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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.
“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.