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“Fuck you.” Ralph scooped the girl up and started to walk down the road. He ignored the hundreds of people standing in front of the prim buildings, the indifferent possessed and their wailing distraught victims, the ones he’d failed so completely. Staring resolutely ahead, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. He knew if he took it all in, acknowledged the magnitude of the disaster he’d wrought, he’d never be able to carry on.
“Enjoy your magnificent victory with the girl,” Annette Ekelund called after him.
“This one is only the beginning,” he promised grimly.
Chapter 05
“Enjoy your magnificent victory with the girl,” Annette Ekelund called after him.
“This one is only the beginning,” he promised grimly.
Chapter 05
At a point in space four light-years distant from the star around which Mirchusko orbited, the gravity density suddenly leapt upwards. The area affected was smaller than a quark, at first. But once established, the warp rapidly grew both in size and in strength. Faint strands of starlight curved around the fringes, only to be sucked in towards the centre as the gravity intensified further.
Ten picoseconds after its creation, the shape of the warp twisted from a spherical zone to a two-dimensional disk. By this time it was over a hundred metres in diameter. At the centre of one side, gravity fluctuated again, placing an enormous strain on local space. A perfectly circular rupture appeared, rapidly irising open.
A long grey-white fountain of gas spewed out from the epicentre of the wormhole terminus. The water vapour it contained immediately turned to minute ice crystals, spinning away from the central plume, twinkling weakly in the sparse starlight. Lumps of solid matter began to shoot out along the gas jet, tumbling off into the void. It was a curious collection of objects: sculpted clouds of sand, tufts of reed grass with their roots wriggling like spider legs, small fractured dendrites of white and blue coral, broken palm tree fronds, oscillating globules of saltwater, a shoal of frantic fish, their spectacularly coloured bodies bursting apart as they underwent explosive decompression, several seagulls squirting blood from beaks and rectums.
Then the crazy outpouring reduced drastically, blocked by a larger body which was surging along the wormhole. Udat slipped out into normal space, a flattened teardrop over a hundred and thirty metres long, its blue polyp hull enlivened with a tortuous purple web. Straightaway the blackhawk changed the flow of energy through the vast honeycomb of patterning cells which made up the bulk of its body, modifying its gravitonic distortion field. The wormhole terminus began to close behind it.
Almost the last object to emerge from the transdimensional opening was a small human figure. A woman: difficult to see because of the black SII spacesuit she wore, her limbs scrabbling futilely, almost as though she were clawing at the structure of space-time in order to pursue the big blackhawk as it drew away from her. Her movements slowly calmed as the suit’s sensor collar revealed stars and distant nebulas again, replacing the menacingly insubstantial pseudofabric of the wormhole.
Dr Alkad Mzu felt herself shudder uncontrollably, the relief was so intoxicating. Free from the grip of equations become energy.
I understand the configuration of reality too well to endure such direct exposure. The wormhole has too many flaws, too many hidden traps. A quasi-continuum where time’s arrow has to be directed by an artificial energy flow; the possible fates lurking within such a non-place would make you welcome death as the most beautiful of consorts.
The collar sensors showed her she had picked up a considerable tumble since losing her grip on the rope ladder. Her neural nanonics had automatically blocked the impulses from her inner ears as a precaution against nausea. There were also a number of analgesic blocks erected across the nerve paths from her forearms. A physiological status display showed her the damage inflicted on tendons and muscles as she’d forced herself to hang on as the Udat dived for safety. Nothing drastic, thankfully. Medical packages would be able to cope once she got the suit off.
“Can you retrieve me?” she datavised to the Udat ’s flight computer. “I can’t stop spinning.” As if they couldn’t see that. But the bitek starship was already seven hundred metres away, and still retreating from her. She wanted an answer, wanted someone to talk to her. Proof she wasn’t alone. This predicament was triggering way too many thirty-year-old memories. Dear Mary, I’ll be calling it déjà vu next. “Calling Udat , can you retrieve me?” Come on, answer.
On the Udat ’s bridge Haltam was busy programming the medical packages which were knitting to the base of Meyer’s skull. Haltam was the Udat ’s fusion specialist, but doubled as ship’s medical officer.
The captain was lying prone on his acceleration couch, unconscious. His fingers were still digging into the cushioning, frozen in a claw-like posture, nails broken by the strength he’d used to maul the fabric. Blood dribbling out of his nose made sticky blotches on his cheeks. Haltam didn’t like to think of the whimpers coming from Meyer’s mouth just before the blackhawk had swallowed out of Tranquillity, snatching Alkad Mzu away from the intelligence agents imprisoning her within the habitat. Nor did he like the physiological display he was accessing from Meyer’s neural nanonics.
“How is he?” asked Aziz, the Udat ’s spaceplane pilot.
“None too good, I think. He’s suffered a lot of cerebral stress, which pushed him into shock. If I’m interpreting this display right, his neural symbionts were subjected to a massive trauma. Some of the bitek synapses are dead, and there’s minor hemorrhaging where they interface with his medulla oblongata.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah. And we don’t have a medical package on board which can reach that deep. Not that it would do us a lot of good if we had. You need to be a specialist to operate one.”
“I cannot feel his dreams,” Udat datavised. “I always feel his dreams. Always.”
Haltam and Aziz exchanged a heavy glance. The bitek starship rarely used its link with the flight computer to communicate with any of the crew.
“I don’t believe the damage is permanent,” Haltam told the blackhawk. “Any decent hospital can repair these injuries.”
“He will waken?”
“Absolutely. His neural nanonics are keeping him under for the moment. I don’t want him conscious again until the packages have knitted. They ought to be able to help stabilize him, and alleviate most of the shock.”
“Thank you, Haltam.”
“Least I can do. And what about you? Are you all right?”
“Tranquillity was very harsh. My mind hurts. I have never known that before.”
“What about your physical structure?”
“Intact. I remain functional.”
A whistle of breath emerged from Haltam’s mouth. Then the flight computer informed him that Alkad Mzu was datavising for help. “Oh, hell,” he muttered. The coverage provided by the electronic sensor suite mounted around the outside of the starship’s life support horseshoe was limited. Normally, Udat ’s own sensor blisters provided Meyer with all the information he needed. But when Haltam accessed the suite, the infrared sweep found Mzu easily, spinning amid the thin cloud of dispersing debris which had been sucked into the wormhole with them.
“We’ve got you located,” he datavised. “Stand by.”
“Udat ?” Aziz asked. “Can you take us over to her, please?”
“I will do so.”
Haltam managed a nervous, relieved smile. At least the blackhawk was cooperating. The real big test would come when they wanted a swallow manoeuvre.
Udat manoeuvred itself to within fifty metres of Mzu, and matched her gentle trajectory. After that, Cherri Barnes strapped on a cold gas manoeuvring pack and hauled her in.
“We have to leave,” Alkad datavised as soon as she was inside the airlock. “Immediately.”
“You didn’t warn us about your friends on the beach,” Cherri answered reproachfully.
“You were told about the observation agents. I apologize if you weren’t aware of how anxious they were to prevent me from escaping, but I thought that was implicit in my message. Now, please, we must perform a swallow manoeuvre away from here.”
The airlock chamber pressurized as soon as the outer hatch closed, filling with a slightly chilled air. Cherri watched Mzu touch the seal catches on her worn old backpack with awkward movements. The small incongruous pack fell to the floor. Mzu’s SII suit began flowing off her skin, its oil-like substance accumulating in the form of a globe hanging from the base of her collar. Cherri eyed their passenger curiously as her own suit reverted to neutral storage mode. The short black woman was shivering slightly, sweat coating her skin. Both hands were bent inward as though crippled with arthritis; twisted, swollen fingers unmoving.
“Our captain is incapacitated,” Cherri said. “And I’m none too certain about Udat either.”
Alkad grimaced, shaking her head. Oh, what an irony. Depending on the Udat ’s goodwill, it of all starships. “Ships will be sent after us,” she said. “If we remain in this location I will be captured, and you will probably be exterminated.”
“Look, just what the hell did you do to get the Kingdom so pissed at you?”
“Better you don’t know.”
“Better I do, then I’ll know what we’re likely to be facing.”
“Trouble enough.”
“Try to be a little more specific.”
“Very well: every ESA asset they can activate throughout the Confederation will be used to find me, if that makes you feel any happier. You really don’t want to be around me for any length of time. If you are, you will die. Clear enough?”
Cherri didn’t know how to answer. True, they’d known Mzu was some kind of dissident on the run, but not that she would attract this kind of attention. And why would Tranquillity, presumably in conjunction with the Lord of Ruin, help the Kulu Kingdom try to restrain her? Mzu was adding up to real bad news.
Alkad datavised the flight computer, requesting a direct link to the blackhawk itself. “Udat ?”
“Yes, Dr Mzu.”
“You must leave here.”
“My captain is hurt. His mind has darkened and withered. I am in pain when I try to think.”
“I’m sorry about Meyer, but we cannot stay here. The blackhawks at Tranquillity know where you swallowed to. The Lord of Ruin will send them after me. They’ll take us all back.”
“I do not wish to return. Tranquillity frightens me. I thought it was my friend.”
“One swallow manoeuvre, that’s all. A small one. Just a light-year will suffice, the direction is not important. No blackhawk will be able to follow us then. After that we can see what’s to be done next.”
“Very well. A light-year.”
Cherri had already unfastened her spacesuit collar when she felt the familiar minute perturbation in apparent gravity which meant Udat ’s distortion field was altering to open a wormhole interstice. “Very clever,” she said sardonically to Mzu. “I hope to hell you know what you’re doing. Bitek starships don’t usually make swallows without their captain providing some supervision.”
“That’s a conceit you really ought to abandon,” Alkad said tiredly. “Voidhawks and blackhawks are considerably more intelligent than humans.”
“But their personalities are completely different.”
“It’s done now. And it would appear we are still alive. Were there any more complaints?”
Cherri ignored her and started to pull on a one-piece shipsuit.
“Could you sling my backpack over my shoulder, please?” Alkad asked. “I don’t have the use of my hands at this moment. Our exit from Tranquillity was more precipitous than I imagined. And I’ll need some medical packages.”
“Fine. Haltam can apply the packages for you; he’ll be on the bridge tending to Meyer. I’ll take the backpack for you.”
“No. Put it over my shoulder. I will carry it.”
Cherri sighed through clenched teeth. She urgently wanted to see for herself how bad Meyer was. She was worried about the way Udat would react if the captain was unconscious for too long. She was coming down off the adrenaline high of the escape, which was like a hit of pure depression. And this small woman was about as safe as her own weight in naked plutonium.
“What have you got in it?”
“Do not concern yourself about that.”
Cherri grabbed the backpack by its straps and held it up in front of Mzu’s impassive face. There couldn’t have been much in it, judging by the weight. “Now look—!”
“A great deal of money. And an even larger amount of information; none of which you would have the faintest comprehension of. Now, you are already harbouring me on board which in itself is enough to get you killed if I’m discovered. And if the agency knew you had physically held up the backpack containing the items it does, they would throw you straight into personality debrief just to find out how much those items weigh. Do you really want to compound matters by taking a look inside?”
What Cherri wanted to do was swing the backpack at Mzu’s head. Meyer had made the worst error of judgement in his life agreeing to this absurd rescue mission. All she could do now was pray it turned out not to be a terminal mistake.
“As you wish,” Cherri said with fragile calm.
San Angeles spaceport was situated on the southern rim of the metropolis. A square ten kilometres to a side, a miniature city chiselled from machinery. Vast barren swathes of carbon concrete had been poured over the levelled earth and then divided up into roads, taxi aprons, and landing pads. Hundreds of line company hangars and cargo terminals hosted a business which accounted for a fifth of the entire planet’s ground-to-orbit traffic movements.
Among the numbingly constant lines of standardized composite-walled hangars and office block cubes, only the main passenger terminal had been permitted a flight of fancy architecture. It resembled the kind of starship which might have been built if the practicalities of the ZTT drive hadn’t forced a uniform spherical hull on the astroengineering companies. A soft-contoured meld between an industrial microgee refinery station and a hypersonic biplane, it dominated the skyline with its imperious technogothic silhouette. On the long autoway ride out from the city it gave approaching drivers the impression it was ready to pounce jealously on the tiny delta-planform spaceplanes which scuttled underneath its sweeping wings to embark passengers.
Jezzibella didn’t bother looking at it. She sat in the car with her eyes closed for the whole of the early morning journey, not asleep, but brain definitely in neutral. Those kids from the concert—whatever their names were—had proved worthless last night, their awe of her interfering with their emotions. Now she just wanted out. Out of this world. Out of this galaxy. Out of this universe. Forever living on the hope that the waiting starship would take her to a place where something new was happening. That the next stop would be different.
Leroy and Libby shared the car with her, silent and motionless. They knew the mood. Always the same when she was leaving a planet, and a fraction more intense every time.
Leroy was pretty sure the unspoken yearning was one reason she appealed to the kids; they identified with that integral sense of bewildered desperation and loss. Of course, it would have to be watched. Right now it was just an artist’s essential suffering, a perverted muse. But eventually it could develop into full depression if he wasn’t careful.
Another item to take care of. More stress. Not that he’d have it any other way.
The eleven cars which made up the Jezzibella tour convoy slid into the VIP parking slots below one of the terminal’s flamboyant wings. Leroy had chosen such an early hour for the flight because it was the terminal’s slackest time. They ought to be able to clear the official procedures without any problems.
Maybe that was the reason why none of the bodyguards sensed anything wrong. Always scanning for trouble with augmented senses, the absence of people was a relief rather than a concern.
It wasn’t until Jezzibella asked: “Where the fuck are the reporters?” that Leroy noticed anything amiss. The terminal wasn’t merely quiet, it was dead. No passengers, no staff, not even a sub-manager to greet Jezzibella. And certainly no sign of any reporters. That wasn’t odd, that was alarming. He’d leaked their departure schedule to three reliable sources last night.
“Just fucking great, Leroy,” Jezzibella growled as the entourage went through the entrance. “This exit is really up there in fucking mythland, isn’t it? Because I certainly don’t fucking believe it. How the hell am I supposed to make a fucking impression when the only things watching me leave are the fucking valeting mechanoids?”
“I don’t understand it,” Leroy said. The cavernous VIP vestibule carried on the never-was illusion of the terminal building: ancient Egypt discovers atomic power. A marble fantasyville of obelisks, fountains, and outsize gold ornaments, where ebony sphinxes prowled around the walls. When he datavised the local net processor all he got was the capacity engaged response.
“What’s to understand, dickbrain? You screwed up again.” Jezzibella stomped off towards the wide wave-effect escalator which curved up towards one of the terminal’s concourses. She could remember coming down it when she arrived, so it must be the way to the spaceplanes. The bastard local net processor wouldn’t even permit her to access a floor plan. Cock-up planet!
She was five metres from the top (her retinue scurrying to catch up) when she saw the man standing waiting for her beside the arched entrance of the concourse. Some oaf in a terminal staff suit uniform, officious smile in place.
“I’m sorry, lady,” he said, when she drew level with him. “You can’t go any further.”
Jezzibella said: “Oh, really?”
“Yes. We’ve got a priority flight operation in progress today, everything has been rescheduled.”
Jezzibella smiled, her skin softening: a delectably young wide-eyed ingenue looking for a real man to guide her. “That’s such a pity. I’m booked to leave this morning.”
“I’m afraid there will be a short delay.”
Still smiling, Jezzibella slammed her knee into his crotch.
Isaac Goddard had been pleased at his assignment. Putting the brakes on inconvenient civilians wandering through the terminal was an important task, Al Capone wouldn’t give it to just anyone. And now it meant he got to meet this century’s superstar, too. Lee Ruggiero, whose body he possessed, was full of admiration for Jezzibella. Looking at her up close, Isaac could see why. So sweet and vulnerable. Shame he had to use force to stop her. But the timing of the spaceplane flights was vital. Al had emphasised that often enough.
He was readying his energistic powers to deal with her bodyguards, who had now caught her up, when she did her level best to ram his testicles into his eye sockets via his intestinal tract.
The energistic power which was the inheritance of every possessed was capable of near-miraculous feats as it bent the fabric of reality to a mind’s whim. As well as its destructive potential, items could be made solid at the flicker of a thought. It was also capable of reinforcing a body to resist almost any kind of assault as well as enhancing its physical strength. Wounds could be healed at almost the same rate they were inflicted.
But first the wish had to be formulated, the energistic flow regulated appropriately. Isaac Goddard never had a chance to wish for anything. A uniquely male agony blew apart every coherent thought current stealing through his captured brain. Pain was all that remained.
His face white, he slowly sank to the floor before Jezzibella. Tears trickled down his cheeks as his mouth laboured soundlessly.
“If it’s all the same to you,” Jezzibella said brightly, “I really would like to leave this shit tip of a planet right now.” She strode away.
“Oh, hey, come on, Jez,” Leroy called as he chased after her down the concourse, forcing himself into a fast waddle. “Give me a break. You can’t go around doing things like that.”
“Why not, for shit’s sake? Worried this fucking great army of witnesses will all testify in court?”
“Look, you heard him. There’s some kind of special flight schedule this morning. Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll find out what’s going on. Huh? I won’t be long.”
“I’m the fucking special flight, shithead! Me, me .”
“Christ! Grow up, will you! I don’t manage bloody teen-scream acts. I only do adults.”
Jezzibella stopped in surprise. Leroy never shouted at her. She pouted prettily. “I’ve been bad.”
“You got it.”
“Forgive me. I was all worked up over Emmerson.”
“I can understand that. But he’s not coming on the starship with us. Panic over.”
The mock smile faltered. “Leroy . . . Please, I just want to leave. I hate this fucking place. I’ll behave, really. But you have got to get me away from here.”
He rubbed his fat fingers over his face; sweat was making hair stick to his brow. “Okay. One miracle evacuation flight coming up.”
“Thanks, Leroy. I don’t have your defences, you know? The world’s different for you. Hard and easy altogether.”
Leroy tried to datavise a net processor. But he couldn’t get a single response, the units were all inert. “What the hell is going on here?” he asked in annoyance. “If these flights were that big a deal, why weren’t we informed?”
“Guess that’s my fault,” Al Capone told him.
Jezzibella and Leroy turned to see a group of ten men walking down the concourse towards them. They all wore double-breasted suits and carried machine guns. Somehow the idea of running from them seemed ludicrous. More gangsters were emerging from side corridors.
“You see, I don’t want people informed,” Al explained. “At least not for a while. After that, I’m gonna speak to this whole goddamn planet. Loud and clear.”
Two of Jezzibella’s bodyguards caught sight of the approaching gangsters. They began to run forwards, drawing their thermal induction pistols.
Al clicked his fingers. The bodyguards let out simultaneous yelps of pain as their pistols turned red hot. They dropped them fast. That was when a ripple of onyx flooring rose up and tripped them.
Jezzibella watched in astonishment as both bulky men went skidding into the wall. She looked from them back to Al, and grinned. “Magnifico.”
She desperately wanted to record the scene, but her fucking neural nanonics were crashing. Fucking typical!
Al watched the beef boy back away fearfully. But the dame . . . she just stood there. This weird expression on her face, fascination and interest making her eyes narrow demurely. Interest in him , by damn! She wasn’t afraid. She was pure class, this one. She was also one hell of a looker. Minx face, and a body the likes of which simply didn’t exist in the twenties.
Lovegrove was itching for a peek at her, busy telling him who Jezzibella was. Some kind of hotshot nightclub singer. Except there was more to it than just singing and playing the ivories these days, a lot more.
“So what are you going to tell us?” Jezzibella asked, her voice husky.
“What?” Al asked.
“When you speak to the planet. What are you going to say?”
Al took his time lighting a cigar. Making her wait, showing exactly who was in control. “I’m gonna tell them that I’m in charge now. Number one guy on the planet. And you’ve all gotta do what I say. Anything I say.” He winked broadly.
Jezzibella put on a disappointed expression. “Waste of talent.”
“What?”
“You’re the guys the police are calling Retros, right?”
“Yeah,” Al said cautiously.
She flicked a casual finger towards her dazed bodyguards. “And you’ve got the balls and the power to take over a whole planet?”
“You catch on quick.”
“So why waste it on this dump?”
“This dump has eight hundred and ninety million people living on it, lady. And I’m gonna be the fucking emperor of them all before the evening.”
“My last album has sold over three billion so far, probably triple that number in bootlegs. Those people want me to be their empress. If you’re going for broke, why not choose a decent planet? Kulu, or Oshanko, or even Earth.”
Not taking his eyes off her, Al called over his shoulder: “Hey, savvy Avvy, get your crummy ass up here. Now!”
Avram Harwood scuttled forwards, his head bowed, shoulders drooping. Each step was obviously painful for him, he was favouring his right leg. “Yes, sir?”
“New California is the greatest goddamn planet in the Confederation, ain’t that right?” Al asked.
“Oh, yes, sir. It is.”
“Is your population bigger than Kulu?” Jezzibella asked in a bored tone.
Avram Harwood twitched miserably.
“Answer her,” Capone growled.
“No, ma’am,” Harwood said.
“Is your economy larger than Oshanko’s?”
“No.”
“Do you export as much as Earth?”
“No.”
Jezzibella inclined her head contemptuously on one side, pushing her lips out towards Al. “Anything else you want to know?”
Her voice had suddenly become the same as a schoolteacher’s. Al started to laugh in sincere admiration. “Goddamn! Modern women.”
“Can you all do that heat trick with the fingers?”
“Sure can, honey.”
“Interesting. So how is taking over this spaceport tied in with conquering the planet?”
Al’s first instinct was to brag. About the synchronized flights up to the orbiting asteroids. About taking out the SD personnel. About using the SD network firepower to open up the whole planet to his Organization. But they were short on time. And this was no backwoods girl, she’d understand if he explained it. “Sorry, babe, but we’re kinda in a hurry. It’s been a ball.”
“No it hasn’t. If you’d had a ball with me, you’d know about it.”
“Hot shit—”
“If it’s tied in with spaceplane flights, you’re either going up to starships or the orbiting asteroids. But if you’re taking over the planet, it can’t be the starships. So it has to be the asteroids. Let me guess, the Strategic Defence network.” She watched the alarmed expressions light up on the faces of the gangsters. All except Mayor Harwood, but then he was already hopelessly adrift in some deep private purgatory. “How did I do?”
Al could only gawp. He’d heard of lady spiders like this; they knitted fancy webs or did hypnosis, or something. It ended up that the males just couldn’t escape. Then they got screwed and eaten.
Now I know what they go through.
“You did pretty good.” He was envious of her cool. Envious of a lot of things, actually.
“Al?” Emmet Mordden urged. “Al, we have to get going.”
“Yeah, yeah. I ain’t forgotten.”
“We can send this group down to Luciano’s people for possessing.”
“Hey, who the fuck’s in charge here?”
Emmet took a frightened pace backwards.
“In charge, but not in control,” Jezzibella teased.
“Don’t push it, lady,” Al warned her sharply.
“True leaders simply tell people to do what they want to do anyway.” She licked her lips. “Guess what I want to do?”
“Fuck this. Modern women. You’re all like goddamn whores. I ain’t never heard anything like it.”
“The talk isn’t all you’ve never had before.”
“Holy Christ.”
“So what do you say, Al?” Jezzibella switched her voice back to a liquid rumble. She almost didn’t have to fake it. She was so turned on, excited, stimulated. You name it. Caught up in a terrorist hijack. And such strange terrorists, too. Wimps with a personal nuclear capability. Except the leader, he was massively focused. Not bad-looking, either. “Want me to tag along on your little coup d’état mission? Or are you going to spend the rest of every waking day wondering what it would have been like? And you will wonder. You know you will.”
“We got a spare seat on the rocketship,” Al said. “But you’ve got to do as you’re told.”
She batted her eyelashes. “That’ll be a first.”
Amazed at what he’d just said, Al tried to play back their conversation in his mind to see how he’d gotten to this point. No good, he couldn’t figure it. He was acting on pure impulse again. And that felt first-class. Like the good old days. People never did know what he was going to do next. It kept them on edge, and him on top.
Jezzibella walked over to him and tucked her arm in his. “Let’s go.”
Al grinned around wolfishly. “Okay, wiseasses, you heard the lady. Mickey, take the rest of this bunch down to Luciano. Emmet, Silvano, take your boys to their spaceplanes.”
“Leave me my manager, and the old woman, oh, and the band too,” Jezzibella said.
“What the hell is this?” Al demanded. “I ain’t got room in my Organization for freeloaders.”
“You want me to look good. I need them.”
“Je-zus, you’re pushy.”
“You want a girl who’s a pushover, find yourself a teenage bimbo. Me, it’s the whole package or nothing.”
“Okay, Mickey, lay off the cornholers. But the rest of them get the full treatment.” He shoved his hands out towards her, palms held up imploringly. “Good enough?” The sarcasm wasn’t entirely feigned.
“Good enough,” Jezzibella agreed.
They grinned knowingly at each other for a moment, then led the procession of gangsters down the concourse to the waiting spaceplanes.
The wormhole terminus opened smoothly six hundred and eighty thousand kilometres above Jupiter’s equator, the absolute minimum permitted distance from the prodigious band of orbiting habitats. Oenone flew out of the circular gap, and immediately identified itself to the Jovian Strategic Defence network. As soon as their approach authorization had been granted, the voidhawk accelerated in towards the Kristata habitat at an urgent five gees. It was already asking the habitat to assemble a medical team to meet it as soon as it docked.
Of what nature?kristata asked.
At which point Cacus, their medical officer, took over, using the voidhawk’s affinity to relay a list of the grisly physical injuries inflicted on Syrinx by the possessed occupying Pernik island. But most importantly we’re going to need a psychological trauma team,he said. We put her in zero-tau for the flight, naturally. However, she did not respond to any level of mental communication after she was brought on board, other than a purely autonomic acknowledgement of Oenone ’s contact. I’m afraid the intensity of the withdrawal is one which approaches catatonia.
What happened to her?queried the habitat. it was unusual for a voidhawk to fly without its captain’s guidance.
She was tortured.
Ruben waited until the medical discussion was under way before asking Oenone for an affinity link with Eden itself. Arriving at Jupiter he could actually feel his body relaxing in the bridge couch despite the acceleration pressure. The events which would play out over the next few hours were going to be strenuous, but nothing like as bad as Atlantis and the voyage to the Sol system.
Oenone ’s instinct had been to rush directly to Saturn and the Romulus habitat as soon as Oxley had brought Syrinx on board. The yearning to go home after such a tremendous shock was as much a voidhawk trait as a human one.
It had been down to Ruben to convince the frantic, frightened voidhawk that Jupiter would be preferable. Jovian habitats had more advanced medical facilities than those orbiting Saturn. And, of course, there was the Consensus to inform.
This was a threat which simply had to rank higher than individual concerns.
Then there was the flight itself. Oenone had never flown anywhere without Syrinx’s subliminal supervision, much less performed a swallow manoeuvre. Voidhawks could fly without the slightest human input, of course. But as ever there was a big difference between theory and practice. They identified so much with the needs and wishes of their captains.
The crew’s general affinity band had rung with a powerful cadence of relief when the first swallow manoeuvre passed off flawlessly.
Ruben knew he shouldn’t have doubted Oenone , but his own mind was eddying with worry. The sight of Syrinx’s injuries . . . And worse, her mind closed as if it were a flower at night. Any attempt to prise below her churning surface thoughts had resulted in a squirt of sickening images and sensations. Her sanity would surely suffer if she was left alone with such nightmares. Cacus had immediately placed her in zero-tau, temporarily circumventing the problem.
Hello, Ruben,eden said. It is pleasant to receive you again. Though I am saddened by the condition of Syrinx, and I sense that Oenone is suffering considerable distress.
Ruben hadn’t conversed directly with the original habitat for over forty years, not since his last visit. It was a trip which most Edenists made at some time in their life. Not a pilgrimage (they would hotly deny that) but paying their respects, acknowledging the sentimental debt to the founding entity of their culture.
That’s why I need to speak with you, ruben said. Eden, we have a problem. Would you call a general Consensus, please?
There was no hierarchy in Edenism, it was a society proud of its egalitarianism; he could have made the same request of any habitat. If the personality considered the request valid, it would be forwarded to the habitat Consensus, then if it passed that vote, a general Consensus would be called, comprising every single Edenist, habitat, and voidhawk in the Sol system. But for this issue, Ruben felt obliged to make his appeal direct to Eden, the first habitat.
He gave an account of what had happened on Atlantis, followed by the précis which was Laton’s legacy. When he finished, the affinity band was silent for several moments.
I will call for a general Consensus,eden said. the habitat’s mental voice was uncharacteristically studious.
Relief mingled with a curious frisson of worry among Ruben’s thoughts. At least the burden which Oenone ’s crew had carried by themselves during the flight was to be shared and mitigated—the fundamental psychology of Edenism. But what amounted to the habitat’s shock at the revelation of souls returning to possess the living was deeply unsettling. Eden had been germinated in 2075, making it the oldest living entity in the Confederation. If anything had the requisite endowment of wisdom to withstand such news then surely it must be the ancient habitat.
Disquieted by the habitat’s response, and chiding himself for expecting miracles, Ruben settled back in the acceleration couch and used the voidhawk’s sensor blisters to observe their approach flight. They were already twenty-five thousand kilometres from Europa, curving gently around its northern hemisphere. The moon’s ice mantle glinted a grizzled oyster as distant sunlight skittered over its smooth surface, throwing off the occasional dazzling mirror-flash from an impact crater.
Behind the moon, Jupiter occluded half of the universe. They were close enough that the polar regions were invisible, distilling the planet to a simple flat barrier of enraged orange and white clouds. The gas giant was in one of its more active phases. Vast hurricane storm-spots geysered through the upper cloud bands, swirling mushroom formations bringing with them a multitude of darker contaminates from the lower levels. Colours fought like armies along frenzied boundaries of intricate curlicues, never winning, never losing. There was too much chaos for any one pattern or shade to gain the ultimate triumph of stability. Even the great spots, of which there were now three, had lifetimes measurable in mere millennia. But for raw spectacle they were unmatched. After five centuries of interstellar exploration, Jupiter remained one of the largest gas giants ever catalogued, honouring its archaic title as the father of gods.
A hundred thousand kilometres in from Europa, the habitats formed their own unique constellation around their lord, drinking down its magnetosphere energy, bathing in the tempestuous particle winds, listening to the wild chants of its radio voice, and watching the ever-changing panorama of the clouds. They could never live anywhere else but above such worlds; only the magnetic flux spun out by gas giants could generate the power levels necessary to sustain life within their dusky-crimson polyp shells. There were four thousand two hundred and fifty mature habitats in Jupiter orbit, nurturing a total Edenist population of over nine billion individuals. The second largest civilization in the Confederation—in numerical terms. Only Earth with its guesstimated population of thirty-five billion was bigger. But the standard of civilization, in both economic and cultural terms, was peerless. Jupiter’s citizens had no underclass, no ignorance, no poverty, and no misfits, barring the one-in-a-million Serpent who rejected Edenism in its entirety.
The reason for such enviable social fortune was Jupiter itself. To build such a society, even with affinity-enhancing psychological stability, and bitek alleviating a great many mundane physical problems, required vast wealth. It came from helium3 , the principal fusion fuel used throughout the Confederation.
In comparison with other fuels, a mix of He3 and deuterium produced one of the cleanest fusion reactions possible, resulting mainly in charged helium with an almost zero neutron emission. Such an end product meant that the generator systems needed little shielding, making them cheaper to build. Superenergized helium was also an ideal space drive.
The Confederation societies were heavily dependent on this form of cheap, low-pollution fusion to maintain their socioeconomic index. Fortunately deuterium existed in massive quantities; a common isotope of hydrogen, it could be extracted from any sea or glacial asteroid. He3 , however, was extremely rare in nature. The operation to mine it from Jupiter began in 2062 when the then Jovian Sky Power Corporation dropped its first aerostat into the atmosphere to extract the elusive isotope in commercial quantities. There were only minute amounts present, but minute is a relative term in the context of a gas giant.
It was that one tentative high-risk operation which had transformed itself, via political revolution, religious intolerance, and bitek revelation into Edenism. And Edenists continued to mine He3 in every colonized star system which had a gas giant (with the notable exception of Kulu and its Principalities), although cloudscoops had replaced aerostats long ago as the actual method of collection. It was the greatest industrial enterprise in existence, and also the largest monopoly. And with the format for developing stage one colony worlds now institutionalized, it looked set to remain so.
Yet as any student of ekistics could have predicted, it was Jupiter which remained the economic heart of Edenism. For it was Jupiter which supplied the single largest consumer of He3 : Earth and its O’Neill Halo. Such a market required a huge mining operation, as well as its associated support infrastructure; and on top of that came their own massive energy requirements.
Hundreds of industrial stations flocked around every habitat, varying in size from ten-kilometre-diameter asteroidal mineral refineries to tiny microgee research laboratories. Tens of thousands of spaceships congested local space, importing and exporting every commodity known to the human and xenoc races of the Confederation—their assigned flight vectors weaving a sluggish, ephemeral DNA coil around the five-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-kilometre orbital band.
By the time Oenone was two thousand kilometres away from Kristata, the habitat was becoming visible to its optical sensors. It shone weakly of its own accord, a miniature galaxy with long, thin spiral arms. The habitat itself formed the glowing core of the nebula, a cylinder forty-five kilometres long, rotating gently inside a corona of Saint Elmo’s fire sparked by the agitated particle winds splashing across its shell. Industrial stations glimmered around it, static flashing in crazed patterns over external girders and panels, their metallic structures more susceptible to the ionic squalls than bitek polyp. Fusion drives formed the spiral arms, Adamist starships and inter-orbit craft arriving and departing from the habitat’s globe-shaped counter-rotating spaceport.
A priority flight path had been cleared through the other ships, allowing Oenone to race past them towards the docking ledges ringing Kristata’s northern endcap, although the starship was actually decelerating now, pushing seven gees. Ruben observed the habitat expand rapidly, its central band of starscrapers coming into focus. It was virtually the only aspect of the external vista which had changed after travelling a hundred thousand kilometres from their swallow emergence point. Jupiter remained exactly the same. He couldn’t even tell if they were closer to the gas giant or not, there were no valid reference points. It seemed as though Oenone were flying between two flat plains, one comprised of ginger and white clouds, the other a midnight sky.
They swept around the counter-rotating spaceport and headed in for the northern endcap. The violet haze of glowing particles was murkier here, disrupted by slithering waves of darkness as the energized wind broke and churned against the four concentric docking ledge rings. Oenone experienced a prickle of static across its blue polyp hull as it slipped over the innermost ledge at a shallow tangent; for a moment the tattered discharge mimicked the purple web pattern veining its hull surface. Then the bulky voidhawk was hovering directly above a docking pedestal, slowly twisting around until the feed tubes were aligned correctly. It settled on the pedestal with all the fuss of a falling autumn leaf.
A convoy of service vehicles rolled towards it. The ambulance was the first to reach the rim of the saucer-shaped hull, its long airlock tube snaking out to mate with the crew toroid. Cacus was still discussing Syrinx’s status with the medical team as the zero-tau pod containing her body was rolled into the ambulance.
Ruben realized Oenone was hungrily ingesting nutrient fluid from the pedestal tubes. How are you?he asked the voidhawk belatedly.
I am glad the flight is over. Syrinx can begin to heal now. Kristata says all the damage can be repaired. Many doctors are part of its multiplicity. I believe what it says.
Yes, she’ll heal. And we can help. Knowing you are loved is a great part of any cure.
Thank you, Ruben. I am glad you are my friend, and hers.
Rising from his acceleration couch, Ruben felt a flush of sentiment and admiration at the voidhawk’s guileless faith. Sometimes its simple directness was like a child’s honesty.
Edwin and Serina were busying themselves powering down the crew toroid’s flight systems, and supervising the service vehicles as umbilicals were plugged into the ledge’s support machinery. Tula was already conversing with a local cargo depot about storing the few containers remaining in the lower hull cradles. Everyone seemed to have acknowledged that they would be here for some time, even Oenone .
Ten picoseconds after its creation, the shape of the warp twisted from a spherical zone to a two-dimensional disk. By this time it was over a hundred metres in diameter. At the centre of one side, gravity fluctuated again, placing an enormous strain on local space. A perfectly circular rupture appeared, rapidly irising open.
A long grey-white fountain of gas spewed out from the epicentre of the wormhole terminus. The water vapour it contained immediately turned to minute ice crystals, spinning away from the central plume, twinkling weakly in the sparse starlight. Lumps of solid matter began to shoot out along the gas jet, tumbling off into the void. It was a curious collection of objects: sculpted clouds of sand, tufts of reed grass with their roots wriggling like spider legs, small fractured dendrites of white and blue coral, broken palm tree fronds, oscillating globules of saltwater, a shoal of frantic fish, their spectacularly coloured bodies bursting apart as they underwent explosive decompression, several seagulls squirting blood from beaks and rectums.
Then the crazy outpouring reduced drastically, blocked by a larger body which was surging along the wormhole. Udat slipped out into normal space, a flattened teardrop over a hundred and thirty metres long, its blue polyp hull enlivened with a tortuous purple web. Straightaway the blackhawk changed the flow of energy through the vast honeycomb of patterning cells which made up the bulk of its body, modifying its gravitonic distortion field. The wormhole terminus began to close behind it.
Almost the last object to emerge from the transdimensional opening was a small human figure. A woman: difficult to see because of the black SII spacesuit she wore, her limbs scrabbling futilely, almost as though she were clawing at the structure of space-time in order to pursue the big blackhawk as it drew away from her. Her movements slowly calmed as the suit’s sensor collar revealed stars and distant nebulas again, replacing the menacingly insubstantial pseudofabric of the wormhole.
Dr Alkad Mzu felt herself shudder uncontrollably, the relief was so intoxicating. Free from the grip of equations become energy.
I understand the configuration of reality too well to endure such direct exposure. The wormhole has too many flaws, too many hidden traps. A quasi-continuum where time’s arrow has to be directed by an artificial energy flow; the possible fates lurking within such a non-place would make you welcome death as the most beautiful of consorts.
The collar sensors showed her she had picked up a considerable tumble since losing her grip on the rope ladder. Her neural nanonics had automatically blocked the impulses from her inner ears as a precaution against nausea. There were also a number of analgesic blocks erected across the nerve paths from her forearms. A physiological status display showed her the damage inflicted on tendons and muscles as she’d forced herself to hang on as the Udat dived for safety. Nothing drastic, thankfully. Medical packages would be able to cope once she got the suit off.
“Can you retrieve me?” she datavised to the Udat ’s flight computer. “I can’t stop spinning.” As if they couldn’t see that. But the bitek starship was already seven hundred metres away, and still retreating from her. She wanted an answer, wanted someone to talk to her. Proof she wasn’t alone. This predicament was triggering way too many thirty-year-old memories. Dear Mary, I’ll be calling it déjà vu next. “Calling Udat , can you retrieve me?” Come on, answer.
On the Udat ’s bridge Haltam was busy programming the medical packages which were knitting to the base of Meyer’s skull. Haltam was the Udat ’s fusion specialist, but doubled as ship’s medical officer.
The captain was lying prone on his acceleration couch, unconscious. His fingers were still digging into the cushioning, frozen in a claw-like posture, nails broken by the strength he’d used to maul the fabric. Blood dribbling out of his nose made sticky blotches on his cheeks. Haltam didn’t like to think of the whimpers coming from Meyer’s mouth just before the blackhawk had swallowed out of Tranquillity, snatching Alkad Mzu away from the intelligence agents imprisoning her within the habitat. Nor did he like the physiological display he was accessing from Meyer’s neural nanonics.
“How is he?” asked Aziz, the Udat ’s spaceplane pilot.
“None too good, I think. He’s suffered a lot of cerebral stress, which pushed him into shock. If I’m interpreting this display right, his neural symbionts were subjected to a massive trauma. Some of the bitek synapses are dead, and there’s minor hemorrhaging where they interface with his medulla oblongata.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah. And we don’t have a medical package on board which can reach that deep. Not that it would do us a lot of good if we had. You need to be a specialist to operate one.”
“I cannot feel his dreams,” Udat datavised. “I always feel his dreams. Always.”
Haltam and Aziz exchanged a heavy glance. The bitek starship rarely used its link with the flight computer to communicate with any of the crew.
“I don’t believe the damage is permanent,” Haltam told the blackhawk. “Any decent hospital can repair these injuries.”
“He will waken?”
“Absolutely. His neural nanonics are keeping him under for the moment. I don’t want him conscious again until the packages have knitted. They ought to be able to help stabilize him, and alleviate most of the shock.”
“Thank you, Haltam.”
“Least I can do. And what about you? Are you all right?”
“Tranquillity was very harsh. My mind hurts. I have never known that before.”
“What about your physical structure?”
“Intact. I remain functional.”
A whistle of breath emerged from Haltam’s mouth. Then the flight computer informed him that Alkad Mzu was datavising for help. “Oh, hell,” he muttered. The coverage provided by the electronic sensor suite mounted around the outside of the starship’s life support horseshoe was limited. Normally, Udat ’s own sensor blisters provided Meyer with all the information he needed. But when Haltam accessed the suite, the infrared sweep found Mzu easily, spinning amid the thin cloud of dispersing debris which had been sucked into the wormhole with them.
“We’ve got you located,” he datavised. “Stand by.”
“Udat ?” Aziz asked. “Can you take us over to her, please?”
“I will do so.”
Haltam managed a nervous, relieved smile. At least the blackhawk was cooperating. The real big test would come when they wanted a swallow manoeuvre.
Udat manoeuvred itself to within fifty metres of Mzu, and matched her gentle trajectory. After that, Cherri Barnes strapped on a cold gas manoeuvring pack and hauled her in.
“We have to leave,” Alkad datavised as soon as she was inside the airlock. “Immediately.”
“You didn’t warn us about your friends on the beach,” Cherri answered reproachfully.
“You were told about the observation agents. I apologize if you weren’t aware of how anxious they were to prevent me from escaping, but I thought that was implicit in my message. Now, please, we must perform a swallow manoeuvre away from here.”
The airlock chamber pressurized as soon as the outer hatch closed, filling with a slightly chilled air. Cherri watched Mzu touch the seal catches on her worn old backpack with awkward movements. The small incongruous pack fell to the floor. Mzu’s SII suit began flowing off her skin, its oil-like substance accumulating in the form of a globe hanging from the base of her collar. Cherri eyed their passenger curiously as her own suit reverted to neutral storage mode. The short black woman was shivering slightly, sweat coating her skin. Both hands were bent inward as though crippled with arthritis; twisted, swollen fingers unmoving.
“Our captain is incapacitated,” Cherri said. “And I’m none too certain about Udat either.”
Alkad grimaced, shaking her head. Oh, what an irony. Depending on the Udat ’s goodwill, it of all starships. “Ships will be sent after us,” she said. “If we remain in this location I will be captured, and you will probably be exterminated.”
“Look, just what the hell did you do to get the Kingdom so pissed at you?”
“Better you don’t know.”
“Better I do, then I’ll know what we’re likely to be facing.”
“Trouble enough.”
“Try to be a little more specific.”
“Very well: every ESA asset they can activate throughout the Confederation will be used to find me, if that makes you feel any happier. You really don’t want to be around me for any length of time. If you are, you will die. Clear enough?”
Cherri didn’t know how to answer. True, they’d known Mzu was some kind of dissident on the run, but not that she would attract this kind of attention. And why would Tranquillity, presumably in conjunction with the Lord of Ruin, help the Kulu Kingdom try to restrain her? Mzu was adding up to real bad news.
Alkad datavised the flight computer, requesting a direct link to the blackhawk itself. “Udat ?”
“Yes, Dr Mzu.”
“You must leave here.”
“My captain is hurt. His mind has darkened and withered. I am in pain when I try to think.”
“I’m sorry about Meyer, but we cannot stay here. The blackhawks at Tranquillity know where you swallowed to. The Lord of Ruin will send them after me. They’ll take us all back.”
“I do not wish to return. Tranquillity frightens me. I thought it was my friend.”
“One swallow manoeuvre, that’s all. A small one. Just a light-year will suffice, the direction is not important. No blackhawk will be able to follow us then. After that we can see what’s to be done next.”
“Very well. A light-year.”
Cherri had already unfastened her spacesuit collar when she felt the familiar minute perturbation in apparent gravity which meant Udat ’s distortion field was altering to open a wormhole interstice. “Very clever,” she said sardonically to Mzu. “I hope to hell you know what you’re doing. Bitek starships don’t usually make swallows without their captain providing some supervision.”
“That’s a conceit you really ought to abandon,” Alkad said tiredly. “Voidhawks and blackhawks are considerably more intelligent than humans.”
“But their personalities are completely different.”
“It’s done now. And it would appear we are still alive. Were there any more complaints?”
Cherri ignored her and started to pull on a one-piece shipsuit.
“Could you sling my backpack over my shoulder, please?” Alkad asked. “I don’t have the use of my hands at this moment. Our exit from Tranquillity was more precipitous than I imagined. And I’ll need some medical packages.”
“Fine. Haltam can apply the packages for you; he’ll be on the bridge tending to Meyer. I’ll take the backpack for you.”
“No. Put it over my shoulder. I will carry it.”
Cherri sighed through clenched teeth. She urgently wanted to see for herself how bad Meyer was. She was worried about the way Udat would react if the captain was unconscious for too long. She was coming down off the adrenaline high of the escape, which was like a hit of pure depression. And this small woman was about as safe as her own weight in naked plutonium.
“What have you got in it?”
“Do not concern yourself about that.”
Cherri grabbed the backpack by its straps and held it up in front of Mzu’s impassive face. There couldn’t have been much in it, judging by the weight. “Now look—!”
“A great deal of money. And an even larger amount of information; none of which you would have the faintest comprehension of. Now, you are already harbouring me on board which in itself is enough to get you killed if I’m discovered. And if the agency knew you had physically held up the backpack containing the items it does, they would throw you straight into personality debrief just to find out how much those items weigh. Do you really want to compound matters by taking a look inside?”
What Cherri wanted to do was swing the backpack at Mzu’s head. Meyer had made the worst error of judgement in his life agreeing to this absurd rescue mission. All she could do now was pray it turned out not to be a terminal mistake.
“As you wish,” Cherri said with fragile calm.
San Angeles spaceport was situated on the southern rim of the metropolis. A square ten kilometres to a side, a miniature city chiselled from machinery. Vast barren swathes of carbon concrete had been poured over the levelled earth and then divided up into roads, taxi aprons, and landing pads. Hundreds of line company hangars and cargo terminals hosted a business which accounted for a fifth of the entire planet’s ground-to-orbit traffic movements.
Among the numbingly constant lines of standardized composite-walled hangars and office block cubes, only the main passenger terminal had been permitted a flight of fancy architecture. It resembled the kind of starship which might have been built if the practicalities of the ZTT drive hadn’t forced a uniform spherical hull on the astroengineering companies. A soft-contoured meld between an industrial microgee refinery station and a hypersonic biplane, it dominated the skyline with its imperious technogothic silhouette. On the long autoway ride out from the city it gave approaching drivers the impression it was ready to pounce jealously on the tiny delta-planform spaceplanes which scuttled underneath its sweeping wings to embark passengers.
Jezzibella didn’t bother looking at it. She sat in the car with her eyes closed for the whole of the early morning journey, not asleep, but brain definitely in neutral. Those kids from the concert—whatever their names were—had proved worthless last night, their awe of her interfering with their emotions. Now she just wanted out. Out of this world. Out of this galaxy. Out of this universe. Forever living on the hope that the waiting starship would take her to a place where something new was happening. That the next stop would be different.
Leroy and Libby shared the car with her, silent and motionless. They knew the mood. Always the same when she was leaving a planet, and a fraction more intense every time.
Leroy was pretty sure the unspoken yearning was one reason she appealed to the kids; they identified with that integral sense of bewildered desperation and loss. Of course, it would have to be watched. Right now it was just an artist’s essential suffering, a perverted muse. But eventually it could develop into full depression if he wasn’t careful.
Another item to take care of. More stress. Not that he’d have it any other way.
The eleven cars which made up the Jezzibella tour convoy slid into the VIP parking slots below one of the terminal’s flamboyant wings. Leroy had chosen such an early hour for the flight because it was the terminal’s slackest time. They ought to be able to clear the official procedures without any problems.
Maybe that was the reason why none of the bodyguards sensed anything wrong. Always scanning for trouble with augmented senses, the absence of people was a relief rather than a concern.
It wasn’t until Jezzibella asked: “Where the fuck are the reporters?” that Leroy noticed anything amiss. The terminal wasn’t merely quiet, it was dead. No passengers, no staff, not even a sub-manager to greet Jezzibella. And certainly no sign of any reporters. That wasn’t odd, that was alarming. He’d leaked their departure schedule to three reliable sources last night.
“Just fucking great, Leroy,” Jezzibella growled as the entourage went through the entrance. “This exit is really up there in fucking mythland, isn’t it? Because I certainly don’t fucking believe it. How the hell am I supposed to make a fucking impression when the only things watching me leave are the fucking valeting mechanoids?”
“I don’t understand it,” Leroy said. The cavernous VIP vestibule carried on the never-was illusion of the terminal building: ancient Egypt discovers atomic power. A marble fantasyville of obelisks, fountains, and outsize gold ornaments, where ebony sphinxes prowled around the walls. When he datavised the local net processor all he got was the capacity engaged response.
“What’s to understand, dickbrain? You screwed up again.” Jezzibella stomped off towards the wide wave-effect escalator which curved up towards one of the terminal’s concourses. She could remember coming down it when she arrived, so it must be the way to the spaceplanes. The bastard local net processor wouldn’t even permit her to access a floor plan. Cock-up planet!
She was five metres from the top (her retinue scurrying to catch up) when she saw the man standing waiting for her beside the arched entrance of the concourse. Some oaf in a terminal staff suit uniform, officious smile in place.
“I’m sorry, lady,” he said, when she drew level with him. “You can’t go any further.”
Jezzibella said: “Oh, really?”
“Yes. We’ve got a priority flight operation in progress today, everything has been rescheduled.”
Jezzibella smiled, her skin softening: a delectably young wide-eyed ingenue looking for a real man to guide her. “That’s such a pity. I’m booked to leave this morning.”
“I’m afraid there will be a short delay.”
Still smiling, Jezzibella slammed her knee into his crotch.
Isaac Goddard had been pleased at his assignment. Putting the brakes on inconvenient civilians wandering through the terminal was an important task, Al Capone wouldn’t give it to just anyone. And now it meant he got to meet this century’s superstar, too. Lee Ruggiero, whose body he possessed, was full of admiration for Jezzibella. Looking at her up close, Isaac could see why. So sweet and vulnerable. Shame he had to use force to stop her. But the timing of the spaceplane flights was vital. Al had emphasised that often enough.
He was readying his energistic powers to deal with her bodyguards, who had now caught her up, when she did her level best to ram his testicles into his eye sockets via his intestinal tract.
The energistic power which was the inheritance of every possessed was capable of near-miraculous feats as it bent the fabric of reality to a mind’s whim. As well as its destructive potential, items could be made solid at the flicker of a thought. It was also capable of reinforcing a body to resist almost any kind of assault as well as enhancing its physical strength. Wounds could be healed at almost the same rate they were inflicted.
But first the wish had to be formulated, the energistic flow regulated appropriately. Isaac Goddard never had a chance to wish for anything. A uniquely male agony blew apart every coherent thought current stealing through his captured brain. Pain was all that remained.
His face white, he slowly sank to the floor before Jezzibella. Tears trickled down his cheeks as his mouth laboured soundlessly.
“If it’s all the same to you,” Jezzibella said brightly, “I really would like to leave this shit tip of a planet right now.” She strode away.
“Oh, hey, come on, Jez,” Leroy called as he chased after her down the concourse, forcing himself into a fast waddle. “Give me a break. You can’t go around doing things like that.”
“Why not, for shit’s sake? Worried this fucking great army of witnesses will all testify in court?”
“Look, you heard him. There’s some kind of special flight schedule this morning. Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll find out what’s going on. Huh? I won’t be long.”
“I’m the fucking special flight, shithead! Me, me .”
“Christ! Grow up, will you! I don’t manage bloody teen-scream acts. I only do adults.”
Jezzibella stopped in surprise. Leroy never shouted at her. She pouted prettily. “I’ve been bad.”
“You got it.”
“Forgive me. I was all worked up over Emmerson.”
“I can understand that. But he’s not coming on the starship with us. Panic over.”
The mock smile faltered. “Leroy . . . Please, I just want to leave. I hate this fucking place. I’ll behave, really. But you have got to get me away from here.”
He rubbed his fat fingers over his face; sweat was making hair stick to his brow. “Okay. One miracle evacuation flight coming up.”
“Thanks, Leroy. I don’t have your defences, you know? The world’s different for you. Hard and easy altogether.”
Leroy tried to datavise a net processor. But he couldn’t get a single response, the units were all inert. “What the hell is going on here?” he asked in annoyance. “If these flights were that big a deal, why weren’t we informed?”
“Guess that’s my fault,” Al Capone told him.
Jezzibella and Leroy turned to see a group of ten men walking down the concourse towards them. They all wore double-breasted suits and carried machine guns. Somehow the idea of running from them seemed ludicrous. More gangsters were emerging from side corridors.
“You see, I don’t want people informed,” Al explained. “At least not for a while. After that, I’m gonna speak to this whole goddamn planet. Loud and clear.”
Two of Jezzibella’s bodyguards caught sight of the approaching gangsters. They began to run forwards, drawing their thermal induction pistols.
Al clicked his fingers. The bodyguards let out simultaneous yelps of pain as their pistols turned red hot. They dropped them fast. That was when a ripple of onyx flooring rose up and tripped them.
Jezzibella watched in astonishment as both bulky men went skidding into the wall. She looked from them back to Al, and grinned. “Magnifico.”
She desperately wanted to record the scene, but her fucking neural nanonics were crashing. Fucking typical!
Al watched the beef boy back away fearfully. But the dame . . . she just stood there. This weird expression on her face, fascination and interest making her eyes narrow demurely. Interest in him , by damn! She wasn’t afraid. She was pure class, this one. She was also one hell of a looker. Minx face, and a body the likes of which simply didn’t exist in the twenties.
Lovegrove was itching for a peek at her, busy telling him who Jezzibella was. Some kind of hotshot nightclub singer. Except there was more to it than just singing and playing the ivories these days, a lot more.
“So what are you going to tell us?” Jezzibella asked, her voice husky.
“What?” Al asked.
“When you speak to the planet. What are you going to say?”
Al took his time lighting a cigar. Making her wait, showing exactly who was in control. “I’m gonna tell them that I’m in charge now. Number one guy on the planet. And you’ve all gotta do what I say. Anything I say.” He winked broadly.
Jezzibella put on a disappointed expression. “Waste of talent.”
“What?”
“You’re the guys the police are calling Retros, right?”
“Yeah,” Al said cautiously.
She flicked a casual finger towards her dazed bodyguards. “And you’ve got the balls and the power to take over a whole planet?”
“You catch on quick.”
“So why waste it on this dump?”
“This dump has eight hundred and ninety million people living on it, lady. And I’m gonna be the fucking emperor of them all before the evening.”
“My last album has sold over three billion so far, probably triple that number in bootlegs. Those people want me to be their empress. If you’re going for broke, why not choose a decent planet? Kulu, or Oshanko, or even Earth.”
Not taking his eyes off her, Al called over his shoulder: “Hey, savvy Avvy, get your crummy ass up here. Now!”
Avram Harwood scuttled forwards, his head bowed, shoulders drooping. Each step was obviously painful for him, he was favouring his right leg. “Yes, sir?”
“New California is the greatest goddamn planet in the Confederation, ain’t that right?” Al asked.
“Oh, yes, sir. It is.”
“Is your population bigger than Kulu?” Jezzibella asked in a bored tone.
Avram Harwood twitched miserably.
“Answer her,” Capone growled.
“No, ma’am,” Harwood said.
“Is your economy larger than Oshanko’s?”
“No.”
“Do you export as much as Earth?”
“No.”
Jezzibella inclined her head contemptuously on one side, pushing her lips out towards Al. “Anything else you want to know?”
Her voice had suddenly become the same as a schoolteacher’s. Al started to laugh in sincere admiration. “Goddamn! Modern women.”
“Can you all do that heat trick with the fingers?”
“Sure can, honey.”
“Interesting. So how is taking over this spaceport tied in with conquering the planet?”
Al’s first instinct was to brag. About the synchronized flights up to the orbiting asteroids. About taking out the SD personnel. About using the SD network firepower to open up the whole planet to his Organization. But they were short on time. And this was no backwoods girl, she’d understand if he explained it. “Sorry, babe, but we’re kinda in a hurry. It’s been a ball.”
“No it hasn’t. If you’d had a ball with me, you’d know about it.”
“Hot shit—”
“If it’s tied in with spaceplane flights, you’re either going up to starships or the orbiting asteroids. But if you’re taking over the planet, it can’t be the starships. So it has to be the asteroids. Let me guess, the Strategic Defence network.” She watched the alarmed expressions light up on the faces of the gangsters. All except Mayor Harwood, but then he was already hopelessly adrift in some deep private purgatory. “How did I do?”
Al could only gawp. He’d heard of lady spiders like this; they knitted fancy webs or did hypnosis, or something. It ended up that the males just couldn’t escape. Then they got screwed and eaten.
Now I know what they go through.
“You did pretty good.” He was envious of her cool. Envious of a lot of things, actually.
“Al?” Emmet Mordden urged. “Al, we have to get going.”
“Yeah, yeah. I ain’t forgotten.”
“We can send this group down to Luciano’s people for possessing.”
“Hey, who the fuck’s in charge here?”
Emmet took a frightened pace backwards.
“In charge, but not in control,” Jezzibella teased.
“Don’t push it, lady,” Al warned her sharply.
“True leaders simply tell people to do what they want to do anyway.” She licked her lips. “Guess what I want to do?”
“Fuck this. Modern women. You’re all like goddamn whores. I ain’t never heard anything like it.”
“The talk isn’t all you’ve never had before.”
“Holy Christ.”
“So what do you say, Al?” Jezzibella switched her voice back to a liquid rumble. She almost didn’t have to fake it. She was so turned on, excited, stimulated. You name it. Caught up in a terrorist hijack. And such strange terrorists, too. Wimps with a personal nuclear capability. Except the leader, he was massively focused. Not bad-looking, either. “Want me to tag along on your little coup d’état mission? Or are you going to spend the rest of every waking day wondering what it would have been like? And you will wonder. You know you will.”
“We got a spare seat on the rocketship,” Al said. “But you’ve got to do as you’re told.”
She batted her eyelashes. “That’ll be a first.”
Amazed at what he’d just said, Al tried to play back their conversation in his mind to see how he’d gotten to this point. No good, he couldn’t figure it. He was acting on pure impulse again. And that felt first-class. Like the good old days. People never did know what he was going to do next. It kept them on edge, and him on top.
Jezzibella walked over to him and tucked her arm in his. “Let’s go.”
Al grinned around wolfishly. “Okay, wiseasses, you heard the lady. Mickey, take the rest of this bunch down to Luciano. Emmet, Silvano, take your boys to their spaceplanes.”
“Leave me my manager, and the old woman, oh, and the band too,” Jezzibella said.
“What the hell is this?” Al demanded. “I ain’t got room in my Organization for freeloaders.”
“You want me to look good. I need them.”
“Je-zus, you’re pushy.”
“You want a girl who’s a pushover, find yourself a teenage bimbo. Me, it’s the whole package or nothing.”
“Okay, Mickey, lay off the cornholers. But the rest of them get the full treatment.” He shoved his hands out towards her, palms held up imploringly. “Good enough?” The sarcasm wasn’t entirely feigned.
“Good enough,” Jezzibella agreed.
They grinned knowingly at each other for a moment, then led the procession of gangsters down the concourse to the waiting spaceplanes.
The wormhole terminus opened smoothly six hundred and eighty thousand kilometres above Jupiter’s equator, the absolute minimum permitted distance from the prodigious band of orbiting habitats. Oenone flew out of the circular gap, and immediately identified itself to the Jovian Strategic Defence network. As soon as their approach authorization had been granted, the voidhawk accelerated in towards the Kristata habitat at an urgent five gees. It was already asking the habitat to assemble a medical team to meet it as soon as it docked.
Of what nature?kristata asked.
At which point Cacus, their medical officer, took over, using the voidhawk’s affinity to relay a list of the grisly physical injuries inflicted on Syrinx by the possessed occupying Pernik island. But most importantly we’re going to need a psychological trauma team,he said. We put her in zero-tau for the flight, naturally. However, she did not respond to any level of mental communication after she was brought on board, other than a purely autonomic acknowledgement of Oenone ’s contact. I’m afraid the intensity of the withdrawal is one which approaches catatonia.
What happened to her?queried the habitat. it was unusual for a voidhawk to fly without its captain’s guidance.
She was tortured.
Ruben waited until the medical discussion was under way before asking Oenone for an affinity link with Eden itself. Arriving at Jupiter he could actually feel his body relaxing in the bridge couch despite the acceleration pressure. The events which would play out over the next few hours were going to be strenuous, but nothing like as bad as Atlantis and the voyage to the Sol system.
Oenone ’s instinct had been to rush directly to Saturn and the Romulus habitat as soon as Oxley had brought Syrinx on board. The yearning to go home after such a tremendous shock was as much a voidhawk trait as a human one.
It had been down to Ruben to convince the frantic, frightened voidhawk that Jupiter would be preferable. Jovian habitats had more advanced medical facilities than those orbiting Saturn. And, of course, there was the Consensus to inform.
This was a threat which simply had to rank higher than individual concerns.
Then there was the flight itself. Oenone had never flown anywhere without Syrinx’s subliminal supervision, much less performed a swallow manoeuvre. Voidhawks could fly without the slightest human input, of course. But as ever there was a big difference between theory and practice. They identified so much with the needs and wishes of their captains.
The crew’s general affinity band had rung with a powerful cadence of relief when the first swallow manoeuvre passed off flawlessly.
Ruben knew he shouldn’t have doubted Oenone , but his own mind was eddying with worry. The sight of Syrinx’s injuries . . . And worse, her mind closed as if it were a flower at night. Any attempt to prise below her churning surface thoughts had resulted in a squirt of sickening images and sensations. Her sanity would surely suffer if she was left alone with such nightmares. Cacus had immediately placed her in zero-tau, temporarily circumventing the problem.
Hello, Ruben,eden said. It is pleasant to receive you again. Though I am saddened by the condition of Syrinx, and I sense that Oenone is suffering considerable distress.
Ruben hadn’t conversed directly with the original habitat for over forty years, not since his last visit. It was a trip which most Edenists made at some time in their life. Not a pilgrimage (they would hotly deny that) but paying their respects, acknowledging the sentimental debt to the founding entity of their culture.
That’s why I need to speak with you, ruben said. Eden, we have a problem. Would you call a general Consensus, please?
There was no hierarchy in Edenism, it was a society proud of its egalitarianism; he could have made the same request of any habitat. If the personality considered the request valid, it would be forwarded to the habitat Consensus, then if it passed that vote, a general Consensus would be called, comprising every single Edenist, habitat, and voidhawk in the Sol system. But for this issue, Ruben felt obliged to make his appeal direct to Eden, the first habitat.
He gave an account of what had happened on Atlantis, followed by the précis which was Laton’s legacy. When he finished, the affinity band was silent for several moments.
I will call for a general Consensus,eden said. the habitat’s mental voice was uncharacteristically studious.
Relief mingled with a curious frisson of worry among Ruben’s thoughts. At least the burden which Oenone ’s crew had carried by themselves during the flight was to be shared and mitigated—the fundamental psychology of Edenism. But what amounted to the habitat’s shock at the revelation of souls returning to possess the living was deeply unsettling. Eden had been germinated in 2075, making it the oldest living entity in the Confederation. If anything had the requisite endowment of wisdom to withstand such news then surely it must be the ancient habitat.
Disquieted by the habitat’s response, and chiding himself for expecting miracles, Ruben settled back in the acceleration couch and used the voidhawk’s sensor blisters to observe their approach flight. They were already twenty-five thousand kilometres from Europa, curving gently around its northern hemisphere. The moon’s ice mantle glinted a grizzled oyster as distant sunlight skittered over its smooth surface, throwing off the occasional dazzling mirror-flash from an impact crater.
Behind the moon, Jupiter occluded half of the universe. They were close enough that the polar regions were invisible, distilling the planet to a simple flat barrier of enraged orange and white clouds. The gas giant was in one of its more active phases. Vast hurricane storm-spots geysered through the upper cloud bands, swirling mushroom formations bringing with them a multitude of darker contaminates from the lower levels. Colours fought like armies along frenzied boundaries of intricate curlicues, never winning, never losing. There was too much chaos for any one pattern or shade to gain the ultimate triumph of stability. Even the great spots, of which there were now three, had lifetimes measurable in mere millennia. But for raw spectacle they were unmatched. After five centuries of interstellar exploration, Jupiter remained one of the largest gas giants ever catalogued, honouring its archaic title as the father of gods.
A hundred thousand kilometres in from Europa, the habitats formed their own unique constellation around their lord, drinking down its magnetosphere energy, bathing in the tempestuous particle winds, listening to the wild chants of its radio voice, and watching the ever-changing panorama of the clouds. They could never live anywhere else but above such worlds; only the magnetic flux spun out by gas giants could generate the power levels necessary to sustain life within their dusky-crimson polyp shells. There were four thousand two hundred and fifty mature habitats in Jupiter orbit, nurturing a total Edenist population of over nine billion individuals. The second largest civilization in the Confederation—in numerical terms. Only Earth with its guesstimated population of thirty-five billion was bigger. But the standard of civilization, in both economic and cultural terms, was peerless. Jupiter’s citizens had no underclass, no ignorance, no poverty, and no misfits, barring the one-in-a-million Serpent who rejected Edenism in its entirety.
The reason for such enviable social fortune was Jupiter itself. To build such a society, even with affinity-enhancing psychological stability, and bitek alleviating a great many mundane physical problems, required vast wealth. It came from helium3 , the principal fusion fuel used throughout the Confederation.
In comparison with other fuels, a mix of He3 and deuterium produced one of the cleanest fusion reactions possible, resulting mainly in charged helium with an almost zero neutron emission. Such an end product meant that the generator systems needed little shielding, making them cheaper to build. Superenergized helium was also an ideal space drive.
The Confederation societies were heavily dependent on this form of cheap, low-pollution fusion to maintain their socioeconomic index. Fortunately deuterium existed in massive quantities; a common isotope of hydrogen, it could be extracted from any sea or glacial asteroid. He3 , however, was extremely rare in nature. The operation to mine it from Jupiter began in 2062 when the then Jovian Sky Power Corporation dropped its first aerostat into the atmosphere to extract the elusive isotope in commercial quantities. There were only minute amounts present, but minute is a relative term in the context of a gas giant.
It was that one tentative high-risk operation which had transformed itself, via political revolution, religious intolerance, and bitek revelation into Edenism. And Edenists continued to mine He3 in every colonized star system which had a gas giant (with the notable exception of Kulu and its Principalities), although cloudscoops had replaced aerostats long ago as the actual method of collection. It was the greatest industrial enterprise in existence, and also the largest monopoly. And with the format for developing stage one colony worlds now institutionalized, it looked set to remain so.
Yet as any student of ekistics could have predicted, it was Jupiter which remained the economic heart of Edenism. For it was Jupiter which supplied the single largest consumer of He3 : Earth and its O’Neill Halo. Such a market required a huge mining operation, as well as its associated support infrastructure; and on top of that came their own massive energy requirements.
Hundreds of industrial stations flocked around every habitat, varying in size from ten-kilometre-diameter asteroidal mineral refineries to tiny microgee research laboratories. Tens of thousands of spaceships congested local space, importing and exporting every commodity known to the human and xenoc races of the Confederation—their assigned flight vectors weaving a sluggish, ephemeral DNA coil around the five-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-kilometre orbital band.
By the time Oenone was two thousand kilometres away from Kristata, the habitat was becoming visible to its optical sensors. It shone weakly of its own accord, a miniature galaxy with long, thin spiral arms. The habitat itself formed the glowing core of the nebula, a cylinder forty-five kilometres long, rotating gently inside a corona of Saint Elmo’s fire sparked by the agitated particle winds splashing across its shell. Industrial stations glimmered around it, static flashing in crazed patterns over external girders and panels, their metallic structures more susceptible to the ionic squalls than bitek polyp. Fusion drives formed the spiral arms, Adamist starships and inter-orbit craft arriving and departing from the habitat’s globe-shaped counter-rotating spaceport.
A priority flight path had been cleared through the other ships, allowing Oenone to race past them towards the docking ledges ringing Kristata’s northern endcap, although the starship was actually decelerating now, pushing seven gees. Ruben observed the habitat expand rapidly, its central band of starscrapers coming into focus. It was virtually the only aspect of the external vista which had changed after travelling a hundred thousand kilometres from their swallow emergence point. Jupiter remained exactly the same. He couldn’t even tell if they were closer to the gas giant or not, there were no valid reference points. It seemed as though Oenone were flying between two flat plains, one comprised of ginger and white clouds, the other a midnight sky.
They swept around the counter-rotating spaceport and headed in for the northern endcap. The violet haze of glowing particles was murkier here, disrupted by slithering waves of darkness as the energized wind broke and churned against the four concentric docking ledge rings. Oenone experienced a prickle of static across its blue polyp hull as it slipped over the innermost ledge at a shallow tangent; for a moment the tattered discharge mimicked the purple web pattern veining its hull surface. Then the bulky voidhawk was hovering directly above a docking pedestal, slowly twisting around until the feed tubes were aligned correctly. It settled on the pedestal with all the fuss of a falling autumn leaf.
A convoy of service vehicles rolled towards it. The ambulance was the first to reach the rim of the saucer-shaped hull, its long airlock tube snaking out to mate with the crew toroid. Cacus was still discussing Syrinx’s status with the medical team as the zero-tau pod containing her body was rolled into the ambulance.
Ruben realized Oenone was hungrily ingesting nutrient fluid from the pedestal tubes. How are you?he asked the voidhawk belatedly.
I am glad the flight is over. Syrinx can begin to heal now. Kristata says all the damage can be repaired. Many doctors are part of its multiplicity. I believe what it says.
Yes, she’ll heal. And we can help. Knowing you are loved is a great part of any cure.
Thank you, Ruben. I am glad you are my friend, and hers.
Rising from his acceleration couch, Ruben felt a flush of sentiment and admiration at the voidhawk’s guileless faith. Sometimes its simple directness was like a child’s honesty.
Edwin and Serina were busying themselves powering down the crew toroid’s flight systems, and supervising the service vehicles as umbilicals were plugged into the ledge’s support machinery. Tula was already conversing with a local cargo depot about storing the few containers remaining in the lower hull cradles. Everyone seemed to have acknowledged that they would be here for some time, even Oenone .