I don’t know what that energistic
power is, but it screws up their flesh real bad under the illusion. Sometimes
you get fat deposits building up, that’s pretty harmless; but nine times out of
ten, it’s tumours.”
“All of them?” Sinon asked.
“Yep. Never satisfied with what
they’ve got. I’m sure it’s a metaphor for something, but I’m buggered if I can
figure out what. We’re having to ship everyone who gets de-possessed back to
Xingu and into one of the major hospitals. They’re overflowing already, and
they don’t have enough nanonic packages to go around. Another week of this, and
the entire Ombey system is going to go into medical meltdown. And that’s not
taking you guys into account; you’re not exactly emerging unscathed from the
Liberation.”
“Can we help?”
“Not a thing you can do, sorry. Now
if you could clear out . . . I’ve got to try and organize some sort of
transport for this batch. Hell, I wish we had hovercraft, they’re the only
things that can travel properly over this swamp. That dickhead Hiltch won’t
allow any planes in under the cloud yet.”
Sinon and Choma left her and
another couple of mercenaries running medical scanners over the unconscious man.
All of them? Sinon repeated gloomily. The prospect kindled a
sensation of alarm, in itself a worrying development. He hadn’t configured
himself to be waylaid by impulsive emotions. Do you know what that means?
Trouble, Choma declared. Real bad trouble.
Chapter 08
The vac-trains were an excellent
solution to Earth’s transport problem in the age of the arcologies. There were
no aircraft any more. The armada storms had finished off air travel in the same
way they made people abandon their cars. One of the late Twenty-first Century’s
most enduring newscable images was of a farmer’s pick-up truck rammed through
the nineteenth-floor window of the Sears Tower in the wake of a storm. As the
planet’s population flowed into cities and began strengthening them against the
weather, so they turned to trains as the only practical method of transport
between urban conglomerations. Heavy and stolid, tornadoes couldn’t fling them
about so easily. Of course, they still took a battering from the wind if they
were caught out in the open. So the next logical stage was to protect the
tracks in the same way the domes were going up to shield the city centres. The
first real example was the channel tunnel, which was extended to cover the
whole journey between London and Paris. Once that proved viable, the global
rail network was rapidly expanded. As with any macro-infrastructure project
awash with government money, the technology advanced swiftly.
By the time Louise and Genevieve
arrived on Earth, the vac-trains were a highly mature system, travelling at
considerable speed between stations. Common wisdom had the tunnels drilled
kilometres deep in the safety of the bedrock. Not so; a lot of the time they
didn’t even qualify as tunnels. Giant tubes were laid over the abandoned land,
and buried just below the surface. It was much easier to maintain the vacuum
inside that kind of factory-manufactured subway than in a rock tunnel.
Tectonics played havoc with rigid lava walls that had been melted by a flame of
fusion plasma; experience showed they fractured easily, and on a couple of
occasions actually sheered. So tunnels were only used to thread the tubes
through mountains and plunge deep under arcologies. Even trans-oceanic routes
were laid in trenches and anchored in place.
With no air to create friction, the
trains were free to accelerate hard; on the longer trans-Pacific runs they
touched Mach fifteen. Powered by linear motors, they were quick, smooth,
silent, and efficient. The trip from Mount Kenya station to London’s Kings
Cross took Louise and Genevieve forty-five minutes, with one stop at Gibraltar.
Airlocks at both ends of their carriage matched up with platform hatches, and
popped open.
“All passengers for London please
disembark,” the sparkling AV pillars on the carriage ceiling announced. “This
train will depart for Oslo in four minutes.”
The girls collected their big
shoulder bags and hurried out onto the platform. They emerged into a long
rectangular chamber, its ornately sculpted walls harking back to long-distant
imperial grandeur. The line of twenty hatches connecting to the train appeared
to be made of black wrought iron, Victorian-era space technology. On the
opposite side, three large archways led to broad wave escalators that spiralled
upwards with impressive curves.
Genevieve stayed close behind her
big sister as she negotiated their way across the platform. At least this time
they managed to avoid barging in to people. Excitement was powering a smile
that would not fade.
An Earth arcology. London! Where we
all came from originally. Home—sort of. How utterly utterly stupendous. It was
the complete opposite of the nightmare that had been Norfolk by the time they
left. This world had massive defences, and its people could do whatever they
wanted with lots of fabulous machines to help them. She held Louise’s hand
tightly as they stepped onto the wave elevator. “Where next?”
“Don’t know,” Louise said. For some
reason she was completely calm. “Let’s see what’s up there, shall we?”
The wave escalator brought them
onto the floor of a huge hemispherical cavern. It was like the arrivals hall of
Mount Kenya station, only larger. The base of the wall was pierced by tunnel
entrances radiating out to lift shafts and platforms for the local train
network, while the floor was broken by concentric rows of wave elevators to the
vac-trains. Bright informational spheres formed tightly packed streamers five
metres above the heads of the thronging passengers, weaving around each other
with serpentine grace. Right in the centre was a single flared spire of rock
that rose up to eventually merge into the roof’s apex.
“It’s just another station,”
Genevieve said in mild disappointment. “We’re still underground.”
“Looks like it.” Louise squinted
up. Black flecks were zipping through the strata of informationals, as if they
were suffering from static. She smiled, pointing. “Birds, look.”
Genevieve twirled round, following
their erratic flight. There were all sorts, from pert brown sparrows to emerald
and turquoise parrots.
“We’d better find a hotel, I
suppose,” Louise said. She pulled her shoulder bag round to take the processor
block out.
Genevieve tugged at her arm. “Oh
please, Louise. Can’t we go up to the surface first? I just want to look. I’ll
be good, I promise. Please?”
Louise tucked the shoulder bag
back. “I wouldn’t mind a peek myself.” She studied the informationals, catching
sight of one that seemed promising. “Come on.” She caught Gen’s hand. “This
way.”
They took a lift up to the surface.
It brought them out in a mock-Hellenic temple at the middle of a wide plaza
full of statues and fenced in by huge oaks. A small commemorative plaque on a
worn pillar marked the passing of the station’s old surface structures and iron
rail tracks. Louise walked out from the shade of the temple, wandering
aimlessly for a few yards until she simply stopped. It was as if the arcology
was appearing in segments before her. Slowly. As soon as her mind acknowledged
one part, another would flip up behind that, demanding recognition.
Though she didn’t know it, Kings
Cross was the geographical heart of the tremendous Westminster Dome, which at
thirty kilometres in diameter enclosed most of the original city, from Ealing
in the west to Woolwich in the east. Ever since the first small protective
domes went up over London (a meagre four km wide to start with—the best
Twenty-first Century materials technology could manage), preservation orders
had been slapped on every building of historical or architectural significance,
which the conservationists basically defined as anything not built from
concrete. By the time the Westminster Dome was constructed over that initial
cluster of ageing weather shields, the outlying districts had undergone
significant changes, but any Londoner from the mid Nineteenth Century onwards
would have been able to find their way around the central portion without too
much trouble. It was essentially one of the largest lived-in museums on the
planet.
The nine smaller domes circling
round outside the Westminster, however, were a different matter. London didn’t
have the megatowers of New York, but the arcology still housed a quarter of a
billion people beneath its geodesic crystal roofs. The outer domes were purpose
built, four hundred square kilometres apiece of thoroughly modern arcology,
with only tiny little zones of original buildings left as curios amid the
gleaming condos, skyscrapers, and malls.
Louise wasn’t aware of them at all.
She could see on the other side of the oaks that the plaza was encircled by a
wide road jammed with sleek vehicles, all driving so close together you
couldn’t walk between them. The vehicles merged in and out of the giant
roundabout from wide streets that radiated away between the beautiful ancient
grey-stone buildings surrounding the plaza. When she raised her gaze above the
blue-slate roofs and their elaborate chimney stacks, she could see even grander
and taller buildings behind them. Then beyond those . . . It was as though she
was standing at the bottom of a mighty crater whose walls were made entirely
from buildings. Around the plaza they were elegant and unique, with each one
somehow merging cleanly into its neighbours to form compact refined streets;
but they grew from that to plainer, larger skyscrapers, spaced further apart.
The towers’ artistry came from the overall shape rather than detailed
embellishments, moulded to suggest Gothic, Roman, Art Deco, and Alpine Bavarian
influences among others.
And gathering all those disparate
architectural siblings within its sheltering embrace was the external wall. A
single redoubtable cliff of windows, a mosaic of panes so dense it blended into
a seamless band of glass, blazing gold under the noonday sun. Out of that, rose
the dome itself, an artificial sky of crystal.
Louise sat down heavily on the
plaza’s stone slabs, and let out a whoosh of breath. Gen sat beside her, arms
folded protectively round her shoulder bag. London’s pedestrians flowed round
them, eyes consummately averted.
“It’s very big, isn’t it?” Gen said
quietly.
“Certainly is.” All those
buildings, so many people. Despite feeling light headed, a weight of worry was
threatening to sink her again. How in heaven’s name am I going to find a single
person amid this multitude? Especially when they probably don’t want to be
found.
“Fletcher would really love this.”
Louise looked at her sister. “Yes.
I think he would.”
“Do you suppose he’d recognize any
of it?”
“There may be bits left over from
his time. Some of these buildings look quite old. We’ll have to look it up in
the local library memory.” She broke off and smiled. That’s it, everything you
ever need to know is in the processor memories. Banneth will be listed
somewhere, I just have to program in the right search. “Come on. Hotel first.
Then we’ll get something to eat. How does that sound?”
“Jolly nice. What hotel are we
going to?”
“Give me a moment.” She took her
processor block out, and started querying the arcology’s general information
centre. Category visitors, subsection residential. Central, and civilized.
They’d wind up paying more for a classy hotel, but at least they’d be safe.
Louise knew there were parts of Earth’s arcologies that were terribly
crime-ridden. And besides, “Kavanaghs never stay anywhere that doesn’t have a
four-star rating,” Daddy had said once.
Information slid down the screen.
They didn’t seem to have star ratings here, so she just went by price. Central
London hotels, apparently, cost as much to run as starships. At least the beds
will be a lot more comfortable.
“The Ritz,” she said finally.
That just left getting there. With
Genevieve getting progressively more impatient, as evidenced by overloud sighs
and shuffling feet, Louise requested surface transport options from Kings Cross
to the Ritz. After ten minutes struggling with horribly complicated maps and
London Metro timetables that kept flashing up she realized she wasn’t quite as
adept at operating the block as she thought she was. However, the screen did
tell her there were taxis available.
“We’ll take a cab.”
Under Gen’s ungenerously sceptical
look, she picked her shoulder bag up, and started off towards the oaks at the
rim of the plaza. Flocks of parakeets and budgerigars pecking at the stone
slabs stampeded out of her way. Most of the subway entrances had the name of
the streets they led to, but a few had the London Transport symbol on top: blue
circle cut by a red line, with a crown in the middle. Louise went down one to
find herself in a short passage that opened out into a narrow parking bay. Five
identical silver-blue taxi cars were waiting silently, streamlined bubbles with
very fat tyres.
“Now what?” Genevieve said.
Louise consulted the block. She
walked up to the first taxi, and keyed the Commence Journey icon on the block’s
screen. The door hissed out five centimetres, then slid back along the body.
“We get in,” she told her sister smugly.
“Oh very clever. What happens if
you don’t have a block to do that for you?”
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t see a
handle anywhere. “I suppose everyone on this world is taught how to use things
like this. Most of them have neural nanonics, after all.”
There wasn’t much room inside,
enough for four seats with deep curving backs. Louise shoved her bag in the
storage bin underneath, and studied the screen again. The block was interfacing
with the taxi’s control processor, which made life a lot simpler for her. The
whole activation procedure was presented to her as a simple,
easy-to-understand-menu. She fed in their destination, and the door slid shut.
The taxi told the block what their fee was (as much as the vac-train fare from
Mount Kenya), and explained how to use the seat straps.
“Ready?” she asked Gen, when they’d
fastened themselves in.
“Yes.” The little girl couldn’t
hide her enthusiasm.
Louise held her Jovian Bank disk up
to the small panel on the taxi’s central column, and transferred the money
over. They started to roll forward. The taxi took them up a steep ramp,
accelerating fast enough to press the sisters back into their seat cushioning.
The reason was simple enough, they emerged right in the middle of the traffic
racing round the Kings Cross plaza, slotting in without the slightest fuss.
Genevieve laughed excitedly as they
zipped across several lanes, then slowed slightly to turn off down one of the
broad streets. “Golly, this is better than the aeroambulance.” The little girl
grinned.
Louise rolled her eyes. Though once
she accepted the fact that the control processor did know how to drive, she
began to breathe normally again. The buildings rushing past were old and
sombre, which gave them a dignity all of their own. On the other side of the
pavement barrier, pedestrians jostled their way along in a permanent scrum.
“I never knew there were so many
people,” Gen said. “London must have more than live on the whole of Norfolk.”
“Probably,” Louise agreed.
The taxi took them a third of the
way round the expressway, then turned off, heading back down to ground level.
There were parks on both sides of the road when they started their descent,
then buildings rose up to their left, and they were back on one of the ancient
streets again. The pavements here didn’t seem so crowded. They slowed
drastically, pulling over to the right alongside a large cube of white-grey
stone with tall windows lined by iron railings and a steep state roof. An open
arcade ran along the front, supported by wide arches. The taxi stopped level
with a gate in the roadside barrier, which a doorman opened smartly. He was
dressed in a dark blue coat and top hat, a double row of brass buttons gleamed
down his chest. At last, Louise felt at home. This was something she could deal
with.
If the doorman was surprised at who
climbed out of the taxi he never showed it. “Are you staying here, miss?” he
asked.
“I hope so, yes.”
He nodded politely, and ushered
them under the arcade towards the main entrance.
Genevieve eyed the front of the
stolid building sceptically. “It looks dreadfully gloomy.”
The lobby inside was white and
gold, with chandeliers resembling frost-encrusted branches that had dazzling
stars at the tip of each twig. Arches along the long central aisle opened into
big rooms that were full of prim white tables where people were sitting having
tea. Waiters in long black tailcoats bustled about, carrying trays with silver
teapots and very tempting cakes.
Louise marched confidently over to
the gleaming oak reception desk. “A twin room, please.”
The young woman standing behind
smiled professionally. “Yes, madam. How long for?”
“Um. A week to start with.”
“Of course. I’ll need your ident
flek, please, to register. And there is a deposit.”
“Oh, we haven’t got an ident flek.”
“We’re from Norfolk,” Gen said
eagerly.
The receptionist’s composure
flickered. “Really?” She cleared her throat. “If you’re from offworld, your
passports will be satisfactory.”
Louise handed the passports over,
thinking briefly of Endron again, and wondering how much trouble the Martian
was in right now. The receptionist scanned the passports in a block and took
the deposit from Louise. A bellboy came forward and relieved the sisters of
their bags before showing them into a lift.
Their room was on the fourth floor,
with a large window overlooking the park. The decor was so reminiscent of the
kind Norfolk landowners worshiped it gave Louise a sense of déjà vu;
regal-purple wallpaper and furniture so old the wood was virtually black
beneath the polish. Her feet sank into a carpet well over an inch thick.
“Where are we?” Gen asked the
bellboy. She was pressed up against the window, staring out. “I mean, what’s
that park called?”
“That’s Green Park, miss.”
“So are we near anywhere famous?”
“Buckingham Palace is on the other
side of the park.”
“Gosh.”
He showed Louise the room’s
processor block, which was built in to the dresser. “Any information you need
on the city for your stay should be in here; it has a comprehensive tourist
section,” he said. She tipped him a couple of fuseodollars when he left. He’d
been holding his own credit disk, casually visible through fingers splayed
wide.
Genevieve waited until the door
shut. “What’s Buckingham Palace?”
The AI was alert to the glitch
within a hundredth of a second. Two ticket dispenser processors and an
informational projector. It brought additional analysis programs on line, and
ran an immediate verification sweep of every electronic circuit in Grand
Central Station.
Half a second. The response to a
general acknowledgement datavise from five sets of neural nanonics was
incorrect. All of them were within a seven metre zone, which also incorporated
the failing ticket dispensers.
Two seconds. Security sensors in
Grand Central’s concourse focused on the suspect area. The AI datavised to B7’s
North American supervisor the fact it had located a possessed-type glitch in
New York. He had just framed his query in reply when the sensors observed Bud
Johnson go cartwheeling over someone in a black robe crouched on the floor.
Three and a half seconds. There was
a visual discontinuity. None of the sensor short-term memory buffers had
registered the black clad figure before. It was as if he’d just materialized
out of nowhere. If he had neural nanonics, then they were not responding to the
ident request datavise.
Four seconds. The North American
supervisor took direct control of the situation in conjunction with the AI. A
datavised warning went out to the rest of the supervisors.
Six seconds. The full B7 complement
of supervisors was on line, observing. The AI’s visual characteristics program
locked on to the shadowed face inside the black robe’s hood. Quinn Dexter rose
to his feet.
South Pacific: “Nuke him. Now!”
Western Europe: “Don’t be absurd.”
Halo: “SD platforms armed; do you
want groundstrike?”
North America: “No. It’s completely
impractical. Grand Central Station’s concourse is a hundred and fifty metres
below ground, and that’s spread out below three skyscrapers. There isn’t an
X-ray laser built that could reach it.”
South Pacific: “Then use a real nuke.
A combat wasp can be down there in two minutes.”
Asian Pacific: “I second that.”
Western Europe: “No! Damn it. Will
you morons control yourselves.”
North America: “Thank you. I’m not
going to blast Dome One into oblivion. There are twenty million people living
in there. Even Laton didn’t kill that many.”
North Europe: “You can’t let him
go. We have to exterminate him.”
Western Europe: “How?”
North Europe: “South Pacific’s
right. Nuke the shit. I’m sorry about the other inhabitants, but it’s the only
way we can resolve the situation.”
Western Europe: “Observe, please.”
Eleven seconds. Bud Johnson’s face
had turned purple. He scrabbled feebly at his chest, then pitched over onto the
floor. People clustered round him. Quinn Dexter became translucent and quickly
faded from view. The AI reported all the processors had come back on line.
Military Intelligence: “Oh shit.”
Western Europe: “Will a nuke kill
him now do you think? Wherever he is.”
South Pacific: “One way to find
out.”
Western Europe: “I cannot permit
that. We exist primarily to protect Earth. Even with our prerogatives, you
cannot exterminate twenty million people in the hope that you kill one
terrorist.”
Halo: “The boy’s right, I’m afraid.
I’m standing down the SD platforms.”
South Pacific: “Terrorist demon,
more like.”
Western Europe: “I’m not arguing
definitions. All this does is confirm I was right the first time. We have got
to be extremely careful how we deal with Dexter.”
North Pacific: “Well at least shut
down New York’s vac-trains.”
Central America: “Yes. Isolate him
in New York. You can creep up on him there.”
Western Europe: “I’m going to have
to say no again.”
North Pacific: “In Allah’s name,
why? We know where he is, that gives us a tremendous advantage.”
Western Europe: “It’s psychology.
He knows we know he’s here. He’s not stupid, he’ll realize we’ll find out about
him appearing in Grand Central station. The question is, how long does it take
us to find out? If we stop the vac-trains now, it shows him we are right up to
speed and deeply worried by him, and also that we’ll go all out to stop him.
That’s not good, that puts him on guard.”
Central America: “So, he’s on
guard? If he’s trapped in one place, it won’t do him any good. He’ll still be
on death row. He knows it’s coming, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”
Western Europe: “First thing he’ll
do is mobilise New York to defend himself. And we’ll be back to one option of
having to nuke the place. Don’t you see? Our arcologies are even more
vulnerable than asteroid settlements. They are utterly dependent on technology,
not just to protect us from the weather, but to feed us and condition our air.
If you confine three hundred million possessed inside one, every single chunk
of machinery will break down. The domes will shatter in the first storm that
comes along, and the population will either starve or turn cannibal.”
Central America: “I’m prepared to
sacrifice one arcology to save the rest. If that’s what it takes.”
Western Europe: “But we don’t have
to sacrifice one. Certainly not yet. You’re being abysmally premature. Right
now, Dexter will be skipping round arcologies, establishing small groups of
possessed who’ll keep their heads down until he gives the word. While he’s
doing that, we’ve got a chance. There will only be small groups in each
arcology, which we really ought to be able to find. If other worlds can
track them, so can we. Dexter is our problem, not the ordinary possessed.”
Asian Pacific: “Put it to the
vote.”
Western Europe: “How wonderfully
democratic. Very well.”
Six supervisors voted for closing
down New York’s vac-trains right away. Ten voted to keep them open.
Western Europe: “Thank you so much
for your confidence.”
Southern Africa: “You have the ball
for now. But if you haven’t dealt with Dexter in another ten days, I shall be
voting to isolate him wherever he is. And then we’ll see if he can hide from a
nuke as well as he can from a sensor.”
The conference dissolved. Western
Europe asked North America, Military Intelligence, and Halo to remain on line.
Natural allies in the eternal warzone of B7’s internal politics, they obliged.
His sensevise overlay program positioning and dressing them around his drawing
room as though they were weekend guests just come in from a stroll round the
grounds.
“It’ll go against you eventually,”
Halo warned. “They’re happy for you to take responsibility for the chase as
long as Dexter hasn’t caused any noticeable damage. But the minute he gets
noisy, they’ll revert.”
“That little crap artist, South
Pacific,” North America complained. “Telling me to nuke New York! Who the hell
does she think she is?”
“She always favours the blunt
approach,” Western Europe said. “We all know that. That’s why I like her so
much, makes one feel constantly superior.”
“Inferior or not, she’ll carry the
day eventually,” Military Intelligence said.
Western Europe walked over to the
tall glass-panelled door, and let his two Labradors in. “I know. That’s why I
found today encouraging.”
“Encouraging?” North America asked,
astonished. “Are you kidding? I’ve got that Dexter bastard running round loose
in New York.”
“Yes, exactly. Something went wrong
for him. He was on his knees when he appeared, and he vanished within seconds. He
was glitched. Another factor in our favour.”
“Maybe,” Halo said. He sounded very
dubious.
“All right,” North America said.
“So what now?”
“You need to do two things. In
forty minutes, I want you to close down all New York’s vac-trains.”
“Forty minutes? He’ll be long
gone.”
“Yes. As I said, he knows we know
he’s here. We have to play along with that, but make him think we’re lumbering
along five steps behind him. So close the vac-trains. He won’t be in New York,
so it doesn’t matter.”
“You hope.”
“I know. Once he’d been exposed
there he had no option but to leave. New York is closed to him now, out of the
equation. To do whatever he wants to do, he has to maintain his mobility. He
probably took the shortest ride out there is, figuring the police would close
down the vac-trains pretty fast; but that’s beside the point.”
“Okay. How long do you want them
shut down for?”
“That’s the second thing. We have
to work on the assumption he was leaving. Therefore, he’s more than likely left
a group of possessed behind him. You have to find them, and eliminate them.
Keep the arcology sealed up until you do. In fact, keeping the individual domes
isolated might be a good idea if you can manage it.”
“You really think that’s what he’s
doing?”
“Yes. He wants to inflict maximum
devastation on this planet. He’ll seed as many arcologies as possible with his
followers. And when he gives the word, they’ll hit the streets, and we’ll be
faced with the exponential curve again.”
“The AI is monitoring the
arcology’s electronics anyway.”
“Yes. I’m sure that’s effective on
Kulu and other modern worlds; but you and I know it can never access
everything, not here, not in the old areas. There’s over five hundred years’
worth of electronic junk plugged together out there; we’re dealing with
millions of old systems, quirky one-offs, and non-standard patch ups. The AI is
a good sentry, but don’t make the mistake of becoming dependent. The best
source we’ll have is probably the sects.”
“The sects?”
“Certainly. The one set of idiots
who’ll support the possessed without having to be forced. Dexter knows that,
they’re the ones he’ll go to.”
“All right, I’ll get on to it.”
“So what are you going to be
doing?” Halo asked Western Europe.
“Same as before. Engineer an
encounter. We have to get our people close to him while he’s visible, and
therefore vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable to what?”
“If he’s out in the open, an SD
strike. Or if our contact is through an agent, we can try for electrocution or
a memory scramble.”
“Memory scramble?”
“Yes,” said Military Intelligence.
“The CNIS believes they can kill souls by firing some kind of mentallic virus
at the possessed. It’s the opposite of a didactic imprint. They’re researching
it now.”
Western Europe started making a
fuss of one of the dogs, scratching its belly as it rolled around on the
carpet. “Do try and stay up to date,” he chided Halo.
“It won’t be available before the
end of the week,” Military Intelligence warned.
“I know. I doubt I’ll manage to
arrange an interception by then anyway.”
“How’s that angle coming along?”
Halo asked.
“The Banneth connection is just
about covered. I’m not sure about the Kavanagh girls; they’re a long shot, and
a pretty random one at that. But I’m working on it.”
Louise spent an hour using the
room’s desktop processor block and got nowhere. The directory provided her with
enough entries under Banneth (173,364—once she’d removed the deceased), but no
matter how she tried to cross reference that with Quinn Dexter the result was
always negative. She racked her brains to remember everything Dexter had said
back in the hangar at Bennett Field. Banneth was female, she remembered that
for certain. And Dexter said she’d hurt him. That was about it, really.
Somewhere, somehow, those facts
should link up. She was sure they did. But finding the connection was beyond
her woeful programming ability. The idea that had begun back when they got in
the taxi was becoming more and more attractive. If she dared.
Why not? she thought. There’s
nothing dangerous about neural nanonics, not physically, the rest of the
Confederation uses them. Joshua has a set. It’s only Norfolk which doesn’t
allow them. She raised her arm, and looked at the discreet medical nanonic
package bracelet. Also banned on Norfolk, yet it was helping her pregnancy.
That settled it. She grinned, emboldened by her decision. I have to take
responsibility for myself now. If I need neural nanonics to help me on Earth,
then I will get myself a set.
They hadn’t left the room since
arriving at the hotel. Lunch had been a snack delivered by room service.
Genevieve had flopped on her bed in weary disgust at the inactivity, and
activated her own block. She was smothered by a laser-haze of grid lines and
feisty fantasy beasts which leapt about enthusiastically at every excitable
shouted command.
“Gen?”
The projection shrank. Genevieve
blinked up at her, trying to focus. Louise was sure that being immersed in the
projection so much was bad for her little sister’s eyesight.
“What?”
“We’re going out. I can’t get the
hang of the desktop block, so I’m going to buy some neural nanonics instead.”
There, she’d said it out loud. There’d be no backing down now.
Genevieve stared at her in
astonishment. “Oh Louise, don’t tease so. We’re not allowed.”
“We weren’t allowed. We’re
on Earth, now, remember. You can do anything you want here as long as you’ve
got money.”
Genevieve cocked her head to one
side. Then the most charming smile graced her face. It didn’t fool Louise for a
second. “Please, Louise. Can I have one, too? You know I’ll never be allowed
once we get home.”
“I’m sorry. You’re not old enough.”
“I am!”
“Gen, you’re not. And you know
you’re not.”
She stamped her foot, little fists
clenched in outrage. “That’s not fair! It’s not. It’s not. You always pick on
me coz I’m the youngest. You’re a bully.”
“I’m not picking on you. You just
can’t have one, your brain is still growing. They can’t connect it. I checked.
It’s not legal, and it’ll do a lot of damage to your brain cells. I only just
scrape in if you measure my age in Earth years.”
“I hate being small.”
Louise put her arms round the girl,
reflecting on how much she’d done so since leaving home. They never used to hug
much before. “You’ll be bigger one day,” she whispered into her sister’s
fluffed up hair. “And things are going to be different when we get home.”
“You think so?”
“Oh yes.”
The receptionist seemed rather
amused at being asked, in a lofty sort of way. But she was helpful enough,
telling Louise that Oxford Street and New Bond Street were probably their best
bet for clothes, while Tottenham Court Road was where they would find any
conceivable kind of electronics. The sisters were also assured these areas were
safe for girls to walk through by themselves. “And the hotel runs a courtesy
collection service for any items that you purchase.” She handed over an
authorization disk, keyed to Louise’s biolectric pattern.
Louise loaded a comprehensive
street map into her block, taken from the hotel’s memory; and combined it with
the guidance program. “Ready?” she asked Gen. “Let’s go spend the family
fortune.”
Aubry Earle had spoken the truth on
the lift capsule when he told them arcology dwellers would always respect their
privacy. Out on the street, Louise couldn’t quite work out how people always
slid to one side at the last second. She was constantly scanning bodies all
round to try and find a way through the gaps, while locals moved as smoothly as
the automated traffic without ever once glancing in her direction. Some of the
pedestrians quite literally glided past. People their own age wearing calf-high
boots with soles that seemed to flow over the pavement slabs without any
resistance. Genevieve watched their effortless progress with admiration and
longing. “I want some boots like that,” she said.
A subwalk got them under Piccadilly
and into New Bond Street. It turned out to be a dainty little pedestrian lane,
lined with enchanting boutiques whose marble frontage was embossed with brass
lettering saying when they’d been established. None of them were under three
centuries old, while some claimed to be over seven. The labels on show meant
nothing to either of them, but judging by the prices they must have been
admiring the most exclusive designer garments on the planet.
“It’s gorgeous,” Louise sighed
longingly at a shimmering scarlet and turquoise evening gown, sort of like an
all-over mermaid’s tail—except it wasn’t all-over, nowhere near. It was the
kind of thing she would love to wear at a summer ball on Norfolk. The planet
had never seen its like before.
“Then buy it.”
“No. We’ve got to be sensible. Just
everyday clothes that we need to get about in the arcology. Remember, one day
I’ll have to explain the entire bill to Daddy.”
The evening gown was just the start
of New Bond Street’s provocative temptations. They trailed past window displays
she could have bought en masse.
“We’ll have to have supper in the
hotel dining room,” Genevieve suggested artfully. “I bet they won’t let us in
unless we dress up.”
It was an insidious suggestion.
“Okay. One dress. That’s all.”
They dashed across the threshold of
the boutique in front of them. Privacy didn’t apply inside the shop; three
assistants swooped eagerly. Louise explained what they wanted, and then spent
the next forty-five minutes ricocheting in and out of a changing room. She and
Gen would look at each other, comment, and go back for the next trial.
She learned a lot in the process.
The assistants were very complimentary about the sisters’ hair. Except . . . on
Earth, it was fashionable to have actives woven among the strands. Their
one-piece suits with big pockets, were current, but not that à la mode. Yes,
Oxford Street stores were perfect for buying streetfashion clothes, and we
recommend these. Louise could have sworn she heard the block’s memory creaking
under the load of names they entered. She used her Jovian Bank credit disk with
only a momentary twinge of guilt.
Out on the street again, they
laughed at each other. Gen had wound up with a scarlet dress and deep-purple
jacket. While Louise had bought herself a full length gown of deepest blue,
that was made from a material crossed between velvet and suede. There was also
a short ginger-coloured waistcoat to go with it, which complemented its square
cut neck.
“It’s true,” Louise said happily.
“Retail therapy actually works.”
They didn’t get directly to Oxford
Street. There was a stop at a salon at the top of New Bond Street first. The
beauticians made an incredible fuss over them, delighted with so much raw
material to work on. The owner himself came over to direct the operation (once
their credit rating had been verified).
After two hours, several cups of
tea, and enthralling the staff with an edited version of their travels, Louise
had the wrap taken off. She stared in the mirror, not believing she’d spent her
life tolerating unmanaged hair. Norfolk’s simplistic regime of washing,
conditioners, and sturdy brushing was barbaric ineptitude. Under the salon’s
professional auspices her hair had become lustrous, individual strands
conducting a little starlight shimmer of light along their length. And it
flowed. Every day of her life she’d held that thick mane in place with clips
and ribbons, sometimes getting the maid to braid fanciful bands. Flexitives
made all that irrelevant. Of its own accord, her hair fell back over her
shoulders, always keeping itself tidy and together in one large tress. It also
rippled subtly, as if she was engulfed in her own permanent private breeze.
“You look beautiful, Louise,”
Genevieve said, suddenly shy.
“Thank you.” Gen’s hair had been
straightened, darkened, and glossed, its hem curling inwards slightly. Again,
it held its shape no matter what.
Stalls were lined up against the
road barriers, filled with brassy, cheaper items than those in the shops.
Genevieve saw one with pairs of the magical boots hanging from the awning.
Slipstream boots, the cheerful owner told her as he found some her size.
Popular with the under fifteens because you didn’t need neural nanonics to
switch the directed frictionless soles on or off.
Louise bought them on the condition
Gen waited until they got back to the hotel before she tried them out. She also
got a duster bracelet. When Gen clamped the trinket round her wrist and waved
it round, it sprayed out a fine powder which emitted a fiery sparkle as it fell
to earth. Holding her arm up and pirouetting, a spiral of twinkling starlight
spun around her.
Quinn sat on one of the benches
along the banks of the Seine, opening his mind to the demented screeching
rever-berating through the beyond. It had taken him two and a half hours to
reach the Paris arcology since being struck by that inexplicable wave of
emotional torment that had swept through the beyond.
The first thing—obviously!—was to
get the fuck out of New York. It wouldn’t take the cops long to review the
memories of sensors covering the concourse and identify him. He’d gone straight
down to a platform and taken a vac-train to Washington. A short ride, not quite
fifteen minutes. He’d kept within the ghost realm for the whole trip,
apprehensive that the vac-train would be halted and returned to New York. But
it arrived at Washington on time, and he switched to the first
inter-continental ride available: Paris.
Even then, he’d remained invisible
as it streaked along the bottom of the North Atlantic. Still anxious that
another of those waves would surge up and expose him. If it had done during the
journey under the ocean, he knew he’d be finished. He couldn’t believe God’s
Brother would allow that to happen. But the first time was causing all sorts of
doubts.
It wasn’t until he was out of the
Paris terminus and walking through one of the old city’s parks that he had
allowed himself to fully emerge. He clothed himself in an ordinary shirt and
trousers, hating the way his white skin tingled in the bright sun shining
through the colossal crystal dome. But it meant he was safe, there were no
processors in the middle of the park to glitch at his appearance, nobody near
enough to see that he’d appeared from nowhere rather than walked round the
ancient tree. He stood there for a minute, scanning the nearby minds for any
sign of alarm. Only then did he relax and make his way down to the river.
Parisians strolled along behind him
as they had for centuries—lovers, artists, business executives, bureaucrats;
none of them paying attention to the solitary downcast youth. Nor did any of
them avail themselves to the space left on his bench. Some subliminal warning steered
them along past, frowning slightly at the unaccountable chill.
Slowly, Quinn started to gather the
strands together, faint images and hoarse wailing voices filling in the story.
He saw clouds which surprised even him, an arcology-born. Rain cascaded down on
huddled bodies, so thick it was almost solid. Terrifying blasts of lightning
ripping through the darkness. The encircling forces, radiating their stern
nonhuman determination, closing in.
Mortonridge was not a place where a
possessed should be caught outside today; and two million of them had been.
Something had struck at them, tearing away their protective covering of cloud.
Some technological devilry. The signal for the Liberation to commence. A
one-off; a unique act in response to a unique situation. Not some miracle
wrought by the Light Bringer’s great rival.
Quinn lifted his head, and smiled a
contemptuous smile. Such a shock was extremely unlikely to occur again. There
was no unknown threat. He was perfectly safe. Night could still dawn.
He stood up, and turned slowly,
examining his surroundings properly for the first time. The celebrated
Napoleonic heart of the city was encompassed by a range of splendid white,
silver, and gold towers. Their burnished surfaces hurt his eyes, as their
grandeur hurt his sensibility. But somewhere among all this cleanliness and
vitality, the waster kids would be grubbing through dank refuse, hurting each
other and unwary civilians for no reason they understood. Finding them would be
as easy here as it had been in New York. Just walk in the direction everyone
else was coming from. His heartland, where his words would bring its denizens
purpose.
He completed his turn. Right ahead
of him the Eiffel Tower stood guard at the end of a broad immaculate park, with
sightseers wandering round its base. Even in Edmonton, Quinn had heard of this
structure. A proud symbol of Gallic forbearance through all the centuries of
Govcentral’s pallid uniformity. Its very endurance reflecting the strengths and
determination of the people who regarded it as their own. Precious to the
world. And now, so terribly fragile with age.
Quinn started to chuckle greedily.
Andy Behoo fell in love. It was
instantaneous. She walked in through the door of Jude’s Eworld, kicking
off a cascade of datavised alarms, and he was utterly smitten.
Terminal babe. Taller than him by a
good ten centimetres, with the most gorgeous cloak of hair. A face with soft
features so delicate as to be way beyond anything cosmetic adapter packages
could achieve—a natural beauty. She wore a white sleeveless T-shirt that showed
off a hot figure without revealing anything, and a scarlet skirt that didn’t
reach her knees. But it was the way she carried herself that clinched it for
him. Perfectly composed, yet she still looked round the shop with child-like
curiosity.
The rest of the staff were all
giving her clandestine glances as the doorway scanners datavised their
findings. Then the smaller girl entered behind her, and the scanners gave out
an almost duplicate alert. How weird. They couldn’t possibly be a cop grab
operation, too obvious. Besides, the manager was pretty regular when it came to
slipping the shop’s bung to the district station.
Andy told the customer he was
dealing with, “Look it over, and have a think about it, you won’t find a better
deal in London,” then left them to scoot over to the girl before any of his
so-called colleagues could reach her. If the floor manager had seen, he’d
probably lose his job. Abandoning a customer before the sale is
sealed—capital crime.
“Hi, I’m Andy. I’m your sellrat.
Anything you want, it’s my job to push the more expensive model on you.” He
grinned broadly.
“You’re my what?” Louise asked. Her
expression was half puzzlement, half smile.
Her accent did strange things along
Andy’s spine, making him shiver. The ultimate in class, and foreign-exotic,
too. He scanned his enhanced retinas across her face, desperate to capture her
image. Even if she walked out of his life now, she would never be entirely
lost. Andy had certain male-orientated software packages that could superimpose
her into sensenviron recordings. He felt shabby even as he recorded her.
“Sellrat. That’s what the public
calls Customer Interactivity Officers round these parts.”
“Oh,” the smaller girl sighed
dismissively. “He’s just a shopboy, Louise.”
Andy’s neural nanonics had to
reinforce his smile. Why do they always come in pairs? And why always one
obnoxious one? He clicked his fingers and pointed both index fingers at the
smaller girl. “That’s me. Try not to be too disappointed, I really am here to
help.”
“I’d like to buy some neural
nanonics,” Louise said. “Is it very difficult?”
The request startled Andy. Her
clothes alone must have cost more than twice his weekly pay, why didn’t she
have a set already? Beautiful and enigmatic. He smiled up at her. “Not at all.
What were you looking for?”
She sucked her lower lip. “I’m
really not very sure. The best I can afford, I suppose.”
“We don’t have them on Norfolk,”
Genevieve said. “That’s where we’re from.”
Louise tried not to frown. “Gen, we
don’t have to give our history to everyone we meet.”
Rich foreigners. Andy’s conscience
struggled against temptation. Conscience won out, backed up by infatuation. I
can’t sell her a pirate set. Not her. “Okay, your lucky day. We’ve got some top-of-the-range
sets in stock. I can fix a reasonable deal for them, too, so there’s no need to
get sweaty about the money. This way.”
He led them over to his section of
the counter, managing to get her name on the way. His neural nanonics
faithfully recorded the way she walked, her body movements, even her speech
pattern. Like most nineteen-year-olds who’d grown up in London’s manky
Islington district with its history of low-income employment, Andy Behoo
fancied himself as a prospective net don. It combined the goal of fringe-legal
work (also his heritage), with very little actual effort. He’d taken didactic
memory courses on electronics, nanonics, and software every month since he’d
passed his fourteenth birthday. His two-room flat was stocked to the ceiling
with ancient processor blocks and every redundant peripheral he’d managed to
scrounge or steal. Everyone in his tenement knew Andy was the guy to visit when
you had a technical problem.
As to why such an embryonic
datasmart prince of darkness was working as a sellrat in Jude’s Eworld, he had
to get the money to finance his revolutionary schemes from somewhere—or maybe
even go to college. And the shop always employed technerd teenagers as their
outfront salesforce, they were the only ones who kept up to date on upgrades
and new marques that would work on minimum-wage weeks.
The wall behind the counter was
made up entirely from boxes of consumer electronics. All of them had colourful
logos and names. Louise read a few of the contents labels, not understanding a
word. Genevieve was already bored; looking round at other parts of the slightly
shabby shop—one of seemingly hundreds of near-identical outlets along Tottenham
Court Road. The inside was a maze formed by counters and walls of boxes, with
old company posters and holomorph stickers stuck up on every available surface.
Holographic screens flashed out enticing pictures of products in action. The
section opposite Andy Behoo had a big GAMES sign above it. And Louise had
promised.
Andy began pulling boxes down and
lining them up on the counter. They were rectangular, the size of his hand,
wrapped in translucent foil, with the manufacturer’s guarantee seal on the
front. “Okay,” Andy said with familiar confidence. “What we have here, the
Presson050, is a basic neural nanonics set. Everything you need to survive
daily arcology life: datavises, mid-rez neuroiconic display, enhanced memory
retrieval, axon block. It’s preformatted to NAS2600 standard, which means it
can handle just about every software package on the market. There’s a
company-supplied didactic operations imprint that comes with it, but we do sell
alternative operations courses.”
“That sounds very . . .
comprehensive,” Louise said. “How much?”
“How are you paying?”
“Fuseodollars.” She showed him her
Jovian Bank disk.
“Okay. Good move. I can give you a
favourable rate on that. So, we’re looking at about three and a half thousand,
for which we’ll throw in five free Quantumsoft supplement packages from their
BCD30 range. Your choice of functions. I can arrange finance for you if you
want, better percentage than any Sol-system bank.”
“I see.”
“Then we’ve got—” His hand moved on
to the next box.
“Andy. What’s the top of the range,
please?”
“Okay, good question.” He
disappeared behind the counter for a moment, returning with a fresh box and a
suitably awed tone. “Kulu Corporation ANI5000. The King himself uses this
model. We’ve only got three left because of the starflight quarantine. These
are most wanted items all over town right now. But I can still give you level
retail.”
“And that’s better than the first
one?”
“Yes indeedie. Runs NAS2600, of
course, with parallel upgrade potential for when the 2615 comes out.”
“Um. What’s this NAS number you
keep saying?”
“Neural Augmentation Software. It’s
the operating system for the whole filament network, and the number is the
version. 2600 was introduced turn of the century, and boy was it a bugfeist
when it came out. But it’s a smooth proved system now. And the supplement
packages are just about unlimited, every software house in the Confederation
publishes compatible products. If you’re going serious professional you can add
physiological monitors, encyclopaedia galactica, employment waldoing, SII suit
control, weapons integration, linguistic translation, news informant, starship
astrogration, net search—the full monty. Then there’s games applications as
well, I can’t even list them you have so many.” He patted the box with
reverence. “No fooling, Louise, this set gives you the full interface range:
nerve overrides to control your body, sense amplification, sight-equivalent
neuroiconic generation, complete reality sensenviron, implant command, total
indexed memory recall.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Got to warn you: not cheap.
Seventeen thousand fuseodollars.” He held up his hands in placation. “Sorry.”
Daddy will kill me, Louise thought,
but it has to be done. I promised Fletcher, and that horrid Brent Roi never
really believed me. “All right.”
Andy smiled in admiration. “Talk
about power choosing. That’s impressive, Louise. But, hey, I can lighten the
burden. For a 5000 set, we’ll throw in twenty-five software supplements, and
give you twenty per cent discount on the next twenty-five you buy from us.”
“That sounds like a jolly good
deal,” she said inanely, swept along by his enthusiasm. “How long does it take
to get a set?”
“For one this complex, ninety
minutes. I can give you the operating didactic at the same time.”
“What’s one of those?”
Andy’s breezy ebullience faltered
in the face of such an astonishing question. He started to access his
encyclopaedia’s file on Norfolk, and put a news search in primary mode for good
measure. “You don’t have them on your planet?”
“No. Our constitution is pastoral,
we don’t have much technology. Or weapons.” Defending Norfolk, yet again.
“No weapons; hey, good policy.
Didactic imprints are sort of like the instruction manual, but it gets written
directly inside your brain, and you never forget it.”
“Well if I’m going to spend this
much money, I certainly need to know how to work it, don’t I?”
Andy laughed heartily, then stopped
quickly when he caught sight of Genevieve’s expression. How come nobody ever
produced a suavity program he could load? Talking to and impressing girls would
be so much easier. The floor supervisor was datavising questions about his
oddball customer and the door sensor alert, which he answered briefly. Then the
Norfolk information started to emerge.
“We have a preparation room,” Andy
gestured to the back of the shop.
“Louise, I want to look round,”
Genevieve said winningly. “There might be something for me.”
“All right. But if you see
something just ask, don’t touch anything. That’s all right, isn’t it?” she
asked Andy.
“Sure thing.” Andy winked at
Genevieve and gave her a thumbs up. Her sneer could have withered an oak tree.
Louise followed Andy into the small
preparation room, a cube-space whose walls were fashioned from dark panelling,
with various electronic units poking out. It was furnished with just a glass
cubicle, like a shower but without any visible nozzle; and a low padded bench
similar to a doctor’s examination table.
The attention Andy showed her was
somewhat amusing. She thought possibly it wasn’t entirely due to her
high-spending customer status. Most of the young gentlemen (and others—slightly
older) on Norfolk had shown a similar, if less blatant, interest over the last
couple of years. Now, of course, she was wearing what amounted to little more
than an exhibitionist’s costume. Though by Earth’s standards it was tame. But
the top and skirt had made her look so damn good in the department store’s
mirror. She could hold her own against London girls in this. For the first time
in her life she was sassy. And free to enjoy it. And loving it.
The glass door slid shut with a
definitive click behind her. She shot Andy a suspicious glance.
“Bugger,” Western Europe muttered
as his linkages with Louise were cut. He switched to Genevieve, which was about
as useless; the little girl was investigating a Gothic fantasy, standing in a
castle courtyard as a column of priestess warriors rode off to battle on their
unicorns.
Western Europe had wanted Louise to
discover the bugs at some stage. He just hadn’t planned on it being quite so
early in the operation. But then, buying neural nanonics wasn’t what he
expected of a girl from Norfolk, either. She was quite a remarkable little
thing, really.
Andy Behoo scratched at his arm
awkwardly. “You do know you’ve been stung, don’t you?” he asked.
“Stung?” Louise took a guess.
“You’re not talking about insects, are you?”
“No. The door sensors spotted it as
soon as you and your sister came in. There are nanonic bugs in your skin; like
miniature radios I guess you’d call them. They transmit all sorts of
information about where you are, and what’s going on around you. There are four
on you, Genevieve has three. That we can detect, anyway.”
She drew in a shocked breath. How
stupid! Of course Brent Roi wouldn’t let her walk round freely. Not someone
who’d tried to sneak a possessed down to Earth. He was bound to want to see
what she did next. “Oh sweet Jesus.”
“I reckon Govcentral must be
nervous about foreigners right now, especially as you come from Norfolk,” Andy
said. “What with the possessed, and all. Don’t worry, this room is screened,
they can’t hear us now.”
His sellrat swagger had diminished
as he tried to reassure her. In fact, he’d become almost sheepish, which made
him actually quite pleasant, she thought. “Thank you for telling me, Andy. Do
you scan all your customers?”
“Oh yes. Mainly for dodgy implants.
There’s quite a few gangs try to siphon our software fleks. Then we do sell
bugs ourselves, see, so sometimes we get cops coming in and trying to find who
those customers are. Jude’s Eworld has a strong neutrality policy, which we
enforce. We have to, or we’d never sell anything.”
“Can you get them off me?”
“All part of our customer service.
I can give you a more detailed scan, too, see if there are any others.”
She followed his instructions,
standing in the cubicle, which gave her a comprehensive bodyscan down to a
subcellular level. So now someone else knows I’m pregnant, she acknowledged in
resignation. No wonder Earth’s population value their privacy so, they don’t
get very much of it. The bodyscan located another two bugs. Andy applied a
small rectangular patch similar to a medical package (same technology, he said)
to her arms and leg; then she pulled up her T-shirt up so he could press it
against her back.
“Is there any way of knowing if the
police sting me again?” she asked.
“An electronic warfare block should
tell you. We had a shipment of front-line equipment in from Valisk a couple of
months back. I think there’s still some left. Good stuff.”
“I think you’d better put one of
those removal patches on the list as well.” Louise called Genevieve into the
room, and explained what’d happened. Thankfully her sister was more curious
than outraged. She peered at her skin after Andy took the nanonic package away,
fascinated by the removal process. “It doesn’t look any different,” she
complained.
“They’re too small to see,” Andy
said. “Which makes them too small to feel. They shouldn’t call it getting
stung, really. More like being feathered.”
When Genevieve scooted back into
the shop to continue her appraisal of consumer goodies, Andy handed over the
box of Kulu Corporation neural nanonics to Louise. “You need to check the
seal,” he said. “Make sure it hasn’t been broken, and see that the wrapping
hasn’t been tampered with as well. You can tell that by the colour. If someone
tries to cut or tear it, the stress turns it red.”
She turned it over obediently. “Why
do I have to do this?”
“Neural nanonics connect directly
into your brain, Louise. If someone changes the filaments or subverts the NAS
codes they could get into your memories or manipulate your body like a puppet.
This guarantees the set hasn’t been tampered with since it left the factory;
and you have the Kulu Corporation’s assurance that their design wouldn’t
sequestrate you.”
Louise gave the box a closer
examination. The foil seemed intact and clear.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,”
he said quickly. “It’s a standard speech; we implant fifty of these a day. I
mean, think what would happen to the shop or the manufacturer if anything like
that did ever happen. We’d be lynched. It’s in our interest to make sure
everything’s kosher for you. Another reason we have sensors at the door.”
“Okay, I suppose.” She handed the
box back. Andy broke the seal in front of her, and took out a small black
capsule a couple of centimetres long. He slotted that into the back of a
specialist medical implant package. The only other item in the box was a flek.
“This is the operating didactic,
which is standard, but it also contains the first time access code specific to
this set,” he told her. “Basically, it allows you to activate the neural
nanonics. After that, you change the code by just thinking of a new one. So
even if someone got hold of your flek afterwards it wouldn’t do them any good.
Don’t worry, it’s all explained in the didactic.”
She lay face down on the cushioned
bench, with a pair of collar wings holding her neck steady. Andy pushed her
hair to one side, ready to apply the medical package to the nape of her neck.
There was already a tiny nearly-healed scar on her skin. He knew exactly what
it was, he’d seen it a thousand times before, every time the implant package
was taken off.
“Is everything all right?” Louise
asked.
“Yes. No problem. It just takes a
minute to line this up right.” He datavised the bodyscan cubicle’s processor.
Its memory file of her scan confirmed there was absolutely no foreign matter in
her brain.
Andy took the coward’s way out and
said nothing. Mainly because he didn’t want to alarm her. But something here
was desperately wrong. Either she was lying to him, which he couldn’t believe.
Or . . . he couldn’t quite decide what the other options were. He was
trespassing deep in Govcentral territory. All that did was enhance her mystery
up to the level of pure enchantment. A babe in distress right out of the
sensevise dramas. In his shop!
“Here we go,” he said lightly, and
put the package over her existing scar. Now there would never be any proof.
Louise tensed slightly. “It’s gone
numb.”
“That’s okay. It’s supposed to.”
All the medical package did was
open a passage through to the base of the skull, and ease the capsule
containing the densely pleated neural nanonics into place. Then the filaments
began to unwind from each other and porrect forward, their probing tips slowly
winding their way round cells as they sought out synapses. There were millions
of them, active molecular strings obeying their AI formatted protocol;
instructions determined by their own structure of spiralling atoms. They formed
a wondrously intricate filigree around the medulla oblongata, branching to
connect with the nerve strands inside while the main filaments seeped further
into the brain to complete their interface.
With the implant package in place,
Andy fetched the didactic imprinter. Louise thought it looked like a pair of
burnished stainless steel ski glasses. He put the flek in a small slot at the
side, and placed it carefully on her face. “This works in pulses,” he said.
“You’ll get a warning flash of green, then you’ll see a violet light for about
fifteen seconds. Try not to blink. It should happen eight times.”
“That’s it?” The edges of the
imprinter had stuck to her skin, leaving her in total blackness.
“Yep, not so bad, is it?”
“And this is the way everyone on
Earth learns things?”
“Yes. The information is encoded
within the light, and your optic nerve passes it straight into your brain.
Simple explanation, but that’s the principle.”
Louise saw a flicker of green, and
held her breath. The violet light came on, an otherwise uniform sheen broken by
that unique monotone sparkle which a laser leaves on the retina. She managed
not to blink until it went off. “Your children don’t go to school?” she asked.
“No. Kids go to day clubs, keeps
them busy and you make friends there. That’s all.”
She was silent for some time,
considering the implications. The hours—years!—of my life I have sat in
classrooms listening to teachers and reading books. And all the time, this way
of learning, of discovery, existed. One of the demonic technologies that will
ruin our way of life. Banned without question. That’s nothing to do with
keeping Norfolk pastoral, that’s denying people opportunity, stunting their
lives. It’s worse than cousin Gideon’s arm. She clenched her teeth together,
suddenly very, very angry.
“Hey, are you all right?” Andy
asked timidly.
The violet light came on again.
“Yes,” she snapped primly. “I’m fine, thank you.”
Andy didn’t say anything else until
the didactic imprinter finished. Too scared he’d say the wrong thing again and
annoy her further. He hadn’t got a clue why her mood had swung so fast. When
the imprinter did come off, it revealed a very pensive expression.
“Could you do me a favour?” Louise
said. A knowing smile licked along her lips. “Keep an eye on Genevieve for me.
I promised I’d buy her something from here, so if you could steer her to some
kind of gadget that’s relatively harmless I’d be grateful.”
“Sure, my pleasure. Consider her
guarded from any possible digital grief.” Andy had to use a nerve override
impulse to prevent her from seeing how crushing that request was. He’d been
counting on using the time it took to implant the neural nanonics to talk to
her. Yet again, Andy blows out, he raged silently. Just once, I’d like to score
with a major babe. Once!
The games section wasn’t nearly as
exciting as Genevieve had expected. Jude’s Eworld was actively promoting a
thousand games through its display screen catalogues, with direct access to ten
times that many over encrypted links to publishers; covering the whole genre
from interactive roles to strategy general’s command. But as she flipped
through them she could see they were all variants of each other. Everybody
promised newer, hotter graphics, unrivalled worldbuilding, tac-stim activants,
ingenious puzzles, more terrifying adversaries, slicker music. Always greater
than before, never different. She sampled four or five, standing inside a
projection cone beamed out from a high-wattage AV lens on the ceiling.
Bore-ing. In truth, she’d begun to tire of them back on the Jamrana;
like spending a whole day eating chocolate cake, really.
There didn’t seem to be much else
in Jude’s Eworld that was interesting. Their main market was neural nanonics
and associated software, or else no-fun processor blocks with strange
peripherals.
“Hi. How’s it going, there? Are you
hyping cool yet?”
Genevieve turned to see the
gruesomely oiky little shopboy Andy smiling ingratiatingly at her. One of his
front teeth was crooked. She’d never seen that on someone his age before. “I’m
having a lovely time, thank you so much for caring.” It was the tone that would
earn her a sharp slap from her mother or Mrs Charlsworth.
“Uh huh.” Andy grunted, fully
flustered. “Er, I thought perhaps I could show you what we’ve got to offer for
kids your . . . I mean, the kind of blocks and software you might enjoy.”
“Oh whoopee do.”
His arms re-arranged themselves
chaotically, indicating the section of the shop he wanted her to move towards.
“Please?” he asked desperately.
With an overlong sigh and slouched
shoulders, Genevieve shuffled along despondently. Why does Louise always
attract the wrong type? she wondered. Which sparked an idea. “She’s got a fiancé,
you know.”
“Huh?”
A modest smile at his horror.
“Louise. She’s engaged to be married. They announced the banns at our estate’s
chapel.”
“Married?” Andy yelped. He
flinched, looking round the shop to see if any of his colleagues were paying
attention.
This was fun. “Yes. To a starship
captain. That’s why we’re on Earth, we’re waiting for him to arrive.”
“When’s he due, do you know?”
“A couple of weeks, I think. He’s
very rich, he owns his starship.” She glanced round in suspicion, then leaned
in towards the boy. “Don’t tell anyone I said this, but I think the only reason
Daddy gave his permission was because of the money. Our estate is very big, and
it takes a lot to keep it running.”
“She’s marrying for money?”
“Has to be. I mean he’s so old. Louise
said he’s thirty years older than she is. I think she was fibbing so it didn’t
sound so bad. If you ask me, it’s more like forty-five.”
“Oh my God. That’s disgusting.”
“It looks so awful when he kisses
her, I mean he’s virtually bald, and hideously fat. She says she hates him to
touch her, but what can she do about it? He’s her future husband.”
Andy stared down at her, his face
stricken. “Why does your father allow this?”
“All marriages are arranged on
Norfolk, it’s just our way. If it makes you feel any better, I think he really
likes Louise.” She’d have to stop now. Crying shame, but it was getting really
difficult to keep a straight face. “He keeps on saying he wants to have a big
family with her. He says he expects her to bear him at least seven children.”
Jackpot! Andy had started trembling with indignation—or worse.
Her day made, Genevieve gently took
his hand in hers, and smiled up trustfully. “Can we see the hyper cool
electronics now, please?”
Understanding arrived within
Louise’s mind like a solstice sunrise. Quietly irresistible, bringing with it a
fresh perspective on the world. A new season of life begun.
She knew precisely how to utilise
the augmented mentality opening up within her brain as the filaments connected
with her neurones, controlling the expanded potential with an instinct that
could have been a genetic heritage it was so deep seated. Audio discrimination,
analysing the murmur of sounds resonating through the door from the shop.
Visual memory indexing, saving and storing what she saw. Pattern analysis. A
test datavise, requesting an update from the medical package on her wrist. And
the neuroiconic display, sight without eyes, moulding raw data into colour. It
left her giddy and sweating from excitement. The sense of achievement was extraordinary.
I’m equal to everybody else now. Or
I will be when I’ve learned how to use all the applications properly.
She datavised the implant package
on her neck for a status check. A procedural menu sprang up inside her skull,
and she ran a comparison. It confirmed the implantation process was complete.
She instructed the package to disengage, withdrawing the empty capsule from
which the filaments had sprouted, and knitting the cells together behind it.
“Steady on,” Andy said. “That’s
supposed to be my job.”
Louise grinned at him as she
climbed off the bench, and stretched extravagantly, flexing the stiffness out
of limbs held still for too long. “Oh, come on,” she teased. “All your clients
must do that. It’s the first taste of freedom we get. Having neural nanonics
must be like being allowed to vote, you’ve become a full member of society.
Aren’t they wonderful gadgets?”
“Um. Yeah.” He got her to lean
forwards, and peeled the implant package from her neck. “You can actually
become a full citizen, you know.” The strangely hopeful tone earned him an
inquisitive look.
“What do you mean?”
“You could apply for residential
citizenship. If you wanted. I checked the Govcentral legal memory core. It’s no
problem; you just need a Govcentral citizen to sponsor you, and a hundred
fuseodollars fee. You can datavise them for an application. I’ve got the
eddress.”
“That’s um . . . very kind, Andy.
But I don’t really plan on staying here for long.” She smiled, trying to let
him down gently. “I have a fiancé, you see. He’s going to come and take me
away.”
“But Norfolk laws wouldn’t apply to
you,” Andy blurted desperately. “Not here. Not if you’re an Earth citizen.
You’d be safe.”
“I’m sure I am anyway. Thank you.”
She smiled again, slightly more firm this time; and slipped past him out into
the shop.
“Louise! I want this,” Genevieve
shrieked. The little girl was standing in the middle of the shop, arms held
rigid at her side as she turned round and round. There was a small block
clipped onto her belt with DEMONSTRATOR printed in blue on its top. Louise
hadn’t seen her smile like that in a long time.
“What have you got, Gen?”
“I gave her a pair of realview
lenses to try,” Andy said quietly. “Like contact lenses, but they receive a
datavise from the block which overlays a fantasyscape on what you’re seeing.”
He datavised a code to her. “That’ll let you view direct from the block.”
Louise datavised the code,
marvelling at how smoothly she did it, and closed her eyes. The world started
to spin around her. A very strange world. It had the same dimensions as the
inside of Jude’s Eworld, but this was a cave of onyx, where every surface
corresponded to walls and counters, fat stalagmites had replaced the flek sale
bins. People had become hulking black and chrome cyborgs, whose limbs were
clusters of yellow pistons.
“Isn’t it fabulous?” Gen whooped.
“It changes whatever you look at.”
“Yes, Gen, it’s good.” She saw the
mouth on one of the cyborgs clank apart to speak her own words, and smiled. The
cyborg’s mouth froze open. Louise cancelled her reception from the realview
block.
“You can get about fifty different
imagery programs for it,” Andy said. “This one’s Metalpunk Wasteland. Quite
popular. There’s an audioplug peripheral to change the voices.”
“Please, Louise! This one.”
“All right, all right.”
Andy datavised an off code to the
demonstrator block. Genevieve pouted as the cave melted back into the shop.
Andy started piling boxes and small flek cases up on the counter. “What
supplements do you want?” he asked.
Louise consulted the market menu
already included in the NAS2600. “News hound, global eddress directory search,
people tracker . . . um the pregnancy supplement for my physiological monitor,
universal message script. I think that’s it.”
“You’re entitled to another
twenty.”
“I know. Do I have to collect them
all today? I’m not really sure what else I’ll need.”
“Take as much time as you need to
choose, and drop in whenever you want. But I’d recommend netA, that’ll give you
your own eddress, you’ve got to pay an annual fee to the link company, but
nobody will be able to contact you without one. Oh, and streetnav, too, if
you’re going to stay in London—shows you the short cuts and how to use public
transport.”
“Okay, fine, put them on.” More
flek cases began to appear on the counter. “And that electronic warfare block
we talked about.”
“Sure thing.”
When he slapped it down, it didn’t
look much different to her ordinary processor block, same anonymous oblong of
dark grey plastic.
“Who buys bugs and things like that
from you?” she asked.
“Could be anyone. Girl wanting to
find out if her boyfriend’s cheating on her. Manager who needs to know which of
his staff are ripping him off. Voyeur perverts. Mostly, though, it’s private
detectives. Regular spooks convention at times, this place.”
Louise didn’t approve of that
notion that just anybody could come along and spy on their friends and enemies.
There ought to be some restrictions on who could buy such items. But then
regulation was one thing Earth didn’t seem to have much of.
Andy handed over the shop’s
accounts block with an apologetic smile. Louise tried not to shiver as she
transferred the money over from her Jovian Bank disk. She gave the realview
block and a packet of disposable lenses to Genevieve, who promptly tore the
wrapping off with a gleeful, “Yesss.”
“I’ll see you when you come back
for the rest of your software?” Andy asked. “And if you change your mind about
. . . the other thing, I’ll be happy to sponsor your application. I’m entitled
to do that. I’m an adult citizen.”
“Right,” she said gingerly. There
was something very odd about the way he’d latched onto the idea. She was
debating whether to quiz him further when she caught the glint of devilment in
Gen’s eye. The little girl spun round quickly. “You’ve been very kind, Andy,”
Louise said. “Please don’t worry about me.” She leant over the counter and gave
him a light kiss. “Thanks.”
Genevieve was already making for
the door, giggling wildly. Louise snatched up the carrier bag full of fleks,
and chased after her.
Louise lay back on her bed as the
brilliant sun finally sank away below Green Park. Genevieve was sleeping on the
bed next to her, exhausted by the very long day.
Terrible child, Louise thought
fondly. I must make sure she gets a set of neural nanonics when she turns
sixteen. She closed her own eyes and put the news hound program into primary
mode. The room’s net processor acknowledged her datavise, and she began asking
for general items on the possessed. That was when she had her crash course on
using news hound’s filter program accessories and designating more refined
search parameters. It took an hour, but she was eventually able to slot the
myriad events reported by Earth’s news agencies into an overall picture. The
arrival of the Mount’s Delta was a weird one. The way its crewman had
been shredded hinted strongly at Quinn Dexter to her mind.
New York’s abrupt isolation was the
principal current topic for the agencies, in fact it was just about their only
topic. Govcentral’s North American Commissioner appeared before the reporters
to assure everyone that it was just a precaution, and they were investigating a
“possessed-type” incident in Dome One as a matter of procedure. No schedule was
given for opening the vac-trains. Police squads, reinforced with riot-control
mechanoids, were out in force on the streets as the arcology residents became
highly restless.
Then there was the event which
caused Louise to jerk upright on the bed, opening her eyes wide in surprise and
delight. Tranquillity’s arrival at Jupiter. Joshua was here! In this
star system.
She sank back onto the pillows,
shaking with excitement. The universal message script was hurriedly brought
into primary mode. She composed a file for him which she really hoped didn’t
sound too desperate and pathetic, and datavised it triumphantly into the
communication net. Her neural nanonics told her that Jupiter was five hundred
and fifty million miles away, so the signal would take about forty minutes to
reach it. She might have a reply within two hours!
Western Europe, who was monitoring
her net connection, instructed the AI to block the message. The last thing he
needed right now was some dunderhead boyfriend charging to the rescue,
especially one as famous as Lagrange Calvert.
Chapter 09
The party was a good one, though
the guy with only one arm was kind of weird. Liol knew he was staring, and
loaded a mild protocol reminder into his neural nanonics. It was just that he’d
never seen anything like that before. Didn’t seem to affect the guy’s balance
out on the dance floor, and the girl he was with obviously didn’t mind. Or
perhaps she enjoyed the novelty value. Knowing the girls in this habitat, that
was a strong option. Come to that, maybe the missing arm was an obscure fashion
statement. Not impossible.
Liol headed for the buffet table,
picking his way through the crowd. Just about everyone smiled and said hello as
they jostled together. He replied to most of them, their names familiar now
without having to access a memory file. Plutocrat princes and princesses, with
media celebrities jumbled in for variety. They tended to work hard during the
day, expanding corporate empires, starting new dynasties, never taking their
wealth for granted especially in these times. Tranquillity’s change of location
was causing them unique problems in sustaining their traditional markets, but
there were fabulous benefits to be had from being placed in the Confederation’s
wealthiest star system. They’d set about exploiting that as ruthlessly and
gleefully as only they could. But nights were given over to a single giant
funtime: parties, restaurants, shows, clubs; Tranquillity boasted the best of
them all in profusion.
He wasn’t even sure who his host
was. The apartment was as expensively anonymous as all the others he’d been in
over the last few days, a hospitality showcase. Everything selected by
designers to demonstrate their talent and taste—bitched over by other
designers. Just another party. No doubt he and Dominique would grace two or
three more before the night was out. The social set he’d belonged to in
Ayacucho had never been shy of a good time, and were wealthy enough to indulge
themselves. But compared to this mob, they were jejune provincials.
They were fascinated that he was
Joshua’s brother. Smiled indulgently when he told them he had his own business
back in Ayacucho. But he could reveal little about Lady Mac’s last
flight. So conversation tended to dry up fast after that. He really didn’t know
much about Confederation politics, or the money shifts in multistellar markets,
or hot entertainment items (Jezzibella was Capone’s girl—oh, come on!);
and he certainly didn’t relish discussing the possessed, and how the crisis was
developing.
He took a plate along the long
table of canapés, deliberately picking the more bizarre-looking items. Jupiter
was rising across the window behind the table, so he munched and stared, as
overwhelmed by the spectacle as any hick farmboy. Not quite the reaction of a
sophisticated starship crewman-about-the-galaxy. The aspiration he’d cherished
for himself since first hearing Lady Mac was supposedly his rightful
inheritance. Now he’d flown in Lady Mac, actually getting to pilot her.
He’d seen new star systems, even fought in an orbital war and (ironically
implausible) saved the Confederation—or at least alleviated some of the Navy’s
burden. After the pinnacle, there was always the journey back down again. He
would never, ever be as good a pilot as Joshua. The manoeuvres his brother had
flown during the Beezling encounter had made that quite obvious. And the
Confederation wasn’t such a fun place to roam through any more. Neither was
life, now the beyond waited.
A reflection in the window made him
turn. Joshua and Ione were mingling among the guests. Talking with ease,
laughing. A good-looking couple, Josh in a formal black jacket, her in a
flowing green evening dress. He was about to go over when Joshua led Ione out
onto the dance floor.
“Yoo hoo.” Dominique waved from
across the room. People struggled to get out of the way as she cut a line
straight for him. Liol was granted the knowledge of what it must be like for a
planet to face an invading fleet. Her hand grasped his arm, and she rubbed her
nose against his. “I missed you,” she murmured with silky reproach.
“I was hungry.”
“Me too.” The resentment snapped
off, replaced with bountiful mischief. She plucked one of the canapés from his
plate and popped it straight into her mouth. “Eeek. Sungwort seaweed, and they
coated it in coriander.”
“It was interesting,” he apologised
meekly. She was as adorable as she was terrifying. By far the most beautiful
girl in the room, Dominique favoured a more natural look than her
contemporaries, a gypsy girl among the glossy mannequins. Her black evening
gown was full-length, but that somehow didn’t stop it from displaying a huge
quantity of strategic flesh. Her broad lips curved up into a delighted smile.
She dabbed her finger on his nose. “I just love your innocence.” A quality of
which he had very little left. Sex with Dominique was narcotic, ruining you
with pleasure.
She held his gaze for a moment,
face enraptured by devotion. He wanted to turn and flee. “Someone I’d like you
to meet,” she said neutrally, as if divining his response. A finger beckoned.
There was a slim girl standing behind her, completely blocked by Dominique’s
broad, healthy physique. She had a prim Oriental face with hair several shades
fairer than Dominique. “This is Neomone.”
“Hi,” Neomone darted forward and
kissed him. Then swayed back, blushing, looking very pleased with herself.
“Hi.” He didn’t quite know what to
make of her. She was in her late teens, wearing a slinky silk dress that
revealed an almost androgynous figure, all ribcage and stringy muscle. Thrilled
and nervous at the same time, she kept giving Dominique worshipful glances.
“Neomone is training to be a ballerina,”
Dominique purred.
“I’ve never been to a ballet,” Liol
admitted. “We’ve had troupes visit Ayacucho, but I didn’t think it would be
quite me. Sorry.”
Neomone giggled. “Ballet is for
everyone.”
“You should dance with him,”
Dominique told her. “Let him see there’s nothing to be scared of from cultural
élitism.” She cocked an eye at Liol. “Neomone’s quite a fan of yours, you
know.”
He grinned, slightly awkward. “Oh.
Why’s that?”
“You flew in the Lady Mac,”
the girl said breathlessly. “Everyone knows Joshua was on a secret mission.”
“If you know, then it can’t be that
secret, can it.”
“Told you he was a modest hero,”
Dominique said. “In public, anyway.”
Liol managed to keep smiling
valiantly. Maybe he had bragged a little. That was the nature of the starflight
business. “You know how it is,” he shrugged.
Neomone’s giggles were unstoppable.
“Not yet,” she said. “But I’m going to find out tonight.”
The beach glowed a pale silver
under the light-tube’s lunar radiance. Joshua took his shoes off to walk along
it, holding Ione’s hand. The sand was warm and soft, flowing over his toes like
grainy liquid. Tiny fluorescent fish darted about just under the sea’s surface,
as if a shower of pink and azure sparks were tumbling horizontally through the
water. Somebody had made a row of small melted-looking mounds just above the
shoreline, meandering away into the distance.
Ione signed contentedly, and leaned
into him. “I know it’s silly, but I keep coming back. She loved playing on this
beach. I suppose I’m expecting to find her here.”
“Jay?”
“Yes.” She paused. “And Haile. I
hope she’s all right.”
“The Kiint say she is. They
wouldn’t lie about that. Many things, but not the welfare of a child.”
“She must be so lonely.” Ione sat
down with her back to one of the small dunes. She slid her silk scarf from her
neck. “I don’t see why they won’t let us bring her back from Jobis. Starships
are still going there.”
“Bloody mystics,” Joshua sat beside
her. “Probably not in their horoscopes.”
“You’re starting to sound like dear
old Parker Higgens.”
Joshua laughed. “I can’t believe
that old duffer is coming with us. And Getchell as well.”
“They’re the best I’ve got.”
“Thanks for asking me to go. I need
to be flying. I’m no good to anybody just sitting around.”
“Joshua.” She reached over to trace
the stark line of his jaw bone. “I’m pregnant again. You’re the father.”
His mouth flopped open. She smiled,
and kissed him gently. “Sorry. Bad timing. Again. I’m very good at that.”
“No,” he said with weak defiance.
“No, that’s, er, not bad timing at all.”
“I thought you should know before
you left.” Even in the twilight she could see the shock and wonder in his eyes.
There was something absolutely gorgeous about him when he looked so vulnerable.
It means he cares, I suppose. She touched his face again.
“Um. When?” he asked.
“Before you went to Norfolk.
Remember?”
He grinned, almost shy. “We’ll
never know the exact time then. There’s an awful lot to choose from.”
“If I had a choice, I think I’d
make it the one in Adul Nopal’s apartment.”
“Oh Jesus, yes. The middle of his
dinner party.” He flopped down onto the sand, and grinned up. “Yeah! That would
be fitting.”
“And Joshua. It was very
deliberate. I’m not in this state by accident.”
“Right. Thanks for consulting me. I
mean, I thought we’d already established the next Lord of Ruin with Marcus.”
“Just say no.”
He put his hand round her head, and
pulled her down, kissing her. “I think we’ve already confirmed I can’t.”
“You’re not angry with me?”
“No. Worried, maybe. More about the
future than anything. But then the kid won’t have it any different to the rest
of the human race when he dies. We can’t fear for that, or we’d be utterly
paralysed. The Kiint found a solution, the Laymil, too—for all it’s
inapplicable. We damn well can.”
“Thank you, Joshua.”
“I’d like to know why, though. I
mean, we already have the next Lord of Ruin established.”
She closed her eyes, shutting out
his gentle curiosity. “Because you’re perfect,” she whispered. “For me. Great
body, good genes.”
“Little Miss Romantic.”
“And a wonderful lover.”
“Yeah, I know that bit. I carry the
burden well, though.”
She laughed spryly, then she was
crying helplessly.
“Hey. No.” He cradled her, hugging
lightly. “Don’t do that.”
“Sorry.” She wiped a hand across
her eyes. “Joshua. Please. I don’t love you. I can’t love you.”
He flinched, but didn’t recoil. “I
see.”
“Oh God damn it. Now I’ve gone and
hurt you. And I didn’t want that. I never wanted that.”
“What the hell do you want, Ione? I
don’t understand. Don’t tell me this was convenience, that I was the male
easily to hand when you happened to make your mind up. You wanted my baby. And
now you’ve told me about it. If you hate me so much, you wouldn’t have done
that.”
“I don’t hate you.” She gripped him
tighter. “I don’t.”
“Then what?” He made an effort not
to shout. Every emotion in his head was freefalling. Thought was almost
impossible, only instinct, blind response. “Jesus Christ, do you have any idea
what you’re doing to me?”
“Well what do you want out of this,
Joshua? Do you want to be a part of this child’s life?”
“Yes! Jesus, how can you question
that?”
“What part?”
“A father!”
“How will you be a father?”
“In the same way you’re a mother.”
She took both his hands in hers,
quelling the trembling. He shook her loose angrily. “You can’t be,” she said.
“I have an affinity bond with the baby. So does Tranquillity.”
“Jesus. I can get symbionts, I can
be equal to you and this bloody habitat. Why are you trying to block me out of
this?”
“Joshua. Listen to me. What would
you do all day? Even if you were my consort, officially my husband. What would
you do? You can’t run Tranquillity. That’s me, that’s what I do. And then it’ll
be the job of our first child.”
“I don’t know, I’ll find something.
I’m versatile.”
“There is nothing. There can never
be anything for you in Tranquillity, not permanently. I keep telling you this,
you are a starship captain. This is your port, not your home. If you stay here,
you’ll become like your father.”
“Leave my father out of this.”
“No, Joshua, I won’t. He was the
same as you, a great captain; and he stayed here in Tranquillity, he never flew
after you were born. That’s what wrecked him.”
“Wrong.”
“I know he didn’t fly again.”
Joshua looked at her. For all his
instinct, his experience, that beautiful face defeated him every time. What
went on inside her head could never be known. “All right,” he said abruptly.
“I’ll tell you. He had it all, and lost it. That’s why he never flew again.
Staying here didn’t break his heart, it was broken before that.”
“Had what?”
“Everything. What all us owner
captains fly for. The big strike, a flight that kills the banks. And I had it
with Norfolk. I was this close, Ione, and loving it. That mayope
exchange deal could have earned me hundreds of millions, I would have become
one of the plutocrats that infest this bloody habitat. Then I would have been
your equal. I would have had my empire to run, I could have bought a fleet of
ships just like Parris Vasilkovsky. That’s what I’d do during the day. And we’d
be able to get married, and none of this question about how worthy I am
would ever arise.”
“It’s not about being worthy,
Joshua. Don’t say that, don’t ever. You stopped the Alchemist from being used,
for heaven’s sake. You think I look down on you for that? How could some dusty
deskbound company president compare to what you are? Joshua, I am so proud of
you it hurts. That’s why I wanted you as the baby’s father. Because there is
nobody better, not just your genes or your intuition, there can be no heritage
finer than yours. And if I thought for one second there was a single chance you
would be happy staying here with me, as my husband, or my partner, or just
fitting me in as one of your harem, then I would have Lady Mac flung
into a recycling plant to stop you leaving. But you won’t be happy, you know
that. And you’d end up blaming me, or yourself; or worse, the child, for
keeping you here. I couldn’t stand that, knowing I was responsible for your
misery. Joshua, you’re twenty-two, and untamed. And that’s beautiful, that’s
how it should be, that’s your destiny as much as ruling Tranquillity is mine.
Our lives have touched, and I thank God they have. We’ve both been rewarded
with two children by it. But that’s all. That’s all we can ever be. Ships that
pass in the night.”
Joshua searched round for the anger
that had blazed so bright just a moment ago. But it had gone. There was mostly
numbness, and a little shame. I ought to fight her, make her see I’m necessary.
“I hate you for being right.”
“I wish I wasn’t,” she said
tenderly. “I just hope you can forgive me for being so selfish. I suppose
that’s my heritage; Saldanas always get their way, and to hell with the human
fall out.”
“Do you want me to come back?”
Her shoulders slumped wearily.
“Joshua, I’m going to drag you back. I’m not forbidding you anything, I’m not
saying you can’t be a father. And if you want to stay in Tranquillity and make
a go of it, then nobody will help and support that decision more than me. But I
don’t believe it will work, I’m sorry, but I really don’t. It might for years, but
eventually you’d look round and see how much you’d lost. And that would creep
into our lives, and our child would grow up in an emotional war zone. I
couldn’t stand that. Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve said? You’re going
to be the joy of your child’s life, he’s going to ache for when you visit and
bring presents and stories. The times you’ll spend together will be magical.
It’s you and I that cannot be inseparable, one of history’s great love affairs.
That’s the convention of fatherhood you’ll be missing, nothing more.”
“Life never used to be this
complicated.”
The sympathy she felt for him was
close to a physical suffering. “I don’t suppose it was before I came along.
Fate’s a real bitch, isn’t she.”
“Yeah.”
“Cheer up. You get joy without
responsibility. The male dream.”
“Don’t.” He held up a warning
finger. “Don’t make a joke of this. You’ve altered my life. Fair enough,
encounters always result in some kind of change. That’s what makes life so
wonderful, especially mine with the opportunities I have. You’re quite right
about my wanderlust. But encounters are chance, natural. You did this quite
deliberately. So just don’t try and make light of it.”
They sat with their backs resting
on the dune for some time, saying nothing. Even Tranquillity was silent,
sensing Ione’s reluctance to discuss what had been said.
Eventually they wound up leaning
against each other. Joshua put his arm around her shoulder, and she started
crying again. A sharing, if not of sorrow for what had been done, then
reluctant acceptance. “Don’t leave me alone tonight,” Ione said.
“I will never understand you.”
Preparing to go to bed took on the
quality of a religious ceremony. The bedroom’s window overlooking the
underwater vista was opaqued, and the lights reduced to the smallest glimmer.
All they could see was each other. They undressed and walked slowly down the
steps into the deep spar hand in hand. Bathing was accomplished with scented
sponges, graduating into erotic massage. Their lovemaking which followed was
deliberately extreme, ranging from aching tenderness to a passion that bordered
brutality. Each body responding perfectly to the demands of the other, an
exploitation that only their complete familiarity with one another could
achieve.
The one aspect they could never recapture
was the emotional connection they’d experienced in the previous few days. This
sex was a reversion to their very first time, fun, physically enjoyable, but
essentially meaningless. Because they didn’t mean the same to each other. The
attraction was almost as strong as before, but of the devotion there was little
evidence. Joshua finally conceded she was right. They’d come full circle.
He wound up lying across the bed,
cushions in disarray around him, and Ione sprawled over his chest. Her cheek
stroked his pectoral muscles, rejoicing in the touch.
“I thought the Lords of Ruin sent
their children off to be Adamists,” he said.
“Father’s and grandfather’s
children became Adamists, yes. I’ve decided mine won’t. Not unless that’s what
they decide they want to become, anyway. I want to bring them up properly,
whatever that is.”
“How about that; a revolution from
the top.”
“Every other part of our lives is
changing. This particular little ripple won’t be noticed amid the storm. But
having a family in whatever form will move me closer to my human heritage. The
Lords of Ruin have been terribly isolated figures before.”
“Will you marry, then?”
“That really is stuck in your
brain, isn’t it? I have no idea. If I meet someone special, and we both want
to, and we’re in a position to, then of course I will. But I am going to
have a great many lovers, and I’ll have even more friends; and the children
will have their friends to play with in the parkland. Maybe even Haile will
come back and join in the fun.”
“That sounds like the kind of
neverland I’d want to grow up in. Question is now, will it ever happen? We have
to survive this crisis first.”
“We will. There’s a solution out
there somewhere. You said, and I agree.”
He ran his fingers along her spine,
enjoying the happy sighs it incited. “Yeah. Well let’s see if this Tyrathcan
God can offer any hints.”
“You’re really looking forward to
the flight, aren’t you? I told you, this is what you are.” She snuggled up
closer, one hand stroking his thigh. “What about you? Will you marry? I’m sure
Sarha would be interested.”
“No!”
“Okay, strike Sarha. Oh, of course,
there’s always that farm girl on Norfolk, you know . . . oh what’s her name,
now?”
Joshua laughed, and rolled her
over, pinning her arms above her head. “Her name, as you very well know, is
Louise. And you’re still jealous, aren’t you?”
Ione stuck her tongue out at him.
“No.”
“If I can’t hack it as a consort
for you, I hardly think a life tilling the fields is going to enthral me.”
“True.” She lifted her head, and
gave him a fast jocose kiss. He still didn’t let go of her arms. “Joshua?”
He groaned in dismay, and collapsed
back onto the mattress beside her; which sent out slow waves to flip the
cushions. “I hate that tone. I always hear it right before I wind up in deep
shit.”
“I was only going to ask, what did
happen to your father that last flight? Lady Mac got back here with a
lot of fuselage heat damage and two jump nodes fused. That couldn’t be pirates,
or a secret mission for the Emperor of Oshanko, or rescuing a lost ship from
the Meridian fleet that was caught in a neutron star’s gravity well, or any of
the other explanations you’ve come up with over the years.”
“Ye of little faith.”
She rolled onto her side, and
propped her head on one hand. “So what was it?”
“Okay, if you must know. Dad found
a xenoc shipwreck with technology inside that was worth a fortune; they had
gravity generators, a direct mass energy converter, industrial scale molecular
synthesis extruders. Amazing stuff, centuries in advance of Confederation
science. He was rich, Ione. He and the crew could have altered the entire
Confederation economy with those gadgets.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“The people who’d hired Lady Mac
to prospect for gold asteroids turned out to be terrorists, and he had to
escape down a timewarp in the centre of the xenoc wreck.”
Ione stared at him for a second,
then burst out laughing. Her hand slapped his shoulder. “God, you’re
impossible.”
Joshua shifted round to give her a
hurt look. “What?”
She put her arms round him and
moulded her body contentedly to his, closing her eyes. “Don’t forget to tell
that one to the children.”
Tranquillity observed Joshua’s
expression sink to mild exasperation. Elaborate thought routines operating
within the vast neural strata briefly examined the possibility that he was
telling the truth, but in the end decided against.
Harkey’s Bar was having a modest
resurgence in fortune. Relative to the absolute downtime endured during the
quarantine when its space industry clientele were careful with their money, this
was a positive boom. Not back up to precrisis levels yet; but the ships were
returning to Tranquillity’s giant counter-rotating spaceport. Admittedly they
were mundane inter-orbit vessels rather than starships, but nonetheless they
brought new cargoes, and crews with heavy credit disks, and paid the service
companies for maintenance and support. The masters of commerce and finance
living in the starscraper penthouses were already making deals with the awesome
Edenist industrial establishment in whose midst they had so fortuitously
materialized. It wouldn’t be long before all the dormitoried starships were
powered up and started travelling to Earth, and Saturn, and Mars, and the
asteroid settlements. Best of all, the buzz was back among the tables and booths,
industry gossip was hot and hectic. Such confidence did wonders for liberating
anticipation and credit disks.
Sarha, Ashly, Dahybi, and Beaulieu
had claimed their usual booth, as requested by Joshua who’d told them he wanted
a meeting. They didn’t have any trouble, at quarter to nine in the morning
there were only a dozen other people in the place. Dahybi sniffed at his coffee
after the waitress had departed. Even their skirts were longer at this time of
day. “It’s not natural, drinking coffee in here.”
“This time isn’t natural,” Ashly
complained. He poured some milk into his cup, and added the tea. Sarha tsked
at him; she always mixed it the other way round.
“Are we flying?” Dahybi asked.
“Looks like it,” Beaulieu said.
“The captain authorized the service engineering crew to remove the hull plates
over Lady Mac’s damaged node. The only reason to do that is to replace
it.”
“Not cheap,” Ashly muttered. He
stirred his tea thoughtfully.
Joshua pulled the spare seat out
and sat down. “Who’s not cheap?” he asked briskly.
“Replacement nodes,” Sarha said.
“Oh, them.” Joshua stuck up a
finger, and a waitress popped up at his side. “Tea, croissants, and orange
juice,” he ordered. She gave him a friendly smile, and hurried off. Dahybi
frowned. Her skirt was short.
“I’m flying Lady Mac tomorrow,”
Joshua told them. “Just as soon as the Oenone returns from the O’Neill
Halo with my new nodes.”
“Does the First Admiral know?”
Sarha inquired lightly.
“No, but Consensus does. This is
not a cargo flight, we’ll be leaving with Admiral Saldana’s squadron.”
“We?”
“Yes. That’s why you’re here. I’m
not going to press gang you this time. You get consulted. I can promise a long
and very interesting trip. Which means I need a good crew.”
“I’m in, Captain,” Beaulieu said
quickly.
Dahybi sipped some coffee and
grinned. “Yes.”
Joshua looked at Sarha and Ashly.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To the Tyrathca Sleeping God, so
we can ask it how to solve the possession crisis. Ione and the Consensus
believe it’s on the other side of the Orion nebula.”
Sarha deliberately looked away,
studying Ashly’s face. The pilot was lost in stupefaction. Joshua’s simple
words were the perfect bewitchment for a man who’d given up normal life to
witness as much of eternity as he could. And Joshua knew that, Sarha thought.
“Monkey and a banana,” she muttered. “All right, Joshua, of course we’re with
you.” Ashly nodded dumbly.
“Thanks,” Joshua told them all. “I
appreciate it.”
“Who’s handling fusion?” Dahybi
asked.
“Ah,” Joshua produced an
uncomfortable expression. “The not-so-good news is that our friend Dr Alkad Mzu
is coming with us.” They started to protest. “Among others,” he said loudly.
“We’re carrying quite a few specialists with us this trip. She’s the official
exotic physics expert.”
“Exotic physics?” Sarha sounded
amused.
“Nobody knows what this God thing
actually is, so we’re covering all the disciplines. It won’t be like the
Alchemist mission. We’re not on our own this time.”
“Okay, but who do you want as
fusion officer?” Dahybi repeated.
“Well . . . Mzu’s specialist field
at the Laymil project was fusion systems. I could ask her. I didn’t know how
you’d all feel about that.”
“Badly,” Beaulieu said. Joshua
blinked. He’d never heard the cosmonik express a definite opinion before, not
about people.
“Joshua,” Sarha said firmly. “Just
go and ask Liol, all right? If he says no, fine, we’ll get someone else. If he
says yes, it’ll be with the understanding that you’re the captain. And you know
he’s up to the job. He deserves the chance, and I don’t just mean to crew.”
Joshua looked round the other
three, receiving their encouragement. “Suppose there’s no harm in asking,” he
admitted.
The crews were starting to refer to
themselves as the Deathkiss squadron. On several occasions the phrase had
almost slipped from Rear-Admiral Meredith Saldana’s own mouth as well.
Discipline had kept it from being spoken, rather than neural nanonic
prohibitions, but he sympathised with his personnel.
The sol-system news companies were
hailing Tranquillity’s appearance in Jupiter orbit as a huge victory over the
possessed, and Capone in particular. Meredith didn’t see it quite that way. It
was the second time the squadron had gone up against the possessed, and the
second time they’d been forced to retreat. This time they owed their lives
entirely to luck . . . and his own rebel ancestor’s foresight. He wasn’t
entirely sure if the universe was being ironic or contemptuous towards him. The
only certainty in his life these days was the squadron’s morale, which was
close to nonexistent. His day cabin’s processor datavised an admission request,
which he granted. Commander Kroeber and Lieutenant Rhoecus air swam through the
open hatch. They secured their feet on a stikpad and saluted.
“At ease,” Meredith told them.
“What have you got for me?”
“Our assignment orders, sir,”
Rhoecus said. “They’re from the Jovian Consensus.”
Meredith gave Commander Kroeber a
brief glance. They’d been waiting for new orders from the 2nd Fleet
headquarters in the O’Neill Halo. “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”
“Sir, it’s a secure operation. CNIS
has located an antimatter production station, they asked Jupiter to eliminate
it.”
“Could have been worse,” Meredith
said. For all it was rare, an assault on an antimatter station was a standard
procedure. A straightforward mission like this was just what the crews needed
to restore confidence in themselves. Then he noticed the reservation in
Rhoecus’s expression. “Continue.”
“A supplementary order has been
added by the Jovian Security sub-Consensus. The station is to be captured
intact.”
Meredith hardened his expression,
knowing Consensus would be observing his disapproval through Rhoecus’s eyes. “I
really do hope that you’re not going to suggest we start arming ourselves with
that abomination.”
If anything, Rhoecus seemed rather
relieved. “No, sir, absolutely not.”
“Then what are we capturing it
for?”
“Sir, it’s to be used for fuelling
the Lady Macbeth’s antimatter drive unit. Consensus is sending a pair of
ships beyond the Orion nebula.”
The statement was so extraordinary
Meredith initially didn’t know what to make of it. Though that ship’s name . .
. Oh yes, of course, Lagrange Calvert; and there was also the matter of a
ludicrously ballsy manoeuvre through Lalonde’s upper atmosphere. “Why?” he
asked mildly.
“It’s a contact mission with the
non-Confederation Tyrathca. We believe they may have information relevant to
possession.”
Meredith knew he was being judged
by Consensus. An Adamist—a Saldana—being asked by Edenists to break the very
law the Confederation was formed to enforce. At the least I should query 2nd
Fleet headquarters. But in the end it comes down to trust. Consensus would
never initiate such a mission without a good reason. “We live in interesting
times, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir; unfortunately, we do.”
“Then let’s hope we outlive them.
Very well. Commander Kroeber, squadron to stand by for assault duties.”
“Consensus has designated fifteen
voidhawks to join us, sir,” Rhoecus said. “Weapons loading for the frigates has
been given full priority.”
“When do we leave?”
“The Lady Macbeth is
undergoing some essential maintenance. She should be ready to join the squadron
in another twelve hours.”
“I hope this Lagrange Calvert
character can stay in formation,” Meredith said.
“Consensus has every confidence in
Captain Calvert, sir.”
The two of them sat at a table by
the window in Harkey’s Bar. Glittering stars chased a shallow arc behind them
as their drinks were delivered. Two slender crystal flutes of Norfolk Tears.
The waitress thought that wonderfully romantic. They were both captains, he in
crumpled overalls but still with the silver star on his shoulder, she in an
immaculate Edenist blue satin ship-tunic. A handsome couple.
Syrinx picked her glass up and
smiled. “We really shouldn’t be drinking. We’re flying in seven hours.”
“Absolutely,” Joshua agreed. He
touched his glass to hers. “Cheers.” They both sipped, relishing the drink’s
delectable impact.
“Norfolk was such a lovely world,”
Syrinx said. “I was planning on going back next midsummer.”
“Me too. I’d got this amazing deal
lined up. And . . . there was a girl.”
She took another sip. “Now there’s
a surprise.”
“You’ve changed. Not so uptight.”
“And you’re not so irresponsible.”
“Here’s to the sustainable middle
ground.” They touched glasses again.
“How’s the refit coming on?” Syrinx
asked.
“On schedule so far. We’ve got the
new reaction mass tanks installed in Lady Mac’s cargo holds. I left the
engineering team plumbing them in. Dahybi is running integration protocols
through the new node; there’s some kind of software disparity with the rest of
them. But then there always is a problem with new units, the manufacturers can
never resist trying to improve something that works perfectly well already.
He’ll have it debugged ready for departure time.”
“Sounds like you have a good crew.”
“The best. How’s Oenone?”
“Fine. The supplement fusion
generators are standard items. We already had the attachment points for them in
the cargo cradles.”
“Looks like we’re running out of
excuses, then.”
“Yeah. But I bet the view from that
side of the nebula is quite something.”
“It will be.” He hesitated for a
moment. “Are you all right?”
Syrinx studied him over the top of
the flute; her ability to read Adamist emotions was quite adroit these days, so
she considered. His genuine concern gladdened her. “I am now. Bit of a basket
case for a while, after Pernik, but the doctors and my friends helped put me
back together again.”
“Good friends.”
“The best.”
“So why this flight?”
“Mainly Oenone and I are
flying because we think this is how we can contribute best. If that sounds
superior, I apologise, but it’s what I feel.”
“It’s the only reason I’m
here. You know, you and I are pretty unique. There’s not many of us who’ve come
face to face with the possessed and survived. That does tend to focus the mind
somewhat.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I’ve never been so scared before.
Death is always so difficult for us. Most people just ignore it. Then when you
start to see your last days drifting away you content yourself that you’ve had
a good life, that it hasn’t been for nothing. And, hey, there might be an
afterlife after all, which is good because deep down you’ve convinced yourself
you did your best, so the plus column is always going to be in the black when
it comes to Judgement day. Only there isn’t a Judgement day, the universe
doesn’t care.”
“Laton worked it out; that’s what
gets me. I’ve retrieved that last message of his time and again, and he really
believed Edenists won’t be trapped in the beyond. Not even one in a billion of
us, he said. Why, Joshua? We’re not that different, not really.”
“What does Consensus think?”
“There’s no opinion yet. We’re
trying to ascertain the general nature of the possessed, and compare it to our
own psychological profile. Laton said that would provide us with an insight.
The Mortonridge Liberation ought to generate a great deal of raw data.”
“I’m not sure how helpful that’ll
be. Every era has a different outlook. What’s thoroughly normal behaviour for a
Seventeenth Century potter is going to be utterly different from you. I always
think Ashly’s ridiculously old fashioned on some things; he’s horrified by the
way kids today can access stim programs.”
“So am I.”
“But you can’t restrict access, not
in a universal data culture like ours. You have to educate society about what’s
acceptable and what isn’t. A little adolescent experimentation isn’t harmful,
in moderation. We have to concentrate on pushing the moderation aspect, help
people come to terms with what’s out there. The alternative is censorship,
which the communication nets will defeat every time.”
“That’s defeatism. I’m not saying
people shouldn’t be educated about the problems of stim programs; but if you
made the effort, Adamist culture could abolish them.”
“Knowledge can’t be destroyed, it
has to be absorbed and accommodated.” He glanced dolefully out at Jupiter. “As
I tried to argue with the First Admiral. He wasn’t terribly impressed, either.”
“I’m not surprised. The fact we’re
going to use antimatter on this flight is restricted information. Rightly so.”
“That’s different—” Joshua began,
then grunted. “Looks like I’m not going to make it past the beyond. Don’t think
like an Edenist.”
“No, that’s not right. This is just
a difference in beliefs. We both agree stim addiction is a dreadful blight, we
just differ on how to treat it. We still think the same way. I don’t understand
this! Damnit!”
“Let’s hope the Sleeping God can
show us the difference.” He gave her a tentative look. “Can I ask a personal
question?”
She rubbed the tip of her index
finger round the rim of the flute, then sucked on it. “Joshua Calvert, I have a
devoted lover, thank you.”
“Er, actually, I was wondering if
you had any children.”
“Oh,” she said, and promptly
blushed. “No, I don’t. Not yet anyway. My sister Pomona has three; it makes me
wonder what I’ve been doing with my time.”
“When you do have children, how do
you raise them? Voidhawk captains, I mean. You don’t have them on board, do
you?”
“No, we don’t. Shipboard life is
for adults, even aboard a voidhawk.”
“So how do they grow up?”
“What do you mean?” It was a
strange question, especially from him. But she could see it was important.
“They haven’t got you there as a
mother.”
“Oh, I see. It doesn’t matter, for
them anyway. Voidhawk captains tend to have fairly large extended families. I
must take you to see my mother some time, then you’ll see first-hand. Any
children I have while I’m still flying with Oenone will be taken care of
by my army of relatives, and the habitat as well. I’m not propagandising, but
Edenism is one giant family. There’s no such thing as an orphan among us. Of
course, it’s hard on us captains, having to kiss goodbye to our babies for
months at a time. But that’s been the fate of sailors for millennia now. And of
course, we do get to make up for it at the end. When Oenone’s eggs are
birthed, I wind up at ninety years old in a house with a dozen screaming
infants. Imagine that.”
“Are they happy, those other
children? The ones you have to leave behind.”
“Yes. They’re happy. I know you
think we’re terribly formal and mannered, but we’re not mechanoids, Joshua, we
love our children.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “You okay?”
“Oh yeah. I’m okay.” He
concentrated on his flute. “Syrinx. You can count on me during the flight.”
“I know that, Joshua. I reviewed
the Murora memory a few times, and I’ve spoken to Samuel, too.”
He gestured out at the starfield.
“The real answer lies out there, somewhere.”
“Consensus has known that all
along. And as the Kiint wouldn’t tell me . . .”
“And I’m not smart enough to help
the research professors . . .”
They smiled. “Here’s to the
flight,” Syrinx said.
“Soaring where angels fear to fly.”
They downed the remainder of their
Norfolk Tears. Syrinx blew heavily, and blinked the moisture away from her
eyes. Then she frowned at the figure standing at the bar. “Jesus, Joshua, I
didn’t know there was two of you.”
The enjoyable surprise of hearing
an Edenist swear in such a fashion was quelled with pique when he saw who she
was talking about. He stuck his hand up and waved Liol over.
“Delighted to meet you,” Liol said
when Joshua introduced them. He polished up the Calvert grin for her benefit,
and kissed her hand.
Syrinx laughed, and stood up.
“Sorry Liol, I’m afraid I had my inoculation some time ago.” Joshua was
chuckling.
“I’ll leave the pair of you to it,”
she said, and gave Joshua a light kiss. “Don’t be late.”
“Got her eddress?” Liol asked from
the side of his mouth as he watched her walk away.
“Liol, that’s a voidhawk
ship-tunic. Syrinx doesn’t have an eddress. So how are you?”
“Absolutely fine.” Liol reversed a
chair, and straddled it, arms resting on the back. “This is party city for me
all right. I think I’ll move Quantum Serendipity here after the crisis.”
“Right. Haven’t seen much of you
since we docked.”
“Well hey, no surprise there. That
Dominique, hell of a girl.” He lowered his voice to a throaty gloating growl.
“Game on, five, six times a night. Every position I know, then some that’s got
to be just for xenocs.”
“Wow.”
“Last night, you know what?
Threesome. Neomone joined in.”
“No shit? You record a sensevise?”
Liol put both hands down on the
table, and stared at his brother. “Josh.”
“Yep.”
“For Christ’s sake take me with
you.”
Kerry was the first planet, the
test. Catholic Irish-ethnic to the bedrock, its inhabitants gave the priests of
the Unified Church a very hard time. Stubbornly suspicious of technology, it
took them a half a century longer than the development company projected to
reach full technoindustrial independence. When they did achieve it, their
economic index never matched the acceleration curve of the more driven
Western-Christian work-ethic planets. They were comfortably off, favoured large
families, traded modestly with nearby star systems, contributed grudgingly to
the Confederation Assembly and Navy, and went to Church regularly. There were
no aspirations to become a galactic player like Kulu, Oshanko, and Edenism.
Quiet people getting on with their lives. Until the possession crisis arrived.
The planet was seven light-years
from New California, and worried. Their Strategic Defence network was the
absolute minimum for a developed world; and combat wasp stocks were never kept
very high; maintenance budgets were also subject to political trimming. Since
the crisis began, and especially post-Arnstat, Kerry had been desperately trying
to upgrade. Unfortunately their industrial stations weren’t geared towards
churning out military hardware. Nor were they closely allied to Kulu or Earth
who did produce an abundance of such items. The Edenists of the Kerry system,
orbiting Rathdrum, lent what support they could; but they had their own
defences to enhance first.
Still, went the hope and reasoning,
that’s the benefit of being galactic small fry, Capone isn’t going to bother
with us. When it came to the effort of mounting a full scale invasion along the
lines of Arnstat they were absolutely right. Which is why Al’s sudden change of
policy caught them woefully unprepared.
Twelve hellhawks emerged five and a
half thousand kilometres above Kerry’s atmosphere, and fired a salvo of ten
(fusion powered) combat wasps each. The bitek craft immediately started
accelerating at six gees, flying away from each other in an expanding globe
formation. Their combat wasps raced on ahead of them, ejecting multiple
submunitions. Space was infected by electronic warfare impulses and thermal
decoys, a rapidly growing blind spot in Kerry’s sensor coverage. Submunitions
began to target sensor satellites, inter-orbit ships, spaceplanes, and low
orbit SD platforms. A volley of fusion bombs detonated, creating a further
maelstrom of electromagnetic chaos.
Kerry’s SD network controllers,
surprised by the vehemence of the attack, and fearing an Arnstat-style assault,
did their best to counter. Platforms launched counter salvos of combat wasps;
electron beams and X-ray lasers stabbed out, slashing across the vacuum to
punch submunitions into bloating haze-balls of ions. Electronic warfare
generators on the platforms began pumping out their own disruption. After four
seconds spent analysing the attack mode, the network’s coordinating AI
determined the hellhawks were engaged in a safe-clearance operation. It was
right.
Ten front-line Organization
frigates emerged into the calm centre of the combat wasp deluge. Fusion drives
ignited, driving them down towards the planet at eight gees. Combat wasps slid
out of their launch tubes, and their drives came on.
The AI had switched all available
sensor satellites to scanning the frigates. Radars and laser radars were
essentially useless in the face of New California’s superior electronic warfare
technology. The network’s visual pattern sensors were being pummelled by the
nuclear explosions and deception impulse lasers, but they did manage to
distinguish the unique superhot energy output of antimatter drives. The
ultimate horror unchained above Kerry’s beautiful, vulnerable atmosphere.
Unlike ordinary combat wasps, a
killstrike didn’t eliminate the problem. Hit a fusion bomb with a laser or
kinetic bullet, and there is no nuclear explosion, it simply disintegrates into
its component molecules. But knock out an antimatter combat wasp, and the
drive’s confinement spheres will detonate into multi-megaton fury, as will as
the warheads.
As soon as the launch was verified,
the AI’s total priority was preventing the antimatter combat wasps from getting
within a thousand kilometres of the stratosphere. Starships, communication
platforms, port stations, and industrial stations were reclassified expendable,
and left to take their chances. Every SD resource was concentrated on
eliminating the antimatter drones. Weapons were realigned away from the
hellhawks and frigates, and brought to bear solely on the searing lightpoints
racing over the delicate continents. Defending combat wasps performed drastic
realignment manoeuvres; platform-mounted rail guns pumped out a cascade of
inert kinetic missiles along projected vectors. Patrolling starships
accelerated down at high-gees, bringing their combat wasps and energy beam
weapons in range.
The hellhawks fired another barrage
of combat wasps, sending them streaking away from the nebulous clot of plasma
which the initial drone battle had smeared across the sky. They were aimed at
the remaining low orbit SD platforms shielding the continent below. Apart from
activating the platforms’ close-defence weapons, there was little the network
controllers could do. Hurtling towards the planet, the frigates began to
diverge, curving away from each other. Nothing challenged their approach. The
continent was completely open to whatever they chose to throw at it.
As the antimatter exploded overhead
in a pattern that created an umbrella of solid incandescent radiation three
thousand kilometres across, they made a strange selection. Two hundred
kilometres above the atmosphere, each warship flung out a batch of inactive
ovoids, measuring a mere three metres high. Their task complete, the frigates
curved up, striving for altitude with an eight-gee acceleration. A second,
smaller salvo of antimatter combat wasps was fired, providing the same kind of
diversionary cover as they’d enjoyed during their descent.
This time, the invaders didn’t have
it all their own way. The number of weapons focused on, and active within, the
small zone where the frigates and hellhawks were concentrated began to take
effect. Even Kerry’s second-rate hardware had the odds tilting in its favour. A
nuclear tipped submunition exploded against one of the frigates. Its entire
stock of antimatter detonated instantaneously. The radiation blaze wiped out
every chunk of hardware within a five hundred kilometre radius. Outside the
killzone, ships and drones spun away inertly, moulting charred flakes of
null-foam. Exposed fuselages shone like small suns under the equally intense
photonic energy release. To those on the planet unlucky enough to be looking up
at the silent, glorious blossoms of light during the first stage of the battle,
it was as though the noon sun had suddenly quadrupled in vigour. Then their
optic nerves burnt out.
Two of the hellhawks were crippled
in the explosion, their polyp penetrated by lethal quantities of gamma
radiation. One of the frigates was unable to handle the massive energy impact.
The dissipation web beneath its hexagonal fuselage plates turned crimson and
melted. The patterning nodes facing the massive explosion flash suffered
catastrophic failures as the radiation smashed delicate molecular junctions
into slag. The fusion drives failed. Plumes of hot vapour squirted angrily out
of emergency vent nozzles. Inside, the crew charged through their contingency
procedures, desperate to sustain the integrity of the antimatter confinement
spheres in their remaining combat wasps.
None of their Organization
colleagues went back for them. As soon as the eight remaining frigates reached
a five thousand kilometre altitude, they jumped outsystem. The hellhawks
followed within seconds, leaving Kerry’s population wondering what the hell had
happened. Behind the shrinking wormhole interstices, the black eggs thundered
earthwards with total impunity. SD sensors never found them amid the electronic
disorder. People on the planet couldn’t see their laser-like contrails against
the dazzling aftermath of the orbital explosions.
They fell fast before decelerating
at excruciatingly high gees in the lower atmosphere. Sonic booms rocked across
the sleepy farmland, the first indication that anything was wrong. When the
rural folk started to scan the sky in mild alarm, all that was to be seen were
chunks of flaming debris streaking down from the battle—to be expected, claimed
those who knew something of such things. The eggs reached subsonic speed a
kilometre above the land. Petals flipped out from the lower half, presenting a
wider surface area to the air, doubling the drag coefficient. At four hundred
metres, the drogue chute shot up. Two hundred metres saw the main chute
deployment.
Two hundred and fifty of the black
eggs thudded to ground at random across an area measuring over three hundred
thousand square kilometres. The petals failed on eight, while a further nine
suffered chute failure. The remaining two hundred and thirty three produced a
bone-rattler landing for their passengers, bouncing and rolling for several
metres before they came to a halt. Their sides slit open with a loud crack, and
the possessed stepped forth to admire the verdant green land they had volunteered
to infiltrate.
The hellhawks arrived back at New
California thirty hours later. They didn’t even get a hero’s welcome. The
Organization already knew the seeding flight had been a success; information
from the infiltrators had already squirmed its way back through the beyond.
Al was jubilant. He ordered Emmet
and Leroy to put together another five seeding flights immediately. The fleet
crews and asteroids cooperated enthusiastically. The success was nothing like
as momentous as the Arnstat victory, but it kicked in a resurgence of
confidence throughout the Organization. We’re a power again, was the shared
opinion. Beefs and recalcitrance sloped away.
The Varrad discarded its
fantasy starship image as it approached Monterey. It slid over the docking ledge
pedestal and slowly sank down, radiating a desultory relief.
You did well, Hudson Proctor told Pran Soo, the hellhawk’s
resident soul. Kiera says she’s pleased with you.
Commence nutrient fluid pumping,
Pran Soo said flatly.
Sure thing. Here it comes.
Enjoy.
Hudson Proctor gave a short
command, and the fluid surged along the pipes and into the hellhawk’s internal
reserve bladders.
Two of us were exterminated, Pran Soo announced to the other hellhawks. Linsky
and Maranthis. They were irradiated when Kerry’s SD network took out the
Dorbane. It was awful. I felt their structure withering.
Price we pay for victory, Etchells said swiftly. Two of us, against an
entire Confederation planet taken out.
Yeah, said Felix, who possessed the Kerachel. Kerry
had me real worried. When it comes to drinking contests and pub brawls, they’d
got us beat every time.
Keep your Goddamn pinko loser
opinions to yourself, Etchells
sneered back. This was a concept-proving mission. What the fuck do you know
about overall strategy? We’re the hard edge of operations, the cosmic shock
troops.
Give it a rest, you boring
little prat. And don’t pretend you were ever in an army. Even armies have a
minimum IQ requirement.
Oh yeah? What you know. I killed
fifteen men when I was in combat.
Yeah, he was a nurse. Couldn’t
read the label on the medicine bottle.
Careful, shit-for-brains.
Or what?
I’m sure Kiera would be
interested to know about this sedition you’re spreading. See what a little
fasting does to your attitude.
SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU BOLLOCKBRAINED
NAZI REDNECK MORON.
The general affinity band fell
silent for quite some time.
Were you listening to all that? Pran Soo asked Rocio on singular engagement.
I heard, the Mindori’s possessor replied. I
think things might be starting to slide our way.
Could be. I’m sure each of us
can do simple maths. Two of us per soft-target planet. When we start hitting
hard targets, Kiera’s going to have a full scale strike on her hands.
Which she’ll win unless we can
provide everyone with an alternative food source.
Yeah. How’s it going?
I have been tracking the Lucky
Logorn, they’re almost back at Almaden.
You think this Deebank guy will
go for our pitch?
He was the first to offer us a
deal. At least he’ll listen to what I suggest.
The First Admiral had stayed away
from the CNIS secure laboratory ever since the incident in court three. Maynard
Khanna had been a damn fine officer, not to mention young and personable. The
boy would have gone a long way in the Confederation Navy, so Samual
Aleksandrovich had always told himself. With or without my patronage. Now he
was dead.
The funeral ceremony in Trafalgar’s
multi-denominational church had been short and simple. Dignified, as was
fitting. A flag draped coffin, the enduring image of military service for
centuries, placed reverently on a pedestal before the altar by the Marine dress
guard. It was intended as a focus for their honour. But Samual had thought it
looked more like a sacrificial offering.
Standing in the front pew, mouthing
the words of a hymn, he suddenly wondered if Khanna was actually watching them.
Information gleaned from captured possessed indicated those ensnared in the
beyond were aware of events inside the real universe. It was a moment of
profound spookiness; he even lowered his hymn book to stare at the coffin in
suspicion. Was this why the whole funeral ritual had started back in
pre-history times? It was one of the most common cross-cultural events, a
ceremony to mark the passing of life. The deceased’s friends and relatives
coming to pay homage, to wish them well on their way. It would be reassuring
for a soul, otherwise so naked and alone, to gain the knowledge that so many
considered their life to be worthwhile.
The remnants of Maynard Khanna’s
body mocked the notion of a fulfilled existence. Young, tortured to death, his
ending had been neither swift nor noble.
Samual Aleksandrovich had raised
his hymn book again and sung with a vigour which surprised the other officers.
Perhaps Khanna would witness the mark of devotion from his superior officer,
and draw some comfort from the fact. If it made a difference, the effort should
be made. Now Samual Aleksandrovich was having to confront the cause of his
regret. Jacqueline Couteur was still possessing her stolen body, immune from
the usual laws that would deliver justice upon such a treacherous multiple
murderess.
He was accompanied by Mae Ortlieb
and Jeeta Anwar from the Assembly President’s staff, as well as admiral Lalwani
and Maynard Khanna’s replacement, Captain Amr al-Sahhaf. The presence of the
two presidential aides he found mildly annoying; an indication of how his
decisions and prerogatives were increasingly coming under political scrutiny.
Olton Haaker had that right, Samual acknowledged, but it was being wielded with
less subtlety as the crisis drew out.
For the first time he was actually
thankful for the Mortonridge Liberation. Positive physical action on such a
massive scale had diverted the attention of both the Assembly and the media
companies from Navy activities. The politicians, he conceded grimly, might have
been right about the psychological impact such a campaign would create. He’d
even accessed a few rover reporter sensevises himself to see how the serjeants
were doing. My God, the mud!
Dr Gilmore and Euru greeted the
small elite delegation with little sign of nerves. A good omen, Samual thought.
His spirits lifted further when Gilmore started to lead them along to the
physics and electronics laboratory section, away from the demon trap.
Bitek Laboratory Thirteen was
almost the same as any standard electronic research facility. A long room lined
with benches, several morgue-like slabs arranged down the centre, and
glass-walled clean rooms at one end. Tall stacks of experimental equipment were
standing like modern megaliths on every surface, alongside
ultra-high-resolution scanners and powerful desktop blocks. The only
distinguishing items the First Admiral could see were the clone vats. Those you
normally wouldn’t find outside an Edenist establishment.
“Exactly what are you demonstrating
for us?” Jeeta Anwar asked.
“The prototype anti-memory,” Euru
said. “It was surprisingly easy to assemble. Of course, we do have a great many
thoughtware weapons on file, which we’ve studied. And the neural mechanisms
behind memory retention are well understood.”
“If that’s the case, I’m surprised
no one has ever designed one before.”
“It’s a question of application,”
Gilmore said. “As the First Admiral pointed out once, the more complex a weapon
is, the more impractical it becomes, especially in the field. In order for the
anti-memory to work, the brain must be subjected to quite a long sequence of
imprint pulses. You couldn’t just fire it at your opponent the same way you do
a bullet. They have to be looking straight into the beam, and a sharp movement,
or even an inappropriately timed blink will nullify the whole process. And if
it was known to be in use, retinal implants could be programmed to recognize
it, and block it out. However, once you hold a captive, application becomes
extremely simple.”
Mattox was waiting for them by the
last clean room, looking through the glass with the air of a proud parent.
“Testing has been our greatest stalling point,” he explained. “Ordinary bitek
processors are completely useless in this respect. We had to design a system
which duplicates a typical human neurone structure in its entirety.”
“You mean you cloned a brain?” Mae
Ortlieb asked, a blatant note of disapproval in her voice.
“The structural array is copied
from a brain,” Mattox said defensively. “But the construct itself is made
purely from bitek. There was no cloning involved.” He indicated the clean room.
The delegation moved closer. The
room was almost empty, containing a single table which held a burnished metal
cylinder. Slim tubes of nutrient fluid snaked out of the base to link it with a
squat protein cycler mechanism. A small box protruded from the side of the
cylinder, half-way up. Made of translucent amber plastic, it contained a
solitary dark sphere of some denser material, set near the surface. The First
Admiral upped the magnification on his enhanced retinas. “That’s an eye,” he
said.
“Yes, sir,” Mattox said. “We’re
trying to make this as realistic as possible. Genuine application will require
the anti-memory to be conducted down an optic nerve.”
A black electronic module was
suspended centimetres from the bitek eye, held in place by a crude metal clamp.
Fibre optic cables trailed away from it, to plug into the clean room’s utility
data sockets.
“What sort of routines are you
running inside the construct?” Mae Ortlieb asked.
“Mine,” Euru said. “We connected
the cortex to an affinity capable processor, and I transferred a copy of my
personality and memories into it.”
She flinched, looking from the
Edenist to the metal cylinder. “Isn’t that somewhat unusual?”
“Not relative to this situation,”
he replied with a smile. “We are attempting to create the most realistic
environment we can. For that we need a human mind. If you would care to give it
a simple Turing test.” He touched a processor block on the wall beside the
clean room. Its AV lens sparkled.
“Who are you?” Mae Ortlieb asked,
with some self-consciousness.
“I suppose I ought to call myself
Euru-two,” the AV lens replied. “But then Euru has transferred his personality
into a neural simulacrum twelve times already to assist with the anti-memory
evaluation.”
“Then you should be Euru-thirteen.”
“Just call me junior, it’s
simpler.”
“And do you believe you’ve retained
your human faculties?”
“I don’t have affinity, of course,
which I regard as distressing. However, as I won’t be in existence for very
long, it’s absence is tolerable. Apart from that, I am fully human.”
“Volunteering for a suicide isn’t a
very healthy human trait, and certainly not for an Edenist.”
“None the less, it’s what I
committed myself to.”
“Your original self did. What about
you, have you no independence?”
“Possibly if you left me to develop
by myself for several months, I would become reluctant. At the moment, I am
Euru senior’s mind twin, and as such this experiment is quite acceptable to
me.”
The First Admiral frowned, troubled
by what he was witnessing. He hadn’t known Gilmore’s team had reached quite
this level. He gave Euru a sidelong glance. “I’m given to understand that a
soul is formed by impressing coherent sentient thought on the beyond-type
energy which is present in this universe. Therefore, as you are a sentient
entity, you will now have your own soul.”
“I would assume so, admiral,” Euru
junior replied. “It is logical.”
“Which means you have the potential
to become an immortal entity in your own right. Yet this trial will eliminate
you forever. This is an alarming prospect, for me if not for you. I’m not sure
we have the moral right to continue.”
“I understand what you’re saying,
Admiral. However, my identity is more important to me than my soul, or souls. I
know that when I am erased from this construct, I, Euru, will continue to
exist. The sum of whatever I am goes on. This is the knowledge which rewards
all Edenists throughout their lives. Whereas I now exist for one reason, to
protect that continuity for my culture. Human beings have died to protect their
homes and ideals for all of history, even though they never knew for certain
they had souls. I am no different to any of them. I quite plainly choose to
undergo the anti-memory so that our race can overcome this crisis.”
“Quite a Turing test,” Mae Ortlieb
said sardonically. “I bet the old man never envisaged this kind of conversation
with a machine trying to prove its own intelligence.”
“If there’s nothing else,” Gilmore
said quickly.
The First Admiral looked in at the
cylinder again, contemplating a refusal. He knew such an instruction would
never be allowed to stand by the President. And I don’t need that kind of
interventionism in Navy affairs right now. “Very well,” he said reluctantly.
Gilmore and Mattox exchanged a
mildly guilty look. Mattox datavised an instruction to the clean room’s control
processor, and the glass turned opaque. “Just to protect you from any possible
spillback,” he said. “If you’d like to access the internal camera you can
observe the process in full. Not that there will be anything much to see. I
assure you the spectrum we’re using to transmit the anti-memory has been
blocked from the sensor.”
True to his word, the image the
delegation received when they accessed the sensor was pallid, the colour almost
nonexistent. All they saw was a small blank disc slide out of the electronic
module, positioning itself over the encapsulated eye. Some iconic overlay
digits twisted past, meaningless.
“That’s it,” Mattox announced.
The First Admiral cancelled his
channel with the processor. The clean room’s window turned transparent again,
in time to catch the disc retract back into the electronic module.
Gilmore faced the AV lens. “Junior,
can you hear me?” The lens’s diminutive sparkle remained constant.
Mattox received a datavise from the
construct’s monitoring probes. “Brainwave functions have collapsed,” he said.
“And the synaptic discharges are completely randomized.”
“What about memory retention?”
Gilmore queried.
“Probably around thirty to
thirty-five per cent. I’ll run a complete neurological capacity scan once it’s
stabilized.” The CNIS science team members smiled round at each other.
“That’s good,” Gilmore said.
“That’s damn good. Best percentage yet.”
“Meaning?” the First Admiral asked.
“There are no operative thought
patterns left in there. Junior has stopped thinking. The bitek is just a store
for memory fragments.”
“Impressive,” Mae Ortlieb said
reflectively. “So what’s your next stage?”
“We’re not sure,” Gilmore said. “I
have to admit, the potential for this thing is frightening. Our idea is to use
it as a threat to force the souls away from their interface with this
universe.”
“If it works on souls themselves,”
Jeeta Anwar pointed out.
“That prospect is bringing about a
whole range of new problems,” Gilmore conceded cheerlessly.
“Let me guess,” Samual said. “If
anti-memory is used on a possessed, you will also erase the host’s memories,
and destroy their soul.”
“It seems likely,” Euru said. “We
know a host’s mind is still contained within their brain while the possessing
soul retains control of the body. The host’s reappearance after zero-tau
immersion forces the possessor out proves that.”
“So, anti-memory cannot be used on
an individual basis?”
“Not without killing the host’s
soul as well, no sir.”
“Will this version work in the
beyond?” Samual asked sharply.
“I doubt it would ever get through
to the beyond,” Mattox said. “At present, it’s too slow and inefficient. It
managed to dissipate Junior’s thought processes; but as you saw, it didn’t get
all the memories. The areas of the mind which are not employed when the
anti-memory strikes are likely to be insulated from it as the thought channels
which would ordinarily connect them are nullified. If you analogise the mind
with a city, you’re destroying the roads and leaving the buildings intact.
Given that the connection a possessing soul has with the beyond is tenuous at
best, there is no guarantee the anti-memory would manage to pass through in its
current form. We must develop a much faster version.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
“No sir. These are estimations and
theories. We won’t know if a version works until after it’s proved successful.”
“The trouble with that is, a
successful anti-memory would exterminate every soul in the beyond,” Euru said
quietly.
“Is that true?”
“Yes, sir,” Gilmore said. “That’s
our dilemma. There can be no small scale test or demonstration. Anti-memory is
effectively a doomsday weapon.”
“You’ll never get the souls to
believe that,” Lalwani said. “In fact, given what we know of conditions in the
beyond, you wouldn’t even get many of them to pay attention to the warning.”
“I cannot conceivably permit the
use of a weapon which will exterminate billions of human entities,” the First
Admiral said. “You have to provide me with alternative options.”
“But Admiral—”
“No. I’m sorry, Doctor. I know
you’ve worked hard on this, and I appreciate the effort you and your team have
made. Nobody is more aware than myself of just how extreme the threat which the
possessed present. But even that cannot justify such a response.”
“Admiral! We’ve explored every
option we can think of. Every theorist I’ve got in every scientific discipline
there is has been working on ideas and wild theories. We even tried an exorcism
after that priest on Lalonde claimed his worked. Nothing. Nothing else
has come close to being viable. This is the only progress we have made.”
“Doctor, I’m not denigrating your
work or your commitment. But surely you can see this is completely
unacceptable. Morally, ethically, it is wrong. It cannot be anything other than
wrong. What you are suggesting is racial genocide. I will tell you this, the
authorization to use such a monstrosity will never come from my lips. Nor I
suspect, and hope, would any other Navy officer issue it. Now find me another
solution. This project is terminated.”
The First Admiral’s staff ran a
quiet sweepstake to see how long it would be before President Haaker datavised
for a conference, the winner called it in at ninety-seven minutes. They sat
facing each other across the oval table in a security-level-one sensenviron
bubble room. Both kept their generated faces neutral and intonations level.
“Samual, you can’t cancel the
anti-memory project,” the President opened with. “It’s all we’ve got.”
In his office, Samual
Aleksandrovich smiled at the way Haaker used his first name, the man always did
that when he was going to adopt a totally intransigent line. “Apart from the
Mortonridge Liberation, you mean?” He could imagine the tight lips drawn at
that jibe.
“As you so kindly pointed out
earlier, the Liberation is not a solution to the overall problem. Anti-memory
is.”
“Undoubtedly. Too final. Look, I
don’t know if Mae and Jeeta explained this fully to you, but the research team
believe it would exterminate every soul in the beyond. You can’t seriously
consider that.”
“Samual, those souls you’re so
concerned about are attempting to enslave every one of us. I have to say I’m
surprised by your attitude. You’re a military man, you know that war is the
result of total irrationality combined with conflict of interest. This crisis
is the supreme example of both. The souls desperately want to return, and we
cannot allow them to. They will extinguish the human race if they succeed.”
“They will ruin almost everything
we have accomplished. But total life extinction, no. I don’t even believe they
can possess all of us. The Edenists have proved remarkably resistant; and the
spread has all but stopped.”
“Yes, thanks to your quarantine.
It’s been a successful policy, I won’t deny that. But so far we’ve been unable
to offer anything that can reverse what’s happened. And that’s what the vast
majority of the Confederation population want. Actually, that’s what they
insist upon. The spread might have slowed, but it hasn’t stopped. You know that
as well as I do. And the quarantine is difficult to enforce.”
“You really don’t understand what
you’re proposing, do you. There are billions of souls there. Billions.”
“And they are living in torment.
For whatever reason, they cannot move on as this Laton character claimed is
possible. Don’t you think they’d welcome true death?”
“Some of them might. I probably
would. But neither you nor I have the right to decide that for them.”
“They forced us into this position.
They’re the ones invading us.”
“That does not give us the right to
exterminate them. We have to find a way to help them; by doing that we help
ourselves. Can you not see that?”
The President abandoned his image’s
impartiality and leant forwards, his voice becoming earnest. “Of course I can
see that. Don’t try to portray me as some kind of intransigent villain here.
I’ve supported you, Samual, because I know nobody can command the Navy better
than you. And I’ve been rewarded by that support. So far we’ve kept on top of
the political situation, kept the hotheads in line. But it can’t last forever.
Sometime, somehow, a solution is going to have to be presented to the
Confederation as a whole. And all we’ve got so far is one solitary possible
answer: the anti-memory. I cannot permit you to abandon that, Samual. These are
very desperate times; we have to consider everything, however horrific it
appears.”
“I will never permit such a thing
to be used. For all they are different, the souls are human. I am sworn to
protect life throughout the Confederation.”
“The order to use it would not be
yours to give. A weapon like that never falls within the prerogative of the
military. It belongs to us, the politicians you despise.”
“Disapprove of. Occasionally.” The
First Admiral permitted a slight smile to show.
“Keep on searching, Samual. Bully
Gilmore and his people into finding a decent solution, a humanitarian one. I
want that as much as you do. But they are to continue to develop the
anti-memory in parallel.”
There was a pause. Samual knew that
to refuse now would mean Haaker issuing an official request through his office.
Which in turn would make his position as First Admiral untenable. That was the
stark choice on offer.
“Of course, Mr President.”
President Haaker gave a tight
smile, and datavised his processor to cancel the meeting, safe in the knowledge
that their oh-so diplomatic clash would be known to no one.
The encryption techniques which
provided a security-level-one conference were, after all, known to be unbreakable.
The most common statistic quoted by security experts was that every AI in the
Confederation running in parallel would be unable to crack the code in less
than five times the life of the universe. It would, therefore, have proved
quite distressing to the CNIS secure communications division (as well as their
ESA and B7 equivalents, among others) to know that a perfect replica of a
27-inch 1980’s Sony Trinitron colour television was currently showing the image
of the First Admiral and the Assembly President to an audience of fifteen
attentive duomillenarians and one highly inattentive ten-year-old girl.
Tracy Dean sighed in frustration as
the picture vanished to a tiny phosphor dot in the middle of the screen. “Well,
that’s gone and put the cat amongst the pigeons, and no mistake.”
Jay was swinging her feet about
while she sat on a too-high stool. As well as being their main social centre,
the clubhouse catered for the retired Kiint observers who weren’t quite up to
living by themselves in a chalet anymore. A huge airy building, with wide
corridors and broad archways opening into sunlit rooms that all seemed to
resemble hotel lounges. The walls were white plaster, with dark-red tile floors
laid everywhere. Big clay pots growing tall palms were a favourite. Tiny birds
with bright gold and scarlet bodies and turquoise membrane wings flittered in
and out through the open windows, dodging the purple provider globes. The whole
theme of the clubhouse was based around comfort. There were no stairs or steps,
only ramps; chairs were deeply cushioned; even the food extruded by the
universal providers, no matter what type, was soft, requiring little effort to
chew.
The first five minutes walking
through the building had been interesting. Tracy showed her round, introducing
her to the other residents, all of whom were quite spry despite their frail
appearance. Of course they were all very happy to see her, making a fuss,
patting her head, winking fondly, telling her how nice her new dress was,
suggesting strangely named biscuits, sweets and ice creams they thought she’d
enjoy. They didn’t move much from their lounge chairs; contenting themselves
with watching events around the Confederation and nostalgic programmes from
centuries past.
Jay and Tracy wound up in the lounge
with the big TV for half the afternoon, while the residents argued over what
channel to watch. They flipped through real-time secret governmental and
military conferences, alternating those with a show called “Happy Days,” which
they all cackled along to in synchronisation with the brash laughter track.
Even the original commercial breaks were showing. Jay smiled in confusion at
the archaic unfunny characters, and kept sneaking glances out of the window.
For the last three days she’d played on the beach with the games the universal
providers had extruded; swam, gone for long walks along the sand and through
the peaceful jungle behind the beach. The meals had easily been as good as the
ones in Tranquillity. Tracy had even got her a processor block with an AV lens
that was able to pick up Confederation entertainment shows, which she watched
for a few hours every evening. And Richard Keaton had popped in a couple of
times to see how she was getting on. But, basically, she was fed-up. Those
planets hanging so invitingly in the sky above were a permanent temptation, a
reminder that things in the Kiint home system were a bit more active than the
human beach.
Tracy caught her wistful gaze once
and patted her hand. “Cultural differences,” she said confidentially as the
mortified Fonz received his army draft papers. “You have to understand the
decade before you understand the humour.”
Jay nodded wisely, and wondered
just when she’d be allowed to see Haile again. Haile was a lot more fun than
the Fonz. Then they’d flicked stations to the First Admiral and the President.
“Corpus will have to intervene
now,” one of the other residents said, a lady called Saska. “That anti-memory
could seep outside the human spectrum. Then there’d be trouble.”
“Corpus won’t,” Tracy replied. “It
never does. What is, is. Remember?”
“Check your references,” another
woman said. “Plenty of races considered deploying similar weapons when they
encountered the beyond. We’ve got records of eighteen being used.”
“That’s awful. What happened?”
“They didn’t work very well. Only a
moderate percentage of the inverse transcendent population were eliminated.
There’s too much pattern distortion among the inverses to conduct an
anti-memory properly. No species has ever developed one that operates fast enough
to be effective. Such things cannot be considered a final solution by any
means.”
“Yes but that idiot Haaker won’t
know that until after it’s been tried,” Galic, one of the men, complained. “We
can’t possibly allow a human to die, not even an inverse. No human has ever
died.”
“We’ve suffered a lot though,” a
resentful voice muttered.
“And they’ll start dying on the
removed worlds soon enough.”
“I tell you, Corpus won’t
intervene.”
“We could appeal,” Tracy said. “At
the very least we could ask for an insertion at the anti-memory project to
monitor its development. After all, if anyone’s going to come up with an
anti-memory fast enough to devastate the beyond, it’ll be our weapons-mad
race.”
“All right,” Saska said. “But we’ll
need a quorum before we can even get the appeal up to an executive level.”
“As if that’ll be a problem,” Galic
said.
Tracy smiled mischievously. “And I
know of someone who’s perfectly suited to this particular insertion.” Several
groans were issued across the lounge.
“Him?”
“Far too smart for his own good, if
you ask me.”
“No discipline.”
“We never ran observer operations
like that.”
“Cocky little bugger.”
“Nonsense,” Tracy said briskly. She
put her arm round Jay. “Jay likes him, don’t you, Jay?”
“Who?”
“Richard.”
“Oh.” Jay held up Prince Dell; for
some unexplainable reason she hadn’t managed to abandon the bear in her room.
“He gave me this,” she announced to the lounge at large.
Tracy laughed. “There you go then.
Arnie, you prepare the appeal, you’re best acquainted with the minutiae of
Corpus protocol procedures.”
“All right.” One of the men raised
his hands in gruff submission. “I suppose I can spare the time.”
The TV was switched back on,
playing the signature tune for “I Love Lucy.” Tracy pulled a face, and took
Jay’s hand. “Come on, poppet, I think you’re quite bored enough already.”
“Who’s the Corpus?” Jay asked as
they walked through the front entrance and into the sharp sunlight. There was a
black iron penny-farthing bicycle mounted on a stone pedestal just outside. The
first time Jay had seen it, she’d taken an age to work out how people were
supposed to ride it.
“Corpus isn’t a who, exactly,”
Tracy said. “It’s more like the Kiint version of an Edenist Consensus. Except,
it’s sort of a philosophy as well as a government. I’m sorry, that’s not a very
good explanation, is it?”
“It’s in charge, you mean?”
Tracy’s hesitation was barely
noticeable. “Yes, that’s right. We have to obey its laws. And the strongest of
all is non-intervention. The one which Haile broke to bring you here.”
“And you’re worried about this
anti-memory weapon thing?”
“Badly worried, though everyone is
trying not to show it. That thing could cause havoc if it gets released into
the beyond. We really can’t allow that to happen, poppet. Which is why I want
Richard sent to Trafalgar.”
“Why?”
“You heard what they were saying.
He lacks discipline.” She winked.
Tracy led her back to the circle of
ebony marble above the beach. Jay had seen several of them dotted around the
cluster of chalets, including a couple in the clubhouse itself. A few times
she’d even seen the black spheres blink into existence and deposit somebody.
Once she’d actually scampered on to a circle herself, closing her eyes and
holding her breath. But nothing had happened. She guessed you needed to datavise
whatever control processor they used.
Tracy stopped at the edge of the
circle, and held up a finger to Jay. “Someone to see you,” she said.
A black sphere materialized. Then
Haile was standing there, half-formed arms waving uncertainly.
Friend Jay! Much gladness.
Jay squealed excitedly, and rushed
forward to throw her arms around her friend’s neck. “Where’ve you been? I
missed you.” There was plenty of hurt in the voice.
I have had time learning much.
“Like what?”
A tractamorphic arm curled round
Jay’s waist. How things work.
“What things?”
The Corpus. Haile’s tone was slightly awed.
Jay rubbed the top of the baby
Kiint’s head. “Oh that. Everyone here’s really annoyed with it.”
With Corpus? That cannot be.
“It won’t help humans with
possession, not big help like we need, anyway. Don’t worry, Tracy’s going to
lodge an appeal. Everything will be all right eventually.”
This is goodness. Corpus is most
wise.
“Yeah?” She patted Haile’s front
leg, and the Kiint obediently bent her knee. Jay scrambled up quickly to sit
astride Haile’s neck. “Does it know any good sandcastle designs?”
Haile lumbered off the ebony
circle. Corpus has no knowledge concerning the building of castles from
sand. Jay grinned smugly.
“Now you two be good,” Tracy said
sternly. “You can swim, but you’re not to go out of your depth in the water. I
know the providers will help if you get into trouble, but that’s not the point.
You have to learn to take responsibility for yourselves. Understood?”
“Yes, Tracy.”
I have comprehension.
“All right, go on then, have fun.
And Jay, you’re not to stuff yourself with sweets. I’m cooking supper for us
tonight, and I shall be very cross if you don’t eat anything.”
“Yes, Tracy.” She squeezed her
knees into Haile’s flanks, and the Kiint started moving forwards, taking them
quickly away from the old woman.
“Did you get into lots of trouble
for rescuing me?” Jay asked anxiously after they’d left Tracy behind.
Corpus has much understanding
and provides forgiveness.
“Oh good.”
But I am not to do it again.
Jay scratched her friend’s
shoulders fondly as they hurried down towards the water. “Hey, you’re getting
lots better at walking.”
The rest of the afternoon was a
delight. Like old times back in Tranquillity’s cove. They swam, and the
attendant universal provider extruded a sponge and a brush so Haile could be
scrubbed, they built some sandcastles, though this fine loose sand wasn’t
terribly good for it, Jay risked asking for a couple of chocolate almond ice
creams—was pretty sure the provider would tell Tracy if she had any more—they
swatted an inflated beach ball to and fro, and once they’d tired themselves out
they talked about the Kiint home system. Haile didn’t know much more than Tracy
had already explained, but whatever new question Jay asked, the Kiint just consulted
Corpus for an answer.
The information was rather
intriguing. For a start, the cluster of retirement chalets were one of three
such human establishments on an otherwise uninhabited island fifty kilometres
across. It was called The Village.
“The island’s called The Village?”
Jay asked in puzzlement.
Yes. The retired human observers
insisted this be so. Corpus suggests there is much irony in the naming. I know
not about irony.
“Cultural difference,” Jay said
loftily.
The Village was one of a vast archipelago
of islands, home to the observers of eight hundred different sentient xenoc
races. Jay looked longingly at the yacht anchored offshore. How fabulous it
would be to sail this sea, where every port would be home to a new species.
“Are there any Tyrathca here?”
Some. It is difficult for Corpus
to insert into their society. They occupy many worlds, more than your
Confederation. Corpus says they are insular. This has troubled Corpus recently.
Haile told her of the world she was
living on now, called Riynine. Nang and Lieria had selected a home in one of
the big cities, a parkland continent studded with domes and towers and other
colossi. There were hundreds of millions of Kiint living there, and Haile had
met lots of youngsters her own age.
I have many new friends now.
“That’s nice.” She tried not to
feel jealous.
Riynine was invisible from The
Village; it was a long way around the Arc, almost behind the dazzling sun. One
of the capital planets, where flocks of xenoc starships arrived from worlds
clear across the galaxy, forming a spiralling silver nebula above the
atmosphere.
“Take me there,” Jay pleaded. She
ached to see such a wonder. “I want to meet your new friends and see the city.”
Corpus does not want you
alarmed. There is strangeness to be had there.
“Oh please, please. I’ll simply die
if I don’t. It’s so unfair to come all this way and not see the best bit.
Please, Haile, ask Corpus for me. Please!”
Friend Jay. Please have
calmness. I will appeal. I promise.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
She jumped up and danced around Haile, who snaked out slender tractamorphic
arms to try and catch her.
“Hey there,” a voice called. “Looks
like the two of you’re having a good time.”
Jay stopped, breathless and
flushed. She squinted at the figure walking across the glaring sand. “Richard?”
He smiled. “I came to say goodbye.”
“Oh.” She let out a heavy breath.
Everything in her life was so temporary these days. People, places . . . She
tilted her head. “You look different.”
He was wearing a deep-blue uniform,
clean and creased; with shining black boots. A peaked cap was tucked under his
arm. And the ponytail was gone; his hair trimmed down to a centimetre high
crop. “Senior Lieutenant, Keaton, Confederation Navy, reporting for duty,
ma’am.” He saluted.
Jay giggled. “This is my friend,
Haile.”
Hello, Haile.
Greetings Richard Keaton.
Richard tugged at his jacket,
shifting his shoulders. “So what do you think? How do I look?”
“It’s very smart.”
“Ah, I knew it. It’s true. All the
girls love a uniform.”
“Do you really have to go?”
“Yep. Got drafted by our friend
Tracy. I’m off to Trafalgar to save the universe from the wicked Doctor
Gilmore. Not that he knows he’s being wicked. That’s part of the problem, I’m
afraid. Ignorance is a tragic part of life.”
“How long for?” She hadn’t quite
realized things would move so fast. Tracy had only talked about the insertion a
few hours ago. And now here it was, about to happen.
“Not sure. That’s why I wanted to
make sure I saw you before I left. Tell you not to worry. Tracy and all her
cronies mean well, but they get panicked too easily. I want you to know the
human race is a lot smarter and resilient than those wonderful old coots think
we are. They’ve seen too much of us at the wrong end of history. I know what we
are now. And this is the time that counts. We stand a damn good chance, Jay. I
promise you that.”
She put her arms round him. “I’ll
look after Prince Dell for you.”
“Thanks.” He looked about with
theatrical slyness, and lowered his voice. “When you get the chance . . . ask
the provider for a surfboard and a jetski. And that was your idea. Okay?”
She nodded extravagantly. “Okay.”
This refit hadn’t been on quite the
scale as the last two she’d undergone; but there was no doubt about it, the Lady
Macbeth was an honoured source of income to the service and engineering
companies that operated in Tranquillity’s counter-rotating spaceport. Several
of her life support capsule fittings had collapsed under the incredible
acceleration of the antimatter drive. Then there were the additional reaction
mass tanks to install in the cargo bays. A whole new specialist sensor suite
wired in for Kempster Getchell, as well as loading a fleet of small survey
satellites. Hull plates had been removed to allow the replacement energy
patterning node to be installed.
When Ione floated into the docking
bay’s control centre, the nullfoam spray nozzles were folding back against the
sides of the bay. Lady Mac glistened a pristine silver-grey under the
ring of lights at the top of the steep metal crater.
Joshua was talking to some of the
staff operating the consoles in front of the windows, discussing colour and
style for the name and registration. A spindly waldo arm was already sliding
out under the direction of one operator, its ion-jet painter head rotating into
position.
“You’re supposed to be launching in
twenty-eight minutes,” Ione said.
Joshua glanced across and smiled.
He left the control centre staff, and glided over to her. They kissed. “Plenty
of time. And you can’t fly without a name on the fuselage. Besides, the C.A.B.
inspectors have already cleared us for flight.”
“Did Dahybi sort out the new node?”
“Yeah. Eventually. We had to get
him some help. A voidhawk actually went and collected two of the manufacturer’s
software team from the Halo for us. They solved the synchronization glitch.
Jesus, I love ultra priority projects.”
“Good.”
“We just have to load the combat
wasps, and Ashly’s flying our new MSV over from the Dassault service bay. Your
science team is already on board. We got Kempster and Renato along with Mzu and
the agents. Parker Higgens insisted on travelling in the Oenone with
Oski Katsura and her assistants.”
“Don’t be offended,” Ione said.
“Poor Parker gets dreadfully spacesick.”
Joshua gave her a blank look, as if
she’d come out with a non sequitur. “And we’ve got the serjeants in zero-tau as
well. Lady Mac’s hauling a much bigger load than Oenone.”
“It’s not a contest, Joshua.”
He grinned lopsidedly and pulled
her close. “I know.”
Liol erupted through the hatchway.
“Josh! There you are. Look, we can’t—oh.”
“Hello, Liol,” Ione said sweetly.
“So have you been enjoying yourself in Tranquillity?”
“Er, yeah. It’s great. Thanks.”
“You made a big impression on
Dominique. She can’t stop talking about you.”
Liol grimaced, appealing silently
to Joshua.
“I don’t think you’ve said goodbye
to her yet, have you?” Ione asked.
Liol’s blush was beyond the ability
of any neural nanonic override to control. “I’ve been very busy helping Josh.
Er, hey, perhaps you could do it for me?”
“Yes, Liol.” She struggled against
a laugh. “I’ll let her know you’ve gone.”
“Thanks, Ione, I owe you one. Er,
Josh, we really need you on board now.”
Ione and Joshua both started
chuckling after he vanished back out of the hatch. “You take care,” she told
him after a while.
“Always do.”
The ride back to her apartment took
a long time. Or perhaps it was because she suddenly felt so lonely.
He took it all very well, Tranquillity said.
You think so? He hurts a lot
inside. There’s a lot to be said for ignorance being bliss. But then again, he
would’ve guessed eventually. I wouldn’t have been doing either of us any
favours, not in the long run.
I am proud of your integrity.
Not much compensation for a
broken heart . . . Sorry, that was bitchy of me. Hormones again.
Do you love him?
You’re always asking that.
And each time you give me a
different answer.
I have very strong feelings for
him. You know that. God, having two children with a man shows something. He’s
absolutely adorable. But love . . . love I don’t know. I think I love what he
is, not him. If I truly loved him, I would’ve tried to make him stay. We
could’ve found something worthwhile for him to do here. Then again, maybe it’s
me. Maybe I can never love anyone that way, not when I have you. She closed her eyes on the empty tube carriage,
and watched the docking cradle slide Lady Mac up out of the bay. The
starship’s thermo-dump panels unfolded, and the umbilicals jacked into sockets
around her lower hull section disengaged. A cloud of gas and silver dust blew
away. Bright blue ion flames burned around the starship’s equator, and she
lifted smoothly.
Ten thousand kilometres away,
Meredith Saldana’s squadron was coming together in formation. The Oenone lifted
cleanly from its pedestal, and swept out to join Lady Mac. The two very different
starships matched velocities, and headed towards the squadron.
I am no substitute for a human, Tranquillity said gently. I would never
claim you.
I know. But you’re my first
love, and you always will be my love. That’s strong competition for a man.
Voidhawk captains succeed.
You’re thinking of Syrinx.
And all her kind.
But they’re Edenists. They have
it different.
Perhaps you should get to know
some while we’re here. They at least would not be intimidated by me.
Good idea. But . . . I don’t
know if it’s because I’m a Saldana, but I just don’t feel right about embracing
Edenism as the solution to all my problems. It’s a wonderful culture. But if we
stayed here, if I had an Edenist for a partner, we’d wind up becoming absorbed.
We have no future returning to
Mirchusko. The Laymil are no longer a mystery.
I know. But I’m still not
converting to Edenism. We’re unique, you and I. We might have been created for
one purpose, but we’ve evolved beyond that now. We have our own lives to live;
we have the right to choose our own future.
If the possessed don’t do that
for us.
They won’t. Joshua’s flight is
only one of a hundred different explorations into this problem. The human race
will surmount this.
Not without change. Edenism will
change, they will surely have to rethink their attitude to religion.
I doubt it. They’ll see the
beyond as justifying their stance that spirituality is a null concept,
everything has a natural explanation however bizarre. Laton telling them they
won’t be caught in the beyond will simply reinforce their position.
Then what do you propose?
I’m not sure. Perhaps nothing
except for a clean start in a new star system. After that we’ll see what
happens.
Ah. Now I think I understand the
urge for you to have and keep this child. You intend to found a new culture. A
people who have affinity, but outside the context of Edenism.
That’s very grand: founding a
culture. I’m not sure my ambition extends to that.
You are a Saldana. Your family
has done this once already.
Yes, but I’ve only got one womb.
I can hardly birth an entire race.
There are ways. Exowombs. People
who might like to try something new. Look how many youngsters flocked to Kiera
Salter’s call—false though it was. And new habitats can be germinated.
Ione smiled. This excites you,
doesn’t it? I’ve never known you quite so enthusiastic before.
I am intrigued, yes. I had never
given the future much consideration. My life has been spent running human
affairs and dealing with the Laymil project.
Well, we’ll have to wait until
the immediate crisis is over before we consider our options. But it would be
something, wouldn’t it? Creating the first post-possession culture, one that
overthrows this ridiculous Adamist prejudice against bitek. We could
incorporate the best of both cultures.
Now you talk like a true
Saldana.
Luca Comar reined in his horse at
the end of the drive, and dismounted to wait. It was near to midday, and people
were drifting in from the fields to take a break. He didn’t begrudge them that,
the sticky heat was quite something. Bloody unnatural for Norfolk.
But it was the community’s choice.
Every day’s weather was a constant summer optimum, with bright light and warm
breezes; while the nightly rains doused the land. Such a combination produced a
vicious humidity. He was worried it might start to affect the aboriginal
plants; late summer was normally a period of gradually increasing rain and
reducing heat. There was also the question of how they’d react to missing
Duchess’s crimson light. So far there was no visible malaise, but he felt
uneasy about it.
But these conditions seemed to be
doing wonders for the new cereal crops. He’d never seen them so advanced. It
was going to be a great harvest. Things are getting back to normal.
You could tell the world was at
rights just from the general mood. There was a heartiness that’d been missing
before. Individual homes were being taken care of, kept properly clean and
tidy, not just wished presentable. People paid attention to their
clothes and general appearance.
And there’d been no sign of Bruce
Spanton and his motley crew for awhile now. Though Luca had heard from other
community leaders he was down at the southern end of Kesteven, giving decent
folk a hard time. Apart from the odd problem like that, this was becoming a
good life, gentle and unhurried. Satisfying.
Oh really, you’ll live it for a
quintillion years, will you?
Luca shook his head, clearing it to
open his perception wide. He’d sensed her approaching early this morning. A
solitary figure making her way across the wolds, a knot in the uniformity of
thought enveloping the county. Unhurried, untroubled. Not a threat like
Spanton. But certainly a curiosity. Something about her was slightly out of
kilter. He didn’t have a clue what.
So just before Cricklade’s lunch
bell was rung, Luca had told Johan he would go and investigate the stranger.
They still had newcomers drift in. Anyone prepared to work was given a place in
the community.
The stranger was half a mile away
now, dawdling along the main road in some kind of vehicle. Luca frowned. That’s
a Romany caravan. The sight was a pleasing one, bringing up the old memories.
Young girls pleased with his attentions, the coquettish and blatant. Their
bodies yielding willingly, in fields of tall corn, secluded glades, darkened
caravans. Year after year I proved my sexuality with them.
I?
He wrapped his horse’s reins around
one of the spikes on the huge wrought iron gate, feet shuffling impatiently.
The caravan’s driver must have been aware of his mood, yet her horse’s plodding
gait never altered. It was a big sturdy horse, Luca saw while it was on the
last couple of hundred yards, its piebald coat muddied and a wild mane in long
tangles. He got the impression that it could have hauled the caravan right
round the world without pausing.
It kept on coming, and Luca
twitched slightly, knowing his nerve was being tested. He refused to give
ground as the huge beast lumbered inexorably towards him. At the last minute,
the woman sitting on the driver’s bench clucked softly, and pulled back
on her slender reins. The caravan halted, rocking slightly on its lightweight
spoke-sprung wheels. Carmitha applied the brake, and hopped down. She studied
the man edging cautiously round Olivier. The horse whinnied at him.
“Greetings,” he said. Then gave a
sudden start as he found himself staring into the twin barrels of her shotgun.
Not for the first time, she regretted giving Louise Kavanagh her pump-action
weapon.
“My name is Carmitha. I am not one
of you. I am not a possessor. Is that a problem?”
“None!”
“Good. Believe me, I will know if
it becomes one. I do have some of your powers.” She concentrated, and the seat
of Luca’s trousers became very hot indeed.
He twisted about, frantically
slapping at the fabric with his hands before it started smouldering. “Bloody
hell.”
Carmitha smiled artfully. His
thoughts were equally agitated, pastel whorls of colour that hung just outside
her physical sight. I can read them, she told herself happily. Along with the
rest of the magic.
The heat gone, Luca squared
himself, recovering some dignity. “How did you . . .” His jaw moved silently.
“Carmitha? Carmitha!”
She shouldered the shotgun, and
brushed some loose strands of hair from her face. “I see part of you remembers.
Then, no man would ever forget an afternoon in my bed.”
“Eh.” Luca blushed. The memories
were certainly strong and colourful, with her vital flesh hot beneath his
hands, the smell of her sweat, rapturous grunting. He felt the stirrings of an
erection.
“Down boy,” she murmured
laconically. “What do you call yourself these days?”
“Luca Comar.”
“I see. At the town they said you
were the one in charge up here. Nice irony, that. But then you’re all
reverting.”
“I am not reverting!” he said
indignantly.
“Of course not.”
“How have you got our powers?”
“I’ve no idea. It must be something
to do with this place you’ve taken us to. After all, you don’t have any contact
with the beyond any more, do you?”
“No. Thank God.”
“So it must be the way everybody’s
thoughts impinge on reality here. Congratulations, you made us all equal in the
end. Grant must be real pissed about that.”
“If you say so,” he said
disdainfully.
Carmitha had a throaty chuckle at
the umbrage on show. “Never mind. Just as long as you lot realize you can’t
turn me into a host for one of your own anymore, we’ll get along okay.”
“What do you mean, get along?”
“It’s very simple. I hate what
you’ve done to these people, don’t be under any illusion about that. But
there’s nothing I can do about it; nor you, now. So I might as well try and
live with it, especially as you’re reverting and re-establishing everything
that’s gone before.”
“We are not reverting,” he
insisted. Yet there was the nagging worry about just how much of Grant
Kavanagh’s personality he was employing these days. I must stop being so
dependent on him, treat him as encyclopaedia, nothing more.
“Okay, you’re not reverting, you’re
mellowing out. Call it whatever you want to salvage your dignity. I don’t care.
Now, I’ve spent the last few weeks hiding out in the woods, and I’m getting
very sick of cold rabbit for breakfast. I also haven’t had a hot bath for a
while either. As you’re probably aware. So I’m looking for a place to stay over
for a while. I’ll pull my weight, cooking, cleaning, pruning; whatever you
like. It’s what I always do.”
Luca pulled thoughtfully at his
lower lip. “You shouldn’t have been able to hide from us before. We’re aware of
the whole world.”
“My people still have the earthlore
your kind—both of you—have forgotten. When you brought magic back into the
world, you made the old enchantments strong again, no longer just words mumbled
by crazed old women.”
“Interesting. Are there any more of
you?”
“You know how many caravans are
here for the midsummer collection. You tell me.”
“I don’t suppose it matters. Even
if all the Romanies survived, you don’t have the power to take us back to the
universe we escaped from.”
“That idea really frightens you,
doesn’t it?”
“Terrifies, actually. But then you
can see that if you have got our ability.”
“Hummm. So, do I get to stay?”
He deliberately let his gaze
meander over her leather jerkin, remembering the full breasts and flat belly
which lay beneath. “Oh, I think I can find room for you.”
“Ha! Well don’t even think about
that!”
“Who, me? I’m not Grant anymore.”
He walked back to his horse, and took the reins off the gate.
Carmitha slid her shotgun into the
leather holster beside the seat, and started to lead Olivier along the drive
with Luca. The caravan wheels crunched loudly on the gravel. “Damn this
humidity.” She wiped a hand across her brow, mussing her hair again. “We are
going to have a winter, aren’t we?”
“I expect so. I’ll certainly make
sure we have it on Kesteven, anyway. The land needs a winter.”
“Make sure! My God. What
arrogance.”
“I prefer to call it practicality.
We know what we need, and we make it happen. That’s one of the joys of this new
life. There’s no fate any more. We control destiny now.”
“Right.” She looked round the
grounds of the big stone manor house as they approached it. Surprised by how
little had changed. But then the possessed tendency to establish glorious
facades over everything they occupied was nullified here. When you already live
in what was essentially a palace, you don’t need gaudy energistic trinkets to
enhance your status. For some reason, the sight of the well maintained fields
was comforting. The normality, I suppose. What we all crave.
Luca led her into the courtyard at
the side of the house. The solid stone walls of the manor and the stable wings
magnified the clatter which the hooves and caravan wheels made on the
cobblestones. It was hotter in the confines of the courtyard, too. Something
Carmitha’s small energistic ability could do little about. She took off her
jerkin, ignoring the way Luca openly looked at the way her thin dress stuck to
her skin.
One of the stables was a burnt-out
hulk, with long sootmarks lashing up over the stone above each empty window.
The centre of its slate roof had collapsed inwards. Carmitha whistled silently.
Louise hadn’t been lying. Several groups of field labourers were sheltering
from the radiant sky in open doorways. They were munching on big sandwiches and
baguettes, passing bottles round. Carmitha could feel every pair of eyes on her
as Luca took her over to the remaining stable.
“You can put Olivier in here,” he
said. “I think the stalls are big enough. And there’s oats in the sacks at the
far end. The hose is working as well, if you want to wash him down first.” It
was something of which he seemed quite proud.
Carmitha could well imagine Grant’s
Kavanagh’s reaction if the hose hadn’t been working. “Thank you, I’ll do that.”
“Okay. Are you going to sleep in
the caravan?”
“I think that’s for the best, don’t
you?”
“Sure. When you’re ready, go into
the kitchen and ask for Susannah. She’ll find something for you to do.” He
started to walk away.
“Grant . . . I mean Luca.”
“Yeah.”
Carmitha held her hand out. Light
sparked sharply off the diamond ring. “She gave it to me.”
Luca stared at it in shocked
recognition, and took a couple of fast paces towards her. He grabbed her hand
and brought it up in front of his face. “Where are they?” he demanded hotly.
“Damnit, where did they go? Are they safe?”
“Louise told me about the last time
she saw you,” Carmitha said coolly. She glanced pointedly at the burnt out
stable.
Luca clenched his fists, his face
contorted in anguish. Every thought in his head was suffused with shame. “I
didn’t . . . I wasn’t . . . Oh, shit! Goddamn it. Where are they? I promise
you, I swear, I am not going to hurt them. Just tell me.”
“I know. It was a crazy time. You’re
ashamed and sorry, now. And you’d never harm a hair on their heads.”
“Yes.” He made an effort to regain
control. “Look, we did terrible things. Brutal, inhuman things. To people,
women, children. I know it was wrong. I knew the whole time I was doing it, and
I still kept on doing them. But you don’t understand what was driving me.
Driving all of us.” He shook an accusing finger, shouting. “You’ve never died.
You’ve never been that insanely fucking desperate. Lucifer’s deal would
have been the most blessed relief from that place we were imprisoned. I would
have done that. I would have walked right through the gates of hell and begged
to be let in if I’d just been given the chance. But we never were.” He
crumpled, energy withering from his body. “Damnit. Please? I just want to know
if they’re all right. Look, we’ve got some other non-possessed here, kids; and
there’s more in the town. We look after them. We’re not total monsters.”
Carmitha looked round the
courtyard, almost embarrassed. “Are you letting Grant know all this?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. I promise.”
“Okay. I don’t know exactly where
they are. I left the pair of them at Bytham, they took the aeroambulance. I saw
it fly away.”
“Aeroambulance?”
“Yes. It was Genevieve’s idea. They
were trying to reach Norwich. They thought they’d be safe there.”
“Oh.” He held his horse tightly,
almost as though he would fall without its support. His face brimmed with
regret. “It would take me months to reach the city. That’s if there’s a ship
that’ll take me. Damn!”
She put a tentative hand on his
arm. “Sorry I’m not much more help. But that Louise is one tough girl. If
anyone is going to avoid possession, it’ll be her.”
He stared at her incredulously,
then gave a bitter laugh. “My Louise? Tough? She can’t even sugar her own grapefruit
for breakfast. God, what a stupid bloody way to bring up children. Why did you
do that? Why don’t you let them see the world for what it really is? Because
they’re born to be ladies, our society protects them. I protect them, as every
father should. I give them everything that’s right and decent in the world.
Your society is shit, worthless, irrelevant; it doesn’t even qualify as
a society; you’re playing out a medieval pageant, not living. Being pathetic
and insignificant isn’t a way of defending yourself and everyone you love.
People have to face up to what’s outside their own horizon. Nothing was
outside, not until you demon freaks came and ruined the universe. We have lived
here for centuries and made ourselves a good respectable home. And you scum
ruined that. Ruined! You stole it from us, and now you’re trying to rebuild
everything you say you hate. You’re not even bloody savages, you’re below that.
No wonder hell didn’t want you.”
“Hey!” Carmitha shook him hard.
“Hey, snap out of it.”
“Don’t touch me!” he screamed. His whole body was trembling
violently. “Oh God.” He sank to his knees, hands pressed into his face. A
wretched voice burbled out between clawed fingers. “I’m him, I’m him. There’s
no difference any more. This isn’t what we wanted. Don’t you understand? This
isn’t how life’s supposed to be here. This was meant to be paradise.”
“No such place.” She rubbed the top
of his spine, trying to ease some of the badly knotted muscles. “You’ve just
got to make the best of it. Like everybody else.”
His head bobbed weakly in what
Carmitha supposed was acknowledgement. She decided this probably wasn’t the
best time to tell him his dear precious Louise was pregnant.
Chapter 10
Mortonridge was bleeding away into
the ocean, a prolonged and arduous death. It was as though all the pain, the
torment, the misery from a conflict that could never be anything other than
excruciatingly bitter had manifested itself as mud. Slimy, insidious,
limitless, it rotted the resolve of both sides in the same way it ravaged their
physical environment. The peninsula’s living skin of topsoil had torn along the
spine of the central mountain range to slither relentlessly down-slope into the
coastal shallows. All the rich black loam built up over millennia as the
rainforests regenerated themselves upon the decayed trunks of timelost past
generations was sluiced away within two days by the unnatural rain. Reduced to
supersaturated sludge, the precious upper few metres containing abundant
nitrates, bacteria, and aboriginal earthworm-analogues had become an
unstoppable landslip. Hill-sized moraines of mire were pushed along valleys,
bulldozed by the intolerable pressure exerted by cubic kilometres of more ooze
behind.
The mud tides scoured every valley,
incline, and hollow; exposing the denser substrata. A compacted mix of gravel
and clay, as sterile as asteroid regolith. There were no seeds or spores or
eggs hidden tenaciously in its clefts to sprout anew. And precious few
nutrients to succour and support them even if there had been.
Ralph used the SD sensors to watch
the thick black stain expanding out across the sea. The mouth of the Juliffe
had produced a similar discoloration in Lalonde’s sea, he remembered. But that
was just one small blemish. This was an ecological blight unmatched since the
worst of Earth’s dystopic Twenty-first Century. Marine creatures were dying in
the plague of unnatural dark waters, choking beneath the uncountable corpses of
their mammalian cousins.
“She was right, you know,” he told
Cathal at the end of the Liberation’s first week.
“Who?”
“Annette Ekelund. Remember when we
met her at the Firebreak roadblock? She said we’d have to destroy the village
in order to save it. And I stood there and told her that I’d do whatever I had
to, whatever it took. Dear God.” He slumped back in the thickly cushioned chair
behind his desk. If it hadn’t been for the staff in the Ops Room on the other
side of the glass wall he would probably have put his head in his hands.
Cathal glanced into the sparkling
light of the desktop AV pillar. The unhealthy smear around Mortonridge’s coast
had grown almost as a counterbalance to the shrinking cloud. It was still
raining over the peninsula, of course, but not constantly. The cloud had almost
reverted to a natural weather formation, there were actual gaps amid the thick
dark swirls now. “Chief, they did it to themselves. You’ve got to stop
punishing yourself over this. No one who’s been de-possessed in zero-tau is
blaming you for anything. They’re gonna give you a fucking medal once this is over.”
Medals, ennoblement, promotions;
they’d all been mentioned. Ralph hadn’t paid a lot of attention. Such things
were the trappings of state, government trinkets of no practical value
whatsoever. Saving people was what really counted; everything else was just an
acknowledgement, a method of reinforcing memory. He wasn’t entirely sure he
wanted that. Mortonridge would never recover, would never grow back to what it
was. Maybe that was the best memorial, a decimated land was something that
could never be overlooked and ignored by future generations. A truth that
remained unsusceptible to the historical revisionists. The Liberation, he had
decided some while ago, wasn’t a victory over Ekelund, at best he’d scored a
few points off her. She’d be back for the next match.
Acacia rapped lightly on the open
door, and walked in, followed by Janne Palmer. Ralph waved at them to sit, and
datavised a codelock at the door. The sensenviron bubble room closed about
them. Princess Kirsten and Admiral Farquar were waiting around the oval table
for the daily progress review. Mortonridge itself formed a three dimensional
relief map on the tabletop, small blinking symbols sketching in the state of
the campaign. The number of purple triangles, indicating clusters of possessed,
had increased dramatically over the last ten days as the cloud attenuated
allowing the SD sensors to scan the ground. Invading forces were green
hexagons, an unbroken line mimicking the coastline, sixty-five kilometres
inland.
Admiral Farquar leant forwards, studying
the situation with a despondent expression. “Less than ten kilometres a day,”
he said sombrely. “I’d hoped we would be a little further along by now.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d
tried walking through that devilsome mud,” Acacia said. “The serjeants are
making excellent progress.”
“It wasn’t a criticism,” the
admiral said hastily. “Given the circumstances, they’ve performed marvellously.
I simply wish we could have one piece of luck on our side, everything about
these conditions seems to swing in Ekelund’s favour.”
“It’s starting to swing back,”
Cathal said. “The rain and the mud have triggered just about every booby trap
they left in wait for us. And we’ve got their locations locked down now. They
can’t escape.”
“I can see the actual campaign is
advancing well on the ground,” Princess Kirsten said. “I have no complaint
about the way you’re handling that. However, I do have a problem with the
number of casualties we’re incurring, on both sides.”
The relevant figures stood in gold
columns at the top of the table. Ralph had done his best to ignore them. Not
that he could forget. “The suicide rate among the possessed is increasing at an
alarming rate,” he conceded. “Today saw it reaching eight per cent; and there’s
very little we can do about it. They’re doing it quite deliberately. It’s an
inhibiting tactic. After all, what have they got to lose? The whole purpose of
the campaign is to free the bodies they’ve captured; if they can deny us that
opportunity then they will weaken our resolve, both on the ground and in the
political arena.”
“If that’s their reasoning, then
they’re badly mistaken,” Princess Kirsten said. “One of the main reasons for
the Kingdom’s strength is because my family can take tough decisions when the
need arises. This Liberation continues until the serjeants meet up on
Mortonridge’s central mountain. However, I would like some options on how to
reduce casualties.”
“There’s only one,” Ralph said.
“And it’s by no means perfect. We slow the front line’s advance and use the
time to concentrate our forces around the possessed. At the moment we’re using
almost the minimum number of serjeants against each nest of them we encounter.
That means the serjeants have to use a lot of gunfire to subdue them. When the
possessed realize they’ve lost, they stop resisting the bullets. Bang, we lose.
Another of our people dies, and the lost souls in the beyond have another
recruit.”
“If we increase the number of
serjeants for each encounter, what sort of reduction do you expect us to be
looking at?”
“At the moment, we try to have at
least thirty per cent more serjeants than possessed. If we could reach double,
then we think we can hold the suicide rate down to a maximum of fifteen per
cent each time.”
“Of course, the ratio will improve
naturally as the length of the front line contracts and the number of possessed
decreases,” Admiral Farquar said. “It’s just that right now we’re about at
maximum stretch. The serjeants haven’t got far enough inland to decrease the
length of the front line appreciably, yet they’re encountering a lot of
possessed.”
“That entire situation is going to
change over the next three to four days,” Cathal said. “Almost all the
possessed are on the move. They’re retreating from the front line as fast as
they can wade. The advance is going to speed up considerably, so the length
will reduce anyway.”
“They’re running for now,” Janne
Palmer said. “But there’s a lot of heavy concentrations of them fifty
kilometres in from the front line. If they’ve got any sense, they’ll regroup.”
“The more of them there are, the
stronger they get, and the more difficult they’ll be to subdue. Especially in
light of the suicides,” Acacia said. “I’ve had the AI drawing up an SD strike
pattern to halt their movements. I don’t think they should be allowed to retreat
any further. We’re worried that we’ll wind up with a solid core at the centre
which will be just about impossible to crack without large scale casualties.”
“I really don’t want to wait three
to four days for an improvement,” Princess Kirsten said. “Ralph, what do you
think?”
“Denying them the ability to
congregate is my primary concern, ma’am. They’ve already got a lot of people in
Schallton, Ketton, and Cauley, I do not want to see that increase any further.
But if we prevent them from moving from their present locations, and then
switch our tactics to a slower advance, you’re looking at almost doubling the
estimated time of the campaign.”
“But with significantly reduced
casualties?” the Princess asked.
Ralph looked over at Acacia. “Only
among the people who’ve been possessed. Trying to subdue them with a larger
number of serjeants using less firepower will significantly increase the risk
to the serjeants.”
“We volunteered for this knowing
the risks would be great,” Acacia said. “And we are prepared for that. However,
I feel I should tell you that a significant number of serjeants are suffering
from what I can only describe as low morale. It’s not something we were
expecting, the animating personalities were supposed to be fairly simple
thought routines with basic personalities. It would appear they are evolving
into quite high-order mentalities. Unfortunately, they lack the kind of
sophistication which would allow them to appreciate their full Edenist
heritage. Normally we can mitigate one person’s burden by sharing and
sympathising. However, here the number of suffering is far in excess of the
rest of us, which actually places quite a strain on us. We haven’t known a
scale of suffering like this since Jantrit.”
“You mean they’re becoming real
people?” Janne Palmer asked.
“Not yet. Nor do we believe they
ever will do. Ultimately they are limited by the capacity of the serjeant
processor array, after all. What I am telling you is that they’re progressing
slightly beyond simplistic bitek servitors. Do not expect machine levels of
efficiency in future. There are human factors involved which will now need to
be taken into account.”
“Such as?” the Princess asked.
“They will probably need time to
recuperate between assaults. Duties will have to be rotated between platoons.
I’m sorry,” she said to Ralph. “It adds considerable complications to the
planning. Especially if you want them to prevent the possessed suicides.”
“I’m sure the AI can cope,” he
said.
“It looks like the campaign is
going to take a lot longer whatever option we go for,” Admiral Farquar said.
“That does have one small benefit,”
Janne Palmer said.
“I’d love to hear it,” the Princess
told her.
“Reducing the flow of de-possessed
is going to alleviate some of the pressure on our medical facilities.”
Back in her private office, Kirsten
shuddered, a movement not reproduced inside the bubble room. That, out of all
the other horrors revealed by the Liberation, had upset her the most. Cancers
were such a rarity in this day and age, that to see several bulging from a
person’s skin like inflated blisters was a profound shock. And there were very
few depossessed who didn’t suffer from them. To inflict such an incapacitating
disease for what was apparently little more than vanity was hubris at an
obscene level. That it might also be simple blind ignorance was almost as bad.
“I have requested aid from the Kingdom and our allies as a matter of urgency,”
she said. “We should start to receive shipments of medical nanonic packages
over the next few days. Every hospital and clinic on the planet is being used,
and civilian ships are being deployed to fly people out to asteroid settlements
in the system—not that they have many beds or staff, but every little bit
helps. I just wish we could ferry people out-system, but at the moment I can’t
break the quarantine for that. In any event, my Foreign Minister has cautioned
me that there would be some reservation from other star systems about accepting
our medical cases. They’re worried about infiltration by the possessed, and I
can’t say I blame them.”
“Capone’s new lunacy doesn’t help
ease the paranoia,” Admiral Farquar grunted. “Damn that bastard.”
“So you would prefer the slow down
scenario?” Kirsten asked.
“Very much so, ma’am,” Janne Palmer
said. “It’s not just a question of providing medical support, there are
transport bottlenecks as well. It’s improved slightly now we can land aircraft
at the coastal ports, but we have to get the de-possessed there first, and they
need care which my occupation forces really aren’t geared up to provide.”
“General Hiltch, what do you
favour?”
“I don’t like slowing down the
advance, ma’am. With all respect to Admiral Farquar’s SD officers, I don’t
think they’ll be able to prevent the possessed from congregating. Slow their
movements, maybe, but halt them no. And once that happens, we’ll be in a real
mess. The kind of firepower we’re going to need to break open Ketton at the
moment is way in excess of any assault so far. We have to prevent it from
turning into a runaway situation. At the moment we’re dictating the pace of
events to them, I’d hate to abandon that level of control. It’s our one big
advantage.”
“I see. Very well, you’ll have my
decision before dawn local time.”
The sensenviron ended with its
usual abruptness, and Kirsten blinked irritably, allowing her eyes to register
the familiar office. Touching base with normality. Necessary, now. These
nightly reviews were becoming a considerable drain. Not even the Privy Council
Grand Policy Conclaves back in the Apollo Palace had quite the same impact,
they implemented policies that would take decades to mature. The Liberation was
all so now. Something the Saldanas were not accustomed to. In any modern
crisis, the major decision would be whether or not to dispatch a fleet. After
that, everything was down to the admiral in charge.
I make political decisions, not
military ones.
But the Liberation had changed all
that, blurring the distinction badly. Military decisions were political ones.
She stood up, stretching, then went
over to Allie’s bust. Her hand touched his familiar, reassuringly sober
features. “What would you do?” she murmured. Not that she would ever be accused
of making the wrong choice. Whatever it was, the family would support her. Her
equerry, Sylvester Geray, scrambled to his feet in the reception room, the
chair legs scraping loudly on the tushkwood floor as Kirsten came out of her
office.
“Tired?” she asked lightly.
“No ma’am.”
“Yes you are. I’m going back to my
quarters for a few hours. I won’t need you before seven o’clock. Have a sleep,
or at least a rest.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” He bowed deeply
as she walked out.
There were few staff about in the
private apartments, which was how she liked them. With the rooms all dark and
quiet, it was almost how she imagined a normal home would be late in the
evening. An assistant nanny and a maid were on duty, sitting up chatting
quietly in the lounge next to the children’s bedrooms. Kirsten stood outside
for a moment, listening; the nanny’s fiancé was in the Royal Navy, and hadn’t
called her for a couple of days. The maid was sympathising.
Everyone, Kirsten thought, this has
touched and involved every one of us. And the Liberation is only the beginning.
So far the Church had been noticeably unsuccessful in quelling people’s fears
of the beyond. Though Atherstone’s Bishop reported that attendance was high in
every parish on the planet, greater than Christmas Eve, he’d said almost in
indignation.
She opened the door to Edward’s
study without knocking, only realising her mistake once she was well inside.
There was a girl with him on the leather settee; his current mistress. Kirsten
remembered the security file Jannike Dermot had provided: minor nobility, her
father owned an estate and some kind of transport company. Pretty young thing,
in her early twenties, with classic delicate bonework. Tall with very long
legs; as they all invariably were with Edward. She stared at Kirsten in utter
consternation, then frantically tried to adjust her evening dress to a more
modest position. Not that she could achieve much modesty with so little fabric,
Kirsten thought in amusement. The girl’s wine glass went flying from trembling
fingers.
Kirsten frowned at that. The
antique carpet was Turkish, a beautiful red and blue weave; she’d given it to
Edward as a birthday present fifteen years ago.
“Ma’am,” the girl squeaked. “I . .
. We . . .”
Kirsten merely gave her a mildly
enquiring glance.
“Come along, my dear,” Edward said
calmly. He took her arm and escorted her to the door. “Affairs of state. I’ll
call you in the morning.” She managed a strangled whimper in response. A
butler, responding to Edward’s datavise, appeared and gestured politely to the
by-now thoroughly frightened and bewildered girl. Edward shut the study door
behind her, and sighed.
Kirsten started laughing, then put
her hand over her mouth. “Oh Edward, I’m sorry. I should have let you know I
was coming.”
He spread his hands wide. “C’est
la vie.”
“Poor thing looked terrified.” She
knelt down and picked the wine glass up, dabbing at the carpet. “Look what she
did. I’d better get a valet mechanoid, or it’ll stain.” She datavised the
study’s processor.
“It’s a rather good Chablis,
actually.” He picked the bottle out of its walnut cooler jacket. “Shame to
waste it, would you like some?”
“Lovely, thank you. It has been a
very bad day at the office.”
“Ah.” He went over to the cabinet
and brought her a fresh glass.
Kirsten sniffed at the bouquet
after he’d poured. “She was jolly gorgeous. Slightly young, though. Wicked of
you.” She brushed at imaginary dust on his lapel. “Then again, I can see why
she’s so obliging. You always did look rather splendid in uniform.”
Edward glanced down at his Royal
Navy tunic. There were no Royal crests, just three discreet medal
ribbons—earned long ago. “I’m just doing my bit. Though they are all
depressingly young at the base. I think they regard me as some kind of mascot.”
“Oh poor Edward, the indignity. But
not to worry, Zandra and Emmeline are terribly impressed.”
He sat on the leather settee and
patted the cushion. “Come on, sit down and tell me what’s wrong.”
“Thank you.” She stepped round the
small mechanoid that was sniffing at the wine stain, and sat beside him,
welcoming his arm around her shoulders. The secret of a successful royal
marriage: don’t have secrets. They were both intelligent people, which had
allowed them to work out the grounds of a sustainable domestic arrangement a
long time ago. In public and in private he was the perfect companion, a friend
and confidant. All she required was loyalty, which he supplied admirably. In
return he was free to gather whatever perks his position presented—and it
wasn’t just girls; he was an avid art collector and bon viveur. They even still
slept together occasionally.
“The Liberation is not progressing
as well as could be,” he said. “That much is obvious. And the net is
overloading with speculation.”
Kirsten sipped some of the chablis.
“Progress is the key word, yes.” She told him about the decision she was faced
with.
After she’d finished, he poured
some more wine for himself before answering. “The serjeants developing advanced
personalities? Humm. How intriguing. I wonder if they’ll refuse to go back into
their habitat multiplicities when the campaign is over.”
“I have no idea; Acacia never
ventured an opinion. And to be honest, that part is not my problem.”
“It might be if they all start
applying for citizenship afterwards.”
“Oh God.” She snuggled up closer.
“No. I’m not even going to consider that right now.”
“Wise lady. You want my opinion?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“You can’t ignore the serjeant
situation. We are utterly dependent on them to liberate Mortonridge, and
there’s a hell of a way to go yet.”
“A hundred and eighty thousand
people de-possessed, seventeen thousand dead, so far; that leaves us with
one-point-eight-million left to save.”
“Exactly. And we’re about to enter
the phase which will see the heaviest fighting. If they keep advancing at their
current rate, the front line will reach the first areas where the possessed are
concentrated the day after tomorrow. If you slow them now, the serjeants are
going to start taking heavy losses just before that. Not good. I’d say, keep
things as they are until the front line hits those concentrations, then shift
to General Hiltch’s outnumbering tactics.”
“That’s a very logical solution.”
She stared at the wine. “If only all I had to consider were numbers. But
they’re depending on me, Edward.”
“Who?”
“The people who’ve been possessed.
Even locked away in their own bodies, they know the Liberation is coming now; a
practical salvation from this obscenity. They have faith in me, they trust me
to deliver them from this evil. And I have a duty to them. That duty is one of
the few true burdens placed on the family by our people. Now I know there is a
way of reducing the number of my subjects killed, I cannot in all conscience
ignore it for tactical convenience. That would be a betrayal of trust, not to
mention an abdication of duty.”
“The two impossibles for a
Saldana.”
“Yes. We have had it easy for an
awful long time, haven’t we?”
“Shall we say: moderately
difficult.”
“Yet if I want to reduce the death
rate, I’m going to have to ask the Edenists to take it on the chin for us. You
know what bothers me most about that? People will expect it. I’m a Saldana,
they’re Edenists. What could be simpler?”
“The serjeants aren’t quite
Edenists.”
“We don’t know what the hell they
are, not any more. Acacia was hedging her bets very thoroughly. If they’re
worried enough to bring the problem to me, then it has to be a substantial
factor. One I cannot discount from the humanist equation. Damn it, they were
supposed to be automatons.”
“The Liberation is a very rushed
venture. I’m sure if Jupiter’s geneticists had been given enough time to design
a dedicated soldier construct then this would never have arisen. But we had to
borrow from the Lord of Ruin. Look, General Hiltch was given overall command of
the Liberation. Let him make the decision, it’s what he’s paid for.”
“Get thee behind me,” she muttered.
“No, Edward, not this time. I’m the one who insisted on reducing the
fatalities. It is my responsibility.”
“You’ll be setting a precedent.”
“Hardly one that’s likely to be
repeated. All of us are sailing into new, and very stormy territory; that
requires proper leadership. If I cannot provide that now, then the family will
ultimately have failed. We have spent four hundred years engineering ourselves
into this position of statesmanship, and I will not duck the issue when it
really counts. It stinks of cowardice, and that is one thing I will never allow
the Saldanas to stand accused of.”
He kissed her on the side of her
head. “Well you know you have my support. If I could make one final
observation. The personalities in the serjeants are all volunteers. They came
here knowing what their probable fate would be. That purpose remains at their
core. In that, they are like every pre-Twenty-first Century army; reluctant,
frightened even, but committed. So give them the time they need to gather their
nerve and resolution, and then use them for the purpose for which they were
created: saving genuine human lives. If they are truly capable of emotion, then
their only hope of gaining satisfaction will come from achieving that.”
Ralph was eating a cold snack in
Fort Forward’s command complex canteen when he received the datavise.
“Slow the assault,” Princess
Kirsten told him. “I want that suicide figure reduced as low as you can
practically achieve.”
“Yes ma’am. I’ll see to it. And
thank you.”
“This is what you wanted?”
“We’re not here to recapture land,
ma’am. The Liberation is about people.”
“I know that. I hope Acacia will
forgive us.”
“I’m sure she will, ma’am. The
Edenists understand us pretty well.”
“Good. Because I also want the
serjeant platoons given as much breathing space between assaults as they
require.”
“That will reduce the rate of
advance even further.”
“I know, but it can’t be helped.
Don’t worry about political and technical support, General, I’ll ensure you get
that right to the bitter end.”
“Yes ma’am.” The datavise ended. He
looked round at the senior staff eating with him, and gave a slow smile. “We
got it.”
High above the air, cold
technological eyes stared downwards, unblinking. Their multi-spectrum vision
could penetrate clean through Mortonridge’s thinning strands of puffy white
cloud to reveal the small group of warm figures trekking across the mud. But
that was where the observation failed. Objects around them were perfectly
clear, the dendritic tangle of roots flaring from fallen trees, a pulverised
four-wheel-drive rover almost devoured by the blue-grey mud, even the shape of
large stones ploughed up and rolled along by thick runnels of sludge. In
contrast, the figures were hazed by shimmering air; infrared blobs no more
substantial than candle flames. No matter which combination of discrimination
filters it applied to the sensor image, the AI was unable to determine their
exact number. Best estimate, taken from the width of the distortion and
measuring the thermal imprint of the disturbed mud they left behind, was
between four and nine.
Stephanie could feel the necklace
of prying satellites as they slid relentlessly along their arc from horizon to
horizon. Not so much their physical existence; that kind of knowledge had
vanished along with the cloud and the possessed’s mental unity. But their
avaricious intent was forever there, intruding upon the world’s intrinsic
harmonies. It acted as a reminder for her to keep her guard up. The others were
the same. Messing with the sight on a level which equated to waving a hand at
persistent flies. Not that satellites were their problem. A far larger note of
discord resonated from the serjeants, now just a couple of miles away. And
coming closer, always closer. Machine-like in their determination.
At first Stephanie had ignored
them, employing a kind of bravado that was almost entirely alien to her.
Everybody had, once they’d reached the shelter (and dryness!) of the
barn. The building didn’t amount to much, set on a gentle hillock, with a low
wall of stone acting as a base for composite panelling walls and a shallow roof.
They’d stumbled across it five horrendous hours after setting out from the end
of the valley. McPhee claimed that proved they were following the road. By
then, nobody was arguing with him. In fact, nobody was speaking at all. Their
limbs were trembling from exertion, not even reinforcing them with energistic
strength helped much. They’d long since discovered such augmentation had to be
paid for by the body in the long run.
The barn had come pretty much at
the end of their endurance. There’d been no discussion about using it. As soon
as they saw its dark, bleak outline through the pounding rain they’d trudged
grimly towards it. Inside there was little respite from the weather at first.
The wind had torn innumerable panels off the carbotanium frame, and the
concrete floor was lost beneath a foot of mud. That didn’t matter, in their
state, it was pure salvation.
Their energistic power renovated
it. Mud flowed up the walls, sealing over the lost panels and turning to stone.
The rain was repelled, and the howl of the wind muted. Relief united them
again, banishing the misery of the retreat from the valley. It was an emotion
which produced an overreaction of confidence and defiance. Now, they found it
possible to ignore the occasional mind-scream of anguish as another soul was
wrenched from its possessed body by the peril of zero-tau. They cooperated
gamely in searching round outside for food, adopting a campfire jollity as they
cleaned and cooked the dead fish and mud-smeared vegetables.
Then the rain eased off, and the
serjeants crunched forwards remorselessly. Food became very scarce. A week
after the Liberation began, they left the barn, tramping along the melted
contour line which McPhee still insisted was the road. Even living through the
deluge under a flimsy roof hadn’t prepared them for the scale of devastation
wrought by the water. Valleys were completely impassable. Huge rivers of mud
slithered along, murmuring and burbling incessantly as they sucked down and
devoured anything that protruded into their course.
Progress was slow, even though
they’d now fashioned themselves sturdy hiking attire (even Tina wore strong
leather boots). Two days spent trying to navigate through the buckled, decrepit
landscape. They kept to the high ground, where swathes of dark-green aboriginal
grass were the only relief from the overlapping shades of brown. Even they were
sliced by deep flash gorges where the water had found a weak seam of soil.
There was no map, and no recognizable features to apply one against. So many
promising ridges ended in sharp dips down into the mud, forcing them to
backtrack, losing hours. But they always knew which way to travel. It was
simple: away from the serjeants. It was also becoming very difficult to stay
ahead. The front line seemed to move at a constant pace, unfazed by the valleys
and impossible terrain, while Stephanie and her group spent their whole time
zigzagging about. What had begun forty-eight hours ago as a nine mile gap was
down to about two, and closing steadily.
“Oh, hey, you cats,” Cochrane
called. “You like want the good news or the bad news first?” He had taken point
duty, striding out ahead of the others. Now he stood atop a dune of battered
reeds, looking down the other side in excitement.
“The bad,” Stephanie said
automatically.
“The legion of the black hats is
speeding up, and there’s like this stupendously huge amount of them.”
“What’s the good?” Tina squealed.
“They’re speeding up because
there’s like a road down here. A real one, with tarmac and stuff.”
The others didn’t exactly increase
their pace to reach the bedraggled hippie, but there was a certain eagerness in
their stride that’d been missing for some time. They clambered up the incline
of the dune, and halted level with him.
“What’s there?” Moyo asked. His
face was perfect, the scars and blisters gone; eyes solid and bright. He was
even able to smile again, doing so frequently during the last few days they’d
spent in the barn. That he could smile, yet still refuse to let them see what
lay underneath the illusory eyeballs worried Stephanie enormously. A bad form
of denial. He was acting the role of himself; and it was a very thin
performance.
“It’s a valley,” she told him.
He groaned. “Oh hell, not again.”
“No, this is different.”
The dune was actually the top of a
steepish slope which swept down several hundred yards to the floor of Catmos
Vale, a valley that was at least twenty miles wide. Drizzle and mist made the
far side difficult to see. The floor below was a broad flat expanse whose size
had actually managed to defeat the massive discharges of mud. Its width had
absorbed the surges that coursed out of the narrower ravines along either side;
spreading them wide and robbing them of their destructive power. The wide,
boggy river channel which meandered along the centre had siphoned the bulk of
the tide away, without giving it a chance to amass in dangerously unstable
colloidal waves.
Vast low-lying sections of the
floor had turned directly into quagmire from the rain and overspill. Entire
forests had subsided, their trunks keeling over to lean against each other. Now
they were slowly sinking deeper and deeper as the rapidly expanding subsurface
water level gnawed away at the stability of the loam. Watched over the period
of a day or two, it was almost as if they were melting away.
Small hillocks and knolls formed a
vast archipelago of olive-green islands amid the ochre sea. Hundreds of
distressed and emaciated aboriginal animals scurried about over each of them,
herds of kolfrans (a deer-analogue) and packs of the small canine ferrangs were
trampling the surviving blades of grass into a sticky pulp. Birds scuttled
among them, their feathers too slick with mud for them to fly.
Many of the islands just below the
foot of the slope had sections of road threaded across them. The eye could
stitch them together into a single strand leading along the valley. It led
towards a small town, just visible through the drizzle. Most of it had been
built on raised land, leaving its buildings clear of the mud; as if the entire
valley had become its moat. There was a church near the centre, its classic
grey stone spire standing defiantly proud. Some kind of scarlet symbols had
been painted around the middle.
“That’s got to be Ketton,” Franklin
said. “Can you sense them?”
“Yes,” Stephanie said
uncomfortably. “There’s a lot of us down there.” It would explain the condition
of the buildings. There wasn’t a tile missing from the neat houses, no sign of
damage. Even the little park was devoid of puddles.
“I guess that’s why these guys are
like so anxious to reach it.” Cochrane jerked a thumb back down the valley.
It was the first time they’d
actually seen the Liberation army. Twenty jeeps formed a convoy along the road.
Whenever the carbon-concrete surface left the islands to dip under the mud,
they slowed slightly, cautiously testing the way. The mud couldn’t have been
very deep or thick, barely coming over the wheels. A V-shaped phalanx of
serjeants followed on behind the jeeps, big dark figures lumbering along quite
quickly considering none of them was on the road. On one side of the
carbon-concrete strip, their line stretched out almost to the central river of
mud; on the other it extended up the side of Catmos Vale’s wall. A second train
of vehicles, larger than the jeeps, was turning into the valley several miles
behind the front line.
“Ho-lee shit,” Franklin groaned.
“We can’t make that sort of speed, not over this terrain.”
McPhee was studying the rugged land
behind them. “I cannot see them up here.”
“They’ll be there,” Rana said.
“They’re on the other side of the river as well, look. That line is kept level.
There’s no break in it. They’re scooping us up like horse shit.”
“If we stay up here we’ll be nailed
before sunset.”
“If we go down, we can keep ahead
of them on the road,” Stephanie said. “But we’ll have to go through the town. I
have a bad feeling about that. The possessed there know the serjeants are
coming, yet they’re staying put. And there’s a lot of them.”
“They’re going to make a stand,”
Moyo said.
Stephanie glanced back at the ominous
line moving towards them. “They’ll lose,” she said, morosely. “Nothing can
resist that.”
“We’ve no food left,” McPhee said.
Cochrane used an index finger to
prod his purple sunglasses up along the bridge of his nose. “Plenty of water,
though, man.”
“There’s nothing to eat up here,”
Rana said. “We have to go down.”
“The town will hold them off for a
while at least,” Stephanie said. She resisted glancing at Moyo, though he was
now her principal concern. “We could use the time to take a break, rest up.”
“Then what?” Moyo grunted.
“Then we move on. We keep ahead of
them.”
“Why bother?”
“Don’t,” she said softly. “We try
and live life as we always wanted to, remember? Well I don’t want to live like
this; and there might be something different up ahead, because there certainly
isn’t anything behind. As long as we keep going, there’s hope.”
His face compressed to a
melancholic expression. He held one arm out, moving his hand round to try and
find her. She gripped his fingers tightly, and he hugged her against him.
“Sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she murmured.
“Hey, you know what? The way we’re heading, it takes us right up to the central
mountain range. You can show me what mountain gliding is like.”
Moyo laughed gruffly, his shoulders
trembling. “Look, guys, I hate to fuck up my karma any more by breaking up your
major love-in scene here, but we have to decide where we’re like going. Like now.
This is one army that doesn’t take time out, you dig?”
“It has to be down to Ketton,”
Stephanie said briskly. She eyed the long slope below. It would be slippery,
but with their energistic power they ought to cope. “We can get there ahead of
the army.”
“Only just ahead,” Franklin said.
“We’ll be trapped in the town. If we stay up here, we can still keep ahead of
them.”
“Not by much,” McPhee said.
“And you’ll not have time to gather
any food,” Rana said. “I don’t know about you, but I know I can’t keep this
pace up for much longer without eating a full meal. We must consider the
practicalities of the situation. My calorie intake has been very low over the
last couple of days.”
“It’s a permanent downer,” Cochrane
said. “Your practical problem is that you don’t eat properly anyway.”
She glared at him. “I really hope
you aren’t going to suggest I should eat dead flesh.”
“Oh brother,” he raised his arms
heavenwards. “Here we go again. Check it out: no meat, no smoking, no gambling,
no sex, no loud music, no bright lights, no dancing, no fucking fun.”
“I’m going down to Ketton,”
Stephanie said, overriding the pair of them. She started to walk down the
slope, her hand holding on to Moyo’s fingers. “If anyone else wants to come,
you’d better do it now.”
“I’m with you,” Moyo said. He moved
his feet along cautiously. Rana shrugged lightly, and started to follow. A
reefer slid up out of Cochrane’s fist and the tip ignited. He stuck it in his
mouth and went after Rana.
“Sod it!” Franklin said wretchedly.
“All right. But we’re giving up by going down there. There’ll be no way out of
that town.”
“You can’t keep ahead of them up
here,” McPhee said. “Look at the bastards. It’s like they can walk on mud.”
“All right, all right.”
Tina gave Rana a desperate look.
“Darling, those things will simply demolish the town. And we’ll be in
it.”
“Maybe. Who knows? The military
always makes ludicrously extravagant propaganda claims about their macho
prowess. Reality invariably lags behind.”
“Yo, Tina.” Cochrane proffered the
reefer. “Come with us, babe. You and me, we could like have our last night on
this world together. Fucking-A way to go, huh?”
Tina shuddered at the grinning
hippie. “I’d rather be captured by those beastly things.”
“That’s a no, is it?”
“No it is not. I don’t want us to
split up. You’re my friends.”
Stephanie had turned to watch the
little scene. “Tina, make up your mind.” She started off down the slope again,
leading Moyo.
“Oh heavens,” Tina said.
“You simply never give me time to decide anything. It’s so unfair.”
“Bye, doll,” Cochrane said.
“Don’t go so fast. I can’t keep
up.”
Stephanie made a deliberate effort
to expel the woman’s whining from her mind. Concentrating solely on navigating
her way down the slope. She had to take quite a shallow angle, constantly
reinforcing the slippery soil below her boot soles with energistic power. Even
then her progress was marked by long skid marks.
“I can sense a lot of possessed
below us,” Moyo said when they were a hundred yards above the quagmires of the
valley floor.
“Where?” Stephanie asked without
thinking. She hadn’t been paying attention to what waited below, traversing the
tricky slope required her complete attention. Now she looked up, she could see
the convoy of jeeps was barely a mile behind them. The sight gave her heart a
cold squeeze.
“Not far.” His free hand pointed
out across the valley. “Over there.”
Stephanie couldn’t see anyone. But
now she scrutinized the mental whispers around the edge of her perception she
was aware of rising anticipation in many minds.
“Hey, Moyo, man, good call.”
Cochrane was scanning the valley. “Those cats are like low in the mud. I
can’t see anyone.”
“Come on,” Stephanie said. “Lets
find out what’s happening.”
The last section of the slope
started to flatten out, allowing them to increase their speed. Stephanie was
tempted just to keep to the undulating foothills that ran along the valley
wall. They could certainly make good time on the reasonably dry ground. Except
it curved gradually away from Ketton. One of the visible sections of road was
about three hundred yards away across a perfectly flat expanse of slough.
Stephanie stood on the edge, mud oozing round her ankles. Her boots kept her
feet dry, but as a precaution she made the leather creep up her shins towards
her knees. The silence down here was unnerving, it was as if the mud had some
kind of anti-sound property. “I don’t think it’s very deep,” she ventured.
“One way to find out,” McPhee said
vigorously. He struck out for the road with confident strides. Mud sloshed away
slowly from his legs as he ploughed across. “Come on, ye great bunch of
woofters. It’s not like we can drown.” Cochrane and Rana gave each other
a reluctant glance, then started in.
“It’s going to be all right,”
Stephanie said. She kept a tight grip on Moyo’s hand, and they waded in
together. Tina held on to Franklin’s hand as they went in. The action drew a
lecherous grin from Cochrane.
Stephanie was right about it not
being particularly deep, but the mud was soon up to her knees. After a couple
of attempts to clear a trench through it with her energistic power, she gave
up. The mud responded so sluggishly it would have taken at least an hour for
them to reach the road by such a method. This had to be crossed the hard way,
and the level of exertion needed to keep going placed a terrible strain on
already fatigued muscles. All of them diverted their energistic power to force
recalcitrant legs forward against mud that seemed to exert an equal pressure
against them. Their efforts were given an extra edge by the onward march of the
army. They were travelling almost at right angles to the front line, losing
precious separation distance with every minute.
Stephanie kept telling herself that
as soon as they made the road they’d be able to build it back up again. But
even using the road, there was a lot of mud to surmount before Ketton, and her
body was already approaching its physical limit. She could hear Cochrane
wheezing loudly, a sound which carried a long way over the quagmire.
“They’re right ahead of us now,”
Moyo said. He’d opened the front of his oilskin jacket in an attempt to cool
himself. The drizzle was seeping through his energistic barrier, combining with
sweat to soak his shirt. “Two of them. And they’re not happy with us.”
Stephanie glanced up, trying to
distinguish the source of the animus thoughts. The slight rise carrying the
road was seventy yards in front. Badly mangled grass and a few straggly bushes
gleaming dully in the grizzly skin of rainwater. Dozens of ferrangs were
pelting about excitedly, running together in packs of six or seven. Their
cohesive motion reminded her of fish schools, every movement enacted in unison.
“I can’t see anyone,” McPhee
grunted. “Hey, shitheads,” he shouted. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Oh groovy,” Cochrane said. “Way to
go, dude. That’ll make them real friendly. I mean it’s not like we’re in
cosmically deep shit at this point and need help, or anything.”
Tina let out a miserable gasp as
she slipped. “I hate this fucking mud!”
“You tell it as it is, babe.”
Franklin helped her up, and the two of them leant against each other as they
forced their way onwards. Stephanie glanced back down the length of Catmos
Vale, and sucked in a fast breath. The jeeps were barely half a mile away.
Fifty yards to solid ground.
“We’re not going to make it.”
“What?” Moyo asked.
“We’re not going to make it.” She
was panting heavily now. Not bothering with clothes, appearance, any energistic
frippery—even the satellites would be able to see her now. She didn’t care. All
that mattered was maintaining the integrity of her boots and shoving
near-useless legs one in front of the other. Muscle spasms were shaking her calves
and thighs.
Rana stumbled, falling to her
knees. Mud squelched obscenely as it closed over her legs. She blew heavily,
her face radiant, glistening with sweat. Cochrane sloshed over and put his arm
under her shoulders, dragging her up. The glutinous mud was reluctant to let
go. “Hey, man, give me a hand here,” he yelled at the land ahead. “Come on, you
guys, quit fooling around. This is like bigtime serious.”
The ferrang packs dodged round each
other as they wheeled about aimlessly. Whoever the people were up ahead, they
chose not to reveal themselves. A slight single-tone mechanical whine was
becoming audible. The jeep engines.
“Get me to her,” Moyo hissed.
He and Stephanie staggered over to
the faltering couple. McPhee had come to a halt twenty yards from the land,
staring back at them. “Keep going,” Stephanie yelled at him. “Go on. Somebody’s
got to get out of this.”
With her help, Moyo took some of
Rana’s weight from Cochrane. They slung her between them, and kicked their way
forward again. “My legs,” Rana groaned miserably. “I can’t keep them going.
They’re like fire. God damn it, this shouldn’t happen, I can move mountains
with my mind.”
“No matter,” Cochrane said through
gritted teeth. “We got you now, sister.” The three of them stumbled forwards.
McPhee had reached the land, standing just above the mud to urge them on. Tina
and Franklin were almost there. The pair of them were plainly exhausted. Only
the big Scot seemed to have any stamina left.
Stephanie brought up the rear. The
jeeps were seven hundred yards away now, on a stretch of dry road. Picking up
speed. “Shit,” she whispered. “Oh shit oh shit.” Even if McPhee started
sprinting right now, he’d never make it to Ketton; they’d overhaul him easily.
Perhaps if the rest of them started flinging white fire at the serjeants . . .
What a ridiculous thought, she told herself. And I don’t have any to spare. I
must focus on channelling my energistic power.
Ten yards to go.
I won’t put up a fight. It wouldn’t
be the slightest good, and it might damage the body. I owe her that much.
At the heart of her mind she could
feel the captive host stirring in anticipation. All four of them staggered up
out of the mud, and simply collapsed on the soggy ground next to Tina and
Franklin. And she still couldn’t see the owners of the two minds impinging so
strongly on her perception.
“Stephanie Ash,” a woman’s voice
said from the empty air. “I see your timing is as fucking atrocious as always.”
“Any second now,” an unseen man
announced.
Both of their minds were hot with eagerness.
Somewhere nearby, the slow-motion wheeze of bagpipes started up, swirling to a
level piercing tone. Stephanie raised her head. Halfway between her and the
jeeps, a lone Scottish piper stood facing the vehicles. Dressed in a kilt of
Douglas tartan, black leather boots shining, he seemed totally oblivious of the
mortal foe riding towards him. His fingers moved sedately as he played “Amazing
Grace.” One of the serjeants in the front vehicle was standing up to get a
clear look in over the mud-caked windscreen.
“I like it,” McPhee hooted.
“Our call to arms,” the concealed
man replied. “It has a certain je ne sais quoi, no?”
Stephanie glanced round urgently,
trying to pin down the voice. “Call to arms?”
An explosion sounded in the
distance, rumbling fast over the quagmires and stagnant pools smothering Catmos
Vale. A mine had detonated under the leading jeep, punching the front of the
chassis into the air. It crashed down, spilling serjeants across the road. Blue
white smoke billowed out from the crater in the concrete. Lumps of debris
rained down. The other jeeps braked sharply. Serjeants froze all along the
front line, crouching down.
The piper finished, and bowed
solemnly at his enemies. There was a dull, potent thock, loud enough to
quiver Stephanie’s gullet. Then another. A whole barrage started up, the
individual thumps merging into a single soundwave. Tina squealed in fright.
“Ho shit,” Cochrane growled. “Those
are mortars.”
“Well done,” said the woman. “Now
keep down.”
It was, the Liberation’s coordinating
AI acknowledged, a classic ambush, and executed perfectly. The jeeps were
confined to one of the narrowest strips of land in the valley, unable to veer
away. A sleet of mortar shells fell upon them, ranged precisely. High
explosives detonated in a near constant bombardment, pulverizing the stalled
vehicles, and shredding the serjeants riding them. Smoke, flame, and spumes of
superfine mud belched out, obliterating the carnage from view.
The AI could do absolutely nothing
to prevent it. Radar pulses from the SD sensor satellites swept the length of
the valley, but they required several seconds to acquire lock on. The first
bombardment lasted for ninety seconds, then the mortar operators switched to
airburst shells, and changed elevation. Dense black clouds burst open above the
line of serjeants as they toiled desperately through the quagmire. Broad
circles of mud erupted into cyclones of beige foam as the shrapnel slashed
down, obliterating the struggling figures.
Only then did the SD radars finish
backtracking the mortar trajectories. The AI launched its counterstrike.
Incandescent scarlet beams stabbed down in retaliation, vaporising the
possessed and their weapons in micro-seconds. Over a dozen patches of dry land
were targeted. Supersonic torrents of steam flared out from the base of each
impact. When they gusted away, the mortar sites had been reduced to shallow
craters of hardbaked clay, their centres still radiant. They chittered softly
as the drizzle fell, prizing open millions of tiny heat stress fractures.
The empty silence returned. Swirls
of smoke drifted over the valley floor, dissipating slowly to reveal the
burning wrecks of the jeeps. Spread out across the quagmire, the ruptured
bodies of the serjeants were gradually claimed by the mud’s tireless embrace.
Within an hour, there would be little left to hint at the conflict.
Stephanie found herself clawing
into the soft soil, every muscle locked solid to resist the laser pulse. It
never came. She let out a wretched sob, surrendering to the severe shaking that
claimed her limbs. Two of the ferrang packs crept towards Stephanie and her
friends. They dissolved into a pair of human figures dressed in dark grey and
green combat fatigues. Annette Ekelund and Soi Hon looked down at them with
anger and contempt.
“You idiots could have got us blown
back into the beyond by blundering about like that,” Annette said. “What if
dear Ralph considered you to be part of this operation? They would have zeroed
this patch of ground for sure.”
Cochrane lifted his head, mud
dribbling down his face to saturate his wild beard. His dead reefer was
squashed against his lips. He spat it out. “Well like fuck me gently with a
chainsaw, sister. I’m real sorry to cause you any inconvenience.”
Not even Lalonde’s oppressive climate
prepared Ralph for the awesome humidity when he stepped out of the Royal Marine
hypersonic transport plane. It prickled his skin at the same time as it
siphoned away vital body energies. Just breathing it in was exhausting.
With the last strands of cloud at
last gusting out to sea, the tropical sun could finally exert its full strength
against poor malaised Mortonridge. Thousands of square kilometres of mud began
to effervesce, thickening the air with hot cloying vapour. Looking round from
the top of the airstair, Ralph could see long ribbons of tenuous white cloud
flowing with oily tenacity around the hummocks and foothills of the broad
valley. More mist was percolating up from the highlands on either side, with
long snow-white streamers spilling out through clefts in the valley walls to
slither down the slope like slow-motion waterfalls.
He sniffed at the air. Threaded
through the blanket of clean moisture were the traces of corruption. The
peninsula’s dead biomass was starting to rot and ferment. In another few days
the stench would be formidable, and no doubt extremely unhealthy. One more
factor to consider. Though it was a long way down on the priority list.
Ralph hurried down the aluminium
stairs, with Brigadier Palmer and Cathal just behind him. For once there was no
Marine detail waiting to guard him. They’d landed outside the staging camp
established in the mouth of Catmos Vale. Hundreds of programmable silicon
igloos had sprung up in rows like giant powder-blue mushrooms, a miniature
recreation of Fort Forward. The only people here were serjeants, occupation
troops, and medical case de-possessed. Plus a handful of rover reporters; all
officially authorized Liberation correspondents, with a pair of Royal Marine
information officers shepherding them.
When he looked up the valley, the
loose smears of mist blurred into a single featureless white sheet carpeting
the floor. His enhanced retinas zoomed in on the only visible feature, the slim
greyish spire of Ketton’s church rising out of the mist. Just by looking at it,
Ralph could sense the possessed mustering in the town, a replay of the gentle
mental pressure they’d all known in the days of the red cloud.
“She’s here,” he murmured. “The
Ekelund woman. She’s in Ketton.”
“Are you sure?” Cathal asked.
“I can feel her, just like before.
In any case, she’s one of their leaders, and this bunch are well organized.”
Cathal gave the distant spire a dubious glance.
The camp’s commander, Colonel Anton
Longhurst, was waiting at the bottom of the airstairs. He saluted Ralph.
“Welcome to Catmos Vale, sir.”
“Thank you, Colonel. Looks like
you’ve got yourself an interesting command here.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll show you round.
That’s after . . .” he indicated the reporters.
“Ah yes.” Ralph kept his ire under
control. They’d probably all be using audio discrimination programs, the
bastards never missed a trick.
The information officers signalled
the all clear, and the rover reporters closed in. “General Hiltch, Hugh Rosler
with DataAxis; can you please tell us why the front line has stalled?”
Ralph gave a wan, knowing smile to
the plain-looking man in a check shirt and sleeveless jacket who’d asked the
question. An in-your-face transmission of the cordial public persona he’d
developed and deployed for the last few weeks. “Oh come on, guys. We’re
consolidating the ground we’ve already recovered. There’s a lot more to the
Liberation than just rushing forward at breakneck pace. We have to be sure, and
I mean absolutely sure, that none of the possessed has managed to sneak
through. Don’t forget, it was just one possessed who got into Mortonridge that
was responsible for this in the first place. You don’t want a repeat of that,
do you?”
“General, Tim Beard, Collins; is it
true the serjeants simply can’t hack it anymore now that the possessed have
started to put up real resistance?”
“No, it is categorically not true.
And if you show me the person who said that, I’ll give them a personal and
private demonstration of my contempt for such a remark. I flew in here today,
and you people drove in from the coast.” He waved a hand back at the
mud-covered land. “They walked the whole way from the beaches, engaged in tens
of thousands of separate combat incidents. And on the way they’ve rescued
nearly three hundred thousand people from possession. Now does that really
sound as though they can’t hack it to you, because it doesn’t to me.”
“So why isn’t the front line
continuing its advance?”
“Because we’ve reached a new stage
of the campaign. Forgive me for not broadcasting our gameplan before, but this
kind of reinforcement manoeuvre was inevitable. As you can see, we’ve reached
Ketton, which has a large number of well organized and hostile possessed in
residence—and this is just one of several such assemblies around Mortonridge.
The army is simply redeploying accordingly. When we have sufficient resources
assembled, then the serjeants will take the town. But I have no intention of
committing them until I’m convinced such an operation can be achieved with the
minimum of loss on both sides. Thank you.” He started to walk forwards.
“General, Elizabeth Mitchell, Time
Warner; one final question, please.” Her voice was authoritative and insistent,
impossible to ignore. “Have you got any comment about the defeat in the
valley?”
Trust the owner of that voice to
ask something he’d really rather avoid, Ralph thought. “Yes, I have. In
hindsight advancing down Catmos Vale so fast was a tactical error, a very bad
one; and I take full responsibility for that. Although we knew the possessed
are equipped with hunting rifles we weren’t expecting them to have artillery.
Mortars are about the crudest kind of artillery it’s possible to build; but
even so, very effective given certain situations. This was one of them. Now we
know what the possessed are capable of, it won’t happen again. Every time they
use a new weapon or tactic against us, we can analyse it and guard against it
in future. And there are only a very limited number of these moves they can
play.” He moved on again, more determined this time. A fast datavise to the two
information officers, and there were no more shouted questions.
“Sorry about them,” Colonel
Longhurst said.
“Not a problem for me,” Ralph
replied.
“You shouldn’t play up to scenes
like that,” Cathal said in annoyance as they made their way to the camp’s
headquarters. “It’s undignified. At least you could hold a proper press
conference with vetted questions.”
“This is as much propaganda as it
is physical war, Cathal,” Ralph said. “Besides, you’re still thinking like an
ESA officer: tell nobody, and tell them nothing. The public wants to see
authority in action on this campaign. We have to provide that.”
Convoys of supply trucks were still
arriving at the camp, Colonel Longford explained as he took them on an
inspection tour. The Royal Marine engineering squads had little trouble
securing the programmable silicon igloos; this section of land was several
metres above the mud of the valley floor. But there were logistics problems
with supplying the troops.
“It’s taking the trucks fifteen
hours to get here from the coast,” he said. “The engineers have virtually had
to rebuild the damn road as they went along. Even now there are some sections
that are just lines of marker beacons in the mud.”
“I can’t do anything about the
mud,” Ralph said. “Believe me, we’ve tried. Solidifying chemicals, SD lasers to
bake it; they’re no good on the kind of scale we’re dealing with here.”
“What we really need is air
support. You flew out here.”
“This was the first inland flight,”
Janne Palmer said. “And your landing field could barely accommodate the
hypersonic. You’ll never be able to handle cargo planes.”
“There’s plenty of clear high
ground nearby, we can build a link road.”
“I’ll look into authorizing it,”
Ralph said. “We should certainly consider flying in the serjeants ready for the
assault on the town.”
“Appreciate that,” the colonel
said. “Things out here are a little different than the AI says they should be.”
“That’s one of the reasons I’m
here, to see how you’re coping.”
“We are now. It was bedlam the
first day. Could certainly have done with the planes to evac the injured and
the depossessed out. That ride back to the coast isn’t doing them any good.”
They came to the big oval hall
where Elana Duncan and her team had set up shop. The massive boosted mercenary
greeted Ralph with a casual salute of her arm, clicking her claws
together. “Not much ceremony in here, General,” she said. “We’re rather too
crowded for that right now. Go see whatever you want, but don’t bother my
people, please, they’re kind of busy right now.”
Ten zero-tau pods were lined up
down the centre of the hall, all of them active. The big machines with their
thick power cables and compact mosaic of components looked strangely out of
place. Or it could be out of era, Ralph acknowledged. The rest of the hall was
given over to cots for the serjeants, a field hospital whose primitiveness
dismayed him. Elana’s mercenaries were carrying large plastic bottles and rolls
of disposable paper towels, doing their rounds along the dark bitek constructs.
There was a strong chemical smell in the air which Ralph couldn’t place. He had
some distant memory of it, but certainly not one indexed by his neural
nanonics, nor a didactic memory—although they were notoriously inaccurate when
it came to imparting smells.
Ralph went over to the first
serjeant. The construct was sucking quietly at the tube of a clear polythene
bag containing its nutrient syrup, a liquid like thin honey. “Did you get hit
by the mortars?”
“No, General,” Sinon said. “I
wasn’t here for the Catmos Vale incident. I am, I believe, one of the lucky
ones. I have participated in six assaults which resulted in a possessed being
captured, and received only minor injuries during the course of those actions.
Unfortunately, that means I have walked the whole way here from the coast.”
“So what happened?”
“Moisture exposure, General.
Impossible to avoid, I’m afraid. As I said, I was slightly injured previously,
resulting in small cracks within my exoskeleton. Although they are not in
themselves dangerous, such hairline fissures are ideal anchorages for several
varieties of aboriginal fungal spores.” He indicated his legs.
Now that he knew what he was
looking for, Ralph could see the long lead-grey blotches crisscrossing round
the serjeant’s lower limbs; they were slightly fuzzy, like thin velvet. When he
glanced along the row of cots, he could see some serjeants where the fungus was
full grown, smothering their legs in a thick furry carpet, like soggy coral.
“My God. Does that . . .”
“Hurt?” Sinon enquired. “Oh no.
Please don’t be concerned, General. I don’t feel pain, as such. I am aware of
the fungus’s presence, of course. It does itch rather unpleasantly. The major
problem is derived from its effect on my blood chemistry. If left unchecked the
fungus would extrude a quantity of toxins that my organs will be unable to
filter out.”
“Is there a treatment?”
“Funnily enough, yes. An alcohol
rub to eradicate the bulk of the fungus, followed with iodine, appears to be
effective in eliminating the growth. Of course, further exposure to these
conditions will probably reintroduce the spores, especially as they appear to
thrive in this current humidity.”
“Iodine,” Ralph said. “I thought I
knew that smell. Some of the Church clinics on Lalonde used the stuff.” The
incongruity of the situation was starting to nag at him. He could hardly be
playing the role of older officer giving comfort to a young trooper. If Sinon
followed usual Edenist lines, he must have been at least a hundred and fifty
when he died. Older than Ralph’s grandfather.
“Ah, Lalonde. I never visited. I
used to be a voidhawk crew member.”
“You were lucky; I was posted there
for years.”
Somebody started wailing, a piteous
gasping cry of bitterness. Ralph looked up to see a couple of the boosted
mercenaries helping a man out of a zero-tau pod. He was wrapped in tattered
grey clothes, almost indistinguishable from the folds of pale vein-laced flesh
drooping from his frame. It was as if his skin had started to melt off him.
“Aww shit,” Elana Duncan snapped.
“Excuse me, General, looks like we’ve got another crash course anorexic.” She
hurried over to help her colleagues. “Okay, let’s gets some protein infusers on
him pronto.” The de-possessed man was puking a thin greenish liquid on the
floor, an action which was almost choking him.
“Come on,” Ralph said. “We’re just
in the way here.” He led the others out of the hall; ashamed that the most
helpful thing he personally could do was run away.
Stephanie went out on to the narrow
balcony and sat in one of the cushioned deck chairs next to Moyo. From there
she could look both ways along Ketton’s high street where squads of Ekelund’s
guerrilla army marched about. All signs of the mud deluge had been ruthlessly
eradicated from the town, producing a pristine vision of urban prosperity. Even
the tall scarlet trees lining the streets and central park were in good health,
sprouting a thick frost of topaz flowers.
They had been billeted in a lovely
mock-Georgian town house, with orange brick walls and carved white stone window
lintels. The iron-railed balcony ran along the front, woven with branches of
blue and white wisteria. It was one of a whole terrace of beautiful buildings
just outside the central retail sector. They shared it with a couple of army
squads. Not quite house arrest, but they were certainly discouraged from
wandering round and interfering. Much to Cochrane’s disgust.
But Ekelund and her ultra-loyalists
controlled the town’s diminishing food supply, and with that came the power to
write the rules.
“I hate it here,” Moyo said. He was
slumped down almost horizontally in his chair, sipping a margarita. Four empty
glasses were already lined up on the low table beside him, their salt rims
melting in the condensation. “The whole place is wrong, a phoney. Can’t you
sense the atmosphere?”
“I know what you mean.” She watched
the men and women thronging the road below. It was the same story all over
Ketton. The army gearing up to defend the town from the serjeants massing
outside. Fortifications were first conceived as ghostly sketches in the air,
and then made real by an application of energistic strength. Small factories
around the outskirts had been placed under Delvan’s command. He had his
engineers working round the clock to churn out weapons. Everybody here moved
with a purpose. And by doing so, they gave each other confidence in their joint
cause.
“This is fascist efficiency,” she
said. “Everybody beavering away as they’re told for her benefit, not their own.
There’s going to be so much destruction here when the serjeants come in. And
it’s all so pointless.”
His hand wavered in the air until
he found her arm. Then he gripped tight. “It’s human nature, darling. They’re
afraid, and she’s tapped into that. The alternative to putting up a fight is
total surrender. They’re not going to go for that. We didn’t go for
that.”
“But the only reason they’re in
this position is because of her. And we weren’t going to fight. I wasn’t.”
He took a large drink. “Ah, forget
about it. Another twenty-four hours, and it won’t matter any more.”
Stephanie plucked the margarita
from his hand and set it down on the table. “Enough of that. We’ve rested here
quite long enough. Time we were moving on.”
“Ha! You must be drunker than me.
We’re surrounded. I know that, and I’m fucking blind. There’s no way out.”
“Come on.” She took his hand and
pulled him up from the chair.
Muttering and complaining, Moyo
allowed himself to be led inside. McPhee and Rana were in the lounge, sitting
round a circular walnut table with a chess game in front of them. Cochrane was
sprawled along a settee, surrounded by a haze of smoke from his reefer. A set
of bulky black and gold headphones were clamped over his ears, buzzing loudly
as he listened to a Grateful Dead album. Tina and Franklin came in from one of
the bedrooms when they were called. Cochrane chortled delightedly at the sight
of Franklin tucking his shirt in. He only stopped at that because Stephanie
caught his eye.
“I’m going to try and get out,”
Stephanie told them.
“Interesting objective,” Rana said.
“Unfortunately, la Ekelund is holding all the cards, not to mention the food.
She’s hardly given us enough to live on, let alone build our strength back to a
level where we can contemplate hiking through the mud again.”
“I know that. But if we stay in the
town we’re going to get captured by the serjeants for sure. That’s if we
survive the assault. Both sides are upping their weapons hardware by an
alarming degree.”
“I told you this would happen,”
Tina said. “I said we should have stayed above the valley. But none of you
listened.”
“So what’s the plan?” Franklin
asked.
“I haven’t got one,” Stephanie
said. “I just want to change the odds, that’s all. The serjeants are about five
miles away from the outskirts. That leaves a lot of land between us and them.”
“So?” McPhee asked.
“We can use that space. It
certainly improves our chances from staying here. Maybe we can sneak through
the line in all the confusion when they advance. We could try disguising
ourselves as kolfrans; or we could hide out somewhere until they pass by us.
It’s got to be worth a try.”
“A non-aggressive evasion policy,”
Rana said thoughtfully. “I’m certainly with you on that.”
“No way,” McPhee said. “Look, I’m
sorry Stephanie, but we’ve seen the way the serjeants move forwards. You
couldn’t slide a gnat between them. And that was before the mortar attack.
They’re wise to us using the ferrangs as camouflage now. If we go out there,
we’re just going to be the first to be de-possessed.”
“No, no, wait a minute,” Cochrane
said. He swung his feet off the settee and walked over to the table. “Our funky
sister might be on to something here.”
“Thanks,” Stephanie grunted
sarcastically.
“Listen, you cats. The black hats
and their UFOs are like scoping the ground out with microscopes, right? So if
we like cooperate with each other and dig ourselves a nice cozy bunker out in
the wilderness, we could sit tight down there until they’ve invaded the town
and moved off.”
Several surprised looks were passed
round. “It could work,” Franklin said. “Hot damn!”
“Hey, am I like the man, or
what?”
Tina sneered. “Definitely a what.”
“I keep expecting to be asked for
my ident disk,” Rana said as the seven of them walked down Ketton’s main
street.
They were the only people not
wearing military fatigues. Ekelund’s army gave them suspicious glances as they
passed by. Cochrane’s tinkling bells and cheery, insulting waves didn’t
contribute to making them inconspicuous. When they walked out of the house,
Stephanie considered junking her dress and adopting the same jungle combat gear
style. Then she thought to hell with that. I’m not hiding my true self anymore.
Not after what I’ve been through. I have a right to be me.
Near the outskirts, the road led
between two rows of houses. Nothing as elaborate as the Georgian town house,
but comfortably middle-class. The barrier between town and country was drawn by
a deep vertical-walled ditch, with thick iron spikes driven into the soil along
the top. Some kind of sludge trickled along the bottom of the trench, stinking
of petrol. The arrangement wasn’t terribly practical, it was more a statement
than a physical danger.
Annette Ekelund was waiting for
them, lounging casually against one of the big spikes. Several dozen of her
army were ranged beside her. Stephanie was quite sure the hulking guns they had
slung over their shoulders would be impossible to lift without energistic power
fortifying their muscles. Three-day stubble seemed compulsory for the men, and
everyone wore ragged sweatbands.
“You know, I’m getting a bad case
of déjà vu here,” Annette said with ersatz pleasantry. “Except this time you
haven’t got a good cause to tug my heartstrings. In fact, this is pretty close
to treachery.”
“You’re not a government,”
Stephanie said. “We don’t have loyalties.”
“Wrong. I am the authority here.
And you do have obligations. I saved your pathetic little arse, and all these
sad bunch of losers you have trailing round with you. I took you in, protected
you, and fed you. Now I think that entitles me to a little loyalty, don’t you?”
“I’m not going to argue this with
you. We don’t want to fight. We won’t fight. That gives you three choices, you
either kill us here on the spot, imprison us which will take up valuable
manpower, or let us go free. That’s the only issue, here.”
“Well that’s actually only two
choices then, isn’t it? Because I’m not diverting anybody from their assigned
duty to watch over ingrate shits like you.”
“Fine, then make your choice.”
Annette shook her head, genuinely
puzzled. “I don’t get you, Stephanie, I really don’t. I mean, where the fuck do
you think you’re going to go? They do have us surrounded, you know. An hour
walking down that road, and you’re straight into zero-tau. Do not pass go, do
not collect two hundred dollars. And you will never ever get out of jail again
for the rest of time.”
“We might be able to dodge them in
open ground.”
“That’s it? That’s your whole game
plan? Stephanie, that’s pitiful even for you.”
Stephanie pressed closer to Moyo,
unnerved by the level of animosity running free in Annette’s thoughts. “So
what’s your alternative?”
“We fight for our right to exist.
It’s what people have been doing for a very long time. If you weren’t such a
small-town imbecile you’d see that nothing easy ever comes free; life is cash
on delivery.”
“I’m sure it is, but you haven’t
answered my question. You know you’re going to lose, what’s the point in
fighting?”
“Let me explain,” Soi Hon said.
Annette flashed him a look of pure anger, then nodded permission.
“The purpose of our action is to
inflict unacceptable losses on the enemy,” Soi Hon said. “The serjeants are
almost unstoppable here on the ground, but the political structure behind them
is susceptible to a great many forces. We might not win this battle, but our
cause will ultimately triumph. That triumph will come sooner once the
Confederation leadership is forced to retreat from ventures like this absurd
Liberation. Their victory must be as costly as we can make it. I ask you to
reconsider your decision to leave us. With your help, the time we have to spend
in the beyond will be reduced by a considerable margin. Just think, the
serjeant you exterminate today may well be the one that breaks the camel’s
back.”
“You lived before Edenism matured,
didn’t you?” Moyo asked.
“The habitat Eden was germinated
while I was alive. I didn’t survive long after that.”
“Then I have to tell you, what
you’re talking is total bullshit. The political ideologies you’re basing your
justifications on are centuries out of date—just like all of us. Edenism has a
resolution which is frightening in its totality.”
“All human resolve can be broken in
the end.”
Moyo turned his perfect, unseeing
eyes to Stephanie, and twisted his lips in a humble grimace. “We’re doomed. You
can’t reason with a psychopath and a demented ideologue.”
“You should tell your boyfriend to
watch his lip,” Annette said.
“Or what?” Moyo laughed. “You said
it, psycho mamma, you told Ralph Hiltch all those weeks ago: the possessed
don’t lose. It doesn’t matter how many bodies of mine you blast away. I will
always be back. Learn to live with me, because you can never escape. For all of
eternity you have to listen to me whining on and on and on and on . . . How do
you like that, you dumb motherfucker?”
“Enough.” Stephanie patted his
shoulder in warning. He couldn’t see Annette’s expression, but he’d be able to
sense her darkening thoughts. “Look, we’re just going to go, all right.”
Annette turned and spat into the
trench. “You know what’s down there? Its something called napalm. Soi Hon told
us about it, and Milne made up the formula. There’s tons of the stuff; lying
down there, in squirt bombs, loaded into flame throwers. So when the serjeants
come over, it’s going to be barbecue time. And that’s just this section. We’ve
got a shitload of grief rigged up for them around this town. Every street they
walk down is going to cost them in bodies. Hell, we’re even running a
sweepstake, see how many we can take with us.”
“I hope you win.”
“The point is, Stephanie, if you
leave now, you don’t come back. I mean that. If you desert us, your own kind,
then you’re our enemy just as much as the non-possessed are. You’re going to be
trapped out there between the serjeants and me. They’ll shove you into
zero-tau, I’ll have you strung up on a crucifix and fried. So you see, it’s not
me that makes the choices. In the end, it’s down to you.”
Stephanie gave her a sad smile. “I
choose to leave.”
“You stupid bitch.” For a moment,
Stephanie thought the woman was going to launch a bolt of white fire straight
at her. Annette was fighting very hard to control her fury.
“Okay,” she snapped. “Get out.
Now.”
Praying that Cochrane would keep
his mouth shut, Stephanie tugged Moyo gently. “Use one of the spikes,” she
murmured to McPhee and Rana. They both began to concentrate. The nearest spike
started to droop, lowering itself like a drawbridge across a moat. When its tip
touched the other side, the metal flattened out, producing a narrow walkway.
Tina was over first; shaking and
subdued at the naked hostility radiating from Ekelund and imitated by her
troops. Franklin guided Moyo over. Stephanie waited until the other three were
on the far side before using it herself. When she turned round, Annette was
already marching back down the road into Ketton. Soi Hon and a couple of others
walked behind her, taking care not to come too close. The remaining troops
stared hard over the trench. Several of them primed the pump action mechanism
on their guns.
“Yo, nooo problem, dudes,” Cochrane
crooned anxiously. “We’re outta here. Like yesterday.”
It was midday, the sun blazed down
on them like a visible X-ray laser, and the mist had gone long ago. Three miles
ahead, the rumpled foothills of the valley wall rose up out of the sluggish
quagmires. The serjeants were strung out across the slopes, forming a solid
line of dark blobs standing almost shoulder to shoulder. Larger groups were
arranged at intervals behind the front line, reserves ready to assist with any
sign of resistance.
A couple of miles behind, the air
shimmered silver, twisting lightbeams giddily around Ketton. Dry mud creaked
and crumbled under their feet as they tramped along the gently undulating road.
They weren’t going particularly fast. It wasn’t just hunger draining their
bodies. Apathy was coming on strong.
“Oh hell,” Stephanie said abruptly.
“Look, I’m sorry.”
“What for?” McPhee asked. There was
bravado in his voice, but not his thoughts.
“Oh come on!” She stopped and flung
her arms out, turning full circle on a heel. “I was wrong. Look at this place.
We’re snowflakes heading straight for hell.”
McPhee gave a grudging look around
the flat, featureless valley floor. During the few days they’d rested in Ketton
the mud had claimed just about every fallen tree and bush. Even the long pools
between the quagmires were evaporating away. “Not much in the way of ground
cover, granted.”
She gave the big Scot an admonitory
stare. “You’re very sweet, and I’m really glad that you’re with me. But I
goofed. There’s no way we can avoid the serjeants out here. And I do think
Ekelund was serious when she said we wouldn’t be allowed back in.”
“Yeah,” Cochrane said. “That’s the
impression I got, too. You know, that bug is shoved so far up, it’s going to be
flapping its way out of her mouth any day now.”
“I don’t understand,” Tina said
miserably. “Why don’t we just stick to Cochrane’s original idea, and dig in?”
“The satellites can see us, lass,”
McPhee said. “Aye, they don’t know how many of us there are, exactly, or what
we’re doing. But they know where we are. If we stop moving and suddenly vanish,
then the serjeants will come and investigate. They’ll realize what we’ve done
and excavate us.”
“We could split up,” Franklin said.
“If we walk about at random and keep crossing each other’s tracks, then one or
two of us could vanish without them realizing. It’d be like a giant-sized
version of the shell game.”
“But I don’t want us to split up,”
Tina said.
“We’re not splitting up,” Stephanie
told her. “We’ve been through too much together for that. I say we face them
together with dignity and pride. We have nothing to be ashamed of. They’re the
ones who have failed. That huge, wonderful society with all its resources, and
all it can do is fall back on violence instead of trying to find an equitable
solution for all of us. They’ve lost, not us.”
Tina sniffed, and dabbed at her
eyes with a small handkerchief. “You say the most beautiful things.”
“Certainly do, sister.”
“I’ll face the serjeants with you,
Stephanie,” McPhee said. “But it might be a good idea to get off this road
first. I’ll give you good odds our friends behind have got it in their mortar
sights.”
Ralph waited until there were
twenty-three thousand serjeants deployed at Catmos Vale before giving the go
ahead to take the town. The AI estimated at least eight thousand possessed were
trapped inside Ketton. He wasn’t going to be responsible for unleashing a
massacre. There would be enough serjeants to overcome whatever lay ahead.
As soon as the first mortar attack
had finished, the AI had pulled the front line back. Then the flanks, up in the
high ground above the valley, had been directed forwards again. By the time the
sun fell, Ketton was surrounded. To start with, the circle was simply there to
prevent individual possessed from trying to sneak out. Any large group that
tried their luck would be warned off with SD lasers in a repeat of the
firebreak protocol across the neck of the peninsula.
Very few did attempt to run the
gauntlet. Whatever method of discipline Ekelund was using to keep her people in
check, it was impressive. The perimeter was progressively reinforced as planes
and trucks brought in fresh squads. Occupation forces were also assembled and
dispatched around the front line, ready to handle the captured possessed.
Medical facilities were organized to cope with the predicted influx of new,
unhealthy bodies (though shortages of equipment and qualified personnel were
still acute). The AI had exhaustively analysed every possible weapon from
history which the possessed could have constructed, and computed appropriate
counter-measures.
Ralph was quietly pleased to see
that the simplest policy was amongst the oldest: the best defence is a good
offence. He might not be able to employ saturation bombardment against the
town, or melt it down into the bedrock. But he could certainly rattle the doors
of Ekelund’s precious sanctum, a quite severe rattling, in fact. “Quake them,”
he datavised.
Two thousand kilometres above
Ombey, a lone voidhawk began its deployment swoop.
Ralph waited beside the rectangular
headquarters building with Acacia and Janne Palmer standing beside him. They
all stared along Catmos Vale at the sliver of dense mangled air at the far end
which marked the town. Maybe he should have been back at the Fort Forward Ops
Room, but after visiting the camp he realized how restricted and isolated he
was sitting in his office. Out here, at least he had the illusion of being
involved.
It was one of the larger patches of
land above the lagoons and mires that cluttered the valley floor. Plenty of
aboriginal grass poked up through the solidifying cloak of mud, as yet
untrampled by animals. There were even some trees surviving near the centre;
they’d fallen down, their lower branches stabbing into the soft ground; but the
trunks were held off the ground, and their battered leaves were slowly twisting
to face the sky.
Stephanie made her way over to
them, putting the road a quarter of a mile behind her. The ground around the
sagging boughs was deeply wrinkled, producing dozens of small meandering pools
of brackish water. She threaded her way through them, into the small dapple of
shade thrown by the leaves, and sank down with a heavy sigh. The others sat
down around her, equally relieved to be off their feet.
“I’m amazed we didn’t step on a
mine,” Moyo said. “Ekelund must have rigged that road. It’s too tempting not
to.”
“Hey guys, let’s like turn her into
an unperson, please,” Cochrane said. “I don’t want to spend my last remaining
hours in this body talking about that bitch.”
Rana leant back against a tree
trunk, closed her eyes and smiled. “Well well, we finally agree on something.”
“I wonder if we get a chance to talk
to the reporters,” McPhee said. “There’s bound to be some covering the attack.”
“Peculiar last wish,” Rana said.
“Any particular reason?”
“I still have some family left
alive on Orkney. Three kids. I’d like to . . . I don’t know. Tell them I’m all
right I suppose. What I’d really like to do is see them again.”
“Nice thought,” Franklin said.
“Maybe the serjeants will let you record a message, especially if we cooperate
with them.”
“What about you?” Stephanie asked.
“I’d go traditional,” Franklin
said. “A meal. You see, I used to like eating, trying new stuff, but I never
really had much money. So, I’ve done most everything else I want to. I’d have
the best delicacies the universe can offer, cooked by the finest chef in the
Confederation, and Norfolk Tears to go with it.”
“Mine’s easy,” Cochrane said.
“That’s like apart from the obvious. I wanna re-live Woodstock. Only this time
I’d listen to the music more. Man, I can like only remember about five hours of
it. Can you dig that? What a bummer.”
“I want to be on the stage,” Tina
said breathlessly. “A classical actress, in my early twenties, while I’m so
beautiful that poets swoon at the sight of me. And when my new play opens, it
would be The event of the year, and all the Society people in the world are fighting
to buy tickets.”
“I’d like to walk through Elisea
woods again,” Rana said. She gave Cochrane a suspect look, but he was listening
politely. “It was on the edge of my town when I was growing up, and the Slandau
flowers grew there. They had chromatactile petals; if you touched one, it would
change colour. When the breeze blew through the trees it was like standing
inside a kaleidoscope. I used to spend hours walking along the paths. Then the
developers came, and cleared the site to make room for a factory park. It
didn’t matter what I said to anyone, how many petitions I organized; the mayor,
the local senator, they didn’t care how beautiful the woods were and how much
people enjoyed them. Money and industry won every time.”
“I think I’d just say sorry to my
parents,” Moyo said. “My life was such a waste.”
“The children,” Stephanie said. She
grinned knowingly at McPhee. “I want to see my children again.”
They fell silent then, content to
daydream what could never be.
The sky suddenly brightened.
Everyone apart from Moyo looked up, and he caught their agitation. Ten kinetic
harpoons were descending, drawing their distinctive dazzling plasma contrails
behind them. It was a conical formation, gradually expanding. A second batch of
ten harpoons appeared above the first. Sunglasses automatically materialized on
Stephanie’s face.
“Oh shit,” McPhee groaned. “It’s
yon kinetic harpoons, again.”
“They’re coming down all around
Ketton.”
“Strange pattern,” Franklin said.
“Why not fire them down all at once?”
“Does it matter?” Rana said. “It’s
obviously the signal to start the attack.”
McPhee was eyeing the harpoons
dubiously. The first formation was still expanding, while the blazing, ruptured
air around their nose cones was growing in intensity.
“I think we’d better get down.”
Stephanie said. She rolled over, and imagined a sheet of air hardening
protectively above her. The others followed her example.
The harpoons Ralph had chosen to
deploy against Ketton were different to the marque he’d used to smash
Mortonridge’s communication net at the start of the Liberation. These were
considerably heavier and longer, a design which helped focus their inertia
forwards. On impact, they penetrated clean through the damp, unresisting soil.
Only when they struck the bedrock below did their tremendous kinetic energy
release its full destructive potential. The explosive blast slammed out through
the soft soil. Directly above the impact point, the whole area heaved upwards
as if a new volcano was trying to tear its way skywards. But the major impetus
of the shockwaves radiated outwards. Then the second formation of harpoons hit.
They formed a ring outside the first, with exactly the same devastating effect.
Seen from above, the twenty
separate shockwaves spread out like ripples in a pond. But it was the one very
specific interference pattern they formed as they intersected which was the
goal of the bombardment. Colossal energies clashed and merged in peaks and
troughs that mimicked the surface of a choppy sea, channelling the direction in
which the force was expended. Outside the two strike rings, the newly formatted
shockwaves rushed off across the valley floor, becoming progressively weaker
until they sank away to nothing more than a tremble which lapped against the
foothills. Inside the rings, they merged into a single contracting undulation,
which swept in towards Ketton, building in height and vigour.
Annette Ekelund and the troops
manning the town’s perimeter defences watched in stupefaction as the newborn
hill thundered towards them from all directions. The surviving network of local
roads leading away from the outskirts were ripped to shreds as the swelling
slope flung them aside. Boulders went spinning through the air in long lazy
arcs. Mud foamed turbulently at the crest while mires and pools avalanched down
the sides, engulfing the frenzied herds of kolfrans and ferrangs.
It grew higher and higher, a
tsunami of soil. The leading edge reached Ketton’s outlying buildings, trawling
them up its precarious ever-shifting slope. Defence trenches either slammed
shut or split wide as though they were geological fault lines, their napalm
igniting in third-rate imitation of lava streams. People diverted every
fraction of their energistic strength to reinforcing their bodies, leaving them
to bounce and roll about like human tumbleweed as the demented ground
trampolined beneath them. Without the possessed to maintain them, the prim,
restored houses and shops burst apart in scattergun showers of debris. Bricks,
fragments of glass, vehicles, and shattered timbers took flight to clot the air
above the devastation.
And still the quake raced on,
hurtling into the centre of the town. Its contraction climaxed underneath the
charming little church, culminating in a solid conical geyser of ground fifty
metres high. A grinding vortex of soil erupted from its pinnacle, propelling
the entire church into the sky. The elegant structure hung poised above the
cataclysm for several seconds before gravity and sanity returned to claim it.
It broke open like a ship on a reef, scattering pews and hymn books over the
blitzed land below. Then as the quake’s pinnacle ebbed, shrinking down, the
church tumbled over, walls disintegrating into a deluge of powdered bricks. Yet
still, somehow, the spire remained almost intact. Twisting through a hundred
and eighty degrees, with its bell clanging madly, it plunged down to puncture
the tormented crater of raw soil that now marked the quake’s epicentre. Only
then, did its structural girders crumple, reducing it to a pile of ruined metal
and fractured carbon-concrete.
Secondary tremors withdrew from the
focal point, weaker than the incoming quake, but still resulting in substantial
quivers amid the pulverised ruins. The quake’s accompanying ultrasound
retreated, only to echo back off the valley walls. In ninety seconds, Ketton
had been abolished from Mortonridge; leaving a two-mile-wide smear of
treacherously loose soil as its sole memorial. Spears made from building
rafters jabbed up out of the rumpled black ground, ragged lumps of concrete
were interspersed with the mashed up remnants of furniture, every fragment
embedded deep into the loam. Rivulets of flaming napalm oozed along winding
furrows, belching out black smoke. A curtain of dust thick enough to blot out
the sun swirled overhead.
Annette raised herself to her
elbows, fighting the mud’s suction; and swung her head slowly from side to
side, examining the remains of her proud little empire. Her energistic strength
had protected her body from broken bones and torn skin, though she knew that
there was going to be heavy bruising just about everywhere. She remembered
being about ten metres in the air at one point, cartwheeling slowly as a single
storey café did a neat somersault beside her to land on its flat roof, power
cables and plastic water pipes trailing from a wall to lash about like
bullwhips.
Strangely enough, through her
numbness, she could admire the quake; there was a beautiful precision to it.
Strong enough to wreck the town, yet pitched at a level that enabled the
possessed to protect themselves from its effects. As dear Ralph had known they
would. Self preservation is the strongest human instinct; Ketton’s buildings
and fortifications would be discarded instantly in the face of such a lethal
threat.
She laughed hysterically, choking
on the filthy dust. “Ralph? I told you, Ralph, you had to destroy the village
first. There was no need to take it so fucking literally, you shit!” There was
nothing left now to defend, no banner or cause around which she could rally her
army. The serjeants were coming. Unopposed. Unstoppable.
Annette flopped onto her back,
expelling grit from her eyes and mouth. Her mouth puffed away, eager for much
needed oxygen. She had never been so utterly terrified before. It was an
emotion shining at the core of every mind littered around her in the decimated
town. Thousands of them. The one aspect they had left in common.
The trees had stood up and danced
during the quake. They left the cloying mud behind with loud sucking sounds and
pirouetted about while the ground rearranged itself. It was probably an
impressive sight. But only from a distance.
Stephanie had screamed constantly
as she wriggled frantically underneath the carouselling boughs, ducking the
smaller branches that raked the ground. She’d been struck several times,
slapped through the air as if by a giant bat. Only the energistic power binding
her body’s cells together had saved her from being snapped in two.
Tina hadn’t been so fortunate. As
the ground started to calm, one of the trees had fallen straight on top of her.
It pushed her deep into the soaking loam, leaving only her head and an arm
sticking out. She was whimpering softly as the others gathered round. “I can’t
feel anything,” she whispered. “I can’t make myself feel.”
“Just melt the wood away,” McPhee
said quickly, and pointed. “Here to here. Come on, concentrate.”
They held hands, imagining the
scarlet bark parting, the hard dark wood of the trunk flowing like water. A big
chunk of the trunk turned to liquid and splattered down on the mud. Franklin
and McPhee hurried forward and pulled Tina out from the mud. Her hips and legs
were badly crushed, blood was running out of several deep wounds, splintered
bones protruded through the skin.
She looked down at her injuries and
wailed in fear. “I’m going to die! I’m going to go back to the beyond.”
“Nonsense, babe,” Cochrane said. He
knelt down beside her and passed his hand over one of the abdominal cuts. The
torn flesh sealed over, melding together. “See? Don’t give me none of this
loser shit.”
“There’s too much damage.”
“Come on, guys,” Cochrane looked up
at the rest of the group. “Together we can do it. Each take a wound.”
Stephanie nodded quickly and sank
down beside him. “It’ll be all right,” she promised Tina. The woman had lost an
awful lot of blood, though.
They circled her, and laid on their
hands. Power was exerted, transmuted by the wish to heal and cleanse. That was
how Sinon’s squad found them, kneeling as if in prayer around one of their own.
Tina was smiling up placidly, her pale hand gripping Rana, their fingers
entwined.
Sinon and Choma approached
cautiously through the jumbled trees, and levelled their machine guns at the
devout-seeming group. “I want all of you to lie down flat, and put your hands
behind your head, now,” Sinon said. “Do not attempt to move or apply your
energistic power.”
Stephanie turned to face him.
“Tina’s hurt, she can’t move.”
“I will accept that claim for the
moment, providing you do not try to resist. Now, the rest of you lie down.”
Moving slowly, they backed away
from Tina and lowered themselves onto the mushy loam.
You can come forward, Sinon told the rest of the squad. They
appear to be compliant.
Thirty serjeants emerged from the
tangle of branches and twigs, making remarkably little sound. Their machine
guns were all trained on the prone figures.
“You will now leave your captured
bodies,” Sinon said.
“We can’t,” Stephanie said. She
could feel the misery and fear in her friends, the same as that found in her
own mind. It was turning her voice to a piteous croak. “You should know by now
not to ask that of us.”
“Very well.” Sinon took his holding
stick out.
“You don’t have to use those
things, either,” Stephanie said. “We’ll go quietly.”
“Sorry, procedure.”
“Look, I’m Stephanie Ash. I’m the
one that brought the children out. That must count for something. Check with
Lieutenant Anver of the Royal Kulu marines, he’ll confirm who I am.”
Sinon paused, and used his
processor block to query Fort Forward’s memory core. The image of the woman
certainly appeared to match, and the man with flamboyant clothes and a mass of
hair was unmistakable.
We can’t rely on what they look
like, Choma said. They can
forge any appearance they want.
Providing they cooperate, there
is no reason to use unnecessary force. So far they have obeyed, and they know
they cannot escape.
You’re far too trusting.
“You will get up one at a time when
instructed,” Sinon told them. “We will escort you back to our field camp where
you will be placed in zero-tau. Three machine guns will be trained upon you at
all times. If any order is refused, we use the holding sticks to neutralize
your energistic ability. Do you understand?”
“That’s very clear,” Stephanie
said. “Thank you.”
“Very well. You first.”
Stephanie climbed cautiously to her
feet, making sure every motion was a slow one. Choma flicked the nozzle of his
machine gun, indicating the small track through the collapsed trees. “Let’s
go.” She started walking. Behind her, Sinon was telling Franklin to get up.
“Tina will need a stretcher,”
Stephanie said. “And someone will have to guide Moyo, he’s damaged his eyes.”
“Don’t worry,” Choma said gruffly.
“We’ll make sure you all get to the camp okay.”
They emerged from the trees.
Stephanie looked at where Ketton had been. A dense cloud of dark-grey dust churned
over the annihilated town. Small fires burned underneath it, muted orange
coronas shining weakly. Twenty slender purple lines glowed faintly in the air
above, linking the cloud with the top of the atmosphere. Streaks of lightning
discharged along them intermittently.
“Bloody hell,” she murmured.
Thousands of serjeants were walking along the valley floor towards the silent,
murky ruins. The possessed cowering within knew they were coming. Raw fear was
spilling out of the dust cloud like gaseous adrenaline. Stephanie’s heart
started to beat faster. Cold shivers ran along her legs and up her chest. She
faltered.
Choma nudged her with his machine
gun. “Keep going.”
“Can’t you feel it? They’re
frightened.”
“Good.”
“No, I mean really frightened.
Look.”
Glimmers of burgundy light were
escaping through gaps in the dust cloud. Billowing tendril-like wisps around
the edges were flattening out, becoming smooth and controlled. The shield
against the open sky was returning.
“I didn’t think you were stupid
enough to try that again,” Choma said. “General Hiltch won’t permit you to
hide.”
Even as he spoke an SD electron
beam stabbed down through the clear air. A blue-white pillar two hundred metres
wide that struck the apex of the seething roof of dust. It sprayed apart with a
plangent boom, sending out broad lightning forks that roamed across the boiling
surface to skewer into the mud. This time, the possessed resisted. Ten thousand
minds concentrated within a couple of square miles, all striving for the same
effect. To be free.
The random discharges of the SD
beam were slowly tamed. Jagged forks compressing into garish rivers of
electrons that formed a writhing cage above the dust. Carmine light brightened
underneath. Fear turned to rapture, followed swiftly by determination.
Stephanie stared across at the clamorous spectacle, her mouth open in
astonishment, and pride. Their old unity was back. And with it came a
formidable sense of purpose: to achieve the safety that so many other possessed
had obtained. To be gone.
The red light in the cloud
strengthened to a lambent glare, then began to stain the ground of the valley
floor. A bright circular wave spreading out through the mud and sluggish water.
“Run,” Stephanie told the
confounded serjeants. “Get clear. Please. Go!” She braced herself as the
redness charged towards her. There was no physical sensation other than a
near-psychosomatic tingle. Then her body was glowing along with the ground, the
air, her friends, and the hulking bodies of the serjeants.
“All right!” Cochrane whooped. He
punched the air. “Let’s go for it, you crazyass mothers.”
The earth trembled, dispatching all
of them to their knees again. Sinon tried to keep his machine gun lined up on
the nearest captive, but the ground shook again, more violently this time. He
abandoned that procedure, and flattened himself. All the serjeants in the
Ketton assault linked their minds through general affinity, clinging to each
other mentally with a determination that matched their grip on the ground.
“What is happening?” he bellowed.
“We’re like outta here, man,”
Cochrane shouted back. “You’re on the last bus out of this universe.”
Ralph watched the red light inflate
out of the dust cloud. Datavises from SD sensors and local occupation forces
spread around Catmos Vale relayed the image from multiple angles, granting him
complete three hundred and sixty degree coverage. He knew what it looked like
from the air, from the ground, even (briefly) as it engulfed marines who were
following close behind the serjeants. But most of all, he just stared ahead as
it poured out across the valley.
“Oh my God,” he breathed. It was
going to be bad. He knew that. Very bad.
“Do you want a full SD strike?”
Admiral Farquar asked.
“I don’t know. It looks like it’s
slowing.”
“Confirmed. Roughly circular,
twelve kilometres across. And they’ve got two thirds of the serjeants in
there.”
“Are they still alive?” Ralph asked
Acacia.
“Yes, General. Their electronics
have collapsed completely, but they’re alive and able to use affinity.”
“Then what—” The ground shifted
abruptly below his feet. He landed painfully on his side. The programmable
silicon buildings of the camp were jittering about. Everywhere, people were on
their knees or spread-eagled.
“Shit!” Acacia shouted.
A sheer cliff was rising up vertically
right across the valley floor, corresponding to the edge of the red light. Huge
cascades of mud and boulders were tumbling down its face. The red light
followed them down, pervading the rock, and growing brighter.
Ralph refuted his instinct. What he
was seeing was just too much, even though he knew they’d done this to entire
planets. “They can’t,” he cried.
“But they are, General,” Acacia
replied. “They’re leaving.”
The cliff was still ascending. Two
hundred metres now, lifting with increasing confidence and speed. It was
becoming difficult to look at as the light turned scarlet, casting long shadows
across the valley. Three hundred metres high, and Ralph’s neural nanonics had
crashed in the backwash of the blossoming reality dysfunction. On the ground around
him, the battered blades of grass were wriggling their way back upwards again,
shedding their cloak of mud to turn the camp into a verdant parkland. Fallen
trees bent their trunks like the spine of an old man rising from his chair,
cranking themselves upright again.
The vivid red light began to
diminish. When Ralph squinted against it, he could see the cliff retreating
from him. It was five hundred metres high, moving away with the majestic
serenity of an iceberg. Except it wasn’t moving, he realized. It was shrinking,
the red light contracting in on itself, enveloping the island of rock which the
possessed had uprooted from Mortonridge to sail away into another universe. As
it left he could see its entire shape, a flat-topped inverted cone wrapped with
massive curving stress ridges that spiralled down to its base, as if it had
unscrewed itself from the peninsula.
Air was roaring hard overhead,
sucked into the space the island was vacating. It still hovered in the centre
of the valley, but now it was becoming insubstantial as well as small. The
light around it turned a dazzling monochrome white, obliterating details.
Within minutes it had evaporated down to a tiny star. Then it winked out.
Ralph’s neural nanonics came back on line.
“Cancel the other two assaults,” he
datavised to the AI. “And halt the front line. Now.”
He scrambled cautiously to his
feet. The reinvigorated grass was withering all around him, shrivelling back to
dry brown flakes that crumbled away in the howling wind. Images from the SD sensors
showed him the full extent of the massive crater. Its edges had already begun
to subside, mountain-sized landslides were skidding downwards, taking a very
long time to reach the bottom. Waiting for them five kilometres down was a
medieval orange glow that fluctuated in no comprehensible rhythm. He frowned at
that, not understanding what it could be. Then the vivid area ruptured, and a
vast fountain of radiant lava soared upwards.
“Whoever’s left, get them back,” he
shouted desperately at Acacia. “Get them as far away from the lip as possible.”
“They’re already retreating,” she
said.
“What about the others? The ones on
the island? Can your affinity still reach them?”
Her forlorn look was all the answer
he needed.
Stephanie and her friends looked at
the serjeants, who stared back with equal uncertainty. For the first time in
what her dazed thoughts insisted must have been hours, the ground had stopped
oscillating beneath her. When she looked up, the sky was a starless ultradeep
blue. White light flooded down from nowhere she could see—but felt right, what
she wanted. Her gaze tracked round to where the other side of the valley had
been. The blank sky came right down to the ground, and the true size of their
island became apparent. A tiny circle of land edged with a crinkled line of
hillocks, adrift in its own eternal universe.
“Oh no,” she murmured in despair.
“I think we screwed up.”
“Are we free?” Moyo asked.
“For now.” She started describing
their new home to him.
Sinon and the other serjeants used
the general affinity band to call to each other. There were over twelve
thousand of them spread out around the island. Their guns worked, their
electronics and medical nanonics didn’t (several had been injured in the waves
of quakes), affinity was unaffected, and there were new senses available.
Almost a derivative of affinity, allowing him to sense the minds of the
possessed. And there was also the energistic power. He picked a stone from the
mud and held it in his palm. It slowly turned transparent, and began to
sparkle. Not that a kilogram of diamond was a lot of use here.
“Could you dudes like give this
heavy military scene a break now?” Cochrane asked.
It would appear our original
purpose is invalid in this environment, Sinon told his comrades. He shouldered his machine gun. “Very well. What
do you propose we do next?” he asked the hippie.
“Wow, man, don’t look at me.
Stephanie’s in charge around here.”
“I’m not. And anyway, I haven’t got
a clue what happens now.”
“Then why did you bring us here?”
Choma asked.
“Because it’s not Mortonridge,”
Moyo said. “That’s all. Stephanie told you, we were frightened.”
“And this is the result,” Rana
said. “You must now face the consequences of your physical aggression.”
We should regroup and pool our
physical resources, Choma
said. It may even be possible for us to use the energistic power to return
to the universe.
Their minds flashed together into a
mini-consensus and agreed to the proposal. An assembly area was designated.
“We are going to join up with our
comrades,” Sinon told Stephanie. “You would be very welcome to come with us. I
expect your views on the situation could prove valuable.”
That last image of Ekelund popped
up annoyingly in Stephanie’s mind. The woman had banished them from Ketton. But
Ketton no longer existed. Surely they wouldn’t be excluded now? Somehow she
couldn’t convince herself. And the only other alternative was staying by
themselves. Without food. “Thank you,” she said.
“Wait wait,” Cochrane said. “You
guys have like got to be kidding. Look, the end of the world is maybe half a
mile away. Aren’t you even curious what’s out there?”
Sinon looked to where the island’s
crumpled surface ended. “That’s a good suggestion.”
Cochrane grinned brightly. “You
cats’ll have to get used to them if you’re going to hang with me.”
The breeze picked up considerably
as they approached the edge of the island. Blowing outward, which troubled the
serjeants. Air had become a finite commodity. Long rivulets of mud were sliding
gently to the edge and spilling over, dribbling down the cliff like ribbons of
candle wax. There was nothing else to see. No break in the uniformity of the
midnight blue boundary of the universe that might indicate another object,
micro or macro. The realization they were on their own percolated through all
of them, growing stronger as they approached the rim.
It was only Cochrane who inched his
way cautiously right up to the edge and peered down into the murky void of
infinity which buoyed them along. He spread his arms wide and threw his head
back, letting the breeze flowing over the island blow his hair around.
“WAAAAAHOOOO.” His feet jigged about crazily as he cried out ecstatically: “I’m
on a fucking flying island. Can you believe this? Here be dragons, mom! And
they’re GROOVY.”
Chapter 11
For some reason, the tangled
strands of black mist which filled this dark continuum would always slide apart
to allow Valisk through. Not one wisp had ever touched the polyp. The habitat
personality still hadn’t managed to determine the nature of movement outside
its shell. Without valid reference points, there was no way of knowing if it
was sailing along on some unknowable voyage, or the veils of darkness were
simply gusting past. The identity, structure, and quantum signature of their
new continuum remained a complete mystery. They didn’t even know if the ebony
nebula was made from matter. All they did know for certain was that a hard
vacuum lay outside the shell.
Rubra’s uncorked brigade of
descendants had devoted considerable effort into modifying spaceport MSVs into
automated sensor platforms. Five of the vehicles had already been launched,
their chemical rockets burning steadily as they raced off into the void.
Combustion, at least, remained an inter-universal constant. The same could not
be said for their electronic components. Only the most basic of systems would
function outside the protection of the shell, and even those decayed in
proportion to the distance travelled. The power circuits themselves failed at
about a hundred kilometres, by which time the amount of information transmitted
had fallen to near zero. Which was information in itself. The continuum had an
intrinsic damping effect on electromagnetic radiation; presumably accounting
for the funereal nature of the nebula. Physicists and the personality speculated
that such an effect might be influencing electron orbits, which in turn would
explain some of the electrical and biochemical problems they were encountering.
The gigantic web of ebony vapour
wouldn’t touch the probes, either, denying them a sample/return mission. Radar
was utterly useless. Even laser radar could only just track the modified MSVs.
Ten days after the axial light tube was powered up, they were floundering
badly. No experiment or observation they’d run had resulted in the acquisition
of hard data. Without that, they couldn’t even start to theorize how to get
back.
By contrast, life inside the
habitat was becoming more ordered, though not necessarily pleasant. Everybody
who’d been possessed required medical treatment of some kind. Worst hit were
the elderly, whose possessors had quite relentlessly twisted and moulded their
flesh into the more vigorous contours sported by youthful bodies. Anyone who’d
been overweight was also suffering. As were the thin, the short; anyone with
different skin colour to their possessor, different hair. And without
exception, everyone’s features had been morphed—that came as naturally as
breathing to the possessed.
Valisk didn’t have anything like
the number of medical nanonic packages required to treat the population. Those
packages that were available operated at a very low efficiency level. Medical
staff who could program them correctly shared the same psychologically fragile
demeanour as all the recently de-possessed. And Rubra’s descendants were
tremendously busy just trying to keep the habitat supplied with power to give
much assistance to the sick. Besides, the numbers were stacked hard and high
against them.
After the initial burst of optimism
at the return of light, a grim resignation settled among the refugees as more
and more of their circumstances were revealed to them. An exodus began. They
started walking towards the caverns of the northern endcap. Long caravans of
people wound their way out from the starscraper lobby parks, trampling down the
dainty parkland paths as they set off down the interior. In many cases, it took
several days to walk the twenty kilometre length across the scrub desert. They
were searching for a haven where the medical packages would work properly,
where there was some kind of organized authority, a decent meal, a place where
the ghosts didn’t lurk around the boundaries. That grail wasn’t to be found
amid the decrepit slums encircling the starscraper lobbies.
I don’t know what the hell they
expect me to do for them, the
habitat personality complained to Dariat (among others) as the first groups set
out. There’s not enough food in the caverns, for a start.
Then you’d better work out how
to get hold of some, Dariat
replied. Because they’ve got the right idea. The starscrapers can’t support
them any more.
Power within the towers was as
erratic as it had been ever since they arrived in the dark continuum. The lifts
didn’t work. Food secretion organs extruded inedible sludge. Digestion organs
were unable to process and flush the waste. Air circulation tubules spluttered
and wheezed.
If the starscrapers can’t
sustain them, then the caverns certainly won’t be able to, the personality replied.
Nonsense. Half the trees in your
interior are fruiting varieties.
Barely a quarter. In any case,
all the orchards are down at the southern end.
Then get teams organized to pick
the fruit, and strip the remaining supplies from the starscrapers. You’d have
to do this, anyway. You are the government here, remember. They’ll do as you
tell them; they always have. It’ll be a comfort having the old authority figure
take charge again.
All right, all right. I don’t
need the psychology lectures.
Order, of a kind, was established.
The caverns came to resemble a blend of nomad camps and field hospital triage
wards. People slumped where they found a spare patch of ground, waiting to be
told what to do next. The personality resumed its accustomed role, and started
issuing orders. Cancers and aggravated anorexias were assessed and prioritized,
the medical packages distributed accordingly. Like the fusion generators and
physics lab equipment, they worked best in the deeper caverns. Teams were
formed from the healthiest, and assigned to food procurement duties. There were
also teams to strip the starscrapers of equipment, clothes, blankets—a broad
range of essentials. Transport had to be organized.
The ghosts followed faithfully
after their old hosts, of course, flittering across the desert during the
twilight hours to skulk about in the hollows and crevices decorating the base
of the northern endcap during the day. Naked hostility continued to act as an
intangible buffer, preventing them from entering any of the subterranean
passages.
It also expelled Dariat. The
refugees didn’t distinguish between ghosts. In any case, had they discovered he
was the architect of their current status, their antipathy would probably have
wiped him out altogether. His one consolation was that the personality was now
part self. It wouldn’t disregard him and his needs as an annoying irritation.
In part he was right, though the
assumption of privilege was an arrogant one—the pure Dariat of old. However, in
these strange, dire times, there were even useful jobs to be had for
cooperative ghosts. The personality gave him Tolton as a partner, and detailed
the pair of them to take an inventory of the starscrapers.
“Him!” Tolton had exclaimed in
dismay when Erentz explained his new duties.
She looked from the shocked and
indignant street poet to the fat ghost with his mocking smile. “You worked well
together before,” she ventured. “I’m proof of that.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Okay. Most of that row need seeing
to.” She gestured at the long line of beds along the polyp wall. It was one of
eight similar rows in the vaulting cavern; made up from mattresses or clustered
pillows hurriedly shoved into a loose kind of order. The ailing occupants were
wrapped in dirty blankets like big shivering pupas. They moaned and drooled and
soiled themselves as the nanonic packages sluggishly repaired their damaged
cells. Their helpless state meant they needed constant nursing. And there were
few enough people left over from the teams prospecting the habitat able to do
that.
“Which starscraper do we start
with?” Tolton asked.
Each starscraper took at least
three days to inventory properly. They’d adopted a comfortable routine by the
time they started on their third, the Djerba. The tower had survived Valisk’s
recent calamities with minimal damage. Kiera’s wrecking teams hadn’t got round
to “reclaiming” it from Rubra’s control. There had been few clashes between
possessed and servitors inside before it was abandoned. That meant it should
contain plenty of useful items. They just needed cataloguing.
To send the work teams down on a
see/grab brief was inefficient, especially as there were so few of them. And
the personality’s thought routines had almost been banished from the habitat’s
extremities; its memories of room contents were unreliable at best.
“Mostly offices,” Tolton decided as
he waved a lightstick around. He was holding one in his hand, with another two
slung across his chest on improvised straps. Together, the three units provided
almost as much illumination as one working at full efficiency.
“Looks like it,” Dariat said. They
were on the twenty-third floor vestibule, where the walls were broken by
anonymously identical doors. Tall potted plants in big troughs were wilting,
deprived of light their leaves were turning yellow-brown and falling onto the
blue and white carpet.
They moved down the vestibule,
reading names on the doors. So far offices had resulted in very few worthwhile
finds; they’d learned that unless the company was a hardware or medical
supplier there was little point in going in and searching. Occasionally the
personality’s localized memory would recall a useful item, but the neural
strata was becoming more incapable with each floor they descended.
“Thirty years,” Tolton mused.
“That’s a long time to hate.” There hadn’t been much else to do except swap
life stories.
Dariat smiled in recollection.
“You’d understand if you’d ever seen Anastasia. She was the most perfect girl
ever to be born.”
“Sounds like I’ll have to write
about her some time. But I think your story is more interesting. Man, there’s a
lot of suffering in you. You died for her, you actually did it. Actually went
and killed yourself. I thought that kind of thing really did only happen in
poems and Russian novels.”
“Don’t be too impressed. I only did
it after I knew for sure souls existed. Besides—” He gestured down at his huge
frame and grubby toga. “I wasn’t losing a lot.”
“Yeah? Well I’m no sensevise star,
but I’m hanging on to what I’ve got for as long as I can. Especially now
I know there are souls.”
“Don’t worry about the beyond. You
can leave it behind if you really want to.”
“Tell that to the ghosts upstairs.
In fact, I’m even keener to hang on to my body while we’re in this continuum.”
Tolton stopped outside a sensevise
recording studio, and gave Dariat a shrewd look. “You’re in touch with the
personality, is there any chance of us getting out of here?”
“Too early to say. We really don’t
know very much about the dark continuum yet.”
“Hey, this is me you’re talking to.
I survived the whole occupation, you know. Quit with the company line and level
with me.”
“I wasn’t going to hold anything
back. The one conjecture all my illustrious relatives are worried about is the
lobster pot.”
“Lobster pot?”
“Once you get in, you can’t get
out. It’s the energy levels, you see. Judging by the way our energy is being
absorbed by this continuum’s fabric it doesn’t have the same active energy
state. We’re louder and stronger than normal conditions here. And that strength
is slowly being drained away, just by being here. It’s an entropy equilibrium
effect. Everything levels out in the end. So if we take height as a metaphor,
we’re at the bottom of a very deep hole with our universe at the top; which
means it’s going to take a hell of an effort to lift ourselves out again.
Logically, we need to escape through some kind of wormhole. But even if we knew
how to align its terminus coordinates so that it opens inside our own universe,
it’s going to be incredibly difficult to generate one. Back in our universe,
they took a lot of very precisely focused energy to open, and the nature of
this continuum works against that. With this constant debilitation effect, it
may not be possible to concentrate enough energy, it’ll dissipate before it
reaches critical distortion point.”
“Shit. There’s got to be something
we can do.”
“If those rules do apply, our best
bet is to try and send a message out. That’s what the personality and my
relatives are working towards. If they know where we are, the Confederation
might be able to open a wormhole to us from their side.”
“Might be able?”
“All new suggestions welcome. But
as it stands, getting them to lower us a rope is the best we can come up with.”
“Some rescue plan. The
Confederation has its own problems right now.”
“If they can learn how to grab us
back, they’ll be half way to solving them.”
“Sure.”
They reached the end of the
vestibule and automatically turned round.
Nothing here, Dariat reported. We’re moving down to the
twenty-fourth floor.
All right, the personality replied. There’s a hotel,
the Bringnal, a couple of floors down from where you are now. Check its main
linen store, we need more blankets.
You’re going to ask one of the
teams to lug blankets up twenty-five floors?
All the large hoards above that
level have been used. And right now it’s easier to find new ones than wash the
old; nobody’s got enough energy for that.
All right. Dariat faced Tolton, taking care to exaggerate
his speech. “They want us to find blankets.”
“Sounds like a real priority job we
got ourselves here.” Tolton slithered through a partly open muscle membrane and
into the stairwell. The quivering lips didn’t bother him nearly so much now.
Dariat followed him, taking care to
use the gap. He could slip through solid surfaces, he’d found, if he really
wanted to. It was like sinking through ice.
One of the random power surges
flowered around them. Electrophorescent cells shone brightly again,
illuminating the stairs in stark blue-tinged light. A jet of foggy air streamed
out of a tubule vent, sounding like a sorrowful sigh. A thin film of grey water
was slicking every surface. Tolton could see the breath in front of his face.
He gripped the handrail tighter, fearful of slipping.
“We’re not going to be able to
salvage stuff from the starscrapers for much longer,” Tolton said, wiping his
hand against his leather jacket. “They’re getting worse.”
“You should see what kind of state
the ducts and tubules are in.”
The street poet grunted in
resentment. He was actually eating a lot better than most of the population.
Inventory duties had a great many perks. The private apartments with their
small stocks of quality food and fashionable clothes were his to pick over as
he wished. The salvage teams were only interested in the larger stores that
were in restaurants and bars. And now the endless succession of lightless
floors no longer bothered him, he was glad to be away from the caverns with all
their suffering—and smell.
Dariat.
The startled tone made him halt. What?
There’s something outside.
Affinity made him aware of the
consternation spreading through his relatives, most of whom were in the
counter-rotating spaceport and the caverns.
Show me.
One of the slow flares of red and
blue phosphorescence was shimmering through the ebony nebula, sixty kilometres
away from the southern endcap. As it dwindled, several more began to bloom in
the distance, sending pastel waves of light washing across the gigantic
habitat’s shell. The personality didn’t believe the sudden increase in
frequency was a coincidence. It was busy concentrating on collecting the images
from its external sensitive cells. Once again, Dariat was uncomfortably aware
of the effort expended in what should be a simple observation routine.
A speck of hoary-grey flitted among
the strands of blackness, snapping in and out of view. Following the smooth
curving motions put Dariat in mind of a skier, the thing’s course was very much
like a slalom run. Every turn brought it closer to Valisk.
The nebula doesn’t get out of
its way, the personality
remarked. It’s dodging the braids.
That implies a controlling
intelligence, or at least animal-level instinct.
Absolutely.
The initial consternation of
Rubra’s descendants had given way to a slick buzz of activity. Those out in the
spaceport were activating systems, aligning them on the visitor. An MSV was
powered up, ready for an inspection/interception flight.
An MSV can’t match that kind of
manoeuvrability, Dariat said.
The visitor performed a fast looping spiral around a grainy black curlicue,
shooting off in a new direction parallel to Valisk’s shell, fifteen kilometres
distant. Visual resolution was improving. The visitor was about a hundred metres
across, appearing like a disk of ragged petals. Even a voidhawk would have
trouble making rendezvous.
The visitor darted behind another
frayed column of blackness. When it re-emerged it was soaring almost at right
angles to its original course. Its petals were bending and flexing.
They look like sails to me, Dariat said.
Or wings. Although I don’t
understand what it could be pushing against.
If this continuum has such a low
energy state, how come it can move so fast?
Beats me.
Several spaceport dishes started
tracking the visitor. They began transmitting the standard CAB xenoc interface
communication protocol on a multi-spectrum sweep. Dariat allowed his affinity
bond to decline to a background whisper. “Come on,” he told a frowning Tolton.
“We’ve got to find a window.”
The visitor didn’t respond to the
interface protocol. Nor did it show any awareness of the radar pulses fired at
it. That was perhaps understandable, given that they produced no return signal.
The only noticeable change as it spun and danced ever-closer was the way
shadows congealed around it. Visually it actually appeared to grow smaller, as
though it were flying away from the habitat.
That’s like the optical
distortion effect which the possessed use to protect themselves with, Dariat said. He and Tolton had found a snug bar
called Horner’s on the twenty-fifth floor. The two big oval windows were misted
over inside, forcing Tolton to wipe them clean with one of the coarse table
cloths. His breath kept splashing against the icy glass, condensing
immediately.
Well we did choose a realm
suitable for ghosts, the
personality said.
I’ve never heard of a ghost that
looked like that.
The visitor was within five
kilometres of the shell now, about where the filigree of nebula strands began.
There was only empty space between it and the habitat now.
Maybe it’s scared to come any
closer, the personality said. I
am considerably larger.
Have you tried an affinity call?
Yes. It didn’t respond.
Oh. Well. Just a thought.
The visitor left the convoluted
weave of the nebula and flashed towards the vast bulk of the habitat. By now
its deceptive glamour had reduced it to a rosette of oyster ribbons
twirling gracelessly in the wake of a fluctuating warp point. The image of the
nebula and its strange borealis storms fluxed and bent as the visitor traversed
them; oscillating between iridescent scintillations and a black boundary deeper
than an event horizon. Nothing about it remained stable.
It streaked over to within fifty
metres of the shell then veered round to follow the curve, wriggling wildly
from side to side. The quick serpentine orbit allowed it to cover a
considerable portion of the habitat’s exterior.
It’s searching, the personality said. That implies a degree
of organisation. It has to be sentient.
Searching for what?
A way in, I imagine. Or
something it can recognize, some method of establishing communication.
Do any of the spaceport defences
still work? Dariat asked.
You have to be bloody joking. We
need all the allies we can get.
Before we fused, you used to be
the mother of all suspicious neurotic bastards. I think that would be a
preferable attitude for you right now.
Well that’s the effect of your
mature calming influence for you. So you’ve only got yourself to blame. But
don’t worry, I’m not going to send the MSV after it.
Thank Tarrug for that.
Our visitor should be coming
over your horizon any second now. Perhaps your eyes will do better than my
sensitive cells.
“Wipe the glass again,” Dariat told
Tolton.
The soaking table cloth smeared the
moisture in long streaks. Tiny flecks of frost were glistening dull white over
the rest of the big oval. Tolton switched off two of his lightsticks. Both of
them peered forward. The visitor arched over the rim of the shell, lensing thin
spires of vermilion and indigo light as it came. They wavered in the runnels of
water, wobbling insubstantially before sinking back down into the visitor’s
core. Now all that remained was a black knot in the continuum’s fabric racing
over the dark rust-coloured polyp.
Tolton’s weak grin was bloated with
uncertainly. “Am I being paranoid, or is that heading towards us?”
In the earlier time and place, long
ago and far away, they had called themselves the Orgathé. Now, names had lost
all meaning and relevance, or perhaps they themselves had devolved into
something else, such was the way of this atrocious existence. There were many
others adrift in the dark continuum, sharing their fate. Identity was no longer
singular. A myriad of racial traits had blended and faded into a singleton over
the aeons.
Purpose, though, purpose remained
steadfast. The quest for light and strength, a return to the sweet heights from
whence they had all fallen. A dream sustained even within the mélange. Few
forms existed now outside of the mélange. The process of diminution claimed
every life to fall into these depths. But this one had risen yet again, buoyed
up by the tides of chaotic chance that rioted within the mélange, spat out to
roam the murk for as long as it had strength. The freeflying state of such escapees
was still that of the Orgathé, though the essence of many others rode upon its
wings. Its chimerical shape was a tortured mockery of the once glorious avian
lords who ruled the swift air currents of their homeworld.
Ahead of it now drifted the exotic object.
It was composed of a substance to be found only in the oldest of the Orgathé’s
memories, those that pre-dated the dark continuum. How strange that it could
barely recognize the antecedent of its own salvation.
Matter. Solid organized matter.
Alive with a heat so fierce it took the Orgathé some time to acclimatise to the
radiance; elevating itself to a near ecstatic level of warmth. Incredibly, just
within the scorching surface, a sheet of life energy burned bright and
vigorous. The entire object was a single mighty entity. Yet passive.
Vulnerable. This was a feast which would sustain a huge proportion of the
mélange for a long time. It might even trigger a total dispersal.
The Orgathé slithered close to the
object’s surface, feeling the mind within follow its flight. Vast swirls of
rich thought flowed underneath it as it basked in the warmth. But there was no
way to reach the abundant life-energy through the hard surface. If the Orgathé
attempted to claw its way through, it would surely incinerate itself. Contact
with so much heat for so long could probably not be sustained. But the craving
within itself from proximity to so much vital life-energy was overwhelming.
There must be some way in. Some
orifice or chink. The Orgathé coasted along over the object, heading for the
spikes radiating out from the centre. They were smaller, weaker than the rest
of it. Long hollow minarets leaking their energy away into the dark continuum.
The life-energy was shallower here, the heat not so intense. Each of the structures
was broken by thousands of dark ovals, curtained by cooler sheets of
transparent matter. Light twinkled briefly through some of them, never lasting
long. Except one. A single oval burning steadily.
The Orgathé glided eagerly towards
it. Two flames of life-energy gleamed behind the transparent sheet. One naked,
the other clad in hot matter; both enraging the Orgathé’s craving. It surged
forward.
“FUCK!” Tolton screamed. He dived
to one side, scattering tables and chairs. Dariat jumped the other way just as
the Orgathé hit the window. Frost blossomed like a living thing, strands of
long delicate crystals multiplying across the glass, then reaching out through
the air. Shapes moved on the other side of the hoary fur, dark indistinct
serpents, thicker than a human torso, that could be tentacles or tongues
scrabbling furiously at the outer surface. The unmistakable grinding shriek of
deep score lines being ripped into the material penetrated the bar, drowning
out Tolton’s terrified cries.
Do something! Dariat wailed.
You name it, I’ll do it.
Tolton was scuttling backwards on
his hands and legs, unable to take his eyes from the window. The serpent shapes
were writhing with rabid aggression as they clawed their way through. A badly
stressed snap sounded above the vicious squealing; corresponding to a
thin dark shadow materializing across the frosted window. Furniture was
rattling, shaking its way erratically across the floor. Glasses and bottles
abandoned on top of the marble bar juddered vigorously and tumbled off.
It’s coming through! Dariat cried. When he tried to clamber to his
feet, he discovered he didn’t have the strength. Fatigue was numbing every
limb.
“Kill it!” Tolton bellowed.
We can try and zap it, the personality said, like we did the
possessed.
Just bloody do it!
It might kill you as well; we
don’t know.
You’re part me. Do you seriously
think I want that to catch me?
Very well.
The personality began to re-route
its patched-up power supply. Diverting current away from the axial light tube
and the caverns, pumping the precarious fusion generators up to their maximum
output. Electricity poured back into the Djerba starscraper’s organic conductor
grid. The first-floor windows blazed with golden light; mechanical and
electronic systems came alive in frantic chitters of movement and data
emissions. Milliseconds later the second floor sprang back to life. The third,
fourth . . .
Dazzling shafts of light sliced out
from the Djerba’s windows, piercing the gloom outside. They snapped downward
storey by storey towards the beleaguered twenty-fourth floor. The personality
gathered its major thought routines and plunged them down into the starscraper,
a sensation like diving into a pitch-black well shaft. Bitek networks were
swiftly resurrected around its descending mentality.
A dead zone was concentrated around
Horner’s window. The external polyp was so cold the personality could no longer
calibrate it. Living cells deeper in had frozen solid. The personality could
feel vibrations running through the floor as the Orgathé pounded and scraped
against the window.
Junctions within the organic
conductor web switched polarity, high order sub-routines cancelled the safety
limiters. Every erg of power from the fusion generators was channelled into
Horner’s. Ceiling strips of electrophorescent cells ignited, flooding the bar
with searing white light. Organic conductors behind the walls fused, burning
out long lines of polyp in a cascade of amber sparks. Incandescent arcs stormed
through the air as a lethal charge of electrons was fired into the external
wall.
Coming on top of the heat and
life-energy, the electron hammer blow was just too much. The Orgathé recoiled
from the window, appendages flailing madly as the streams of alien energy
churned within its body. There was a brief glimpse of sinuous chrome-black
tendrils bristling with curving blades coiling back protectively around a
bulbous midsection. Ragged wing petals began to flex. Then the distortion
smeared it with refracted scintillations from the gleaming starscraper, and it
shot away at a bruising acceleration. Within seconds it was lost inside the
nebula.
Dariat took his arm away from his
face. The tremendous barrage of noise and light saturating the bar had faded. A
few sparks were still popping out from the deep scorch marks in the walls. The
glossy electrophorescent cells had shattered and shrivelled to rain across the
floor, their fragments curling up, puffing out licks of smoke.
You all right, my boy? the personality enquired.
Dariat looked down at himself. The
feeble yellow glow from Tolton’s remaining lightstick showed his spectral body
unchanged. Though possibly more translucent than usual. He still felt terribly
weak. I think so. I’m bloody cold, though.
Could have been worse.
Yeah. Dariat felt the personality’s major routines
withdrawing from the starscraper. The lights were going off again in the upper
floors, autonomic bitek functions shutting down.
He struggled to his knees,
shivering intensely. When he looked round he could see ice encrusted on every
surface, turning the bar into an arctic grotto. The electrical discharge had
melted very little of it. That was probably what had saved them; it was several
centimetres thick over the window. And the fracture pattern in the glass
underneath was unnervingly pronounced.
Tolton was spasming on the floor,
spittle flecking his lips. His hair was rimed with frost. Each shallow panted
breath was revealed in a cloud of white vapour.
“Shit.” Dariat staggered over to
him. Just in time he remembered not to try and touch the tormented body. Get
a medical team down here.
Oh yeah. I’ll get right on it.
They should be with you in about three hours.
Shit. He knelt down next to Tolton, and leaned right
over, staring into delirious eyes. “Hey.” Limpid fingers clicked right in front
of Tolton’s nose. “Hey. Tolton. Can you hear me? Try and steady your breathing.
Take a deep breath. Come on! You’ve got to calm your body down. Breathe.”
Tolton’s teeth chittered. He
gurgled, cheeks bulging.
“That’s it. Come on. Breathe. Deep.
Suck that air down. Please.”
The street poet’s lips compressed
slightly, making a whistling sound.
“Good. Good. And again. Come on.”
It took several minutes for
Tolton’s bucking to subside. His erratic breathing reduced to sharp gasps.
“Cold,” he grunted.
Dariat smiled down at him. “Ho boy.
You had me worried there. We really don’t need any more ghosts floating around
in here right now.”
“Heart. My heart. God! I thought .
. .”
“It’s okay. It’s over.”
Tolton nodded roughly, and tried to
lever himself up.
“Stop! You just lie there for
another minute longer. There’s no paramedic service any more, remember? First
thing we need is some proper food for you. I think there’s a restaurant on this
floor.”
“No way. As soon as I can get up,
we’re leaving. No more starscrapers.” Tolton coughed, and started to glance
round. “Jesus.” He scowled. “Are we safe?”
“Sure. For now, anyway.”
“Did we kill it?”
Dariat grimaced. “Not exactly, no.
But we gave it a hell of a fright.”
“That lightning bolt didn’t kill
it?”
“No. It flew off, though.”
“Shit. I nearly died.”
“Yeah. But you didn’t. Concentrate
on that.”
Tolton slowly eased himself into a
sitting position, wincing at each tiny movement. Once he was propped up against
a table leg, he reached out and caressed the ice which was engulfing a chair,
fingers stroking curiously. He gave Dariat a grim look with badly bloodshot
eyes. “This isn’t going to have a happy ending, is it?”
The seven hellhawks glided in
towards Monterey, acknowledging the query from the SD network defence as the
sensors locked on.
The Sevilla SD network was a
hell of a lot stronger than anything we were briefed about, they told Jull von Holger, when he asked how
the mission had gone. Seven frigates were lost, and we’re all that’s left of
our squadron.
Did the infiltration succeed?
We think over a hundred got
through.
Excellent.
Neither side said anything more.
Jull von Holger could sense the quiet rage of the surviving hellhawks. He chose
not to mention the fact to Emmet Mordden; the hellhawks were all Kiera’s
problem.
Go straight to the docking
ledges, Hudson Proctor told
the hellhawks. We’ve already cleared the pedestals. You’ll be fed as soon as
you land. He focused on Kiera’s face. She smiled her brightest ingénue
smile, pouring as much gratitude into her thoughts as possible for her deputy
to relay. “Well done. I know it’s not easy, but believe me there won’t be many
more of these ridiculous seeding missions.” She arched an eyebrow in query to
Hudson. “Was there a reply?”
He coloured slightly at the
emotional backlash to her little speech that flooded the affinity band. “No.
They’re pretty tired.”
“I understand.” Her sweet
expression hardened. “End your contact.”
Hudson Proctor nodded curtly,
signalling it had been done.
“You hope there ain’t going to be
many more seeding flights, you mean,” Luigi said indolently.
The three of them were sitting in
one of the smaller, more private lounges above the asteroid’s docking ledges,
waiting for the last member of their group to arrive. Kiera’s small revolution
had picked up a respectable degree of momentum over the last ten days. The
success of the seeding flights had bolstered Al’s popularity and authority
considerably. But that triumph came with a high price in terms of starships,
and quite a few people were starting to acknowledge that the infiltration
campaign was short-termism. Slowly, quietly, Kiera had exploited that. Being
able to see the dissatisfaction and worry in people’s minds gave her a handy
advantage when it came to spotting potential recruits.
Silvano Richmann came in and took
his seat around the coffee table. There was a cluster of bottles in the centre,
he poured himself a shot of whisky.
“The Sevilla flotilla is back,”
Kiera told him. “Seven frigates and five hellhawks got zapped.”
“Fuck.” Silvano shook his head in
dismay. “Al’s putting together another fifteen of these missions. He just
doesn’t see it.”
“He sees it the way he wants to see
it,” Kiera said. “They’re successful in that they’re landing infiltrators each
time. The Confederation is going apeshit. We’re knocking off five of their
planets a day. It buys him complete respect and loyalty with the Organization
down on the planet.”
“While my fleet gets chopped to
shit,” Luigi snapped. “That goddamn whore Jezzibella. She’s got him by the
balls.”
“Not just your fleet,” Kiera said.
“I’m losing hellhawks fast. Much more of this, and they’ll leave.”
“Where to?” Silvano asked. “They’ve
got to stick with you. That was a neat sting you pulled on them with the food.”
“The Edenists keep making offers to
try and lure them away,” Hudson said. “Etchells keeps us informed. The latest
offer is that they’ll actually accept the blackhawk host personality into their
habitat neural strata, leaving our guys as the only soul in there. In exchange
they get all the food they want, providing they just cooperate with the
Edenists, help them find out about our powers.”
“Shit,” Silvano muttered. “We gotta
stop this. I’d be mighty tempted by any offer that got rid of this body’s host
soul.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” Kiera said. She
sat back and sipped at her wine. “Okay, the question is, how far are you
prepared to go?”
“Pretty goddamn obvious for me,”
Luigi said. “I’ll waste that shit Capone myself. Busting me down to a fucking
errand boy. Nobody could have handled Tranquillity any different.”
“Silvano?”
“He’s got to go. But there’s one
condition for me signing up with you. And it ain’t negotiable.”
“What’s that?” Kiera asked, though
she was fairly sure she knew. Silvano was feared as Al’s chief enforcer, but he
did have one major difference with his boss.
“After we do this, there are no
more non-possessed in the Organization. We take them all out. Understood?”
“Suits me,” Kiera said.
“No way!” Luigi shouted. “I can’t
run my fucking fleet with just possessed crews. You know that. You’re shitting
on me here, man.”
“Yeah? Who says there’s going to be
a fucking fleet after this. Right, Kiera? We’re doing this for our own safety.
We’re going to take New California out of here; out of this universe. Just like
all the other possessed have done. And for that, we can’t afford no
non-possessed to be around. Come on, Luigi, you know that. As long as there’s
one of them left, they’re going to be plotting and scheming how to get rid of
us. For Christ’s sake. We steal their bodies from them. If you was alive right now,
you wouldn’t give jack shit about anything else other than getting them back
from us.” He slammed his tumbler back down on the table. “We eliminate all the
non-possessed, or there’s no deal.”
“Then there’s no fucking deal,”
Luigi stormed.
Kiera held up her hands. “Boys,
boys, this is how Al wins. You ever heard of divide and rule? All of us have
different interests, and the only way we can hang on to them is if we’re part
of the Organization. Only the Organization needs a fleet, and hellhawks, and lieutenants
that have to be kept in line.” She shot Silvano a significant look. “He’s made
it complicated so that we have to support him to keep our own places. What
we’ve got to do is dismantle the Organization, but rig whatever’s next so that
we three come out on top.”
“Like what?” Luigi asked
suspiciously.
“Okay, you want the fleet back,
right? Tell me why?”
“Because it’s fucking mine, you
dumb broad. I built that fleet up from nothing. I was here right from the
start, the day Al walked into San Angeles City Hall.”
“Fair enough. But all the fleet did
was make you a player. Do you really want to risk flying to Confederation
planets and going up against their SD networks? They’re getting wise to us now.
These seeding flights are pissing them off bad. They’re killing us out there,
Luigi.”
“So? Like I should care. I’m the
admiral. I don’t have to go with them every time.”
“The whole fleet doesn’t have to go
anywhere, Luigi; that’s the point. What you need is to exchange the fleet for
something else that will keep you in the game, right?”
Luigi eyed her cautiously. “Maybe.”
“That’s what we’ve got to work out
between the three of us. Right now, we can carry the Organization if we
eliminate Capone. But the Organization’s a dead end. Dishing out tokens instead
of money, for Christ’s sake. If we take it over, we’ve got to use it to
establish a new type of government. One that has us at the top.”
“Like what?” Silvano asked. “The
second New California leaves this universe then nobody needs any kind of
government.”
“Says who?” Kiera sneered. “You’ve
seen the cities down there. Unless the Organization keeps putting the squeeze
on the farmers to supply food, they’d collapse overnight. If New California
escapes this universe, everyone on it is going to have to turn into some kind
of medieval peasant just to stay alive. And that’s such bullshit. Five per cent
of the population working in the fields can sustain the rest of us. Now I don’t
know what kind of society we can build on the other side, but I’m damned if I’m
going to live in a mud hut and spend my days walking behind a horse’s arse to
plough a field. Especially when someone else can be made to do it for me.”
“So what are you saying here?”
Silvano asked. “That we keep the farmers working while the rest of us live it
up?”
“Basically, yeah. It’s just like
what I’ve done with the hellhawks, but on a much bigger scale. We have to keep
the farmers farming, and we have to be in charge of distributing the food to
the urban areas. Convert the Organization into a giant supplier; and the only
people who get supplied, are the ones who we say.”
“You’d need a fucking army for
that!” Luigi exclaimed.
Kiera gestured magnanimously.
“There you are then. That’s what you turn the fleet into. Find a portable
weapon that’s effective against the possessed: something like those bastard
serjeants use on Mortonridge, manufacture it up here, and equip our supporters
with it. Use the same chain of command network that’s already in place, but
with a land army to back it up instead of the SD platforms.”
“That might work,” Silvano said.
“So if Luigi’s got himself an army, what do I get?”
“Communications are vital,
otherwise this whole thing will just collapse. And we’d need to be more subtle
with the farmers than forcing them at gunpoint. That’s an enforcer’s job.”
He poured himself another whisky.
“Okay. Let’s talk about it.”
Western Europe always took his dogs
for a walk himself. Dog ownership was a healthy reminder of responsibility; you
either do it properly or not at all. There weren’t many crises which could make
him skip a day. Though he suspected one of his staff was going to have to start
substituting fairly soon.
The formal lawns extended for over
three hundred metres from the back of the house (they were yards back in the
days when he bought the estate, but even he had fallen to using that appalling
modern French metric system now). A hedge of ancient yews marked the end, ten
metres high, laden with their squishy dull-red berries. He pushed through the
gap marked by crumbling stone pillars that used to be gateposts, making a
mental note to get a gardening construct to prune the twigs. The carpet of dry
needles compressed beneath his brogues as the Labradors scampered round him. It
was meadowland beyond, the shaggy grass thick with daisies and buttercups. A
gentle slope led down to a long still lake eight hundred metres away. He
whistled softly, and threw his stick.
“Found them,” North America
datavised.
“Who?”
“The possessed Quinn Dexter left
behind in New York. Just to make you more insufferable, you were right. He went
for the Light Bringer sect.”
“Ah.” The Labradors found the
stick, one of them clamped it in his jaw. Western Europe slapped his hands on
his thighs, and the dogs started to bound back to him. “How bad is it?”
“Not too bad, I believe. I lost the
High Magus, of course. I guess he suicided. But there are several actives left.
Two of them called me before the energistic effect glitched their neural
nanonics. They’re taking over the covens one at a time. Eight down already,
including the arcology headquarters in the Leicester skyscraper.”
“Numbers?”
“That’s the good news. About ten
possessed to each coven. The moron acolytes are actually welcoming them, and
doing as they’re told. Their new masters are just sitting tight, and holding
some pretty gross orgies. They’ve made sure each coven’s electronics are
switched off, not that many of their units were ever interfaced with the net
anyway.”
“I knew it. They’re moving with a
purpose.”
“Definite infiltration tactics.
They’ve got their foothold, now they’re waiting.”
“If they’re spreading to each dome,
then some of them must be on the move.”
“Yes, I know. And they’ve had it
easy in all the confusion. With all those riots resulting from the vac-train
shutdown there’s been a lot of vandalism; that makes it tough for the AI to
locate glitches.”
“So when are you going to hit the
covens?”
“Good question. I wanted your
opinion on that. If I hit them now, then whoever’s moving about will be warned
and go to ground. That’ll leave New York vulnerable.”
Western Europe took the stick from
the Labrador, and paused. “Yes, but if you wait until every coven is taken
over, you’ll have a lot of the bastards to deal with. Someone will inevitably
get through the police cordons, and you’ll be back in the same leaky boat. How
many covens can you monitor in real time?”
“All of them. That’s already being
done. Those I have no direct access to are being watched by agents.”
“Then you’ve got it covered. Wait
until a group of possessed shows up at a new coven, then take them all out
together.”
“And if there’s more than one group
moving round?”
“I’m paranoid, but am I paranoid
enough. What sort of assault were you planning?”
“GISD tactical team, with shoot to
kill orders. Wipe each coven out, I don’t want prisoners to interrogate.
Fletcher is still cooperating with Halo’s science teams.”
“Given the stakes, here, I’d
suggest using a gamma pulse against them first. You’ll get peripheral
casualties, but it’ll be nothing like as bad as an SD strike. Send the tactical
teams in to secure and mop up afterwards.”
“All right. I can live with that.”
“We might even get a vote of
confidence from our illustrious colleagues.”
“Not even this century’s geneering
can make pigs fly yet. I’ll get the assault organized for three hundred hours
EST.”
“If you need any help, just
whistle.” Western Europe smiled happily, and slung the stick high into the air.
Not even B7 could block news of
events inside New York from spilling out across the global net. Speculation had
been hot and intense ever since the arcology’s vac-trains had been shut down
after the Dome One “incident.” Several riots had been captured by rover
reporters; two of whom had been badly injured during the coverage, adding extra
spice to the sensevise. Then eleven hours later, the North American
Commissioner had appeared before the press once more to announce the
investigation had been completed, and confirm the incident was not caused by
the possessed. It was in fact a professional assassination carried out in Grand
Central Station involving a sophisticated weapons implant and a chameleon suit.
Business rivals of the deceased Bud Johnson were currently being sought for
questioning.
The vac-trains had been re-opened.
The rioters and looters had cleared the streets. The police reinforcements had
been stood down. Celebrity news presenters were given extended programmes to
cover the paranoia raging across the planet. The arrival of the Mount’s
Delta appeared to have acted as the trigger for a multitude of small events
that were blamed on the possessed, culminating in the Grand Central Station
disturbance. And Capone’s recent switch in tactics to flying infiltration
attacks against Confederation planets served to exacerbate people’s fears. The
Confederation Navy and local SD networks seemed unable to prevent the
Organization’s strike flotillas. After the quarantine appeared to be preventing
the spread, worlds were starting to fall again. Everyone, ran the feeling, was
vulnerable.
But the lifting of the vac-train
restrictions eased the tension a little, right up until 2:50 EST when they were
abruptly shut again. Frustrated commuters datavised the information to the news
agencies within ten seconds. New York’s rover reporters, who had descended en
masse into the arcology’s bars after a hard day’s sensationalising, were hauled
back out onto the concrete canyons by their editors. Agencies which datavised
information requests to the arcology’s civic authority were met with blank
puzzlement. Nobody had told the graveyard shift about the vac-trains. The police
precinct houses were equally baffled. Even the urgent requests to in-house
sources produced a blank, at least in the ten minutes that counted.
With all of the B7 supervisors
on-line and observing, North America gave the order to launch the assault.
The Internal Security Directorate
tactical teams had been arriving in New York ever since the vac-trains started
running again. By the time the assault was launched, there were over eight
hundred personnel deployed around the various sect covens. They were all armed
with projectile weapons loaded with chemical or electric rounds. Complementing
them were the gamma lasers. Intended for anti-terrorist interception
situations, they were powerful enough to penetrate at least five metres of
carbon-concrete. Such a range would allow the teams to strike at targets holed
up deep inside skyscrapers and megatowers. One would usually be sufficient to
eliminate an entire room full of hostiles instantaneously.
North America had ringed each coven
with nine, while the Leicester skyscraper had fifteen ranged against it. The
supervisor’s deepest worry was that the possessed with their extended senses
would discover the preparations. To try and deny them any hint, engineering
mechanoids had been used throughout the day to unpack and install the gamma
lasers in surrounding buildings. Give-away human supervision had been kept to
an absolute minimum. As well as the gamma lasers, North America had the exits
and service tunnels rigged to electrify anyone who scuttled down them. That was
the most dangerous aspect of the work, but again mechanoids with New York’s
civic service emblem on their sides trundled along modifying wires and cables
without drawing questions or interest.
The tactical teams had assembled
several blocks away to avoid attention. North America started to move them
forward simultaneously with closing down the vac-trains. He also closed down
all road traffic and metro transit carriages inside the arcology, and sealed
the domes from each other; an aspect the news agencies didn’t realize until a
lot later. According to every asset and functional bug infiltrated into the
covens, neither the possessed nor the acolytes were aware of the preparations.
They didn’t even know the tactical teams were advancing.
The gamma ray lasers fired at 2:55
EST. The fifteen beams transfixing the Leicester skyscraper swept through the
lower eight stories which made up the sect’s headquarters. They used a scan
pattern, switching between vertical and horizontal to cover every cubic
centimetre. When the beams were aimed right through the core of the skyscraper,
the energy was absorbed by the structure, while furnishings and composite walls
ignited instantly under the intense radiation barrage. Thick, radiant orange
lines were scratched across the carbon-concrete support pillars and floors as
the beams traversed the building. The air was superheated, dissolving into its
component atoms. Windows detonated outward from the appalling pressure,
showering the street below with daggers of glass.
Fire sprinklers burst into life,
only for their water to vaporise first into steam then clouds of ions. Glaring
blue and violet streamers jetted out of the smashed windows, and fountained up
the skyscraper’s elevator shafts. Ruptured air-conditioning ducts provided secondary
routes for the heatstorm to pervade the building. The entire lower floors were
engulfed in a dazzling fireball.
Human bodies caught within the
flexing three-dimensional mesh of beams burst apart from the terrible energy
input. Their water content exploded into steam as the carbon combusted. When
the beams reached the outer sections of the skyscraper, they were powerful
enough to pierce clean though the walls. Surrounding skyscrapers were strafed
with the radiation, resulting in vast tracts of damage. Then the sharp spires
of ions exhaled by the Leicester played across their outer walls, igniting
dozens of ordinary fires.
The gamma ray lasers switched off.
The night was filled with the roar of flames and the screams of those being
burnt alive. There was enough light thrown out from the fires to light the
entire district. Unharmed residents of the nearby buildings lucky enough to
live on the lower floors rushed onto the street; while those higher up could
only stare out helplessly as the flames took hold. The images they relayed to
the news agencies, which were distributed across the planet in real-time,
showed the GISD tactical teams marching down every approach road to the
Leicester. Against the raging orange flames, their heat-proof flexarmour suits
appeared as matt-black silhouettes. Weapons with long snouts were cradled
casually on their arms as they walked into the conflagration with astounding
nonchalance.
Three times, figures rushed out of
the skyscraper’s main entrance doors, making their bid for freedom. They were
like fire monsters, flames shooting from every part of their bloated figures.
The tactical team guns spat short pulses of turquoise flame with quiet
efficiency, and the fiery creatures crumpled to burn unhindered on the wide
sidewalk.
It was those scenes of perfunctory
extermination which finally convinced the world that the possessed had somehow
penetrated the titanic defences of the Halo. The political fallout was
considerable. A motion of impeachment was put before the Govcentral Grand Senate,
condemning the President for not informing the senatorial defence committee in
advance. The President, who could hardly publicly admit to knowing nothing
about the situation, fired the chiefs of GISD Bureaus 1 through 4, for gross
insubordination and overreaching their authority. The GISD’s New York chief was
charged with reckless homicide, and put under immediate arrest. Such
machinations went almost unnoticed by the public, who were fed a continual
stream of updates of the on-the-ground aftermath by the news agencies.
Once the tactical teams had
confirmed that there were no possessed left alive in any of the sect covens,
they withdrew. Only then were the emergency services allowed in. It took ten
hours for the fire department mechanoids to extinguish the last fires.
Paramedic crews followed them through the burnt out floors. The arcology
hospitals were swamped by casualties. Preliminary insurance damage estimates
ran into hundred of millions of G-dollars. Dome One’s mayor, in conjunction
with the other fourteen mayors of the arcology, instigated an official day of
mourning, and opened a bereavement fund.
Officially, one thousand two
hundred and thirty-three people died in the assault against the New York
possessed; nearly half as a result of being hit by gamma radiation. The rest
were either burned or asphyxiated. Over nine thousand needed hospital treatment
for minor burns, shock, and other injuries. Double that number lost their
homes; with several hundred businesses forced to try and relocate. The vac-trains
in and out of New York remained closed.
“Well?” North Pacific asked. It was
five hours after the tactical teams had finished their sweep of the covens, and
B7 had reconvened to hear the genuine results.
“We got a hundred and eight
possessed, that’s the best estimate I can provide. There wasn’t a hell of a lot
left for the forensic crew to analyse after the gamma lasers finished.”
“I’m more interested in the ones
you didn’t eliminate.”
“Eight of the electrocution traps
we rigged along possible escape routes were triggered. The teams pulled eleven
corpses out of various ducts and service tunnels.”
“Quit stalling!” South America
said. “Did any of them get out?”
“Probably, yes. Forensics thinks
maybe three or four people got past the electrocution traps. There’s no way of
telling if they were possessed or not, but it would take one inhumanly tough
mother to survive what we threw at them.”
“Shit! We’re right back where we
started. You’re going to have to initiate this kind of slaughter operation each
time they regroup. Only now they don’t have any convenient sects to flee back
to.”
“Well this time, I’m going to
insist on keeping New York’s vac-trains shut,” North Pacific said. “We can’t
let them get out of New York.”
“I quite agree,” Western Europe
said.
“Only because you can’t risk
another vote.”
“There’s no need to get personal.
We remain on top of the situation.”
“Really? Where’s Dexter, then?”
“When the time comes, I will
eliminate him.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
The K5 star had a catalogue number,
but that was all. Only three planets were in orbit around it, two of them
smaller than Mars, and a gas giant fifty-thousand kilometres in diameter.
Undistinguished in astronomical terms, it lay forty-one light-years outside the
loose boundary of space claimed by the Confederation. There had been a single
scoutship visit in 2530, which quickly established its worthlessness. As far as
official records were concerned, that was the first and last time humans had
visited the barren system. Certainly the Navy never bothered with it; their
patrols were stretched thinly enough as it was searching for illegal activity
within the Confederation and through the stars fringing the boundary. Although
the surrounding wreath of stars was an obvious location for illegal operations
(and several highly dubious independent colony ventures), forty-one light-years
was just too far away to justify the expense of regular inspection flights.
Such a safeguard made it ideal for
the black cartel. Their antimatter station orbited five million kilometres from
the star’s surface, a closeness which stretched human materials science to its
limit. The radiation, heat, particle, and magnetic forces it encountered were
appalling. An approaching ship would see it as a simple black disk sailing across
the incandescent solar glare. Sixty kilometres in diameter, it cast a
significant cone-shaped umbra behind it; a zone insulated from the star’s heat,
the one place where hell’s proverbial snowflake might just have survived. The
surface facing the star was a radial concertina array of solid state cells
absorbing the incredible blast of heat and converting it directly into
electricity. At the back they glowed a gentle pink, utilizing their own shade
to radiate the immense thermal load away into space. In total, the array was
capable of generating over one and a half terawatts of electricity.
The antimatter production system
itself was housed in a cluster of boxy silver-white industrial modules right in
the centre of the array. The mundane method of churning out antimatter was
essentially unchanged since the late Twentieth Century; although the levels of
scale and efficiency had risen considerably since the first few experimental
antiprotons had been manufactured in high-energy physics laboratories. Production
requires individual protons to be accelerated until their energy becomes
greater than a giga-electron-volt, at which point each one has more energy in
its motion than its mass. Once that state has been achieved, they are collided
with heavy nuclei, resulting in a spray of elementary particles that includes
antiprotons, antielectrons, and antineutrons. These are then separated,
collected, cooled, and merged into antihydrogen. But it is that initial proton
acceleration stage which absorbs the phenomenal amount of electricity produced
by the solar array in its entirety.
The whole operation was overseen by
a crew of twenty-five technicians, stationed in a large, heavily-shielded
rotating carbotanium wheel that floated deep inside the array’s umbra. They had
now been joined by eight members of the Organization to keep them in line.
Taking over the station had been absurdly easy.
Because the black cartel took the
elementary precaution of installing its own modified neural nanonics in
everyone who knew of the station’s location, there could only ever be two kinds
of visitor: the Confederation Navy on a search and destroy mission, or a
legitimate buyer. The arrival of Capone’s lieutenants came as a severe shock to
the crew. The few hand weapons available were utterly useless against the
possessed; their only other option was to kamikaze. Once the Organization’s
terms and conditions had been laid on the line, that was postponed
indefinitely. The same kind of uneasy stand-off balance between need and fear
that had claimed New California settled across the station.
After supplying the first
Organization convoy with every gram of antimatter held in storage, the station
had been operating a full production schedule ever since, attempting to cope
with Capone’s desperate demands for more. Starships came from New California
every five or six days for new supplies.
Admiral Saldana’s squadron made no
attempt at stealth or subtlety when it jumped into the system, emerging
twenty-five million kilometres from the star. Navy starships always had a
tremendous advantage against the stations they hunted. Deep inside the star’s
gravity field, there could be no quick escape for the station’s crew. Defensive
weapons were almost useless. Not even antimatter propulsion and warheads could
produce their usual overwhelming advantage; in such proximity to the star,
combat wasp sensors were almost blind.
Standard procedure for the Navy
starships was to launch a volley of kinetic projectiles in a retrograde orbit.
It was a tactic that would quickly exhaust the station’s stock of drones,
leaving them with beam weapons alone. Against a swarm of ten thousand harpoons,
their chances of vaporizing every one before it hit was effectively nil. That
was assuming the station sensors were even capable of locating the incoming
missiles to begin with. In most cases the hellish solar environment completely
masked their approach. And the Navy vessels would never issue a warning, the
station might never know of their presence until the first missile struck.
All the attackers needed was a
single strike against the production system. Any large explosion would
inevitably set off a chain reaction within the antimatter storage chambers. The
resulting blast could at times be five or six times the size of a planet-buster,
depending on how much of the substance was in store.
This time it was going to have to
be a little different. Meredith Saldana waited impatiently on the Arikara’s
bridge while the voidhawks deployed around the star in small swallow
manoeuvres. Each of them launched a pack of small sensor satellites to scan the
huge magnetosphere in which they were all immersed.
Locating the station was easy
enough, though the sheer volume of space they were searching through made it a
lengthy task. The Arikara’s tactical situation computer started to
receive datavises from the satellites, blending them into a harmonized picture
of the whole near-solar environment. When the information was complete, it
showed the star as a dark sphere surrounded with graded shells of pale gold
translucence. The innermost seethed like a restless sea as the magnetic forces
fluxed and coiled, above that they smoothed out considerably.
A tiny knot of twisted copper light
was sliding along a circular, five million kilometre orbit. The squadron’s comparative
position was fed in, and Meredith began issuing orders. Because of their
vulnerability to the star’s heat and radiation, the voidhawks maintained their
orbits, enabling them to keep watch for any emerging starships. The Adamist
starships flew inward. Eight frigates were vectored into high inclination
orbits, a location from which they could launch a kinetic assault on the
station. The remaining starships, including Lady Macbeth, aligned
themselves on an interception course and accelerated along it at three gees.
When they were three million
kilometres away, the Arikara pointed her main communication dish on the
station, and boosted the signal to full strength.
“This communiqué is directed to the
station commander,” Meredith datavised. “This is the Confederation Navy ship Arikara.
Your illegal operation is now terminated. Ordinarily, you would be executed
for your actions in producing antimatter, but I have been authorized to offer
you transport to a Confederation penal colony planet if you cooperate with us.
This offer is also applicable to any possessed who are resident at the station.
I will require your answer within one hour. Failure to respond will be taken as
a refusal to cooperate, and you will be destroyed.” He datavised the flight
computer to repeat the message, and the squadron waited.
It took ten minutes for a
static-heavy signal to emerge from the station. “This is Renko, I’m the guy Al
left in charge around here. And I’m telling you to get the fuck out of here
before we smear your pansy asses across the sun. You got that clear, pal?”
Meredith glanced across the
bridge’s acceleration couches to where Lieutenant Grese was lying. The
intelligence officer managed to grin, despite the gee force. “That’s a break,”
he said. “We got Capone’s source, no matter what the outcome.”
“I believe the Navy is due a
break,” Meredith said. “Especially our section of it.”
“He’ll have to stop those bloody
infiltration flights now. His fleet will need all the antimatter they’ve got
left to defend New California.”
“Indeed.” Meredith was almost
cheerful when he ordered the computer to datavise a reply to the station.
“Consult your crew, Renko. You’re in the losing position here. All we have to
do is launch a single missile once an hour. You have to fire five each time
just to make sure it doesn’t get through. And we’re in no hurry, we can keep
shooting at you for a couple of weeks if we have to. There’s just no way you
can win. Now are you going to accept my offer, or do you want to go back to the
beyond?”
“Nice try, but you don’t mean it.
Not for us, leastways. I know you guys, you’ll slam us into zero-tau the second
we put our hands up.”
“For what it’s worth, I am Rear
Admiral Meredith Saldana, and you have my word that you will be given passage
to an uninhabited world capable of supporting human life. Consider your
alternatives. If we attack the station, you go back to the beyond, if I’m lying
about transporting you to a planet you go back. But there is the very strong
possibility that I’m not lying. Can you really reject that hope?”
Along with the rest of the
squadron, Joshua had to wait another twenty minutes for the answer. Eventually,
Renko agreed to surrender. “Looks like we’re on,” Joshua said. They were
accelerating hard again, preventing him from smiling. But there was no hiding
the rise of excitement in his labouring voice.
“Christ, the other side of the
nebula,” Liol marvelled. “What’s the furthest anyone’s ever been before?”
“A voidhawk scout group travelled
six hundred and eighty light years from Earth in 2570,” Samuel replied. “Their
course took them directly galactic north, not in this direction.”
“I missed that,” Ashly complained.
“Was there anything interesting out there?”
Samuel closed his eyes, questioning
the voidhawks racing along their orbits millions of kilometres away. “Nothing
unusual, or dramatic. Stars with possible terracompatible planets, stars
without. No sentient xenoc species.”
“The Meridian fleet went further,”
Beaulieu said.
“Only according to legend,” Dahybi
countered. “Nobody knows where they vanished to. In any case, that was
centuries ago.”
“Logically then, they must have
gone a long way if no one’s ever found them.”
“Found the wreckage, more like.”
“Such pessimism is bad for you.”
“Really? Hey, Monica.” Dahybi
lifted one hand to make an appeal before the acceleration made him lower it
fast again. “Do your lot know where they went? It could be important if they’re
waiting out there for us.”
Monica stared stubbornly at the
compartment’s ceiling, a headache building behind her compressed eyeballs that
no program could rid her of. She really hated high gees. “No,” she datavised
(her throat was suffering along with the rest of her), irritated she couldn’t
put any emphasis into her digitalized speech. Not that snapping at the crew
would endear her to them, but their relentless discussions of utter trivia were
starting to chafe. And she’d possibly got a month or more to go. “The ESA was
in its infancy back when the Meridian fleet was launched. Even today I doubt
we’d bother planting assets in with a bunch of paradise seeking fools.”
“I don’t want to know what’s
there,” Joshua said. “The whole point of this mission is discovery. We’re real
explorers going out on a limb, first for at least a century.”
“Amen to that,” Ashly said.
“Where we are now is new for most
people,” Liol said. “Just look at that station.”
“Standard industrial modules,”
Dahybi said. “Hardly exotic or inspiring.” Liol sighed sadly.
“Okay, we’re getting close to
injection point,” Joshua announced. “Systems review, please. How’s our fuselage
holding out?” The flight computer was datavising images from the localized
sensors into his neural nanonics. Lady Mac’s thermo dump panels were
fully extended, constantly rotating to present their narrow edges towards the
raging star. Their flat surfaces were glowing radiant pink as they expelled the
ship’s accumulated heat. He’d programmed a permanent spin into their vector, a
fifteen minute cycle to ensure the immense thermal input was distributed evenly
across the fuselage. Fine manoeuvring was slow, given the additional reaction
mass they were carrying, but the balance compensation programs were handling it
providing he kept tweaking them.
“No hot spots yet,” Sarha reported.
“That extra layer of nulltherm foam is doing its job quite well. But it is
picking up a lot of particle radiation, far more than we’re used to. We’ll have
to watch that.”
“Should lose it when we get behind
the shield,” Liol said. “Won’t be long now.”
“See?” Beaulieu told Dahybi. “You
are surrounded by optimists.”
The squadron’s interception ships
were sliding into an orbital slot three thousand kilometres behind the
antimatter station. If Renko did decide to switch off the storage confinement
chambers, the radiation impact from the blast would tax the shielding on the starships
to an uncomfortable degree. But they should be safe. So far, he appeared to be
cooperating.
Commander Kroeber was handling the
negotiation on how the hand over was to be accomplished. The civil starship
already docked at the station was to depart with everyone on board. It would
rendezvous with one of the squadron’s marine cruisers. The possessed would
disembark and proceed directly to the brig under heavily armed guard where they
would stay for the duration of the flight. Any indication of them using their
energistic power, for whatever reason, would result in a forty-thousand-volt
current being run through the brig. The cruiser, accompanied by two frigates,
would fly directly to an uninhabited terracompatible world (currently in the
middle of an ice age) where the possessed would be shot down to the
tropical-zone surface in one-way descent capsules, with a supply of survival
equipment. There would be no further contact with that planet by the
Confederation, apart from delivering any further possessed with whom similar
exceptional deals had been made.
Kroeber’s other offer, that they
help the CNIS with its research into energistic power until such time as a
solution was found for possession, was summarily rejected.
Once the possessed were safely incarcerated,
another marine cruiser would rendezvous with the starship and take off the
station’s regular crew ready to transport them to a penal planet. Complete
control of the station systems was to be handed over to the Navy technical
crew, who would remote test their new domain. If total access was confirmed, a
third marine cruiser would dock with the station itself, and perform a boarding
and securement manoeuvre.
After some haggling, mainly over
the contents of the survival equipment they could take with them down to the
icy planet, Renko agreed to the arrangement. Lady Macbeth’s crew watched
the proceedings through the sensors. The hand-over went remarkably smoothly,
taking just less than a day. A datavise from the first marine cruiser showed
the possessed, dressed defiantly in double-breasted suits, laughing brashly as
they were led into the brig. The station crew looked frankly relieved that
they’d escaped with exile. They datavised over their access codes without a
qualm.
“You may proceed to docking, Captain
Calvert,” Admiral Saldana datavised. “Lieutenant Grese informs me we are now in
full command of the station. There is enough antimatter in storage for your
requirements.”
“Thank you, sir,” Joshua replied.
He triggered the fusion drives. The simple course over to the station had been
plotted for hours. Accelerate, flip, and decelerate. They were already inside
the station’s umbra and commencing final rendezvous manoeuvres when the
Organization’s convoy arrived.
“Eleven of them, sir,” Lieutenant
Rhoecus said. “Confirmed emergence twenty-three million miles out from the
star, eighty-nine million miles from the station.”
“Threat assessment?” the admiral
enquired. How typical, he thought, that something should come along to thwart
the squadron’s mission once again.
“Minimal.” The Edenist liaison
officer appeared almost happy. “Ilex and Oenone report there are
five hellhawks and six frigates in the enemy formation. Their hellhawks can’t
swallow down to us, not at this altitude. And even if we assume the frigates
are armed with antimatter combat wasps, they would take hours to reach us
accelerating continually. I’ve never heard of a combat wasp that has an hour’s
fuel in it.”
“They’d have to be custom built,”
Grese said. “Which is unlikely for Capone. And even if they do exist, we can
evade them easily at this distance.”
“Then Calvert can carry on?” the
admiral asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. Kroeber, inform the Lady
Macbeth to proceed as planned. I’d appreciate it if the good captain didn’t
dawdle.”
“Aye, sir.”
Meredith reviewed the tactical
display. The Oenone was barely five million kilometres from the cluster
of Organization ships. “Lieutenant Rhoecus, voidhawks to group together
twenty-five million kilometres directly above the antimatter station. I don’t want
them isolated, it might give the hellhawks ideas. Commander Kroeber, move the
rest of the squadron up to rendezvous with the voidhawks, the frigates in high
inclination orbits to meet us there. Two of our frigates to remain with the
station until Lady Macbeth has completed her fuelling. Once they’re at a
safe distance, the station is to be destroyed.”
“Aye, sir.”
Meredith instructed the tactical
computer to compile options. The resulting assessment just about matched his
own opinion. The two sides were evenly matched. He had more ships, but the
Organization was expected to be armed with antimatter combat wasps. And if he
did order the squadron up to intercept, it would take hours to reach them. The
Organization ships could simply jump away, leaving only the voidhawks to pursue
them—who would then be outgunned.
Effectively, it was a stand-off.
Neither side could do much to affect the other.
Yet I cannot allow them to go
unchallenged, Meredith thought, it sets a bad precedent. “Lieutenant Grese?
What do we know about the non-possessed crews on board Organization ships? Just
how much of a hold does Capone have on them?”
“According to the debriefings we’ve
conducted; they all have family being held captive on Monterey. Capone is very
careful about who is given command authority over antimatter. So far it’s a
strategy that’s worked for him. A number of crews on ordinary Organization
starships have managed to eliminate their possessed officers and desert. But
we’ve never had any indication of attempted mutiny on ships equipped with
antimatter.”
“Pity,” Meredith grunted as the Arikara
started to accelerate up to the rendezvous with the voidhawks.
“Nevertheless, I’ll issue them with the same ultimatum as the station was
given. Who knows, the opportunity to capitulate might be enough to spark a
small rebellion.”
Etchells listened to the admiral’s
message as it was beamed out to the convoy. Slippery, vague promises of pardons
and safe passage. None of it was relevant to him.
We repeat Edenism’s offer to
you, the voidhawks added. You
may transfer your host’s personality over to us, and we will provide your
nutrient fluid. All we ask in return is your help in finding a satisfactory
resolution.
Don’t any of you bastards even
answer, Etchells warned his
fellow hellhawks. They’re running scared. They wouldn’t make that kind of
offer unless they were absolutely desperate.
He could sense the uncertainty
rumbling through their affinity bond. But none of them were brave enough to
challenge him directly. Satisfied he’d kept them in line for now, Etchells
asked the convoy’s commander what he intended to do. Withdraw, came the answer,
there’s nothing else we can do.
Etchells wasn’t so sure. The Navy
hadn’t destroyed the station. And that went against everything the
Confederation stood for. There had to be a phenomenal reason for such a change
of policy. We should stay, he told the convoy commander. They cannot engage us
for hours yet. That gives us a chance to discover what they are doing here. If
they’re going to start using antimatter against us, Capone should be told.
Reluctantly, the commander agreed. However, he did order the Adamist ships to
accelerate towards a new jump coordinate that would take them back to New
California, leaving the hellhawks to observe the station.
It was difficult to look directly
into that dangerous glare. Etchells’s sensor blisters began to suffer from
glare spots, similar to purple after-images which plagued human eyes. He
started to roll lazily, flicking his ebony wingtips to bank against the gusts of
solar particles, switching the view between the blisters. Even then,
concentrating on that tiny speck millions of kilometres away was inordinately
stressful. A headache began to pound away inside his stolen neurone structure.
None of the electronic sensors
loaded into his cargo cradles were any use, they were mostly military systems,
intended for close defence work. And his distortion field couldn’t reach that
far. The visual spectrum provided him with the greatest coverage. He could see
the Navy’s Adamist ships accelerating up out of the star’s enormous gravity
field, little sparks of light, actually brighter than the photosphere.
After half an hour, three more
fusion drives ignited around the station. Two of them started to follow the
Navy squadron. The last one took a different course altogether; curving round
the star’s southern hemisphere on a very high inclination trajectory.
Etchells opened his beak wide to
let out an imaginary warble of success. Whatever it was doing, the lone
starship had to be the reason behind the Navy’s strange action. He issued a
flurry of instructions to the other hellhawks. Despite his brute-boy attitude,
Etchells had actually absorbed a great deal of information from his host’s
mentality. The facade of toughness was a deliberate ploy—always let your
opponents believe you’re dumber than you are. Becoming Kiera’s most dependable
and trusted hellhawk made sure she wouldn’t risk him on those mad seeding
flights, or any other dangerous actions. Convoy escort was about the safest duty
to pull.
Wasted decades spent bumming round
pointless mercenary actions across the Confederation, had taught him to
disguise his true potential. Survival was dependent on intelligence and the
lowest cunning, not worthy courage. And he knew for sure that surviving his
current situation was going to take a great deal of ingenuity. Like Rocio in
the Mindori, he had come to admire his new bitek form, finding it
utterly superior to a human body. Quite how he could hang on to it was a
question he’d been unable to resolve. There would be no place for hellhawks in
the place where possessed took their planets to escape the universe, he was
sure. And the Confederation would never rest until they’d solved the problem of
how to evict souls back into the beyond permanently.
So he bided his time, keeping a
giant yellowing eye open for some opportunity to save his own ass, and to hell
with his comrades.
The Navy’s unconventional behaviour
might just be the break he’d been looking for.
When the last three starships were
thirty thousand kilometres from the antimatter station, it exploded with a
violence which outshone the prominence arching through the chromosphere below.
As if in acknowledgement of their defeat, the hellhawks swallowed away.
The voidhawks analysed the way their
distortion fields applied energy against space-time to open a wormhole
interstice. All five hellhawks appeared to be heading back to New California.
They have left the remaining
frigates extremely vulnerable, Auster,
Ilex’s captain, reported to Rhoecus. What are the admiral’s orders?
Hold your position. If you
attack they will just jump clear. We could harass them all the way home, but
there is no tactical advantage to be gained from that. Our objective has been
accomplished.
Very well.
Syrinx.
Yes, Rhoecus.
Oenone is cleared to rendezvous with the Lady
Macbeth. The admiral wishes you both bon voyage.
Thank you.
Etchells didn’t believe the
voidhawks would follow, certainly not instantaneously. The hellhawks all
swallowed ten light-years clear of the star, then swallowed again three seconds
later. Unless a voidhawk had been with them to observe the second swallow,
there was no way of knowing where they’d gone.
Four of them carried on back to New
California. Etchells returned directly to the star, emerging twenty-two million
kilometres above its south pole. With the voidhawks all clustered together in
their twenty-five million kilometre equatorial orbit, there was no way they
could detect his wormhole terminus opening and closing. His position was ideal
to observe the Navy starships flying out from their low orbit. His sensor
blisters didn’t have to focus against the overwhelming white blaze. Even his
headache started to fade.
He did keep a cursory watch on the
Navy ships as they rose out of the gravity field, but it was the lone ship
heading south that interested him. When it was twenty million kilometres from
the star its drive cut out. Etchells projected its course, and started to check
his captured spatial memories. Given its jump alignment there were twenty
possible Confederation systems it could be heading for. And one other.
Hesperi-LN. The Tyrathca planet.
Chapter 12
Fifteen minutes Courtney sat up at
the bar waiting. Four men offered to buy her a drink. Not as many as usual, but
then there were very few civilians abroad these days. Even the Blue Orchid was
suffering from the scare stories flashing across the net, its numbers well
down. Normally it would be jammed at this time of night; the kind of
not-quite-sleazy club where lower-middle management could hang out after work
and not have to worry if someone else from the company saw them. Courtney had
been in a lot worse than this. The doormen didn’t give her any hassle even
though her ass was virtually hanging out of her cocktail dress. Courtney liked
the dress, cool black fabric with straps on the front to hold her titties up
high, and more cross straps down the cut out back. It made her look hot,
without being too cheap.
Banneth said she looked good
wearing it. Best thing the sect had ever done putting her in this dress; she’d
never been so fem before. And it worked. There hadn’t been a night she didn’t
deliver for them. Sometimes twice. It was a good gig, taking the men back to
one of the student rent hotels where the sect had squeezed the manager. Then as
soon as the mark’s pants were off, Billy-Joe, Rav, and Julie would storm in and
kick the shit out of him. Then when he was unconscious Billy-Joe took a
recording of his biolectric pattern and emptied his credit disk.
She’d done much the same thing for
all of the last three years since her brother introduced her to the Light
Bringer. Except to start with she’d attracted paedopervs, who mostly had their
own dens to take her to, or just hauled her into the dark end of a downtown
alley. Those days, it had been Quinn Dexter who pimped her. In a strange way,
she’d always been safer with him in charge. No matter how big a sicko the man
was, Quinn had always arrived in time.
Now she was fifteen, and too big to
pass for a juvenile any more. Banneth had switched the hormones she took. This
new batch didn’t prevent her breasts from growing; quite the opposite, they
promoted development. She’d still got a skinny frame, but now she was huge with
it. In the last nine months her targets had changed completely. It wasn’t the pervs
who wanted her now, just the losers. Courtney reckoned she’d come out of the
alteration okay. Big tits was one of the mildest modifications Banneth made to
sect members.
The fifth man to ask if she was all
right and did her glass need freshening had what it took. Overweight, round
face with perspiration on his brow, hair slicked back with gel, a good suit
cleaned too often. His expression was hesitant, ready for a slapdown. Courtney
drained her glass, and held it out to him, smiling. “Thanks.”
He was too fat to dance. That was a
shame, she liked to dance. So that meant having to sit and listen to about an
hour of bitching—his boss, his family, his apartment; how none of it was going
right for him. The drone was so she’d see he was a real genuine guy who’d had a
couple of bad breaks lately, hoping for the sympathy fuck.
She made all the right sounds at
the right places. After this time working the arcology’s clubs she could
probably have filled in his life story just by looking at him. Proof of that:
she never chose wrong. They always had a loaded disk. After the hour and three
drinks he had enough nerve to make his innocent suggestion. To his utter
surprise the answer was a demure smile and a hurried nod.
It wasn’t far to the student hall,
which was good. Courtney didn’t like getting into a cab with them; there was
too much chance Billy-Joe might lose her. She didn’t look to see if the three
sect members were trailing after her down the street. They’d be there. This was
a real smooth routine now.
Twice though, she thought she heard
footsteps following. Real distinctive, regular thuds of someone using a lot of
metal in their heels. Dumb idea, there was a whole bunch of people walking
along the street. When she did snatch a look, there was no one she could see
that looked like a cop. Just a bunch of civilians scurrying around, making out
their stupid lives meant something.
The cops were her only worry. Even
given the fact less than a quarter of the targets reported the assault and
theft, it wouldn’t take an AI to spot the pattern. But Banneth would know if
there was any sort of operation being mounted. Banneth knew fucking everything
going down in Edmonton. It was scary, sometimes. Courtney knew some of the
sect’s acolytes didn’t really believe in God’s Brother, they were just too
shit-scared of Banneth to step out of line.
“This is it,” she told the man.
They’d stopped outside the worn entrance of a two-century-old skyscraper. A
couple of genuine students were sitting on the steps, taking charges from a
power inhaler. They looked at Courtney with glazed uncaring eyes. She pulled
the man past and into the foyer.
In the elevator he made his first
tentative move. Going for a kiss, which she let him have. Tongue straight down
her throat. He didn’t have time for anything more; the room they’d hijacked for
the night was on the third floor. Its real owner lost somewhere in the arcology
as the black stimulant program shorted out her neurones.
“What are you studying?” he asked
once they were inside.
That caught her short. She didn’t
have a story in place for that—he wasn’t supposed to care. Nothing to help
here, either. The room was a usual student’s jumble, badly lit with fleks and
clothes everywhere, a decades-old desktop block on the one shabby table.
Courtney didn’t read too good, so she couldn’t tell what the tiny print on the
flek cases said.
Easy way out. She shoved the
shoulder straps down, and let her tits bobble free. That shut him up. It took
him about thirty seconds to push her down on the bed, then one hand was up her
skirt while the other was squeezing a tit crudely. She groaned like it was
good, hoping Billy-Joe and the others got a fucking move on. Sometimes the
shits waited and let the man fuck her. Watching the show through some sensor or
peep hole, getting off on the scene and laughing quietly. They always claimed
it looked less like a set-up if they came in afterwards. Banneth laughed too if
she complained.
The man’s hand was tugging at her
panties. Mouth all hot and slobbering over a nipple. Courtney tried not to
grimace. Then she was shivering, as if the conditioning duct had suddenly
dumped a shitload of ice into the air.
He gave out a single puzzled grunt,
pulling his head back. They looked at each other for an instant, both equally
bewildered. Then a white hand clamped over his gelled hair, yanking his head
away from her. He yelled in shock and pain as he was pulled off her and flung
over the room. His flabby body hit the opposite wall with a loud crash, and
crumpled to the floor. A figure in a black robe was standing at the side of the
bed, blank hood tipped down towards Courtney. She drew in a breath to shriek,
knowing fucking well this wasn’t Billy-Joe or any of the others.
“Don’t,” the figure warned. The
darkness inside the hood withered to reveal the face.
“Quinn!” Courtney squeaked. A smile
flicked her lips. “Quinn? God’s Brother, where the fuck did you come from? I
thought you got transported.”
“Long story. Tell you in a minute.”
He turned and went over to the quivering man, grabbed his head and pulled back
viciously. The man’s throat was exposed along its entire length, skin stretched
tight.
“Quinn, what are you . . . Urrgh!”
Courtney watched in a kind of interested shock as a couple of sharp fangs slid
out of Quinn’s mouth. He winked at her as he lowered his head to bite the man’s
neck. She could see Quinn’s Adam’s apple bobbing as he sucked down the blood,
several drops dribbled past his lips. The man was whimpering in high-pitched
terror. “Oh fuck, Quinn, that’s disgusting.”
Quinn stood up, grinning, and wiped
the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood. “No it’s not. It’s
the final conquest. Blood is the best food a human can have. Think on it; every
nutrient you need all nicely refined and cooked ready for you. It’s your right
to take it from the followers of the false lord you defeat. Use them to make
you strong, Courtney, replenish your body.” He looked down at the fat man who
was clutching the neck wound desperately. Blood was pouring through his
fingers.
Courtney giggled at the feeble
gurgling sounds the man was making. “You’ve changed.”
“So have you.”
“Yeah!” She cupped her tits and
lifted them. “Grew these for a start. Good, aren’t they?”
“God’s Brother, Courtney, you are a
total slut.”
She straightened a leg and dangled
her shoe from one toe. “I like what I am, Quinn. That’s my serpent beast,
remember? Dignity is a weakness, along with all the other crap on the
middle-class wish list.”
“You did listen to the sermons.”
“Sure did.”
“So how’s Banneth?”
“Same, I guess.”
“Not for long. I’m back now.” He
held out his hands, making simple gestures. The room began to change; the walls
darkening, furniture turning to matt black cast iron. Manacles appeared on the
metal railings at the head of the bed.
Courtney looked round wildly at the
manifestations, and scrambled backwards over the crumpled duvet, cramming
herself into a corner away from Quinn. “Shit, you’re a possessed!”
“Not me,” he said softly. “I
possess. I am the one God’s Brother has chosen as his Messiah. This power the
returning souls have depends on the force of their will. And nobody believes in
themselves more than me. That’s how I regained control of my body, through the
belief He gave me in myself. Now I’m stronger than a hundred of those
snivelling lost dickheads.”
Courtney unfolded her legs and
peered forward. “It is you, isn’t it. I mean, like really you. You’ve got your
own body and everything.”
“You never were very quick, were
you? But then, it was never your brain the sect wanted.”
“Were you in New York?” she asked
in quiet admiration. “I saw all the fighting on the AV. The police killed
skyscrapers full of people they were so scared.”
“I was there a while back. I was
also in Paris, Bombay, and Johannesburg, which the police don’t know about yet.
Then I gave in to myself, and came home.”
“I’m glad you did.” Courtney
bounded off the bed, and flung her arms round him, licking from his ear to his
mouth. “Welcome back.”
“You will follow me now, not
Banneth.”
“Yes.” She slid her tongue over the
tacky blood congealing on his chin, tasting its salt.
“You will obey.”
“Of course.”
Quinn focused on the thought
currents in her brain, and knew she was telling the truth. Not that he’d
expected anything else from Courtney. He opened the door and let the other
three in. Billy-Joe and Rav he knew from before; it hadn’t taken much to cow
them. Five people standing made the little student room badly cramped, their
breath helping to heat it up. Fast breathing which came from nerves and
excitement. They were all eager to see what Quinn would do next.
“I came back to Earth so I could
bring down the Night,” he told them. “You’ll play a big part in that, and so
will the possessed. I’m going to leave a nest of you in every arcology. But
Edmonton is special for me, because Banneth’s here.”
“What you going to do to her?”
Billy-Joe asked.
Quinn patted the slender youth’s
wire-like arm. “The worst I can imagine,” he said. “And I’ve spent a lot of
time imagining.”
Billy-Joe’s mouth split into an
oafish grin. “All right!”
Quinn looked down at the fat man.
He was gasping like a fish. Blood had formed an enormous puddle on the scuffed
tile floor. “You’re dying,” Quinn said cheerfully. “Only one way to save you
now.” Fields of energy shifted at his command, exerting a specific pressure
against reality. The cries of the souls began to filter out of the beyond.
“Courtney, hurt him.”
She shrugged to the others, and
kicked the man hard in the crotch. He shivered, eyes bugging before the lids
began to flutter uncontrollably. An extra squirt of blood pumped out of the
wound.
“And again,” Quinn directed mildly.
In his mind, he was dictating terms to the lost souls who clustered round the
weak rent between universes. Hearing the pleas of those who claimed they were
worthy. Making his judgement.
Courtney did as she was told,
watching in fascination as a soul (a real dead person!) took control of the
wretched man. The wound closed up. He started hissing in consternation. Tiny
rivulets of lightning slithered along the creases of his blood-soaked suit
fabric.
“Give him something to drink,”
Quinn said.
Billy-Joe and Julie ransacked the
cupboards for cans of soda, popping them and handing them down to the grateful
possessed.
“It’ll take you a while to replace
that much blood,” Quinn said. “Just lie there and take it easy for a while.
Enjoy the show.”
“Yes, Quinn,” the possessed
muttered weakly. He managed to roll onto his back, the effort coming close to
making him faint.
The iron manacles snapped open
loudly. Courtney took one look at them, and glanced back enquiringly at Quinn.
His robe was already dissolving. “You know how to use them,” he told her.
She wriggled out of her dress and
bent over the bed, placing her wrists in the manacles. They hinged shut, and
locked.
Ilex emerged above Avon, radiating profound
satisfaction (and considerable hunger). Every Edenist within Trafalgar picked
up the emotional emission, and smiled simultaneously at the results Auster was
declaring. Lalwani immediately declassified the strike mission against the
antimatter station, and the navy press office started relaying the information
to the system’s news companies. Everything happened so fast that the First
Admiral’s staff only just managed to officially brief Jeeta Anwar before the
Presidential office staff received it off the communication net.
The voidhawk’s easy two-gee flight
to the naval base’s docking ledges was considerably more relaxed than the last
time it had burst out of wormhole close to Trafalgar. General affinity hummed
with a great many ironic comments pointing this out to its triumphant crew.
Two hours after Ilex’s
arrival, Captain Auster was escorted into the First Admiral’s office by
Lieutenant Keaton, the newest member of the admiral’s staff. Samual
Aleksandrovich greeted the Edenist captain warmly, and gestured to the sunken
reception area. Lalwani and Kolhammer joined them on the leather couches, while
the lieutenant served tea and coffee. As he was moving round with their china
cups, the bulky AV cylinder at the apex of the ceiling shimmered brightly, and
the images of President Haaker and Jeeta Anwar materialized in the reception
area.
“My congratulations to the Navy,
Admirals, Captain,” Haaker said. “The destruction of an antimatter station at
this time is particularly satisfying.”
“Capone’s antimatter station, Mr
President,” Kolhammer said significantly. “That’s a considerable bonus.”
“Essentially he will be unable to
mount any more of these damnable infiltration missions against Confederation
planets, let alone attempt another full scale invasion along the lines of
Arnstat,” Samual said. “That means he’s been neutered. We shall now resume our
harassment campaign, and enhance it considerably this time around. That should
wear down the hellhawks, and deplete his stock of antimatter in defence. Given
its unstable social base, we expect the Organization to collapse within a few
weeks, two months at the most.”
“Unless he pulls another rabbit out
of his capacious fedora,” Haaker said. “I don’t mean to disparage your action
against the antimatter station, Samual, but in Allah’s name, it was a long time
coming. Possibly too long. According the latest report I have, nearly a third
of Kerry’s population is now possessed, and it’s only a question of time until
the remainder are taken over. On top of that, we know of eleven other worlds Capone
has successfully managed to infiltrate. That means we’ll lose them, too, you
know that as well as I do. And there will no doubt be starships currently en
route, telling us of more infiltrations launched before the station was
destroyed. Your pardon, but this success rings hollow indeed.”
“What else would you have us do?”
“You know very well. How is Dr
Gilmore’s project progressing?”
“Slowly, as Mae Ortlieb has been
telling you.”
“Yes, yes.” Haaker waved an
irritable hand. “Well keep me informed of any further developments. Preferably
ahead of the media.”
“Yes, Mr President.”
The image of the President and his
aide vanished.
“Ungrateful old git,” Kolhammer
muttered.
“It’s understandable,” Lalwani
said. “The Assembly is beginning to resemble a zoo these days. The ambassadors
have realized that for once their magnificent speeches alone aren’t going to
solve this crisis. They’re shouting for action, though of course they don’t
name a specific.”
“The antimatter ought to relieve a
lot of pressure on the Navy,” Kolhammer said. “We should be able to press
individual governments to maintain the civil starflight quarantine.”
“There’s still a lot of reticence
there,” Lalwani said. “The smaller, more distant asteroids are suffering badly
from the economic situation. To them, the conflict is a remote one. That
justifies their clandestine flights.”
“It’s only remote until their
selfish idiocy allows a possessed into their settlement,” Kolhammer snapped.
“We’re making progress on
identifying the principal offenders,” Lalwani said. “I’m getting a lot of
cooperation from other intelligence agencies. Once we’ve confirmed the offence,
the problem then becomes a diplomatic one.”
“And everything goes pear-shaped,”
Kolhammer said. “Bloody lawyers.”
Samual put his tea cup down on the
central rosewood table, and turned directly to Auster. “You were with
Meredith’s squadron at Jupiter, I believe?”
“Yes, Admiral,” Auster said.
“Good. I accessed all of your
report on the antimatter station mission while the Ilex was docking; and
I’d like you to tell me directly why Consensus is sending two ships to the
other side of the Orion nebula. Specifically why one of them is the Lady
Macbeth. I simply could not make it plainer that I expected Captain Calvert
and that despicable Mzu woman to remain in Tranquillity, and incommunicado.”
The voidhawk captain gave a slight
bow, his face respectfully grave. Despite all the mental bolstering which came
from unity with other Edenists, and his link with Ilex, facing the
displeased First Admiral was quite an ordeal. “I assure you, Consensus regards
the Alchemist problem with the utmost seriousness. However, there was some
on-the-ground information available which required reassessing your
proscription.”
Samual Aleksandrovich settled back
in the leather upholstery, knowing he shouldn’t enjoy playing the inflexible
tyrant. Sometimes it was hard to resist. “Go on.”
“The Lord of Ruin has discovered
that the Tyrathca religion may have some physical basis.”
“I didn’t know they had a
religion,” Kolhammer said. His neural nanonics was running a search through
various encyclopaedia files.
“That was also something of a
revelation,” Auster said. “But they do, and their God would appear to be some
kind of powerful artefact. They believe it capable of saving them from human
possessed.”
“So Consensus sent a pair of
starships to investigate,” Samual said.
“Yes. Given the distance involved,
the only kind of Adamist ship that can get there is one that has an antimatter
drive.”
“And such a flight also removes
Calvert and Mzu from any possible contact with the possessed. How very
convenient.”
“Consensus considered it so,
Admiral.”
Samual laughed dryly. “Lagrange
Calvert meeting a real live god. What a spectacle. We should be able to see
that clash of egos from this side of the nebula.” Lalwani and Auster grinned in
unison.
“Well, there are slimmer straws to
grasp, I suppose,” Samual said. “Thank you, Captain, and my congratulations to Ilex
on a successful mission.”
The Edenist stood, and bowed
formally. “Admiral.” Lieutenant Keaton went with him to the door.
Although he considered it faintly
ridiculous, if not rude, Samual waited until Auster was outside before speaking
to the other two admirals. Privacy was a hard concept for him to abandon; and
he knew Lalwani kept their secure sessions confidential as a matter of
courtesy. “A god?” he asked Lalwani.
“I don’t know anything about it,”
she said. “But Consensus wouldn’t embark on such a course unless it had a
degree of confidence in the result.”
“Very well,” Samual said. “I’d like
to receive a complete briefing from the Jovian Consensus, please.”
“I’ll see that we’re updated.”
“Until we are, we won’t be
including biblical salvation in our strategic planning sessions.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“That just leaves us with our last
current problem,” Samual said. “Mortonridge.”
“Could have told you that was a
waste of time,” Kolhammer retorted.
“You did. Frequently. As did I. But
it is first and foremost a politically motivated campaign. However, we cannot
ignore the fact it isn’t going quite to plan. This latest development is
unnerving to say the least. It also looks as though our marine battalions are
going to be tied up there for a longer than we originally estimated.”
“Longer! Ha,” Kolhammer said in
disgust. “Have you accessed any of those sensevises? God, that mud. The whole
bloody Liberation is completely stalled.”
“It hasn’t stalled, they’re just
encountering more problems than they anticipated,” Lalwani said.
Kolhammer chuckled, and raised his
coffee cup in salute. “I’ve always been a massive admirer of the Edenist
ability to understate. But I think defining a chunk of land fifteen kilometres
across that suddenly takes flight and wanders off into another dimension as a
little problem is possibly the best example yet.”
“I never said little.”
“Ketton’s disappearance isn’t my
main concern,” Samual said. He received the surprised look which the others
gave him with calm humour. “I was thinking about the medical difficulties
de-possession is leaving us with. So far we’ve been fortunate the news companies
have been playing it down, but that won’t last. People will eventually wake up
to the implications if we’re ever successful in returning planets like Lalonde
and Norfolk to this universe. There’s been a commendable effort by the
Kingdom’s allies to assist with fresh medical supplies, but the number of
cancer-related deaths is still rising.” He clicked his fingers at Keaton, who
was hovering near the samovar.
“Sir.” The lieutenant stepped
forward. “Trafalgar’s medical office have been examining the consequences of
depossession. Frankly, we’re lucky Mortonridge doesn’t have a larger
population. The Kingdom and its allies should just manage to provide enough
nanonic packages to cope with two million cancer patients. Though we’re dubious
about correct application; the number of experienced doctors is a critical
factor. However, we estimate that an entire planet of de-possessed, with an
average population of three quarters of a billion, would essentially exhaust
the entire Confederation’s medical facilities. To our knowledge, the possessed
have so far taken over eighteen planets, with several hundred additional
asteroid settlements. And we expect the planets Capone has infiltrated will
soon join them. Ultimately, we could be dealing with as many as thirty planetary
populations, possibly more than that.”
“Shit,” Kolhammer exclaimed. He
gave the youngish lieutenant a very worried frown. “So what’s going to happen
if we get them all back?”
“Given the development level of
cancers we’ve seen on the de-possessed so far, there will be a rapid and
extremely high mortality rate among their respective populations if they remain
untreated.”
“That’s a very clinical way of
putting it, lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir. You should also
consider, the possessing souls are either unaware of the damage they’re
inflicting on their hosts, or are unable to cure it. Their energistic power is
capable of repairing physical injury, but we haven’t seen them deal with this
kind of illness yet. It may be they can’t.”
“What are you getting at?” Lalwani
asked.
“Unless the biochemical environment
on the planets they’ve removed from this universe is radically different in
some way, then the possessed will all be suffering like this no matter where
they are. In which case, if they don’t start to effect some kind of treatment,
their host bodies might die.”
Lalwani’s shock was so vehement she
couldn’t prevent some of it from leaking into the general affinity band.
Edenists in the asteroid automatically opened their minds, proffering emotional
support.
Reluctantly, Lalwani refused.
“Thirty planetary populations?” she demanded, incredulous. She glanced from the
lieutenant to the First Admiral. “You knew?”
“I accessed the report this
morning,” Samual admitted. “And I haven’t informed the President, yet. Let him
get on top of the Assembly again before we break news like this.”
“Dear God,” Kolhammer muttered. “If
we pull them back from wherever they’ve gone, we won’t be able to save them.
And if we leave them alone, they won’t survive either.” He gave Keaton a look that
was almost a plea. “Did the medical office come up with any ideas?”
“Yes sir, they had two.”
“Finally! Someone with some bloody
initiative. What are they?”
“The first is fairly simple. We
broadcast a warning to the possessed groups we know are still remaining in this
universe. Ask them to stop trying to change the appearance of their host
bodies. It should appeal to their own self interest.”
“If they don’t just ignore it as
propaganda,” Lalwani said. “By the time a tumour actually becomes noticeable,
it’s usually too late for primitive medical treatments.”
“Nonetheless, we will definitely
proceed with that option,” Samual said.
“And the second?” Kolhammer asked.
“We formally request the Kiint
ambassador for help.”
Kolhammer let out a disgusted
breath. “Ha! Those bastards won’t help us. They’ve already made that clear
enough.”
“Um, sir?” Keaton said. He gave the
First Admiral a glance, and received a nod of permission. “They said they
wouldn’t provide us with a solution to possession. In this case, we’re just
asking them for material aid. We know they have a more sophisticated technology
than ours; human companies have been buying upgrades and improvements for a
variety of products ever since we made contact with them. And now with the
Tranquillity incident we know they haven’t abandoned their manufacturing base
as thoroughly as they claimed. They may well be able to produce the kind of
medical systems we require in the quantities we’ll need. After all, we’ll only
have a use for them if we solve the possession problem for ourselves. If the
Kiint are as sympathetic as they assure us they are, then there is a good
chance they’ll say yes.”
“Excellent analysis,” Lalwani said.
“We can’t possibly ignore the option.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” Samual
said. “In fact, I’ve already requested a personal meeting with Ambassador
Roulor. I’ll sound him out about the prospect.”
“Good move,” Kolhammer said.
“That’s a commendable advisory team your medical office put together, Samual.”
It felt strange to be back. Quinn
stalked through the ghost realm, observing the sect’s Edmonton headquarters.
His peculiar, hazy perception of the real world from this shadowed existence
might account for his new interpretation of the familiar rooms and corridors.
Or it could just be time and a very different attitude to when he was last
here.
This had been home for many years.
A place of refuge and of terror. Now it was just a cluster of gloomy chambers,
devoid of any appeal or memories. The routine of the place hadn’t changed,
though it was slowing down, much to the fury of the senior acolytes. He smiled
as they shouted and brutalized the juniors. His fault. His word was spreading.
All of Edmonton would soon be aware
of his arrival. So far he’d taken over eight covens, and was ready to visit the
remainder. Those that had fallen under his thrall were now actively pursuing
the will of God’s Brother. Over the last few days he’d been dispatching several
small groups to attack strategic sections of the arcology’s infrastructure.
Generators, water stations, transport junctions; they’d all been damaged to
some degree. It was primitive stuff, chemical explosives concocted from
formulae loaded into public databanks centuries ago by freethink anarchists,
the files replicated so many times they were impossible to erase. On Quinn’s
orders, the possessed would only supervise the missions, never actually
venturing to the target themselves. That was left to the faithful: useful,
disposable, imbeciles. He couldn’t risk the authorities discovering a possessed
in Edmonton, not yet. So for now such destruction would appear to be the work
of a breakaway sect faction, fanatics who had split away from their High Magus.
That way they would appear as sympathisers to the anarchist groups in Paris,
Bombay, and Johannesburg that were also bombing and terrorizing their fellow
citizens.
The authorities would discover who
was behind it eventually. But by then he would have established enough cells of
possessed to bring about the Night.
Quinn arrived at the temple, and
surveyed it slowly. A tall chamber, more elaborate than the smaller covens.
Pictures of violent depravity alternated with runes and pentagons along the
walls. A wreath of small yellow flames flickered weakly around the tarnished
inverted cross on the altar. He was drawn to the big slab as the memories of
this place finally returned. There was the pain of his initiation, then more
pain as he was used for further ceremonies. Each time, Banneth had smiled down
serenely; a dark angel ministering to his body. Drugs and packages were
applied, and an obscene variety of pleasure would be combined with his agony.
Banneth’s laugh would wrap around him, taking on the power of an indecent
caress. She/he/it, that terrible androgynous multi-sexed monster, conditioned
him to respond to the torment in the way that generated the most enjoyment—for
it. Eventually the two extremes of sensation merged, becoming one.
A triumph, Banneth had declared.
The creation of the perfect sect mentality. Birthing the serpent beast.
Quinn gave the altar a curious
look, seeing himself bound to it, skin glistening with sweat and blood as he
screamed. The pain and the images were real enough, but he couldn’t recall
anything before then. It was as if Banneth had created his flesh at the same
time as his mind.
“Quinn? Is that you, Quinn?”
Quinn turned slowly, squinting at
the ghostly figure sitting on the front pew. A face he was sure he knew,
belonging to this place but from a long time ago. The figure stood, a hunched
up adolescent in a torn leather jacket and dirty jeans. He was pitifully
insubstantial. “It is you, isn’t it? You remember me, Quinn. It’s me. It’s
Erhard.”
“Erhard?” He wasn’t sure.
“Damn, we shovelled shit together
for long enough. You must remember.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” A novice acolyte
who’d joined the sect around the same time as Quinn. One who lacked the
strength to survive such a brotherhood. The same relentless battery of ordeals
and punishments which had fortified Quinn had crushed Erhard. It had culminated
in a ritual in the temple, one which Banneth had never intended Erhard to live
through. There was rape and torture and drugs and burrowing parasites of
Banneth’s devising; atrocities performed to the hot chants and wild laughter of
the entire headquarters coven. Erhard’s final pleas had risen above their
chorus, a thin wail of ultimate terror. Then Banneth had brought the jewelled
sacrificial knife down in a fast slash.
The joy Quinn had experienced that
day was almost orgasmic. He’d been the one tasked to carry the knife for
Banneth.
“It’s not fair, Quinn. I don’t
belong here. I hate this place. I hate the sect.”
“You never did feed your serpent
beast,” Quinn said contemptuously. “Now look at you. You’re as much a loser now
as you ever were.”
“It’s not fair!” Erhard cried. “I
didn’t know what the sect was like, not really. And then they killed me. You
killed me, Quinn. You were one of them.”
“You deserved it.”
“Fuck you. I was nineteen. I had my
life, and you took it away, you and that psycho fruit Banneth. I want to kill
Banneth. I swore I would.”
“No!” Quinn stormed. Erhard
quailed, cowering back from the command. “Banneth does not die,” Quinn said.
“Not ever. Banneth belongs to me.”
The ghost edged forward, holding
out a hand as though feeling the warmth thrown out by a fire. “What are you?”
Quinn giggled quietly. “I don’t
know. But God’s Brother has shown me what I’ve got to do.” He walked out of the
temple, leaving the ghost behind.
Three figures were marching along
the corridor, one of them with desperate reluctance. Quinn recognized him.
Acolyte Kilian. They’d met a few days ago. All three frowned as they passed
their invisible watcher, puzzled by why they suddenly felt so chilly.
Quinn followed them. He knew where
they were going, he’d taken this route himself enough times. Soon he would see
it again: Banneth. That’s all it would be, this time. Just a look, a reminder
of that face. Nothing fast would happen to Banneth. It had taught Quinn well,
in that respect. The most delectable punishments were the slowest ones. And
when Night came, it would be in tandem with eternity.
Darkness has arrived. Even when the acolytes didn’t whisper it, the
phrase hung in the smoky air of the sect’s Edmonton headquarters. A threat more
menacing than any sadism the sergeant acolytes could bestow.
Banneth knew what that meant. The
AV projectors were broadcasting a constant coverage of the New York situation,
which the entire headquarters coven was obsessed by. The arcology’s continuing
isolation. Rumours of free possessed. Portents wherever you looked. And many of
the coven looked very hard indeed.
Their work suffered as a
consequence. Income from the scams and hustling were well down in every coven
across town. Even she, the High Magus, couldn’t rack up much enthusiasm. What
chance did the lesser maguses have?
When she did rage at the sergeant
acolytes, they just shuffled their feet and muttered dourly that there was
little point continuing their old activities. Our time has come, they said,
God’s Brother is returning to Earth. Who cares about knocking off dumb-ass
civilians. Given the creed of the Light Bringer sect, it wasn’t an attitude she
could effectively argue against. The irony of the situation didn’t escape her.
All she could do was keep listening
to the rap from the street, hunting out clues. It was a thin source of
information, especially now. Like a great many of Earth’s arcologies, Edmonton
was slowly shutting down as it spewed out its own fear. Commercial districts
were reporting increasing absenteeism. People were calling in sick, taking
holidays. Parks and arcades were nearly deserted. Football, baseball, ice
hockey, and other game fixtures were played to small crowds. Parents kept their
kids away from day clubs. For the first time in living memory it was always
possible to get a seat on metro buses and tube carriages.
The vac-trains weren’t shut.
Keeping the routes open was a bravado example of Govcentral confidence,
intended to reassure people that Earth was still safe. Passenger numbers were
under thirty per cent. Nobody wanted to do anything that brought them into
contact with other people, especially strangers. Civic utility companies had to
threaten employees with lawsuits to keep essential services going. Government
workers were intimidated with the prospect of disciplinary proceedings if they
didn’t perform their duties as normal, especially the police. The mayors were
desperate to provide the image of normality in the hope the public would follow
their cue. A desperation that was taking on increasingly surreal dimensions in
the face of such stubborn public reticence.
Banneth kept dispatching sect
members to wander through the eternal half light gullies that were downtown
streets, hunting any sign of a score. The usual broken inhabitants shuffling
along the sidewalks would huddle away from them in sealed-up doorways, sniffing
suspiciously as they strutted past. Cop cars swished along silently, creating
whirlpools of silvery wrapping foils; the only vehicles moving at ground level.
They slowed as they drew level with the sect gangs, examining the sullen faces
through misty armoured glass before tooting the siren and accelerating away.
Forcing them to go out was a mostly futile exercise. But she had persevered
while the world slowly choked on its own paranoia. And now it seemed as though
she’d got lucky.
Acolyte Kilian was doing his level
best not to shake as the sergeant acolytes hurriedly left him alone in
Banneth’s inner sanctum. The chamber was buried at the centre of the skyscraper
which the sect used as its headquarters. As with the Light Bringer covens the
world over, the original layout of rooms and corridors had been corroded and
corrupted as acolytes burrowed their way through walls and ducts like human
maggots. Haphazard partitions were hammered and cemented up behind them,
creating a bizarre onion-layer topology of chambers and cells that protected
the core. Banneth had dwelt there for nearly three and a half decades without
once ever venturing out. There was no need now, everything necessary to make
her life enjoyable was brought to her.
Unlike several High Maguses she was
aware of, Banneth didn’t go in for ostentation. Her senior acolytes were
permitted whatever decadent luxuries they could steal and bribe for themselves.
But they lived several floors above her, decorating their apartments with
expensive hedonistic amenities, and harems of beautiful youths and freakish
supplicants. She indulged herself on somewhat different levels.
When Kilian started to look round,
he found he was in a place that was way beyond the worst-case scenarios that
acolytes whispered among themselves. Banneth’s sanctum was an experimental
surgery. Its mainstay was a broad bench desk with high-capacity processor
blocks and shiny new medical equipment. Three stainless steel tables were lined
up in the middle of the floor, with discreet leather restraint straps placed
strategically round the edges. Life support canisters were arranged around the
walls, like huge glass pillars. Aquarium-style lighting caps shone brightly on
their contents. Kilian really wished they didn’t, the things inside were enough
to make him shit his pants. People, in a few of them. Suspended by a white silk
web in some thick clear fluid, tubes going into their mouths and noses (those
that still had mouths and noses). Always with their eyes open, looking about.
Acolytes he remembered from not so long back; with new appendages grafted on;
others with parts removed, their incisions raw and open to reveal the missing
organs. Then there were the less than human creatures, made worse by having
very human pieces attached. Clusters of organs bound together by a plexus of
naked pumping veins. Animals, game cats and gorillas with the tops of their
skull removed, and no brain left inside. Pride of place on the wall above the
work desk was taken by an ancient oil painting of a young woman in a dress with
a stiff bodice and long skirt.
Although Kilian had never been in
the sanctum before, it was the place where everyone came eventually, either for
boosting or punishment. Banneth performed both types of operation herself. Now
he stood as still as his trembling limbs would allow as the High Magus walked
briskly across the floor to him.
Banneth’s face had a male jawline,
a blunt protuberant blade of bone. But that was the only masculine feature, the
eyes and mouth were soft, very feminine. A shaggy pelt of straw-blonde hair
completed the enigma. Kilian glanced nervously at the white shirt Banneth wore.
Everyone said the High Magus got aroused at the sight of fear. If her nips were
jutting, then she was in the feminine stage of her cycle.
Dark circles of skin were
definitely tenting the cotton. Kilian wondered if it really made a difference.
Banneth was a hermaphrodite—by design, so rumour said. She looked as if she was
about twenty, either as a male or a female; though age was an easy enough
cosmetic adaptation. Nobody knew how old she really was, nor even how long she
had been High Magus. In fact, legend and rumour were all that existed about her
past. Questions were discouraged.
“Thank you for coming to see me,”
Banneth said. Her hand stroked Kilian’s cheek, the cool skin of her knuckles
drifting gently along his cheekbone. An appraisal by a gifted sculptor, finding
his exact form. He quivered at the touch. Pink eyes with feline irises blinked
in amusement at his reaction.
“Nervous, Kilian?”
“I don’t know what I’ve done, High
Magus.”
“That’s true. But then a barely
human grunt like you doesn’t know much of anything. Do you? Well don’t worry
yourself too much. Actually, you’ve been quite useful to me.”
“I have?”
“Amazingly, yes. And as you know, I
always reward the devout.”
“Yes, High Magus.”
“What can I do for you now, I
wonder?” She began to circle the apprehensive acolyte, grinning boyishly.
“You’re how old now? Twenty-five, isn’t it? So I ask myself what does a nice
young boy your age always want. And the answer’s a much bigger cock, of course.
That’s pretty standard. I can do that, you know. I can snip off that pitiful
rat-sized cock you’ve got now, and replace it with something much better. A
cock that’s as long as your forearm and as hard as steel. You would like me to
do that, wouldn’t you?”
“Please, High Magus,” Kilian
whimpered.
“Was that a ‘yes please,’ Kilian?”
“I . . . I just want to help you.
However I can.”
She blew him a kiss, still prowling
her circuit around him. “Good boy. I asked to see you because I’d like to know
something. Do you believe in the teachings of the Light Bringer?”
Trick question, Kilian screamed silently. If I say no, she’ll
do whatever she wants as punishment; if I say yes she’ll ask me to prove it
through endurance. “All of it High Magus, every word. I’ve found my serpent
beast.”
“An excellent answer, Kilian. Now
tell me this: do you welcome the coming darkness?”
“Yes, High Magus.”
“Really? And how do you know it’s
coming?”
Kilian risked a glance over his
shoulder, trying to follow the High Magus as she circled round him. But she was
directly behind him now, and the only thing he really noticed was the way the
eyes of the acolytes in the life support containers were tracking her movements.
“The possessed are here. He sent them, our Lord. They’re going to bring His
Night to the whole world.”
“So everyone says. The whole
arcology is talking about nothing else. Indeed the whole planet has little else
to say. But how do you know? You, Kilian?”
Banneth stopped in front of him,
lips curved in a sympathetic, expectant smile.
I’ll have to tell the truth, Kilian
realized in horror. But I don’t know if that’s what she wants to hear. Fuck! Oh
God’s Brother, what’ll she do to me if it’s wrong? What will she turn me into?
“Cat got your tongue?” Banneth
asked coyly. The smile hardened slightly, becoming less playful. Her glance
flicked to one of the life support canisters containing a puma. “Of course, I
can give the cat your tongue, Kilian. But what would I fit in its place? What
would be appropriate do you think? I have so much material I don’t really need
any more. Some of it is long past its sell-by date. Ever felt flesh that’s
started to decay, Kilian? Necromorphology is a somewhat acquired taste. You
never know, though, you might get to like it in time.”
“I saw one!” Kilian shouted. “Oh
fuck, I saw one. I’m sorry High Magus, I didn’t tell my sergeant acolyte, I . .
.”
She kissed his ear lobe, shocking
him into silence. “I understand,” she whispered. “Really I do. To understand
the way people think, you must first understand the way they work. And I’ve
made the workings of the human body my special area of study for a long time.
Physiology begets psychology, you might say. Mightn’t you, Kilian?”
Kilian hated it when the
High Magus talked all this weird big-word shit. He never knew how to answer.
None of the acolytes did, not even the seniors.
“It—I saw him in the Vegreville
dome coven’s chapel,” Kilian said. He knew for sure now that the High Magus
wanted to hear about the possessed. Maybe this would get him off the hook.
Banneth stopped her pacing,
standing directly in front of the woeful acolyte. There were no more smiles
left on her androgynous face. “You didn’t tell your sergeant acolyte because
you thought you’d wind up in deep shit. Because if the possessed are real, then
the sect hierarchy that you’ve so devoutly been kissing ass to for the last six
years will be replaced by them. By telling everyone what you’d seen you would
in effect be spreading sedition; though I doubt you would be able to
rationalize it quite like that. To you it was simple instinct. Your serpent
beast looks after you, it puts you first. As indeed it should, in that respect
you’ve been loyal to yourself and God’s Brother. Of course, you couldn’t resist
telling a few people, could you? You should have known better, Kilian. You know
I reward acolytes who betray their friends to me.”
“Yes, High Magus,” Kilian mumbled.
“Well I’m glad that’s settled then.
Unfortunately the golden rule of the sect is that I am to be told everything. I
and I alone decide what is important, and what is not.” Banneth walked over to
one of the stainless steel tables, and tapped a finger on it. “Come over here,
Kilian. Lie down for me.”
“Please, High Magus.”
“Now.”
If he’d thought running would have
done him the slightest good, he would have run. Actually, he even had the wild
thought that he could attack Banneth. The High Magus was physically weaker. But
that idea was resolved in a second by a simple clash of wills. He was foolish
enough to glance at her pink eyes.
“That’s a very bad thought,”
Banneth said. “I don’t like that at all.”
Kilian walked over to the table,
taking the smallest steps possible. In the faintly violet light thrown out by
the life support containers, he could see the scuffed silvery surface was
sprinkled with small black flecks of dried blood.
“Remove your clothes first,”
Banneth told him. “They get in the way of what I want to do.”
The initiation ceremonies, the
punishments, the degradations he’d undergone for the sect—none of them prepared
him for this. Simple pain he could endure. It was soon over, making him all the
meaner, stronger for it. Each time his serpent beast would come away slightly
larger, more dominant. None of that helped him now. Each garment he took off
was another portion of himself sacrificed to her.
“In times gone by, they used to say
the punishment should fit the crime,” Banneth said. Kilian removed his jeans,
and she smiled thinly at his flabby legs. “An appropriate sentiment, I always
thought. But now I believe it’s more fitting that the body part should fit the
crime.”
“Yes,” Kilian said thickly. That,
he needed no explanation for. He had spent hour after hour mucking out the pigs
as part of his duty. All the acolytes had to do it. All of them detested the
filthy squealing animals. It was an insidious reminder of what fate ultimately
greeted Edmonton sect members, no matter you were being disciplined or
rewarded.
Banneth’s herd were special;
developed centuries ago when geneering was in its infancy. They were originally
designed to provide organs for human transplants. A worthy project, to help
people with worn out hearts or failed kidneys. Pig organs were the same size as
human ones, and it was the first practical success of the geneticists to modify
porcine cells so they didn’t trigger a rejection by their new host’s immune
system. For a few brief years at the start of the Twenty-first Century the
concept had flourished. Then medical science, genetics, and prosthetic
technology had raced on ahead. Humanized pigs were abandoned and forgotten by
everyone except medical historians and a few curious zoologists. Then Banneth
had come across the obscure file in some long-outdated medical text.
She had identified and traced
descendants of the original pigs, and began breeding them anew. Modern genetic
improvements had been sequenced in, strengthening the bloodline. It was the raw
primitiveness of the concept which appealed to her. The sect’s use of modern
technology was so much at odds with its basic gospel. Pigs and old fashioned
surgery were an ideal alternative.
When an acolyte needed boosting, it
wasn’t AT muscle she implanted to enhance the original human ones. Like the
rest of the porcine organs, the muscles wouldn’t cause rejection. Pig skin,
too, was thicker, sturdier, than its human counterpart. Lately, she had begun
to experiment with other animals. Grafted monkey feet turned an acolyte into an
efficient acrobat, useful for gaining entry to upper-storey floors. Lighter leg
bones allowed them to outrun police mechanoids. Given time and research
subjects, she knew she could match any modification used by cosmoniks and the
combat boosted mercenaries so prevalent out there among the Confederation
worlds.
The surgical techniques could also
be used to rectify behaviour. For example, an attempt to run away from the sect
would be easily curtailed by replacing legs with trotters. In Kilian’s case,
Banneth hadn’t finalized on an effective lesson. Though she did favour extending
and re-routing his colon into the back of his throat, so that every time he
wanted to shit, he’d have to do it through his mouth. The extra tubing would
give him a very thick neck. A nice irony, that. It would match his thick head.
When he was naked, she made him lie
face down on the table, then used the straps to secure him in place. Creative
punishment would have to wait. Since he blurted confirmation about a possessed,
only one thing had mattered to her. She smeared a big dollop of depilatory
cream on the back of his neck, and squirted it off with a cold water hose. It
left his skin clean and bare, ready to receive the nanonic implant package.
Kilian wasn’t permitted an
anaesthetic or sedative. He groaned and whimpered continually as the
personality debrief filaments pierced his brain; their brutal intrusion
sparking cascades of aberrant nerve impulses that sent spasms rippling along
his limbs. Banneth sat on one of the desk bench stools, sipping a chilled,
hand-mixed martini as she supervised the procedure, occasionally datavising new
instructions into the package. After nearly two hours, the first erratic
impulses started to flood back along the invading filaments. Banneth brought
her AI on-line to analyse and interpret the confusing deluge of impulses. Visualizations
that were nothing more than randomized detonations of colour slowly calmed as
the AI began to marshal Kilian’s synaptic discharges into ordered patterns.
Once his thought patterns had been catalogued and correlated with his neural
structure, his entire consciousness became controllable. The filaments could
simply inject new impulses into the synaptic clefts they’d penetrated,
superseding any natural thoughts he had.
Kilian was thinking about his
family, such as it was. Mother and two younger half-brothers, living in a
couple of dingy rooms in a downtown skyscraper over in the Edson dome. Years
ago, now. Mother surviving on a Govcentral parent work-pay scheme; never there
during the day. All he had was the constant noise, the shouted arguments, fights,
music, footsteps, metroline traffic. At the time he’d wanted nothing more than
to escape. A bad decision.
“Why?” Banneth asked.
Kilian flinched. He was sprawled on
the sagging bed-settee by the window, looking fondly at all the familiar old
objects that had occupied his brief childhood.
Now Banneth stood by the doorway,
regarding him contemptuously. She was brighter than anything else in the room,
more colourful.
“Why?” she repeated.
A spherical wave of pressure
contracted through Kilian’s skull, squeezing his thoughts out through his mouth
in an unstoppable stream. “Because I left this to join the sect. And I wish I
hadn’t. I hate my life, I fucking hate it. And now I’m on your table and you’re
gonna turn me into a dog, or chop my dick off and give it to someone else to
fuck me with. Some kind of crap like that. And it’s not fair. I didn’t do
anything wrong. I’ve always done whatever the sect asked. You can’t do this to
me. You can’t, please God. You’re not human. Everybody knows that. You’re a fucking
weirdo freak cannibal.”
“Now there’s gratitude. But who
gives a fuck about this pathetic little comfort regression you’re in. I want
when you saw the possessed.”
The pressure wave found another
part of Kilian’s mind to crush. He screamed out loud as memories erupted like
fountains of acid behind his eyes. Home was coldly scorched out of existence,
huge great sections of it peeling away like rotten flesh to reveal the
Vegreville chapel’s temple. Kilian had been there three days back, sent by his
sergeant acolyte to pick up some package. He didn’t know what was in it, just
that: “Banneth wants it fast.”
The coven was different than
before. There was a new atmosphere percolating through the dark nest of rooms.
They regarded him as a joke. His urgency to complete the assignment, to get the
package and leave, made them snigger and scoff. Every time he asked them to be
quicker they delighted in delaying. They were like frisky kids at a day club
who’d found a new boy to taunt and bully.
Eventually he’d been taken to the
temple where the senior acolyte told him the package was waiting. The chamber
walls were made from thousands of slim metal reinforcement rods welded
together, the inside of a bird’s nest woven out of iron twigs. Its altar was a
tight-packed mound of rusty spikes, their tips all shaved down to the same
length. Twin flames rose out of the bristling metal at each end, long yellow
tongues dancing in the gloom. Pews were composite roof planks nailed to a
variety of pedestals. The sect’s usual runes were still on the walls, but they
were barely visible now. A single new slogan had been sprayed everywhere: Night
is coming. On the walls, on the ceiling, even on the floor.
Kilian was made to enter alone, his
little escort clustering round the thick doors behind him, giggling wildly. His
annoyance dropped away as he walked quietly towards the altar, replaced by
growing nervousness. Three figures waited silently for him behind the altar,
clad in black robes. These garments had none of the embellishments or pentagons
usually favoured by senior sect members. If anything it made them appear even
more menacing than usual. Their faces were almost lost inside the large hoods.
Flickering yellow beams from the candles would occasionally reveal a feature
within two of the hoods: bloodshot eyes, hooked nose, wide mouth. The third
hood could have been empty for all that Kilian saw. Even when he reached the
altar, he could see nothing inside that night-like cavity of fabric.
“The High Magus sent me,” he
stammered. “You’ve got a package for me, yeah?”
“We certainly have,” a voice said
from somewhere inside that veiled hood.
Alert now, Banneth ran the voice
through an analysis program, though ordinary memories of voices were a
notoriously unreliable source for such verification programs. Nonetheless, it
showed remarkable similarities to recordings of Dexter’s voice. Kilian trembled
as the hidden figure slowly held out an arm. He was almost expecting a pistol
nozzle to poke out at him. But it was just a snow-white hand that emerged from
the voluminous sleeve. A small plastic container was dropped carelessly on the
altar.
“Our gift to Banneth. I hope it is
useful.”
Kilian scooped it up hurriedly.
“Right. Thanks.” All he wanted now was to get the fuck out of here. These guys
were almost as creepy as Banneth.
“I am interested that the High
Magus is carrying on as though nothing is happening.”
Kilian didn’t know how to answer.
He cast a glance over his shoulder, wondering if he should make a dash for it.
Not that he could ever get out of the chapel unless he was allowed to. “Well,
you know how it is.” He shrugged lamely.
“I certainly do.”
“Sure. I’d better get this back to
her, then.”
“The Night will fall.”
“I know.”
“Excellent. Then you will join us
when the time comes.”
“My serpent beast is strong.”
A head emerged from the hood, the
darkness slowly washing backwards to expose more and more features. “You’ll
need to be,” Quinn said.
Banneth froze the image. No doubt
about it. Skin as white as snow, eyes infinite pools of black—though that could
have just been emotion-aggravated exaggeration. But it was Quinn.
The High Magus smiled thinly as the
image hung in her mind. The fierceness which had once so animated him, and
fascinated her, was gone. If anything, he looked rather stressed out. Crinkled
lines radiated away from the corner of his eyes, while those sweet cheeks were
rather sadly sunken.
She concentrated her thoughts,
focusing on the personality traits of one individual. Dexter’s in Edmonton.
One of my acolytes encountered him three days ago.
Ah. Thank you, Western Europe replied.
The ten ships in the convoy emerged
above New California, immediately confirming who they were to Monterey’s SD
command. For once the hellhawks accompanying the frigates hadn’t raced on
ahead. They were quite content to let the convoy commander break the bad news
they were carrying.
Where’s Etchells? Hudson Proctor asked once the four remaining
hellhawks had checked in.
We don’t know, Pran Soo said. He left us to scout round the
antimatter station. He will probably emerge soon.
You’re sure the Confederation
destroyed it?
The frigates were still there.
They saw it explode.
A fact which the convoy commander
was very reluctantly confirming to Monterey. The news was all around the
asteroid within thirty minutes, and down to New California’s cities in roughly
the same timescale. Word spread across the countryside within a couple of days.
The more remote Organization asteroid settlements lagged behind by anything up
to a week. The last ones actually got to hear about it from Confederation
propaganda broadcasts—who damn well weren’t going to miss that opportunity.
This time Emmet Mordden refused
point blank to be the one who had to tell Al. So the senior lieutenants decided
that Leroy Octavius should be awarded the honour. Their unspoken thought as
they watched him waddle out of the asteroid’s command centre was that he too
would chicken out and simply tell Jezzibella.
A lifetime juggling temperamental
personalities in the entertainment industry had left Leroy wise to that option.
Knowing that Jezzibella was the only guarantee his own precious body and soul
remained intact, he simply couldn’t permit her position to be weakened. Leroy
gathered his courage and went down to the Nixon Suite. Walking along the last
few metres to the doors his legs had more than a little wobble of apprehension.
The two gangsters on guard outside picked up on his emotions, and studiously
avoided eye contact as they opened the big doors for him.
Al and Jezzibella were having
breakfast in the conservatory, a long, narrow room with one wall made entirely
of curving enhanced sapphire, which gave a slightly bluish tint to the view of
the planet and stars outside. The opposite wall had vanished beneath a
trelliswork of flowering vines. Pillars running the length of the conservatory
were transparent tubes, aquariums filled with the strange and beautiful fish
from a dozen worlds.
There was only one table, a broad
wrought iron oval, with a vase of orange lilies in the middle. Al and
Jezzibella sat next to each other, dressed in identical aquamarine bathrobes,
and casually munching toast. Libby was limping round the table, pouring coffee.
Al looked up as Leroy came in. His
welcoming smile faded when he caught the anxiety in the obese manager’s mind.
“You don’t look too happy, Leroy, my boy. What’s eating you?” Jezzibella
glanced up from her history book.
Leroy took a breath and plunged in.
“I have some news. It’s not good.”
“Okay, Leroy, I ain’t gonna bite
you because those wiseasses dumped a shitty job on you. What the fuck’s
happened?”
“That last convoy we sent to the
antimatter station just made it back. Thing is, the Navy was there waiting for
them. They blew it up, Al. We’re not going to get any more antimatter, not
ever.”
“Jesus H Christ!” Al’s fist thumped
the table, bouncing the crockery. Three slim scars throbbed white on his cheek.
“How the hell did they find out? Ain’t nothing we do more careful than
sending the convoy to the station. Did the last lot get followed?”
“I don’t know, Al. The frigates’ll
dock in another ninety minutes; maybe the captains’ll tell us more.”
“They’d fucking better.” Al’s fists
clenched. He stared at the starfield outside the conservatory.
Leroy hesitated, glancing at
Jezzibella. She inclined her head silently to the door. It was all the
permission Leroy needed; he ducked his head at Al, and shifted himself the hell
out of there as fast as his thick legs would allow. Jezzibella waited
patiently, not saying anything. By now she was well used to the cycle of Al’s
moods.
After a minute in which he could
have been frozen, Al roared: “Fuck it!” and smashed a fist down on the table
again. This time it had his energistic power behind the blow. The iron bent
alarmingly. Plates, jam pots, cups, and the vase went sliding down the new valley
to crash together along the fold. He stood up fast as the boiling coffee
splashed onto the floor with the lilies. His chair legs caught on the tiling.
“FUCK!” Al spun round and kicked the chair, sending it flying into the curving
sapphire window. Libby whimpered in fright, cradling the milk jug as if it
alone could protect her. Jezzibella sat back, holding on to the coffee cup
she’d saved. Her expression was strictly neutral.
“Goddamn motherfucking shit-eating
bastards! That was my goddamn station. Mine.” He put both hands
under the buckled table and shoved it upwards. The entire thing went
somersaulting along the conservatory. Crockery tumbled away to smash against
the floor. Libby cowered as one of the heavy metal legs flashed centimetres
above the bun of her grey hair. “Nobody takes my property away from me. No
Body! Don’t they know who the fuck they’re dealing with here? I’m not some
chickenshit small-time loser pirate! I am Al goddamn Capone. I’ve got a fleet
that kicks the shit out of whole planets, for Christ’s sake. Are they fucking
insane? I’ll blow that whole stinking pennyass navy of theirs out of the
goddamn water. That knucklehead Ruski admiral is gonna get a baseball rammed so
far up his ass he’ll be pitching it out of his mouth.”
“Space,” Jezzibella said firmly.
“What?” Al whirled round and bellowed at her. “What did
you fucking say to me?”
“You’ll blow them out of space. Not
water. We’re not on Earth now, Al.”
He pulled a fist back. It shook
violently as he held it over her. Then he swung round and punched one of the
tall aquariums. The glass shattered. Water and a shoal of long purple fish
poured out of the big hole, splattering the hem of his robe.
“Shit. Goddamn.” He danced
backwards, trying to keep his house slippers out of the water.
Jezzibella calmly lifted her feet
off the tiles as the tide swirled round her chair. Fish started wriggling
frantically over the mosaic, their movements skidding them against the
planters. “Did you have antimatter when you started?”
Al was watching the fish in mild
perplexity; as if he couldn’t quite understand where they’d come from. “What?”
he demanded.
“You heard.” She deliberately
looked away from him, and gave Libby a gracious smile. “Go and fetch a bucket,
or something, there’s a dear.”
“Yes, poppet,” Libby said
nervously. She scurried away.
“You frightened her,” Jezzibella
accused.
“Fuck her,” Al said irritably.
“What did you say about antimatter?”
“First off, we’ve still got tonnes
of the stuff. Think how many convoys got through.”
“Tonnes?”
“Alright, not tonnes, but certainly
kilograms. Work it out if you don’t believe me: one kilogram equals two and a
fifth pounds. So the fleet and the SD network still has more than enough to
wipe the floor with any Confederation Navy task force stupid enough to try its
luck against New California. Then there’s Kingsley Pryor. You haven’t forgotten
him, have you?”
Al stopped his mental arithmetic.
He was actually very good at it, a hangover from the days when he was working
as an accountant in Baltimore. Jez was right again, they had got a healthy
stash of the superbomb material. And no he hadn’t forgotten Kingsley, exactly,
it was just a long time since they set him loose on his clandestine assignment.
“That flaky asshole? I’ve written him off. Christsake, it’s been too long.”
“No it hasn’t. He’s a courier, not
a missile. He’ll get there eventually.”
“Could be.”
“Will be, and then you’ve won. Once
the Confederation’s been broken, you don’t have to worry about New California
being hauled back here.”
“Could be,” he sighed. “But we
ain’t going to get any more antimatter. Hell, Jez, if they send two task
forces, we’re up shit creek.”
“They won’t. Believe me. It’s a
political impossibility. So we’re back to my original question. You didn’t have
antimatter when you started out, and you still managed to take over this
planet. Antimatter was a beautiful bonus, Al. And you used it perfectly. You’ve
not only got the Confederation public terrified of you, but with those
infiltration flights you’ve weakened them physically. Twenty-five planets
seeded. That’s crippled their economies and leadership. They can’t
challenge you on your home ground. No way. And that’s what really counts.” She
extended her legs, and rested her heels on one of the two remaining chairs.
“We’re never going to see Navy warships outside this window. Not now. You’re
secure, Al. You’ve made it clean. You’ve dug the moat to keep those bastards
out, now concentrate on cementing what you’ve conquered. Don’t let those
moaning weaklings who claim to be your friends chip away at the Organization.”
“God damn, you’re beautiful.” He
splashed through the thin runnels of water to kiss her. She smiled up at him,
and used a forefinger to tickle under his chin.
“The guys are going to go apeshit
about losing the station.”
“They’re going to be frightened,
that’s all,” she said. “Just show them they don’t have to be, that you’re in
charge of the situation. They need that reassurance. They need you, Al, no one
else can hold things together.”
“You’re right. I’ll call the senior
lieutenants in. Spin them some bullshit, and kick ass.”
Her hand curled round the back of
his neck. “It can wait an hour.”
Al buckled down on his disapproval
when he arrived at the Chiefs of Staff office. No point in biting people’s
balls off before they’d even started the meeting. It was just—he couldn’t help
remembering what the plush office had looked like the first time they’d used
it. Tidy and gleaming, with coffee served from a silver pot into elegant china.
Now, it was suffering from the general tide of crap washing through Monterey.
Without mechanoids, nothing was being cleaned, let alone polished. There were
plates and crumpled sachets on the table, dating back three or four meetings;
cups with mould growing in the bottom. No one could be bothered to take them
back to the nearest canteen.
It wasn’t good. Not at all. Jez was
right. He had to consolidate what he’d got. Make things function smoothly
again. Like it all had at the start.
Kiera was last to arrive. That was
getting to be a habit. Al couldn’t work out if she was doing it to annoy him,
or to make everyone take notice of her. She took her place halfway down the
side of the table, between Patricia and Leroy. Al performed his own theatre by
getting up again and refilling his coffee cup from the wheezing espresso
machine.
“Hey, Leroy, where’s Webster?” Al
asked suddenly. “He should be dishing this stuff out.”
The manager broke off his murmured
conversation with Patricia and glanced round the office in surprise. “Kid’s
probably skiving off.”
“Yeah? I ain’t seen him about for a
while. How come?” Now he thought about it, Al couldn’t remember the last time
the boy had been in attendance. It was goddamn typical of the sloppy way things
were being run these days. No hostage was more important than Webster Pryor; he
was the only person who could make Kingsley Pryor go through with the
assignment.
Leroy took out his pocket block and
typed quickly, summoning up staff rotas. The results made him uneasy, which
everyone was very aware of. “He’s down in the kitchens, I think. That was his
last assignment, helping the chef. His supervisor hasn’t reported back since.”
Al sat down and stirred his coffee.
“Silvano, where’s the kid?”
The morose lieutenant’s scowl
deepened. “I don’t fucking know.”
“It’s your job to fucking know.
Je-zus, I put you in charge of keeping people in order, and you can’t even look
after a brat. You know what’s riding on keeping Webster in line. He’s more
important than all the other hostages put together.”
“Sure, Al. I’ll find him.”
“You’d better. Fuck me, this is
goddamn typical of how slack things are getting up here.” He took a sip of
coffee, making sure his temper sank back. “Okay, are you guys all up to speed
on what’s happened with the antimatter station?” By the way everyone mumbled
and avoided his eye he guessed they were. “Well don’t all make out like it’s
the end of the world. It ain’t. We just about achieved what we set out to do.
Dwight, how many planets have we screwed now?”
The fleet commander flushed as
everyone concentrated on him. “Seventeen confirmed infiltrations, Al. We’re
waiting for another two flights to get back.”
“Nineteen planets.” Al grinned
round the lieutenants. “Plus Arnstat. Not bad. Not bad at all. We’ve kicked so
much shit into the Navy’s face they can’t even see us now. And if they do try a
raid . . . What’ll happen, Emmet? We still got what it takes to see them off?”
“No problem, Al. The SD platforms
are all armed with antimatter, along with half the fleet. The only Navy ships
that’ll visit New California for a rumble are the ones on a suicide mission.”
“Glad to hear it. You all hear
that, too?” He searched round, trying to spot any major-league dissenters with
his ethereal senses as they all swore they heard and approved. There was the
obvious ones; Kiera with her cool contempt, the rest were just jittery, or,
like Silvano, sullen and resentful. But so far he was carrying it. “Okay, so
we’ve done what we set out to when we walked into City Hall. We got us an
entire planet, along with a haul of space factories. And the important thing
is, we took out the nearest opposition. This planet is a fucking fortress now.
That means we can ease up on watching our backs, and get on with running this
shebang properly. Leroy, how’s the food situation down on the surface?”
“Nobody’s starving, Al. The farms
aren’t producing as much as they did before. But they are producing. I think we
can get them back up to the old levels if the lieutenants on the ground applied
some pressure. We need to motivate them.”
“Okay. So food is something we can
improve if we had the time. Mickey, your boys jiving you, or are they marching
round like a bunch of krauts whenever you give the word?”
Mickey Pileggi licked at the beads
of sweat that had suddenly erupted on his upper lip. “I got them under control,
Al. Yeah. Sure thing.”
“Mickey, you’re full of crap. This
whole fucking joint is going down the pan. We’ve been humping away at the
Confederation so bad, we ain’t noticed the rain coming in.”
“That’s what you wanted.”
Al stopped in full flow, hauling
back on his anger. He’d just been getting nicely into his spiel. “Kiera, stop
being such a ballbuster. I did what I had to to protect us. Ain’t nobody here
gonna argue with that.”
“I’m not arguing, Al. I’m saying
the same thing as you. We are where we are, because this is where you’ve
brought us.”
“You want to be somewhere else
right now?”
“No.”
“Then shut the fuck up. I’m telling
you, all of you; now is when we start getting things working properly again.
You gotta start keeping tabs on the soldiers under your command, else
everyone’s gonna finish up going AWOL like Webster. And that way, we wind up in
deep shit. We gotta have things working smoothly around here again. If you
don’t start exerting some proper discipline then the whole Organization’s gonna
fall apart. And if it goes down, then we go down with it.”
“Al, the Organization is set up to
keep the fleet working,” Kiera said.
“Hey, fucking lady Einstein, you
just worked that out for yourself, or did one of the kids from the gym explain
it when he was banging you?” Al chuckled loudly, encouraging the others to join
in.
“I’ve always known it. I just
wondered if you did.”
Al’s humour faded out. “What are
you getting at?”
“The only reason we need the fleet
is if New California remains in this universe.”
“Aw shit, not this crap again.
Don’t you get it? If we leave, then the Confederation longhairs are going to be
free to dream up some way of snatching us back. We have to stay here, it’s the
only way we can see what’s coming.”
“And if you see something like that
coming at you, Al, what are you going to do about it? A technology powerful
enough to pull a planet back from the other side of the beyond. Launch a combat
wasp at it? Believe me, if the Confederation ever gets to be that powerful,
then we don’t stand a chance. But I don’t think they’ll ever learn how to do
anything like that. We can do it because we’ve got the devil’s own power
charging us up. No chunk of machinery can challenge that. If we leave, then I
say we’re going to be a hell of a lot safer there than we are here.”
There was an itch in Al’s palm,
running across his skin exactly where he gripped the handle of his baseball
bat. He held off from making it real. Her talk about the devil being behind
them made him uncomfortable. A Catholic by birth, he didn’t like examining the
implications of what he was now, nor why. “We ain’t pinning our future on what
you think might be right, sister,” he growled. “If we want a certainty,
then we stay right here.”
“The Organization can be
transported down to the planet,” Kiera said, as if Al hadn’t even spoken. “We
can use the SD network to keep our power base secure until we assume control of
the cities. After that, we use ground troops to enforce order. Al was right
about that. There’s been too much slippage allowed recently. We know we have to
keep the farms and a lot of the industries going if we want any kind of decent
life on the other side. It’ll take a strong, positive government to achieve
that. And that’s us.”
“We can do all that crap, and still
stay here,” Al said. His voice had become little more than a whisper. That
worried those who had been with him the longest, though Kiera didn’t seem to
notice the barely concealed danger. “When I want someone else to tell me how to
run my Organization, I’ll let you know. Got that, baby doll? Or do I need to
make it real plain for you?”
“I hear what you say, Al.” The tone
was amused indolence.
“That’s smart of you. Now I want
the rest of you guys to start doing like I’ve said. We need a crackdown like
God’s foot is stomping through the clouds. I want things up and jumping around
here. Put the word out to your soldiers, as of now you shape up or ship out.
And out is where you don’t want to be.”
Al told Emmet and Silvano to stay
behind after the others trooped out. He flicked a switch to turn the wall
clear, and waited impatiently as transparent waves skidded about in front of
him. With his mind all het up, it was hard to cool down his energistic power.
Eventually, the wall stabilized, giving him a view across the SD Tactical Operations
Centre. Five people were sitting behind the long ranks of consoles; two of them
playing cards.
“The bitch is good,” Al said. He
was surprised more than anything.
“She used to be married to a
politician,” Silvano said. “Knows how to sound plausible.”
“Certainly convinced me scooting
our asses out of here is a good idea,” Al muttered. He turned back to his two
senior lieutenants. “Emmet, is what she said right? Can we take the planet out
of their reach? I mean, right away?”
Emmet wiped a hand across his
forehead. “Al, I can make the machines we’ve got work for you. Do a few
repairs, make sure everything’s plugged in where it oughta be. But, shit,
questions like that . . . That’s out of my league, Al, way out. You need a
theoretical physicist, or a priest. But even if they can learn how to do that,
it’s not gonna be tomorrow. We’d be safe there a long time. And could be we’d
learn how to keep ourselves there. Shit, I just don’t know, Al.”
“Ha.” Al sat himself down, annoyed
by how badly he’d come out of the clash. “And we don’t get to find out,
neither. God damn that bitch. Now she’s declared for the running away option,
I’ve gotta make my stand to stay here. And you can be certain she’ll start
shouting her idea about.”
“Leaving this universe has a strong
appeal to the possessed,” Silvano said. “It’s intrinsic. Perhaps you should bow
to the inevitable, boss.”
“You think I’m gonna knuckle under
to that whore?”
“Not to her, no. But she’s backing
a winning idea.”
“I still need the hellhawks a
while,” Al said. “Emmet, you done anything more about building another feeding
trough for them?”
“Sorry, Al, haven’t had time.”
“You’ve got it now.”
Banneth was making her preliminary
preparations to Kilian when one of the senior acolytes pounded on the door of
her sanctum. Kilian gurgled weakly as she eased the slim tube deeper inside
him.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Banneth
promised him cheerfully, and fastened a clamp around the incision to stop the
bleeding. She stripped the thin isolation gloves from her hands as she walked
over to the door.
“A body, High Magus,” the acolyte
panted. “There’s a body in the temple.”
She frowned. “Who?”
“Acolyte Tilkea, High Magus. He was
butchered. We didn’t authorize it. Tilkea is one of the better ones.”
“I see.” Banneth datavised a codelock
at her sanctum door, and strode off towards the temple. “How awful, a corpse we
didn’t authorize.”
“Yes, High Magus,” the acolyte
agreed nervously. Like everyone in the headquarters, he never knew if she was
joking or not.
Even by the standards of the sect,
the killing was fairly extreme. The remains of acolyte Tilkea were suspended
from strands of carbon wire above the altar, arms and legs extended wide. Large
hooks punctured the skin above his shoulder blades, as well as his buttocks,
wrists, and ankles, fastening him to the wires. His chest had been split open
from throat to crotch, ribs levered apart to allow the internal organs to spill
out. They’d splattered down on the altar, along with a small lake of blood.
Banneth circled the corpse carefully, while a gaggle of acolytes stood at a
respectful distance. It was ironic, she thought, that a death in the temple
where they themselves had killed hundreds over the last few decades should
invoke such trepidation. A sign of the times.
The blood was still warm. Banneth
took a small medical block from her pocket, and pressed its sensor pad against
Tilkea’s glistening liver. “This happened within the last half hour,” she
announced. “Was he on duty in here?”
“Yes, High Magus.”
She datavised the headquarters network
processor, and instructed it to review the security systems. Nobody had left
the building within the last hour. “I want every door guarded by a team of five
acolytes. You can issue the hand weapons, chemical projectiles only.”
The senior acolytes hurried to
obey. When she stood up, Banneth saw the writing on the wall behind the altar.
Someone had used Tilkea’s heart as a sponge, scrawling in blood: Darkness
has arrived. Her gaze switched from that to the wires disappearing into the
shadows cloaking the ceiling. “Who fixed them up there?” she asked quietly. Not
a difficult job, but hardly one that could be done unnoticed. The acolytes
simply shrugged helplessly.
This is a very elaborate death, Banneth told Western Europe. It obviously
took some time to prepare. And getting in and out of the building would be hard
even for the possessed. My AI is running a constant glitch scan.
It wouldn’t be difficult for
Dexter, Western Europe
replied. From what we’ve seen so far he can circumvent all your electronics.
I’d suggest he’s starting a war of nerves. If he’s as fixated on you as we
believe, then a quick death will hardly suffice.
I expect you’re right.
Cheer up, it confirms that he’s
still in Edmonton. And if Tilkea was killed only half an hour ago, he can’t
have left yet. I’ll have the vac-trains shut down immediately.
If Dexter can make himself
invisible, he’s probably still inside this temple right now. Banneth resisted the urge to stare round into
the many dark recesses. I imagine he’ll want to see my reaction.
You could make him happy.
Scream, faint; that kind of thing.
I’ll consider it for the future.
Perhaps you ought to trigger
your gender cycle early, Western
Europe suggested. Shift into a man.
I fail to see the relevance.
A male’s aggression would probably
be a more appropriate response to this situation. Dexter is a raging psychotic,
after all.
Banneth dispatched a dry laugh down
the affinity bond. That’s one of my more treasured privileges, an intimate
knowledge of both psychological profiles owned by the human race. I can exploit
the relevant weaknesses to perfection. Men have less of a conscience, I’ll
grant you; but your claim that you’re rougher and tougher is a rather sad
ego-enhancing lie you tell yourselves.
Charmed, I’m sure. Well if you
don’t want to do that, is there anything else you need?
I can’t think of anything. This
place is so heavily booby trapped I’m more worried about one of these bumpkin
acolytes setting off a charge than I am an invasion of possessed.
Very well.
Are you watching the other
sects?
Yes. North America and I have
them all covered. Eight of Edmonton’s chapels have been taken over by
possessed. It’s only a matter of time until the remainder follow. Quinn has
also started to sabotage Edmonton’s infrastructure. The acolytes have been sent
out several times to damage fusion generators and water pumping stations. They
actually got through in three or four instances.
I haven’t noticed any reduction
in services.
Because there haven’t been any.
Not yet. But the margins are being cut; which raises an considerable question
mark over Dexter’s ultimate goal. However, it’s proved an interesting footprint
for us. There have been similar acts in Paris and Bombay.
You think that’s where he’s
been?
Yes. I’m investigating Paris
myself, of course. The East Asian supervisor is giving the Bombay sect his
personal attention.
Your observers here should keep
watch for Courtney and Billy-Joe. Banneth concentrated on their images. They’ve been missing for a
couple of days now. Dexter used to pimp Courtney for me when he was an acolyte.
You couldn’t classify her as a friend, but she’ll be loyal to him. If he keeps
anyone close, it’ll be her.
Thank you. We’ll keep an eye
out.
The program’s visualization took
the form of a three dimensional spider web that filled the entire universe.
Strands were all primary colours, crossing and recrossing against each other, a
weave that stretched away to an infinity where they blurred into null-grey
uniformity. Louise’s mind hung in the centre, looking in every direction at
once.
What her neural nanonics were
showing her was Earth’s communication net. Or at least, part of London’s
informational structure. Then again, it might have been just the Ritz’s
internal house network. She wasn’t entirely sure, only that this was what
surrounded her room’s net processor . . . when she ran this particular
symbology protocol, anyway. There were some interpretations which were like
cybernetic coral, others that had cartoon roads, looping gas-giant rings, even
one that was an intertexture of glowing liquids. But this, she felt, was the
most real.
Information taxis were flooding
back towards her, silent sparkles of light riding the strands down to the
centre, condensing around her like a new galaxy. A response to the latest
questor she’d fired into the digital aether; the fiftieth variant on that one
basic inquiry: find a connection between Quinn Dexter and Banneth, any
category. She’d tried multiple combinations of the most preposterous phonetic
spellings, removed time restrictions so that the questors could search
centuries-old memories, allowed fictional works (every media type from books
onwards) to be incorporated. If she could just get that first connection,
discover a single positive reference, then the questors and news hounds and
directory extractors and credit profilers and a hundred other search programs
installed in her neural nanonics could be unleashed on Banneth like dogs after
a hax.
The information taxis loaded their
passenger files into the analysis program she was running in primary mode. “Oh
hell,” she groaned. The neuroiconic display vanished, and she propped herself
up on her elbows.
Genevieve was sitting at the room’s
desk, running an English geo-historical tutorial through her processor block.
She gave her big sister a sympathetic look. “Zeroed out again?”
“Yep.” Louise leaned over the side
of the bed, and hunted round for her shoes. “Not a single file entry, not that
combines them.”
“You’ve just got to keep asking.”
Genevieve indicated the pile of flek cases on the desk. “Computers aren’t
smart, just fast. Garbage in, garbage out.”
“Is that so?” Louise wasn’t going
to quibble about Gen’s new-found interest of boning up on educational texts. It
was better than games. Trouble was, the knowledge was superficial.
Like mine.
“I don’t know enough,” she
confessed. “Even with the program tutors to help me format the questor.” It
wasn’t just her inability to get a lead on Banneth that bothered her. There was
still no response from Joshua. She’d sent half a dozen messages now without so
much as an acknowledgement from Tranquillity. “I need professional help.”
She was back. Andy Behoo sighed
helplessly as soon as he saw her walk in. The magic was only slightly soiled by
Genevieve trailing after her. This time he didn’t even bother to say anything
to the customer he was serving before he abandoned them. Louise was standing in
the middle of the shop, looking round with that same slightly befuddled
expression as the first time. She smiled lightly when she saw him approaching
(not too fast, don’t run—you’ll look pathetic).
“Back for some more?” he asked.
God, what a stupid thing to say. Why not just yell out: I don’t have a life.
“I’d like to choose some programs,
yes,” Louise said.
“Excellent.” His eyes tracked up
and down in a fast sweep, feeding the image into a memory cell. Today she wore
a lemon-yellow dress made from a sparkly fabric that was tight around her
bottom; and a pair of antique wire rimmed sunglasses. An odd combination, but
very stylish. You just had to have considerable poise to carry off the effect.
“What can we get you?”
“I need a very powerful questor.
You see. I’m trying to find someone, and I’ve got very little information about
them. The NAS2600 questor can’t locate them for me.”
Interest in what she was saying
actually diverted Andy’s eyes from her cleavage. “Really? It’s usually pretty
good. Your friend must be very well hidden.” And pray it’s her loathsome
fiancé.
“Could be. Can you help?”
“What I’m here for.” Andy walked
back to his counter, working out in his mind what he could do to use the
situation. He plain didn’t have the nerve to ask her outright if she’d like to
come for a drink with him after work. Especially not with Genevieve at her
side. But there had to be some way he could get to see her again, outside
Jude’s Eworld.
He was very conscious of Liscard,
the general manager, tracking his progress. Liscard had been on edge ever since
a couple of Special Branch cops had paid Jude’s Eworld a visit. They’d taken
the manager back into her office, and spoken to her for over an hour. Whatever
they said, her suppresser programs couldn’t get a grip on her subsequent
nerves. She’d certainly given Andy a hard time all day, snarling at him for
little or no reason.
Andy had a horrible feeling it
might all be connected with Louise. Specifically de-stinging her and Genevieve.
If they had been Govcentral bugs, then Jude’s Eworld had probably broken the
law removing them. But there’d been no real reprimand. The sellrats had been
nibbling on curiosity and rumour ever since. Each of them bragged about their
own special shady customer who was the probable cause.
The shop’s inventory flashed up in
Andy’s head, and he ran through the specs for questors. “I expect half of your
trouble is that the 2600 questor only reviews current file indexes,” he told
Louise. “What we need to do is get you one that’ll review entire files and
disregard data status, that should help with obscure references.” Andy ducked
down below the counter top, and looked at the clutter of fleks stacked up on
the shelves below. “Here we go.” He surfaced, holding up a flek case.
“Killabyte. It’s almost an AI in its own right. A one shot request that
operates on fuzzy breeder intuition, which means it can utilise whatever
references it finds to build new associations which you haven’t loaded in, and
search through them. It won’t taxi back until it’s found the answer, no matter
how long it takes. Tenacious little bugger.”
“That’s good. Thank you, Andy.”
“What I’d really like to give you
is the Hyperpeadia, but we haven’t got any fleks of it in stock right now. If
it’s used in tandem with Killabyte I’d guarantee you’ll find your friend.
They’re the two market leaders right now.”
“I’m sure Killabyte will be fine.”
“I’ll put in an order for
Hyperpeadia. The software collective won’t datavise it to us, they’re worried
about bootlegs.” He put his elbows on the counter and leaned towards her in a
confidential fashion. “Course, the encryption has already been cracked. You can
get a pirate clone at any stall in Chelsea market, but it’ll probably have
transcription degradation. Best you have an original. It’ll be here tomorrow
morning. I can have it delivered straight to wherever you’re staying.”
“I’m at the Ritz.” Louise fished
round in her shoulder bag and produced the hotel’s courtesy collection disk.
“Ah.” Andy held up the counter’s
delivery log block to accept the Ritz’s code. “Your fiancé hasn’t arrived yet,
then?” Genevieve had to bend over and hide her face in her hands to stop the
giggles.
“No, not yet,” Louise answered
levelly. “But I’m expecting him any day now. He’s already in the solar system.
I was wondering if you could help me with something else?”
“Sure. Anything!”
Louise smiled demurely at his
enthusiasm. I ought to be firmer with him. But somehow being firm with Andy
Behoo would be like drowning kittens. “It’s just in case the questors can’t
find what I want. You said some private detectives use the store. Could you
recommend one?”
“I can ask,” he said thoughtfully.
“Hang on a minute.”
Liscard gave him an alarmed look as
he walked over to her. “A private dick?” she mumbled when Andy asked which one
he should recommend.
“Yeah,” Andy said. “One that’s good
at finding people. Do you know if any of them are?”
“I think so,” Liscard stammered.
She waited apprehensively. As soon as the Kavanagh girls had come back into the
store, she’d established a sensevise link to the eddress which the Special
Branch officers had given her. Her retinas and audio discrimination program had
been capturing the scene for whoever was at the other end of the link. She
didn’t have the nerve to load any of the tracer programs available to employees
of Jude’s Eworld. The software houses who produced them guaranteed they would
be completely undetectable, but she wasn’t about to take the risk. Not with the
people who claimed they were from Special Branch. When she asked her fixer in
the local police about them he’d abruptly told her never to contact him again,
and cut the datavise.
“What do you want me to say?” she
datavised to the anonymous receiver.
“There’s someone I know who can
help the girl,” came the answer.
Liscard datavised the information
directly into Andy’s neural nanonics. He took his time walking back across the
shop, a measured approach allowed him to savour her shape. The images he’d
snatched before were fine as far as they went, but they amounted to little more
than photonic dolls in his sensenviron. After conjuring them up he was left
craving for more substantial replicants. Now, with his retinas switched to
infrared, and feeding through discrimination program, he could trace her
abdominal muscle pattern and rib cage through the fabric of her dress. A scan
grid overlay revealed the precise three-dimensional measurements of those
wonderful breasts. And her skin tone spectrum was already on file; that would
be a simple continuation for the sculptor program, extending up from the legs,
and down from her bare shoulders. That just left the taste of her as he ran his
tongue along her belly and down between her thighs. The correct pitch as she
cried out in gratitude, the praise she would moan to him, her greatest ever
lover.
Andy hated himself for resorting to
sensenviron sprites. It was the final humiliating proof that he was a complete
loser. But she was so fantastic. Better to have loved and lost, than never
loved at all. Even if that love was purely digital.
“What’s the matter with him?”
Genevieve asked loudly. “Why’s he looking at you all funny?”
Andy’s smile was a thin mask over
his horror as her piping voice broke through his distracted thoughts. Cool
sweat was beading across his flushed skin. His neural nanonics couldn’t help
dispel the blush, they were too busy fighting down his erection.
Louise gave him a vaguely
suspicious look. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Andy mumbled. He scurried
back behind the counter, ignoring Genevieve’s frown. “I think the person you
want is Ivanov Robson. He specializes in missing persons, both kinds.”
“Both kinds?”
“Yeah. Some people are genuinely
missing; they drop out of life, or haven’t updated their directory entries—like
your friend. Then there’s the kind who’re deliberately trying to vanish;
debtors, unfaithful partners, criminals. You know.”
“I see. Well thank you, this Mr
Robson sounds about right.”
Andy datavised the detective’s
address and eddress over. Louise smiled and gave him an uncertain wave as she
walked out. Breath whistled out between Andy’s crooked teeth. His hands were
shaking again, forcing him to grip the edge of the counter. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot!
But she hadn’t stormed out, or made an issue of his stupid erotic
daydreaming. There was still a chance.
Yeah, about the same as me getting
crowned King of Kulu.
He looked down to double check. The
counter’s middle shelf held a stack of fifteen Hyperpeadia fleks, all with
their wrapping intact. His one and only excuse to see her again.
The taxi pulled up at the end of
Fernshaw Road, where it intersected with Edith Terrace. Louise and Genevieve
stepped out, and the door slid shut behind them. The vehicle accelerated away
silently down the road. It had deposited them in a quiet residential street,
where the pavements were actually made from slabs of stone rather than a simple
band of carbon-concrete. Silver birch and sycamore trees that must have been a
couple of centuries old lined both sides of the road, their giant boughs
merging together to provide a gentle emerald shield against the fierce
sunlight. The houses were all ancient two or three storey affairs, painted
white or cream. Bricks and slate roofs were betraying their age by sagging and bulging;
centuries of subsidence and environmental decline had distorted every wall and
support timber. Window frames were tilted at the oddest angles. There wasn’t a
straight line to be seen anywhere in the street. Each house had a tiny front
garden, though they’d all been paved over; the massive trees absorbed so much
light they prevented any shrubs or vines from growing underneath.
“This must be it,” Louise said
dubiously. She faced a high wall with a single golden oak door in it, heavily
tarnished with age. There was a brass panel with a grill on one side. It looked
far too primitive to datavise at. She pressed the ivory button on top.
“Yes?” the grille squealed.
“I’m here to see Mr Robson,” she
said. “I called before. I’m Louise Kavanagh.”
The door buzzed loudly, and she
pushed it open. There was a rectangular patio beyond, running along the front
of the building; home to a set of wrought iron furniture and a couple of dead
conifer bushes in cracked pots. The front door, a duplicate of the one behind, was
open. Louise peered cautiously into the small hallway. A blonde girl, barely
older than she, was standing behind a reception desk whose surface was
smothered with folders, flek cases, and china coffee mugs. She was staring into
a small AV pillar that protruded from the top of a very expensive-looking stack
of processor blocks. Pale turquoise light from the sparkling pillar was
reflected in her narrow, brown eyes. Her frozen posture was one of shock.
Her only acknowledgement of the
sisters’ entry was to ask: “Have you accessed it?” in a hoarse voice.
“What?” Genevieve asked.
The receptionist gestured at the
pillar. “The news.”
Both sisters stared straight into
the pillar’s haze of light. They were looking out across a broad park under a
typical arcology dome. Right across the centre of their view, a big tapering
tower of metal girders had collapsed to lie in a lengthy sprawl of contorted
wreckage across the immaculate emerald grass. Several of the tall, cheerfully
shaggy trees that surrounded it had been smashed and buried beneath the
splinters of rusty metal. A vast crowd encircled the wreckage, with thousands
more making their way along the paths to swell their numbers. They were people
in profound mourning, as if the tower had been some precious relative. Louise
could see they all had their heads bowed, most were weeping. Thin cries of
grief wove together through the air.
“Bastards,” the receptionist said.
“Those utter bastards.”
“What is that thing?” Genevieve
asked. The receptionist gave her a startled look.
“We’re from Norfolk,” Louise
explained.
“That’s the Eiffel Tower,” the
receptionist said. “In Paris. And the Nightfall anarchists blew it up. They’re
a bunch of crazies who’re going round wrecking things over there. It’s their
mission, they say, preparing the world for the fall of Night. But everyone
knows they’re just a front for the possessed. Bastards.”
“Was the tower really important?”
Genevieve asked.
“The Eiffel Tower was over seven
hundred years old. What do you think?”
The little girl looked back into
the projection. “How horrid of them.”
“Yes. I think that’s why there is a
beyond. So that people who do things like that can suffer in it until the end
of time.”
A glassed-in spiral stair took
Louise up to the first floor. Ivanov Robson was waiting for the sisters on the
landing. Travelling in the Far Realm had accustomed Louise to people who
didn’t share the bodyform template she’d grown up with. And of course, London
had an astonishing variety of people. Even so, she nearly jumped when she first
saw Robson. He was the biggest man she’d ever seen. Easily over seven feet
tall, and a body that seemed bulky even for that height. Not that any of it was
fat, she noticed. He was frighteningly powerful, with arms thicker than her
legs. His skin was the deepest ebony, glossy from a health club’s spar
treatment. With thick gold-tinted auburn hair twirled into a tiny pony tail,
and wearing a stylish yellow silk business suit, he looked amazingly dapper.
“Miss Kavanagh, welcome.” From the
confident humour in his smooth voice, it was obvious he knew the effect he had
on people.
Floorboards creaked under his feet
as showed them into his office. The bookcases reminded Louise of her father’s
study, although there were very few leather-bound volumes here. Ivanov Robson
eased himself into a wide chair behind a smoked-glass desk. The surface was
empty apart from a slimline processor block and a peculiar chrome-topped glass
tube, eighteen inches high, that was full of clear liquid and illuminated from
underneath. Orange blobs glided slowly up and down inside it, oscillating as
they went.
“Are they xenoc fish?” Genevieve
asked. It was the first time she’d spoken. The huge man had even managed to
quash her usual bravado. She’d kept well behind Louise the whole time.
“Nothing as spectacular,” Ivanov
said. “It’s an antique, a genuine Twentieth Century lava lamp. Cost me a
fortune, but I love it. Now, what can I do for you?” he tented his fingers, and
looked directly at Louise.
“I have to find somebody,” she
said. “Um, if you don’t want to take the case when I’ve told you who, I’ll
understand. I think she’s called Banneth.” Louise launched into a recital of
her journey since leaving Cricklade, not quite as heavily edited as usual.
“I’m impressed,” Ivanov said softly
when she’d finished. “You’ve come face to face with the possessed, and
survived. That’s quite a feat. If you ever need money, I know a few people in
the news media.”
“I don’t want money, Mr Robson. I
just want to find Banneth. None of the questors seem to be able to do that for
me.”
“I’m almost embarrassed to take
your money, but I will, of course.” He grinned broadly, revealing teeth that
had been plated entirely in gold. “My retainer will be two thousand
fuseodollars, payable in advance. If I locate Banneth, that will be another
five thousand. Plus any expenses. I will provide receipts where possible.”
“Very well.” Louise held out her
Jovian Bank credit disk.
“A couple of questions first,”
Ivanov said after the money had been transferred. He tilted his chair back, and
closed his eyes in thought. “The only thing you know for certain about Banneth
is that she hurt Quinn Dexter. Correct?”
“Yes. He said so.”
“And Banneth definitely lives on
Earth? Interesting. Whatever happened between the two of them sounds very ugly,
which implies they were involved in some kind of criminal activity. I think
that should provide my investigation with an adequate starting point.”
“Oh.” Louise didn’t quite look at
him. It was so obvious, laid out like that. She should have sent a questor into
criminal archives.
“I am a professional, Louise,” he
said kindly. “You do know the possessed have reached Earth, don’t you?”
“Yes. I accessed the news from New
York. The mayor said they’d been eliminated, though.”
“He would. But Govcentral still
hasn’t opened the vac-train lines to New York. That should tell you something.
And now we’ve had the Eiffel Tower blown up for no reason other than to
demoralize and anger people. That probably means they’re in Paris as well. A
feat like that is beyond the ability of some stimbrained street gang. What I’m
trying to say, Louise, in my dear bumbling way, is that if Quinn Dexter is
here, then he’ll be heading for Banneth as well. Now do you really want to bump
into him again?”
“No!” Genevieve squeaked.
“Then bear in mind that’s where
your current path is taking you.”
“All I need is Banneth’s eddress,”
Louise said. “Nothing else.”
“Then I will do my best to ensure
you receive it. I’ll be in touch.”
Ivanov waited until the sisters
were circling down the spiral stair before asking: Do you want me to give
her Banneth’s eddress?
I’m afraid it’s a bit pointless
right now, Western Europe
answered. Edmonton has been sealed up, with Quinn inside. I can’t get her in
to meet him; so she’ll just have to sit this out on the substitute’s bench for
a while.
Chapter 13
The prospect of interstellar flight
had been real to certain sections of the human race for a long time before Sputnik
One thundered into orbit. A notion which began with visionaries like
Tsiolkovskii, Goddard, and somewhat more whimsical science fiction writers of
that age, was quickly taken up and promoted by obsessive space activists when
the first micro-gee factories came on line, proving that orbital manufacturing
was a profitable venture. With the development of the O’Neill Halo and the
Jupiter mining operation in the Twenty-first Century the concept finally began
to seem practical. Asteroids were already being hollowed out and made
habitable. Now it was only an engineering and finance problem to propel them
out of Earth orbit and across the gulf to Proxima Centauri. There were no
theoretical show stoppers; fusion or antimatter engines could be built to
accelerate the giant rocks up to speeds of anything between five and twenty per
cent of lightspeed, depending on which physicist you asked. Generations of crew
would live, tend their machinery, and die within the rock as they crawled
across the emptiness, with the anticipation that their descendants would
inherit a fresh world.
Sadly, human nature being what it
is, century-duration flights were just too long, the ideal of colonization too
abstract to motivate the governments and large institutions of the time into
building these proposed space arks. The real clincher, inevitably, was cost.
There could never be any return on the investment. So it seemed as though the
fresh start idealists would just have to go on dreaming.
One such thwarted dreamer was
Julian Wan, who, more resourceful than his colleagues, persuaded the board of
the New Kong corporation to research faster than light travel. His pitch was
that it would be a small, cheap project testing the more dubious equations of
Quantum Unification Theory, essentially a few wild theoretical physicists with
plenty of computer time. But if it could be made to work, the commercial opportunities
would be phenomenal. Noble concern for human destiny and the search for pure
knowledge never got a look in.
New Kong successfully tested the
ZTT drive in 2115, and the arkship concept was quickly and quietly discarded.
Beautifully detailed plans and proposals drawn up by a multitude of starflight
societies and associations were downloaded into university library memories to
join the ranks of other never-made-it technologies like the nuclear powered
bomber, the English Channel bridge, geostationary solar power stations, and
continent birthing (the so-called Raising Atlantis project, where fusion bombs
were proposed to modify tectonic activity). Then the Tyrathca world of
Hesperi-LN was discovered in 2395, along with the news that it was actually a colony
founded by an arkship. The old human plans were briefly revisited by history of
engineering students, interested to see how they stood up to comparison with a
proven arkship. That academic interest faded away inside of a decade.
Joshua, who fancied himself as
something of a spaceflight buff, was fascinated by the dull blip of light which
Lady Mac’s sensors were focused on. It was in a wildly elliptical orbit
around Hesperi-LN, with a twelve thousand kilometre perigee and four hundred
thousand kilometre apogee. Fortunately for their mission, it was just under
three hundred thousand kilometres away from the Tyrathca planet, and climbing.
They’d emerged two million
kilometres out from Hesperi-LN; a distance which put them safely beyond the
planet’s known SD sensor coverage. The Tyrathca world was not a cradle for the
kind of space activity found above industrialized human worlds. There were a
few low-orbit docking stations, industrial module clusters, communication and
sensor satellite networks, and twenty-five SD platforms supplied and operated
by the Confederation Navy. Not that there was a lot of worry about pirate
activity, the Tyrathca simply didn’t manufacture the kind of goods which could
be sold on any human market let alone the underground one. The Confederation
was far more concerned by the prospect of blackmail by a rogue starship captain
armed with ground-assault weapons. Although they didn’t have consumer products,
the Tyrathca did mine gold, platinum, and diamonds among other precious commodities
for their indigenous industries. And the colony had been established in AD
1300; rumours of vast stockpiles accumulated over millennia persisted on every
human world. Any bar or dinner party would have someone who knew somebody else
who had been told of a first-hand witness who’d walked through the endless
underground caverns filled with their glittering dragon hoards.
So the Navy maintained a small
cost-ineffective outpost to guard against the possibility of any inter-species incident.
It had been abandoned, along with all the other human-maintained systems,
when the Tyrathca broke off contact. According to the briefing Monica and
Samuel had given to the Lady Mac’s crew, the Tyrathca would find it
difficult to keep the SD systems functional for very long.
“But we have to expect them to
try,” Monica said. “Their ambassador was pretty damn insistent that we don’t
intrude on them again.”
Joshua and Syrinx assumed the SD
network was on-line and fully functional, and planned their tactics
accordingly. The goal was to land an explorer team on Tanjuntic-RI, who would
attempt to locate a reference to the Sleeping God in the arkship’s ancient
electronics. Getting them inside unnoticed was the big problem.
Both craft were in full stealth
mode when they emerged. Jumping into the system, Joshua had aligned Lady Mac
so that her vector would carry her in a rough trajectory from the emergence
coordinate towards the arkship. As long as he didn’t have to use either the
fusion or antimatter drives, the starship would probably remain undetected. At
this stage, they were back up; there to rush in and provide covering fire in
case things got noisy and Oenone had to rescue their team. They were
using passive sensors only, with just the chemical verniers firing occasionally
to hold them stable; every nonessential system was in stand-by mode, reducing
the power consumption and with it their thermal emission. Internal heat stores
were soaking up the fusion generator output, although they could only last for
a couple of days before the thermodump panels would have to be extended to
dissipate the heat. Even that wasn’t too much of a problem, the radiation could
be directed away from the SD network sensors. They’d have to be extremely
unlucky to be discovered by anything that guarded Hesperi-LN.
“Picking up some radar pulses from
the SD network,” Beaulieu reported. “But it’s very weak. They’re not scanning
for us. Our hull coating can absorb this level easily.”
“Good,” Joshua said. “Liol, what
about spacecraft activity?”
“Infrared’s showing twenty-three
ships using their drives above the planet. The majority are travelling between
low orbit and the SD platforms. Four seem to be heading up for high polar
orbits. I’d say they’re complementing the platforms. But none of them are
moving very fast, half a gee maximum. They are big ships, though.”
“That’s how the Tyrathca like
them,” Ashly said. “Plenty of room to move round in the life support sections.
It’s like being inside a bloody cathedral.”
“Offensive potential?”
“If they’re armed with human-made
combat wasps, considerable,” Liol said. “With that drive signature I’m assuming
they’re Tyrathca inter-planetary ships; they have a dozen asteroid settlements
to provide the planetary industries with several kinds of bulk microgee
compounds. Which means their payload is considerably larger than ours. They’re
like highly manoeuvrable weapons platforms.”
“Wonderful.” Joshua datavised the
new bitek processor array they’d installed during the last refit. “Oenone,
what’s your situation?”
“I remain on schedule, Joshua. We
should be rendezvousing with Tanjuntic-RI in another forty-two minutes. The
exploration team is suiting up now.”
Unlike the Lady Macbeth, Oenone
had been able to accelerate and manoeuvre after emerging above the planet.
By reducing its distortion field to a minimum, the voidhawk could accelerate at
half a gee towards the arkship. Given the distance involved, the network
satellites were unable to pick up such a small ripple in space-time. The
disadvantage was, with such a reduced field the voidhawk couldn’t perceive a
fraction of the local environment it usually did. If for some unaccountable
reason, the Tyrathca had surrounded Tanjuntic-RI with proximity mines, they
wouldn’t know until they were very close indeed.
Syrinx always hated being dependent
on just the sensor blisters and passive electronic arrays. The voidhawks’
ability to pervade a huge spherical volume of space around the hull was
intrinsic to their flight.
We managed like this in our Navy
days, Oenone said, unperturbed.
Syrinx grinned in the half-light of
the bridge. The crew toroid’s internal power consumption was minimal as well. You
mean back when we were young and foolish?
This is not a foolish venture, the voidhawk chided. Wing-Tsit Chong
considers it of the utmost importance.
Me too. But this part just
brings back memories. Of
Thetis, though she didn’t mention him. Lately she’d started to wonder if her
brother had managed to elude the beyond as that ever-damned Laton had promised.
Mild feelings of guilt had kept her away from his strange stunted existence
within the Romulus multiplicity before they left. Really, what was the point in
preserving him when his soul was free?
What is our best landing point,
do you think? Oenone asked.
As always, the voidhawk knew when
she needed distracting. I’m not sure. Show me what we can see. She
accessed the all-too scant files on Tanjuntic-RI stored in the on-board
processors, and attempted to match them up with the image the voidhawk was
seeing.
Tanjuntic-RI had been completely
abandoned less than fifty years after it arrived in the Hesperi-LN star system.
An unduly harsh treatment by human standards, but it had fulfilled every duty
its long-dead builders had required of it, and the Tyrathca were not a
sentimental species. Fifteen thousand years old, it had travelled one thousand
six hundred light-years to ensure the Tyrathca race didn’t die along with their
exploding home star. Five separate, successful colonies had been established
along its route. Each time the arkship had stopped inside a star system to
create a new colony, the Tyrathca had virtually rebuilt it, refuelled it, then
carried on with their crusade of racial survival. Even so, there are limits to
the most sturdy machinery. After Hesperi-LN was founded, Tanjuntic-RI was left to
circle ceaselessly above the planet.
Borrowing Oenone’s sensor
blisters, Syrinx could see the details becoming clear as they glided in for a
rendezvous. Tanjuntic-RI was a dark cylindrical rock six kilometres long, two
and a half in diameter. Its surface was a gentle mottle of flattened craters,
resembling a wind-sculpted ice field. Remnants of vast machines sketched out a
random topology of tarnished metal lines along the floors of the meandering
valleys. These appurtenances had succumbed to millennia of particle impacts and
vacuum ablation. What had once been a surface bristling with elaborate towers
and radiator panels the size of lakes was left with little more than their
stubby mounting fixtures as a reminder of past grandeur. The forward end was
the most heavily speckled, due mainly to the extensive remnants of a coppery
hexagonal grid.
With Tanjuntic-RI capable of
travelling at over fifteen per cent lightspeed, a collision with a single
pebble at that speed could result in catastrophic damage. So in flight the
arkship was protected by a plasma buffer, a cloud of electrically charged gas
that broke up and absorbed any mass smaller than a boulder. It rode ahead of
the arkship, a luminous mushroom-shape held in place by a magnetic field
generated by the superconductor grid.
Right in the centre of the grid,
aligned along the rotation axis, was the arkship’s spaceport. Although the
concept was the same as the counter-rotating spaceports on Edenist habitats,
the Tyrathca had fashioned an elaborate conical structure made up from tiers of
disks. Its peak disappeared below the surface of the rock, as if it were a kind
of giant arrow tip which had impaled itself in some forgotten era. The larger
disks at the top end had broken off centuries ago, probably when the magnetic
bearing seized up. Those that remained were vacuum ablating, their edges
fraying like worn cloth, while their flat surfaces slowly dissolved, reducing
their overall thickness. With the last maintenance crew departing thirteen
centuries previously, the vast sheets of metal were down to a few centimetres
thickness, and perforated by thousands of micrometeorite holes.
Oenone was also relaying the image of the arkship to
the little exploration team suiting up in the crew toroid’s airlock prep
chamber. Given the clandestine nature of their mission, Monica Foulkes and
Samuel were leading the team. There were only two technical staff coming with
them; Renato Vella, who was Kempster Getchell’s chief assistant, and Oski
Katsura, head of the Laymil project’s electronics division. Their job would be
to reactivate Tanjuntic-RI’s electronic library and extract whatever files
concerning the Sleeping God that they could locate. Tactical support was
supplied by four serjeants, loaded with Ione’s personality.
Kempster Getchell and Parker
Higgens were also in the prep chamber; helping with the suits when they were
asked, but mainly rehearsing mission goals with Renato and Oski. The formless
black silicon of the SII suits had enveloped each of the team, now they were busy
clipping their rigid exoskeleton suits on top. They were using standard issue
Confederation Navy Marine armour, generator reinforced monobonded carbon with
power augmentation. As sleek and featureless as the SII suits, they were
designed for both asteroid and ship assault roles, capable of supporting and
keeping the wearer active in high gee environments, and with built in
manoeuvring packs.
The team started to run integration
diagnostics. Arm joints bent and twisted, sensor inputs flicked through the spectrum.
Monica, Samuel, and the serjeants ran their weapons interface programs, and
stowed the various items of lethal hardware on their belts and racks once the
suit processor confirmed the connection. Oski and Renato started picking up
their blocks and equipment kits; there were too many to hang on their belts, so
they were both using small chestpacks.
Kempster held Renato’s pack steady
as it adhered to the armour suit. “I can’t feel the weight,” the young
astronomer datavised. “I just have to balance right. And I’ve even got a
program for that.”
“The wonders of science,” Kempster
muttered. “Mind you, I ought to be flattered. Commando raids to acquire
astronomical data. I suppose that’s a sign of how important my profession has
become.”
“The Sleeping God isn’t an
astronomical event,” Parker chided irritably. “We’re sure of that now.”
Kempster smiled at the blank
neutral-grey back of his assistant. Now he was ready, Renato datavised Oenone’s
processor array for an update on their approach. Tanjuntic-RI’s dilapidated
spaceport was a hundred and fifty kilometres away, and the voidhawk’s sensor
blisters had it in perfect focus. The large disks were separated by a single
central column that appeared to be made up from hundreds of braided pipes. They
were spaced far enough apart, a hundred metres at least, to admit ships between
them. Tyrathca craft had used them as hangar floors, anchoring themselves to
docking pins and plugging into the utility sockets. Now, the disks were
essentially flat sheets of decaying metal; their thin lattice of ancillary
systems had evaporated away along with the rim.
“We’re not going to land on those,
are we?” Renato Vella asked. “They don’t look very reliable.”
Samuel used his suit’s bitek
processor to datavise a reply. “Oenone will take us in under the bottom
disk. We’ll go EVA and try and find a way in along the spaceport’s support
column.”
“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Monica
datavised. “The archaeology team from the O’Neill Halo got in easily.”
“A hundred and thirty years ago,”
Kempster said. “The decay rate Tanjuntic-RI is suffering from could well make
things difficult for you. The original route may be blocked.”
“This isn’t an archaeology project,
doc,” Monica datavised. “We’ll just cut our way in if we have to. Decay should
help us there. The structure won’t put up much resistance.”
Kempster caught Parker’s eye, the
two of them registering their disapproval in unison. Cut it open, indeed!
“At least we have a basic layout
file of the internal chambers,” Oski datavised. “If we really did have to
explore, I doubt we’d achieve anything.”
“Yeah,” Monica agreed. “How come
the Tyrathca allowed that university team in?”
“Wrong question,” Parker said. “Why
shouldn’t they? The Tyrathca couldn’t understand our interest in the arkship at
all. You know they seal up and abandon a house once the breeders have died?
Well Tanjuntic-RI is a similar case. Once something of theirs has ended its
natural life, it becomes . . . invalid, is about the nearest definition
we have. They just don’t use it, or visit it again. And it’s not due to the
kind of respect we have for graves; they don’t consider their relics or burial
houses to be sacred.”
“Weird species,” Monica datavised.
“That’s what they think of us,
too,” Parker said. “The various Lords of Ruin have asked them on several
occasions if they would join the Laymil research project, another viewpoint
would always be valuable. It was the same answer each time. They’re simply not
interested in examining obsolete artefacts.”
Oenone folded its distortion field to almost nothing
as it crept across the last kilometre to Tanjuntic-RI. The arkship was rotating
around its long axis once every four minutes, with only a small wobble picked
up over the centuries. Which said a lot for how well they’d managed the internal
mass distribution, Syrinx thought. As a result of the minute instability, the
spaceport was pursuing a small loop which the voidhawk could match easily.
They slid in under the bottom disk,
which was only seventy metres in diameter. The short length of the support
column which emerged from the disk’s centre to burrow into the rock was
twenty-five metres wide.
That lower disk must have been
used to dock the Tyrathca analogue of our MSV’s, Syrinx suggested. With the big
inter-planetary ships on the top deck.
That would be logical, Oenone agreed. I wonder what they looked like?
Very similar to those the
Tyrathca use today, Ruben
said. They don’t innovate much. Once a system is finalized they never change
it.
That doesn’t make a lot of
sense, Serina said. How can
you know when something is as good as possible unless you keep analyzing and
tinkering with the design? A bicycle is a good, efficient method of getting
from one place to another, but the car came along because we weren’t satisfied
with it.
I hadn’t really thought about
it, Ruben admitted. Now you
mention it, thirteen hundred years is a long time to stick with one design, an
awful lot more if you add their voyage time to that. We’re still improving our
fusion drives, and we’ve only had them six hundred years.
And they’re a lot better than
Tyrathca fusion drives, Oxley
said. We’ve been selling them improvements ever since we made contact.
You’re applying human psychology
to them, Ruben said. It’s a
mistake. They don’t have our intuition or imagination. If it works, they really
don’t try to fix it.
They must have some imagination,
Cacus protested. You can
hardly design an arkship without it.
Ask Parker Higgens, Ruben said. A slight tinge of defensiveness was
leaking into his affinity voice. Maybe he can explain it. I guess being slow
and methodical gets you there in the end.
Syrinx examined the twisted braid
of pipes and girders that made up the spaceport’s support column. Following her
silent urging, Oenone expanded its distortion field enough to pervade
the dilapidated structure. A picture of entwined translucent tubes filled her
mind. The number of black-crack flaws in the metal and composite was alarming,
as was the thinness of individual tubes. That really is very fragile, she
declared. Samuel, please be careful when you egress. It won’t take much to
snap the spaceport clean off.
Thanks for the warning.
Oenone rotated gently, turning its crew toroid airlock
towards the lead-grey shaft. Standing in the open hatch, Samuel’s suit sensors
showed him the stars slip past until he was facing the wrinkled mesh of metal.
Even though it was basically just a frayed mechanical structure, it had a
quality that told him it wasn’t human. Neatness, he decided, it lacked
neatness, the kind of confident elegance that was the signature of human
astroengineering. Where humans would use failsofts and multiple redundancy, the
Tyrathca built tough simple devices in tandem. If one was taken out of service
for repair or maintenance they trusted the second to remain functional. And it
was obviously a philosophy which worked. Tanjuntic-RI’s existence and triumph
was evidence of that. It was just . . . reality at one degree from human
sensibilities.
The voidhawk’s movement halted.
Shadows plagued the hull, turning the marbled polyp a dingy walnut. Gravity in
the airlock faded away as the distortion field flowed away from it.
This is as close as we can get, Syrinx said. The archaeology team went in
just above the bearing ring.
The spaceport support column
appeared to be holding steady just past the lip of the hull. Stars waved about
behind it. Samuel triggered the cold gas jets in his armour, and drifted out
from the airlock. Gaps in the column were easy enough to find. The original
close weave of pipes and structural girders had been loosened when the bearings
seized up, opening a multitude of chinks, though it was impossible to guess
which one had been used by the archaeology team all those years ago. He
selected one ten metres above the huge bearing ring set in the rock.
Nitrogen puffed out from tiny
nozzles around his slimline manoeuvring backpack, edging him closer to the gap.
It was lined with a buckled pipe on one side, and a tattered conduit casing on
the other. He reached out with his left gauntlet, and made a tentative grab for
one of the flaky cables inside the conduit. Dust squirted out around his
fingers, and tactile receptors in his palm told him the cable had compressed
slightly in his grip. But it held. His main worry had been that everything they
touched along the column would disintegrate like so much brittle porcelain.
“Okay, there’s a degree of
integrity left in the material,” he datavised back to the rest of the team.
“You can come over. I’m going in.”
Helmet and wrist lights came on,
and he shone the beams into the black cavity ahead. When the column bearings
seized up, the torque stress exerted by the spaceport’s inertia had splintered
hundreds of structural girders, ripping apart the multitude of pipes and cables
they carried. The result was to fill the inside of the column with a forbidding
tangle of wreckage. Samuel activated his inertial guidance block. Bright green
directional graphics flicked up over the monochrome sensor image, and he eased
himself forward. According to his suit sensors, the spaces between the interlocking
struts contained a thin molecular haze from the slowly ablating metal.
The chinks were becoming smaller,
with fragments scraping against his armour as he hauled himself in the
direction the graphics indicated. He pulled a ten centimetre fission knife from
his belt. The blade’s yellow light shone brightly, shimmering off the strands
of ash-grey metal. It cut through without the slightest resistance.
I feel like some kind of
Victorian soldier aristocrat hacking through a jungle, he confided to the Oenone’s crew.
Scraps of crumbling metal were
whirling round him, bouncing and twirling off the corners and angles of the
shambolic maze. The second armour-suited figure had reached the gap: Renato
Vella, who was quickly wriggling along after him. One of the serjeants was
next, followed by Monica, another serjeant, then Oski Katsura. Syrinx and the
crew used the sensor blisters to watch them vanish inside one after the other.
Looking good, she said, sharing a quiet confidence with her
crew.
Parker Higgens and Kempster
Getchell walked into the bridge, and took the chairs Syrinx indicated. “They’re
making progress,” Edwin told the two elderly science advisors. “At this rate,
Samuel will have reached the main airlock chamber in another ten minutes. They
could be at their target level in a couple of hours.”
“I hope so,” Tyla said. “The
quicker we’re away from here, the better. This place gives me the creeps. Do
you suppose the Tyrathca souls are watching us?”
“An interesting point,” Parker
said. “We’ve not had any reports of our returning souls encountering a xenoc
soul in the beyond.”
“So where do they go?” Oxley asked.
“We’ll put that on the list of
questions for the Sleeping God,” Kempster said jovially. “I’m sure that’s quite
trivial compared to—” he broke off as all the Edenists froze, closing their
eyes in unison. “What?”
“A starship,” Syrinx hissed. “Oenone
can sense its distortion field. Which means the Tyrathca detectors will
pick it up, too. Oh . . . bloody hell.”
I see you, the Stryla gloated.
Etchells hadn’t realized that there
was a voidhawk accompanying the rogue Adamist starship. Not until he swallowed
in above Hesperi-LN, and started scanning round for the ship he’d pursued from
the antimatter station. There was plenty of activity above the xenoc planet,
big sedate ships powering their way into high inclination orbits, complementing
the protective sphere thrown up by the SD platforms. The twin moons were
sending out constant gravitational perturbations as they orbited round each
other, half a million kilometres above Hesperi-LN itself. A network of sensor
satellites. An unusually thick band of dust slithering above the upper
Van-Allen belt. He had to move around cislunar space in small swallows so that
his distortion field could complete a clean sweep above the planet. The Adamist
starship was easy to locate, a tight curve in the uniformity of space-time. He
focused on it, prying and probing at its composition by creating a multitude of
tiny ripples within his distortion field, seeing how they reacted to the
encounter, the diffraction pattern created as they washed across the hull and
internal machinery. One thing was clear, it wasn’t a Navy ship. The layout was
all wrong for that. And Navy ships didn’t have an antimatter drive. Its main
fusion generators were shut down, leaving just a couple of ancillary tokamaks
to power the life support capsules; and the biggest give-away of all: its
thermo-dump panels were retracted. It was in stealth mode.
A Confederation Navy sanctioned
starship on a clandestine mission in the Tyrathca system. It would have to be a
very important mission to risk an inter-species clash at this delicate time.
Etchells knew damn well it had to be connected to the issue of possession
somehow. Nothing else would warrant approval. When he extrapolated its
trajectory, he saw it was going to fly past a moonlet. He ran through a batch
of his stolen almanac memories, discovering that the moonlet was actually an
arkship, abandoned over a thousand years ago after a flight from an exploding
star. His knowledge of Tyrathca history was almost zero, although the
fundamentals were there. But he certainly couldn’t imagine any connection with
their ancient ship and the possession crisis.
A quick swallow manoeuvre put him a
thousand kilometres from Tanjuntic-RI, hours ahead of the Adamist starship, and
he began to examine it. That was when he found the stealthed voidhawk lurking
so close to the surface it was almost touching.
His flush of achievement was
tempered by continuing worry. What the hell were they doing here? It had to be
important. Critical, even. Which meant it was a threat to him. Among all his
possible options, one thing was very clear. They had to be prevented from
achieving their goal, whatever it was.
This is captain Syrinx of the
voidhawk Oenone. Who am I addressing?
The name’s Etchells, and I’m one
of Capone’s hellhawks.
Leave this star system
immediately. We will not hesitate to use force to make you comply.
Tough bitch, huh? Well, give me
a reason to leave. In fact, I’d like you to tell me what you two are doing
here.
Our task is not your concern.
Leave, now.
Wrong. I think it has a lot to
do with me. Etchells launched
a combat wasp at the arkship, then immediately swallowed away. The wormhole
terminus opened a hundred kilometres from the Adamist starship. He loaded a
hunter program into another combat wasp, and launched it as he emerged into
real space.
As soon as Syrinx warned him a
hellhawk had arrived, Joshua initiated combat status. He knew damn well their
cover either had been, or was about to be, blown. Lady Mac’s main fusion
generators powered up, the full suite of combat sensors rose out of their
recesses, combat wasp launch tubes opened. Alkad Mzu and Peter Adul hurriedly
secured themselves on the large, zero-tau capable acceleration couches in the
lounge. Up in the bridge, webbing tightened around the crew.
“Wormhole terminus opening,”
Beaulieu warned. “One hundred kilometres.”
Joshua triggered the Lady Mac’s
triple fusion drives. That close wasn’t an accident, the hellhawk had their
exact coordinate. “Liol, maser the bastard.”
“On it, Josh.” A targeting program
went primary in his neural nanonics. Three of the starship’s eight maser
cannons aligned themselves on the terminus and fired. The beams caught the
hellhawk as it slid out, and tracked it perfectly. At a hundred kilometres, the
inverse square law meant they couldn’t kill the hellhawk immediately. Joshua
didn’t care about that. He just wanted to force it away. Lady Mac could
take a lot more radiation punishment than any bitek construct if the hellhawk
wanted an energy beam duel.
It didn’t. A single combat wasp
shot out of its launch cradle, curving round to intercept Lady Mac. The
hellhawk’s harpy shape wavered and imploded into a narrow polyp ovoid pimpled
by steel-grey mechanical modules. It rolled frantically, trying to dodge the
beams. After three seconds of futile manoeuvring, its distortion field applied
a near-infinite force against space, and an interstice blossomed open. Joshua
fired four combat wasps to intercept the incoming drone, and changed course
again. His crew groaned in dismay as they accelerated at ten gees. Space behind
Lady Mac’s triad of dazzling fusion drive plumes ruptured into a gale of
plasma as the combat wasps ejected their submunitions. A curtain of nuclear
explosions erected an impenetrable barrier while particle beams and X-ray
lasers lashed out.
“I think we’re clear,” Beaulieu
datavised. “Our combat wasps knocked out their combat wasp.”
Joshua reviewed the sensor data,
which was calming as the expanding plasma wreathes from the explosions turned
to purple then began to decay through the spectrum. Stars began to shine
through the squall of enraged ions again. He reduced their acceleration to four
gees, and switched course once more.
“We just ditched our softly softly
policy,” Sarha grunted.
“Yeah,” Dahybi said. “Whoever
possesses that hellhawk knows their tactics. One combat wasp was never going to
hurt us. But it made us expose ourselves to the SD network.”
“Not just us,” Beaulieu said.
The sensors were showing them
another combat wasp clash developing several hundred kilometres away from
Tanjuntic-RI. “Syrinx, where the hell did it go?” Joshua datavised. “Could you
get a fix?”
“It swallowed over to the moons,”
Syrinx said.
Joshua already had the star system’s
almanac file open. He reviewed the data on the twin moons. Airless rocks, three
thousand kilometres in diameter. If they hadn’t been orbiting Hesperi-LN they’d
be categorised as exceptionally large asteroids. “There’s nothing there for
it,” he protested. “The Tyrathca don’t even bother mining them the ore’s so
poor.”
“I know. We think it’s just a good
location for a tactical withdrawal at this point in time. And it’ll be at least
partially shielded from the SD sensors. The Tyrathca probably don’t know it’s
here.”
“Great. Did you manage to get the
team in?”
“Yes, they’re in. But Oenone is
now holding station a hundred kilometres out from Tanjuntic-RI in case the
hellhawk tries to swallow in and launch some more combat wasps. The arkship is
very fragile, Joshua, it couldn’t withstand a nuclear assault. That leaves us
totally exposed. The Tyrathca’s sensors have already locked on to us.”
The flight computer reported that
three radars were already focused on Lady Mac’s hull. “Shit.” Joshua
shut down the fusion drives and let the starship coast along. Their trajectory
wasn’t taking them anywhere near Tanjuntic-RI anymore. “They’re watching us,
too,” he told Syrinx. “Now what?”
“It’s their move. We wait.”
The message came eight minutes
later, beamed at both Lady Macbeth and Oenone from one of the low
orbit docking stations. “Human craft, you are not permitted here. You have
fired weapons above our planet. This is an act of war. Leave now. Do not
return.”
“Brief, but not open to much
misinterpretation,” Ashly said as the message began to repeat. “I’m surprised
they didn’t put in an or else.”
“They just have,” Beaulieu said.
“Three ships on their way to intercept us. One-point-two-gee acceleration.”
“For them, that’s really racing
along,” Liol said. “The Tyrathca hate high gees.”
“Another three fusion drive
ignitions,” Beaulieu said. “One heading for us. Two aligning on Tanjuntic-RI.”
“At least we’re out of range from
the platforms’ combat wasps,” Liol said. “That could have been nasty.”
“What’s your assessment?” Joshua
asked Syrinx. He started to run the Tyrathca ship trajectories through some
tactical analysis programs. While he was doing it, another two ships ignited
their fusion drives and started to fly up on a course for the arkship.
“I think the situation’s still
manageable,” she replied. “Providing it doesn’t escalate any further.”
“Yeah. I’m working on that aspect.
We’ve got to make sure the team can continue. You’re going to have to stop that
hellhawk from coming back to Tanjuntic-RI.”
“We can swallow out to the moons
and keep it very busy. But that leaves the team without protection. One of
those Tyrathca ships is bound to investigate the arkship. Even with their
phlegmatism, they’ll want to know what we’re doing here.”
“Leave it to me. I’ll divert them. You
get over to the moons.”
“Acknowledged.” Joshua lifted his
head, and smiled round at his crew.
“Oh God,” Sarha moaned with
unfeigned consternation. “I hate it when you smile like that!”
“Cheer up. We’re going to invade
Hesperi-LN.”
The rotating airlock chamber had
survived the spaceport bearing seizure almost intact. Samuel cut through the
wall and floated into the big empty space. His helmet lights automatically
defocused, throwing their radiance all around him. It was a cylindrical
chamber, fifteen metres in diameter, and fifty long; stark even by Tyrathca
standards. The walls were lined with a petrified sponge material resembling
pumice stone, with thousands of regularly spaced indentations. Each one was
just big enough to accept a Tyrathca breeder’s hoof.
There were three airlock hatches at
each end, large circular affairs with chunky electromechanical locking rims.
Precisely halfway down the chamber was a bulging hoop; the rotating seal to
provide the Tyrathca with a pressurized transfer from the arkship to the
spaceport. Now, its working fluid had evacuated, internal components were
reduced to granular sculptures of their former selves; a technological cave
etching.
Renato Vella squirmed into the
chamber with jerky motions, knocking large chips of the wall material from the
edge of the hole Samuel had cut. “Oh great, late era gloomy,” he pronounced.
“They didn’t exactly go in for frills, did they?”
“I doubt a translator could even
find an equivalent word,” Samuel datavised back.
The first serjeant was emerging
from the hole, fracturing even more wall material as it came. There was an
almost identical hole a third of the way round the wall, slightly larger. A
matching opening had been made next to one of the airlocks at the ship end of
the chamber. Samuel’s gauntlets gripped the indentations in the desiccated
sponge fabric, and he moved cautiously hand over hand towards it.
“This must be where the archaeology
team cut their way in,” he datavised. “Wait. Yes.” The suit sensors showed him
a small plastic box fixed close to the jagged rim by a blob of epoxy, narrow
lines of red human lettering covered a third of its dark blue surface. “Some
kind of communication block. There are several cables running through the
hole.” He ordered his suit communicator to transmit a standard interrogation
signal. “No response. I guess the power’s drained by now.”
“Shame,” Renato datavised. “It
would have been convenient to have some kind of communication net in there.”
“We could probably power it up
again,” Oski replied. “It’s only a century old, the processors will be fully
functional.”
“Forget it,” Monica told them. “The
bitek processors can keep us in touch with each other and Oenone. We’re
not going to be inside long enough to justify getting cosy.”
“We hope,” Samuel said. With the
whole team now in the airlock chamber, his helmet lights refocused into wide
beams. He grasped the edge of the old hole and pulled himself through.
The archaeology team had cut their
way into a broad corridor that served one of the large jammed-up airlocks. It
was a simple, square section shaft sliced straight through the rock, with the
spongy hoof-grab fabric along the floor, and pipes fastened to both walls. He
barely did more than look round, when Syrinx announced the presence of a
hellhawk. She gave them a running commentary as the other team members emerged
into the corridor.
“The Oenone is swallowing
over to the moons to tag the hellhawk,” Syrinx told them. “Lady Macbeth will
distract the Tyrathca.”
“For how long?” Monica asked.
“As long as possible,” Joshua
replied. “Worst case, we fail completely. Their first ship should reach
Tanjuntic-RI in fifty-three minutes—mark.”
“That’s no good. We won’t even have
reached the second level by then.”
“I’ll swap with you any time.”
“Sorry, Joshua; that wasn’t a
complaint. How did that hellhawk know we were here?”
“Probably followed us from the
antimatter station,” Syrinx said. “It wouldn’t be too difficult.”
“Thank you, Captains,” Samuel
datavised. “We’ll try to be as quick as we can.”
“If things get too hot, let us
know,” Joshua replied.
“We’d better get on,” Samuel told
the team. “Every minute of lead time could be indispensable later.” He ordered
his backpack to fire the cold gas jets, and slid easily along the corridor to
the first big airlock. Monica triggered her own backpack, and glided after him.
The corridor flared out around the
airlock, which was a typical example of Tyrathca engineering: a square of
titanium four metres in diameter with rounded corners, edged with locking
seals, thick, sturdy, and reliable. And vacuum welded into place. The
archaeology team had solved the egress problem by cutting out a metre-wide
circle of metal from the Tyrathca slab and installing their own airlock. It was
a simple mechanical hatch with frictionless hinges and seals. A chrome handle
was half-recessed in the middle, with standard operating instructions
stencilled beside it.
Samuel secured himself and pulled
the handle. His armour’s power augmentation barely kicked in to help. The
handle slid up, and rotated ninety degrees.
“One up to human engineering,”
Renato datavised as Samuel pushed the hatch inwards.
“Not really,” Oski datavised. “It’s
our materials science that makes the difference. The hatch was designed for
longterm vacuum exposure. Their airlock was built with regular maintenance
services in mind.”
There was another corridor
identical to the first on the far side of the airlock. One of the serjeants
shut the small hatch after them. This corridor also ended in a big titanium
airlock, with an identical human hatch inserted. Samuel pulled the lever up.
Before he could attempt to push the hatch open, his suit sensors advised him of
an environment change. “It’s venting,” he datavised. “Very small nitrogen
release, minute contamination. Pressure must be equalising.”
“Open it,” Monica datavised. “There
can’t be any real atmosphere in there. We’re wasting time.”
Samuel gripped one of the titanium
spars with one gauntlet, and pushed with the other. The suit’s power
augmentation whined on the threshold of audibility. A whirl of silvery dust
scooted around Samuel’s armour as the hatch flipped back.
“Just how many of these corridors
are there?” Renato asked as he air-swam through, only to be faced with yet
another blank rock shaft. His inertial guidance display showed him it was
inclined slightly, heading away from the rotation axis. Though there was still
no appreciable gravity.
“This is the last one, according to
our file,” Samuel said.
The airlock at the far end had a
human hatch in it; there was also a small plaque.
HIGH YORK UNIVERSITY
ARCHAEOLOGY EXPEDITION OF 2487
We respectfully offer our
tribute to the generations of Tyrathca who ventured forth in this vessel.
In this place we have stumbled
through the remnants of greatness, eternally thankful for the glimpse of
nobility they reveal.
Though the Tyrathca have no god,
they are clearly not devoid of miracles.
Renato floated over to the silvered
plaque after Monica moved aside. “Well that’s a nice way to start,” he
datavised. “The archaeology expedition never found any reference to a Tyrathca
god.”
“We knew that already,” Oski
datavised. “Besides, I doubt they were looking. The only memory files they
accessed were in the systems management architecture. We’ve got to go a lot
deeper than that to find anything useful.”
Samuel shifted his sensors from the
plaque to the hatch. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like a grave robber.”
“There have been worse
assignments,” Monica datavised. “For you as well as me, I suspect.”
Samuel didn’t reply. He grasped the
hatch’s handle and pulled up. This time there was a significant gas vent.
“This is it,” Oski datavised.
“We’re in. Terracompatible nitrogen oxygen mix, several trace gases. Three per
cent standard atmospheric pressure. No water vapour content. Guess it’s too
cold. Registering thirty degrees below zero.”
“Checks with the file,” Monica
confirmed. Samuel pushed the hatch open and glided through.
The archaeology expedition had
spent six weeks exploring the interior of Tanjuntic-RI. Given the timescale, it
could hardly be thorough. But the main sections were all mapped, allowing the
nature of the arkship’s engines and environmental maintenance mechanisms to be
inspected. Tanjuntic-RI was arranged in three principal levels. Along the
rotation axis were three long cylindrical chambers six hundred metres wide.
Each contained a shallow lake which served as the principal biological
recycling system. The water was a combination fish-tank/ algal air regenerator,
powered by a thermal lighting array strung along the axis. Surrounding that was
an extensive warren of hemispherical caverns linked by kilometre after
kilometre of broad corridors. This level was devoted to engineering and flight
maintenance; the caverns filled with machinery, everything from fusion
generators to chemical filtration plants, cybernetic factories to mineral
storage silos. The rear quarter of the caverns were all used to house support
systems and fuel for the fusion engines.
Encircling the second level were
the eight principal life support rings. Tunnelled out of the rock and lined
with metal, like giant binding bands; they had a rectangular cross section,
five hundred metres wide, a hundred metres high. Their floor was a single
looped strip of Tyrathca tower houses threaded by narrow roads of greenery, a
computer design program’s notion of urban pleasantries.
“We need the third level, ring
five,” Oski datavised as soon as they were through the last airlock. “That’s
where the archaeologists found the control offices.” A three dimensional map of
the interior expanded into her mind. Her guidance block extended a glowing
green line through the tunnels, linking her present location to ring five.
The last airlock had brought the
team into a standard-sized corridor that circled the forward end of the
arkship. Over a hundred other corridors branched off from it. Gravity was
barely noticeable, taking several minutes to pull objects towards the floor.
Monica used her gas jets to take her over to a clump of human crates stacked
against the wall. The thin, freezing atmosphere had turned the white plastic a
faint cream. She read some of their labels. “Nothing we can use,” she
datavised. “It’s their camp equipment. Programmable silicon shelters, life
support units, microfusion generators; that kind of thing.”
“What about lighting?” a serjeant
asked.
“Good question.” Monica shifted
position, scanning more labels. “Yes, here we go. Monochrome projectors, three
hundred metre illumination radius. I don’t think they’re self powered, though.”
“Leave it,” Samuel datavised. “We
don’t have the time.” He fired his manoeuvring pack and started drifting along
the corridor. The wall opposite the airlocks had archways leading away into the
interior, their depth defeating his suit sensors and lights. “There should be a
lift here somewhere. Ah.” The fifth archway had a palm-sized plastic disk stuck
on the wall beside it, a small lifelong beacon light in the centre. Samuel
couldn’t resist flicking it with a gauntlet finger as he went past. There was
no spark of light from the beacon, its tritium-decay power source had been
exhausted decades ago.
His gas jets squirted strongly,
steering him through the archway. Fifteen metres down the corridor was a lift
door: a single panel of metal ten metres long and three high. The team didn’t
even pause by it. There was a smaller door on either side, each heading a ramp
that spiralled, DNA-fashion, around the entire length of the lift shaft. One of
them was open; it had a dead light beacon just inside.
“This should take us nearly a
kilometre straight down,” Samuel datavised.
“At least it’ll be a smooth ride
once the gravity kicks in,” Renato datavised. “Thank god the Tyrathca don’t use
steps. Can you image the size and spacing?”
Monica halted in mid-air beside the
doorway and focused her suit beams through the gap. The downward slope was
barely noticeable, though the curve was pronounced. She took a tube dispenser
from her belt, and thumbed out the first disk. Jupiter had supplied the little
bitek sensors, completely transparent disks a centimetre wide. Their affinity range
was only a few kilometres—enough for this mission. She pressed it against the
door rim. It stuck instantly. When she requested an affinity bond with it from
her suit’s bitek processor, the disk revealed a fish-eye view of the corridor,
with the suits floating before the ramp doorway.
“Pity we don’t have a swarm of
bitek insects covering the interior,” she datavised. Samuel didn’t rise to the
jibe. “But this’ll give us plenty of warning. There’s a motion trigger if
anything starts moving around behind us.”
“Onward, then,” Samuel datavised.
His gas jets flared, pushing him along the ramp.
Everyone’s bitek processor received
Joshua’s troubled hail. “I’m afraid you’re going to have company,” he
announced.
Lady Mac was accelerating at six gees, a quarter of a
million kilometres above Hesperi-LN and heading in a shallow curve around the
planet’s north pole. Two five-strong formations of Tyrathca ships were heading
out to intercept, rising from their hundred thousand kilometre orbits at one
and a half gees. He wasn’t worried about them, nor the three ships that were on
course for the twin moons to investigate the antics of the two bitek starships.
Another group of four ships were flying straight for Tanjuntic-RI, seventy-five
thousand kilometres from Lady Mac.
“Definite interception course,”
Beaulieu confirmed. “Looks like they want to know what was going on there.”
“Wonderful,” Joshua grunted. “The
only way to stop them is if they think we’re hostile.”
“I think they know that already,”
Sarha said with as much irony as five gees allowed.
As soon as they’d accelerated along
their present course, Joshua had launched three combat wasps. There was no real
target designation, just the planet; and they were programmed to detonate ten
thousand kilometres above the atmosphere if they managed to get that far. But
the Tyrathca didn’t know that. All they’d seen was three nuclear missiles
charging in towards their planet at twenty-seven gees: an unprovoked attack
from a human starship that was continuing to manoeuvre in a hostile manner.
Joshua changed course again, flying
along a vector which would take him below the ships heading for
Tanjuntic-RI—logically, a position he could bombard the planet from. Another
two combat wasps flew out of their tubes, searing fusion drives thrusting them
towards the four ships.
It was a good tactical move, which
almost paid off. Three of the Tyrathca ships changed course to defend
themselves against the combat wasps and pursue Lady Mac. The fourth
remained on course for the arkship.
“Thirteen ships heading right at
us,” Beaulieu confirmed. “Twelve SD platforms have also acquired lock on. No
combat wasp launch yet.”
Joshua reviewed the tactical
situation display again, purple and orange vector lines flipping round inside
his skull. Lady Mac was now heading in almost the opposite direction to
the last Tyrathca ship. There was nothing left he could do to distract it. The
only option left was an attack, which wasn’t an option at all. First he would
have to reverse his current vector which would take up a vast amount of time
and delta-V, then he would have to fight his way past the three other ships
with their potentially large stock of combat wasps. And even if he achieved
that, he’d have to kill the ship to stop it rendezvousing.
It was a bad deal. The Tyrathca
crewing the ship were innocent—just trying to defend themselves and their world
against aggressive xenocs. Although, if you looked at it in an abstract way,
they could well be all that stood between the exploration team and salvation
from the possessed. Can you really allow a dozen Tyrathca to bring about the
end of an entire race because of what was essentially a communication breakdown
on a multitude of levels?
Joshua used the bitek array to call
the exploration team and warn them of the approaching ship. “We estimate it’ll
dock in another forty minutes,” he said. “Just how long do you need?”
“If everything goes without a
hitch, a couple of hours,” Oski said. “But I would think a day would be more
realistic.”
“A day is out of the question,” Joshua
said. “If I get seriously noisy out here I might be able to buy you an hour or
so.”
“That’s not necessary, Joshua,” a
serjeant said. “This is a very big ship. If they do come on board, they’ll have
to find us.”
“Not too difficult with infrared
sensors.”
“That’s assuming a straightforward
pursuit scenario. Now we know the Tyrathca are coming, we can make that pursuit
extremely difficult for them. And there is also the Horatius option to
consider. We four are expendable, after all.”
“Our weapons are superior, as
well,” Monica said. “Now we haven’t got to worry about the hardware glitching
on us, we can deploy some real firepower.”
“What about getting out
afterwards?” Dahybi asked.
“Advance planning for a situation
this fluid is a waste of time,” Samuel said. “Let’s wait until we have the
relevant data before we consider how to achieve extraction.”
“Okay,” Joshua said reluctantly.
“Your call. But we’re here if you need us.” He returned to the tactical
situation. Lady Mac wasn’t in any real danger from the planet’s
defences. She was too far away from the Tyrathca ships and SD platforms. At
this separation distance, any combat wasp would take a minimum of fifteen
minutes to reach them. The starship could jump out of trouble long before that.
“Right, let’s keep these bastards
busy,” Joshua said. He instructed the flight computer to fire another combat
wasp at the planet.
Halfway down the giant spiral ramp,
the easiest way to descend was to sit and slide. Black frost had coated the
floor, sending broad tendrils scurrying up the wall like frigid creepers. Along
with the others Monica was bumping along on her bum as if she was on an après
ski glissade, gradually picking up speed, and ignoring the total lack of
dignity. Clouds of filthy ice motes were spraying up from where the suit was
making its grinding contact with the ramp. Every now and then she’d hit an
uneven patch and glide through the air for a metre.
“Getting near the bottom,” Samuel
datavised.
He was two people down the line
from Monica, nearly obscured by the black particle haze. Suit beams were
jouncing about chaotically, throwing discordant shadows across the walls.
Monica put her gauntlets down to
try and brake her speed. They just skipped and skidded about. “Just how do we
slow down?” she asked.
“Manoeuvring pack.” Samuel
triggered the jets at full throttle, feeling the gentle thrust slow him. The
serjeant directly behind bumped into his back. “Everybody at once, please.”
The ramp shaft was suddenly full of
whirling pearly-white fog as ice granules and nitrogen blended together,
boosting the air pressure. Suit lights fluoresced it to a uniform opacity.
Monica shifted to micro-radar as
her speed slowed drastically. This time when she put her hands down she pressed
hard enough to activate the augmentation. It allowed her to dig her fingertips
into the sheet of ice, producing a loud wince-inducing screech as they gouged
out ten straight furrows. She halted on a relatively flat section. Radar showed
her the end of the ramp fifteen metres ahead and the other armour suits skating
elegantly to a halt around her. The white fog vanished as quickly as it’d
emerged, sucked away back up the ramp, and out through the archway ahead.
They picked themselves up and
scanned round. The ramp had come out at an intersection of eight corridors.
Beacons had been stuck on each archway. The ice along the floor of every
corridor was slightly rumpled, like stone paving slabs worn by centuries of
feet. Nothing else showed the archaeology expedition had once passed this way.
“This is where we should split up,”
one of the serjeants datavised. “Two of us will lay heat trails, while you head
for ring five.”
Monica accessed the archaeology
expedition’s map file, and integrated it with her inertial guidance block.
Orange graphics overlaid her sensor vision, indicating the corridor they should
take. She took another sensor disk from the tube and stuck it on the wall.
“Okay. You two take care, they’ll be here in another twenty minutes. Oski,
Renato, let’s go.” The four humans and two remaining serjeants started off down
the corridor, bouncing along in low glides in the one-third gravity field.
Ione’s quad mind started to melt
away into four more individual, independent identities as the serjeants
separated from each other. One of her chose a corridor which the map file
showed would lead towards a chemical plant of some kind. She drew a laser
pistol and datavised it to a very low power setting, with an intermittent
discharge varying over three seconds. As she walked forwards in long loping steps
she began sweeping it in a short arc, keeping the muzzle pointed at the ground.
Speckle points of warmth blossomed around her feet—never enough to thaw the
ice, just to make an imprint. To an infrared sensor it would appear as if
several people had walked along beside her.
The darkness which contracted
around the bubble of light from her suit lights was absolute, isolating her to
an unnerving degree, a fact only slightly alleviated by affinity contact with
her other three selves and Samuel.
My third experience of life outside
Tranquillity, and it’s just rock tunnels not much different from Ayacucho. But
a lot more oppressive, and that’s without the possessed after me.
The others in the team were feeling
the same low harmonic of unease. Monica was leading now, a locomotion
auto-balance program keeping her movements smooth and steady in the low
gravity. Despite the depressing surroundings, their easy progress was
confidence enhancing. She’d had a lot of misgivings about the whole mission,
and this part most of all. In her mind during the flight here, Tanjuntic-RI had
taken on the appearance of a large chunk of debris, just like the fragments
that made up the Ruin Ring. Reality was considerably better. Nothing was broken
inside the arkship, merely neglected and cold. She could even imagine
revitalizing the old wanderer. If the fusion generators could be started up
again, and power fed through the distribution net, it would be a simple matter
for light and heat to return.
“How come they abandoned this?” she
asked. “Why not rendezvous with an asteroid and use it as a ready-made base for
their microgee industry?”
“Because of the upkeep,” Oski
datavised back. “The whole thing is interdependent, you can’t just keep a life
support ring going and dump the rest. And it’s big. Keeping it functioning
would take too much effort for the level of return. They were much better off
building smaller-scale asteroid habitation caverns from scratch.”
“Shame. At the very least the
Tyrathca could have made a fortune selling it as a human tourist destination.”
“That’ll be that famous phlegmatism
of theirs. They just don’t care about it.”
After five minutes they came to the
first second-level cavern. A hemisphere two hundred metres high, the walls
ribbed by bands of tubes. There was a single huge machine in the centre,
supported by ten three-metre-thick pipes that rose out of the ground to act as
its legs. Another ten pipes emerged from the top of the machine to vanish into
the chamber’s apex. The team stood just inside the entrance, playing their suit
beams over the metal beast. Its sides were fluted with long glass columns,
tarnished on the inside with heat-blackened chrome. Valves, coils, relays,
motors, intake grids, high-voltage transformers, and pumps protruded from the
rest of the edifice like metallic warts.
“What in Christ’s name is that?”
Renato asked.
“Access your file,” Oski told him.
“It’s some kind of biological reactor. They bred a lot of organic compounds
inside it.”
Renato walked over to one of the
big pipes and took a look directly underneath the reactor’s formidable bulk.
The casing had cracked as the arkship lost its heat, allowing ragged strings of
some blue green compound to ooze out all over the base. They’d clotted in
hanging webs before freezing solid. Smears and stains of other liquids were
splattered across the floor.
“There’s something wrong with all
of this,” Renato datavised.
“What do you mean?” Samuel asked.
“Just look at this thing.” The
young astronomer slapped his hand against the pipe. Even in the rarefied atmosphere,
the suit audio sensors could pick up a faint clang. “It’s, like . . . immortal.
I can’t imagine anything else occupying this chamber since the day they left
their star. I know they’ll have rebuilt it a hundred times during the voyage.
And I know they go for the brute strength engineering solutions. But I don’t
understand how nothing can have changed in fifteen thousand years. Nothing, for
Christ’s sake. How can you draw a line across your technology and say we will
never develop anything that goes beyond this?”
“You’ll be able to ask them soon,”
Monica datavised. “Their ship will reach us in another ten minutes. Look,
Renato, I know this is all fascinating, but we really don’t have the time.
Okay?”
“Sure, I’m sorry. I just hate
unsolved puzzles.”
“That’s what makes you a good
scientist. And I’m glad you’re here to help us. Now, this is the corridor we
want.” Monica left another sensor disk on one of the stolid pipes and started
walking again. Renato took a last glance at the ancient reactor and followed
her. The two serjeants brought up the rear.
“The Tyrathca ship is definitely
docking,” Beaulieu said. “They’ve matched velocities with Tanjuntic-RI.”
“Bugger,” Joshua grunted. They were
enjoying a slight lull in the three-dimensional chess game that was the
high-orbit diversion. Lady Mac was accelerating at one gee, sliding over
Hesperi-LN’s pole at a hundred and seventy-five thousand kilometres altitude.
Eighteen combat wasps were arrowing in towards her from every direction, a
classic englobing manoeuvre. The closest one would reach them in another four
minutes. At least the hellhawk wasn’t a current factor. Syrinx confirmed they
were still chasing the Stryla round the two moons.
“Liol, break the bad news to the
team, will you?” Joshua concentrated on the starship’s systems schematic,
ordering the flight computer to configure the hull for a jump. Somewhere near
the back of his mind, almost in the subconscious, was a smiling astonishment
that he could now be so confident about taking part in a space battle. Contrast
his, and the crew’s, calm responses and performance today to the frantic
shouting and adrenaline powered high-gee desperation above Lalonde, and it was
as though they used to belong in an alternative universe. The major difference,
of course, was that he’d initiated this, he was calling the shots.
“Dahybi?”
“Nodes charged and on line. Ready
to jump, Captain.”
“Great. Let’s see how accurate we
can be.” He cut the fusion drives and initiated the jump.
The watching Tyrathca saw the
dangerous invader vanish from the middle of their combat wasp swarm. SD sensors
picked up its emergence point simultaneously, fifty thousand kilometres from
where it had jumped. Its fusion drive came on again, powering it back down
towards the planet, presenting fresh danger to the population. The pursuing
craft all changed course to resume their chase.
A crackling smog of hot ions
splashed across the front of Tanjuntic-RI as the Tyrathca ship finished its
approach manoeuvre. Electrical discharges flashed along the remnants of the
superconductor grid, burning off the fragile surface molecules in scintillating
spectral fountains. The pilot hadn’t bothered to rendezvous at a distance and
nudge in towards the spaceport cone using secondary drives. Their flight vector
was projected to bring them to a halt less than a kilometre from the arkship,
completely disregarding the damage the fusion drives would inflict on the
ancient vessel.
The ship was a typical Tyrathca
inter-planetary craft, a simple cylinder a hundred and fifty metres wide, three
hundred long. Unlike human designs which were built round a load-carrying
gantry to which modules and capsules were attached as required, this had
everything encased inside an aluminium hull. A basic, ugly workhorse of a ship,
discoloured by years of exposure to the thermal and ultraviolet emissions of
Hesperi-LN’s star. Four big rectangular hatches were spaced equidistantly round
its front end, while five stumpy fusion rocket nozzles protruded from the rear.
When it finished its deceleration
burn it was floating parallel to Tanjuntic-RI’s spaceport, two kilometres out.
Small chemical rockets flared around its edges, brilliant sulphur yellow flames
pushing the ship in towards the rotation axis. It started to turn at the same
time, aligning its base towards the spaceport. The chemical rockets around its
front end throttled up to maximum, and two fusion rockets ignited briefly.
Their plasma plumes stabbed out, twin incandescent spears transfixing the
centre of the spaceport. The burn didn’t last for more than a couple of
seconds, nor was it particularly powerful. But the damage caused was immense.
Metal and composite detonated into vapour, roaring out from the impact point.
It was too much for the enfeebled
spaceport structure to withstand. The entire cone of stacked disks snapped off
close to the base, tumbling away. Individual disks tore loose, spinning off in
every direction, spewing fragments as they went. One disk actually collided
with Tanjuntic-RI, crumpling as if it were made from paper before it started to
rebound. All that was left of the spaceport’s support column was a shattered
ten metre stub sticking out from the rock. It was rapidly eclipsed as the
massive Tyrathca ship positioned itself directly overhead. Two hatches hinged
open, and several dozen pale ovoid shapes were ejected. At first they drifted
as aimlessly as thistledown in a zephyr, then puffs of gas erupted from small
spouts around their crests, and they started to fly in towards the broken end
of the support column.
Hesperi-LN’s twin moons were not a
hospitable location for spacecraft. Their clashing gravity fields had drawn in
a great deal of cosmic debris since their formation, and continued to do so.
Dust, sand, and smaller motes were eventually liberated by the solar wind,
light-pressure and high energy elementary particles blowing them back out
towards the stars. But the larger chunks remained. Pebbles, boulders, entire
asteroids; once they’d fallen into a looping orbit, they were slowly hauled in
over the millennia as the ever-changing gravity perturbed their new orbit.
Ultimately, they wound up at the central Lagrange point, poised equidistantly
between the moons. It was a cluttered zone over a hundred kilometres across,
visible from the surface of Hesperi-LN as a fuzzy grey patch. In composition,
it mimicked a galaxy, with the largest asteroids clumped together at the
centre, surrounded by a whirl of smaller boulders and stony nuggets.
A place, then, where the use of
combat wasps and energy beams was essentially impossible. You could stay within
its fringes and observe your enemy waiting outside with impunity. Providing you
could ward off the clouds of dark, high-velocity gravel swirling endlessly
around the periphery of the Lagrange cluster.
Oenone’s attempts to pursue the hellhawk inside the
cluster had come to nothing. After twenty minutes of dangerous slaloming and
weaving, during which it gained barely a hundred metres on the contemptuous
hellhawk, Syrinx had decided enough was enough. They were draining the energy
cells at an alarming rate to maintain the distortion field, essential to
deflect the hail of stone from the hull. And they would need that power later,
no matter what the outcome at Tanjuntic-RI. She told Oenone to halt and
match the orbital vector of the surrounding particles.
Once Etchells realized he was no
longer being actively pursued, he also eased back, and simply held his
position. They were no more than fifteen kilometres apart. Though the only way
they knew that was by sensing each other with their distortion fields, visual
or radar observation was impossible.
This is not a valid status quo, Syrinx told the hellhawk. There are three
Tyrathca ships on their way to us. You cannot stay inside the cluster forever.
Leave this system.
Not a chance, Etchells said. You’ve got to stay here with
me, now. That means I’ve won. You can’t achieve whatever the fuck you came here
to do. And your Adamist pals are in deep shit. They’re neutered, too.
With reservations, I will accept
that observation, she told
him, careful not to let any emotional context slip into the affinity contact.
He obviously wasn’t aware they’d landed the team in Tanjuntic-RI. All they had
to do was keep him here until Oski and Renato had accessed the files.
String him along, she told the crew. I want to monitor the
spacecraft situation. We may have to move in a hurry.
Of course, Cacus said.
Ruben, get our new fusion
generators on line. I’d like Oenone’s energy cells recharged as fast as
possible. When we leave here, I want to be able to leave this hellhawk far
behind.
Understood. Ruben ordered the processor array to begin the
generator power up sequence.
The links between the second and
third levels on Tanjuntic-RI were mainly cargo lifts. Again, each of them was
wrapped by the ubiquitous spiralling ramps. The exploration team had to engage
their boot spikes as they made their way down one which led to ring five. Icy
floors combined with the strengthening gravity provided a treacherous
environment.
There was a large airlock chamber
at the bottom, with doors more suited to bank vaults than spaceships. But this
had been the Tyrathca’s first line of defence against a breach in the upper
levels, their design philosophy had come into its own here. As tribute to that
efficiency, Tanjuntic-RI’s caverns and rings still retained a tiny atmosphere
after thirteen centuries of disuse.
A cache of human machinery was
spread out before the door at the end of the ramp: a couple of microfusion
generators, mobile cherry-picker platforms, industrial thermal inducer plates,
hydraulic rams, and electromechanical actuators; all hooked together with
loosely bundled cables and flexible hoses. The archaeology expedition had used
them to reactivate the massive airlock. It was a quarter open, allowing them
access to ring five. Four small jeeps were parked just inside, standard
airless-planet mobility vehicles, with large low-pressure tyres and a composite
latticework chassis. Ridiculously dainty in comparison to the engineering on
display around them.
Samuel went over and inspected
them, flicking switches on the dashboard. “I’m getting a response from the
control processor,” he datavised. “There’s some power left in the standby
circuits, but that’s about all. The main energy cells are dead.”
“Irrelevant,” Monica datavised. She
ordered her suit lamps to emit a high-wattage pulse, and readied the sensors.
Her neural nanonics memory froze the image when the lights flared. Buffer
programs isolated the image for her to examine.
Not even the suit’s lights could
penetrate the gloom right across the ring. As a result, the curvature effect
was completely lost. She was standing in a metal cave, walls, floor, and
ceiling made up from millions of aluminium alloy panels, heat sealed to the
naked rock underneath and welded together. Plants had been grown up the walls
while the arkship was occupied, vigorous creepers clawing their way along metal
trellises. Their leaves were black and wizened now, dead from lack of water and
light long before the heat seeped away into space. But the cold had arrived
before they’d fallen in their final autumn, sprinkling them with frost then
freezing them into place against the dull metal tiling.
The ring’s ceiling had an analogue
in human warehouse roofs; criss crossed with thick pipes and sturdy gantry
crane rails, giving the vast chamber an overtly industrial feel. Its
illumination had been provided by thousands of large circular disks of smoked
glass, which peered out of the gaps.
“A winter wonderland palace,”
Monica datavised. “Even if it was built by the devil’s own elves.”
“How could they live in this, for
Christ’s sake?” Renato asked. “It’s just a machine. There’s no attempt to make
it pleasing or hospitable. You couldn’t stay inside all of your life, it would
drive you insane.”
“Us,” Oski datavised. “Not them.
They don’t have our psychological profile.”
“I expect they would find one of
our habitats to be equally disenchanting,” Samuel said.
“The Tyrathca have arrived,” one of
the serjeants datavised.
Everyone saw it through the sensor
disk Monica had left up in level one. A flash of light from the airlock which
led up to the spaceport support column. Large jagged sections of the square
titanium hatch flew into the corridor, rebounding from the walls amid cascades
of ice chips to twirl away in both directions. The Tyrathca emerged, and began
moving in a slow canter towards the entrance to the spiral ramp. They were in
spacesuits, which made it hard to tell between breeders and soldiers. Although
the SII had tried many times to sell them programmable silicon suits modified
to their physiology, they’d resolutely stuck to their own original design.
The body of Tyrathca spacesuits was
made from a tough flexible plastic, a silvery blue in colour, like metallic
silk. They formed overalls that were loose and baggy enough for the big
creatures to slip into easily, with concertina-like tubes for legs and arms.
After that, instead of inflating them with oxygen, they were pumped full with a
thick gel, expelling all the air. Given how many limbs (and therefore joints) a
Tyrathca body had, such a concept neatly did away with the problem of providing
multiple pressurized joints on every suit. In order to breathe, they wore
simple tight-fitting masks inside the suits. Oxygen tanks, a regulator
mechanism, and a heat exchanger were worn in a pack along their backs, with two
black radiator fins running along their spine. Additional equipment was carried
on a harness around their necks.
“Looks like subtlety is another
trait we don’t share,” Monica datavised. “They must have blown out every
airlock along that first corridor to get inside. The sensor disk is registering
a lot of gas motion in that corridor. They just don’t care that Tanjuntic-RI is
going to vent its remaining atmosphere.”
“If they don’t, we shouldn’t,”
Renato datavised. “It won’t affect our mission.”
“They’re all armed,” Samuel
datavised. “Even the breeders.”
The Tyrathca were each carrying a
pair of long matt-black rifles, with coiled leads plugged into power packs on
their harnesses. Monica put an armaments library file into primary mode, and
let it run through the catalogue for a match. “Masers,” she datavised. “Fairly
basic medium-output projectors. Our armour should withstand an energy strike
from them. But if we get caught in a saturation situation we’ll be in trouble.
And they’re carrying other ordnance as well. I think I can make out some guided
rockets, and EE grenades on those harnesses. Human-built.”
“I wonder who sold those to them,”
Oski datavised. “I thought the Confederation didn’t permit armaments sales to
the Tyrathca.”
“Not relevant,” Samuel datavised.
“Come on, let’s locate that control office the archaeology expedition found.”
Monica bled in her suit sensor’s
infrared visualization as they moved off. The Tyrathca buildings materialized
around her, tapering towers of a pale blue luminescence, like flame frozen
against the empty blackness which stretched out along the ring. It was a cold
necropolis, with every street and building identical, as if each section had
been stamped from the same die and laid out end to end. Gardens of tangled
plants besieged each of the towers, their entwined stalks caught in the act of
sagging. Unrelenting cold had turned the vegetation as hard and black as cast
iron. Fanciful leaves, strangely shaped flowers and bloated seed pods had all
been reduced to the same sombre shade of charcoal.
“Damn, those Tyrathca can move fast
in low-gee,” Samuel datavised. They hadn’t been walking ten minutes, and
already the Tyrathca had reached the bottom of the first spiral ramp. A sensor
disk showed one of them sweeping a portable electronic scanner over the floor
while the others waited behind. The group split into three, following the
various thermal trails.
“I make that eighteen coming our
way,” Monica datavised. “I think we’ve got four breeders. They’re slightly
larger.”
“I will return to the entrance,”
one of the serjeants datavised. “I will have time to lay several false heat
trails before they reach this ring. That should split them again. And I may
manage to close the airlock door. Either way, it will reduce the force that
will ultimately pursue you.”
“Thank you,” Monica datavised.
The serjeant turned round, and
walked back down the road.
“And then there were five,” Renato
muttered uneasily round his respirator tube.
Ione wanted to know as soon as
possible what the Tyrathca intended. The knowledge would certainly help her
plan the kind of tactics needed to keep them away from the team. The two
diversion serjeants had busily laid their heat trails, meandering between
several of the big machinery chambers on the second level. That was when she
found that the map made by the archaeologists was not perfect. Several times,
she’d had to use her inertial guidance to work out where she was when corridors
didn’t correspond to the indicated layout. It was a factor to consider when she
sketched in her possible escape routes. The Tyrathca wouldn’t suffer from such
misinformation. Tanjuntic-RI’s exact topology would be known to them; passed
down from generation to generation via their chemical program glands.
One of the diversion serjeants was
now hanging back from the archway that opened into a hemispherical chamber. It
was a big space, occupied by what appeared to be a refinery constructed
entirely out of glass. Colonnades, spheres, bulbs, and minarets formed their
own miniature city, bound together with a tangled lattice of tubes. Individual
containers were full of coloured liquids that had turned to ice. Cracks were
visible everywhere. If heat ever did return to this chamber, the whole edifice
would probably collapse.
There were three other entrances to
the glass refinery, the one opposite the serjeant was where the heat trail from
the ramp led. Sensor disks on the corridor wall showed Ione the Tyrathca
advancing steadily along it. Ione waited. She knew her suit’s heat signature
would be visible to the Tyrathca as soon as they entered the refinery chamber,
shining with the tenacity of a red dwarf star against the arctic corridor.
The first Tyrathca came in.
Stopped. Raised the scanner it was holding, pointing it directly at her. Her
suit communication block picked up a burst of encrypted data. The whole column
of Tyrathca came to a halt. Then two of them moved up to support the first.
They immediately fanned out on either side of the chamber, reducing her target
opportunity.
Damn, she said. I think we can kiss the entrapment
goodbye. The rest are waiting to see what happens.
It was to be expected, Samuel replied. They are soldier-caste,
after all. Bred for conflict. The breeders don’t need to impart chemical
programs of tactics among them; such knowledge is instinctive.
The serjeant moved out of the
shallow alcove which had been masking it. Ione was ordering the communication
block to open a channel on the frequency the Tyrathca were using when both the soldiers
fired their maser rifles. The beams struck the serjeant’s armour, almost
overloading its energy dissipation web. She jumped, a movement enhanced
considerably by low gravity and the suit’s augmentation. At the same time she
triggered the EE charges she’d placed above each of the chamber’s entrances.
Tonnes of rock descended in four separate avalanches, sealing the three
Tyrathca in.
Ione climbed to her feet, and
focused the suit sensors back. The jump had sent her soaring fifty metres down
the corridor, barely avoiding hitting the roof. Small lumps of rock were
spinning and bouncing towards her in lazy motions. The sensor disks in the
refinery chamber showed nothing but a swirling cloud of dust, while the others
showed the remaining Tyrathca retreating swiftly. They started to split up,
vanishing down side corridors where there were no sensors to follow them.
The bad news is they’re
operating a shoot-to-kill policy, she said. I guess they’re not curious why we’re here.
That’s to be expected, Samuel said. You don’t evolve an entire
caste devoted to aggression unless you have a great need for them. The Tyrathca
social structure is based around a clan hierarchy, they are extremely
territorial. And we’re violating their oldest piece of territory in defiance of
their explicit instructions.
Yes. Well at least you know what
to expect when they reach ring five. Now I’d better get out of here before they
pop up from some secret passage and shoot me.
The control offices were a series
of rooms bored into the wall of ring five, fourteen hundred metres from the
spiral ramp. Simple open rectangles, plated in aluminium alloy, with the floor
covered in composite. Each room was lined by bulky computer terminals, with
twin rosette keyboards for Tyrathca fingers. The walls above them were covered
by long display screens to project the arkship’s engineering schematics and
navigational plot. To all intents and purposes, this was Tanjuntic-RI’s bridge.
According to the archaeology
expedition there was less frost and ice inside, which had permitted them to
reactivate several of the electronic systems without much trouble. The control
offices were on an independent environmental circuit with a much reduced
humidity level; and the airlocks were shut prior to the arkship’s final evacuation
so there was no contamination from ring five’s damper atmosphere.
The archaeology expedition had
known the sealed rooms were important; they’d traced the arkship’s internal
communication network, and discovered the principal node was inside. With due
respect, they’d installed their own hatches in the Tyrathca airlocks, as they
had up in level one. There was no worry about atmospheric contamination any
more, not with all the water frozen out. But they wanted to maintain the
environmental integrity. This was the first human exploration through an
artefact belonging to a sentient xenoc species; ethics was a paramount
concern—even though the Tyrathca were indifferent to such matters.
So, Monica and the others
discovered, was someone else.
The large titanium rectangles
leading to the control offices had been reactivated and opened, swinging back
against the chamber wall. Not only that, the safety interlocks had somehow been
circumvented, allowing all three to be opened at once. The five suited figures stood
in front of the opening, scanning round with their sensors.
“This has got to be it,” Monica
datavised. “The human hatches are still here. The archaeologists didn’t install
them anywhere else.”
“Has there been another expedition
since the first?” Renato asked.
“If there was, then neither Earth,
Jupiter, nor Kulu knew anything about it,” Samuel datavised. “I have to say
that’s extremely unlikely.”
“In any case, why not just use the
archaeology team’s hatches?” Renato asked. “We know they work. It must have
taken a lot of effort to get these brutes open again.”
Oski stepped forward gingerly,
using a hand-held sensor pad to scan around the airlock rim. “I can’t pick up
any electrical impulses. But this was opened very recently. There’s still some
very faint thermal traces in the surrounding structure. They probably had to
warm the airlocks back up to their operating temperature to get them to
function again.”
Monica resisted the instinct to
whirl round and check the streets of the necropolis behind. Her suit’s micro
radar was scanning constantly for any sign of local movement. But the arkship’s
chill had somehow managed to stroke her skin through the armour. “How recent?”
she asked.
“Within the last five days.”
“And not human,” Renato datavised.
“Why do you say that?”
“Obvious. If it was our species,
they would have used the hatches the archaeologists installed. Whoever it was,
they were too big to fit through them.”
“It has to be the Kiint,” Samuel
datavised. “After all, they are partly the reason we’re here. Ione and Kelly
were right, Lieria was interested in the Sleeping God. And this is the obvious
place where information on it would be stored. They must have teleported in
here not long after they left Tranquillity. And simply opening the original
airlock is the kind of elegance I’d expect from them. We’ve seen what the
Tyrathca do to doors that won’t budge for them.”
“Why not just teleport directly
inside the control offices?” Monica asked.
“They’re extremely small on a
cosmic scale. I’m guessing such an action would require impossible accuracy,
especially over three hundred light years from Jobis.”
“Could be. Do you think they’re
still here?”
Oski pointed her sensor pad along
the short airlock tunnel. “It’s inert as far as I can tell.”
“And our time is running out,”
Monica datavised. “Let’s get in there.”
The control offices were noticeably
warmer. Suit sensors detected thermal concentrations around three of the
computer terminals in the second room. “This is the astrogration centre,” Oski
datavised. “One of our information targets. If we’re to get a fix on the
Sleeping God’s location, we ought to find it stored in here.”
“Get started,” Monica datavised.
The sensor disks were showing her the Tyrathca moving through the second level
chamber with the biological reactor. They’d slowed their advance slightly since
the diversion serjeant’s attempted entrapment, treating each chamber with
suspicion, never allowing more than three soldiers inside together. Even so,
they’d be at the spiral ramp leading to ring five in another fifteen minutes.
Oski and Renato knelt down beside
one of the terminals, and spread out their equipment. Monica, Samuel, and the
last serjeant quickly searched the remaining rooms, then went back out into
ring five.
“We should backtrack a bit and lay
some false heat trails,” Monica datavised. “That will give us a few minutes
more.”
“I don’t think it will,” Samuel
replied. “By the time they get here, it will be obvious to them that we came
for the control offices. Diversions won’t work. We shall have to defend our
position.”
“Shit, I hope not, because this is
a tactical lost cause. They can come at us from all sides, and we don’t have a
way out.”
“But we do have superior weaponry.
Let’s just hope we don’t have to use it.”
“Fine. And now we’ve actually
reached the mission target, why don’t we start thinking of a way out of here.”
The second diversion serjeant had
rigged a hundred-and-fifty-metre length of corridor. A simple enough
entrapment: wait until the lead Tyrathca reached the EE charge, then trigger
both of them. The length of corridor should trap all twelve of the pursuing
xenocs between the rockfalls. But when the lead Tyrathca approached the first
EE charge, it slowed, and the others stopped. Ione cursed as it moved forwards
carefully, waving its scanner round. She must have left an abnormal thermal
trace in the corridor when she was placing the EE charges.
The Tyrathca consulted the scanner
display a final time, and pointed its maser rifle at the corridor roof. If the
beam did wash over the EE charge’s trigger electronics, the radiation would
destroy them.
Annoyed, Ione set off the EE
charge, bringing down a five metre section of roof. It didn’t harm any of the
Tyrathca. They cantered back down the corridor and split up, presumably to
bypass the blockage and pick up the diversion serjeant’s heat trail again.
Although without any sensor disk coverage, she couldn’t be sure where they
were. She started to move again, heading deeper into the arkship’s interior,
certain they weren’t ahead of her, at least.
Oski was in her element. Worry
about her physical predicament had vanished completely as she and Renato
removed the computer terminal panels, exposing the circuitry inside. Tyrathca
electronics lagged behind current human systems by several generations—if not
centuries. She hadn’t dealt with anything this crude since her compulsory
History of Electronics semester while she was studying for her degree.
Renato followed her datavised
instructions efficiently, tracing the terminal’s main power cable and splicing
in one of the energy matrices they’d brought with them. Small coloured symbols
ringing the rosette keyboard lit up.
“Thank heavens they don’t have any
imagination,” Oski datavised. “I’d hate to try and do this kind of thing on
nonstandard systems in the timescale we’ve got. But that’s a null concept for
the Tyrathca.”
“Which I still think is a paradox,”
Renato datavised. “Imagination is the root cause of all fresh ideas. You can’t
design a starship without it. It’s the Siamese twin of curiosity.”
“Which they also don’t seem to have
much of.”
“But probing your environment is a
basic survival trait. You have to know if there’s any kind of threat out there
if you want to keep on living. Then you have to work out how to overcome it.”
“I’m not arguing. Let’s just save
it for another time, okay?” Oski began attaching the processor blocks she’d
brought to the databuses inside the terminus; unspooling long ribbons of fibre
optic cable with custom built interface plugs on the end. The Laymil project
had the specifications of known Tyrathca electronic systems on file in
Tranquillity, of course; but she’d referenced the archaeology expedition’s
records to be sure. Tanjuntic-RI’s systems were identical to those used today,
even down to the size and configuration of the sockets. Fifteen thousand years
of standardisation! Renato was right: that wasn’t merely odd, it was downright
eerie.
The interface plugs clicked
smoothly into their sockets, and the block datavised that the high density
photonic link had been established. Which was ridiculous. She’d been waiting to
apply a chemical spray that would have eased the plugs into place. It had been
invented by her division to clean up optical contacts that had been exposed to
the vacuum, dust, and general degradation of the Ruin Ring; they used a lot of
it on the scant remnants of Laymil electronics they acquired.
She put the spray canister down and
picked up a micro scanner. “I can accept that their electronics are in a much
better condition than the Laymil modules we have,” she datavised. “The
environment here is so much more benign, and they haven’t been abandoned as
long. But this lucky is absolutely impossible.” The blocks finished
assembling an iconographic display of the terminal’s architecture. “The entire
terminal is on-line, there isn’t a single element not functioning. The Kiint
didn’t just access this, they repaired the damn thing to full operational
status. Some of these components are brand new, for heaven’s sake.”
“How much of it is new?”
“According to my scanner, it’s just
processors and some support circuitry. The memory crystals are original. Which
makes sense. They want the data stored inside them, just like us.”
“Can you get it?”
“No problem.” They already knew the
Tyrathca program language, and there was certainly no such thing as security
protocols or codes to guard against unauthorised access. Before leaving
Tranquillity, the division’s software experts had written customised questors
that could examine all the information contained within Tyrathca memory
crystals. Oski datavised the first batch of pre-formatted programs into the
terminus architecture. Some of them were hunting for distinct references, while
the others were classifying the information according to file type. The pair of
them accessed the questor results as they returned.
“Well, it would have been too much
to expect a direct reference to the Sleeping God,” Renato datavised.
“No mention of an unusual
cosmological event, either,” Oski observed. She studied the file index, seeing
what kind of database they’d activated, and shaping the next batch of questors
accordingly. “We have plenty of navigational fixes.”
“I’m going to see if the questors
can find a list of star fixes they used to align their communication laser
during the flight. At least that’ll give us an idea of their contact protocol
with the other arkships.”
“Good idea. I’ll see if any other
arkship flight paths are stored in here. That should tell us what kind of
spatial volume we’re dealing with.”
The questors revealed several tens of
thousands of star fixes performed to align the interstellar communication
laser. Eighty-five per cent of them were performed during the first six
thousand years of the flight, after that the number of communiqués transmitted
and received by the arkship dropped off considerably. During the latter stages
of the flight, the star fixes were performed almost exclusively to align the
laser on the five colony planets which Tanjuntic-RI had established.
With the fixes established, Oski
began to search for associated files. “The messages aren’t stored in here,” she
datavised eventually. “I keep getting a link code with all the laser alignment
files. But it’s to a different system altogether.”
“Do you know where it is?” Renato
asked.
“Not yet.” She composed a new batch
of questors, and sent them probing through the terminal’s basic management
routines. “How are you doing?”
“Unpleasantly successful. The
Tyrathca built over a thousand arkships.”
“Good god.”
“Yeah, quite. If they all travelled
as far as this one, that gives us a phenomenal area to search through for their
Sleeping God. We’re talking about a percentage of the entire galaxy. Small,
admittedly. But everything is relative. Parker and Kempster will love this.”
The questors started to display
their answers to Oski. “Ah, here we go. The files we want are stored in some
kind of principal archive. I’ve got the identification code.”
“But it could be anywhere. We can’t
access anything from here.”
“Yes. Come on. We want the office
which dealt with the arkship’s general systems. We’ll see if we can activate
one of the terminals in there, and call up a general schematic.”
The maser beam caught the diversion
serjeant on its thigh as it was crossing one of the hemispherical chambers.
Ione’s response was automatic, a fast powered dive behind a huge clump of
machinery. The beam cut off as she fell behind it. Her armour’s electronic
warfare block had pinpointed the origin. The Tyrathca was shooting from just
inside one of the corridors.
She loaded the coordinate into her
weapons hardware. A homing grenade shot out of her belt dispenser, curving over
the top of the sheltering machinery. An EE explosion obliterated the corridor
entrance. Another maser slashed across the serjeant’s armour. Ione rolled
quickly, swinging the launcher round. A second homing grenade eliminated the
corridor the Tyrathca soldier was charging out of.
They’re moving bloody fast, she told her other selves and Samuel. It was
a good pincer manoeuvre. She used the suit’s sensors to scan down the
corridor ahead. No motion or anomalous infrared source was detectable.
You can’t go back, the serjeant with Monica and Samuel down in
ring five told her. You know they’re behind you.
Yes. She unclipped a magazine from her belt and
slotted it into her multi-barrelled launcher as she walked over to the one
remaining corridor entrance. Three slender missiles were fired at two second
intervals, streaking away down the lightless tunnel. The serjeant flattened
itself against the wall.
Each of the three missiles was
tipped with a neutron pulse warhead. They detonated simultaneously, soaking a
five hundred metre length of the corridor with a lethal cascade of radiation.
If there had been any Tyrathca lurking down there, the neutron bombardment
would have killed them almost instantaneously. Holding the fat missile launcher
in one hand, and an X-ray laser in the other, the diversion serjeant started to
creep down the radioactive corridor.
“Oski, progress report, please,”
Monica datavised. A sensor disk showed her the Tyrathca massing at the top of
the spiral ramp which led down to ring five. “We’re getting a little critical
out here.”
“I’m in the general systems layout.
Should have the archive location any second now. This is another terminal the
Kiint have refurbished. That must mean we’re on the right track.”
“Oski,” Samuel datavised. “Please
store as much of the layout as possible. It might help us to get out of here.”
“To get out?” Monica queried.
“Yes. I have an idea.”
“I’d love to hear it.”
“One moment.” Syrinx?
Yes Samuel. Are you making
progress?
Not as much as I’d like, but
yes. Oski will start to datavise the information we have acquired so far to you
and the Lady Macbeth in case we do not get out.
There’s still only one Tyrathca
ship at Tanjuntic-RI. They’ll be no match for Oenone. As long as you can
get back up to what’s left of the spaceport support column, you’ll be fine.
That may prove difficult. The
Tyrathca soldier-caste are very capable, as the serjeants are discovering. And
they know where we have to return to. An ambush would be easy for them.
What do you propose?
Monica and I were both present
when Dr Mzu escaped from Tranquillity.
Now wait a minute—Syrinx protested.
I could do that, Oenone said. If the Udat can, I can. There was considerable
eagerness in the voidhawk’s mental tone.
No, Syrinx said, instinctively protective. Tanjuntic-RI
is a hell of a lot smaller than Tranquillity. You’d never fit into one of the
rings.
But I would fit into the
level-one chambers.
That was what I was going to
suggest, Samuel said. We
ought to be able to reach one of them. And I doubt the hellhawk could swallow
in to harass you. Whereas if you came back here to fight your way past the
Tyrathca ship, it could certainly complicate the situation for you.
I can do it, Oenone insisted.
Are you sure? This isn’t just
bravado, is it?
You know I can. And we would
honour Udat’s memory by doing so.
All right. Syrinx couldn’t hide the pride and simmering
excitement in her mind. Samuel, we’ll attempt to pick you out from one of
the axial chambers.
Thank you, Samuel said emphatically.
Oski and Renato were almost running
as they emerged from the control office airlock. Their suit programs were
having to limit the augmentation to stop them from hitting their heads on the
airlock chamber ceiling. “I’ve found the archive.” Renato datavised the layout
file over to Monica, Samuel, and the serjeants. “It’s on the other side of the
ring, a kilometre away.”
“Move out,” Monica datavised. Her
guidance block was analysing the new data, incorporating it into existing
files.
“According to this file, there’s a
ramp up to the second level just past the archive,” Samuel datavised. “I’ll
blow the airlock hatch, and we’ll evacuate through there as soon as you’ve got
the information.”
“Sounds good,” Renato datavised.
The five of them were skating along
the lightless streets in long low bounds, utterly reliant on their guidance
programs. Nothing changed around them. At every turn, the wintered towers were
the same ahead and behind, their infrared signatures identical.
“The Tyrathca are on their way down
the ramp to this ring,” datavised the serjeant who was guarding the entrance.
“I’ve rigged the airlock. Do you want me to blow it?”
“No,” Monica datavised. “Wait until
they’re all inside the ring, then blow it.”
“You want to trap them in here?”
Renato datavised. “With us?”
“Good tactics,” Samuel confirmed.
“If we block them now, we won’t know where they are, nor how they gain entry.
But once they’re in, they can’t get out easily, and we can monitor them via the
sensor disks. It gives us the strategic high ground.”
A glimmer of infrared started to
shine down the corridor ahead of the diversion serjeant, like an autumnal dawn.
Ione stopped and slapped a magazine of smart-seeker missiles in the launcher,
datavising the Tyrathca profile into their processors. Suit sensors showed a
similar infrared glow expanding behind her.
Surrounded, she informed her other selves. Be warned.
They really are making good use of their knowledge.
A couple of neutron pulse tipped
missiles were fired at the group behind her. She dropped a grenade, and started
to run forwards. Smart-seeker missiles sliced out of the big launcher ahead of
her. The neutron pulses went off. She triggered the grenade, bringing down the
corridor roof. Small EE detonations were flaring up ahead as the missiles
punctured the Tyrathca spacesuit fabric, burying themselves deep in the xenoc
bodies before detonating.
Infrared vision was wiped out in
splashes of brilliant crimson. Still firing missiles. Something like a
medium-sized cannonball hit her right leg. Exploding. She was flung violently
against the ceiling, bouncing down against the floor. Internal bones snapped.
Cracks multiplied across her exoskeleton. But the armour held, reinforced by
the molecular binding generators.
The diversion serjeant raised its
head, dislodging various rocks which were lodged on its helmet. It moved its
arms, actuators pushing hard against the weight of rocks holding its torso
down. More rocks slithered off the armour. Two soldier-caste Tyrathca were
bounding towards it. Ione waited until they were fifteen metres away, and fired
a couple of homing grenades.
The sensor disk by the spiral ramp
up in level one noted a rise in the thermal environment beyond its pre-set
parameters, and broadcast an alert. Visual observation showed twenty new
Tyrathca marching into the interior.
“Oh God,” Monica datavised. “Just
what we need.”
“It will take them forty minutes to
reach ring five,” Samuel datavised. “If Oski hasn’t retrieved what we need by
then I doubt it will matter.”
They were fifty metres short of the
ring wall, passing the last of the towers. Five sets of suit lights slithered
erratically over the wall, kindling small refractive auras from the curtain of
frosted creeper leaves.
“There,” Renato datavised. Rather
uselessly, he raised an arm and pointed. But the others saw where his suit
lights had come to rest, and focused their own beams on the spot. The airlock
door to the archive was very similar to those of the control offices. And like
them, open.
“It’s recent,” Oski datavised.
“Several faint infrared footprints, very similar to those at the control
offices.”
“Monica, you go in with them,”
Samuel datavised. “I’ll set the charges ready to open that ramp for us.”
Monica drew an X-ray laser rifle
from her belt, and switched her homing grenades to active mode. Feeling
slightly more confident, she stepped through the open airlock. Oski and Renato
had been issued with the same weapons suite as she, but not even full field
combat programs could turn a pair of academics into decent troops. She didn’t
have surprise on her side. Instead she went for speed, flashing through the
final doorway with sensor gain on maximum. Radar and infrared covered the whole
interior of the archive chamber in milliseconds. The results filtered through
her tactical location program, which declared there was nothing active inside.
“You can come in,” she datavised.
The archive was substantially
different to the control offices. A lot larger, a long hall tunnelled out of
naked rock, with an arching ceiling thirty metres high. Despite having
Tyrathca-sized computer terminals and display cases, it was the most human
place they’d seen in Tanjuntic-RI.
Principally, Monica decided,
because it was instantly recognisable: a museum. Five-metre glass cube display
cabinets were standing in regimented rows the whole length of the hall. The
glass was fogged by grime and ice. When they shone their suit beams on the
cabinets, the contents were visible only as intriguing dark shadows. From what
they could discern, it was machinery inside; the outlines had too many flat
sides and regular angles to be anything biological.
Each line of cubes was divided into
sections by broad areas given over to computer terminals clustered round a
central hexagonal pedestal of giant display screens. Oski walked over to the
nearest one. “These zones must be the archive’s operating stations,” she
datavised. Her light beams fanned up and down the casings, then settled on the
screens. “There’s a plaque here.” Neural nanonics put her Tyrathca translation
program into primary mode. “Atmospheric engineering,” she read out. “They must
cover different disciplines at each station. Try and find anything relating to
navigation or communications.”
“Can you see if the Kiint repaired
any of the terminals?” Renato asked. “That would save a minute or two.”
“Nothing like that showing yet,”
Monica datavised.
Renato walked along a row of the
big cubes, annoyed they were all so opaque. The first station of terminals was
mineral distillation, followed by thermal maintenance, then distillation
mining. On impulse he wiped a gauntlet against the ice on one cube, upping the
brightness on his suit lights. It was a chunk of machinery inside. “These
gizmos look like they’re brand new,” he datavised. “I’m not sure this is a
museum. Could be they archived actual physical components, the ultimate
template back-up in case something screwed up their electronics.”
“Any kind of disaster big enough to
eradicate their crystal memories would wreck these machines first,” Oski
datavised. “Besides, think how many different components there are to make
Tanjuntic-RI work. A hell of a lot more than we can see in here.”
“Okay, so it’s just the really
critical ones.”
“I think I’ve found it,” Monica
datavised. “This terminal has been spruced up, and it’s still a couple of
degrees warmer than the rest.”
Oski scanned her suit sensors round
to locate the ESA operative. “What’s the station?”
“Planetary habitation.”
“That doesn’t sound quite right.”
She hurried over to where Monica was standing, suit lights converging on one of
the terminals.
“The Tyrathca are now in ring
five,” the serjeant guarding the ramp entrance datavised. “I am blowing the
airlock behind them.”
Despite her high suit sensor
resolution, Monica could receive no indication of the explosion. “Oski, we
really don’t have any more time to hunt round,” she datavised. “Just get what
you can from this terminal, and pray the Kiint knew what they were doing.”
“Confirmed.” The electronics
specialist knelt down beside the terminal, and started working on the front
panel.
Ione was tracking the Tyrathca
through multiple observation points as they spread out through the streets of
ring five. As soon as the airlock detonated and collapsed behind them, trapping
the last two in the rubble, they had deployed in a wide sweep formation. The
sensor disks were picking up microwave radar pulses from several of the
soldiers. Their emissions helped to target the first batch of homing grenades
which she launched, eliminating a further three. Then they wised up to that and
switched the radars off. She launched a swarm of smart seeker missiles,
programming them to flit above the tops of the towers. Arrowing down as soon as
they located a suit.
The launch betrayed her general
direction. Ultimately, another plus point. She was on the other side of the
airlock from the control offices and archive, drawing them away from the
exploration team.
One of the sensor disks showed a
soldier raise a rifle the size of a small human cannon. Ione started running,
not caring about the lack of cover. A tower disintegrated behind her; the blast
strong enough to create a rumble in the ring’s near-non-existent atmosphere.
Big nodules of debris crashed into neighbouring towers, shattering the brittle
concrete. Three of them toppled over, throwing up thick clouds of black dust
which surged along the streets in every direction, blocking vision in all
spectrums.
Monica followed what she could of
the fight via the sensor disks. Nervous energy created a nasty itch along her
spine and ribs. It was impossible to scratch through the suit. Even twisting
round inside the armour was useless. There was nothing she could do to assist
Oski and Renato. The pair of them had exposed the terminal’s electronics, and
were busy attaching their own blocks to the primitive components inside. Their
fluid motions were bringing effective results. Little lights were flashing
around the rosette keyboard, and the monitor screen was producing a snowstorm
of green and scarlet graphics.
She started walking round the
outlying display cubes, alert for any other signs of Kiint activity. It was the
one contribution she could still make. Not that it would be a lot of use at
this point. It wasn’t until after she’d started on her second circuit of the planetary
habitation station that her subconscious alarm grew strong enough to make her
stop and take a proper look at what she was seeing. The shapes inside the
opaque cubes were no longer nice and regular.
With real unease replacing her
anxiety now, Monica swiped her gauntlet over the crinkled, sparkling ice,
rubbing a patch clear. Her suit lights brightened, converging on the cube.
Visual sensors altered their focus. Monica took a half step back, breath
catching in her throat. Her medical monitor program warned her of a sudden fast
heart rhythm. “Samuel?” she datavised.
“What is it?”
“They’ve got xenocs in here. Xenocs
I’ve never seen before.” She scanned her sensors across the creature inside the
cube, building up a pixel file image for the Edenist. It was bipedal, shorter
than a human, with four symmetrically arranged arms emerging from mid-torso. No
elbow or knee joints were apparent, the limbs moved as a single unit. Bulbous
shoulder/hip joints hinted at a considerable articulation. All four arms ended in
stumpy hands with four claw-fingers; while the legs finished in rounded pads.
The head was a fat cone, with deep folds of skin ringing a thick neck, which
would permit a great deal of rotation. There was a vertical gash, which could
be either a nose or mouth, and deep sockets that could have held eyes.
“My God, Samuel, it’s sentient.
It’s wearing things, look.” She focused on an arm, where a silver bracelet was
wrapped around the wizened caramel skin. “That could be a watch, I think. It’s
certainly technological. They caught a sentient xenoc and stuffed the poor
bastard for their kids to look at in this freak show. Oh for Christ’s sake,
what are we dealing with here?”
“You’re jumping to some very wild
assumptions, Monica.”
“Then you explain what the fucking
hell it’s doing in here. I’m telling you, they put it on show. It must have
come from one of the planets they stopped at.”
“You’re in an archive, not a circus
zoo.”
“Is that supposed to make me happy?
So this is scientific not entertainment. What were they doing studying it? It’s
sentient. It’s not a laboratory creature.”
“Monica, I know it’s shocking, but
it isn’t relevant to our current situation. I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to
ignore it for the moment.”
“Jesus fucking wept.” She spun
round, and marched back towards the terminal where Oski and Renato were
working. Heat and anger kept her going for several paces. Then she stopped and
scanned the cube again. Her suit lights refracted off the gritty ice with its
dark adumbrate core of sorrow and suffering.
When they’d come on board, she’d
wondered about Tyrathca souls watching them. Now all she could think about was
the soul of the unknown xenoc; lost and alone, crying out desperately for
others of its kind. Could it see her now? Was it shouting its pleas for
salvation from some obscure corner of the dreadful beyond? Unheard even by its
own deities?
The medical monitor warned Monica
she wasn’t breathing properly. She made an effort to inhale in a regular
motion. “Oski? How are you doing?”
“I’m not sure. There are some files
in here that look like communiqués. I’ve just reverted to our fall-back option.
We’re copying every memory to analyse later.”
“How long?”
“Programming is almost complete.
It’ll take half an hour to datavise all their files over to our processors.”
“We can’t afford that.”
“I know. The bitek processors can
shunt the information directly over to Oenone and Lady Mac in
real time. We just have to hope the Tyrathca don’t come in here and find out
what we’re doing until it’s finished.”
“That’s a safe enough bet. I expect
they’ll be too busy chasing us.”
How the hell did they get up
there? Ione asked.
At least three Tyrathca soldiers
were cantering along ring five’s ceiling gantries. The narrow metal walkways
threaded amongst the crane rails and irrigation pipes were shaking alarmingly
as the heavy bodies thundered down them. But they were holding. And they
provided the Tyrathca with a dangerously effective vantage point.
There were now six separate smears
of billowing dust blotting out entire sections of the ring, evidence of
shattered towers caught in the increasingly brutal crossfire. Tyrathca bodies
lay everywhere, bleeding fluid and heat onto the cold alloy floor. One of the
two remaining serjeants was limping badly, its suit leg crushed almost flat
around the knee. Caught by a huge chunk of debris whose inertia defeated the
binding generators. Several processors and hardware units on its belt were
dead, ruined by maser fire.
Worse, from a tactical viewpoint,
only one Tyrathca was currently stalking it. The remainder had moved away from
the mayhem it’d unleashed to chase down the remaining heat trails. Four of
them, including one breeder, were congregating round the open airlock into the
control offices.
“They know we went in there now,”
Samuel datavised.
“The ones on the gantries will be
looking for us,” Ione datavised. “And they’ll see us soon enough.”
“We’ve finished programming the
file extraction,” Oski said. “The data is being received by the starships.”
“Excellent. Get out of the archive,
I’m about to blow the airlock. Ione, can you take out the soldiers on the
gantries?”
“I’ll try.”
“At this point, you’re not
expendable to us, okay? We’re going to need back-up to get out of here.”
“Understood. But only one of me
will be able to keep up with you on the ramp.”
The injured serjeant raised its
missile launcher, and fired the two remaining smart seeker missiles. They
soared off into the gloom, twin spikes of intense amber light, seemingly rising
out of sight around the ring’s curvature. It began to limp into the seething
dust, heading back towards the archive. Searching round on its belt, Ione found
a magazine containing neutron pulse missiles. Only four of the twelve responded
to a datavise. She slipped the magazine into the launcher anyway.
When the others made it to the
shelter of the ramp, she could then make life seriously unpleasant for the
Tyrathca left in ring five.
Samuel and the last serjeant were
waiting for Monica, Oski, and Renato right outside the archive. Monica’s
thoughts were still in such turmoil after finding the xenoc that she didn’t
trust herself to say anything to him.
“There’s still one soldier-caste
left up on the gantry,” Samuel datavised. “Not that it matters much now.” He
triggered the charges he’d laid around the airlock.
They were close enough to see the
flash: a dazzling ripple of pure white light that burst across the ring, fading
fast.
Samuel started running straight at
it. They only had a hundred and fifty metres to go. He datavised instructions
to the others, who activated their rocket launchers. A semicircle of towers
fell in unison as the missiles pulverised their ground floors. Dust strangled
the thin plumes of potent flame, sending out a curtain of impenetrable darkness
that fountained straight upwards.
The airlock leading to the ramp had
been wrenched to one side by the charges Samuel had laid around its rim,
buckling the thick slab of titanium like so much plastic sheeting. A tide of
rock had spewed out of the gap, narrowing it still further. His boots dislodged
small loose fragments as he scrambled up. There was enough space to pass
through, providing he turned sideways. As soon as he was on the other side, he
started slapping EE charges on the walls. Monica and the others wriggled
through the gap, with the serjeant bringing up the rear.
Eighteen combat wasps were closing
on Lady Mac, the third time in an hour Hesperi-LN’s defences had
launched such a salvo at them. Each time, Lady Mac had simply jumped
away before any of them were in range, leaving the drones to search round
helplessly for their target.
“Good job the Tyrathca never met
anything hostile when they were on their voyage here,” Joshua remarked. “I
mean, Jesus, they are absolutely crap at space warfare. Why do they keep firing
salvos when we’re far enough above the planet to jump?”
“They’re lulling us into
complacency,” Ashly said cheerfully. “They’ve worked out roughly where we’ve
got to emerge next time, and they’ve flown their superweapon there ready to zap
us.”
“Nope. Keeping the jump emergence
coordinate as a random variable is file-one in the combat manual.”
“They wouldn’t have a superweapon
anyway,” Liol said. “Building stuff like that takes inventive flair. And they
just ain’t got it.”
“They do seem to be very dogmatic,”
Dahybi said. “As they haven’t got a combat capable starship to field against
us, their options are limited.”
“Limited, yes,” Joshua agreed. “But
not to one.” He studied the tactical display. The nearest combat wasp would be
close enough to start deploying submunitions in another two minutes. “Stand by
for jump. Sarha, how’s the memory dump coming on?”
“No problems, Joshua. The bitek
array is accepting the load.”
“Great, let’s hope there’s
something useful in there.” He cut the fusion drives, holding the starship
stable with ion thrusters. The flight computer showed him the energy patterning
node status as the combat sensors retracted. “Here we go.” They emerged forty
thousand kilometres from the combat wasp swarm. Hesperi-LN’s SD network took
nearly three minutes to acquire lock on.
“Are you launching another combat
wasp?” Liol asked.
“Not yet,” Joshua said. He
datavised the bitek array for a link to the exploration team. “Where are you?”
“Coming up to level two,” Monica
replied. “The ramp is sealed behind us, so if we don’t get ambushed, we’ll be
at level one in another twelve minutes.”
“Okay, thanks, Monica. Syrinx, we’d
better start finalizing our next move.”
“Agreed. We must assume the
blackhawk will try and follow us again.”
“I can throw it off with multiple
consecutive jumps. Can you do something similar?”
“No problem. Designate a rendezvous
coordinate.”
“That’s trickier. This bloody
diversionary battle has screwed around with our vector. I can get a rough
alignment on the second planet with a small burn. We’ll slingshot around it,
and re-align on the Orion nebula. After that, we can lose the hellhawk.”
“Very well. Oenone will
swallow out to the second planet as soon as we’ve picked the team up. See you
there.”
The second level cavern housed a
gigantic fusion generator, three pale metal spheres standing one on top of the
other, eighty metres high. Arching buttresses of pipes and cables were wrapped
around the main section like mechanized viaducts, sinking away into the walls
and floor. A quintet of heat exchangers surrounded it. Fluids had leaked from
their valves and feed tube junctions, dribbling down the casings to solidify in
colourful multi-layered ribbons. The cavern’s irradiated rock kicked off
datavised Geiger warnings as soon as the exploration team bounded in from one of
the corridors.
“This is it,” Samuel datavised.
“Our shortcut.”
“It will be very short with this
radiation level if we’re not careful,” Monica datavised. “This is as bad as a
fission core meltdown. What kind of fuel did they use?”
“Heaven only knows.” Samuel scanned
his sensors across the pipes that disappeared into the curving apex overhead.
“Any of those three.” His suit’s tactical program datavised the designation
icon to the others, highlighting the pipe he’d chosen. “According to the file
Oski pulled from the control offices it’s a thermal gas duct. The exchangers
transferred some of their heat along it to keep the level-one lakes warm. It’s
an express route straight there. All we have to do is slice it open.”
Monica didn’t argue with him,
despite the sudden doubts. She’d stayed with Oski and Renato in the archive,
leaving details of their withdrawal to Samuel. That was teamwork. And it was as
though he’d been her partner forever. They knew they could rely on each other
now. She took the stumpy laser rifle from her belt, datavised its control
processor for a continual burn, and lined it up on the pipe he’d designated.
Five ruby red beams stabbed out,
puncturing the pipe. Bright molten metal droplets drizzled down slowly, losing
their radiance before they reached the ground. Monica’s radar caught the
movement just before the maser beam hit her suit. A couple of homing grenades
fired immediately from her dispenser, looping through the three dimensional
maze of pipes to smash the corridor entrance where the Tyrathca soldier was
lurking.
Backwash from the EE blast rolled
her across the ground to clang against the base of a heat exchanger. Her
infrared sensor caught a blur of motion away on the other side of the chamber.
Radar was useless, there was too much machinery in the way.
“They’re in,” she warned.
“Oski, Renato, finish cutting the
pipe open,” Samuel ordered. “We’ll take care of them.”
One of the Tyrathca cannon fired,
blowing a hole in the side of the fusion generator. Monica grabbed her missile
launcher, and fired off a pair of smart seekers. Samuel was kangaroo jumping up
the side of a heat exchanger. Homing grenades spat out of his dispenser,
zipping away to pummel the corridor entrances. Maser beams slashed at him.
Monica’s sensors triangulated their origin, and she launched more smart seekers
in retaliation. Explosions ripped round the chamber as the corridor entrances
were closed.
“Pipe’s open,” Oski datavised.
“Go straight in,” Samuel datavised.
“We’ll cover you.”
Monica dived under a buttress, scanning
at ground level. The lower section of four hot Tyrathca spacesuit legs was
visible ahead of her, below a coil-wound beam. She chopped them with the laser,
slashing straight through the fabric. Large globs of weird purple gel burped
out, oscillating wildly as they bounced off the floor and machinery. The
Tyrathca stumbled and fell. Monica slid the laser along its flank. A tidal wave
of gel blobs erupted. Then the body went into explosive decompression.
Oski’s manoeuvring pack fired at
full power, lifting her towards the apex of the cavern. Every suppresser
program she had that could squash down on her fear was in primary mode. They
must have worked, she was quietly delighted at how calmly she was reacting to
being shot at. Guidance programs bent her flight around the clutter of arching
pipes as she rose higher and higher. She actually passed a two metre section of
the pipe on her way up, its edges still glowing pink as it tumbled end over
end.
A maser beam struck her legs. The
suit’s tactical program shot a homing grenade down in response. Then she was
concentrating solely on her flight, arrowing for the gaping hole they’d sliced
in the pipe. Its rim flashed past her, catching her shoulder, and scraping
along her arms. Then she was completely inside. Radar was the only sense which
functioned in here, showing a rigid, featureless tube stretching out above her
for nearly three hundred metres. Her manoeuvring pack thrusters throttled down,
slowing her to a less reckless speed as the gravity dropped off. A second
armour suit slid into the pipe below her.
“Hell of an escape route,” Renato
datavised.
Etchells had no warning that the Oenone
was going to swallow away from the twin moons. The crew were still boring
him crazy with their promises and propaganda when it happened. But he felt it
go, a massive tear in the uniformity of his distortion field.
What are you doing? he asked. The Tyrathca ships were still hours
away.
We’re leaving now, Ruben said. Why don’t you go home? Think
about what we’ve been saying.
There was a momentary lapse in the
affinity contact. Etchells observed the amount of energy Oenone applied
to open the wormhole interstice, determining the terminus location. They had
returned to that damn arkship!
Why are you here? he demanded. What’s so special about that
ship?
If you join our efforts to solve
this crisis, then such questions will be answered for you, Syrinx said.
Fuck your psychobabble bullshit.
He sent the energy flashing
through his patterning cells, uncomfortably aware of how much he had expended
in warding off impacts from the Lagrange point particles. A wormhole opened,
and he dived down it, emerging into real space again, barely twenty kilometres
from the arkship.
The Oenone was probing the
ancient vessel very thoroughly with its distortion field (an act which Etchells
didn’t understand). And the large Tyrathca ship was firing its secondary drive,
moving up from its holding position at the front of Tanjuntic-RI. Etchells
didn’t really want to go into combat against the xenocs at this point,
especially not with uncertain allies like the Edenists.
Oenone was performing another swallow manoeuvre.
You can’t elude me, Etchells said.
Fine, Syrinx replied with icy superiority. Follow
us in, then.
Etchells derived the voidhawk’s
wormhole terminus. Which was impossible. They were swallowing inside the
arkship. There were cavities in there, he could feel them. Tenuous bubbles
within the hard rock. So very small.
He didn’t dare. That kind of
accuracy was staggering.
The Tyrathca ship had risen above the
arkship’s horizon. It launched fifteen combat wasps straight at him. He
swallowed away fast.
The level-one cavern was quickly
and silently saturated with light, revealing the cyclorama of frozen water.
Ripples and waves were caught in mid-swell, drained of colour as they had been
of heat. The endocarps were different. Flat cliffs of rock, rimmed with ledges
of metal just above the ice. One of them boasted a tiny pinprick of warmth.
Five armour-suited figures hovered in front of it, watching the light source
expand; twisted fragments of starlight threaded through the length of the
wormhole to spray out at random. There was no other indication of the terminus
opening.
As the light dimmed it shone across
Oenone’s marbled blue hull, glinting off the crew toroid. The huge
voidhawk swept round the lake’s curvature towards the exploration team,
skirting the rickety old axial gantry with simple grace.
You’ve no idea how good it is to
see you, Samuel said,
accompanying the statement with a wash of gratitude and relief.
You too, Oenone replied. I knew I could do this.
Etchells conceded defeat. He wasn’t
going to find out why the two starships had come here, not now. Oenone was
inside the arkship for less than five minutes before swallowing away again. Its
wormhole terminus opened out above the star system’s second planet. The Adamist
ship jumped there as well.
Etchells joined them, at a
non-threatening distance, observing the Adamist ship fly round the planet on a
tight slingshot trajectory. When it jumped, Etchells tried to follow. But it
must have used multiple consecutive jumps, because he couldn’t find it anywhere
near the emergence coordinate. With his energy patterning cells badly depleted,
and his nutrient reserve getting low, he began the long, lonely trip back to
New California. It was time to hand the whole problem over to Kiera and Capone.
Chapter 14
Candles shaped like dark lily pads
bobbed about over the bath water, never managing to touch the two bodies
resting in the middle. Several of them had become mired in the burgs of
apple-scented bubbles, their wicks sizzling as the flames struggled to stay
alight. More candles were flickering gamely along the bath’s marbled rim, half
a metre tall; they were cemented into place by thick rivulets of wax. As the
only source of light in the suite’s dilapidated bathroom, their weak yellow
flickers bestowed an appropriately dingy appearance.
For years the Chatsworth had been
one of central Edmonton’s most renowned five-star hotels, attracting the
wealthy and the famous. But successive changes of management and ownership had
seen it decay badly over the last two decades as too much of its cash flow had
been diverted from maintaining standards to inflating shareholder dividends.
Eventually it was trading solely on its name, and that could never last. Now it
was closed for a much needed refurbishment and re-launch. But the work crews
and their mechanoids hadn’t even started stripping the old fittings out when
New York’s problems with the possessed hit the AV news. After that, most of
Earth’s long-term commercial investment projects were put on hold while the
financiers and entrepreneurs waited to see what the outcome would be. The
Chatsworth included.
Quinn had taken it over with quiet
efficiency to use as his home base in the arcology. The three-man caretaker
team left inside were possessed, and every last connection to the outside world
was severed: power, water, data, air conditioning. He knew that police and
government security forces tracked the possessed by the glitches they caused,
but they could only do that when there was working processor-governed machinery
nearby. So he and his loyal followers made do with the water left in the hotel
tanks, cooked on camping gear in one of the ritzy function rooms, and used
candles. Bath water was heated purely by energistic power. The soaps and oils
were stolen from a local mall. Along with booze.
Quinn reached for the bottle of
Norfolk Tears chilling in an ice bucket among the candles, and poured the pale
liquid over Courtney’s glistening breasts. She giggled as her nipples hardened
from the cold, and arched herself further out of the water. There were bruises
and teeth marks on her gold-tanned skin, evidence of Quinn’s recent
predilections. She didn’t mind the kind of sex he wanted; it was kind of
interesting, the physical things he could do with his new black magic. That
kind of misused power really turned her on, further proof of his omnipotence.
He didn’t have to worry about censure, or being caught. He wrote the rules now.
And there was never much pain, nor did it last long. He didn’t have to hurt her
to confirm their relationship; he knew she had submitted herself completely to
him and the cause. Joyfully, too. By embracing the serpent beast in its dark
lair, Courtney’s life had changed, becoming so much better. Hotter. Brighter.
She got all the stuff like clothes and AV fleks she wanted now; and she didn’t
have to take shit from anyone anymore, either. Not bad going for a sect whore.
Quinn threw away the bottle, and
started to lick the luxurious drink off her skin. “This is the fucking max,” he
said. “You know, it really is true; the bad guys get the best of everything.
Best clothes. Best drugs. Best babes. Best parties. Best sex. It’s fucking great.”
“We’re the bad guys?” Courtney
asked, puzzled. “I thought we were doing the right thing smashing up the
world?”
Quinn stood up, sending the
floating candles surfing into the bubbles. His erection grew to a thick flesh
sword hanging over Courtney’s upturned face. “We’re both; we’re bad and we’re
right. Believe it.”
Her confusion vanished, and she was
smiling with simple contentment again. “I believe in you.” She cupped his
balls, squeezing like he’d taught, and started to lick the length of his dick.
“After I’ve finished fucking you,
I’m going to go over and kill another one of Banneth’s people,” Quinn said.
“This time, I’m going to do it right in front of her. Force her to see how
impotent she is.”
“I don’t get it.” Courtney sat
back, glancing up inquiringly. “Why don’t you just march in there and start
torturing her? It’s not like she can stop you, or anything.”
“Because this is exactly what she
did to me. To us. All of us. She frightens people. It’s her bang. What she can
do to you up in that sanctum of hers is so fucking freaky and scary it hammers
into your brain like some monster prick. All you can think of is how to stop
her doing anything bad to you. Everybody in the coven knows they’re gonna be
strapped down on one of her tables some day. All you can do is ask God’s
Brother that when it’s your turn, she does something that boosts you. Nothing
you can do about the pain. That’s fucking standard issue with Banneth.”
“I see what you’re doing,” Courtney
said, pleased with herself. “You’re stalking her.”
“That’s a part of it, yeah. Each
time I go over there and kill one of her people, it ruins a little more of what
she is. The Banneth they all fear is growing smaller and smaller every day.
Even dickheads that dumb are going to realize that the one person who can
defeat anything is utterly helpless against the coming Night. I want her
sitting there while the entire headquarters’ coven freaks out and deserts her.
I’m going to make that he-bitch feel what we all did. That she’s a total
nothing; all that power she’s spent fuck-knows how many decades building up
isn’t worth shit any more. She used to make people piss themselves just by
being sarcastic. Sarcastic, for shit’s sake! Can you believe that? But
that’s how strong she was. Well now she’s going to know what I’ll do to
her, and she’s going to know there’s no way out when I come for her.
That puts me in control, and me on top. It switches her whole life around;
screws with the way her brain’s wired. I love that almost as much as I love the
pain I’m going to inflict.”
Courtney rubbed her cheek along his
dick, eyes closed in dreamy admiration. “I want to watch.”
“You can.” He beckoned. She was
taken up against the wall, hands pinned above her head. A loutish violation of
hard thrusts, energistically strengthened muscles overcoming any hindrance to
pummel his body against hers. In his mind he let it be Banneth, enhancing the
pleasure.
Halfway through, when Quinn’s
orgasm was building, Billy-Joe knocked tentatively on the door. “Get in here,
you little shit,” Quinn yelled. “Wait. Watch us.”
Billy-Joe did as he was told.
Standing well out of the way. Keeping still, but with inflamed eyes following
every aspect of Courtney’s contortions. Quinn finished with her, and let go.
She sank to the floor, propped up clumsily against the wall, shivering heavily.
Her hands stroked gingerly over her body, touching the fresh bruises.
“What do you want?” Quinn asked.
“It’s one of the possessed come to
see you,” Billy-Joe said. “He’s one of the new ones. Come from the Lacombe
sect. Says he’s got to see you. It’s like real urgent, he says.”
“Shit.” Quinn’s skin dried; his
robe materialized around him. “Hey! You want any of those healed up?”
“It’s all right, Quinn,” Courtney
said thickly. “I’ve got some cream and stuff to rub on. I’m fine.”
“This better be fucking important,”
Quinn said. “I told you dickheads not to move around the arcology. The police
are going to be watching for you.”
“I was careful,” the possessed man
said. His name was Duffy. He’d taken over the Lacombe coven’s magus. Unlike the
magus, Quinn judged him devout enough to God’s Brother. Duffy had been left in
charge of the coven, organizing several successful strikes against Edmonton’s
infrastructure.
Quinn sat down in one of the
lounge’s fraying leather armchairs, and let his mind wander through the
Chatsworth and its neighbouring buildings. They were only a couple of blocks
away from Banneth’s headquarters, a location perfect in every respect.
There were no suspicious minds
anywhere near. If Duffy had been spotted and followed, then the police were
keeping well back. Quinn resisted the impulse to go over to the window and pull
back one of the tatty curtains to peer down onto the street. “Okay, you haven’t
completely fucked up. What is it?”
“This magus, Vientus, I been
squeezing him. He ain’t a magus, not a real one. Doesn’t believe in God’s
Brother.”
“Big deal. None of those shits ever
did, not really.”
Duffy played with his hands,
wretchedly nervous. Nobody liked the idea of telling Quinn what to do—like shut
up and listen—but this was vital.
“All right,” Quinn grunted. “Go
on.”
“He’s some kind of secret police
informer. Has been for years. Every night he makes a report to some kind of
supervisor about what the coven’s been doing and what’s going down on the
street.”
“That’s impossible,” Quinn said
automatically. “If the police had that kind of information they would have
raided the coven.”
“I don’t think the supervisor’s
that kind of police, Quinn. Not like you get in the local precinct house.
Vientus never met them, he just datavised the information to some eddress each
night. There was other stuff going on, too. Vientus sometimes got told to
target people for this supervisor, local business people, buildings that needed
to be firebombed. And they’d talk about what other gangs were doing, and if
they needed to be chopped back. Real detailed shit like that. It was almost
like the supervisor was running the coven, not Vientus.”
“Anything else?” Quinn was
listening, but not really paying attention. He was too involved thinking
through the implication, and with that came a growing sense of alarm.
“This supervisor must have had some
influence with the cops. Quite a bit, I guess. There were times when Vientus
got useful sect members released from custody. All he had to do was ask the
supervisor for them, and the cops would let them go. Easy bail, or community
work sentence, some shit like that.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said quietly. That
recollection was one of the most bitter he owned. Waiting in Edmonton’s Justice
Hall for days with the dwindling prospect that Banneth would get him released.
Banneth could make the whole legal system do tricks for her, like every judge
owed her a favour. Murder suspects out on parole within an hour. Stim suppliers
given house arrest sentences.
“Er.” Duffy was sweating badly now.
“And, er . . . the supervisor had told Vientus to look out for you.”
“Me? The supervisor used my name?”
“Yes. There was a visual file on
you and everything. The supervisor said you were using the possessed to take
over sect covens, and they thought you’d try to kill Banneth.”
“Shit!” Quinn stood up, and
sprinted for the door. Halfway across the lounge he shifted into the ghost
realm, running through the closed door without breaking stride.
Half past two Edmonton local time,
and the arcology was at its quietest. Solaris tubes suspended underneath the
elevated roads between the uptown skyscrapers shone down on deserted streets.
Hologram adverts swarmed up the frontage of the ground level shops, bright
fantasy worlds and beautiful people shining enticingly. An army of municipal
mechanoids crawled along the pavements in front of them, spraying their
solvents on tacky patches and guzzling down fast food wrappers. The only
pedestrians left to avoid were a few late night stimheads thrown out of clubs
by the bouncers, and romantic youthful couples slowly strolling the long route
home.
Quinn adopted Erhard’s image as he
hustled along the street. Not an exact replicant, but a reasonable facsimile of
the pathetic ghost. Good enough to deceive any characteristics recognition
program scanning pedestrian faces through the street monitor sensors for a
glimpse of Quinn Dexter. He stopped by the taxi rank a full block from the
Chatsworth, and the barrier slid down. One of the sleek silver Perseus cabs
glided up out of the subway garage, opening its door for him.
Quinn pulled the seatbelt on with
one hand, keying in his destination on the central control column with the
other. He transferred the displayed fee from his bank disk and the little
vehicle sped off along the street.
It all made a frightening amount of
sense. He remembered the High Magus in New York; who obviously knew too much to
risk being possessed. And back in Edmonton when he’d been a junior acolyte; the
way everyone on a sect gig had to tell their sergeant acolyte all the crap that
was going down on the street. It happened every single day. The sergeants would
report to the senior acolytes, who in turn reported to Banneth. An
uncompromising routine, drilled in to Quinn along with all the others right
from their initiation. Information is the weapon which wins all wars. We need
to know what the gangs are doing, what the police patrols are doing, what the
locals are doing. Every coven was the same, in every arcology. The sect knew
the moves of every downtown illegal on the whole planet.
“Perfect!” Quinn shouted. He
thumped his fist into the seat cushion. “Fucking perfect.” The taxi was
starting to rise up a ramp to the elevated express-road. Vertical lines of
blanked windows zipped past as they increased speed, then curved round to a horizontal
blur. Thousands of slumbering minds slipstreamed through his consciousness.
Restful and content. Just as they were supposed to be. As they had to be.
Arcologies were the social
equivalents of nukes. Half a billion people crammed into a couple of hundred
square kilometres; an impossibility of human nature. The only society which
could conceivably hang together in those circumstances was a total-control
dictatorship. Everything licensed and regulated with no tolerance of dissent or
rebellion. Anarchy and libertarian freedoms didn’t work here, because
arcologies were machines. They had to keep working smoothly, and the same way.
Everything interlocked. If one unit fucked up, then every other unit would
suffer. That couldn’t be allowed. Which was a paradox, because you couldn’t
keep the jackboot stamping down forever. However benign a dictatorship, some
generation down the line will rebel. So somebody, centuries ago, had worked out
how to keep the lid screwed down tight. An old enough idea, never quite managed
in practice. Until now. A government department that quietly and secretly takes
control of society’s lowest strata. Criminals and radical insurgents actually
working for the very people whose existence they threaten.
Quinn could feel his energistic
power starting to boil up. His thoughts were so hot with fury he could barely
contain the power. “Gotta keep it in,” he spat through clenched teeth. One
mistake now, and they’d have him. “Got to.” He pummelled his hands against his
head, the shock of the craziness helping to bring himself back under control.
Deep breath, and he glanced out of the cab’s window. Uptown’s layout was second
nature, though he’d rarely experienced it from an elevated road before, much
less a cab. They’d be taking the down ramp soon, angling in to Macmillan
Station. Minutes only.
His breathing evened out, though he
was still outraged. The sect, the awesome gospel he’d given his very life to,
was being used as the front of some ultra-spook department. No wonder Banneth
and Vientus could fix for an acolyte’s bail with the cops; they were the
fucking cops. Anyone with the slightest potential for danger was sucked in by
the sect. And if they couldn’t be cowed into dumb obedience and neutralized
that way, then they were thrown to the cops and given an Involuntary
Transportee sentence.
“That was me,” he whispered in
pride. “Banneth couldn’t subdue me. Not even with all that shit she can do to
bodies. Not me!” So the cops had been told about the persona-sequestrator
nanonics he was bringing into the arcology. He’d always wondered who’d tipped
them off, who the traitor was amongst his fellow devout. There probably had
never even been any in the carton.
Banneth. Always fucking Banneth.
The taxi drew up in front of one of
the hundreds of vehicle entrance bays to Macmillan Station. Quinn knew there
and then that he was in the deepest shit imaginable. He climbed out of the cab
and walked slowly into the main concourse.
The giant arena of corporate urban
architecture was almost as empty as the streets outside. There were no
arrivals. No streams of frantic passengers racing away from the tops of the
escalators. Icons had evaporated from the informationals, which were hanging
motionless in the air. Stalls had been folded up and abandoned by their sellrats.
A few clumps of listless people stood under holoscreens, cases clutched
tightly, staring up at the single red message that was repeated like a parallel
mirror image everywhere you looked across the station: ALL VAC-TRAIN SERVICES
TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED. Even the scattering of ghosts Quinn could see were
wandering aimlessly about their haunt, their expressions even more glum and
bewildered than usual.
A group of cops were standing
together outside a closed BurrowBurger outlet, drinking from plastic cups,
talking quietly among themselves. The loud echo of his footsteps as he walked
towards them stirred way too many memories inside Quinn’s skull. It was the
same concourse, same dark cop uniform. Then, there had been pounding feet,
heart thudding hard in his chest. Screams as people dived out of his way,
shouted warnings. Alarms blaring. Brilliant lightbursts. The pain of the
nervejam shot.
“Excuse me, officer; could you tell
me what’s happening here? I have a connection to San Antonio in half an hour.”
Quinn smiled Erhard’s twitchy smile at the cops. It must have been a good copy;
most of them sneered. Finally, the failed acolyte had performed a useful
service for God’s Brother.
“Check the station bulletin,” one
of them said. “Christ’s sake.”
“I, a ha, I don’t have a set of
neural nanonics. I qualify for the company loan scheme next year.”
“Okay . . . sir; what we have here
is a vacuum breach. The tunnels were pressurizing, so the transit company had
to activate the emergency seals. There’s a repair crew down there now. Should
be fixed in a day or so. Nothing to worry about.”
“Thank you.” Quinn walked back to
the taxis.
I can’t get out, he realized. God’s
Brother! The bastards have snared me here. Unless I can get to the other
arcologies, His work will remain incomplete. The Night may be held off. And
that cannot be allowed. They are thwarting the Light Bringer Himself!
It was frightening, the way he’d
been lulled into a false sense of security. He, of all people. Ever suspicious,
ever mistrustful. And he’d fallen into their trap. Yet they must be frightened
of him to go to such elaborate lengths. Whoever they were.
He stood outside a taxi for a long
time, working out where he should go. In the end, there wasn’t a lot of choice.
He was in Edmonton for one person. And only one person would be able to tell
him who his real enemy was.
This was the part Billy-Joe didn’t
like. He was holding a laser pistol in one hand, there was a heavy-calibre
magnetic carbine hanging on a strap round his left shoulder, fitted with a
magazine of EE-tipped projectiles, a bag full of EE demolition charges on his
right shoulder, codebuster and ELINT blocks on his belt, and a slim omniview
band worn like a tiara on his forehead to boost his sight. It was enough
hardware to start a war. Kicking the shit out of Courtney’s punters was
Billy-Joe’s usual gig. Fast, nasty, and personal. None of this commando shit,
where security systems would shoot back at him if anybody in the group screwed
up.
But Quinn had wanted to stir things
up in Edmonton, keep the cops busy and away from uptown. So Billy-Joe was
sneaking down a lightless alley at half past four in the morning with ten other
acolytes from Duffy’s coven.
“This is the place,” said the
possessed man who was leading them, and stopped at a blank section of the alley
wall.
He gave Billy-Joe the creeps, maybe
even more than Quinn. One of the five possessed which Duffy had let into the
bodies of snatched civilians. They all lived at the coven headquarters,
treating the acolytes like shit and lording it up: the core of what Quinn
promised was to be the army of the Night. Billy-Joe wasn’t so sure about all
that dark destiny stuff now, despite all he’d seen Quinn do. From where he was,
it was just replacing one bunch of turds for another. The sect never changed;
he always got dumped on no matter who was in charge.
The possessed rested his hands on
the wall, tensing as if he was trying to push it over. He probably could,
Billy-Joe acknowledged. And that was without energistic power. He was at least
thirty centimetres taller than Billy-Joe, and must have weighed half as much
again.
A door materialized in the wall,
made of wooden planks with big black iron bolts and with a sturdy circular
handle. It opened silently, letting a wedge of bright light spill out into the
fetid alley. There was a long hall of machinery on the other side; bulky
turbine casings half-submerged in the carbon-concrete floor. Billy-Joe was
looking down on them from at least sixty metres; the door had opened onto a
high metal gantry running round the inside.
“In you go,” the possessed man
ordered. His bass voice rumbled along the alley, agitating the rats.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to
use your power,” Billy-Joe said. “The cops know how to look for it now.”
“They can only detect those
fireballs we use,” the possessed said glibly. “Listen, kid; Quinn wants you to
bugger up this water station, he was real keen for you to do that. That’s why
I’m here with you, so I can let you guys in quietly. Now, unless you’d like to
go in by the front gate, this is the way to do it.”
Three of the sensors perched along
the top of the alley wall picked up the blasé assurance, relaying it to the
intrigued supervisors of North America and Western Europe. The big possessed
man had been leaving a trail of glitched processors ever since the little
sabotage group emerged from the coven headquarters.
The ever-vigilant AI had datavised
North America as soon as the first two were confirmed. A GISD covert tactical
team had been dispatched to shadow them within seconds. But the trail had been
so ridiculously blatant that North America had alerted Western Europe, and kept
the tactical team a block away. Both of the B7 supervisors waited to see
exactly where Billy-Joe and the others were heading.
“I can’t let them damage the water
station,” North America said. “Edmonton’s operating margins are becoming
critical as it is, thanks to Quinn’s vandalism.”
“I know,” Western Europe said. “And
our big friend has to know that as well. Use the snipers to target the waster
scum, but don’t let them shoot this new possessed. I’ve become very curious
about his attitude.”
“Haven’t we all.” North America
issued his orders to the tactical team, who started to take up position inside
the water station hall.
Internal sensors showed the
sabotage group sneaking in through the new door, glancing from side to side to
make sure no one was watching them, then stalking along the catwalk in an
almost theatrical mime of caution. Nine of them went inside. Then the possessed
man grabbed Billy-Joe’s shoulder with a meaty hand and pulled him back just as
he was about to slip through. White fire spat from the fingertips of his free
hand, soaring into the hall. A couple of balls struck an electrical junction
panel, detonating loudly.
“What the fuck?” Billy-Joe gasped.
He struggled uselessly in that implacable grip as his colleagues shouted in
panic. The door slammed shut with a vociferous bang, and vanished. “You
bastard!” Billy-Joe screamed. He swung his laser pistol round, and fired at the
chuckling possessed at point blank range. Nothing happened. The weapon’s
electronics had crashed.
Several explosions sounded inside
the hall, reverberating through the solid wall. Both supervisors watched with
little interest as the tactical team eliminated the saboteurs. Their attention
was focused almost entirely on the small, intense drama unravelling outside in
the alley.
“Traitor!” Billy-Joe yelled
recklessly. “You killed them, they’re dying in there.”
The possessed man’s grip tightened,
lifting Billy-Joe off the floor, and bringing their faces close together.
“Quinn’s gonna chop you into rat bait,” Billy-Joe hissed in defiance.
“I spared you so you can deliver a
message to him.”
“What? What . . . I—”
A palm slapped into Billy-Joe’s
cheek. It was hard enough to make bones rattle. A red veil flashed up over
Billy-Joe’s vision, like someone had shot the omniview band with a targeting
laser. He groaned, tasting blood. “Are you listening to me?” the possessed
purred.
“Yeah,” Billy-Joe whimpered
miserably.
“You tell Quinn Dexter that the
friends of Carter McBride are coming for him. We’re going to piss all over his
crazy little schemes, then we’re going to make him pay for what he’s done.
Understand? The friends of Carter McBride.”
“Who are you?”
“I just told you, dickhead.”
Billy-Joe was dropped to stumble
among the slippery bags of trash and fleeing rats. A boot kicked his ass with
terrible force, sending him flying. He hit the wall and rebounded, crying out
at the pain stabbing through his buttocks.
“Now start running,” the possessed
said. “I want you out of here before the cops start hunting us.”
“Keep the tactical team away from
them,” Western Europe said. A shout had almost escaped from his lips, the
revelation was so astounding.
“Thank you for your insight,” North
America said caustically. “They’ll stay clear.”
“My God, we’ve got an ally. A bona
fide ally. A possessed at war with Quinn Dexter.”
“We won’t have him for very long, I
suspect.”
The big possessed man was almost
chasing a terrified Billy-Joe along the alley. They emerged onto a broad patch
of wasteland, cracked sheets of carbon-concrete with rows of severed metal
support pillars sticking up all along the edges. Typical of that area on the
edge of dome, dominated by warehouses and shabby industrial buildings.
“What are you talking about?”
Western Europe demanded.
“Smart boy, this friend of Carter
McBride. He’s heading for the utility labyrinth.” North America datavised the
file over.
Neural icons flowed together,
producing a horrendously complex three dimensional maze for Western Europe to
examine. Pipes, tunnels, subway tracks, underground cargo roads, power
conduits, they all seemed to interlock under that one section of the dome. It
was a nexus where utility providers and transport industries joined together to
supply Edmonton with the essentials its inhabitants expected; the busy
powerhouse behind the public stations, efficient suppliers, and immaculate
malls. The ground for kilometres around the water station was riddled with
concrete warrens and bunkers, with a thousand entrances and ten thousand
junctions.
“And those are just the ones marked
on the file,” North America said bitterly. “Christ knows what’s actually down
there.”
The possessed man and Billy-Joe
stopped beside a giant metal trapdoor whose rectangular rim was marked out by
thin lines of thistles. It hinged upwards, tearing the tangle of yellow tap
roots with a loud ripping sound. Crumbs of soil dribbled down into the chasm
revealed underneath. The top rungs of a rusty ladder were just visible. Billy-Joe
started to climb down. The possessed man followed. As soon as his head was
level with the ground, the trapdoor closed over him. For a second, the rim
glowed purple, as if it had been haloed by neon tubes.
“I bet he just sealed it up,” North
America said.
“Get the tactical team over there
fast,” Western Europe said. “Welding the edges isn’t going to stop them cutting
it open, not with their firepower.”
“They’re on their way.”
“Can the AI track him down there?”
“It’s already accessed all sensors
and processors in the labyrinth. But that shaft they went down was an
inspection and maintenance access for an old industrial heat exchange coolant
fluid pipe. There’s no active electronics in there, it hasn’t been used for
fifty years. They could come out anywhere.”
“Damnit. Flood the place with your
bitek insects. Use every operative you have to physically cover the exits. We
cannot let him escape.”
“Please. Don’t tell me how to
manage my assets. I have some experience in these matters.”
“I apologise,” Western Europe said.
“Damn, this is so frustrating. That possessed could be the real break we’re
looking for. He might manage to neutralize Dexter for us. We have to make
contact.”
The tactical team reached the metal
trap door and promptly carved a circle out of it. One by one they hurried down
the ladder.
“Billy-Joe would probably lead us
direct to Dexter,” Western Europe said. “If we could just find him when he
comes out.”
“Maybe,” North America said. “I’m
not making any promises.”
Searching the labyrinth was a huge
operation, though subtle enough to avoid the attention of the media. Police
were diverted from their usual patrol routes to cover every entrance. Swarms of
bitek spiders, bees, earwigs, and roaches were released into the maze of
tunnels and passageways, their examination coordinated by North America’s
subsentient bitek processor array. Every employee working in the labyrinth was
stopped and questioned as they came on and off shift. The AI assumed direct
control of every mechanoid the labyrinth companies used, reassigning them to
assist the search.
North America discovered several
stim dens, enough deadbeats to populate a couple of condos, caches of weapons
dating back decades, and enough illegally dumped toxic waste canisters to
warrant urgent official attention. There were also a large number of bodies,
ranging from the freshly dumped to skeletons picked clean by the rats.
Of Billy-Joe and the friend of
Carter McBride there was no sign.
“Carter McBride?” Incredulity swept
all Quinn’s anger away as the name finally registered. “God’s Brother! This
possessed definitely said Carter McBride? You’re sure?” Quinn could barely
remember Carter’s face, just one of the little brats running loose round
Aberdale. Then, as he found out later, Laton had the boy murdered, making it
look as though the Ivets had done it. The villagers had systematically set out
to kill Quinn and his colleagues in revenge.
“Yes,” Billy-Joe said. His limbs
wouldn’t stop trembling. He expected Quinn to blast him into a lump of smoking
meat when he returned to the Chatsworth. In fact, he’d been wondering if he
should even bother returning to the old hotel at all. Five hours of shitting
himself about the consequences as he slunk round diseased tunnels full of those
fucking rats and worse. Expecting the cops to burst out of the walls any
second. Getting mugged. Fucking mugged! Some bunch of deadbeats clubbing him
over the head and making off with most of his gear. Not daring to shoot them in
case the cops detected his weapon.
It had taken a long time before he
trudged back to the Chatsworth. In the end he did it because he believed Quinn
would ultimately win. Edmonton would fall into a state of demonic anarchy,
ruled over by sect possessed. And when that happened, the dark messiah would
catch up with Billy-Joe. Explanations would have to be made. Punishment would
follow that. So he came back. This way only one failure had to be accounted
for.
“Shit,” Quinn breathed. “Him! It’s
got to be him again.”
“Who?” Courtney asked.
“I don’t know. He keeps . . .
pissing me off. He’s appeared a few times now, screwing with what I do. What
else did he say?” he asked Billy-Joe.
“That he was going to wreck
whatever you were doing.”
“Figures. Anything else?” The tone
was unnervingly mild.
“You’ll pay for what you’ve done.
He said it, Quinn, not me. I swear.”
“I believe you, Billy-Joe. You’ve
been obedient to Our Lord. I don’t punish loyalty. So he said he’d make me pay,
did he? How?”
“Just that he’d catch up with you.
Didn’t say nothing else.”
Quinn’s robe changed, the fabric
hardening around his limbs. “I shall enjoy that encounter.”
“What are you going to do, Quinn?”
Courtney asked.
“Shut up.” He stalked over to the
window and peered down through a gap in the heavy curtains. Cars and trucks
flashed along the ramp five stories below, curving down to street level. Fewer
vehicles than usual, and the crowds on the sidewalk were noticeably thinner.
But then Edmonton had been in a mild panic for most of the day since the early
morning commuters discovered the vac-trains were closed. Every Govcentral
spokesperson in the arcology assured the reporters that there were no possessed
loose. Nobody believed them. Things were falling apart across the domes. But
not in the way Quinn intended.
I don’t fucking believe this, he
raged silently. Some kind of supercops know I’m here. I can’t bring about the
fall of true Night without the vac-trains. And now heaven’s own bastard
vigilante is gunning for me. God’s Brother, how could everything go so wrong?
Even Banneth is diminished.
It was another of His tests. It
must be. He is showing me the true path to Armageddon lies elsewhere. That as
His messiah I must not rest, not even to gorge my own serpent beast. But who
the fuck is Carter’s friend? If he knew Carter, then he must be someone from
Lalonde, Aberdale itself. One of the men.
Although that conclusion hardly
reduced the field of suspects. All the men at that sewer of a village hated
him. He forced himself to be calm, to remember the few words the bastard had
spoken back on Jesup asteroid when he fucked up the sacrifice ceremony.
“Remember this part?” Quinn’s own
mimicked face had taunted. So whoever it was had witnessed the sect ceremony
before, then. And was from Aberdale.
The realization was so pleasurable
it blessed Quinn’s face with the kind of smile usually bought by orgasm. He
turned from the window. “Call everyone,” he told one of the nervous acolytes.
“We’re going to tool up and march against Banneth. I want every one of my
followers to accompany me.”
“Shit, we’re going for her?”
Courtney’s eyes were shining with greed.
“Of course.”
“You promised I could watch.”
“You will.” It was the only way.
The cops would only allow the vac-trains to run again if they thought they’d
eliminated all the possessed in the arcology.
Quinn would bring them together,
and do to them what Carter McBride’s friend had done to the sabotage group.
After that, time would become his most powerful weapon. Not even the supercops
could keep the vac-trains closed for months when there were no further signs of
possession.
“But first, I have something else
which needs taking care of.”
Courtney did as she was told and
switched on a processor block, establishing a link with Edmonton’s net. Quinn
stood a couple of metres away, watching the little screen over her shoulder as
the questor was launched into Govcentral’s main citizens directory. It took
eight minutes before the requested file expanded into the block’s memory. He
read down the information, and smiled victoriously. “Her!” he said, and thrust
the block towards Courtney and Billy-Joe, showing them the picture he’d found.
“I want her. You two go down to the vac-train station and wait. I don’t give a
fuck how long you have to stay there for, but the first vac-train out of here,
you take it and you get over to Frankfurt. Find her, and bring her to me.
Understand? I want her alive.”
A call from reception informed
Louise that she had a delivery to accept. The house telephone was almost
identical to the chunky black instruments back on Norfolk, except it had a bell
rather than a shrill chime. Now she had neural nanonics, the whole thing seemed
absurdly primitive. Presumably, for people who didn’t have them as their sole
planetary communication system, they were endearingly quaint. Part of the
Ritz’s old-world elegance.
Louise looked around the lobby as
soon as the lift doors opened, curious about what could have been sent to her.
She was sure all the department stores had delivered. Andy Behoo was slouching
against the reception desk under the suspicious gaze of the concierge. He
jerked to attention when he saw Louise, his elbow nearly knocking over a vase
of white freesia. She smiled politely. “Hello, Andy.”
“Uh.” He stuck his hand out,
holding a flek case. “The Hyperpeadia questor’s arrived. I thought I’d better
bring it round myself to make sure you got it okay. I know it was important to
you.”
The concierge was watching with
considerable interest. He didn’t get to see such naked adoration very often.
Louise gestured towards the other end of the vaulting chamber. “Thank you,” she
said when Andy pressed the flek into her hand. “That’s very kind.”
“Part of the service.” He smiled
broadly, crooked teeth on show.
Louise was rather stuck for what to
say after that. “How are you?”
“You know. The usual. Overworked
underpaid.”
“Well you do a very good job at the
shop. I’m grateful for the way you looked after me.”
“Ah.” Andy’s world was suddenly
very short on oxygen. But she’d come down by herself. That must mean her fiancé
hadn’t arrived yet. “Um, Louise.”
“Yes?”
Her soft smile was wired directly
into his brain’s pleasure centre, shorting out his coordination. He knew he was
making a right old balls up of this. “I was wondering. If you haven’t got
anything planned, that is. I mean, I’ll understand if you have and all that.
But I thought, you know, you haven’t been in London long and had a chance to
see much of it. So if you like, I could take you out to dinner. This evening.
Please.”
“Oh. That’s really sweet of you.
Where?”
She hadn’t said no. Andy stared,
his smile numbed into place. The most beautiful, classy, sexy girl in existence
hadn’t said no when he asked her for a date. “Huh?”
“Where do you want to go for
dinner?”
“Um, I thought the Lake Isle. It’s
not far, over in Covent Garden.” He’d asked Liscard for a two week advance on
his pay, just in case Louise said yes; Liscard granted it on a four per cent
interest rate. That way he could actually afford the Lake Isle. Probably. It
had cost a lot more than he’d expected to reserve the table; and that deposit
was non-refundable. But the other sellrats all said it was the right kind of
place to take a girl like Louise.
“That sounds nice,” Louise said.
“What time?”
“Seven o’clock. If that’s okay?”
“That’s fine.” She gave him a light
kiss on his cheek. “I’ll be here.”
Andy walked back with her to the
waiting lift. There had been something about a dress code in the datavise when
he reserved the table. He now had two and a quarter hours to find a dinner
jacket. A clean one, that fitted. It didn’t matter. A man who’d got himself a
date with Louise Kavanagh could do anything. Louise pressed the button for her
floor. “You don’t mind if I bring Genevieve, do you? I really can’t leave her
here by herself, I’m afraid.”
“Uh.” From nirvana to hell in half
a second. “No. That’ll be lovely.”
“I don’t want to spend an evening
with him,” Genevieve whinnied. “He’s all peculiar. And he fancies you.
It’s creepy.”
“Of course he fancies me,” Louise
said with a grin. “He wouldn’t have asked me out otherwise.”
“You don’t fancy him, do you?” a
thoroughly shocked Genevieve asked. “That would just be too hideous, Louise.”
Louise opened the wardrobe and
started to rifle through the dresses they’d managed to acquire on their
shopping trips. “No, I don’t fancy him. And he’s not peculiar. He’s quite
harmless.”
“I don’t understand. If you don’t
fancy him, why did you say yes? We can go out by ourselves. Please, Louise.
London isn’t nearly as dangerous as Daddy thinks it is. I like it here. There’s
so much to do. We could go to one of the West End shows. They sell tickets at
reception. I checked.”
Louise sighed and sat down on the
bed. She patted the mattress, and Gen made a show of being reluctant to sit
beside her. “If you really, really don’t want to go out with Andy for the
evening, I’ll cancel.”
“You’re not going to kiss him or
anything, are you?”
“No!” Louise laughed. “Devil child.
What a dreadful thing to say.”
“Then why?”
Louise stroked the dark hair from
Gen’s face, letting the flexitives ripple it over her ears. “Because,” she said
softly. “I’ve never been asked out to dinner with a boy before. Not to a fancy
restaurant where I can dress to kill. I don’t suppose it’ll ever happen again.
Not even Joshua asked me out. Not that he could, of course. Not when we were at
Cricklade.”
“Is he the baby’s father?”
“Yes. Joshua’s the father.”
Gen brightened. “That means he’s
going to be my brother-in-law.”
“Yes. I suppose it does.”
“I like Joshua. It’ll be stupendous
having him living at Cricklade. He’s such jolly fun.”
“Oh yeah. He’s fun all right.” She
closed her eyes, remembering the way his hands had caressed. Warm and skilful.
It had been so long since she’d seen him. But he did promise . . . “So, what do
I tell Andy Behoo, then? Do we go, or do we stay here all night?”
“Can I wear my party dress, too?”
Gen asked.
The scene playing out above the B7
sensenviron conference room table was the one involving the failed sabotage
attempt against Edmonton’s water station. It wasn’t a particularly good image,
the station’s perimeter sensors were hardly commercial-quality; but the two
humanoid figures shouting at each other had enough colour and resolution to
sketch in their individual features. Billy-Joe was being suspended several
centimetres off the floor of the alley by the large possessed man. Their noses
were almost touching. Then Billy-Joe was slapped hard, more words were
exchanged. The two of them ran off down the squalid alley.
“We think we know who Carter
McBride is,” Western Europe told the other supervisors as the recording ended.
“The AI found several references. He was the child of a colonist family on the
same starship that took Quinn Dexter to Lalonde. According to the Lalonde
Development Company files I accessed, the McBrides were also in the same
village that Dexter was assigned to for his work-time.”
“A friend of Carter McBride,”
Southern Africa mused. “You mean this new possessed was on Lalonde?”
“Yes,” Western Europe said. “And
the whole Quallheim Counties trouble was originally thought to be an Ivet
rebellion over the killing of some boy. The obvious conclusion is that it was
Carter. That implies the possessed who blew the sabotage group in Edmonton has
to be someone killed on Lalonde at around the same time.”
“So you’re saying that this
possessed person is out for revenge against Quinn Dexter?”
“Exactly,” North America said. “We
have a new ally.”
“Bullshit,” South Pacific said
sharply. “Just because the possessed have internal disputes, that doesn’t make
one faction friendly towards us. Suppose this new possessed does manage to
eliminate Dexter? Do you really think he’ll just conveniently vanish for us
afterwards? I certainly don’t. In any case, we’re not exactly communicating
with him, are we? You lost him and this waster boy. What kind of amateurism is
that?”
“I’d like to see you do better in
that goddamn labyrinth,” North America snapped.
“Given the speed at which this new
development broke, I think the situation was handled as adroitly as possible,”
Western Europe said. “However, it does introduce some new factors which I
believe warrant our consideration.”
“Such as?” North Pacific asked
suspiciously.
“I believe it will force Dexter to
abandon all his activities for a while. Unfortunately, this wretched little oik
Billy-Joe couldn’t be intercepted, so we must assume he returned to Dexter and
passed on the message he was given. As a consequence, Dexter will know he has a
possessed stalking him; and that after the sabotage mission was exposed, the
authorities have confirmed there are possessed in Edmonton. If we’re right
about his reasons for being here—to wreck as much of the planet as
possible—he’ll have no choice but to ignore Banneth and either abandon or
betray the remaining possessed in the arcology. Then he’ll lay low until
political pressure forces the North American senate to reopen the vac-train
lines. Face it, we can’t keep them shut for months unless there is a visible
threat to rattle the public with. Time is on his side. We’re already
compromising ourselves with the actions we’ve taken to date.”
“Not a chance,” South Pacific
blurted. She pointed a hostile finger at Western Europe. “Very smooth. But I
can see what you’re angling for, and I say no. No way.”
“Angling for what?” Central America
asked.
“He wants us to open Edmonton’s
vac-train routes.”
“Count me out,” Asian Pacific said
quickly.
“Absolutely not,” East Asia agreed.
“We’ve got Dexter bottled up in one place. Keep him there. You’ll just have to
improve your surveillance techniques and track him down.”
“He’s goddamn invisible!” North
America stormed. “You saw what happened in Grand Central Station. There aren’t
any techniques to improve that can catch up with that kind of ability.”
“If we don’t re-open the vac-train
routes, then we’ll be condemning Edmonton and everyone in it to possession,”
Western Europe said. “And very probably removal from this universe. Remember
what happened to Ketton on Mortonridge. That’s what they’ll do to it. They
can’t survive here.”
“That outcome is certainly
acceptable to me,” North Pacific said. “We’ve discussed this through before.
Better to lose one arcology if that means saving the rest.”
“But we don’t have to,” Western
Europe insisted. “Dexter becomes visible to us when he’s moving. That’s when
he’s vulnerable.”
“He’s not visible,” South Pacific
said. “We know he’s moved simply by the destruction he leaves behind. I mean,
shit, blowing up the Eiffel Tower! Face it, we can’t catch him.”
“We have to make the attempt. It’s
the reason we exist, the only reason. If we cannot protect Earth from a single
possessed when we have the opportunity, especially because of political
cowardice, then we have failed.”
“I’m not buying into any of this
noblesse oblige crap, I never did. That might be your heritage, but it
certainly isn’t mine. We formed B7 out of sheer bloody minded self interest.
And you were a big part of that, don’t forget. We exist to protect our own
interests. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that means protecting Earth and
looking out for its citizens. Well bravo us. I don’t begrudge them that
expenditure. But this is not one of those benevolent times. This time we
safeguard ourselves against possession, and especially against Quinn bloody
Dexter. I’m sorry about the inhabitants, but Edmonton falls to this Night of
his. Probably Paris and the others as well. Tough. We’ll be safe, though.”
“I was wrong,” Western Europe said
coldly. “It’s not political cowardice. You’re frightened of him.”
“That’s beneath contempt,” South
Pacific sneered. “I’m not going to open the vac-trains simply because you
insult me.”
“I know that. I was just insulting
you anyway. You deserve it.”
“Big deal. Don’t tell me you’re not
making preparations to desert the sinking ship.”
“All of us are, as we all know. It
would be foolish not to. But for me it’s a last resort. To be perfectly honest,
starting afresh on some new world holds little appeal. I suspect the same
applies to the rest of you.”
The representations around the
table remained silent.
“Exactly,” Western Europe said. “We
have to defeat Dexter on the ground. Our ground.”
“By letting Edmonton fall, we are
defeating him,” Central America said. “He’ll vanish from the whole planet along
with the arcology.”
“He won’t. He’s too smart to fall
into that trap, and his agenda is different to the ordinary possessed. The
vac-trains will be opened again no matter how determined you all are. It’s only
a matter of time. I say we should lure him out into a target ground of our own
choosing.”
“He’s already exterminated four of
Banneth’s acolytes in her own headquarters,” Military Intelligence said. “We
know he keeps going back there, yet we still haven’t managed to kill the little
bastard. I don’t see how taking him to another arcology helps.”
“We can’t change Banneth’s
environment now, that would be too blatant. Dexter would be warned off. But we
can take her to a more suitable location for a strike.”
“You just said he’ll sacrifice his
vendetta against Banneth to achieve his greater objective,” Asian Pacific said.
“Do try to present a consistent argument, please.”
“I can get him out of Edmonton,”
Western Europe insisted. “The Kavanagh girls appearing at this stage will be an
irresistible enigma to him. He’ll have to follow them to find out what’s
happening. And they will be manoeuvred wherever I choose.”
“Well you needn’t try choosing my
territory,” South Pacific said.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. This
requires efficiency and total cooperation. Qualities apparently beyond your
ability to provide.”
“Lead him into your territory
then.”
“I intend to.”
“Then what are you whining about?”
“I don’t want any interference.
This requires finesse. If I initiate this operation, you stay out of it. No
surprise Presidential decrees wrecking my preparations. No media novas. We all
know what we’re capable of if we want to screw each other over. We’ve been at
it long enough in our other arenas, but this is not the time for those sort of
games.”
South Pacific looked from Western
Europe to North America. “You two do whatever you like. But you do it between
yourselves. Your territories are now embargoed, along with Bombay and
Johannesburg. Would you like to put a counter motion to the vote?”
“No,” Western Europe said. “I have
what I want.”
In the end Andy had to go back to
Liscard and ask for a further advance. Four week’s pay at seven and a half per
cent interest! He deliberately didn’t put a calculator program in primary mode,
didn’t want to know how long he was going to be shackled to Jude’s Eworld to
finance one date. But he could hardly ask Louise to pay for Genevieve. That
would be cheap.
This time when he walked into the
lobby of the Ritz, the concierge smiled pleasantly. Andy’s dinner jacket had
been loaned from someone he’d done repair work for a couple of months back;
midnight black with a reasonably fashionable cut. The white dress shirt he’d
borrowed from a fellow sellrat, along with the scarlet bow tie. His black shoes
came from a neighbour. Even the silk handkerchief in his top pocket was his
mother’s. In fact the only thing he wore of his own were his boxer shorts. He
could risk that, somehow he was pretty sure Louise wouldn’t get to see them
tonight.
Seven o’clock and she wasn’t there.
Six minutes past and he was debating if he should ask reception to call her
room. Eight minutes, and he knew he’d been stood up. Hardly surprising.
The lift doors opened. Louise was
wearing a full length gown of deep-blue fabric, accessorised by a small
rust-coloured waistcoat. No longer the breezy teenager who’d sauntered into
Jude’s Eworld needing assistance, her demeanour had gained twenty years. Andy
didn’t bother recording her image into a memory cell. No program could ever
capture that combination of beauty and sophistication. His own recollection of
this moment would stay with him throughout his entire life, he knew.
When he smiled at her, it was
almost in sadness. “Thank you for coming.”
Her answering expression was
uncertain, sensing somehow just how important this had become for him. “I’m
flattered to be asked, Andy.” She prodded Genevieve.
“Thank you very much for letting me
come along,” the little girl said. There was nothing in the voice that gave
hint of duplicity.
“That’s okay,” Andy said. “Hey, you
look great. Give us a twirl.”
Genevieve smiled in appreciation,
and put her arms out to turn a complete circle. Her scarlet dress flapped
about. A slim chain was fastened round her throat, its tarnished pendant
bobbing against her neckline. Andy looked straight at Louise. “Another five
years and the boys won’t know what hit them.”
“What do you mean?” Genevieve
asked.
“He means you’re very pretty,”
Louise told her.
“Oh.” Genevieve blushed, but still
managed to grin up at Andy.
Having her along wasn’t so bad,
after all, Andy found. In fact, she removed a lot of the tension that would
probably have come from being alone with Louise for the whole evening. It
wasn’t boy-girl, one on one; with him desperate to impress with every word. That,
he acknowledged, would have been an utter disaster.
He paid for the short taxi ride to
Covent Garden. The Lake Isle was one of a hundred restaurants in the area. It
had an antique frontage enclosing a small bar, with a seating area at the back
which was inexplicably large given the size of the neighbouring buildings, and
too shiny to be genuinely old. As they stepped inside, Louise tapped Andy’s
shoulder. “We’re going Dutch tonight. No arguments. I brought Gen along after
all. It wouldn’t be fair.”
The head waiter handed them over to
an assistant waiter, who showed them to a table. Glancing round, Louise thought
that they were possibly overdressed. But she couldn’t turn down the chance to
wear the blue dress, and Andy certainly didn’t complain. If eyes had been
hands, he would’ve crushed her.
“Did you find your friend?” he
asked once they were seated.
“Not yet. That detective you
recommended seemed quite good, though. Thank you.”
The wine list appeared. Louise
looked wistfully at the Norfolk Tears, not quite believing the price. She let
Andy choose; a dry white wine from the Jovian habitats, and sparkling mineral
water for Gen.
“You can have one glass of wine,”
Louise said when her sister started to look mutinous.
“Yes, Louise. Thank you, Louise.”
She stared the little girl down.
Gen had been threatened with dire retribution if she stepped out of line during
the meal.
It was a strange evening. Louise
enjoyed it for the knowledge it gave her. What it would really be like to live
in a vibrant arcology, and be asked out by boys. Dressing up. The taste of
exotic food. Conversation that wasn’t just about crops, relatives, and local
events; but of the momentous things facing the Confederation, and how the Navy
was coping, and the latest news from the Mortonridge Liberation campaign. She
had the freedom to say what she thought, based on her personal experience. To
have an astonishing tale to tell, and be listened to.
While it was happening, she could
actually forget how phony it all was. That she could never actually be that
girl about town, because she was due to be a mother. That Joshua had never seen
her dressed like this. How life could never be lived without a care anymore now
that the human race knew the beyond awaited. And Quinn Dexter, who stalked
Earth’s beautiful, awesome arcologies, ready to smash them into a trillion
pieces.
Over dessert she found herself
looking at Andy in what was near to envy. He could still have that life; chase
girls, go out partying with his friends, attend university, earn his degree, write
his programs, travel. Possibly. If the possessed didn’t win.
“Are you okay?” Andy asked. He’d
been in the middle of telling her about his plans to set up his own software
house when he’d raised enough money. This month’s dream.
“I’m sorry.” She put her hand on
top of his, and squeezed softly. “You probably won’t believe the cliché, but
this has been one of the nicest evenings of my whole life. I’m very grateful
you asked me out.” The look of utter longing he gave her in reply nearly made
her cry for what could never be. She caught their waiter’s attention. “Three
glasses of Norfolk Tears, please.”
Genevieve stopped attacking her
dessert bowl with a spoon in an attempt to scrape out the very last morsels of
chocolate orange soufflé. She smiled in hopeful astonishment.
“Yes, you, too,” Louise laughed. To
Andy she said: “My treat. If you’ve never had it, you should. It’s the only way
to end an evening as perfect as this.”
The drinks arrived in slim crystal
glasses on a silver tray. Louise sniffed gently at the bouquet. “Wessex County,
probably the Clayton estate.”
“Yes miss,” the startled waiter
said. “That’s right.”
The three of them raised their
glasses. “To living life, not wasting it,” Louise said.
They drank to that.
Louise received the datavise when they
were in the taxi heading back to the Ritz; a purple telephone handset icon
blinking silently at the corner of her vision (NAS2600 had thousands of symbols
and sounds to choose from—but this was the most familiar). The sense of
cosiness which the evening had engendered immediately shrank away. It couldn’t
be anything other than business.
Her neural nanonics acknowledged
the call, and Ivanov Robson’s icon tag replaced the purple telephone.
“I’ve got some good news for you,”
the detective datavised. “I’ve found Banneth.”
“Where?” Louise datavised back.
“She’s currently in Edmonton.”
“Thank you.” That was one of the
arcologies which the news had said was isolated. “Do you have an eddress for
her?”
“Certainly.” He datavised the file
over. “Louise, you may have a problem selling this story of yours to her. If
that happens, please call me. I might be able to help.”
“Of course, and thank you again.”
The doorman gave Andy a dubious
stare when they got back to the hotel. Louise saw him hesitate, full of his old
uncertainties, and felt an uncomfortably strong stab of sympathy. “Wait for me
inside the lobby,” she told Genevieve.
Her sister smiled mischievously up
at Andy, winked, then skipped inside.
Thankful no giggles had been
audible, Louise took a deep breath. “I have to go now, Andy.”
“Can I see you again?”
The amount of hope in his voice was
awful. I should never have agreed to come out tonight, she thought, he was
always going to misinterpret it. Yet for all his faults, he has a good heart.
“No, Andy, I’m sorry. I have this person I need to find, and I also have my
fiancé. I shall be leaving Earth as soon as I can. It wouldn’t be right, not
for either of us. I don’t want you to think this is something it isn’t.”
“I see.” His head drooped down.
“You can kiss me goodnight,
though,” she said shyly.
More in fear than joy, he pressed
himself against her, touching his lips to hers. When they parted, her mouth
crinkled up in compassion. “I really did enjoy tonight, Andy. Thank you.”
“If it doesn’t work with your
fiancé, and you come back . . .” he began optimistically.
“You’ll be top of my list.
Promise.”
He watched her disappear through
the doors, standing with his arms hanging limply at his side. The finality of
it was appalling. For one mad moment he wanted to rush after her.
“You’ll get over it, son,” the
doorman said. “Plenty more of them out there.”
“Not like her!” Andy shouted back.
The doorman shrugged, and smiled
with infuriating smugness.
Andy turned fast, and walked away
through the night-time crowds that were clogging the pavement. “I kissed her,
though,” he whispered. “I really did.” He gave an incredulous little guffaw as
the enormity of the contact finally registered. “I kissed Louise Kavanagh.”
Laughing broadly he set off towards Islington; he was far too broke to pay for
a metro trip.
Louise waited until Genevieve was
tucked up in bed before she called Banneth.
“Hello. You don’t know me, but I’m
Louise Kavanagh. I’m calling to warn you about someone called Quinn Dexter. Do
you know him?”
“Fuck off.” The contact was
cancelled.
Louise datavised Banneth’s eddress
to the room’s net processor again. “Look, this is important. I met Quinn Dexter
on Norfolk, and he’s going to . . .”
A red cross icon flashed
persistently as the contact was cancelled again. The next time Louise datavised
Banneth’s eddress she got a filter program which requested her icon tag. She
loaded it in, only to be told she wasn’t on the receiver’s approved reception
list. “Damnation!”
“What’s the matter?” Genevieve
peered over at her from the bed, duvet clutched round her shoulders.
“Banneth won’t talk to me. I don’t
believe this, after everything we’ve been through to warn her. How . . . How stupid.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Call Robson, I suppose.” She
datavised the detective’s eddress into the processor, wondering if the man was
psychic. Not a bad thing for a private eye.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ll
come right over.”
The cocktail lounge was a mistake.
Louise sat at a table by herself and ordered an orange juice while she waited for
Ivanov Robson to arrive. The decor was as polished as the rest of the hotel,
with honey-brown wooden panels and gold-framed mirrors covering the walls.
Chandeliers kept it well lit, although it seemed shady, like a woodland glade.
There were enough different bottles behind the rosewood bar to make the
shelving look like an art exhibition.
Whether it was the wine and Norfolk
Tears finally catching up with her, or just the superb cushioning of the deep
leather chair, Louise suddenly started to feel warm and drowsy. It didn’t help
that she had to deflect seemingly dozens of offers from young (and
not-so-young) men to buy her a drink and keep her company. She was worried that
she was being too sharp when she turned them down. Whatever would mother say?
One of the tailcoated waiters
eventually came over, an ancient man with large white sideburns who put her in
mind of Mr Butterworth. “Are you sure you want to stay here, miss?” he asked
kindly. “There are quieter rooms available for residents.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Ivanov
Robson said.
“Of course, sir.” The waiter bowed,
and backed away.
The giant detective’s gaze slid
along the line of men sitting up at the bar. All of them suddenly found
something else of interest.
“No offence, Louise, but if you’re
going to wear that kind of dress, you really shouldn’t be in a bar by yourself.
Not even here. It sends out some seriously strong signals.” He sat down in the
chair beside her, his bulk making the leather creak.
“Oh.” She looked down, only just
realizing she was still in the blue dress she’d worn as a treat for Andy. “I
think I may have had too much to drink. I went out for a meal with a friend
earlier on.”
“Indeed? I didn’t think you were
wearing it for my benefit. Though I would have been highly flattered. You look
quite gorgeous.”
Louise blushed. “Um . . . thank
you.”
“You do know your neural nanonics
have a suppression program to deal with a wee bit too much mouth-alcohol
interaction, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Well they do. Perhaps if you were
to put it into primary mode, this would be a more productive meeting.”
“Right.” She called up the control
architecture, and hunted round for the suppresser program. It took a couple of
minutes, but eventually the bar wasn’t so warm. Deep breaths conjured up the
kind of alertness she employed during difficult school exams.
A cut-crystal tumbler of whisky had
appeared on the small table at Ivanov’s side. He took a sip, watching her
intently. “Better now?”
“Yes. Thank you.” Though she was
unhappy about the dress; people were still giving her the kind of looks Andy
had, but without his endearing reticence.
“What happened with Banneth?”
Ivanov asked.
“She cut me off. I couldn’t tell
her anything.”
“Humm. Not entirely surprising. I
accessed several facts about her during my investigation that indicate she’s
not an average citizen. The Edmonton police have amassed a rather large file on
her activities. They believe she’s involved with some kind of criminal
organization; supplying illegal hormones and bitek products. Any mention of her
former colleagues is bound to make her prickly. And you were right about this
Dexter character, he was deported; the charge was aggravated resistance of
arrest. The cops suspected he was a courier for Banneth.”
“Now what do I do?”
“You have two options. One, you can
forget it and stay in London. We’re safe for now. I keep my ear close to the
ground, the possessed haven’t appeared here yet.”
“I can’t. Please don’t ask why, but
I have to give Banneth a proper warning. I didn’t come all this way to be
thwarted by the last mile.”
“I understand. In that case, I
reluctantly advise you to visit Edmonton. If you meet Banneth face to face
she’ll see you are neither a police entrapment agent, nor a nutcase. She’ll
take your warning seriously.”
“But Edmonton has been isolated.”
“Not any more.” He took a sip of
whisky, watching her closely. “The vac-trains have started running again. I
guess the authorities have eliminated the possessed, or think they have.”
“Quinn Dexter will be there,” she
said softly.
“I know. That’s why I advised you
to stay away before. However, if you’re set on this, I’ll accompany you and
provide what protection I can. If he’s as bad as you say he is, it won’t amount
to much. But it’s better than nothing.”
“You’d do that?”
“You’ll have to pay for it. But I
include bodyguard services in my job description.”
It still wasn’t over. Louise fought
to hold back the fear she felt at the prospect of walking into an arcology
where she was sure Quinn would visit. But dear Fletcher had been so adamant,
and she’d promised. “Do you know where Banneth is?”
“Yes. I have a contact in the
Edmonton police who’s keeping me informed. If you decide you want to do this,
we can go straight to her. You deliver your message, and we walk out. I doubt
that’ll take more than ten minutes. We could be back here in London in less
than five hours.”
“I can’t leave Gen. Not even for
that.”
“I’m sure the hotel can arrange for
someone to look after her tonight.”
“You don’t understand. She’s my
responsibility; Gen and I are all that’s left of our home, our family, maybe
even our whole planet. I can’t put her in any more danger. She’s only twelve
years old.”
“The danger is the same here as it
is in Edmonton,” he said levelly.
“No it isn’t. Just being in the
same arcology as Banneth is dangerous. Govcentral should never have opened the
vac-trains to Edmonton again.”
“I can get my hands on the kind of
weapon which the Liberation army is using on Mortonridge. They’re proven
against the possessed. That puts the odds back in our favour.”
She gave him a long look, puzzled
by his attitude. “It’s like you want me to go.”
“All I’m doing is explaining the
options to you, Louise. We agreed before that I know most of the ground rules
in this arena, didn’t we. This kind of mission is well inside my expertise.”
Maybe it was his sheer presence, or
just his intimidating size, but Louise certainly felt a lot safer with the
detective around. And everything he said did sound plausible.
She propped her forehead up against
a hand, surprised to find she was perspiring. “If we go, and I don’t like what
we find at Banneth’s home, then I’m not going in to meet her.”
Ivanov smiled gently. “If it’s so
bad that even you can see it’s wrong, I won’t let you go in.”
Louise nodded slowly. “All right.
I’ll go and fetch Gen. Can you book us some tickets?”
“Sure. There’s a vac-train in
thirty minutes. We can be at Kings Cross by then.”
She climbed to her feet, dismayed
at how tired she’d become.
“Oh, and Louise? Appropriate
clothing please.”
The AI picked up the deluge of
telltale glitches a few seconds before frantic citizens started to bombard
Edmonton’s police with emergency datavises about the army of the dead that had
risen to march through the centre of the dome. It was mid-afternoon, and the
sun shone down brightly from an admirable storm-free sky, illuminating the
scene perfectly. Cars and metro buses performed emergency braking manoeuvres as
their motors jammed and power cells failed. Their occupants spilled out,
sprinting away from the advancing possessed and sect acolytes. Pedestrians
hammered against closed doors, desperate for admission.
Quinn had spent most of the
afternoon carefully positioning his minions along the four main roads leading
to the sect’s headquarters. Ordinary acolytes were easy: dividing them into
pairs or threes, designating cafes and shops where they should wait, keeping
their weapons out of sight in bags or backpacks. The possessed were more
difficult; he had to identify deserted offices or empty ground-floor apartments
for them. A couple of non-possessed acolytes who’d been given basic didactic
electronics courses would break in and deactivate any processors they found,
leaving it safe for the possessed to wait inside. It had taken two hours to get
everyone into position. None of them complained, at least not to his face. They
all accepted that it was part of some grand strategy to bring about his Night.
The only thing standing in their way, he told them, was the sect headquarters
and the traitors inside.
With every possessed in Edmonton
assembled (except one, Quinn thought glumly), Quinn had given the order to
advance. If the supercops were as good as he suspected, then the response would
be swift and effective. None of the possessed, and few acolytes, would survive.
Quinn walked the first few paces
with his small doomed army as they flooded out into the streets, pulling out
their weapons and taking on a variety of gruesome appearances. Once everyone
was committed, he discreetly slipped away into the ghost realm.
Those civilians lucky enough to be
behind the possessed when they emerged slowed their retreat and glanced
nervously over their shoulders. The more commercially minded among them
contacted local media offices and began to relay sensevises. Anyone receiving
the show was presented with an astonishing display of defiance; the deliberate
flaunting of a prowess which even the possessed could never truly own. A
magnificent final charade, blowing their cover in a single grand fuck you gesture.
Entire offices of editorial staff froze in slack-jawed amazement at what they
were witnessing.
The marchers closed swiftly on the
unexceptional fifty-storey skyscraper. There were over a hundred in each of the
groups, spearheaded by the possessed. Elaborate, archaic warrior costumes
sparked and flashed, ripe with energistic power. Whenever they passed the
pillars which supported elevated roads, the air would seethe with wrestling
coils of miniature lightning bolts, grounding out through the metal amid
jittering spumes of molten droplets. Following close behind their silent deadly
leaders, the bulk of each group was made up by the non-possessed acolytes;
striding along blithely, weighed down by the largest pieces of weapons hardware
the covens had stashed away in their secret armouries.
None of them paid any attention to
the whimpering civilians scampering out of their way, they were focused on the
skyscraper alone. Vehicles littering the street ahead of them flared
electric-blue before bursting apart into a sleet of black granules. The army of
the damned walked through the smouldering wreckage. Again, it was all panache.
Showtime.
To the majority of Edmonton’s
citizens, the skyscraper that was the centre of their wrath was just a modest,
ordinary building divided into standard commercial and residential sections.
The police knew different, as did most of the locals. Rumours of the sect
presence inside began to filter back to the media anchors. But by then
professional rover reporters were on the scene, watching the police seal off
the area and armed squads take up position.
Sixty per cent of Earth’s
population was now on-line, waiting for the shoot out. The greatest audience in
history.
Inside the sect headquarters, the
senior acolytes broke open the armoury and began handing out heavy-calibre
chemical projectile rifles and machine guns to the acolytes. There was little
panic; the beleaguered sect members were almost glad they had a tangible enemy
at last. Banneth herself supervised setting up their defences. First she
established a ring of snipers peeking through the skyscraper’s windows, then
consolidated their heavier firepower around the convoluted barriers inside.
She hurried round all of them,
issuing orders and offering encouragement—never threats, not now. Quinn and the
possessed had become the new fear-figures. It was interesting that they had now
returned to her. After all Quinn had done to fill them with doubt and mistrust,
the random tortures and deaths he had silently enacted throughout the
headquarters had come to nothing in the end. They still believed that she was
the stronger of the two.
You realize this is probably a
diversion, don’t you? she
asked. He’s most likely planning to snatch me or kill me in the battle.
Possibly, Western Europe replied equitably. Personally,
I believe this pathetic conflict he’s staging is purely a case of collateral
slaughter while he achieves his real goal: escaping from our grasp.
Thanks. That makes me feel a lot
better.
Frightened? You?
Wouldn’t you be?
If I was physically in your
position, no doubt I would, yes. But I’m not, am I?
Don’t give me that natural
superiority crap.
I apologise.
Very magnanimous. Does that mean
you’ve got the SD platforms zeroed in on me?
I’m afraid so, yes. Again, I
doubt if we’ll have to use them. Quinn won’t reveal himself, not today.
Banneth took a look along the
familiar darkened corridors of the headquarters as she made her way back to her
own rooms. On her orders, they were lit with candles and crude chemical
batteries powering low-voltage halogen bulbs—technology the possessed would be
unable to glitch without considerable effort. Not that it particularly
mattered, she thought, we’re not protecting anything we can salvage. After
this, the headquarters would be no more. All her acolytes were doing was
fighting a delaying action until the police and B7 eliminated Quinn’s ersatz
invasion. But then, the sect was nothing more than a B7 creation anyway. A
convenient umbrella for them and her.
She walked through the temple
giving it a nostalgic look. The first rocket hit the skyscraper; a light EE
tipped anti-armour missile. Duffy fired it; Quinn had given him the honour of
opening the fighting as a reward for unswerving loyalty to the cause of Night.
The explosion sent shockwaves yammering through the skyscraper’s structure,
blowing out a huge crater on the northern corner and shattering hundreds of
surrounding windows. Huge lumps of rubble cascaded down onto the street to
smash apart in front of the possessed. The surviving snipers inside picked
themselves up and opened fire.
The vac-train carriage had seating
for a hundred. Louise, Genevieve, and Ivanov Robson were the only people using
it. In fact, Louise had only seen a dozen or so people milling about on the
platform at King’s Cross when they got on. She wasn’t sure if they were
passengers or station staff.
Despite her growing uncertainty,
and Gen’s sulky resentment, she’d followed the private detective in through the
airlock door. Even now there was something about him that reassured her. Even
beyond physical size, he had a self-confidence greater than Joshua. Which was
saying a lot. She settled back with dreamy thoughts of her fiancé filling her
mind. Although the seats were worn, they were comfortable; and her alcohol
suppresser program was off. Joshua had such a warm smile, she remembered. It
would be so nice to have it shine on her again.
“I love you, and I’m coming back
for you.” His words. Spoken to her when they were naked and alone, their bodies
clinging together. A promise that could be nothing but totally honest.
I will find him again,
despite all this horrid mess.
Her news hound program alerted her
to the situation developing in Edmonton. She went through Time Universe to
access a sensevise of the fight. And there she was, crouched behind one of the
abandoned buses, peering cautiously round the front at the crazy army marching
along the street. Dazzling white fireballs were pumping up from a dozen
upstretched hands, smacking into the skyscraper. Flames were roaring out of
windows and missile craters all the way up the first eight or nine stories.
Heavy-calibre guns were firing down in retaliation, pummelling the
carbon-concrete sidewalk with small intense topaz explosions. Several bodies
were scattered along the street, clothes still smouldering from beam weapon
scorches.
Figures began to race past the bus.
Police in dark-grey armour suits, hauling even larger automatic guns than those
in use up ahead. Their movements were arachnid, scuttling from cover to cover.
They began to fire; the discharge from their weapons a continuous howl ripping
into the delicate tissue of her inner ear. She started, hands halfway to her
ears before the reporter’s audio limiter program cut in. Then she was ducking
down as multiple explosions ploughed up the street. White fireballs flew
directly overhead.
Louise reduced the sensevise to
monitor function, bundling it away until it became a vivid real-time memory.
She looked at Ivanov. “Now what?” she asked. “They won’t let this train into
Edmonton now, will they? Surely?”
“They ought to. Access the overview
commentary. The possessed are concentrated in one area, and the police have
them contained. They’ve got enough firepower concentrated on them to
exterminate ten times as many as there are on the ground. Besides, if we were
being diverted, the train company would have told us immediately.”
Louise accessed the carriage’s
processor, and requested a schedule update. It reported that they were going to
arrive in Edmonton in forty-one minutes. “That doesn’t make any sense. The
authorities were paranoid about outbreaks before.”
“It’s politics. Edmonton is trying
to prove they don’t have a problem with the possessed; that they’re on top of
the situation.”
“But—”
“I know. They should have waited
until after this fight is over before any grand announcements. Being premature
with the good news is hardly new for Govcentral. As soon as the Edmonton
isolation was announced, a lot of highly connected lobbyists will have been
called in to pressure the president’s office and sympathetic senators to have
the vac-train lines re-opened. If Edmonton is taken out of the global economic
loop, all the companies in the arcology will start to fall behind their
competitors; and an entire arcology is a huge market for outside companies to
sell into; that’s a factor, too.”
“They’re endangering people because
of money?” Louise asked in astonishment. “That’s awful.”
“Welcome to Earth.”
“Don’t they understand what’ll
happen if the possessed get into other arcologies?”
“Of course they do. Now the
possessed have been exposed in Edmonton, there’ll be an equal amount of
pressure applied to close the vac-trains down again. Action and reaction,
Louise.”
“You mean we might not get out
after we arrive?”
“We will. There’ll be enough time.
I promised you: back home again in five hours. Remember?”
She glanced over at Gen, who was
sleeping, curled up in the seat, her small face scowling even as she dreamed.
“I remember.” Not that there was much she could do about her worries now. The
train was going to stop in the arcology. She hadn’t felt this out of control
since that first mad horse ride away from Cricklade the day Quinn Dexter
appeared.
That the fight around the
skyscraper would be uneven was never in doubt. Even so, the effectiveness of
the police tactical team was impressive. Heavy-calibre portable weapons deployed
by the front line were backed up by X-ray lasers from the rear support groups,
far enough back to resist glitching by the possessed. As a consequence, very
few possessed actually made it in to the skyscraper; and judging by the amount
of gunfire coming from inside, the sect members weren’t exactly a pushover.
That was where the commercial sensevise coverage ended. B7 immediately switched
to the surviving sensors in the headquarters, watching nervous, indistinct
figures creeping along dark smoke-filled corridors. One of them walked over a
grid with twenty thousand volts running through it. The body ignited into a
pillar of flame hot enough to melt the concrete corridor around it.
“Well, that’s a neat trick,”
Northern Europe said. “What kind of energy level is that, do you think?”
“Could be total chemical
conversion,” Central America suggested. “It can’t be a direct mass energy
reaction. That would eliminate the entire arcology.”
“Hardly relevant,” South Pacific
said.
“On the contrary,” Central America
said. “The more we learn of their ability, the closer we come to defeating
them.”
“You can hardly classify their
death throes as part of their ability.”
“All information is useful,”
Western Europe said, deliberately bleeding a note of snobbery in to his
representation’s voice. “We wouldn’t have had this kind of success without it.”
“Success?” South Pacific pointed at
the image above the conference table. The possessed had burnt out, leaving a
human sculpture of ash standing amid the drizzle of molten carbon-concrete. It
pitched over, disintegrating into a slush of grey flakes. “That’s a success;
Edmonton under siege from the possessed? May we please be preserved from your
failures.”
“By studying the data on Dexter we
determined his likely course of action. I told you he’d betray the remaining
possessed to us. This merely proves I was right all along.”
“And Edmonton is not under siege,”
North America said. “The police tactical teams have the possessed surrounded.”
“Wrong,” South Pacific said. “That
friend of Carter McBride won’t be among this group. You haven’t got him
surrounded.”
“He is not a threat to anyone other
than Dexter,” Western Europe said.
“Only in your book. As far as I’m
concerned, nothing has changed. One invisible possessed and one elusive
possessed are running round loose. Your territories remain embargoed.”
“Thank heavens for that. We all
know what would happen to Edmonton if you had any say in events over here.”
“At least with my way only one
arcology suffers. I can’t believe you’re willing to expose another to Dexter.”
“You can’t win at this level
without taking risks. And I do intend to win. Dexter is the epitome of all we
have fought against these last five hundred years. He is the yobbish anarchy
that B7 has successfully banished from this world. I’ll not have him return.
The investment in blood and money it has cost us must be honoured.”
“You sound like a third-rate
Shakespearean king the night before battle. Damn, and you accuse me of
arrogance.”
Banneth walked back into her
sanctum as the police tactical team searched through the rest of the sect
headquarters for any possessed that might have survived the assault. She knew
none had, but it wasn’t her place to interfere. The North American supervisor
had given the police commissioner instructions that she was to be left alone,
along with her suite of rooms. Senior officers had taken up position outside
the doors to enforce the order in case any of the tactical team turned bolshie.
People hyped high on adrenaline after a fight were liable to have a healthy
disregard for authority, especially where the possessed were concerned.
The rest of the sect, those that
had survived, weren’t so fortunate. Police officers, while sympathetic to their
erstwhile allies, were disarming and cuffing them. The temple was proving a
popular viewing point for awed, angry officers. Quinn’s last two victims were
still in there on show. And when the forensic crew got to work they’d find an
awful lot of DNA samples around the altar and in the drains. It was going to be
a busy night down at Edmonton’s justice hall.
The sanctum was a wreck. A couple
of lights had survived when the ceiling cracked open, hanging on their cables,
spinning slowly round and round. Clear fluid from the life support canisters
sloshed over Banneth’s shoes, several centimetres deep and tinged with blood.
Most of the canisters had been smashed, spilling their bizarre occupants on to
the floor. Their tubules had invariably torn out, depriving them of the vital
chemicals she was feeding into them, leaving the poor creatures to flop their
limbs (those that had any) feebly until death overcame them. The organs and
appendages that were simply being suspended until she found a use for them were
ruined.
Banneth picked up the oil painting
of Mary Shelley and tipped the broken glass out of its frame. Life-support
fluid had discoloured the canvas quite badly. She stared at the author’s drawn
face for a moment, then sighed and cast the painting aside. “How poetic,” she
said quietly. Her suspicions about the sanctum were strengthening. There was an
awful lot of damage considering it hadn’t taken a direct hit. If the structural
quakes and blastwaves from the explosions had been this powerful they ought to
have brought down the entire skyscraper.
Louise Kavanagh has arrived, Western Europe said. Please stick to the
scenario we worked out.
Sure. She knew her rebelliousness was coming through.
Not that it mattered. She certainly couldn’t evade the supervisors. That was
the bargain she’d shaken on all those years ago. Not that she’d ever suspected
it would come to this: a suicide bait. But when you sign in blood, you must
expect the devil to write the small print in his favour.
Go down to one of the lower
floors, Western Europe said. I
don’t want Louise to see your little dungeon of horrors. It’s important she
isn’t upset by you.
Banneth hesitated. Her legs
quivered, a pointed reminder of what this particular affinity bond was capable
of. If she refused, they would simply take her over and puppet her body.
Okay, God’s Brother I’m doing
it. Just don’t expect me to smile and say thanks. She turned slowly, gazing carefully round the
ruins. One last nostalgic look. A cool breeze drifted against her cheek,
causing the dangling lights to sway as they spun. The door was shut.
Is something the matter? North America asked.
No, she said, then relented. They could pick up on
her emotional state easily enough through affinity. Possibly. I think he
might be in here with me right now. I have the feeling I’m being watched. It’s
the spookiest thing. She projected a starched ironic smile.
Call out, Western Europe said excitedly. Challenge
him. Provoke him. Something. See if you can get him to materialize. We only
need a second.
“Quinn? Is that you, my little
darling? Are you here at last?” Banneth put out a hand and stroked the central
table, fingers lingering on the straps. “Have you come home to me? You’re not
afraid are you, my darling? I made you better than that. Remember that
beautiful pain that birthed you. I cleansed you of fear amid that pain so you
could serve God’s Brother properly. And you have, haven’t you. How you’ve grown
since I banished you. The very messiah of darkness, now. That’s what you claim,
isn’t it. But can you do what you claim, or have you become flawed? I can
correct that, Quinn, I can make you whole again. Submit to me. Return to me,
and I’ll love you in that very special way. Our way. Just like before.” She
held up the strap invitingly.
Quinn trembled in fury. He wanted
to take her there and then. Every word she spoke, each mocking syllable teased
out the memories of what she’d done to him. This room had been the place where
the real violations had been performed. His screaming and her silken laughter
mingling long into the nights. The urge to reverse those acts made his serpent
beast howl in torment as he denied himself. She should be the one bound
by those straps. He should be the one standing over the table.
His hands reached out to her, ready
to caress and crush.
An annoyed frown creased her face,
verging on petulance. “It’s no good,” she muttered. “The little prick can’t
hear me.”
Quinn leaned closer, puzzled. It
was as though she was talking to someone.
Banneth came to a decision, and
strode out of the door, anger evident in every tense muscle and furious
grimace. Her mind-tone was sullen and extremely fearful. It was similar to
those Quinn had perceived in his sacrificial victims. He followed her as she
stomped through the headquarters. Two police officers fell in beside her,
escorting her down the stairs. More proof of the treachery she had indulged in
at the expense of God’s Brother. As if he needed more.
They came to an office below the
headquarters edifice itself. The place belonged to an alcohol wholesaler, one
of the sect’s commercial fronts. And Quinn received the biggest shock of all
since he’d returned to Earth. The Kavanagh sisters were there, waiting for
Banneth.
Louise was amazed to find they’d
arrived at the skyscraper featured on the news sensevise. It did make her
wonder about Ivanov Robson, though. For a start, there was something very odd
about the way he was always right about things. And then there was this
“contact” he had inside the Edmonton police division. She could believe that
he’d worked with police departments before, and no doubt a few favours were
owed on both sides. But to pass so effortlessly through the cordon of armed
police around the skyscraper was hard to credit.
Nonetheless, the major in charge of
the tactical squad had been waiting to greet them when their taxi pulled up
fifty metres short from the rear of the buzzing crowd. Now it was safe,
thousands of Edmonton’s ordinary citizens had flocked in to soak up whatever
was left of the drama. Rover reporters and several district councillors formed
the inner wall, pressing against the barriers, shouting and datavising the line
of implacable police for snatches of information, or pleading to be allowed
just that fraction closer than their rivals.
Six tactical team officers fell in
around Louise’s party and cleared their way through the tightly packed crowd.
Inside the barriers, the fire department was doing most of the work. Hoses
snaked away from large tenders, trailing down from mechanoids that were
scampering across the vertical walls of the skyscraper, extinguishing the last
of the fires. The police were concerned only in bundling the surviving
combatants from both sides into secure trucks so they could be driven away to
the justice hall. One of them, a girl younger than Louise, was sobbing
hysterically, kicking and bucking violently as four officers carried her to a
waiting truck. She screamed: “The messiah lives! His Night will claim you all!”
as they flung her unceremoniously inside.
Just as they were going in through
the main entrance, three fully grown pigs rampaged out, squealing and grunting
as they raced down the broken stairs towards the street. Sweating, angry
officers chased after them. Louise simply stood aside and let them go past; it
was one of today’s milder insanities.
The major led them inside. Fire and
explosions had wrecked the lobby. Water and foam from the fire mechanoids was
pooling underfoot. Lighting came from temporary rigs set up at strategic
corners. None of the lifts or escalators were working. They went up four
flights of stairs before being shown into some kind of office that had escaped
any serious damage. Despite the fires, Louise felt chilly. The major left them,
and a strange-looking woman walked in.
At first Louise wasn’t entirely
sure she was a woman. Her jaw was strong enough to be male, although her feminine
figure countered the argument. And the way she walked, straightforward easy
strides, that was masculine, too. The oddest feature was her eyes with their
pink irises. When she looked at Louise, there was no hint of what she was
thinking.
“I don’t know who you people are,”
Banneth said. “But you must have a lot of clout to get in here right now.” She
stared at Genevieve. For the first time her face betrayed an emotion. “Very
strange,” she muttered in puzzlement.
“I have contacts,” Ivanov said
modestly.
“I’m sure you do.”
“My name is Louise Kavanagh. I
called you earlier, about Quinn Dexter. Do you remember?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“I think he may have done all this;
or at least sent people to do it. He told me he was coming back to Earth to get
you. I did try and warn you.”
Banneth’s gaze remained on
Genevieve, who was fingering her pendant. “So you did. My mistake for not
listening. Although as you can imagine, I have good reason to be sceptical.
Quinn was deported. I didn’t expect to see him again.”
“He really hated you. What did you
do to him?”
“We had several disagreements. As
you might have guessed, my occupation is outside the mainstream. I earn a
living by supplying certain items to people, which cannot be bought through
normal commercial channels. It’s an activity which has brought me into conflict
with the police on several occasions. Dear Quinn was one of my couriers. And he
rather stupidly got caught. That was the reason he was deported, in fact. I
expect he blames me for his sentence. I didn’t contribute to his defence; at
the time I was using my contacts to protect myself. His incompetence landed me
in a very difficult legal situation. So you see, the antipathy is mutual.”
“I’m sure it is,” Louise said. “But
he’s a possessed now, one of the strongest. That makes him very dangerous,
especially to you.”
Banneth gestured round. “I’m
beginning to appreciate that. Though I’m curious, why are you, someone I’ve
never met before, interested in saving me? I guarantee, I really am someone a
nice girl like you wouldn’t want to meet.”
Louise was beginning to ask herself
the same thing. Banneth was nothing like the image in her mind; she’d been
expecting a slightly older version of herself: innocent and bewildered. Not
this cold, criminal woman, whose every gesture and syllable was rich with
disdain. “He was obsessed with you, and people need to be warned what he’s
capable of. I’m frightened that once he’s murdered you, he’ll do to Earth what
he did to Norfolk. That was my home planet, you see.”
“How very noble and unselfish of
you, Louise. Behaviour no one on this planet is remotely accustomed to. Not in
this day and age.” She arched an eyebrow at Ivanov. “So what do you suggest I
do now?”
“I’m not sure,” Louise said. “I
just had to deliver the warning, I promised myself that. I didn’t really think
about afterwards. Can you convince the police to give you a twenty-four hour
guard?”
“I expect that if I told them a
possessed was hunting me, they’d probably show Quinn where I was, and laugh a
lot while they were doing it. I’ve used up every contact and legal resource I
had merely to avoid getting arrested for the crime of being in the same
building he attacked.”
“Then you’ll have to leave.”
“I can see this means a lot to you.
But the police have killed every possessed involved in the attack. I wouldn’t
worry. Quinn Dexter’s soul is back where it belongs, suffering badly in the
beyond.”
“You don’t know that,” Louise
insisted. “If any of them survived, it’ll be him. At least leave here until the
police confirm there are no more possessed left in Edmonton. If they didn’t get
him, he’ll come after you again. I know he will. He told me. Killing you is a
filthy obsession with him.”
Banneth nodded. Reluctantly, Louise
considered, as if there was something demeaning in taking advice from her. What
horrible snobbery. To think of everything I risked in coming to her aid, not to
mention the money it’s cost. Not even Fletcher would have bothered if he’d
known how awful she is.
“I suppose there’s no harm in
playing it safe,” Banneth said. “Unfortunately, Quinn knows all my associates
and safe houses here in the arcology.” She paused. “The vac-trains are open to
half of Europe and most of North America; though the rest of the world seems
more sceptical about Edmonton’s assurances. Good for them.”
“We’re going back to London this
evening,” Ivanov Robson said. “Do you know anyone there you can stay with?”
“Like you, I have contacts.”
“Okay, I can arrange for a police
tactical team to escort us back to the station. But once we get to London, you’re
on your own.”
Banneth gave an indifferent shrug.
Quinn watched the entire scene play
out, resisting the impulse to interfere at Banneth’s petty lies. He was
captivated, not just by what was said, but the emotional content behind the
words. Louise backed every word she spoke with intense fervour. Banneth was her
usual serene, egotistical self, a state she shared with the husky private
detective (which made Quinn highly suspicious of him). It was pure theatre. It
had to be. Yet it must be a paradox. Louise Kavanagh had no script, no
coaching; she believed what she was saying, that she had some higher mission to
save Banneth from him. That couldn’t be forged. The entire thing must have been
orchestrated by the supercops.
For whose benefit? That was the really
unnerving part.
There was no possible way Louise
could have found Banneth unless the High Magus wanted her to. The girl must
have been steered here by the supercops for one reason, to get Banneth out of
Edmonton. Yet Banneth was part of the supercop set-up, she didn’t need Louise
to tell her where to go. It didn’t make any sense.
One thing he couldn’t ignore, the
vac-trains were running again. Though that might be the trap, the reason for
this charade. To snare him on the ocean bed halfway between continents; even he
couldn’t get out of that. But how would they know if he was on board a specific
train?
He followed the group out of the
office and down the stairs, not really paying much attention. His mind was
savaging the possibilities. If they could detect me when I’m in this realm,
they would have done everything they could to destroy me. That means they
can’t. So this must be a ploy to lure me out. The supercops know I want
Banneth, so they’re using her as bait. The vac-train isn’t the trap; wherever
she goes in London is their kill arena. And that’s where they’ll be: this
planet’s strongest, most subtle line of defence against His Night.
Quinn smiled lustily and increased
the speed of his gliding walk through the ghost realm, determined not to let Louise
and her party out of his sight. After so many false starts, the true Armageddon
was beginning.
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