"Neutronium Alchemist - Conflict" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F.)

Chapter 08

Alkad Mzu hadn’t seen snow since she left Garissa. Back in those days she’d never bothered indexing a memory of winter in her neural nanonics. Why waste capacity? The season came every year, much to Peter’s delight and her grudging acceptance.

The oldest human story of all: I never knew what I had until I lost it.

Now, from her penthouse in the Mercedes Hotel, she watched it falling over Harrisburg, a silent cascade as inexorable as it was gentle. The sight made her want to go outside and join the children she could see capering about in the park opposite.

The snow had begun during the night, just after they landed at the spaceport, and hadn’t let up in the seven hours since. Down on the streets tempers were getting shorter as the traffic slowed and the pavements turned slippery with the slush. Ancient municipal mechanoids, backed up by teams of men with shovels, struggled to clear the deep drifts which blockaded the main avenues.

The sight didn’t exactly bode well. If the Tonala nation’s economy was so desperate that they used human labour to clean the streets of their capital . . .

So far Alkad had managed to keep her objective in focus. She was proud of that; after every obstacle thrown in her way she had proved herself resourceful enough to keep the hope alive. Even back on the Tekas she’d thought she would soon be retrieving the Alchemist.

Nyvan had done much to wreck her mood and her confidence. There were starships docked at the orbiting asteroids, and the local astroengineering companies could probably provide her with the equipment she wanted; yet the decay and suspicion native to this world made her doubt. The task was slipping from her grasp once more. Difficulties were piling up against her, and now she had no more fallback positions. They were on their own now: she, Voi, Lodi, and Eriba, with money as their only resource. True to his word, Prince Lambert had taken the Tekas out of orbit as soon as they’d disembarked. He said he was flying to Mondul, it had a strong navy, and he knew people there.

Alkad resisted accessing her time function. Prince Lambert must have made his third ZTT jump by now, and another potential security hazard was no more.

“That’s a new one,” Eriba announced. He was stretched out along the settee, bare feet dangling over the armrest. It meant he could just see the holoscreen on the far wall. A local news show was playing.

“What is?” Alkad asked him. He had been consuming news ever since they arrived, switching between the holoscreen and the communications net’s information cores.

“Tonala has just ordered every border to be closed and sealed. The cabinet claims that New Georgia’s actions are overtly hostile, and other nations can’t be trusted. Apparently, the SD networks are still blasting each other with electronic warfare pulses.”

Alkad grimaced. That clash had been going on when the Tekas arrived. “I wonder how that affects us? Are those the land borders, or are they going to prohibit spaceflight as well?”

“They haven’t said.”

The door chimed as it admitted Voi. She strode into the big living room shrugging out of her thick navy-blue coat and shaking grubby droplets of melted snow on the white carpet. “We’ve got an appointment for two o’clock this afternoon. I told the Industry Ministry we were here to buy defence equipment for the Dorados, and they recommended the Opia company. Lodi ran a check through the local data cores, and they own two asteroid industrial stations along with a starship service subsidiary.”

“That sounds promising,” Alkad said guardedly. She had left all the organization to Voi. The agencies would be looking for her; zipping around town would be asking for trouble. As it was, using the Daphine Kigano passport when they arrived was a risk, but she didn’t have any others prepared.

“Promising? Mary, it’s spot on. What do you want, the Kulu Corporation?”

“I wasn’t criticising.”

“Well it sounded like it.”

Voi had slowly reverted to her original temper during the voyage. Alkad wasn’t sure if the waspy girl was recovering from her father’s death or reacting to it.

“Has Lodi found out if there are any suitable starships for hire?”

“He’s still checking,” Voi said. “So far he’s located over fifty commercial vehicles stranded insystem due to the quarantine. Most of them are docked in low orbit stations and the asteroid ports. He’s running performance comparisons against the requirements you gave us. I just hope he can find us one at a Tonala facility. Did you hear about the border restrictions? They’re even closing down net interface points with the other nations.”

“That’s a minor problem compared to the one we’ll have crewing the ship.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our flight is not the kind of job you normally give mercenaries. I’m not sure money will guarantee loyalty for this mission.”

“Why didn’t you say so, then? Mary, Alkad, how can I help if you keep complaining after the fact? Be more cooperative.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Alkad said mildly.

“Is there anything else we should know?”

“I can’t think of anything, but you’ll be the first to be told if I do.”

“All right. Now, I’ve arranged for a car to take us to Opia’s offices. The security company which supplied it is also providing bodyguards. They will be here in an hour.”

“Good thinking,” Eriba said.

“Elementary thinking,” Voi shot back. “We’re foreigners who have arrived in the middle of an Assembly-imposed quarantine. That’s hardly an optimum low-visibility scenario. I want to downgrade our risk to a minimum.”

“Bodyguards ought to help, then,” Alkad said prosaically. “You should go and take a rest before we visit Opia. You haven’t slept since we landed. I’ll need you to be fresh for the negotiations.”

Voi gave a distrustful nod, and went into her bedroom.

Alkad and Eriba exchanged a glance and smiled simultaneously.

“Did she really say low-visibility scenario ?” he asked.

“Sounded like it to me.”

“Mary, that detox therapy was a bad idea.”

“What was she like before?”

“About the same,” he admitted.

Alkad turned back to the window and the snow softening the city skyline.

The door chimed again.

“Did you order something from room service?” she asked Eriba.

“No.” He gave the door a worried look. “Do you think it’s the bodyguards Voi hired?”

“They’re very early, then; and if they’re professional they would datavise us first.” She picked up her shoulder bag and selected one of the devices inside. When she datavised the penthouse’s net processor to access the camera in the corridor outside there was no response. The cut crystal wall lights began to flicker. “Stop!” she told Eriba, who had drawn his laser pistol. “That won’t work against the possessed.”

“Do you think . . .”

He trailed off just as Voi burst back into the lounge. She was gripping a maser carbine tight in her hand.

The penthouse’s entrance door swung open. Three people were standing behind it, their features lost in the darkened corridor.

“Do not come in,” Alkad said loudly. “My weapons will work, even against you.”

“Are you quite sure, Doctor?”

Sections of Alkad’s neural nanonics were dropping out. She datavised a primer code at the small sphere she held in her hand before she lost even that ability. “Fairly sure. Do you want to be the first experimental subject?”

“You haven’t changed; you were always so confident you were right.”

Alkad frowned. It was a female voice, but she couldn’t place it. She didn’t have the processing power left in her neural nanonics to run an audio comparison program. “Do I know you?”

“You used to. May we come in, please? We really aren’t here to harm you.”

Since when did the possessed start saying please? Alkad thought the circumstances out and said: “It only needs one of you to speak. And if you’re not a threat, stop glitching our electronics.”

“That last request is difficult, but we will try.”

Alkad’s neural nanonics started to come back on-line. She quickly re-established full control over the device.

“I’ll call the police,” Voi datavised. “They can send a Tac Squad. The possessed won’t know until it’s too late.”

“No. If they wanted to hurt us, they would have done it by now. I think we’ll hear what she has to say.”

“You shouldn’t expose yourself to a negative personal safety context. You are the only link we have to the Alchemist.”

“Oh, shut up,” Alkad said aloud. “All right, come in.”

The young woman who walked into the penthouse was in her early twenties. Her skin was several shades lighter than Alkad’s, though her hair was jet black, and her face was rounded by a little too much cellulite for her to be pretty; it fixed her expression to one of continual shy resentment. She wore a long tartan-print summer dress, with a kilt-style skirt that had been the fashion on Garissa the year of the genocide.

Alkad ran a visual comparison program search through her memory cells. “Gelai? Gelai, is that really you?”

“My soul, yes,” she said. “Not my body. This is just an illusion, of course.” For a moment the solid mirage vanished, revealing a teenaged Oriental girl with fresh jagged scars on her legs.

“Mother Mary!” Alkad croaked. She’d hoped the tales of torture and atrocity were just Confederation propaganda.

Gelai’s usual profile returned. The flicker of exposure was so fast, it made Alkad’s mind want to believe Gelai’s was the true shape; the abused girl was something decency rejected.

“What happened?” Alkad asked.

“You know her?” Voi demanded indignantly.

“Oh, yes. Gelai was one of my students.”

“Not one of your best, I’m sorry to say.”

“You were doing all right, as I recall.”

“This enhances stress relief nicely,” Voi said. “But you haven’t told us why you’re here.”

“I was killed in the planet-buster attack,” Gelai said. “The university campus was only five hundred kilometres from one of the strikes. The earthquake levelled it. I was in my residence hall when it hit. The thermal flash set half of the building alight. Then the quake arrived; Mary alone knows how powerful it was. I was lucky, I suppose. I died in the first hour. That was reasonably quick. Compared to a lot of them, anyway.”

“I’m so sorry,” Alkad said. She had rarely felt so worthless; confronted by the pitiful evidence of the greatest failure it was possible to have. “I failed you. I failed everybody.”

“At least you were trying,” Gelai said. “I didn’t approve at the time. I took part in all the peace demonstrations. We held vigils outside the continental parliament, sang hymns. But the media said we were cowards and traitors. People actually spat on us in the streets. I kept going, though, kept protesting. I thought if we could just get our government to talk to the Omutans, then the military would stop attacking each other. Mary, how naive.”

“No, Gelai, you weren’t naive, you were brave. If enough of us had stood for that principle, then maybe the government would have tried harder to find a peaceful solution.”

“But they didn’t, did they?”

Alkad traced Gelai’s cheeks with her finger, touching the past she’d thought was so far behind her, the cause of the present. Feeling the ersatz skin was all she needed to know she had been right to do what she’d done thirty years ago. “I was going to protect you. I thought I’d sold my very soul so that you would all be safe. I didn’t care about that. I thought you were worth the sacrifice; all you bright young minds so full of the silliest hopes and proudest ideals. I would have done it, too, for you. Slain Omuta’s star, the biggest crime in the galaxy. And now all that’s left of us are the ones like these.” She waved a hand limply at Voi and Eriba. “Just a few thousand kids living in rocks that mess with their heads. I don’t know which of you suffered the worst fate. At least you had a taste of what our people might have achieved if we’d lived. This new generation are just poor remnants of what they could’ve been.”

Gelai puffed up her lips and stared firmly at the floor. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I came here. Warn you or kill you.”

“And now?”

“I didn’t realize why you were doing it, why you went off to help the military. You were this aloof professor that we were all a bit in awe of, you were so smart. We respected you so much, I never gave you human motives, I thought you were a lump of chilled bitek on legs. I see I was wrong, though I still think you are wrong to have built anything as evil as the Alchemist.”

Alkad stiffened. “How do you know about the Alchemist?”

“We can see this universe from the beyond, you know. It’s very faint, but it’s there. I watched the Confederation Navy trying to get people off Garissa before the radiation killed them. I’ve seen the Dorados, too. I even saw you a few times in Tranquillity. Then there are the memories that we tear from each other. Some soul I encountered knew about you. Perhaps it was more than one, I don’t know. I never kept count; you don’t, not when you do that hundreds of times a day. So that’s how I know what you built, although no one knows what it is. And I’m not the only one, Doctor; Capone knows about it too, and quite a few other possessed.”

“Oh, Mother Mary,” Alkad groaned.

“They’ve shouted into the beyond, you see. Promised every soul bodies if they cooperated in finding you.”

“You mean the souls are watching us now?” Voi asked.

Gelai smiled dreamily. “Yes.”

“Fuck!”

Mzu glanced at the penthouse’s door, which was closed on Gelai’s two companions. “How many possessed are on Nyvan?”

“Several thousand. It will belong to us within a week.”

“That doesn’t leave us much time,” Alkad said.

Voi and Eriba were starting to look panic-stricken.

“Forget the Alchemist,” Voi said heatedly. “We must get ourselves outsystem.”

“Yes. But we have a few days grace. That gives us time to be certain about our escape, we can’t afford a mistake now. We’ll charter a ship as we always intended; Opia’s service subsidiary can do that for us. But I don’t think there will be enough time to have the carrier built. Ah well, if it comes to it, we can always load the Alchemist onto a combat wasp.”

“You can fit it on a combat wasp?” Voi was suddenly intrigued. “Just how big is it?”

“You don’t need to know.”

The tall girl scowled.

“Gelai, will you warn us if any of the possessed come close?”

“Yes, Doctor, we’ll do that much. For a couple of days anyway, just while you find a ship. Are you really going to use the Alchemist after all this time?”

“Yes, I am. I’ve never been as sure about it as I am now.”

“I don’t know if I want you to, or not. I can never accept that revenge wrought on such a scale is right. What can it ever achieve except make a few bitter old refugees feel better? But if you don’t use it against Omuta, then someone else will take it from you and fire it at another star. So if it must be fired, then I suppose I’d rather it was Omuta.” Naked distress swarmed over her face. “Funny how we all lose our principles at the end, isn’t it?”

“You haven’t,” Alkad told her. “Killed by the Omutans, thirty years in the beyond, and you would still spare them. The society that can produce you is a miracle. Its destruction was a sin beyond anything our race had committed before.”

“Except perhaps possession.”

Alkad slipped her arms around the distraught girl and hugged her. “It will be all right. Somehow, this dreadful conflict will finish up without us destroying ourselves. Mother Mary wouldn’t condemn us to the beyond forever, you’ll see.”

Gelai broke away to study Mzu’s face. “You think so?”

“Strange as it seems for a semi-atheist, yes. But I know the structure of the universe better than most, I’ve glimpsed order in there, Gelai. There has always been a solution to the problems we’ve posed. Always. This won’t be any different.”

“I’ll help you,” Gelai said. “I really will. We’ll make sure all three of you get off the planet unharmed.”

Mzu kissed her forehead. “Thank you. Now what about the two who came with you, are they Garissans as well?”

“Ngong and Omain? Yes. But not from the same time as me.”

“I’d like to meet them. Ask them to come in, then we can all decide what to do next.”

“What bloody high life?” Joshua challenged. “Listen, I risked everything—balls included—to earn the money to refit Lady Mac . You wouldn’t catch me crawling to the banks and finance companies like you did. True Calverts are independent. I’m independent.”

“How we established ourselves was due entirely to circumstances,” Liol retorted. “My only prospect came from the Dorados Development Agency grants. And by God did I take it. Quantum Serendipity was built up from nothing. I’m self-made and proud of it, I wasn’t born with your kind of privileges.”

“Privileges? All Dad left me was a broken down starship and eighteen years unpaid docking fees. Hardly a plus factor.”

“Crap. Just living in Tranquillity is a privilege which half of the Confederation aspires to. A plutocrat’s paradise floating in the middle of a xenoc gold mine. You were never not going to make money. All you had to do was stick your hand out to grab a nugget or two.”

“They tried to kill me in that fucking Ruin Ring.”

“Then you shouldn’t have been so sloppy, should you? Earning your wealth is always only half of the problem. Hanging on to it, now that’s tough. You should have taken precautions.”

“Absolutely,” Joshua purred. “Well I’ve certainly learned that lesson. I’m hanging on to what I’ve got now.”

“I’m not going to stop you from captaining Lady Mac . But . . .”

“If it’s of any interest ,” Sarha announced loudly. “We’ve emerged in the middle of a hostile electronic environment. I’ve got two of Nyvan’s SD networks asking for our flight authorization at the same time they’re saturating our sensors with overload impulses.”

Joshua grunted disparagingly, and returned his attention to the datavised displays from the flight computer. He chided himself for the lapse, it wasn’t like him not to pay attention to the jump emergence sequence. But when you’ve got a so-called brother with a lofriction conscience . . .

Sarha was right. Space between Nyvan and its orbiting asteroids was being subjected to a variety of powerful electronic disruption effects. Lady Mac ’s sensors and discrimination programs were sophisticated enough to pierce most of the clutter; Nyvan’s SD networks were using archaic techniques, it was the sheer wattage behind them that was causing the trouble.

With Sarha’s help, Joshua managed to locate the network command centres and transmit Lady Mac ’s standard identification code, followed by their official Tranquillity flight authorization. Only Tonala and Nangkok responded, giving him permission to approach the planet. New Georgia’s SD network, based at Jesup, remained silent.

“Keep trying them,” Joshua told Sarha. “We’ll head in anyway. Beaulieu, how are you doing tracing the Tekas ?”

“Give me a minute more, Captain, please. This planet has a very strange communications architecture, and their usual interfaces seem to be down today. I expect that is a result of the network barrage. I am having to access several different national nets to find out if the ship arrived.”

On the other side of the bridge from the cosmonik, Ashly snorted bitterly. “Boneheads, nothing on this damned world ever changes. They always brag about how different they are to each other; I never noticed myself.”

“When were you here last?” Dahybi asked.

“About 2400, I think.”

Joshua watched Liol slowly turn his head to look at the pilot; his eyebrow was raised in quizzical dissension.

“When?” Liol asked.

“Twenty-four hundred. I remember it quite well. King Aaron was still on Kulu’s throne. There was some kind of dispute between Nyvan’s countries because the Kingdom had sold one of them some old warships.”

“Right,” Liol said. He was waiting for the punch line.

Lady Mac ’s crew propagated dispassionate expressions right across the bridge.

“I’ve found a reference,” Beaulieu said. “The Tekas arrived yesterday. According to Tonala’s public information core it had an official flight authorization issued by the Dorados council. It docked at one of their national low orbit stations, the Spirit of Freedom , then departed an hour later; with a flight plan filed for Mondul. Four people disembarked, Lodi, Voi, Eriba, and Daphine Kigano.”

“Jackpot,” Joshua said. He datavised traffic control for an approach vector to the Spirit of Freedom . After the eighth attempt, traffic control confirmed contact through the jamming and gave him a vector.

Spirit of Freedom was Tonala’s main low-orbit civil spaceport, orbiting seven hundred and fifty kilometres above the equator. A free-floating hexagonal grid two kilometres in diameter and a hundred metres thick. Tanks, lounges, corridor tubes, thermal-dump panels, and docking bays were sandwiched between the framework of grey-white alloy struts, tapering spires extended out from each corner, tipped with a cluster of fusion drive tubes to hold the structure’s attitude stable.

As well as a port for commercial starships and cargo spaceplanes, it was also the flight hub for the huge tugs which brought down the metal mined from Floreso asteroid. Several of the heavy-duty craft were keeping station alongside the Spirit of Freedom as Lady Mac approached; open lattice pyramids with a clump of ten big fusion drive tubes at the tip, and load attachment points at each corner.

They were designed to ferry down four ironbergs apiece. Seventy-five thousand tonnes of spongesteel: incredibly pure metal foamed with nitrogen while it was still in its molten state. Floreso’s industrial teams solidified it into a squat pear shape, with a base that was scalloped by twenty-five gently rounded ridges. After that, the ironbergs were attached to the tugs for a three-week flight, spiralling down into a slightly elliptical two-hundred-kilometre orbit. For the last two days of the voyage, electric motors in the load attachment points would spin them up to one rotation per minute. In effect, they became the biggest gyroscopes in the galaxy, their precession keeping them perfectly aligned as they flew free along the final stretch of their trajectory.

Injecting the ironbergs into the atmosphere was an inordinately difficult operation for the tugs, requiring extreme precision. Each ironberg had to be at the correct attitude, and following its designated flight path exactly, so that its blunt base could strike the upper atmosphere at an angle which would create the maximum aerobrake force. Once its velocity started to drop off, gravity would pull it down in a steepening curve, which created yet more drag, accelerating the whole process. Hypersonic airflow around the scalloped base would also perpetuate the spin, maintaining stability, keeping it on track.

If everything went well—if the asteroid crews had got the internal mass distribution balanced right, if the injection point was correct—the ironberg would be aerobraked to subsonic velocity about five kilometres above the ocean. After that, nothing else mattered, no force in the universe could affect that much mass hanging in the sky in a standard gravity field. It fell straight down at terminal velocity to splash into the water amid an explosion of steam that resembled the mushroom cloud of a small nuclear bomb. And there it bobbed among the waves, its foamed interior making it buoyant enough to float without any aids.

When all four ironbergs from one tug had splashed down, the recovery fleet would sail in. The ironbergs would be towed into a foundry port ready to be broken up and fed to Tonala’s eager mills. An abundant supply of cheap metal, obtained without any ecological disturbance, was a healthy asset to the nation’s economy.

So not even the chaotic electronic war being fought between the SD networks was allowed to interrupt the operation. The tugs around the Spirit of Freedom continued to receive their regular maintenance schedule. SII-suited engineering crews crawled over the long struts, while MSVs and tankers drifted in close attendance. The service craft were the only other vehicles flying apart from Lady Mac . Joshua had a trouble-free approach, making excellent time. As they flew over the station, sensors showed him eleven other starships nestled snugly in the docking bays.

The inspection from port officers was one he was expecting; checking everyone on board for possession, then going through the life-support capsules and the two ancillary craft with electronic warfare blocks to make sure there were no unexplained glitches. Once they’d been cleared, Joshua received an official datavised welcome from Tonala’s Industry Ministry, with an invitation to discuss his requirements and how local firms could help. They were also authorized to fly Lady Mac ’s spaceplane down to Harrisburg.

“I’ll take a pair of serjeants, Dahybi, and Melvyn,” Joshua announced. “You too, Ashly, but you stay in the spaceplane in case we need evacuating. Sarha, Beaulieu, I want Lady Mac maintained at flight-ready status. Same procedure as before, we may have to leave in a hurry, so keep monitoring groundside, I want to be told if and when the crap hits the fan.”

“I can come with you,” Liol said. “I know how to handle myself if it gets noisy down there.”

“Do you trust my command judgement?”

“Of course I do, Josh.”

“Good. Then you stay up here. Because my judgement is that you won’t follow my orders.”

It was dark in Jesup’s biosphere cavern now, a permanent joyless twilight, and cold. Quinn had ordered it so. The solartubes strung out along the axial gantry were producing an enfeebled opalescent glow, whose sole purpose was to show people where they were going.

As a result, an impossible autumn had visited the lush tropical vegetation. After a futile search twisting around on their stems in search of light, the leaves were yellowing. In many places they had begun to fall, their edges crisping black from the bitter air. Already the neat filigree of pretty streams was clogging with soggy mush, overspill channels were blocked, pools were flooding the surrounding ground.

The experience of accelerated decay was one which Quinn savoured. It demonstrated his power over his surroundings. No reality dysfunction this, making things different as long as you didn’t blink. This was solid change, irreversible. Potent.

He stood before the stone altar which had been built in the park, studying the figure bound to the inverted cross on top. It was an old man, which in some ways was good. This way Quinn confirmed his zero-rated compassion; only children held equal status.

His loyal disciples stood in a circle around him, seven of them clad in blood-red robes. Faces shone as bright as their minds, fuelled by greed and ominous desire.

Twelve-T was also in attendance, sagging with the formidable burden of merely staying alive. His maltreated head was permanently bowed now. No possessed was imposing change upon him, but he was becoming almost Neanderthal in his posture.

Outside the elite coterie the acolytes formed a broad semicircle. All of them were wearing grey robes with the hoods thrown back. Their faces illuminated by the unnaturally hot bonfires flanking the altar, a flickering topaz light caressing their skin with fake expressions.

Quinn could sense several ghosts standing among them. They were frightened and demoralized as always and, as he had discovered, utterly harmless. They were completely unable to affect any aspect of the physical world. Trivial creatures with less substance than the shadows they craved.

In a way he was glad they were attending. Spying. This ceremony would show them what they were dealing with. They could be tyrannized, he was sure, in that they were no different from any other human. He wanted them to realize that he would never hesitate to inflict what pain he could upon them if they chose not to obey.

Satisfied, Quinn sang: “We are the princes of the Night.”

“We are the princes of the Night,” the acolytes chorused, it was a sound similar to the threat of thunder beyond the horizon.

“When the false lord leads his legions away into oblivion, we will be here.”

“We will be here.”

The old man was shaking now, moving his lips in prayer. He was a Christian priest, which was why Quinn had selected him. A double victory. Victory over the false lord. And victory for the serpent beast. Taking a life for no reason other than you wished it, for the pain it would cause others.

Such sacrifices had always focused on authority and its enforcement. A spectacle to coerce the weak. In pre-industrial times, this rite might have been about the summoning of dark witchcraft; but in an age of nanonic technology man had long surpassed magic, black or white. The sect arcology had known and encouraged the value of image, the psychology of precise brutality. And it worked.

Who now among this gathering would stand to challenge him? It was more ordination than anything else, confirming his right to reign.

He held out a hand, and Lawrence placed the dagger in his palm. Its handle was an elaborate ebony carving, but the blade was plain carbotanium and very sharp.

The priest cried out as Quinn slid the tip into his paunchy abdomen. It deepened to a whimper as Quinn recited: “Accept this life as a token of our love and devotion.”

“We love you, and devote ourselves to you, Lord,” growled the acolytes.

“God grant you deliverance, son,” the priest choked.

Blood was running down Quinn’s arm, splattering the altar. “Go fuck yourself.”

Lawrence laughed delightedly at the priest’s anguish. Quinn was immensely proud of the boy; he’d never known anyone to offer himself up to God’s Brother so unreservedly.

The priest was dying to the harsh cheers of the acolytes. Quinn could sense the old man’s soul rising from the body, twining like smoke in a listless sky to vanish through a chink in reality. He pressed himself forwards to lick ravenously at the ephemeral stream with a narrow black tongue, enraptured.

Then another soul was pushing back down the trickle of energy, surging into the body.

“Shithead!” Quinn spat. “This body is not for you. It is our sacrament. Get the fuck out of it.”

The skin on the priest’s upside-down face began to flow like treacle. The features twisted themselves through a hundred and eighty degrees so that the mouth was superimposed on the forehead. Then the skin hardened again and the eyes snapped open.

Quinn took a pace back in surprise. It was his own face staring at him.

“Welcome to the beyond, you little prick,” it told him. Then it smiled wickedly. “Remember this part?”

A streamer of white fire lashed out of the knife which was plunged deep into the priest’s chest. It struck Twelve-T’s right arm, puncturing his chrome and steel wrist. The smoking mechanical hand dropped to the floor, fingers waggling as if they were playing piano keys. His wrist joint was reduced to a jagged bracelet of metal with green hydraulic fluid spraying out, and the frayed end of a power cable fluttering about.

“Do it!” the forged face yelled.

Twelve-T lunged towards Quinn, shoving his broken arm forwards. A mad smile cracked his face.

Lawrence wailed: “No,” and flung himself into Twelve-T’s path.

The broken wrist joint rammed into Lawrence’s throat. A bright spark of electricity twinkled at the end of the ragged power cable as it touched the boy’s skin.

Lawrence shrieked as his whole body silently detonated into sunlight brilliance. He froze with his arms still outstretched, a frantic expression etched on his face. The light was so fierce he became translucent—a naked angel bathing in the heart of a star. Then his extremities began to shrivel, turning black. He had time to shriek once more before the internecine fire ate him away.

The dreadful light shrank, revealing a patch of baked earth and droppings of fine white ash. Twelve-T lay next to it where he had stumbled, the fall jolting his brain out of his half skull like wine from a goblet. It was rolling over the grass.

“Ah well,” said the forged face. “I guess we both lost this time around. Be seeing you, Quinn.” It began to untwist, reverting to the priest’s startled death rictus. The incursive soul flowed away, retreating into the beyond.

“COME BACK!” Quinn roared.

There was a last ironic laugh, and his tormenter was gone.

For all his power and strength, there was nothing Quinn could do. Absolutely nothing. His impotence was an agonizing humiliation. He screamed, and the altar shattered, sending the priest’s battered body tumbling. The acolytes began to run. Quinn kicked Twelve-T’s brain, and the grisly organ burst apart, sending a splat of gore across his terrified disciples. He turned back and discharged a bolt of searing white fire into the priest’s remnants. The body ignited instantly, but the flames were only an effete mockery of the incendiary heat which had consumed Lawrence.

The disciples shrank away as Quinn sent blast after blast of white fire into the pyre, reducing the body and the crumbling stones to radiant magma. When they reached the boundary of light given off from the bonfires, they too turned and fled after the acolytes.

Only the ghosts remained, safe from the fury of the black-robed figure in their secluded lifeless realm. After a while they saw him sink to his knees and make the sign of the inverted cross on his chest.

“I will not fail you, my Lord,” he said quietly. “I will quicken the Night as I promised. All I ask as the price of my soul is that when it has fallen you bring me the fucker who did this.”

He rose and made his way out of the park. This time he was truly alone. Even ghosts quailed before the terrifying thoughts alight inside his head.

Hoya was the first of the four voidhawks to emerge above Nyvan. Niveu and his crew immediately began scanning the local environment for threats.

“No ships within twenty thousand kilometres,” he said, “but the SD networks are shooting off electronic warfare blitzes at each other. Looks like the nations are in their usual confrontational state.”

Monica accessed the sensor suite in the voidhawk’s lower hull, and the starfield projected into her mind came alive with vivid coloured icons. Two more voidhawks were holding formation a hundred kilometres away. As she watched, another wormhole terminus opened to disgorge the fourth. “Are we being targeted by the platforms?” she asked. She appreciated the way the Edenists unfailingly spoke out loud in her presence, keeping her informed. But their display symbology was very different to that used by the Royal Navy, she hadn’t quite mastered the program yet.

“There are very few specific targets,” Samuel said. “The networks appear intent on jamming and disrupting every processor out to geosync orbit.”

“Is it safe for us to approach?”

Niveu shrugged. “Yes. For now. We’ll monitor the local news to find out what’s going on. If there’s any indication of them advancing the hostilities to an active stage, I’ll review the situation again.”

“Does your service have any stations down there?” she asked Samuel.

“There are some assets, but we don’t have any active operatives. We don’t even have an embassy. There’s no gas giant in this system, it was colonized long before their presence was deemed necessary to develop an industrialized economy. Frankly, the price of having to import all their He3 is partly responsible for Nyvan’s current state.”

“It also means we have no backup,” Niveu said.

“Okay, let me have a communications circuit. We have a couple of embassies and several consuls. They should be monitoring starship traffic.”

It took a long time to establish contact. After hours subjected to the output from the SD platforms, the national civil communications satellites were now almost completely inoperative. She eventually got around the problem by aligning one of Hoya ’s antennae directly on the cities she wanted, which limited her to those on the half of the planet ahead of the voidhawks.

“Mzu’s here,” she said at last. “I got through to Adrian Redway, our station chief in the Harrisburg embassy. The Tekas arrived yesterday. It docked at Tonala’s principal low orbit station, and four people took a spaceplane down to Harrisburg. Voi was one of them, and so was Daphine Kigano.”

“Excellent,” Samuel said. “Is the Tekas still here?”

“No. It departed an hour later. And no other starship has left since. She’s still down there. We’ve got her.”

“We have to go in,” Samuel told Niveu.

“I understand. But you should know that several governments are claiming New Georgia has fallen to the possessed. New Georgia is denying it of course, though it does seem as though they have lost their asteroid, Jesup. Apparently Jesup dispatched some inter-orbit ships to the three abandoned asteroids. It is being heralded as a breach of sovereignty, which of course is taken extremely seriously here.”

“Could the ships be carrying escapees?” Monica asked.

“It is possible, I suppose. Although I can’t think of any reason why anyone should consider those asteroids to be a refuge; they were badly damaged in the ’32 conflict. No one even bothered to salvage them. But we ought to know what the Jesup ships are doing before too long; the governments which own the abandoned asteroids have dispatched their own ships to investigate.”

“If it turns out those ships from Jesup are crewed by possessed, then the situation will deteriorate rapidly,” Samuel said. “The other governments are unlikely to come to New Georgia’s aid.”

“True enough,” Monica said pensively. “They’re more likely to nuke the whole country.”

“I don’t imagine we will be staying long,” Samuel said. “And we will have the flyers with us, we can evacuate within minutes.”

“Yeah sure. There’s one other thing.”

“Oh?”

“Redway said one other starship has arrived since the Tekas left. The Lady Macbeth , she’s docked at Tonala’s main low-orbit station.”

“How intriguing. The Lord of Ruin obviously knew what she was doing when she chose this Lagrange Calvert.”

Monica was sure there was a note of admiration in his voice.

The four voidhawks accelerated in towards Nyvan. After receiving permission from traffic control, they slotted into a six-hundred-kilometre orbit, adopting a diamond formation. Four ion field flyers left their hangars and curved down towards the planet, heading into the huge swirl of angry cloud that covered most of Tonala.

Jesup’s Strategic Defence control centre had been hollowed out of the rock deep behind the habitation section. It was New Georgia’s ultimate citadel: safe from any external attack which didn’t actually crack Jesup open, equipped with enough security systems to fend off an open mutiny by the asteroid’s population, and fitted with a completely independent environmental circuit. No matter what happened to Jesup and New Georgia’s government, the SD officers could continue to fight on for weeks.

Quinn waited for the monolithic innermost door to slide open, displaying a serenity that was harrowing in its depth. Only Bonham accompanied him now as he strode around the asteroid, the other disciples were too afraid.

There had been a few modifications to the control centre. Console technology had devolved considerably; in most cases processors and AV projectors had abated to a simple telephone. A whole rank of the black and silver machines were lined up along a wall, where they were jangling incessantly. A group of officers in stiff grey uniforms were snatching up the handsets as fast as they could. In front of them was a big square table with a picture of Nyvan and its orbiting asteroids covering its surface. Five young women were busy moving wooden markers across it with long poles.

The adrenaline-powered clamour faltered as Quinn walked in. There was no sign of any face inside his robe’s hood; light fell into the oval opening never to return. Only the pearl-white hands emerging from his sleeves suggested a human was in residence.

“Keep going,” he told them.

The voices sprang back, far louder than before so as to demonstrate their loyalty and commitment.

Quinn went over to the commander’s post, a pulpitlike podium which overlooked the table. “What is the problem?”

Shemilt, who was running the control centre, saluted sharply. He was wearing a heavily decorated Luftwaffe uniform from the Second World War, every inch the Teutonic warrior aristocrat. “I regret to inform you, sir, that ships have been sent to intercept our teams working in the other asteroids. The first will make contact in forty minutes.”

Quinn studied the table; it was becoming cluttered. Four vultures were grouped together just above the planet. New Georgia’s SD platforms were diamond-studded pyramids. Ruby pentagons showed opposing platforms. Three red-flagged markers were being shoved slowly over the starmap. “Are they warships?”

“Our observation stations are having a lot of trouble in this foul weather, but we don’t think so. Not frigates, anyway. I expect they will be carrying troops, though; they’re definitely big enough for that.”

“Don’t get too carried away, Shemilt.”

Shemilt stood to attention. “Yes, sir. ”

Quinn pointed at one of the red flags. “Can our SD platforms hit these ships?”

“Yes, sir.” Shemilt pulled a clipboard off a hook inside his command post and flicked through the typewritten sheets. “Two of them are in range of our X-ray lasers, and the third can be destroyed with combat wasps.”

“Good. Kill the little shits.”

“Yes, sir.” Shemilt hesitated. “If we do that, the other networks will probably shoot at us.”

“Then shoot back, engage every target you can reach. I want an all-out confrontation.”

Activity around the table slowed as operators glanced at Quinn. Resentment was building in their thoughts, capped, as always, by fear.

“How do we get out, Quinn?” Shemilt asked.

“We wait. Space warfare is very fast, and very destructive. By the end of today, there won’t be a working laser cannon or a combat wasp left orbiting Nyvan. We’ll get hit a few times, but fuck, these walls are two kilometres thick. This is the mother of all fallout shelters.” He gestured at the table, and every marker ignited, yellow candlelike flames squirting out black smoke. “Then when it’s over, we can fly away in perfect safety.”

Shemilt nodded hurriedly, using speed to prove he’d never doubted. “I’m sorry, Quinn, it’s obvious really.”

“Thank you. Now kill those ships.”

“Yes, sir.”

Quinn left the control centre with Bonham scurrying after him, always trailing by a few paces. The giant door slid shut behind them, its bass grumbles echoing along the broad corridor.

“Are there really enough ships here to take everyone off?” Bonham asked.

“I doubt it. And even if there were, the spaceport will be a prime target.”

“So . . . some of us should leave early, then?”

“Fast, Bonham, very fast. That’s probably why you got where you did.”

“Thank you, Quinn.” He quickened his steps; Quinn’s voice was slightly fainter.

“Of course, if they see me leaving now, they’d know I’d abandoned them. Discipline would go straight to shit.”

“Quinn?” He could hardly hear the dark figure at all now.

“After all, it’s not as if you could bind them . . .”

Bonham squinted at the figure he was now almost running to catch up with. Quinn seemed to be gliding smoothly over the rock floor without moving his legs. His black robe had faded to grey. In fact it was almost translucent. “Quinn?” This latest performance was frightening him more than anything to date. The anger and wrath which Quinn radiated so easily were simple to understand, almost reassuring in comparison. This though, Bonham didn’t know if it was something being done to Quinn, or something he was doing to himself. “What is this? Quinn?”

Quinn had become completely transparent now, only the slightest rippling outline of rock betrayed his position; even his thoughts were evaporating from Bonham’s perception. He stumbled to a halt. Panic set in. Quinn was no longer present anywhere in the corridor.

“Holy Christ, now what?”

He felt a breath of cold air strike his face. He frowned.

A bolt of white fire smashed into the back of his skull. Two souls were cast out of the corpse as it collapsed onto the floor, both of them keening in dread at the fate which awaited.

“Wrong God.” A chuckle drifted down the empty corridor.

When Joshua landed just after midday local time, rumour was blanketing Harrisburg as thickly as the snow. It seemed to be the one weapon in the armoury of the possessed which was the same the Confederation over. The more people heard, the less they knew, the more fearful they became. One freak outbreak of urban mythology and entire populations would become paralysed, either that or regress straight into survivalist siege mode.

On most worlds, government assurances and rover reporters on the scene managed to restart the engines of ordinary existence. People would creep sheepishly back to work and wait for the next canard of Genghis Khan riding a Panzer tank into the suburbs.

Not on Nyvan. Here governments were the ones gleefully shooting out savage accusations at their old antagonists. A coordinated global response to the prospect of the possessed landing was never even considered, a realpolitik impossibility.

As soon as they landed Joshua loaded a search request into the city’s commercial data core. The number of armed guards and lack of flights at the spaceport made his intuition rebel. He knew they didn’t have much time; the quiet approach—questions, contacts, money—would never work here.

They hired a car and set off down hotel row, a potholed six-lane motorway which linked the spaceport to the city ten kilometres away. Only two lanes were cleared of snow, and there was hardly any other traffic.

Dahybi used his electronic warfare detector block to sweep the eight-seater cabin for bugs. “Seems clean,” he told the others.

“Okay,” Joshua said. “Our processor technology is probably more advanced than the locals, but don’t count on it for a permanent advantage. I need to find her as fast as we can, which is going to mean sacrificing subtlety.”

As they approached the hotel they’d booked, Joshua datavised an update into the car’s control processor. The car swept past the hotel’s entrance, heading for the city.

“There goes our deposit,” Melvyn complained.

“It bothers me,” Joshua said. “Ione, are we being followed?”

One of the serjeants was sitting at the back of the cab, pointing a small circular sensor pad through the rear window. “One car, possibly two. I think there are three people in the first one.”

“Probably some kind of local security police,” Joshua decided. “I’d be surprised if they weren’t keeping tabs on foreigners right now.”

“So what do we do about them?” Dahybi asked.

“Not a damn thing. I don’t want to give them an excuse to interfere.” He accessed the car’s net processor and established an encrypted link to the spaceplane. “What’s your situation, Ashly?”

“So far so good. I’ll have the electron matrices completely recharged in another three minutes. That’ll expand your options.”

“Good. We’ll keep a channel open to you from now on. If the city’s net starts to crash, come get us. That’s our cut-off point.”

“Aye, Captain. Lady Macbeth just fell below the horizon, so I’ve lost contact. Every civil communications satellite is out now.”

“If their situation alters, they’ll change orbit and re-establish a link. Sarha knows what to do.”

“I certainly hope so. Before I lost contact, Beaulieu told me four voidhawks have arrived. They’re heading for low orbit.”

“They must have come from the Dorados,” Joshua decided. “Ashly, when Lady Mac comes back on-line, tell Sarha to monitor them as best she can. And let me know if any of their spaceplanes land.”

The snowfall had thickened considerably by the time Joshua’s car reached the address his search program had identified for him. It reduced Harrisburg to a sequence of shabby granite streets that were hard to tell apart. Nothing was alive apart from people, wrapped in their insulated coats as they kicked their way through the pavement slush. Hologram billboards and neon signs were all that remained unaffected by the weather, flashing and morphing as always.

“I should have brought Liol down,” Joshua muttered, half to himself. “He said he wanted a taste of exotic worlds.”

“You’re going to have to come to terms with him eventually, Joshua,” Melvyn said.

“Maybe. Jesus, if he just wasn’t such a pushy bastard. Can’t you tell him to lighten up, Ione? You spend a lot of time talking to him.”

“It didn’t work before,” one of the serjeants said.

“You’ve already told him?”

“Let’s say I’ve been through the procedure earlier. He’s not the only one who needs to relax, Joshua. Neither of you are going to make any progress the way you both carry on.”

He wanted to explain. How it was. How he didn’t feel quite so alone anymore, and how that left him troubled. How he wanted to welcome his brother, but at the same time knew him so well he didn’t trust him. To be honest with him would be seen as a weakness. Liol was the interloper. Let him make the first gesture. I saved his arse from the Dorados, I was the honourable one, and what thanks do I get?

When he glanced around the car, he knew that anything he said which verged on truth would make him sound petulant. A year ago I would’ve told the lot of them to bugger off. Jesus, life was simpler then, when there was just me. “I’ll do what I can,” he conceded.

Their car turned off the street and dipped down into an underground garage. The building it served was a ten-storey block with small shops at street level (half of them empty), and the upper floors given over to offices and design bureaus.

“Going to tell us why we’re here now?” Dahybi asked as they climbed out of the car.

“Simple,” Joshua said. “When you need a job doing fast and effectively, go to a professional.”

The office of Kilmartin and Elgant, Data Security Specialists, was on the seventh floor. There was nobody behind the desk in the reception room. Joshua paused for a second, expecting a secretarial program to query them, but the desktop processor wasn’t switched on. The inner door slid open when he approached it.

In a rash of optimistic bravado accompanying their firm’s launch, Kilmartin and Elgant had taken a fifty-year lease on sufficient floor space to house fifteen operatives. There were still enough desks for fifteen in the open-plan office; seven of them had dust covers thrown over processors which were fairly dubious even by Nyvan’s technological standards; four desks had niches where processors used to be; one patch of carpet showed imprints where a desk used to stand.

Only one desk had a decent cluster of modern blocks, which shared the surface with a thoroughly dead potted plant. Two men were sitting behind it, staring intently into the hazy aura of an AV pillar. The first was tall, young, and broad-shouldered, sporting a long blond ponytail tied with a colourful leather lace. He wore an expensive black suit, tailored to provide maximum freedom of movement. He was not openly belligerent, but had a presence that would make people think twice before tackling him. The second was well into middle age, dressed in a faded grey-brown jacket, tufty chestnut hair askew. He looked as if he belonged behind the complaints desk in a tax office.

They regarded Joshua and his odd delegation with mild surprise.

Joshua looked from one to the other, slightly uncertain as intuition tickled his skull. Then he clicked his fingers decisively and pointed at the younger of the two. “I bet you’re the data expert and your friend handles the combat routines. Good disguise, right?”

The aura from the AV pillar faded as the younger man tilted his chair back and put his hands behind his head. “Clever. Are we expecting you, Mr . . . ?”

Joshua gave a faint smile. “You tell me.”

“All right, Captain Calvert, what do you want?”

“I need to access some information, and fast. Can you manage that for me?”

“Sure. Nationwide net access, no problem, whatever file you want. Hey listen, I know what this place looks like. Forget that. Talent isn’t something you can eyeball. And I’m so far on top of things I’m getting oxygen starvation. Someone’s search program locates my public file, I know about it before they do. You came down from the Lady Macbeth an hour ago. One of your crew is still with your spaceplane. Want to know how much the service company is ripping you off for your electron matrix recharge? You’re in the right place.”

“I don’t care. Money doesn’t concern me.”

“Okay, I think we’ve reached interface here.” He turned to his colleague and muttered something. The older man gave him a disgruntled look, then shrugged. He walked out of the office, giving the two serjeants a curious glance as he passed.

“Richard Keaton.” The athletic young man leaned over the desk, holding his hand out and smiling broadly. “Call me Dick.”

“I certainly will.” They shook hands.

“Sorry about Matty, there. He’s got enough implants to chop up a squad of marines. But he gets overprotective, and I don’t need him hovering right now. Smart of you to see which of us was which. I don’t think anyone’s ever done that before.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

“So what can I do for you, Captain Calvert?”

“I need to find someone.”

Keaton raised a forefinger. “If I could just interrupt. First, there is my fee.”

“I’m not going to quibble. I might even pay a bonus.”

One of the serjeants tapped a foot pointedly on the worn carpet.

“Nice to hear, Captain. Okay then; my fee is one flight off this planet on the Lady Macbeth , just as soon as you leave. Destination: who cares.”

“That’s an . . . unusual fee. Any particular reason?”

“Like I said, Captain, you came to the right place. This might not be the biggest firm in town, but I fish the data streams. There are possessed on Nyvan. They’ve already taken over Jesup, that wasn’t just propaganda by our upstanding government. The electronic warfare barrage in orbit? That was cover to help them get down here. There aren’t too many in Tonala yet—not according to the Special Investigation Bureau, anyway. But they’re spreading through the other countries.”

“So you want to be gone?”

“I sure do. And I figure you won’t be here when they reach Harrisburg, either. Look, I won’t be any trouble on board. Hell, shove me into zero-tau, I don’t mind.”

Joshua didn’t have the time to argue. Besides, taking Keaton with them actually reduced the risk of exposure. A flight off Nyvan wasn’t such a high price. “You bring only what you’ve got with you; I’m not waiting while you go home to pack. We don’t have any slack built into our mission profile.”

“We have a deal, Captain.”

“Very well, welcome aboard, Dick. Now, the person I want is called Dr Alkad Mzu, alias Daphine Kigano. She arrived on the starship Tekas last night with three companions. I don’t know where she is or who she might attempt to contact; however, she will be trying to stay hidden.” He datavised over a visual file. “Find her.”

Twenty thousand kilometres above Nyvan, the Organization frigate Urschel emerged from its ZTT jump. It was swiftly followed by the Raimo and the Pinzola. They were nowhere near a designated emergence zone, but only the four voidhawks were aware of their arrival. None of Nyvan’s gravitonic-distortion detector satellites were functioning; the waves of electronic warfare assaults had crashed them beyond repair.

After five minutes assessing the local situation, their fusion drives came on, pushing them towards a low-orbit injection point. Once they were on their way, Oscar Kearn, the small flotilla’s commander, concentrated on the eternal, beseeching voices crying into his head.

Where is Mzu? he asked them.

The possessed among the crew, including Cherri Barnes, joined his silky cajoling, adding to the tricksy promises he made. Theirs was a multiple chant which hummed through the beyond, a harmonic passed between every desperate soul. It agitated them, its very existence a taunt; plots and scheming were an exquisitely tortuous reminder of what lay on the other side of their dreadful continuum, what they could partake of once again if they just helped.

Where is Mzu?

What is she doing?

Who is with her?

There are bodies waiting for worthy hosts. Millions of bodies, out here among the light and air and experience , held ready for Capone’s friends. One could be yours. If—

Where is Mzu? Exactly?

Ah.

When they reached a five hundred kilometre orbit, each of the frigates dispatched a spaceplane. The three black delta-shapes sliced down through Nyvan’s atmosphere, their tapering noses lining up on Tonala, hidden behind the planet’s curvature seven thousand kilometres ahead.

Oscar Kearn ordered the frigates to manoeuvre again, and they began to raise their orbit.

“This really doesn’t look good,” Sarha said. “The sensors are showing three of them. I don’t think their transponders are responding to the station.”

“You don’t think?” Beaulieu queried.

“Who knows? Those bloody SD platforms are still at it. I doubt we could pick up an em pulse through all this jamming.”

“What are their drive exhausts like?” Liol asked.

Sarha ignored the datavised displays inside her skull long enough to fire a disgusted glance at him. The three of them were alone on Lady Mac ’s bridge. All the remaining serjeants were down in B capsule, guarding the airlock tube. “What?” There were times when he was a little bit too much like Joshua, that is: quite infuriating.

“If there are possessed on board, they’ll be affecting the ship’s systems,” Liol recited. “Their drives will fluctuate. The recordings from Lalonde taught us that. Remember?”

Sarha didn’t trust herself to answer directly. Yes he was like Joshua, gallingly right the whole time. “I’m not sure our discrimination programs will be much use at this distance. I can’t get a radar lock to determine their velocity.”

“Want me to try?”

“No thank you.”

“When Josh said don’t give me access to the flight computer, I don’t think he meant I wasn’t supposed to help you survive an assault by the possessed,” Liol said peevishly.

“You will be able to ask him directly soon,” Beaulieu said. “We should be over Ashly’s horizon in another ninety seconds.”

“Those ships are definitely heading for a rendezvous with the Spirit of Freedom ,” Sarha said. “The optical image is good enough for a rough vector analysis.”

“I’d like to point out that the three highly similar ships which appeared at the Dorados before we left were all from New California,” Liol said.

“I am aware of that,” Sarha snarled back.

“Jolly good. I’d hate to be possessed by anyone I didn’t know.”

“What are the voidhawks doing?” Beaulieu asked.

“I don’t know. They’re on the other side of the planet.” Sarha was uncomfortably aware of the perspiration permeating her shipsuit. She datavised the conditioning grille above her for some cool, dry air—cooler, dryer air. And to think, I’d always been slightly envious about Joshua having command of a starship. “I’m disengaging the airlock,” she told the other two. “Station staff might try to come on board once they realize those starships are heading here.” It was a logical action. And actually doing something made her feel a whole lot better.

“I’ve got the spaceplane beacon,” Beaulieu announced.

“You’re still intact, then?” Ashly datavised.

“Yeah, still here,” Sarha replied gamely. “What’s your situation?”

“Stable. Nothing much is moving at the spaceport. The four Edenist flyers arrived half an hour ago. They’re parked about two hundred metres away from me right now. I tried datavising them, but they’re not answering. A whole group of people set off into town as soon as they landed. There were cars here waiting for them.”

The flight computer signalled that Joshua was coming on line. “Any signs of possession on the planet yet?” he asked.

“I’d have to say yes, Captain,” Beaulieu told him. “The national nets are suffering considerable degrees of dropout. But there’s no real pattern to it. Several countries don’t have a single glitch.”

“They will,” Joshua datavised.

“Joshua, three Adamist starships appeared an hour ago,” Sarha datavised. “We believe they sent some spaceplanes or flyers down to the planet; they were in the right orbit for it. Liol thinks they’re the same Organization ships that were at the Dorados.”

“Oh, well, if the starflight expert says so . . .”

“Josh, those frigates are heading for this station,” Liol datavised.

“Oh, Jesus. Okay, get clear of the station. And, Sarha, try to get a positive ident.”

“Will do. How are things your end?”

“Promising, I think. Expect us . . . today, what . . . outcome.”

“I’m losing the link,” Beaulieu warned. “Heavy interference, and it’s focused directly at us.”

“Josh, let me have access authority for the flight computer. Sarha and Beaulieu are being overloaded up here, for Christ’s sake. I can help.”

“. . . think . . . mummy’s boy . . . on my ship . . . fucking . . . because I’ll . . . first . . . trust . . .”

“Lost them,” Beaulieu said.

“The frigates have started jamming us directly,” Sarha said. “They know we’re here.”

“They’re softening up the station for an assault,” Liol said. “Give me the access codes, I can fly Lady Mac away.”

“No, you heard Joshua.”

“He said he trusted me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Look, you two have to operate the on-board systems, monitor the electronic warfare battle, and now you’ve got to watch the frigates as well. If we launch now they might think we’re going to defend the station. Can you fly Lady Mac and fight at the same time as everything else?”

“Beaulieu?” Sarha asked.

“Not my decision, but he does have a point. We need to leave, now.”

“Sarha, Josh is all emotionally tangled up when it comes to me. Fair enough, I didn’t handle him well. But you can’t endanger his life and ours on a single bad decision made from ignorance. I’ll do my best here. Trust me. Please.”

“All right! Damn it. But fusion drive authority only. You’re not jumping us anywhere.”

“Fine.” And the dream finally happened, just as he’d always known it would. Lady Mac ’s flight computer opened to him, and all the systems were on-line, filling his mind with glorious wing-sweeps of colour. They fitted just perfectly.

He designated the procedure menus he needed, bringing the thrusters and drive tubes up to active flight status. Beaulieu and Sarha were working smoothly together, activating the remaining on board systems. Umbilicals retracted from the fuselage, and the cradle started to elevate them out of the shallow docking bay. The viewfield which the flight computer was datavising at him expanded as more of Lady Mac ’s sensor clusters lifted above the rim. Three bright, expanding stars were ringed in antagonistic red as they crept up over the curvature of the brilliant blue horizon.

Liol fired the verniers to take them off the cradle, not caring if the other two could see the stupid smile on his face. For a moment, all the envy and bitterness returned, the irrational pique he’d felt when he first learned that Joshua existed, a usurper brother who was captaining the ship which was rightfully his. This was the rush that belonged to him. The power to traverse the galaxy.

One day, he and Joshua were going to have to settle this.

But not today. Today was when he proved himself to his brother and the crew. Today was when he started living the life he knew belonged to him.

When they were a hundred metres above the docking bay, Liol fired the secondary drive, selecting a third of a gee acceleration. Lady Mac immediately veered off the vector he’d plotted. He pumped a fast correction order into the flight computer, deflecting the exhaust angle. Overcompensating. “Wowshit!” The acceleration couch webbing gripped him tighter.

“The spaceplane hangar is empty,” Sarha said witheringly. “That means our mass distribution is off centre. Perhaps you’d care to bring the level seven balance calibration programs on-line?”

“Sorry.” He searched desperately around the flight control menus and found the right program. Lady Mac juddered back onto her original vector.

“Joshua is going to throw me out of the airlock,” Sarha decided.

It had taken some time for Lodi to get used to having Omain sitting in the hotel suite with him. A possessed for Mary’s sake! But Omain turned out to be quiet and polite (a little sad, to be honest), keeping out of the way. Lodi slowly managed to relax, though this must surely be the strangest episode in his life. Nothing was ever going to out-weird this.

At first he had jumped every time Omain even spoke. Now, he was relatively cool about the whole scene. His processor blocks were spread out over one of the tables, enabling him to cast trawl programs into the net streams, fishing out relevant information. It was what he did best, so Voi had left him to it while she, Mzu, and Eriba went to the Opia company. His main concern at the moment was monitoring the civil situation now the government had closed the borders. Voi wanted to make sure they would be allowed to get back into orbit. So far, it looked as if they could. There had even been one piece of good luck, the first since they arrived at Nyvan. A starship called Lady Macbeth had docked at the Spirit of Freedom , and it was exactly the type of ship Mzu wanted.

“They are asking for her,” Omain said.

“Huh?” Lodi cancelled the datavised displays, blinking away the afterimage the graphics left in his mind.

“Capone’s people are in orbit,” Omain said. “They know Mzu is here. They are asking for her.”

“You mean you can tell what’s going on in orbit? Mary! I can’t, not with all the interference from the SD platforms.”

“Not tell, exactly. This is whispered gossip, distorted by the many souls it has passed through. I have only the vaguest notion of the facts.”

Lodi was fascinated. Once he began talking, Omain knew some seriously interesting facts. He’d lived on Garissa, and was quite willing to share his impressions. (Lodi had never summoned the courage to ask Mzu what their old world was like.) From Omain’s melancholic descriptions it sounded like a good place to live. The Garissans, Lodi was sure, had lost more than their world by the sound of it; their whole culture was different now, too tight-arsed and Western-ethnic orientated.

One of the processor blocks datavised a warning into Lodi’s neural nanonics. “Oh, bollocks!”

“What is it?”

They had to speak in raised voices, almost shouting at each other. Omain was sitting in the corner of the living room furthest from Lodi, it was the only way the blocks would remain functional.

“Someone has accessed the hotel’s central processor. They’ve loaded a search program for the three of us, and it’s got a visual reference for Mzu, too.”

“It cannot be the possessed, surely?” Omain said. “Neural nanonics don’t function for us.”

“Might be the Organization ships. No. They’d never be able to access Tonala’s net from orbit, not with the platforms still going at it. Hang on, I’ll see what I can find out.” He felt almost happy as he started retrieving tracker programs from the memory fleks he’d brought. The net dons in this city probably had ten times the experience he’d got from snooping around Ayacucho’s communications circuits, but his programs were still able to flash back through the junctions, tracing the origin of the searchers.

The answer sprang into his mind just as the hotel’s central processor crashed. “Wow, that was some guardian program. But I got them. You know anything about a local firm called Kilmartin and Elgant?”

“No. But I haven’t been here long, not in this incarnation.”

“Right.” Lodi twitched a smile. “I’ll see what . . . that’s odd.”

Omain had risen from his chair. He was frowning at the suite’s double door. “What is?”

“The suite’s net processor is down.”

The door chimed.

“Did you . . .” Lodi began.

Something very heavy smashed into the door. Its panels bulged inwards. Splintering sounds were spitting out of the frame.

“Run!” Omain shouted. He stood before the door, both arms held towards it, palms outwards. His face was clenched with effort. The air twisted frantically in front of him, whipping up a small gale.

Another blow hammered the door, and Omain was sent staggering backwards. Lodi turned to run for the bedroom. He was just in time to see a fat three-metre-long serpent slither vertically up the outside of the window. Its huge head reared back, levelling out to stare straight at him. The jaws parted to display fangs as big as fingers. Then it lunged forwards, shattering the glass.

From his elevated position in the command post, Shemilt studied the ops table below him. One of the girls leaned over and pushed a red-flagged marker closer to the deserted asteroid.

“In range, sir,” she reported.

Shemilt nodded, trying not to show too much dismay. All three of the inter-orbit ships were in range of New Georgia’s SD network now. And Quinn had not returned to change his orders. His very specific orders.

If only we weren’t so bloody terrified of him, Shemilt thought. He still felt sick every time he remembered the zero-tau pod containing Captain Gurtan Mauer. Quinn had opened it up during two of the black mass ceremonies.

If we all grouped together—But of course, death was no longer the end. Throwing the dark messiah into the beyond would solve nothing.

There was a single red telephone in his command post. He picked up the handset. “Fire,” he ordered.

Two of the three inter-orbit ships on their way to find out what the teams from Jesup were doing in the deserted asteroids were struck by X-ray lasers. The beams shone clean through the life support capsules and the fusion drive casings. Both crews died instantly. Electronics flash evaporated. Drive systems ruptured. Two wrecks tumbled through space, their hulls glowing a dull orange, vapour squirting from split tanks.

The third was targeted by a pair of combat wasps.

The officers of the other two national SD networks saw them streaking away from New Georgia’s platform, heading towards the helpless inter-orbit ship. They requested and received fire authority codes. By then the attacking combat wasps had begun dispensing their submunitions drones. Infrared decoys shone like micro-novas amid the shoal of drive exhausts; electronic warfare pulses screamed at the sensors of any SD platform within five thousand kilometres. The offensive was a valid tactic; combat wasps launched to try to protect the remaining ship were confused for several seconds. A time period which in space warfare was critical.

A flock of one-shot pulsers finally got close enough to discharge into the remaining inter-orbit ship, killing it immediately. That didn’t prevent the kinetic missiles from arrowing in on it at thirty-five gees. Nor submunitions with nuclear warheads from detonating when they were within range.

Lady Mac ’s sensors picked up most of the brief battle, though the overspill from the electronic warfare submunitions overlapping the general assault waged by the SD platforms caused several overload dropouts.

“This is becoming a seriously hazardous location,” Sarha mumbled. The external sensor image was quivering badly as if something was shaking the starship about. Artificial circles of green, blue, and yellow were splashing open against the starfield like raindrop graffiti. Intense blue-white flares started to appear among them.

“It just went nuclear,” Beaulieu said. “I don’t think I’ve seen overkill on that scale before.”

“What the hell is going on up there?” Sarha asked.

“Nothing good,” Liol said. “A possessed would have to be very determined to make a trip to one of those abandoned asteroids; there are no biospheres left, that’ll leave them heavily dependent on technology.”

“How are the Organization ships reacting?” Sarha asked. Twenty minutes after Lady Mac had left the Spirit of Freedom , the three frigates had docked. Quarter of an hour after that all communication with the station had ceased. They were now holding orbit eight hundred kilometres ahead of Spirit of Freedom , which gave their sensors a reasonable resolution.

“I’m way ahead of you,” Liol said. “Two of them are launching—wait, they all are. They’re going down into a lower orbit. Damn, I wish we could see what the voidhawks are doing.”

“I’m registering activity within the station’s defence sensor suite,” Beaulieu said. “They’re sweeping us.”

“Liol, take us another five hundred kilometres away.”

“No problem.”

Sarha consulted the orbital display. “We’ll be over Tonala in another thirty minutes. I’m going to recommend Joshua pulls out.”

“There’s a lot of ship movements beginning down here,” Beaulieu said. “Two more low-orbit stations are launching ships; and those are the ones we can see.”

“Bugger it,” Sarha grunted. “Okay, go to defence-ready status.”

Lady Mac ’s standard sensor clusters retreated down into their recesses; the smaller, bulbous combat sensors slid smoothly upwards to replace them, gold-chrome lenses reflecting the last twinkling explosions in high orbit. Her combat wasp launch tubes opened.

All around her, Nyvan’s national navies and SD platforms were switching to the same status.

Since arriving at Jesup, Dwyer had spent almost every hour helping to modify the bridge systems of the cargo clipper Mount’s Delta . Given his minimal technical background, his time was spent supervising the non-possessed technicians who did most of the installation.

The bridge compartment was badly cramped, which meant only a couple of people could work in it at any one time. Dwyer had become highly proficient at dodging flying circuit boards and loose console covers. But he was satisfied with the result, which was far less crude than the changes they’d made to the Tantu . With the huge stock of component spares available in the spaceport, the consoles looked as if they’d slipped off the factory production line mere hours earlier. Their processors were now all military grade, capable of functioning while they were subjected to the energistic effect of the possessed. And the flight computer had been augmented until it was capable of flying the ship following the simplest of verbal orders.

This time there was none of the black sculpture effect, every surface was standard. Quinn had insisted the clipper’s life support capsule must stand up to inspection when they arrived at Earth. Dwyer was confident he had reached that objective.

Now he was hovering just outside the small galley alcove on the mid-deck watching a female technician replacing the old hydration nozzles with the latest model. A portable sanitation sucker hovered over her shoulder, its fan humming eagerly as it ingested the occasional stale globule which burped out of the tubes she’d unscrewed.

The unit’s hum rose sharply, becoming strident. A draught of cold air brushed Dwyer’s face.

“How’s it going?” Quinn asked.

Dwyer and the technician both yelped in surprise. The clipper’s airlock was in the lower deck, and the floor hatch was closed.

Dwyer spun around, grabbing at support struts to wrestle his inertia back under control. Sure enough, Quinn was sliding down through the ceiling hatch from the bridge. His robe’s hood was folded back, sticking to his shoulders as if he were in his own private gravity field. For the first time in days his flesh tone was almost normal. He grinned cheerfully at Dwyer.

“God’s Brother, Quinn. How did you do that?” Dwyer glanced over his shoulder to check the floor hatch again.

“It’s like style,” Quinn said. “Some of us have it . . .” He winked at the female technician and flung a bolt of white fire straight into her temple.

“Fuck!” Dwyer gasped.

The corpse banged back into the galley alcove. Tools fluttered out of her hands like iron butterflies.

“We’ll dump her out of the airlock when we’re under way,” Quinn said.

“We’re leaving?”

“Yes. Right now. And I don’t want anyone to know.”

“But . . . what about the engineering crew in the bay’s control centre? They have to direct the umbilical retraction.”

“There is no more crew. We can relay the launch instructions to the management computer through the bay’s datanet.”

“Whatever you say, Quinn.”

“Come on, you’ll enjoy Earth. I know I will.” He performed a somersault in midair, and slow-dived back up through the hatch.

Dwyer took a moment to compose himself, clenching his hands so the way his fingers trembled didn’t show, then followed Quinn up into the bridge.

Anger and worry isolated Alkad from the mundanities of the drive back to the hotel. She hadn’t thought this fast and hard since the days she was working on the Alchemist theory. Options were closing all around her, like the sound of prison doors slamming shut.

The meeting with two of Opia’s vice presidents had been a typical sounding-you-out session. All very cordial, and achieving very little. They had agreed on the principle of the company finding her a starship and crew, which at some yet-to-be-specified time would be equipped with specialist defence systems for duties in the Dorados’ defence force.

The one hold she had over them was the prospect that this would be the first order by the Dorados council; and if all went smoothly, more would follow. Possibly a great deal more.

Greed had taken root. She had seen it so many times before in the industrialists who had been supplying Garissa’s navy.

They would have followed her requests, ignoring the oddities of the situation. She was convinced of it. Then just as the meeting was winding down the Tonala government announced a state of emergency. New Georgia’s SD platforms had opened fire on three ships, one of which belonged to Tonala. Such an action, the Defence Ministry insisted, proved beyond any doubt that the possessed had captured Jesup, that the New Georgia government was lying, and possibly even possessed itself.

Once again Nyvan’s national factions were at war with each other.

The Opia executives loaded a program for a crestfallen expression into their neural nanonics. Sorry, but the contract would have to go into suspension. Temporarily. Just until Tonalan might has reigned triumphant.

The car drew up underneath the sweeping portico of the Mercedes Hotel. Ngong was first out, scouring the broad street for threats. Now they had him and Gelai protecting them, Alkad had dispensed with the security firm Voi had hired; although they’d kept the company’s car with its armoured bodywork and secure circuitry.

There wasn’t much traffic on the street. The team of men shovelling snow had vanished, leaving the dilapidated mechanoids to struggle on by themselves. Ngong nodded and beckoned. Alkad eased herself off the seat and scurried over to the lobby’s rotating door, Gelai a pace behind her the whole time. They had told her of the Organization’s ships during the trip back. It baffled Alkad how Capone had ever heard of her. But there was no disguising Gelai’s rising concern.

The five of them bundled into the penthouse lift, which rose smoothly. Only the annoying flicker of the light panel betrayed Gelai and Ngong for what they were.

Alkad ignored the lighting. The state of emergency was dangerous. It wouldn’t be long before Tonala retaliated against New Georgia’s SD network. Those starships docked above Nyvan would be pressed into service, if the captains didn’t simply ignore the quarantine and leave. She would soon be trapped here without any transport and the Capone Organization closing in. Unless she did something fast, she would belong to the possessed one way or the other, and with her came the Alchemist.

The spectre of what the device could do to the Confederation if it was used on a target other than Omuta’s star was now preying on her mind. What if it was used against Jupiter? The Edenist habitats would die, Earth would be deprived of the He3 without which it could never survive. Or what if it was used against Sol itself? What if it was switched to the nova function?

There had never been any conceivable prospect of this before. I was always in control. Mother Mary forgive my arrogance.

She cast a sideways glance at Voi, who was looking as irritable as always with the lift’s progress. Voi would never entertain any change in their mission priorities. The concept of failure was not allowed for.

Like me at that age.

I have to get off this planet, she realized abruptly. I have to reopen the options again. I can’t let it end like this.

The lift’s floor indicator said they were three floors below the penthouse when Gelai and Ngong exchanged a questioning glance.

“What’s the matter?” Voi asked.

“We can’t sense Omain, or Lodi,” Gelai said.

Alkad immediately tried to datavise Lodi. There was no response. She ordered the lift to stop. “Is there anyone up there?”

“No,” Gelai said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Of all the facets of possession, the perception ability fascinated Alkad the most. She’d only just started considering the mechanism of possession. The whole concept would ultimately mean quantum cosmology having to be completely restructured again. So far, she’d made very little theoretical progress.

“I told him to stay put,” Voi said indignantly.

“If his neural nanonics aren’t responding, then this is rather more serious than him simply wandering off,” Alkad told her.

Voi pulled a face, unconvinced.

Alkad ordered the lift to restart.

Gelai and Ngong were standing in front of the doors when they opened on the penthouse vestibule. Trickles of static skipped over their clothes as they readied themselves for trouble.

“Oh, Mary,” Eriba said. The double doors to the penthouse had been smashed apart.

Gelai waved the others back as she edged cautiously into the living room. Alkad heard an intake of breath.

The body Omain had been possessing was lying across one of the big settees, covered with deep scorch marks. Snow was blowing in through a gaping hole in the window.

Ngong hurriedly checked the other rooms. “No body. He’s not here,” he told them.

“Oh, Mother Mary, now what?” Alkad exclaimed. “Gelai, have you got any idea who did this?”

“None. Aside from the obvious that it was some possessed.”

“They know about us,” Voi said. “And now Lodi’s been possessed, they know too much about us. We must leave immediately.”

“Yes,” Alkad said reluctantly. “I suppose so. We’d better go directly to the spaceport, see if we can hook up with a starship there.”

“Won’t they know we’re going to do that?” Eriba said.

“What else can we do? This planet can’t help us anymore.”

One of the processor blocks on the table let out a bleep. Its AV projector sparkled.

Alkad looked straight into it. And she was looking out through a set of eyes at a man dressed in a traditional Cossack costume.

“Can you hear me, Dr Mzu?” he asked.

“Yes. Who are you?”

“My name is Baranovich, not that it particularly matters. The important fact here is that I have agreed to work for Mr Capone’s Organization.”

“Oh, shit,” Eriba groaned.

Baranovich smiled and held a small circular mirror up. Alkad could see Lodi’s frightened face reflected in the surface.

“So,” Baranovich said. “As you can see, we have not harmed your comrade. This is his datavise you are receiving. If he was possessed, he would be unable to do this. No? Say something, Lodi.”

“Voi? Dr Mzu? I’m sorry. I couldn’t—Look there are only seven of them. Omain tried . . .” Something hissed loudly behind him. The image blurred. Then he blinked.

“A brave boy.” Baranovich clapped Lodi on the shoulder. “The Organization has a place for those with such integrity. I would hate to see another come to use this body.”

“You might have to,” Alkad said. “I cannot consider swapping a lone man for the device, no matter how well I know him. There have been far bigger sacrifices made to get me to this point. I would be betraying those who made them, and that I can never do. I’m sorry, Lodi, really I am.”

“My dear doctor,” Baranovich said. “I was not offering you Lodi in exchange for the Alchemist. I am simply using him as a convenient instrument through which I can deal with you, and perhaps demonstrate our intent.”

“I don’t need to deal with you.”

“Your pardon, Doctor, I believe you do. You will not get off this planet unless the Organization takes you off. I think you know that now. After all, you weren’t going to try and run to the spaceport, now were you?”

“I’m not about to discuss my departure arrangements with you.”

“Bravo, Doctor. Resistance to the very end. I respect that. But please understand, the circumstances in which you find yourself have changed radically since you began your quest for vengeance. There will be no revenge against Omuta anymore. What would be the point? In a few short months Omuta as it is today will not exist. Whatever you can do to it will not exceed the coming of possession. Will it, Doctor?”

“No.”

“So you see, you have only yourself to consider now, and what will happen in your personal future. The Organization can offer you a decent future. You know that with us millions of valuable people remain unpossessed, and secure in their jobs. You can be one of them, Doctor. I have the authority to offer you a place with us.”

“In return for the Alchemist.”

Baranovich shrugged magnanimously. “That is the deal. We will take you—and your friends too if you want them—off this planet today, before the orbital battle becomes any worse. Nobody else will do that. You either stay here and become possessed, an eternity spent in the humiliation of physical and mental bondage; or you come with us and live out the rest of your life as fruitfully as possible.”

“As destructively as possible, you mean.”

“I doubt the Alchemist would have to be used many times, not if it’s as good as rumour says. Yes?”

“It wouldn’t need many demonstrations,” Alkad agreed slowly.

“Alkad!” Voi protested.

Baranovich beamed happily. “Excellent, Doctor, I see you are acknowledging the truth. Your future is with us.”

“There’s something you should know,” Alkad said. “The activation code is stored in my neural nanonics. If I am killed and moved into another body in a bid to make me more compliant, I will not be able to access them. If I am possessed, the possessor will not be able to access them. And, Baranovich, there are no copies of the code.”

“You are a prudent woman.”

“If I come with you, then my companions are to be given passage to a world of their choice.”

“No!” Voi shouted.

Alkad turned from the projection and told Gelai: “Keep her quiet.”

Voi squirmed helplessly as the possessed woman pinned her arms behind her back. A gag solidified out of thin air to cover her mouth.

“Those are my terms,” Alkad told Baranovich. “I have spent most of my life in pursuit of my goal. If you do not agree to my terms, then I will not hesitate to defy you in the only way I have left. I have that determination, it is the one real weapon I have always had. You have pushed me into this position, do not doubt that I will use it.”

“Please, Doctor, there is no need for such vehemence. We will be happy to carry your young friends to a safe place.”

“All right. We have a deal.”

“Excellent. Our spaceplanes will pick you and your friends up at the ironberg foundry yard outside the city. We’ll be waiting at Disassembly Shed Four with Lodi. Be there in ninety minutes.”